Work Text:
All right.
Being burned to death was, in fact, extremely painful.
That sentence sounded somewhat unnecessary. After all, there probably were not many people in the world who would seriously think about what it felt like to be swallowed by flames.
But when tongues of fire truly crawled over skin, uniform, wounds, and nerves, Damian realized that even he would still produce, in that instant, some very instinctive, very human fear.
The air became scorching hot.
Breathing felt like swallowing broken glass.
The white cathedral of Sybil was burning. The cold light that had once been sacred to the point of disgust was dyed by fire into an absurd orange-red.
The false god had finally been dragged down from its altar.
Damian lay in the white ruins, struggling to turn over.
Even if his body was to be destroyed beyond recognition, he still hoped to die with a little dignity.
At least not face-down.
At least not in a way that, if Father and the others found him, they would think he looked like a nameless remnant.
Assuming they could find him at all.
The Sybil building was already filled with raging flames, collapsing steel beams, shattered glass, melted culture fluid, and wave after wave of explosions from deeper within.
The Joker really was insane.
How many bombs had he buried in this building?
Several tons?
And on the floor below, Pamela Lillian was thinking the same thing.
She had come to kill the Joker.
For Eric.
For the mentor who, on her long and lonely path of research, had once given her understanding and assistance.
Before the operation began, she had already reached cooperation with the Riddler.
As an exchange, they gave each other what the other lacked.
Pamela provided the information she had on members of Special Investigation Division One, as well as some of her research materials on plant neurotoxins and environmental contamination.
Edward Nygma, in turn, gave her hacking techniques, access routes, and a promise.
He would help her find the murderer who killed Eric.
That person was clearly the Joker.
However, the Riddler was a partner with an extreme lack of business credibility and cooperative reputation. He dragged Pamela along for more than half a year before finally telling her that he had found the Joker and planted a tracker on him.
Following that flickering signal, Pamela walked all the way into the Sybil building.
All the way to the top of god’s tower.
But when she arrived at the scene, everything before her was rather unexpected.
The Joker was gone.
Inside the entire burning building, this white palace contained only the brains still protected behind glass, neural pipelines that did not seem to have been fully destroyed by the fire, and Damian Wayne, missing his left arm and burned half to death.
Pamela stood in the firelight and watched the eerie green spring water burn away.
Seeing that the truth of Sybil was this unbearable, her hatred toward humanity deepened once more in that instant.
So this was Sybil, which people called faith.
How ugly.
How arrogant.
Nothing more than a group of brains believing they could judge the world.
Since the Joker seemed to be gone, and most likely had died here, Pamela, who had endured humiliation and tracked him for more than half a year, suddenly felt an indescribable emptiness.
She looked down at the young Inspector on the ground.
He had inhaled a large amount of smoke. His left arm had been completely destroyed by high heat and explosions. Burns were everywhere on his body.
What a painful way to die.
Yet on his face, aside from relief and satisfaction, there was almost no other expression.
As if he had finally been freed from some long duty.
Memories surged into Pamela’s mind.
This rookie, Damian, truly had a strange fate with her.
He loved nature too.
He had even praised her research and pursuits.
He had quickly understood her philosophy and intent. He could even read a little of what plants represented.
More than that, during Black Mask’s Full Moon Battle Royale, Damian had resolutely protected her former student, Lauren.
Pamela did not want to think about whether she had helped him more, or Damian had helped her more.
They were not on the same path.
Everything they did came from their own hearts.
As a member of the Special Police, Damian protecting civilians was only natural.
As Poison Ivy, aside from protecting nature and avenging Eric, she had no other pursuit.
But this was already their third meeting.
And it was also true that he had helped her student.
Pamela sighed.
She took a spare smoke mask from her bag and fastened it over Damian’s face.
“Now we are even.”
Poison Ivy carried Damian onto her back, turned, and walked into the hidden safe passage she had used when she came.
That night, Damian had deleted all of his files from the Sybil System.
He had truly vanished from the world.
His original intention had been to stop anyone else from trying to replicate another “compatible sample” like him.
But this also gave him, for the first time since birth, true freedom.
No files.
No number.
No identity.
No access permissions.
No evaluation written by Sybil.
No system could tell others who he was, or what he should become.
In a certain sense, he could travel to the ends of the earth and never look back again.
For once, he could truly live for himself.
Pamela took Damian to a nearby private clinic.
After that, because the clinic did not have better facilities, Damian was secretly sent to the central hospital in neighboring Metropolis for treatment.
He remained unconscious for several months.
During that period, his existence was hazy and muddled.
Perhaps it was because of the aftereffects of Lazarus and Sybil.
Perhaps it was because his body and mind had finally reached their limit.
He did not truly wake.
Instead, inside his mental garden, beneath the hibiscus tree, he slept deeply.
Ever since the Night of Lazarus, he had never entered such deep sleep again.
It was a hard-won chance to recuperate.
The lake was very quiet.
The fragrance of hibiscus was faint.
Deer walked through the tree shadows.
Birdsong landed on the branches.
Sunlight covered him like a gentle blanket.
Because he slept too deeply, he did not hear Timothy knocking at the door at all.
Tim had never accepted Damian’s death.
Nor had he imagined that Damian had been hidden inside the hibiscus paradise all along.
All his previous attempts had vanished like stones sinking into the sea, not because Damian had truly disappeared, but because Damian had entered real deep sleep.
So deeply asleep that he could not receive any external brainwaves.
Could not answer any calls.
Could not hear anyone crying outside the door, shouting his name.
And so, Damian slept from the end of the year until Christmas had almost passed before finally opening his eyes.
The hospital ceiling was gray-white.
Outside the window was the cold rain of late winter in Metropolis.
Neon advertisements flickered across the glass curtain wall of the building opposite, casting layers of pale blue and purplish red light.
It took Damian a full ten seconds to realize he was still alive.
Then he looked at his skin, burned by fire, and then at his empty left arm.
He did not care too much.
After all, after the Full Moon Battle Royale, his left hand had already become very difficult to control. Replacing it while he had the chance was not necessarily a bad thing.
However, when the nurse told him his current medical expenses, Damian quickly realized that being alive came with problems of its own.
In every possible sense, he was undocumented.
No identity.
No files.
All assets bound to his identity had been frozen as well.
In the real world, Damian Wayne no longer existed.
Looking at how even a decent mechanical arm was not something he could currently afford, Damian frowned so hard he could have crushed a jellyfish between his brows.
How much had his previous salary been again?
Did he have hidden cash somewhere?
Of course, he could directly contact his father and family in neighboring Gotham.
But his pride would not allow him to appear in such a miserable state.
Just like when he recognized Bruce as his father, Damian had always cared about ceremony.
Back then, he had chosen a good date, a good restaurant, and the best timing.
So in Damian’s own imagination, Bruce, Dick, and the others were either still missing him, or had already continued moving forward.
After all, they were all the best police officers.
Every one of them was talented.
They should not waste too much thought on one person falling in the line of duty.
Therefore, his reappearance had to be formal.
Had to be beautiful.
Had to astonish everyone.
It absolutely could not be himself wearing hospital clothes, carrying an overdue bill, and knocking on the Batcave’s door like a cat soaked by rain.
That had far too little dignity.
Thinking this, Damian barely paid attention to who his lifesaver was, and directly entered the cycle of rehabilitation and expensive medical bills.
Facts proved that this society was very cruel to someone who was both undocumented and disabled.
After recovering, he could not find any proper work at all.
No identification.
No academic proof.
No Special Police résumé.
No bank account.
No social credit record.
He clearly possessed so many qualifications, but without proof and identity, everything was useless.
If he had known he could come back alive, Damian would never have deleted every piece of information so cleanly.
At least he should have kept his graduation certificate and qualification certificates.
And a few diplomas.
There was no choice.
Damian could only find another way.
In the end, the comfort zone he found was working as a midnight DJ at an underground music hall.
Facts proved that there was a reason the underground district of Metropolis had so many midnight music halls.
No one seriously checked identity here.
No one truly cared where you came from.
As long as you could work, did not cause trouble, and did not bring police through the door, everything else was negotiable.
The owner in front of him, with a silver mohawk and a face full of metal rings, asked him only one question.
“Do you know rock?”
Damian was silent for two seconds.
Several playlists Timothy had once forcefully shared with him suddenly appeared in his mind.
So he spoke very calmly for a while.
About industrial rock.
Synthesizers.
Post-punk.
And why certain album covers were aesthetically questionable.
The owner’s gaze changed instantly.
“You’re hired.”
And so, Damian became a one-armed midnight DJ.
Life at first was not easy.
Although he was originally ambidextrous, losing his left arm did not make his life completely collapse, but certain details remained extremely troublesome.
Putting on pants.
Washing up.
Tying shoelaces.
Opening medicine bottles with one hand.
Wringing out towels with one hand.
Adjusting headphones and the mixing console with one hand.
Every little thing reminded him that his body was already different from the past.
However, Damian’s adaptability had always been absurd.
In less than two weeks, he could already solve eighty percent of life’s problems with his right hand and his teeth.
The remaining twenty percent relied on patience, rage, and a stubborn refusal to ask anyone for help.
As for the DJ work itself, it unexpectedly gave him some new understandings.
The nights in the underground music hall were very long.
Neon lights flowed across the walls like shattered syrup.
Bass shook the floor.
The crowd rose and fell in the dark.
Electronic sound was like the heartbeat deep inside the city.
Sometimes it was heavy metal.
Sometimes industrial electronic.
Sometimes psychedelic rock.
Sometimes certain remixed versions that Damian did not understand at all, but that made everyone below the stage scream wildly.
As the music changed, the Hues of everyone on the dance floor would also fluctuate on a large scale.
As a former Inspector, Damian initially did not understand the principle at all.
But he respected this state of pursuing a hobby and being passionately absorbed in it.
After all, seeking common ground while preserving differences was one of his personal philosophies.
Beyond that, after spending time with four Enforcers of very different personalities, Damian had discovered an interesting fact.
When a person became excessively absorbed in something, their Hue would change noticeably.
Whether it rose or fell, that was an intense, primitive human emotional fluctuation that could not be fully explained by the System.
Take Dick as an example.
Every morning, he would drag Damian into morning training with him.
Ordinary exercise was nothing, but when he did gymnastics stretches and acrobatic movements, Dick would show off his strength and flexibility like a bird.
During one morning training session, Damian discovered that even though Dick could precisely control his Mental Index, keeping it around 188 every day, when he truly immersed himself in flips, vaults, and landings, that number would become 198, and even briefly break past 200.
The same went for Timothy on a skateboard.
His Hue was normally above 350 year-round, but when he braked at the highest point, sliding down from a railing at an angle nearly suicidal, the value could even approach 400.
That was not criminal psychology.
It was excitement.
The thrill of the edge of danger.
The obsessive longing for speed, weightlessness, and freedom from a bird long trapped inside a cage.
Jason was the opposite.
That big, rough berserker, who seemed so violent in daily life, could lower his number to around 190 when reading.
To verify his hypothesis, Damian had once given Jason a free psychological counseling session during that month they spent alone together, when Jason’s emotional fluctuations were more severe.
Using “books” as the anchor, he tried to imitate the way Talia had once built the hibiscus paradise for him, and create a mental garden for Jason.
Although the road would be long, Jason was actually quite talented.
Even though it only happened once, Damian successfully implanted a sunroom library.
It gave Jason’s inner world, contaminated by Lazarus, a place where he could breathe.
Cassandra was the same.
Damian discovered that when she meditated, her Mental Index would lower to just over 200.
He seriously suspected that she definitely used some technique similar to a mental garden to regulate her own mental health.
And now, looking at the young people in the midnight music hall pursuing colorful disco lights, underground bands, and deafening beats, and at their Hues rising and falling one after another, Damian could not help frowning.
Did the pursuit of art cause a person’s Hue to cloud?
What did listening to music have to do with crime?
Was this truly reasonable?
In another city very far away, Damian began thinking about a question he had almost never had the chance or reason to truly think about in the past.
What exactly were the legitimacy and measurement standards of Hue?
If one could understand the causes behind human emotional fluctuations, would there be a way to truly heal others, rather than simply classifying, isolating, and disposing of them?
Without realizing it, another two months passed.
The medical loan was still as expensive as robbery.
But the income from being a midnight DJ at least allowed Damian to afford a cheap but decent mechanical arm.
It was a silver-gray mechanical arm.
Because the model was very old, it had no outer coating that imitated human skin, and there was some delay in the joints.
Occasionally, it made tiny metallic friction sounds.
But aside from that, there were no major issues.
Also, it was secondhand.
In the end, he bought it at half price.
Working as a DJ in an underground dance hall was already a strange thing.
Stranger still was that the old-fashioned Hue scanner Damian carried always honestly displayed pale green, Mental Index 33.
After experiencing so much, Damian had thought he would become a latent criminal too.
Or rather, the truth of Sybil, the contamination of Lazarus, the Joker’s madness, his mother’s death, the image of his father falling, and his own decision to detonate the entire building by hand — all of that together should, no matter how one thought about it, have resulted in something far worse than pale green and 33.
But the fire seemed to have purified everything.
Or perhaps, after that night, Damian had finally stopped treating himself as an extension of Sybil’s will.
Later, because of his disappointment in Sybil, his fear of Lazarus resurrecting his mother, his anger at the chaos created by the Joker, his unwillingness to accept the deaths of innocents, and his obsession with whether everyone could coexist, he stepped into the fire once more.
Everything had been purified by that fire. Every sin had been burned away. After that, Damian unsurprisingly watched as the Sybil System continued to exist.
Ironically, after absorbing the Joker, merging with Lazarus, and retaining part of Edward the Riddler’s consciousness, Sybil, in order to maintain a new balance, actively abandoned many of the glass samples it had kept in the past.
It became imperfect. And because of that, it became more complete.
Because Sybil solved many questions it had previously been unable to answer all at once.
Including, but not limited to: Could a collective be treated as a guilty subject? Could Sybil itself make mistakes? Did a perfect social system for humanity truly exist? And should the judge also stand in the defendant’s seat?
Even so, before fire and disaster, all were equal.
The purifying flames burned god’s temple, and also made everyone in Gotham realize that no system could replace their own hands in fighting for happiness and tomorrow.
That was why now, even though Hue scanners still existed, their numbers were gradually decreasing.
Humanity was beginning to try again. To stop judging the people beside them by numbers.
On the day he left Metropolis, the owner and employees of the underground dance hall were quite reluctant to part with him.
They had absolutely no idea that this one-armed DJ, with burn scars on his face, a silver-gray mechanical left arm full of metallic feeling, and an aura like some legendary cold cyberpunk young master, had once been the most outstanding young Inspector of the Gotham Special Police.
They only knew that he spoke little, had a bad temper, and possessed unexpectedly good taste in music.
When mixing, he had an almost mathematical calm and precision.
The owner gave him a punk jacket. A drummer stuffed a pile of rock band badges into his hands. Someone else hung an old pair of headphones on his mechanical arm and said that this was the blessing of the underground music hall.
Damian said goodbye to them one by one and accepted those punk and rock souvenirs.
Then, wearing his mechanical arm, he walked out of the underground music hall before the neon lights had fully gone out.
Metropolis had entered winter.
And there were still three months before the Gotham Special Police recruitment.
Before going back, there were two things he needed to solve.
The first happened one night while Damian was DJing.
The crowd rose and fell in the center of the dance floor. Purple-red neon flowed across everyone’s faces like water.
He was playing a DJ remix version of Lady Gaga’s “Disease.” At that moment, Damian saw a familiar figure in the crowd. At the back of the dance floor stood Pamela Lillian.
Her fiery red hair was like burning vines. Her gaze was cold. Her green skirt swayed softly in the light like plant leaves.
Beside her stood a blonde woman Damian did not know.
That woman smiled very brightly, her makeup exaggerated, but her eyes kept looking at Pamela.
The two looked very intimate.
As if they truly were only a couple coming to dance at an underground music hall.
Almost by instinct, Damian should have rushed over and arrested her.
But in the next second, he remembered the familiar fragrance he had smelled in the fire that night.
Datura.
Roses.
Wet soil.
And the smoke mask fastened over his face.
At this moment, Damian was only a midnight DJ.
And Pamela was only a guest who had come to dance with her lover.
More importantly, Damian had gained a different feeling about the first case he had been responsible for.
Pamela was nature’s avenger.
But unlike the narcissistic Riddler, the mad Joker, and the self-important Black Mask, her pursuit of ideals and her love for nature were worthy of respect.
Killing was, of course, wrong.
But among all the criminals Damian had encountered, he felt Pamela was the purest, and the closest to a kind of compassion.
Not to mention, she had saved him, and brought him all the way to the best hospital in the neighboring city.
Thinking of that, the relationship between them became even harder to untangle.
But then again, breaking up a pair of lovebirds invited divine punishment.
Watching Pamela and that blonde woman lean toward each other with smiles on the dance floor, Damian ultimately only lowered his head and raised the bass for the next chorus.
Forget it. He would let her go this time. Consider the debt repaid.
Since he now knew how he had escaped from the fire, Damian felt much more at ease.
Then, the second matter. How to join Division One?
Good question. Have you heard of a qualification exam?
No. Of course not the wretched Lazarus kind. The formal recruitment exam of the Special Police.
Before the Night of Disaster, all participants had to undergo strict checks of identity, education, psychological state, and files. But after that disaster, every department was short of people. They were practically desperate to transfer police and manpower from neighboring cities.
Naturally, the pathways to join were much looser than before.
Including, but not limited to, directly taking the qualification exam, obtaining an internship opportunity based on on-site performance, and becoming official after the trial period ended.
A beautiful résumé was not particularly useful.
In criminal investigation and practical combat, personal ability, practical experience, and reaction under pressure outweighed everything else.
And Damian, who had followed Bruce through life-and-death situations for an entire year, received an SS+ evaluation with outstanding written and practical scores.
Looking at the résumé before her, which contained not a single truthful sentence, Stephanie Brown, as the examiner, had red eyes, yet especially wanted to laugh.
She lowered her head and looked at Damian’s completely insincere personal information.
Name: Ibn al Xu’ffasch. (Son of the Bat)
Gender: Male.
Age: 39.
Personal experience: Ten years of work experience; achieved success in the Metropolis music industry; extensive combat experience.
Aspiration: To join Special Investigation Division One of the Special Police and become an Inspector.
Looking at the age “39,” Stephanie almost snapped her pen. He was clearly only twenty-three. And what did “achieved success in the music industry” mean? Did being a midnight DJ count as career peak?
But looking at this trash résumé that had no sincerity whatsoever, and at those personal results that were excellent to an almost absurd degree, Stephanie ultimately made her decision with great determination.
First, she gave Damian a huge hug. Then she directly stamped the approval and allowed him to report to Division One.
At noon that day, cherry blossom projections were falling from both sides of the street. Damian stood before the familiar building and paused for several seconds.
He had still arrived fifteen minutes early. Still carefully organized his appearance.
His uniform was smooth. His mechanical arm polished clean and bright. His black leather boots had not a speck of dust. He stood outside the door.
Then knocked.
His father’s voice came from inside, “Come in.”
There was a trace of impatience in that voice.
Damian pushed the door open.
First, he looked with satisfaction at the way everyone seemed to be struck by lightning.
Every document in Bruce’s hands fell to the ground. The popcorn in Dick’s hands scattered everywhere. Tim’s coffee spilled directly across the desk. Jason looked like he had been preparing to duel him, but the boxing gloves had already fallen to the floor. Cassandra’s mask also failed to hold on and slipped straight down.
All of this satisfied Damian greatly.
He had endured for more than half a year for this day.
There had to be ceremony. It had to symbolize a new beginning.
Robin birds, or redbreasts, had always represented dawn and rebirth. They were among the first birds to sing in early spring, symbolizing that after the long winter night, dawn had finally arrived. They also symbolized the miracle of rebirth from a desperate situation. In legend, the robin once tried to ease the suffering of one who was being tortured, and so blood stained its breast, giving it that striking red.
And Damian, after the long night, the flames, death, and loneliness, flew back to spring once more.
Just as in the fable.
After countless hardships, after fire and neon, after finally having a little time to think alone, Robin finally flew back to his nest. Back to his family.
Damian raised his hand and gave a military salute almost identical to the one from their first meeting last year.
“Damian al Ghul Wayne.”
His voice was steady, carrying a little pride after succeeding in his scheme.
“Reporting to you, Captain Bruce.”