Chapter Text
The Gotham warehouse district smelled like rust and rain. Damian Wayne crouched on a steel beam thirty feet above the concrete floor, his cape settling around his shoulders like folded wings. Below, six armed men moved crates with the efficiency of a well-oiled operation. Drugs, most likely. Or weapons. It didn't matter, they were criminals, and he was Robin.
"Robin, wait for my signal." Dick's voice crackled through the comm, calm and authoritative. Nightwing was positioned on the opposite side of the warehouse, his silhouette barely visible against the grimy windows.
"I see the opening," Damian whispered back. "I can take three before they even draw weapons."
"Damian—"
But Robin was already moving. He dropped silently, his boots hitting the catwalk below with barely a whisper of sound. The training from the League of Assassins made him faster than thought, more precise than hesitation. He was thirteen when he first killed a man. Sixteen now, and he'd learned restraint, learned to pull his punches, to incapacitate rather than eliminate.
Most of the time.
He launched himself at the nearest target, his boot connecting with the man's jaw. The crack echoed through the warehouse. The others spun, weapons rising, and Damian was already moving to the next one. His fist drove into a solar plexus. His elbow caught a throat. Efficient. Clean.
Then the gunfire started.
"Robin, down!" Dick's shout came too late.
Damian twisted mid-strike, his body already moving before his brain processed the danger. The bullet missed him by inches, but his momentum carried him backward, toward the gap in the catwalk railing where rust had eaten through the safety barrier.
He fell.
His hand shot out, fingers scraping metal, finding no purchase. The world tilted. Fifteen feet. Twenty. His cape billowed uselessly. His training screamed at him to tuck, to roll, to minimize impact.
He didn't see the rebar until it punched through his abdomen.
The pain was white-hot and absolute. It drove the air from his lungs, turned his vision into a tunnel of agony. He hung there, suspended three feet off the ground, impaled on the rusted metal spike that jutted from a pile of construction debris. Blood, hot and wet, soaked through his uniform.
"Damian!"
Dick's voice seemed to come from very far away. Damian tried to speak, but only a choked gasp emerged. His hands moved to the rebar, instinct demanding he pull himself free, but even the slightest movement sent fresh waves of agony through his core.
Then Dick was there, his face pale beneath his mask. "Don't move. God, Damian, don't move."
"I'm—" Damian's voice cracked. Blood filled his mouth, copper and thick. "I'm fine."
"You're not fine. You're very not fine." Dick's hands hovered over him, trembling. "Oracle, I need an ambulance at our location. Now. Trauma team. He's— Jesus, he's impaled."
Damian's vision swam. The warehouse ceiling blurred into abstract shapes. He could hear shouting, the sound of bodies hitting the floor. Dick must have taken out the remaining men. Good. Efficient.
"Stay with me, little brother." Dick's hand found his, squeezed hard. "You're going to be okay. You hear me? You're going to be fine."
Damian wanted to argue. Wanted to snap that he didn't need reassurance, that he'd survived worse, that this was merely a flesh wound. But the words wouldn't come. The pain was eating him alive from the inside out, and the blood, there was so much blood.
"Ambulance is three minutes out," Barbara's voice said through the comm, tight with controlled panic. "Keep him conscious, Dick. Keep him talking."
"Damian, look at me." Dick's face filled his vision. "Tell me about that book you were reading. The one about marine biology."
"Stupid," Damian managed. "Talking... waste of energy."
"That's my boy. Stay angry. Stay with me."
The three minutes felt like three hours. Damian's body began to shake, tremors he couldn't control. Cold seeped into his bones despite the warm blood pooling beneath him. Dick kept talking, a steady stream of words that Damian couldn't quite process. Something about the time they went to the zoo. Something about Alfred's cooking. Anything to keep him conscious.
When the paramedics arrived, they took one look at the situation and called for backup.
"We can't move him with the rebar in place," one of them said, a woman with kind eyes and steady hands. "We need to cut it."
The sound of the saw was worse than the pain. Metal shrieking against metal, vibrations traveling up the spike and into Damian's body. He bit down on his lip hard enough to draw blood, refusing to scream. Al Ghuls didn't scream. Waynes didn't scream.
But when they finally lifted him free, when the rebar slid out of his body with a wet, obscene sound, Damian's vision went white. He heard himself make a sound. Something between a gasp and a sob, and then Dick's face was above him again.
"I've got you. I've got you."
The ambulance ride was a blur of motion and pain. Damian drifted in and out, catching fragments. Dick's voice on the phone: "Bruce, you need to get to Gotham General. Now." The paramedic's hands pressing gauze to his abdomen, the fabric immediately soaking through. The wail of sirens. The fluorescent lights of the ER bay as they rushed him inside.
"Sixteen-year-old male, penetrating abdominal trauma, estimated blood loss two liters..."
Sixteen. The word stuck in Damian's fading consciousness. When had he become just a sixteen-year-old? He was Robin. He was the son of Batman. He was trained by the League of Assassins. He was—
He was so cold.
"Damian, stay with us." A new voice, authoritative and calm. A doctor. "We're going to take care of you."
But Damian's eyes were already closing, the world fading to black around the edges. The last thing he heard was Dick's voice, cracking with fear:
"Please. He's just a kid."