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When Damian closes his eyes, all he sees is blood.
It explodes behind his eyelids, staining everything red, like the elevator scene in The Shining. The exact moment his eyes shut, he can almost hear the thick glug-glug-glug and smell iron. It clogs his throat and masks the scent of everything else. It makes his head spin. It robs him of his appetite, stomach twisting in angry rebellion.
Damian used to revel in it. He used to view blood as a metric of victory. The more he spilled the prouder his mother would become. Now it makes him dizzy and the room spins until he needs to sit down or else risk passing out.
In his AP biology class last Tuesday, they were assigned to dissect frogs. Damian had sat frozen, staring at the gray-tinged, chemically preserved skin of a rather large and very dead bullfrog. When he reached out, the scalpel rattled against the metal tray. His hand was shaking so violently he couldn’t even grip the handle. His lab partner shot him a pitying look and simply took the blade.
“You’re vegetarian, right? I can take care of this part if you wanna write notes,” she had offered.
Damian nodded automatically, although his mind seemed to be frozen, and he felt like he was experiencing the classroom through a heavy fog that blanketed his vision and muffled all sound.
She sliced a neat, clean line down the center of the frog's belly.
The smell of formalin mixed with the imagined phantom sting of copper. Damian didn't say a word. After the class was over and he let his lab partner take a picture of his notes, he stood up, walked to the boys' bathroom, and retched until his stomach was entirely empty.
Damian doesn’t want to be a hero anymore.
He and his father used to get into screaming matches that seemed to shake the entire manor. Now, Damian simply doesn't have the energy for it. The desire is gone. When his father shouts at him, a trigger that used to make Damian’s blood boil and his mind scream for a fight, all he wants to do is run. It is a humiliating, primal instinct. To hide it, Damian clasps his hands tightly behind his back, locking his fingers together to anchor the tremors, and gazes at his father with a perfectly blank, practiced, vacant expression. He takes whatever reprimand, whatever disappointment is thrown at him, and swallows it whole.
Secretly, Damian relishes the nights his father forbids him from working as Robin. His pride is still too high, too stubborn to let him walk away on his own, especially since it would make him the only Robin to give up on the mantle entirely without a fight or a replacement lined up. But the relief of being benched is intoxicating. He doesn’t want to do this anymore.
But who is Damian if he isn’t a weapon?
He was engineered to be the heir to Batman or Ra’s al Ghul. He has always been a symbol, a legacy, a project, but never a person. His father hasn’t done much to dispel that reality, either.
His father has never attended a single art show at Damian’s school, despite the formal invitations the school sends to the mansion by mail. He has never asked about Damian’s hobbies, or what he does in the hours between the final bell and patrol.
Yet, Damian watches. He sits at the dinner table and feels something ugly, bitter, and hot swirl in his gut when Bruce asks Dick about his most recent case, or asks Tim about his photography hobby, or even casually brings up a movie that came out the week before with Jason while on patrol. Damian had a girlfriend last year. He had a boyfriend for a brief period after that, too. Granted, both relationships were short-lived, clumsy, and mostly relegated to the safe, quiet corners of the school library. But Bruce had never even made a single inquiry into Damian’s personal life. He didn't even seem to notice the change in his schedule.
Maybe I am depressed, Damian thinks. The word feels weak, but accurate. Even in the face of this, he can’t make himself care that he is treated so differently, beyond just being sad. He wants a relationship with his father like the others have.
Damian’s not naive. He understands that they have their own complexities within their relationships. That his father is not perfect for them, either. The main difference is that at least with the others, his father seems to try to be better.
A few weeks ago, a thick envelope arrived in the mail from a university in California. Damian was accepted for a psychology program. He wants to be an art therapist. He’s weeks away from graduation, yet his father hasn’t asked about his post-high school plans, or whether Damian even bothered to apply anywhere, or what he might want to study.
Damian’s plans are already finalized. He is going to move out, go across the country alone, and leave Robin in the dirt. He doesn’t plan to ever come back to Gotham. There is nothing here for him anyway. He can hardly manage to make friends in this city, much less build a life worth staying for.
He wants to be more than Bruce Wayne’s youngest son. More than the heir to Ra’s al Ghul. More than himself. Damian doesn’t want to be himself anymore. He wants to be someone entirely different. Someone happy.
A car horn honks, sharp and sudden, shattering the silence.
Damian blinks, dragged back to reality. The girl who had been sitting on the bench next to him for the last twenty minutes silently tucks her phone into her bag and stands up. Her mother is waiting in the idling sedan at the curb. When the girl slides into the passenger seat, her mother smiles warmly, adjusting the visor, and asks a question. The girl immediately begins gesturing animatedly, laughing as they pull away into the early evening traffic.
Damian pulls his phone from his blazer pocket. 5:45 PM.
School ended at 4:30. Because Damian doesn’t participate in any clubs or sports, he is always finished by 4:30 on the dot. Bruce picks him up at 6:00 everyday. Normally, Damian spends that awkward hour and a half in the art classroom. He helps his teacher, Mrs. Choi, tidy up the clay wheels, wash the brushes, and organize the palettes for the next morning. Afterward, she always lets him sit in the back corner and sketch in peace until 5:55 PM. But today, Mrs. Choi had to leave early to catch her son’s school play. Damian had messaged his father, in hopes that perhaps he would read the message and come on time.
He could have found somewhere else to go—a diner, a library, a coffee shop—rather than sitting on a freezing concrete bench for two hours. But he simply couldn't be bothered to move. Damian wanted proof that he was less important to his father than the others. He wanted justification for his upcoming escape.
Right on the dot at 6:00 PM, a black Rolls-Royce pulls up to the curb.
Damian stands, his joints a little stiff from the late-autumn chill, and slings his messenger bag over his shoulder. He walks to the car, opens the door, and slides into the front seat. His father gives him a distracted grunt of acknowledgment as he begins driving.
They travel in total silence. Damian stares out the passenger window, watching the jagged, grime-streaked skyline of Gotham blur into a gray smear. Slowly, the city gives way to the wide, manicured lawns and clean, gated estates of Bristol, until the wrought-iron gates of Wayne Manor swing open to welcome them.
Bruce parks in the garage. They both get out, entering the massive, echoing house through the side door before immediately fracturing off into their own separate directions without a word.
Damian walks up the grand staircase, his footsteps muffled by the heavy carpets, and pushes open the door to his bedroom.
The tight knot in his chest loosens just a fraction. Titus is asleep on his orthopedic bed on the floor, and Alfred the Cat is curled into a tight, purring crescent right against the dog's flank. At the sound of the door clicking shut, Titus shifts, lifting his heavy head. He blinks sleepily, then stands up and slowly ambles his way over to greet his owner.
Damian drops his bag on the floor. He sinks down to his knees, letting out a breath he feels like he’s been holding since he left for school this morning. He reaches out and gently scratches the sweet spot right between Titus’s ears.
“Hi, Titus,” Damian whispers, his voice sounding incredibly small in the empty room. “How was your day?”