Chapter Text
“Clean yourself up. You’re getting blood everywhere.”
Damian look at his mother in the mirror. He blinks. It’s only him there. He’s tired.
She’s right, though. He is getting blood everywhere as he drags himself into his apartment. The cut on his side had bleed trough the first aid he did on the field. He huffs. Some guy got a lucky hit, that’s all.
“If you rely on luck,” the Talia in the mirror says, “You’re not good enough.”
“I know,” he growls. He doesn’t need her, or his father, to remind him constantly. He stumbles. He would have been fine if the guy hadn’t removed the knife. He would have been fine if he hadn’t been left in Gotham as a child in the first place and still had servants to patch him up. He would have been fine if he could have just gone to the cave and have Pennyworth patch him up. He would have been fine if his father hadn’t told him to never come back. He would have been fine if – If he hadn’t killed the Joker.
It doesn’t really matter that the Joker isn’t actually dead. Turns out the truth only matters to the world greatest detective until lies give him a good enough excuse to cast out a son he never wanted in the first place.
So, now, the Joker is alive, and Batman is without a partner. Without a decent partner, at least.
Because of course, Batboy still courses the skies, with a clumsiness Damian would never allowed himself to have. Unskilled, untrained, unresolved Timothy Drake should never had been allowed to wear the name the media created for Damian. He’s not worthy of it. Yet, somehow, he’s worthy of Batman’s affection.
Damian stumbles in his shower, falling on his ass when his foot gets caught in the step.
“You’re pathetic,” Talia says, and he doesn’t know if she’s talking about his lack of grace in bleeding out or his pitiful jealousy. Possibly both.
“Shut up,” he tells her, or his image in the mirror, he’s not sure. He peels the Nightwing suit of his skin and tosses it in the bathroom’s floor. Something else to clean up later. When he wouldn’t feel so weak on all fronts.
His hand leaves bloody prints when he reaches for the switch and turns on his shower. He watches, mesmerized, as blood and grime go down the drain.
“There you go,” he says to no one, in a low voice. “Cleaning up.”
It will strain, maybe. More clean up to do. But then again, what’s one more blood strain in his shower?
“The amount of blood strains in your shower is worrying,” Stephanie had said when she came in his apartment. “Especially for a cis dude who lives alone.”
He blinks. There are dark spots dancing in front of his eyes.
He could call Stephanie, he realizes. She would come. She would actually come, no matter what happened between them. He can imagine the phone call.
Hello. I know it’s been weeks, and the last time we saw each other you brought up my father, so I brought up yours and you punched me in the face so I replied and possibly broke your nose. Anyway I just got stabbed, could you come and make sure I do not die? Thanks.
He puts his back on the shower wall and lets the water run on his face. It’s hot, good pressure water, because he still, somehow, has access to Wayne money. The same money he used to furnish his apartment with cutting edge technology that give him eyes and ears everywhere in Gotham, including Bristol. That allows him to see his father being happy.
His head hit the wall, the little shock doing nothing to distract him from the pain on his side. He closes his eyes. How long would it take for someone to notice if he died here? Surely, Nightwing would be missed in Gotham’s skies, but how long would it take until someone finds his body?
His name has been taken, along with his place by Batman’s side. He doesn’t think the League considers him their next heir, anymore. His mother hadn’t reached out in years.
“Why would I?” the image in the mirror says. “If this is what I would see.”
Stephanie would grieve, maybe. A little, at least. And then, she would find someone else, someone better.
“Are you going to wallow in self pity until you die like a dog?” Talia asks and he pushes himself out of the shower to get a knife hidden beneath his cabinet and tosses it in the mirror. It breaks, sending glass everywhere. Talia doesn’t disappear.
But he’s out of the shower, now, so he reaches out for his first aid kit and get the material needed for stitches.
His hands are covered in blood. The needle slips around his fingers, but he sews himself up together. Blood, all over his hands, since his childhood.
He’s a murderer. He’s been a murderer since he was three. His father knew it when he took him in his care. Why would the Joker – who he didn’t actually kill - make a difference. No, it was just an excuse. Deep down, he always knew it.
He bites his lips. He doesn’t care what kind of noise he makes or how much blood he gets in his apartment. No one is here to see.
No matter what Talia in the mirror says, no matter who his father brings back in his place next time, he sews himself up together.
“I understand you don’t want to talk to Master Bruce,” Pennyworth says. He’s not in the mirror, but Damian knows he’s not actually here, either. “But you could have asked me.”
“No,” Damian says. “I couldn’t have.”
After all, his father was the one to cast him out, but Pennyworth? Pennyworth who had been the only one to understand him so many times? Pennyworth let him go.
But Damian isn’t going to let himself go. He finishes the last stitch. It’s not his perfect work, but he’s no longer bleeding out. He’s no longer dying.
“You’re pathetic,” his mother, or his own image, repeats from a broken piece of mirror.
“Then,” he asks her, he asks all of them, “What does that make you?”