Chapter Text
“So is that where I’m dropping you off little prince?”
“Yes. Thank you very much.” Damian mumbled, turning back once to take in the face of the driver before climbing down the stairs of the white mini van.
“Have a good day.” He wished, sighing softly and dejectedly.
“little prince.” Damian reminisces. He’s giddy and light on his feet, giggling softly to himself as he walks down to middle school. He’s so unlike himself it’s sickening. Every ounce of that past giddiness is gone as soon as he steps foot in that doomed place.
Why did he have to endure? Why did he have to be treated so differently? Why wasn’t he allowed to defend himself and his dignity? Why, why, why?
Why indeed.
When he comes back home, everything’s a little blurry, a little high-pitched and sensitive. Words don’t resonate the way they should, not any of them help him feel less raw and hollow. It’s all wrong. How can he not seem to remember what happened today?
Rocks land on his forehead. Laughs. He runs to the restrooms pathetically. Some classmates, sent by the teacher have to bring him out of there. They see his tear tracks and puffy red eyes.
Oh. So that’s why.
Best to forget it then.
Another rainy day, Damian runs to the bus stop. He switches between fast steps and medium ones not to slip up and foolishly fall. (that’s what he keeps telling himself).
He observes in horror the color of his bus fading as it disappears in the distance, letting out one last hot puff of air that warms him instantly and he sighs, as much as in relief and resignation.
Today was one of these days. For a few months now, as a punishment for acting like an idiot and punching a classmate right in the nose, Damian had to take the bus. As Pennyworth also started to generously drive Richard to his work in Bludhaven before bringing him back to the manor for their family night patrols.
The day Damian had rebelliously acted and defended a classmate from a wretched bully, his justice had been as “immature” and “unacceptable”, which was odd, because he only followed Batman’s principles to always defend the vulnerable. But he assumed that did not apply to Damian, as he was defending a vulnerable person from another child. Damian was a trained assassin. He was not considered a child, therefore, he should have shown more dignified restraint.
That day, Father had to deal with an excruciatingly tenacious patrol and another run in with the Scarecrow and his new toxin. Father was already frustrated with the aftermath, so this call from the school was exactly what pushed him over the edge and led to Damian’s punishment. Though he knew he was in the wrong, still, it stung. There was no room for debate, Father hadn’t asked what led to his excess of violence -“Damian, you need to control your temper and stop acting selfish.”- because he was used to this monstrous side of Damian, and immediately declared him guilty without a trial. Which he was, but still…
The injustice resonated loudly in his mind.
Patiently waiting at the side of the road, his thumb lifted up in the air, his arm was already feeling numb and heavy, the pins and needles starting to ravage him. But he waits. He’s already weighted the other options, and the one that definitely would get him in less trouble would be this one. Anything but call Father or his family or steal a car or motorcycle and drive himself to school.
He would know. They would know.
He ignores the shame brought by the stares, the shaking of driver’s heads as they drive by, the gaze of some of them, trailing to the side, trying to ignore him like an inconvenience. The eyes that roam disgustingly across his body are the ones that make him drop his arm momentarily.
Damian feels gross and unwanted for some reason.
Finally, a car pulls over, waiting on the side of the road, with adrenaline raking his body and anticipation guiding him, he walks over to the car and peeks in the window. Nothing strange, just a normal, boring man. No one could know or suspect what that normal man hides.
“So where are you going?” He asks nicely, a smile gracing his chapped lips.
“To Gotham middle school.” The man ponders a moment, calculating the parameters before signaling for the boy to join him at the passenger’s side. Damian disgracefully crawls in the green, khaki car, his feet get caught in the car belt. He tries to quickly bring them on the floor of the car. It’s a little dirty in it, there are napkins and random objects littering the surface. Damian suppresses the sneer on his face. He has no right whatsoever to judge someone’s car he’s currently using to make up for his lapses in timing.
While on the route, they both start meaningless small talk that bring them nowhere. Damian hates it as he abhors small talk as much as any social interaction that requires him to fake his interest.
The conversation deviates, and without the focus to pay attention, Damian suddenly has to answer to something: “what do I look like?”
Damian turns his head to the man as he is also staring at him, an interesting smile plastered on his face. Damian can’t quite decipher it. He tries to remember some of the context that could be useful to answer the question, recalling words like “family in Central city”, “goddamn tourists”, “origin”, and responds with something that he hopes, makes sense. “A Gothamite.” The man nods and hums, his focus turning back to the road. It seemed to be the correct answer. Damian slumps in the seat, feeling his blood pressure drop gradually.
The funny- not funny, it isn’t the right word, interesting thing is that Damian could die right now. In a car, with a stranger, no tracker, no nothing, no leverage, no weapon, just Damian Wayne. Fourteen years old.
But he is Robin, and an ex-assassin. So obviously it would be enough to deal with any threat.
But what if he doesn’t want to?
“Here we are little man. Have a good day!”
“Thank you sir, you as well.” Damian says before walking down to school, sighing disappointingly.
Another awful day today.
He comes back home with three more insecurities. Everything’s blurry again. It’s like his brain doesn’t allow him to think until it’s night and he’s free and soaring through the Gotham’s crisp air.
His cape flows behind him as he follows the shadow in front of him. He never feels more alive than after midnight.
“Damian go take the bus or you’ll be late!”
Damian rushes to eat, wash and dress himself before slowing down to walk to the bus stop. It’s long gone already. His vision blurs for a moment before he goes to his usual spot to wait for someone to pick him up. Gambling uselessly with his life. Damian never stops doing it nonetheless.
A white van stops. And it would be incredibly cliche for this one to pose a threat. He peeks at the window, tries to decipher some kind of evil glint and deems it somewhat safe, casting aside all his Robin instincts and training. Same old routine.
“You should be careful when you do that, you know? Can you call your parents?” Damian waits for the man to forget and continue to drive.
Why would he want him to call Father? Wouldn’t he be riding with him if it was an option?
(what if it was?)
Damian notices that each time he’s been taken, it’s mostly been men, only one woman that confessed to doing the same thing when she was young. Damian distantly wondered if she felt that same desperation and sorrow while waiting, but adrenaline and anticipation in the action.
The drive is slow. Painfully slow. Every time the man’s hands stray from the wheel, Damian finds himself recoiling to the car door. With only a subtle nudge of the handle, he knows it’s locked.
So Damian has no choice but to stay in. He has no choice, but he is Robin, an Al’ Ghul and could rip him open and grab his beating heart to smash it in his hand.
But he would be reverting back. And Damian wants to die respecting his new way of life.
“We’re here. Be careful next time, you never know who you ride with.” Damian nods curtly and wishes a good day for the man before going down to the school and he already knows, deep down, this will not be the last time he does this kind of rash thing.
When the day’s over and Damian comes back home, he crawls in his bed and sobs quietly, letting it all out before a long night of hard work.
The bruises, black, blue and purple all remind him of his vulnerability, he hides them carefully as not to attract attention from the others by covering them with large clothes. Even as the discreet glances of Drake, Richard, Brown, Cain, Thomas, Todd and even Father sometimes seem to linger longer and longer as the nights accumulate, no one notices that Damian never once hurts himself during patrol.
The world is a little grayer and staler, life becomes without meaning and he finds solace in the little things, like petting Titus, feeding Bat-cow or playing with Alfred the cat.
He draws when he has the time, so at least once a week, and enjoys every second of it. The process is nice, but what really matters in the end is the result and whether or not it will end up in the garbage can if it isn’t up to standard and can be used against him.
Every single reminder of his weakness has to be cast away and buried, deep and far away.
How nice would it be, to not care and finally let his guard down. But he would be fighting statistics at that point.
Today is a foggy day, it is a perfect mirror to his mind. The mist disperses and he observes from afar his transportation patiently waiting for once. He feels a tinge of frustration, then a girl, approximately the same age as him climbs the stairs to the bus as the doors start to close and it drives away. Though this time, Damian feels pure anger. It wasn’t fair. Not at all. Why did the driver wait for that particular girl and not him? What did she have more than him?
“A nice, beautiful color”, a cruel voice whispers in his mind and ice washes over him as his eyes blur and he can’t tell if it’s him or the fog anymore.
And again. He’s here. Same spot. Same routine. Same fate.
He really hopes today is the day.
A normal, clean white Audi stops for him as he drops his freezing thumb. He peeks to the window once again. No smile, nothing. Just a silent invitation to hurry up and climb in to stop blocking the circulation. He didn’t even ask where he was going. Damian doesn’t waste a second to join him.
“So… Where are you going kid?” The voice is deep and calm, way too serene. Something like unexplained dread washes over Damian, he busies himself with his fingers, picking at the skin there knowing it’ll burn and sting soon, the color of his cuticles already blooming red.
“Gotham middle school.” The boy answers plain and simple and the man hums, not bothering to entertain a useless chat which Damian is grateful for.
While he willingly did go with this man in his car, he can’t help but instinctively scan around the area and revise for his escape plan. Discreetly, his hand bumps in the car handle. It’s firm and won’t budge. He won’t get out this way. A roaming eye never seems to leave his trail.
Under the seat then. His heart pumps loudly as he makes one of his ear bud drop and slowly leans in to grab it, feeling around and identifying any curious items. Nothing. It’s clinically clean and probably been washed not so long ago. The whole car smells fresh. It brings shivers down his spine.
Damian quickly rationalizes. He probably was the meticulous and hypochondriac type. Someone that cares about their car. It isn’t that pretty but still, it’s decent. Except for the few bumps on the back.
His breathing slows and he slumps in the seat once again. His feet barely scrape the floor.
“Tell me kid, why would you just hop in with a stranger. It’s dangerous, especially these days.”
The man asks, low and careful. There’s a little something in his voice that ticks Damian off.
He knows to never doubt his instincts and right now, all the sirens are blaring in his head.
“Come on, you gotta answer when someone asks you a question.” Damian is genuinely surprised that after his lack of response, he hadn’t dropped it already. It usually worked. Now, he had to come up with an answer, because the man’s patience seemed to be wearing thin as could be seen from the iron grip on the wheel, leaving him with white knuckles.
Damian shrugs, ruffling through his own hair and letting some strands fall.
“I missed my bus.”
“Couldn’t you ask your parents?”
“They’re at work.”
“I know they all aren’t.” Damian doesn’t even dare move his head to look in the direction of the man already fully staring at him. The hairs on his arms are straight up and the inside of his mouth is dry and uncomfortable, like he’s been waiting to talk for a long time. His breathing, uneven and shallow seem to be making him forget how to function altogether.
“I-”
“I know, I know. How do I know that?” Eyes piercing and dead bore into his own, sucking all the air in his lungs and leaving him hanging by a thread. Right now, there’s nothing more interesting than to hear the next words coming out of his mouth. He flashes sharp canines that seem like they want to leap at his throat and drain all the blood out. Maybe he is seeming very calm on the outside, the League training proving its effectiveness, but on the inside, he’s screaming in terror and envisioning himself clawing his way out of this metal prison.
The man tilts his head curiously, as though the sight before him is nothing but unusual and amusing. “Now I know you can have more grit than that, come on little one, ask me yourself, use your adorable, squeaky voice.” The man almost coos the last words and Damian feels himself sneering in disgust, though he is practically sure that from an outside perspective, he’s got the best poker face to exist since the invention of poker.
“How-” He tries first, testing the tone of his voice, “how do you know that?”
“I know because I know all about you. I know your deepest desires and your unique wants, and when I found out that you wanted this yourself, god, how happy I was! I always wanted a son! I’ve been wanting one for so long, but no one could ever come close to you. You and your ridiculously magnetizing personality. They- your “family” don’t appreciate you like they should. They never could understand you but I do! I know what you want and you want this! You don’t want to go back sweetie, do you?”
Tears can’t help but prick at his eyes, and soon Damian finds himself shaking his head and offering the smallest of smiles while the rest isn’t really matching. The upper side of his head is screaming while the lower one is relieved.
Thing is, he probably already lost it long before that. He was born broken, though genetically modified to be perfect, and that in itself, was a flaw, because being “too perfect” is one. Damian never was but still, if he was, he would’ve ended up the same way, desperately relieved to be in this exact place.
Now, Damian could finally be seen as the victim for once. As the helpless, gullible child he wanted for others to pretend he was. Now he had a reason to be sad and depressed over pathetic, useless stuff. Now he would be loved.
Death now meant that poor little Damian Wayne got kidnapped by a psychopathic stranger on his way to school. Poor Damian fought hard to escape, but never got the chance to. Only hair could be found in the car, proof he was there.
Damian always thought suicide was the coward’s way out, so he hoped that this was finally his chance to accomplish something he has now wanted for a while.
Please. Please let this be the moment he will never have to worry about being enough or not being guilty of crimes. For once, let this be the moment he receives the pity and cries of those pretending to care about him. Let them feel the grief and sorrow ravage them inside, at least as nearly as much as when the second Robin died. Let his grave be covered in daisies and daffodils, but make it so that on it, is never written “good soldier”. Let this be different.
Let him face his mortality.
Let him die.
Because it hurts, so, so, so much to be alive right now.
“Oh baby, no, never, we’ll live a happy life together. Don’t worry, no one can know what you want better than me sweetheart.”
Damian sobs softly as the man covers his own mouth with a mask and gas pours in heavy amounts and drowns him in peaceful slumber.
“You’ll wake up reborn from the ashes.”
A small smile graces his rosy lips, raw from the biting and decorating the tear tracks tracing two dry rivers down his earth-like cheeks.
He’s living his best nightmare as well as his worst dream, mostly because it should have stayed imaginary…
Or maybe it was always meant to be.