Chapter Text
It always starts the same way.
A dark alley, a happy family, a fired gun.
A scream that pierces the city. A kneeling boy who never looks up past the wet asphalt. A snake that eats its own tail.
The dull thud of two corpses against the pavement.
And a white pearl rolls into the gutter, as loud as a gunshot.
It clatters down through the open mouth of the metal grate and into the sewers, where it sinks until Gotham is but a faint memory, being dragged along by the everflowing current of sewage pumping beneath her streets.
In nearly forty years time, a young boy will scour the sewers in search of it, and he’ll disturb that delicate peace, sanctioned only by the invariable duplicity of confinement, by removing the pearl from its plinth in the heart of the city, returning it to his father's waiting hands.
And he’ll be forced to suffer the consequences of his show of good faith.
For no good deed goes unpunished.
GOTHAM CITY, NJ: JUNE 26, 1973
A rookie detective and his disillusioned partner walk into an alley, like the start of a bad joke. The rookie approaches the boy’s slumped, trembling silhouette as his partner trails behind, pointedly avoiding eye contact and muttering grievances under his breath. He asks the boy questions and offers hollow reassurances, and he inspects the corpses with a frown and a furrowed brow while the older cop meanders further down the alley in a blatant evasion of the responsibilities associated with his badge.
The boy remains frozen, and their exchange washes over him like a steady stream of tepid water in a bathtub, which is to say it goes mostly unnoticed, until he's enveloped in the distinct warmth of two familiar arms. Bruce buries his face in the wool of Alfred’s worn coat and cries for an indeterminate amount of time, releasing fragmented, shallow breaths into the damp air.
In the hours that followed, his world was consumed by a haze. The car hummed as he pressed his cheek against the cool glass of the backseat window, watching raindrops race to the bottom, where they’re met not with victory but with the beltline moulding. To so often be personified in this manner is for them to race to their deaths. And yet again, he's transfixed, helpless to do much anything other than stare.
Bruce had gotten into the habit of making sailboats, paper ones, that would glide on the water and drift out to sea. He’d release them in the streams and ponds that surrounded their acreage, and when water would rush down the sidewalks during a particularly heavy downpour, he wondered if he could float the boats there, too.
When Dad was weighed down at Sacred Heart, Bruce would make one and leave it somewhere for him to find, and then they’d sail it together. There’s one waiting on the hutch of his dad's desk at home, from when he snuck into his office two days ago. It’s a shame they won’t ever sail it.
He should’ve picked up a few more patients. Then Bruce would be home, right now, carefully folding yesterday’s newspaper into a little boat, and they would probably be sailing it tomorrow morning, after Alfred served breakfast and they read the next paper that he’d no doubt fashion into something else.
Maybe they shouldn’t have gone to the movies together at all.
Because if he made another boat, it would sit there idly until it disintegrated into the shadowy basin of water. Maybe it’d float through a network of pipes until it got caught in the same sludge as his mother’s necklace.
What remained of Thomas and Martha's belongings were held for investigation, before forensics deemed them nonessential and they were released to the head of the estate. Gordon delivered them to the manor personally the following week. In his panicked retreat, the gunman had left his father’s wallet to soak in his blood as it pooled on the street, and it taunted Bruce, lazed mockingly as it was on his father's nightstand, collecting dust each week until Alfred made his rounds.
His mother's necklace was never recovered.
The planet continued its rotation, and Martha Wayne's pearls spun as they were swept along the length of the Park Row's sewer line.
The knees of his slacks steadily dried, and the rain washed away his parents' spilled blood down that same corroded gutter, but Bruce stayed kneeling there in a stunned paralysis. For him, the sun never rose again. Time stopped dead in its tracks, though the alleyway thrummed where it was sealed off by police tape. And the sun would dip down into that sewer drain and irradiate that which wasn’t visible to the city, light refracting through the thick nacre, and projecting a distorted image of the streets above. A warped reflection.
That is to say, his world was never the same.
Nor was that of the world at large.
GOTHAM CITY, NJ: SEPT 17, 2014
A ten year old boy, clad in an uncharacteristically colorful uniform, traverses the sewers in search of an item the size of his fingernail. GPR imaging apparatus in hand, he swings it in both boredom and exasperation, with a complete and youthful disregard for whatever awaits him in the tunnels.
Standing at an imposing four feet, ten inches, the wastewater nearly comes up to his knees, and his attached cape drags behind him as wades through it. Despite his seeming negligence, the boy walks with a watchful eye, taking careful notice of all that surrounds him; every pipe drip, every undue slosh, every furry friend.
Damian glances at one of the pipes above his head, greeting the speckled rat he so aptly named after its fur pattern, “You don’t seem much afraid of me anymore, right, Spotty?”
“Sorry to keep coming down here uninvited,” he continues, eyeing the device in his right hand. The detector body knocks into a bundle of something, and according to the thermal imager, it’s just what he’s looking for.
“…Another couple months…and I’ll start growing.”
He bends down, careful not to entrench himself any further in the contaminated water, and reaches out with a steady hand, scrupulously extracting a pearl from its chamber of sludge.
While meaningless to him, Damian knows his overly sentimental father will appreciate this gesture of kindness. That’s what he hopes, at least. In doing this, that he will dispel any doubts pervading his father’s mind. The perception that he’s a thoughtless, self-serving individual, that he is unsuited to stand by the batman's side in his crusade against injustice.
He just needs to prove himself; that he is thoughtful and human and worthy.
Damian eases his hand out of the water and stares at the pearl where it’s cradled in the bend of his fingers, gliding his thumb over it’s smooth yet slightly grimy surface. It remains tightly clenched in his fist as Croc leaps out of the gutter and barrels toward him, jutting out that slimy elongated tongue of his and wrapping it around Robin’s gloved wrist.
Damian filters out whatever drivel the mutant intends to occupy him with, opting to instead take a quick gander at whatever lies behind him. As a result of their scuffle, Spotty has gone airborne.
He retaliates with his free hand, grabbing Spotty by the tail and slinging him onto Croc’s tongue, which he then proceeds to bite and claw at, allotting Damian the time to pry a pipe from the sewer wall and bludgeon Croc in the side of the head.
But the reptilian beast makes a quick recovery, taking hold of Robin's calf and swinging him down into the concrete.
His head knocks against the stone, but he’s endured far worse, so he forces his eyes open, with gritted teeth and an unbridled groan, and reassesses his position.
Looming over him, bearing his sharp, repugnant teeth, Croc’s face is left open and vulnerable, and Damian would be foolish not to seize the opportunity. He hammers the metal pipe into Croc’s skull with the outsole of his boot and tases his lateral chest wall in quick succession, which renders the brute immobile and defeated.
After Croc drops into the water, Damian stashes the pearl in his utility belt just as his comms buzz to life.
“Robin, where are you?”
His father’s commanding voice cuts through the line, and Damian hastens to produce an excuse clarifying his whereabouts.
“Um, checking on a lead.”
“Get back to the cave.”
“I’ll be there shortly.”
“You’ll go back now.”
Damian sighs, knowing there’s no end to his father’s preeminence. His obstinate need for control.
He lifts his fingers to the earpiece, declaring “Robin out,” before cutting the line. He's certain there will be consequences later, but there were bound to be regardless of what he did in this moment and, as of now, he’s beyond caring.
How unfortunate it is that he didn’t know beforehand…
You don’t disturb that which is dead and buried.