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The stone of Nanda Parbat did not just hold the cold; it breathed it. Damian crouched in the shadow of a jagged pillar, his small chest heaving. The air tasted of copper and ancient dust. Around him, the silence of the monastery felt heavy, a physical weight pressing against his ribs. He gripped his training sword, the wood splintering under the pressure of his white-knuckled hold.
Shadows detached themselves from the walls. They didn't walk; they flowed, ink-black shapes with eyes like dying embers. These were not the instructors he knew. These were the whispers of his grandfather's disappointment given form, jagged blades extending from their wrists. They circled, their movements synchronized and predatory.
Damian backed away, his heel catching on a loose pebble. He fell, the impact jarring his spine. The shadows closed in, a canopy of obsidian steel descending to erase him.
A blur of blue and black slammed into the lead shadow.
The impact sounded like a thunderclap. A pair of escrima sticks carved arcs of electricity through the gloom, shredding the ink-black entities into mist. Dick Grayson stood over him, legs braced, a grin cutting through the oppressive grey of the dream.
"You're late for practice, Dames," Dick said, his voice a warm anchor in the shifting void.
Damian scrambled up, hiding his trembling hands behind his back. "I had the situation under control, Richard. Your interference was unnecessary."
Dick laughed, the sound echoing and pushing the shadows further back. He didn't look at the monsters; he looked at Damian. He reached out, ruffling the boy's hair with a casualness that felt like a shield.
"Sure you did. But I figured you could use a sidekick. How about we get out of here?"
"I do not require a sidekick," Damian snapped, though he leaned into the touch.
"Too bad. I'm the sidekick today. Race you to the edge of the world?"
Dick grabbed his hand, his grip firm and calloused. The moment their palms met, the monastery began to dissolve, the terrifying shapes evaporating into a pale, morning light. Damian didn't let go until the world turned white.
***
The sky was the color of a bruised plum, and the ground was a slurry of grey ash. Damian waded through the muck, his boots heavy. Around him, the dead rose. They weren't the mindless shamblers of cinema; they were the fallen soldiers of the League, their skin translucent and clinging to bone, their eyes milky white. They didn't scream. They whispered.
Failure. Weakness. Blood-traitor.
The whispers grew into a roar. The undead surged, a wave of rotting flesh and rusted steel. Damian swung his katana, slicing through a decayed neck, but for every one he felled, three more emerged from the ash. He was being swallowed by a sea of grey.
He backed into a wall of obsidian, the cold stone leaching the heat from his skin. A skeletal hand clamped around his ankle, pulling him down into the slurry.
"Get off!" Damian shrieked, his voice sounding small and fragile in the oppressive air.
A flash of gold and blue ignited the horizon. Dick dropped from the sky like a comet, hitting the center of the horde with a shockwave that sent the undead flying. He spun, a whirlwind of precision, his sticks humming with high-voltage energy. He didn't just fight; he danced, turning the slaughter into a performance.
Dick stepped back, sliding his sticks into their holsters with a metallic click. He held out a hand, his expression soft, devoid of the combat intensity.
"Rough neighborhood, huh?"
Damian stared at the hand. He felt the phantom grip of the dead still lingering on his ankle. He lunged forward, grabbing Dick's forearm and clinging to it with a strength that bordered on desperate.
"They would not stop," Damian whispered, his forehead resting against Dick's chest.
Dick wrapped an arm around his shoulders, pulling him close. The smell of laundry detergent and old leather drowned out the scent of decay.
"They can't touch you while I'm here. I've got the perimeter secured."
"You are an idiot," Damian murmured, closing his eyes.
"Yeah, but I'm your favorite idiot."
The ash turned to velvet, and the plum sky shifted into the deep, comforting blue of a bedroom ceiling.
***
There was no monster in this dream. There was only the void.
Damian stood on a thin sliver of glass floating in an endless expanse of white. There was no sound, no wind, no scent. The silence was an entity, eating away at his edges. He looked down and saw his own reflection in the glass, but the reflection wasn't him. It was a version of himself with hollow eyes and a mouth sewn shut with silver thread.
The reflection leaned forward and whispered through the stitches.You are a weapon. Weapons do not have families. Weapons are used and discarded.
Damian tried to scream, but his own mouth was suddenly sewn shut. He clawed at the silver threads, the metal slicing into his cheeks. He was alone in a universe of white, a discarded tool in a sterile room.
"Damian!"
The voice shattered the silence like a stone through a window.
Dick appeared, not falling or jumping, but simply manifesting. He wasn't wearing his suit; he wore a worn-out hoodie and sweatpants, looking like the version of him that existed only within the walls of the Manor. He saw the threads on Damian's face and his expression shifted from confusion to a fierce, protective rage.
Dick didn't use a weapon. He reached out and gripped the silver threads with his bare hands, ripping them away with a visceral snap.
Damian gasped, air flooding back into his lungs. He collapsed forward, the glass beneath them cracking.
"I've got you," Dick whispered, catching him before he could fall into the white. He pulled Damian into a crushing hug, burying the boy's face in the crook of his neck. "You aren't a weapon, Dames. You're a kid. You're my kid."
Damian stiffened. "I am a Wayne. I am the heir to—"
"Shh," Dick interrupted, rocking him gently. "Right now, you're just Damian. And you're safe. I'm not letting you go back into the white."
Damian gripped the fabric of the hoodie, his fingers curling into the cotton. "Why do you persist in this sentimentality, Richard?"
"Because someone has to," Dick murmured. "And because I love you, you little brat."
The white void began to bleed into colors—warm oranges, deep reds, the smell of cinnamon and old books. Damian let himself be carried, the weight of the world vanishing as he drifted toward wakefulness.
***
The training room was an infinite loop of mirrors. Damian stood in the center, his breathing rhythmic, his blade poised. But every mirror held a different version of his grandfather. Ra's al Ghul stood in a thousand reflections, each one judging a different flaw.
"Your footwork is sloppy," the mirror to the left sneered.
"Your heart is too soft," the mirror to the right hissed.
"You are a disappointment to the bloodline," they all chanted in unison.
The reflections stepped out of the glass. A thousand Ra's al Ghuls, a thousand swords, all converging on a single point. Damian fought. He fought until his arms burned, until his lungs screamed for air, until his sword notched and chipped. He was a master of the blade, but he could not kill a thousand ghosts.
He fell to one knee, the cold floor leaching his strength. The swords hovered, a canopy of steel ready to descend.
"Is this the best you've got, Ra's?"
A sudden, chaotic energy disrupted the symmetry. Dick vaulted over Damian's head, kicking the lead reflection squarely in the chest. The mirror-man shattered into a million shimmering shards.
Dick landed in a crouch, a playful smirk on his lips. He looked around at the army of grandfathers and shrugged.
"Honestly, the ego in this room is suffocating. Dames, you're overthinking it. Stop fighting the reflections and just break the mirrors."
Damian blinked, looking at the shards of the first Ra's. "What?"
"The mirrors," Dick said, handing him a heavy, blunt training weight from somewhere in the void. "They only have power if you believe the image. Break the image, break the spell."
Damian took the weight. He looked at the reflection of the man calling him a disappointment and swung with everything he had. The glass exploded. Then he swung again, and again, a symphony of shattering crystal filling the air.
Dick cheered, dancing around him, adding his own kicks to the destruction. "That's it! Smash the patriarchy! Give 'em hell!"
Damian found himself laughing—a genuine, jagged sound. He looked at Dick, who was currently trying to balance on one leg atop a pile of broken glass.
"You are incredibly distracting," Damian said, though his eyes sparkled.
"That's my primary function," Dick replied, winking. "Now come on, let's go find some actual food. I'm starving."
As the mirrors vanished, the smell of ozone replaced the smell of old parchment, and Damian woke up with the ghost of a smile on his lips.
***
The city of Gotham was a vertical labyrinth. Damian was falling.
He wasn't falling from a building; he was falling through the city itself. The skyscrapers shifted like tectonic plates, the streets turning into rushing rivers of black oil. He plummeted through clouds of smog that tasted like sulfur, the wind whipping his cape into a frantic snap.
Every time he tried to right himself, the gravity shifted. He was slammed against a brick wall, then flung back into the abyss. The city felt like a living creature, a concrete beast trying to digest him.
He saw the ground rushing up—a jagged maw of asphalt and iron. He closed his eyes, waiting for the impact, waiting for the darkness to finally claim the small, lost bird.
A pair of strong arms snatched him from the air.
The jerk of the movement nearly knocked the wind from him, but he was suddenly secure. He opened his eyes to see Dick, soaring through the air using a grapple line, swinging with a grace that defied physics. Dick held him tight against his chest, his heartbeat a steady, rhythmic drum against Damian's ear.
"Gotcha," Dick breathed, his voice strained but triumphant.
He swung them upward, soaring above the smog, breaking through the clouds into a clear, starlit night. For a moment, they hung in the air, suspended between the chaos below and the silence above.
"I thought I was falling," Damian whispered, his voice trembling.
"You were," Dick said, glancing down at him with an expression of fierce tenderness. "But I'm the best at catching people. It's kind of my thing."
Damian tightened his grip on Dick's neck. "I do not like the heights of this city."
"Me neither," Dick lied, his voice soothing. "But we've got the best view from up here. Look, Dames. You can see the whole world."
Damian looked, but he didn't see the city. He saw the way the moonlight caught the gold in Dick's eyes. He felt the warmth of the man's breath on his forehead. He felt a sense of belonging that no amount of bloodline purity could ever provide.
"Richard?"
"Yeah, buddy?"
"Thank you."
Dick squeezed him once, a firm, grounding pressure. "Anytime. Always."
The stars blurred into a soft, golden haze, and the sensation of falling transformed into the feeling of sinking into a deep, plush mattress.
The reality of the Manor was colder than the dreams.
Damian lay awake in his room, the moonlight carving silver stripes across his duvet. The silence of the house was different from the silence of the void; it was filled with the ticking of clocks and the distant hum of the ventilation system. But tonight, the silence felt predatory.
He had woken up drenched in sweat, the memory of the falling city still vibrating in his marrow. He stared at the ceiling, his breath coming in shallow, jagged hitches. He was a warrior. He was the son of the Demon. He was Robin. He did not seek comfort. He did not crave the warmth of another human being.
But the room felt too large. The shadows in the corners seemed to stretch, mimicking the ink-black entities of Nanda Parbat. He felt the phantom threads of the void pulling at his lips, trying to sew his voice shut.
He sat up, his movements mechanical. He didn't put on his slippers. The cold hardwood floor bit into his soles, a sharp reminder that he was awake.
He walked down the hallway, his footsteps silent. The Manor was a fortress, but tonight it felt like a tomb. He reached the door to Dick's room and stopped. He stood there for five minutes, his hand hovering over the mahogany wood.
This is a weakness, he told himself.A failure of discipline.
But the cold was winning.
He pushed the door open. The room smelled of old gym bags, expensive cologne, and the faint scent of coffee. Dick was fast asleep, sprawled across the bed in a tangle of sheets, one arm hanging off the edge. He looked vulnerable, his features softened by sleep, far removed from the whirlwind of Nightwing.
Damian approached the bed like he was scouting an enemy camp. He stood by the bedside, watching the steady rise and fall of Dick's chest.
"Richard," he whispered.
Dick stirred, his eyes fluttering open. He blinked, squinting in the dim light. When he saw the small, shivering figure standing by his bed, he didn't ask why Damian was there at three in the morning. He didn't ask what had happened.
He simply shifted, lifting the duvet with one hand.
"Hey, Dames. Bad dream?"
Damian didn't answer. He didn't need to. He climbed into the bed, his movements hurried and stiff. He slid under the covers, the warmth hitting him like a physical wave.
Dick pulled him close, wrapping an arm around him and tucking Damian's head under his chin. It was the same hold from the dream—the same grounding pressure.
Damian stiffened for a moment, his instinct screaming at him to maintain his distance, to be the soldier. But then he felt Dick's heart beating—thump, thump, thump—a steady, living rhythm.
He relaxed. He let his weight sink into the mattress, his small frame fitting perfectly against Dick's side. He reached up, gripping the front of Dick's t-shirt, bunching the fabric in his fist.
"I... I found the reflections particularly tedious tonight," Damian murmured, his voice muffled by the cotton.
Dick chuckled, the vibration echoing in his chest. "Is that so? Well, we'll just have to smash a few more mirrors tomorrow. I'll buy you a sledgehammer."
Damian let out a small, huffing sound that was almost a laugh. He closed his eyes, the darkness of the room no longer feeling predatory. It felt like a blanket.
"Richard?"
"Yeah?"
"You are... an acceptable guardian."
Dick smiled, kissing the top of Damian's head. "I love you too, kiddo."
Damian didn't correct him. He didn't tell him that he didn't require affection. Instead, he burrowed deeper into the warmth, his voice a ghost of a whisper, meant only for the silence of the room.
"Goodnight, Baba."
Dick froze for a heartbeat, his grip tightening just a fraction. He didn't say the word back—he knew the fragile architecture of Damian's pride—but he held him tighter, shielding him from the ghosts of the night.
Damian fell asleep not to the sound of shattering glass or the roar of a falling city, but to the sound of a heart that beat for him, and for the first time, the dreams were only of the sun.