Chapter Text
“It’s been such a nightmare putting up with the demon brat!”
Was that what everyone felt, that he was a burden? To the people he loved, was he really such a chore? He knew he was… crass, sometimes blunt. Rude. Violent. But he wanted the same things they all sought from Grayson, and he sought it from all of them-- from Drake, from Father, from Grayson, too. He wanted someone to yearn to hold him the way he yearned to see his mother, again, the way he’d yearned when he knew he was going to meet his father. He’d expected things to be warmer, here, but they were cold, so cold, didn’t even carry the heat of Nanda Parbait or the warmth of blood spilled.
How stupid, how stupid it had been of him to think they’d all ever come to love him. Even after all this time, they saw him as volatile, angry, quick to snap, but he wouldn’t have been if they didn’t spend their time dancing on his buttons-- no , no, thinking that way would disappoint Father. Disappoint Grayson. No, it must have been his fault, something he could fix.
(His mother in his head and his ears, out of the corner of his eyes, told him that he was imperfect, he needed to fix it, but he couldn’t. He’d tried. He’d tried so hard.)
And he was tired, he was so tired. This wasn’t what he’d expected. He thought he’d walk out of hot sands and strangling expectations into a proud, competent father’s arms and home. Instead, he found his own inability and ineptness thrown back in his face every day, no pride in his father’s eyes, not for him, not for a burden. He knew. He knew, okay! Nobody wanted him there. Nobody wanted him home, wherever that was. If he could not right himself, then he was unfit.
Unfit to be Robin. Unfit to be a Wayne. Unfit to be the son of Batman. Unfit to be a brother. Brothers were hugged, looked after, loved. He was… dealt with. He was put up with. He was tolerated and at that, only barely. He knew. He knew he wasn’t loved.
(He wasn’t sure anybody noticed how he picked at his food instead of nibbling at it, or how he spent more and more time in his room with the door closed and the sheets under his curled form. He wasn’t hungry, he was just sad. The ravenous search of food and drink had slowly become a bubble in his stomach that expanded until he felt nothing at all. If he did not eat, he did not take up space, he did not fight or bite or yell, maybe they’d want him.)
Men who struggled in their training, who failed again, and again, and again to meet his grandfather’s requirements, they’d meet their maker at the end of a sword-- be it his, Grandfather’s, or their own. He recalled cut wrists, torn chests, sliced throats, the smell of dired, stale blood hanging on arabian night air. They’d failed, so they’d removed themselves. A warrior’s defeat, a warrior’s death. He’d seen every which way, every pair of closed eyes, every heart in open air, stopped, and stopped much too early (too late , he could hear his mother mumbling, because she never thought her son would be one of those men with their souls forsaken and their hearts cut deep).
Mother,
he’d written one time,
Talia
.
This isn’t what I thought
No.
I would like to return promptly. I miss home (you
No, stupid, so, so stupid. Whining, like a fool, folding when he should have been thriving. But things were not the same here as they were at Nanda Parbat. He used to be revered, he used to be admired, he used to be not loved, but feared and cherished and looked after just the same. Here, he wasn’t needed. In the way, a hindrance, a risk. He was a risk, he was a burden, he was not a son, he was a demon. He wouldn’t get the smiles from Father that Drake got, he wouldn’t get the silent understanding Todd got, or the wide-eyed, excited joy of Grayson walking in the door, turning heads with open arms. Nobody was ever so happy to see him.
Mother wouldn’t want to see him, now.
He’d be a disgrace coming home, if that’s what he could call the League, just another soldier who failed his mission, who would meet his end by sword. But, he mused, he couldn’t stay here, not when he could feel the walls closing in on him, when he could feel the unease whenever he and Drake or he and Brown were anywhere near the same room. He couldn’t stay where he’d become superfluous to the family, where he’d become more obstacle than helping hand. He was never Robin, could not be redeemed, because he’d tried, tried so hard to be good, and he’d failed.
But he didn’t want to go with blood-covered hands, the way they all saw him, even if it was his own blood. He wanted to drift, maybe. Painting, if he could, of a robin he could never catch, or maybe just laying at his bed as he has all these lonely days, curled up on his side, head resting against his pillow. They’d find him when he was cold, but he’d be clean, and maybe Father would be proud. Mother would call him a coward.
And it wasn’t hard. Acetaminophen was easy to come by in the manor, and the cave, between Father’s long nights and Drake’s headaches and patrols that ended with head injuries. He’d snuck a bottle of it out of the medicine cabinet in the cave, early in the morning, when nobody was down there. Monday of summer meant break for him but not for his Father, not for Drake, not for Pennyworth… not that he was sure they’d stop him.
So he retreated to his room alone, curled up in his bed, and swallowed pill after pill after pill, until he was sure it was enough, until he was sure that he’d fall asleep and never open his eyes again. He dug his head into his pillow, gathered his knees to his chest, and he closed his eyes and waited. Not a warrior’s death, but a failure’s death, a demon’s death. The end of a burden. He closed his eyes and paid no mind to the tears as they welled and slipped beyond him. They weren’t a problem, anymore, not his, and not theirs.
But he did wake up, almost. Because he could feel hands on his face, fingers tapping at him.
“~Da~wake~!” Grayson? He could hear vague sounds like he could see letters and not read a word.
“Bruce!”
“Stay~wi~me~!”
The effort to open his eyes would have been… tremendous, right then. Besides, he didn’t really want to. He was so close to going, he could feel it in the weight of his body, how he couldn’t move a muscle. It felt like he was at the brink, like he was hearing the white noise of the mortal plane, but he could open his eyes and see stars. He was so close, he just wanted to slip away.
He wanted to stop this pain in his chest.
“-- bottle of Tylenol!”
“Shit! Demon Brat, c’mon, open your eyes.” Todd? “Can you do that for me?” There was a pause, a hand carding through his hair. “Shit. He’s gonna need acetylcysteine.”
There was another hand at his forehead. “Oh god, he’s so cold. Come on, Baby Bat, stay with us.” He was hallucinating, he had to be, because Drake had never used such a term of endearment, had never called his name with anything but disdain-- and he’d deserved it . “Oh god, please, please stay awake-- Alfred! ”
“Damian! Son, please!” That was Father, he could hear him, and in the next moment he felt weightless. Almost, and he would have laughed pitifully at himself for thinking such a thing, like he was being cradled. But he wasn’t a robin, and he wasn’t a son, and he wasn’t a brother, so the idea of that-- stupid . So stupid. “ Alfred, go grab the--! ”
“Yes, sir, right here, put him down.”
“I-I can’t…” Pennyworth didn’t fight, but he felt a hand at his own nevertheless, squeezing, cupping, pressed to a warm, wet face that huffed. “Come on, son, hold on, for me, please.”
He winced as something pricked his wrist, right in the vein. One eye, just a crack, opened and immediately squinted at the bright lights, the faces, the colors. He could see Pennyworth, with his sleeves rolled up. He could see Todd and Drake just beyond his shoulder, or the vague shadows of them; Todd was pacing fervently, all red, uneven breathing, and Drake was a perfect contrast, white and still and trembling with shaking fists.
As two hands cupped his own between wet skin and warmth, there was another pair of hands, holding him still, helping Pennyworth to keep him from moving-- unnecessary. He didn’t even think it was possible for him to move. Not to mention, the hands at his arm were thick with worry, shaking, hardly able to keep still on their own. They had no business trying to still his limp limbs. “He’s so small,” he could hear Grayson mumble. “He’s so small and he took the whole bottle.”
“Damian, please, please hold on, just a little longer.” Pennyworth glanced at him, or the arms cradling him, took one glance and turned away, to focus? Perhaps. “Son, I promise, I’ll make things right, please, please just stay.”
“Oh god, oh god, how did I--?” Drake stumbled over his words, ran a hand over his sweaty, pale face. “How did we not notice? How did-- god , he didn’t give us any signs!”
“He gave plenty, Master Timothy,” Pennyworth’s voice was soothing, but still stoney with focus, eyes on… Damian, his body, somewhere. His body that felt weightless and useless and already dead. Why wasn’t he dead? “I’m afraid I should have watched him more closely.” Pennyworth had done enough. It was his fault, no one else’s. He was a failure, a disappointment, and he was bad. That’s why they wanted him gone. That’s why he removed himself from the equation.
His head fell over the brink, and for a moment, his neck hung loose until the arms readjusted and cradled him closer. “C’mon, Lil’ D, you’ve gotta hold on for us, okay? We love you.”
But that couldn’t have been right. He blinked again, opened his eyes, found the eyes of his father looking back at him, and instead of the sins of his past and the disdain and the disappointment, he saw the pain of a father, desperate, clutching, filled with tears he wasn’t shedding, not yet. He saw the love he’d seen in his eyes only a few times, in only a few ways, the way he looked at his real robins, his real sons, the treasures and not the affliction of blood. He realized, then, that it was his father’s arms he laid in, cradled to his chest, one arm lifted by Grayson’s trembling hands while Pennyworth fed a tube into his bloodstream. “You hear that, Damian?” Father lifted his small palm and pressed it to his cheek. “You’ve gotta hold on, son. I know you’re strong enough.”