The Executioner

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/61912546.

Rating: Mature
Archive Warning: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Categories: Gen, M/M
Fandoms: DCU, Batman - All Media Types
Relationships: Tim Drake & Dick Grayson & Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne & Damian
Wayne, Dick Grayson & Damian Wayne, Jason Todd & Damian Wayne,
Tim Drake & Damian Wayne, Bruce Wayne & Damian Wayne
Characters: Tim Drake (DCU), Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Bruce Wayne, Damian
Wayne, Cassandra Cain, Alfred Pennyworth, Original Characters
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Rape/Non-con Elements,
Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault,
Implied Sexual Content, Necrophilia, Serial Killers, Corpses, Gore,
Violence, Child Abuse, Kidnapping, Collars, (IN A NOT SEX WAY),
Chains, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Stockholm Syndrome, Lima
Syndrome, non-sexual nudity, Case Fic, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Father-
Son Relationship, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Good Parent
Bruce Wayne, Protective Bruce Wayne, Bruce Wayne is Bad at
Communicating, Dick Grayson Needs a Hug, Protective Dick Grayson,
Good Sibling Dick Grayson, Dick Grayson Has Issues, Protective Jason
Todd, Hurt Jason Todd, Jason Todd Has Issues, Tim Drake Needs a Hug
(DCU), Tim Drake Whump (DCU), Tim Drake Emotional Whump, Hurt
Tim Drake (DCU), Tim Drake Has Abandonment Issues, tim drake has a
complex TM, Damian Wayne-centric, Damian Wayne is a Little Shit,
Damian Wayne Feels, Damian Wayne Whump, Hurt Damian Wayne,
damian wayne is having a straight up not good time, Mystery, Starvation,
look sometimes when you keep damian wayne captive a lot of shit has to
be done to KEEP him there, the boy is a pain in the ass, also, Pedophilia,
Mind the Tags, Dissociation
Language: English
Stats: Published: 2025-01-02 Updated: 2025-05-15 Words: 62,540 Chapters:
10/25
 The Executioner
by Chemical_Processes, GalaxyThreads

Summary

The Executioner has been dropping bodies. Damian Wayne is missing. And the bats are
stretched a little too thin to realize these two things are connected.

Notes

ALT title: the brazen confidence of a young man with a developing dick

my wife and I are enjoying winter break 👍

chem says she got sword earrings (can confirm, i was there, they are cute)

warnings: check tags 🙏

 see the trouble that i cause, i feed the thoughts you never saw
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

The compulsion is worse than the disappointment. Damian stares at his notification-free lock
screen for the fifth time in the last three minutes, the messaging app remaining unbothered by
the deepening scowl he’s aiming at it.

Of course, Father is not texting him. He was told before he left this morning to watch his
phone, and Damian has, all day, but he's acutely aware of the fact that any information that
he's given will be minimal, if not pointedly vague. He has rendered himself useless.

His eyes slide from the blank screen to his wrist, freshly wrapped in green plaster, snug and
confining. His fingers poke from the top, made clumsy by the injury. It’s a boon that he’s
rendered himself ambidextrous, else he might have been hindered by the clunky bandages.

He’d tried to tell Alfred that he’d be fine with just an ace bandage. It didn’t feel like anything
more than a bad sprain last night, but he can admit now that it is definitely broken. The
painkillers wore off around noon, and his arm is throbbing down to his elbow, dull and
distracting.

Even wiggling his fingers is agonizing, which is humiliating for an injury that’s so miniscule.
If it hadn’t been for Jason, he probably would have gotten the entire thing severed from his
wrist down. Alfred had told him he should be grateful. As if.

It’s ignominious.

Mother taught him better than this. It’s no wonder Father has maligned him. Damian will be
living down the shame of this for a while.

He grits his teeth, watches his phone screen time-out in his hands. Digs his thumbnail into the
power button to bring it back to life. There still aren’t any notifications.

There’s little doubt in his mind, though, that there have been developments. If not in the drug
trafficker that Jason stole twenty kilograms of fentanyl off of after Damian was sidelined,
then the Executioner’s case. Dick's been canvassing the Sprang to try and find new bodies.
He was going to give his report to Father this morning.

His classmate, Haleema Khan, raises an eyebrow at him when he taps his screen to keep the
phone on. Her eyes drop to his finger, then his face, then back to his phone. She pointedly
returns her attention to where Mr. Helmstutler is solving the Pythagorean theorem on the
board.
Damian hopes the man is proud of himself for teaching such basic maths and struggling so
severely.

He refreshes the messages app. It doesn’t do anything. He’s tempted to text first, but he
already reached out to Jason directly, and if he tries Dick, or someone else, then his
desperation will be obvious. He won’t give Timothy any more fodder for his mockery.
Impatience does not become him.

But neither does idleness.

Khan taps her pencil against his notebook. Damian has to retrain himself from turning on her
with violence. He doesn’t know what it is about him that has brought the burden of her
attention, but he would rectify that mistake if he knew it.

The rest of the class has no problem minding their own business. Helmstutler himself has
seen fit to turn a blind eye to Damian’s inattention, most likely out of some misguided pity.
When Damian had arrived at class this morning, the man had settled his hand behind
Damian's neck as he'd cooed over the broken wrist. It had annoyed Damian. He doesn’t care
what these plebeians think of him or his injuries.

“What happened?” Khan asks quietly, and taps the notebook next to his arm again. Her
expression is tight around her eyes, like she’s withholding blunt concern. He’s not sure if it’s
better or worse that it’s sheathed.

“Nothing,” Damian says. Father may think Gotham Academy a suitable reprieve for Damian
to retreat into “ normal life”, but he’d be loath to let his guard down. Eighth-graders will
exploit any perceived weakness, oftentimes more cruelly than any other opponent Damian
has faced. “Why do you care?”

“I broke my arm when I was seven,” Khan scoots closer. Damian’s still not sure why they’ve
been assigned the same cluster. Her math scores are far inferior to his own. “I fell out of a
tree. It really hurt, you could see the bone and everything.”

“Riveting.” Damian tucks his phone into the pocket, trying to bury his disappointment.
There’s still a half hour before the last period ends, hopefully Father is only waiting until the
cessation of his internment in this prison.

“You know, Dami,” Khan frowns, “you’re always covered in bruises, but this is intense, even
for you.”

Damian looks at her.

“Are you getting into fights?”

Damian glares at her.

“I can sign it if you want.”

It’s no wonder her math scores are so low, truly. She is clearly allergic to getting the damn
point . Damian pities the poor fools in charge of her education.
Khan fidgets again. She pulls the edge of her sleeve over her fingers. It’s the third time she’s
done so since demanding his attention. Damian’s eyes narrow at her. That isn’t a nervous
habit so much as it is a pointed gesture. It isn’t clear if she’s hiding it from someone other
than herself.

He pulls the notebook away from her insistent tapping, snapping it shut. There’s nothing
Helmstutler can teach him that he hasn’t mastered three times over. Father refuses to let him
advance beyond accelerated coursework, citing a neglected social education , whatever the
hell that means. The end result is the same. He's stuck in the confines of arbitrary polite
society.

Khan reaches out and grabs his casted wrist, lifting up her purple glitter pen and pressing the
tip to the plaster.

The rush of pain at the slightest pressure is overwhelming. He grits his teeth.

“Restrain yourself,” Damian snaps.

“It’s really sad if no one signs your cast, Dami.” HAL , she writes, and he jerks his elbow
back, hissing as the throbbing renews its vigor. Alfred tried to send acetaminophen with him
to school but he’d declined. It seemed like too much of a hassle, to have to spend his lunch
period begging pills off the nurse. Haleema pulls back, leaning over their shared desk. Her
hair falls into her face with her intent, bangs hiding her expression, and Damian has to clench
both fists to keep from lashing out at her.

“I don’t care,” he says, and it comes out louder than he means it to. Draws the eyes of the
neighboring desks, and Helmstutler at the front. The teacher has dropped his dry erase marker
to turn around and face them. “Let go of me.”

Haleema frowns at him. Has the audacity to look hurt , like he’s deprived her of something
by exercising his autonomy. Damian sneers at her.

“Alright everyone, let’s focus on the problem,” Helmstutler says, before moving over to their
desk. He leans over the two of them, his expression tight with disappointment. “What is
going on here?”

“Nothing,” Khan says quickly.

“You’re disturbing the class,” the teacher points out. He looks at Damian, and the warmth in
his eyes is surprisingly ominous. There’s nothing about the man visually that’s off-putting,
he’s white and brunett, young enough that it’s hard to pin his exact age, but older than Dick
by a few years.

Haleema recoils, but doesn’t unhand Damian.

The teacher’s eyes settle on her. “Haleema, he asked you to let go. You shouldn’t touch
someone if they ask you to stop. Consent is important for little things, too.”
The girl releases him swiftly, looking vaguely sick. She pulls her sleeve over the edge of her
hand again. Damian’s eyes narrow.

Helmstutler seems proud of himself, smug. He does not walk away. “Are you alright,
Damian?” he says. Puts a hand on the back of Damian’s chair, his fingers brushing against the
boy’s neck.

“I’m fine,” Damian hunches forward. Partly because Helmstutler’s breath smells like the tuna
sandwich he’d undoubtedly had for lunch, and partly to hide the cell phone sitting in his lap.
“You may resume class without further interruption.”

Helmstutler’s expression does something funny. A passing irritation and righteous anger that
settles into something calmer. The teacher looks over at Haleema and she shrinks beneath his
gaze, but he doesn’t say anything else. He returns to the front of the class. As Damian said,
there are no further interruptions before the bell rings, but Haleema looks like she wants to.
Damian steadfastly ignores any attempts to get his attention.

His notifications stay empty even after class ends, and the school day has come to a blessed
conclusion.

He shoves his notebook into his backpack, along with the unused pencil case before he starts
to move toward the exit after the rest of the crowd of students.

He can make a call before the bus ride home, see if Father needs him elsewhere. He’s pulling
up his keypad, typing in the familiar number, when Khan tries to grab him again.

He’d noticed her approach, of course. She wasn’t exactly subtle. It takes very little effort to
evade her repeated assault.

“Dami,” she says, her determination dogged, eyebrows screwed up in frustration. She’s
buffeted by the rest of the crowd, shoved by uncaring peers. She almost falls over, and
Damian instinctually reaches out and grabs her sleeve, jerking her upright.

She cries out, probably more from the shock than anything else, but it still has him drawing
up short, finally turning to look at the girl.

Khan is on the verge of tears, teeth digging into her bottom lip, eyes carefully fixed on
Damian’s. She stumbles before getting her footing, and Damian waits long enough to see her
upright before pulling away. She runs her hands over the blazer of her uniform, pulling her
sleeve down again.

It doesn’t stop him from seeing the dark, hand-shaped bruise circling her forearm.

He’s been trained to be better than instinctive anxiety, but it does give him hesitation. A
hesitation Mother would not appreciate. Gotham Academy is a part of his life that exists
outside the physical damage of Robin or the League.

"Nevermind," Khan says. "I should go."

At her words, that hesitation fizzles out. He reaches back out to grab her arm and pulls the
sleeve back up. It’s too large to have come from a woman. A man’s hand, and the bruise is
several days old. Not from her father, who Damian knows is overseas. Khan has been talking
about how her parents are trying to scrape funds to get him a ticket to the states after Khan's
younger sister was hospitalized last week.

“Who did that to you?” Damian asks. He believes he has some measure of entitlement to
know if she’s harassing him about his broken arm.

Haleema deflates. She looks like she’s going to start crying. Damian panics some. He doesn’t
have Dick to shove her off onto, and he’s not great with emotions. Timothy has told him
several times he has the emotional range of a cold, stale piece of bread.

“Did he break your arm?” Haleema asks. Her eyes are filling with tears now, and her voice
cracks as she whispers, "He broke my sister's collarbone."

“ Who ?” Damian steps closer. This is not the place for a conversation of this nature. There
are too many people around, and Haleema is flighty. Damian’s shocked she chose him to
confide in, of all people. She must have sensed his heroic nature, his prowess as an arbiter of
justice.

Father will be proud, that his cold nature has worn off enough that people will approach him
as himself.

“Mr. Helmstutler.” her voice is cracking, the syllables coming out in chopped up pieces. If
he’s not careful, she’ll start crying in full. It’s always harder to calm down hysterical victims
than it is to redirect upset ones. Dick taught him that. To be gentle to start because fast-acting
sedatives are expensive.

“Our algebra teacher?” Damian glances back at the room. Shit .

He thought he was more observant than that. Helmstutler had seemed harmless. A witless
fool, but harmless. And maybe he was to Damian, but Haleema lacks any sort of skill set.
The perfect, hapless victim for a miserable piece of shit to prey on.

“Yeah,” Haleema nods. “He was doing the same thing to you, so I thought…”

No he wasn’t. Damian would have been aware. He has been trained to recognize behavior
like that. Then again, despite Haleema’s hysterics, he’s failed to notice the man’s behavior all
together.

“How long has he been laying hands on you?” Damian closes the phone app, pulls up his
messages. The hallway is clearing now, he’ll be late for his bus if he doesn’t hurry. “Have
you told anyone else?”

“No,” Haleema says. She wraps her arms around herself, looking vaguely sick. “He said he
would hurt my mom if I told anyone. I don’t want—I just want it to stop. I thought—he
didn’t break your arm, did he?”
“He did not,” Damian confirms. He looks at his messages to Dick, still unanswered, and
Father, also unanswered, and Timothy, left on read, and the irritation spikes. He opens his
text thread with Jason instead. He’s the only member of his family that has not earned his ire
this morning.

More sniffling. Damian puts a hand on her shoulder without looking up. It’s on Grayson’s
victim checklist. Damian was required to commit it to memory.

“I’m sorry,” Haleema says, burying her face into her hands. “Don’t call the cops, please. I
can’t—I don’t want him to hurt my mom. I really, really—I can’t let her, Damian, please. I
didn’t mean to get you involved with his, I just thought you were already—”

“Be quiet,” Damian snaps, because her panicking is getting irritating to try and think around.
His message to Jason is taking far more time than it should. Belatedly, he remembers that this
is not on the list of approved behavior for victims, but he’s quick to rectify that with, “I mean
that it is not a problem, I do not mind being involved, Haleema.”

“He’ll hurt you, too.” She’s weeping now, Damian’s failed. Shit. He’s not even sure what the
checklist is for if it doesn’t fucking work . “I know he wants to,” she continues, “he talks
about you, he says we look alike. That you're pretty.”

“I look nothing like you.” their skin tone is approximately the same, and that’s about it.
Damian’s hair isn’t as curly as hers, his eyes are green, she’s shorter and slimmer. Her face is
rounder. More evidence Helmstutler is an unrivaled moron. Can’t even tell his students apart.

“That’s not the point,” Haleema insists. She’s going to run. Damian sees it on her face
approximately a second before she starts to move her feet, and he grabs her arm before she
can.

“Haleema,” Damian says, as calm as he can manage, “my brother is a police officer. He can
handle this discreetly. You should not have to suffer at his hands further if it can be helped.”

Her lip is wobbling. Damian wasn’t aware that was a real thing, outside of dramatized
middle-grade novels. She flinches away from his grip, but he does not let her go. Appropriate
physical contact. And also if she runs now, she won’t be able to give him the details to build
the case file.

“He’s gonna rape my mom.” The word is sharp coming out of her mouth. Damian didn’t
think she had it in her to say it. “I thought he’d already done you, and you’d get it, but you’re
just a stupid rich boy who thinks this can be fixed with the cops?” Haleema shakes her head,
“He’ll know, if I say something. He said he’d know.”

Damian takes in a breath. The words bother him more than he wants to admit, even to
himself. “He will not,” Damian promises. “Look at me, Haleema. He does not have the
intelligence to set up surveillance that extensive. You can talk to me, and my brother.”

“You’re so stupid,” she jerks away from him. Damian needs both hands to hold her in place,
and his message is still only half-written. “I already tried to talk to people. Do you think
you’re the first? Do you have any idea what he did to my sister?”
Does anyone not know what happened to her sister? Her assault has been the gossip of
Gotham Academy's lunch room for the last week. More proof scholarship children don't
belong with the higher classes of society, the fools.

“What’s your sister’s name?” Damian asks, lifting his phone again. Haleema makes an angry
sound, high in the back of her throat, fists balling up like she’s ready to hit him.

He doesn’t understand why. He’s trying to help her, she’s the one being irrational. Making
things harder than they need to be. If Helmstutler is doing unspeakable things to her—and
likely has done more to others—he is exactly the sort of scum that Damian would rejoice to
see pay penance for his crimes.

Damian runs through what he knows about her family. Her mother is a secretary at Gotham
Academy. Her father is working overseas, she has a multitude of siblings, greater than his. He
doesn’t remember her mentioning names before, but he’s never thought the information was
important. Father will chide him for that, remind him to treat everything as an important
detail.

Haleema has been more withdrawn the last few days. Damian had been certain it wasn't his
problem, given the distance he's encouraged between them. Concern is not always his
greatest skillset.

He’s been so engorged in complaining about how he’s not allowed to work cases that he’d
completely missed the obvious one in front of him. Helmstuter has been an irritant to him, in
the same way that a bug is, but it isn’t anything that Damian isn’t used to, especially from
some of Grandfather’s associates. The hair touching, the leaning in close, easing the limits of
the social barrier.

He has seen Helmstuter give the same treatment to one student or another the entire year, he
hadn’t thought that much about it.

“Why don’t you get it?” the tears are streaming down her face now. They’re drawing eyes,
teachers stepping out of the doorways of their classrooms to observe, poised to intervene. If
she were just a bit louder, she’d be exposing herself exactly the way she doesn’t want Damian
to. “Why aren’t you taking this seriously? He’s gonna hurt you real bad, just like he hurt me
and Mirah, and you don’t even care.”

“I do care,” Damian protests, because why else would he be here, if he didn’t care? Missing
his bus, tiptoeing around the raw edges of Haleema’s trauma, trying to help her. Damian has
done nothing but care, even though she’s annoying and bothers him in class. What could
possibly have made her think that he doesn’t? “I’m trying to help you—”

“What’s going on here?” Helmstutler’s voice isn’t nearly as far away as it should be for
Damian to be unaware of him. He’d been so wrapped into Haleema that he’d narrowed the
entirety of his attention to her. Foolish.

Haleema bursts into tears. Loud, wracking sobs. The sort that devolve into screaming the
longer they go on. It’s enough to draw the attention of Mrs Neudermeyer and Mrs Devon as
well, who make shocked tittering noises at the racket.
Damian steps closer to Haleema, shifting to put himself between the girl and Helmstutler.
The man’s frown deepens, brows scrunching together as he approaches.

“I just wanna sign your cast,” Haleema all but wails. She latches onto Damian’s good arm,
forcing him to slip his phone into his pocket or risk dropping it. The message is still unsent.
“I just wanna be friends with you, Dami.”

Her acting is surprisingly decent. Crying loudly clearly comes naturally to her.

“Haleema? What in the world is going on?” Helmstuter asks. He sounds concerned, but
Damian no longer trusts it. Even if he hadn’t seen Haleema’s bruises, he’s seen the emotional
ones, which has been enough.

“I don’t want you to,” Damian says, playing along, “I told you that I only want signatures
from people I actually care for.”

“Don’t be rude, Damian,” Helmstuter chides, as Haleema bursts into another round of tears.
He wants to reach out and reassure her that he will help her. Robin will take care of this, if
not Nightwing and Batman.

Damian shrugs nonchalantly.

Now that she’s pointed it out, however, Damian is acutely aware of how closely the two of
them are standing together, and Helmstuter’s hand on his shoulder, settled and warm with the
rebuke. He doesn’t release him. Let’s it linger.

Damian sees it in a far more sinister light.

It makes his skin crawl.

“I don’t have time for this,” he says, impatiently, trying to pull away from the man. Mrs
Neudermeyer has given Haleema a hug, rubbing over her back gently. It’s far kinder than the
cold comfort of official detective work that Damian can offer her, if slightly less useful. “It is
not important for you to sign my cast, Khan. We are not friends.”

“ Damian ,” Mrs. Neudermeyer reprimands.

One of the things that Mother stressed to him is the importance of knowing when to walk
away from a fight. There are tactical advantages to retreat. Damian is utilizing that now by
turning and starting to stalk down the hall. He’s the most help to Haleema without Helmstuter
knowing that anything is going on between them.

“Mr. Wayne,” Helmstutler calls after him, and when that doesn’t fetch him, the man appears
at Damian’s side, pulling him to a stop. There is faint suspicion in his eyes anyway; perhaps a
brain was not wasted on this imbecile. “If she was talking to you about something…
upsetting, you should really speak to an adult. I would be happy to listen. You’re safe with
me.”

“She was talking to me about her inane flights of fancy,” Damian curls a lip, affecting a sneer
that would make Mother proud. Even Helmstutler recoils from him. “Delusions of
companionship that I do not share, as I’m sure you understand. There is no love lost between
Khan and myself.”

The tone—or maybe just the words, clipped and measured, catch his teacher off guard.
Makes him falter. “Damian,” he says, hesitant and reproachful for a whole new reason now.
“Maybe you should try making friends though. I have some concerns about your social
development.”

“You and every other dimwitted moron in this city,” Damian shrugs off Helmstutler’s hands.
His touch had never bothered Damian to this degree before. “I assure you, I am worldly and
cultured beyond your means.”

Helmstutler does not miss the pointed blow at his teaching skills. His mouth does something
funny. “I see. Why don’t you get home, Damian? I’m sorry that Haleema disturbed you.
She’s been having a hard time since her sister was put in the hospital, try to have patience
with her.”

Damian scoffs. “I am always patient.”

Helmstutler pauses. “You’re sure she didn’t talk to you about anything else?”

“Yes.” Damian insists.

Helmstutler sighs quietly, and reaches out to brush Damian’s hair off his face. The gesture is
something that his family has done often, and Damian flinches back at the sheer intimacy.

“Don’t,” Damian snaps.

His teacher’s mouth gets tight. He lets his hand linger in the air where Damian pulled away
from. “Damian,” the man’s voice has dropped to something without any of the usual warmth,
“you should keep your mouth shut. I'd hate for someone to have to make you."

He pulls away, chin tipped up. Feels his eyes widen around the edges, when he catches the
look Helmstutler gives him. Cold and knowing.

Haleema was right about one thing, he supposes. The old bag is too observant for his own
good. This isn’t the sort of situation that can wait on Grayson’s gentle touch anymore.

He says nothing to the man, backing down the hallway instead of turning around, shoulders
tight with apprehension.

Helmstutler doesn’t follow him, but his eyes track Damian the whole way.

“Wha’d’you want pipsqueak?”

“Well.” Damian slouches on the perimeter wall for Gotham Academy, watching the front
doors for Haleema and her mother to exit. Helmstulter has already left, but Damian isn't
foolish enough to trust that means anything, “For starters, enunciation would be appreciated.
I do not believe contractions were meant to be used in that manner.”
“Language is constantly evolving,” Jason points out, “get with the times, Old English, or
you’ll need a modern translator soon. You or nighttime shit, Day?”

Both , Damian thinks miserably. Helmstutler's touch lingers on his skin like a phantom. If this
is anything of what Haleema's been experiencing for the last few weeks, he pities her beyond
measure. He wants to scrape off the first layer of his skin.

“Damian,” Jason says, and it startles him enough to have him sitting up a little straighter, at
attention. Jason is allergic to using given names, for some nonsensical reason. “Status report.
Come on, I don’t have all day. I'm kind of in the middle of something with the drug guy."

“I require your assistance with something,” Damian clears his throat, awkwardly. Maybe he
should take care of Helmstutler himself. Pay the man a visit as Robin. Except that’ll take time
as well, to gather and compile evidence, abide by his father’s rules. And as he is, Damian
can’t guarantee he can work fast enough. WIth his broken arm, he's hindered even further.

He’s not sure he wants to face Helmstutler, either. An entirely selfish desire, but there
nonetheless.

Jason is efficient, he’s quick, and he doesn’t ask too many questions. It’s the logical solution.

“Okay,” Jason says, “what kind of situation?”

“A sensitive one.”

Jason sighs, very softly, “Day, did you call me to ask for my help or to allude vaguely that
you want it? Use your words.”

“I would like you to kill someone,” Damian admits. Then he remembers Father’s discussions
and appends, “As a last resort.”

“Damian, who the fuck pissed you off badly enough—I swear to god if this is about Tim
again—”

“No,” Damian interrupts, exasperated. “It’s…there’s a girl in my class. Haleema Khan. She’s
been harassed by Kyle Helmstulter, our sub-rate mathematics teacher, and she needs help. I
am currently unable to provide aid, but she and her family may be in danger if someone does
not intervene.”

There’s a longer pause. “Harassed how?”

“I believe he has defiled her and her sister.” Damian glances up at the school, where the front
doors remain closed. He can hear the clunk of something heavy on the other end of the line,
and movement besides. “As well as threatened her mother.”

He can’t bring himself to add his own name to the list. He didn’t even notice anything was
going on, whatever discomfort he received he surely earned. He should have done better.
Been better. Robin is meant to be better than this.

“He’s your teacher,” Jason says, as if he just realized. “He try anything with you?”
“No, of course not,” Damian says, ignoring the way his heart rate picks up at the mention of
it. The ghost of Helmstutler’s fingers on his shoulder, his arm, his neck.“I would never let
such a second rate sea urchin besmirch my dignity.”

"Are you on the bus right now?" Jason ignores the statement, though there's resignation in his
voice, "Where are you?"

"I'm outside the school," Damian says. He scowls at his arm. "I would take care of this
myself if my arm was in better condition. I simply require assistance--"

"No." Jason snaps, "Absolutely not. This guy's creeping on kids, I don't want you anywhere
near that. You almost got your arm cut off yesterday, I need some time to work through the
trauma before I'm ready to work with you again."

Damian bristles. "I am not an invalid."

"That's great. I'm proud. But you are a liability right now. Go home, Day. Get some pain
meds. You sound like shit. I'll take care of this."

"I don't--"

Jason hangs up on him. Of course he does. Damian scowls at his blank screen. He misses the
days when the man was more likely to plant an incendiary device in their private vehicles
than pick up their calls. He's more protective than Dick, and it's irritating. Damian
isn't useless simply because his arm is broken. Jason is going to lose hold of Edward Lamont
now because Damian couldn't handle this by himself. Because Damian needs a minder, and
someone to fix all his problems for him.

Damian is still Robin. He'll fix the Lamont situation, as he should have last night, prove his
worth to his family. Then, after Damian has done so, he'll handle Helmstutler as well.

Liability. The word burns in Damian's stomach, Jason's disapproval even stronger. Is that
really what his family considers him now? It must be. Mother would always withhold her
love when Damian was injured, she couldn't bare the shame until after he was back together.

He looks back down at his empty messages. Of course they wouldn't tell him anything. He's
the liability.

Fine. Fine.

Damian calls a cab. He has to walk three miles to find one, but thankfully, the cabbie is
minding her own business, intent on the destination Damian’s paying her to take him to. The
vehicle rolls to a stop outside of a dilapidated brownstone off Becker street, two and a half
miles deep into Crime Alley. Before they attacked the warehouse last night, Jason had shared
Lamont's home address with him as a plan B, in case the raid didn't work.

Father has stressed the importance of remembering information, and so Damian gave the
address without a problem.
He's without Robin's equipment, still dressed in his uniform, his backpack in his lap. He can
fight with his fists. Well. Fist. A weapon would be preferable, but he's perfectly capable of
working without one.

The cabbie doesn't give him a second look as Damian climbs out into the street.

Still no messages. Irritated, Damian puts it on silent on the unlikely scenario someone tries to
get ahold of him, and slips it into his pocket. Jason will likely have words with him later
about this, stress the importance of staying out of Crime Alley again, like the man has any leg
to stand on.

It's been some time since Damian came to this part of the city as himself. The lack of the
Robin logo emblazoned on his shoulder like a shield is one he feels painfully. The eyes rake
up and down him, over him, assessing. Damian lifts his chin and meets them head-on.
Mother taught him not to show fear, especially when he felt intimidated. Which he does, if
only marginally. He's still Robin. Still Ra’s Al Ghul’s grandson.

He climbs the steps two at a time, wishing he’d thought to drop his bookbag somewhere that
wouldn’t see it stolen in seconds. It’s heavy on his back, weighed down with homework and
textbooks. He’ll have to discard it in the fight—or use it as a weapon. The idea holds merit, a
weighted projectile, if he aims it with enough force it might be useful to stun Edward
Lamont. Perhaps he's not nearly as disarmed as he thought.

He rings the bell, listening to the harsh crackling buzz as it echoes throughout the house. No
one answers the door. Not that Damian was expecting him to. If he’s smart the man will have
vacated this house and gone into hiding.

He waits a beat, listening for movement, before descending the steps to round the side of the
house. There are iron bars on the ground-level windows, but the second floor doesn’t have
any, and the brick is chipped enough, and articulated enough with the neighboring
brownstone, that Damian doesn’t hesitate to dig his nails into the window ledge and heave
himself up.

He'll check the building over to see if he needs to do additional tracking, but if the man hasn't
fled the city yet, Damian can wait.

Inside, the Brownstone looks dirty, but isn't, in that odd way old buildings get stained with
grime from previous inhabitants. Walls yellowed from cigarette smoke, the corners dyed
black and gray over the years, ceiling caked in dust and suspect splatter stains. He lets his feet
settle on the carpeted rug.

Damian’s nose wrinkles.

The overhead light isn’t on, but he doesn’t bother with it, given the gray dirt covering the
shade. The blinds have been drawn on every window that isn’t covered in duct tape or
boarded over, casting the hall in a deep shadow.

He keeps moving into the house. Reaches the staircase and hears movement below.
Something crashing violently. A cry of pain. A fight. Damian would recognize that sound
anywhere.

Shit .

How is he to redeem himself if someone murders Lamont first? He moves down the stairs as
quietly as he can, hears metal clatter against the floor.

He tilts his head, listening in to the sound of a struggle. Muffled cries, more restrained than
what Damian would expect from a dispute amongst gang members. He rounds the corner in a
crouch, poking his head out into the foyer, just observing for now. The poor lighting works to
his advantage, concealing his slight figure from the men.

Lamont is getting the shit beat out of him. He’s on the floor, much closer than Damian was
expecting to be, just a few feet away, splayed out and scrambling weakly from his attacker.
There’s blood dripping from a cut on his temple, the wound already inflaming—blunt force
trauma.

The attacker—taller and leaner, the lower half of his face covered with a blue bandana—
wields a truncheon in his left hand, looming above Lamont with deadly intent.

There is no hesitation, or a period long enough for Damian to think about intervening, the
man brings the truncheon down over the back of his skull with a sickening crack. Damian
flinches.

The attacker isn't done. He stoops forward to grab Lamont by the back of his head, forcing
the man into a painful backward arch. Lamont is still alive, somehow, though the bloom of
liquid scarlet over his skull and rivuleting into his eyes promises to remedy that. The attacker
tosses the truncheon aside, and the sound jars Damian back into his body, has him tensing up
to move, but the man withdraws a knife. He presses it to the inside of Lamont’s neck, sliding
over his vocal chords in one smooth motion, the skin splitting under the blade like over-
ripened fruit.

The blood spray is visceral and explosive, spitting outward with the last desperate pumps of
Lamont’s heart. The noise the dying man makes is wet and wheezy, cut short when the
attacker drops Lamont limply onto the floor.

Damian flinches back as the spray hits him in the face, stumbling back onto his ass. It's a
foolish mistake, one that he should have training to combat. It's not Damian’s first body. Not
even his first time being coated in human blood.

He wipes frantically at his face anyway. His vision is clouded with panic, and he stumbles
backward to get away from the attacker. Abruptly, he feels thirteen and childish, squirming
out of the reach of violence he knows is inescapable.

His movement is his undoing. The attacker’s head snaps up to track him. Their eyes meet,
Damian's green against the man’s cold brown. He freezes. There's still blood spray clouding
his vision.
The man is breathing hard, violently, pupils blown almost enough to swallow the iris. His
hair is clumped with blood, an odd, hungry set to his gaze. Familiar eyes, dark brown and
searching.

He’s just as shocked as Damian, goes just as still, lips parting beneath the bandana, eyebrows
raising. For half a second, neither of them dare to move. Damian goes first, training kicking
something deep inside him to life. Not to fight. He flails upright to his feet and bolts for the
door.

He could, of course, take the man in a fight if he needed to, but he's hindered by his stiff
uniform, the bookbag, and the lack of the Robin armor to hide inside. Tactical retreat. Dick
would call him wise.

“Shit!” The man yells, voice cracking, and Damian can hear him lunge into motion behind
him, feel the scrape of his fingers on Damian's bag. It reminds him too much of Helmstutler's
fingers against his neck. His heart rate picks up.

He flails, stumbling on the first step before finding his footing again. He makes it five steps
up before the man grabs the handle of his backpack, tugging hard.

Damian shrugs out of it, not letting his momentum slow, moving on reflex now. Except, his
cast catches on the zipper and the pain steals his breath as his arm is jerked awkwardly.
Damian’s foot misses the next step, ankle twisting beneath his ill-placed weight and sending
him crashing to the floor.

Damian lands on his back hard enough to take his breath away. He tries to move up anyway,
scrambling to get out of reach, out of the man’s sight, but he's laying in Lamont's blood and
the sensation makes him freeze up again.

“Shit, shit.” The man is repeating, before he grabs Damian by his neck and slams him back
down to the floor. His hands are large, fingers wrapping around Damian’s throat, squeezing
with intent. He leans his weight onto Damian, pinning him to the floor. “What the fuck are
you doing here?”

Damian scrabbles to scratch at the man’s wrist, raking his fingernails down his forearm. Let
go. Let go. Let go. He can't breathe. He can't breathe.

“No one was supposed to be here.” He’s not even talking to Damian now, the hysteric edge of
a rant in his voice. “What the fuck is a kid doing here?”

He pulls Damian back by his neck, leaning forward to see his face, before cursing again,
shoving Damian back down. His other hand comes up to cover Damian's mouth.

Damian throws an elbow back, catching the man in the stomach, earning a pained wheeze for
the effort. But the grip doesn’t loosen, and the man digs a knee into Damian’s broken wrist in
retaliation.

He's seized by the urge to scream, but he's not a civilian. He just needs to get some sort of
leverage. If he can just—
 The knife gets pressed to his throat. “What the fuck am I supposed to do with you?” The man
demands.

Damian, still trying to ease the worst of the hyperventilating and hypoxia, glares. It doesn't do
much.

“ Shit .” The man whispers again. He studies Damian’s face for a long second, and seems to
come to sort through some rapid-fire decisions. “Shh, shh, shh,” he leans forward, more
weight on Damian’s chest. His ribs are aching at the pressure, black spots crowding his
periphery, a heady combination of adrenaline and pain making the world spin around him.

Damian squirms his good arm against his side, reaching into the inside pocket of his blazer,
the switchblade tucked into the inner pocket. He just needs to reach it. He just needs to—

The man lifts him up one more time, shifting his grip to thread his fingers into Damian’s hair,
his hands surprisingly gentle before he cracks Damian’s skull into the edge of the step.

The world consumes itself in a rush of pain and color. Damian’s eyes roll up into the back of
his head.'

Chapter End Notes

thank you for reading!! <3

damian is about to have the worst time of his thirteen years

 explain away the panic, but veins were made for addicts
Chapter by GalaxyThreads

Chapter Notes

me and my wife can't stop making necrophilia jokes 😔😔

JAIL for chem and galaxy. jail for One Thousand Years.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Micah is gone when Dick wakes up, but the blankets are still cooling from the body heat. He
rolls over to face the bathroom, sees the stretch of light beneath, and buries his face
underneath the blankets.

It's still early. What the hell is Micah doing up this early? Dick just finished four tens. Does
he have a shift that he didn't talk about? Micah got here late last night, and he'd been stressed,
but it Dick doesn't think that he'd have stayed the night if he was planning on leaving at—
Dick looks at the clock.

4:32 a.m.

He groans. Covers his face with his hand. That means it’s something important. He should go
and see what’s wrong.

Instead, Dick waits until he can’t hear Micah moving around the kitchen anymore, dozing off
and on, trying to encourage himself to wake up fully and not getting anywhere. Patrol ran
late, Jason and Tim were radio silent all night, and Bruce turned off his comms to track down
supposed leads about the Executioner case. Dick had to pick up routes left and right, and the
minute he got home Micah was at his door, all pent up frustration and angry brown eyes.

It’s hard to get Micah worked up. Dick never turns him down when he is. It can be a fun time
for both of them, and last night was no different.

This morning is a little different. Especially when Micah eases open the door to his bedroom
and turns on the lamp light. A watery yellow glow that illuminates Dick’s still-naked body
and Micah in the doorway, standing there in full uniform.

Dick groans again, louder.

“Sorry, babe.” His boots click as he approaches the bed, peeling away the pillow Dick’s
trying to smother himself with, leaning down to kiss the scrunch in his brow. “C’mon. They
need us down at the station.”

“Why?” Dick demands. “I have OTed the entire week. I'm free. My skin is glowing. I'm
resting. Radiant. I'm calling OSHA.”

“Crime scene was discovered last night,” Micah says, quieter. “Detective Gonzalez is
thinking the Executioner. No body, but enough blood the fucker's definitely dead.”

Dick sobers. He sighs and drops the blanket away from his face. “Give me five to get dressed
and overdose on caffeine.”

“I’ll start the coffee maker then.” Another kiss. Lingering hands down the side of his neck,
before Micah’s pulling away again, headed toward the kitchen to do as he said.

“This is why you're my favorite. Thanks MJ.” Dick crawls out from under the blankets,
looking for his boxers.

“Oh so that’s why,” Micah calls. His voice is more relaxed than last night, steadier. It fills
Dick with a sense of accomplishment. “And here I thought it was my dick you were after.”

“Your mouth is too pretty.” Dick answers back. “But that too.”

He gets dressed quickly, and walks into the kitchen. Micah is holding a photo he pulled off
the fridge, and his expression is hard to read. “Is this your family?”

Dick leans over his shoulder to see the photo. Rolls his eyes at the mess that looks back at
him. “Yeah. The whole Brady Bunch. Bunch of pains in my ass.”

“They’re cute.” Micah’s fingers are stiff, putting the picture back up and the magnets in
place. The coffee is percolating, almost done. Usually Micah would have poured them both a
cup from what’s in the carafe by now.

“You don't have siblings, right?” Dick asks carefully. He knows Micah’s parents are dead.
Murder-suicide when he was seven. He was alone with the bodies for a week before anyone
found him. Family isn't Micah’s favorite subject. That much Dick only gleaned from the
gossip that followed Micah around the BPD after he was made DIC of the Executioner case
three months ago when Hendrickson was put on mandatory probation.

“No, I.” His lips rub together. “Cousins, when I lived with my aunt. But we weren’t really
close. You guys look happy.”

“Looks it, yeah.” Jason’s not in the photo, couldn’t be wrangled into the manor long enough,
not even with Alfred’s mixture of bribes and threats. Kate and Helena begged off because
they were feuding with Bruce at that point. Tim only agreed on the stipulation that Damian be
on the other end of the picture as him.

Micah’s thumb smooths over Damian. “I didn't know you had a kid brother. He looks as old
as one of my cousins. He ten?”
“Damian, yeah. He’ll be fourteen in December, actually. Bruce’s youngest.”

“Oh. Nice. You're the oldest, right?”

Hard to tell with Cass. Dick smiles. “Yeah.”

“Cool.” Micah turns to the coffee machine. There's something pained in his movements. Dick
tries not to wince. He remembers all too well how painful it had been to see whole families
when his own was fractured or gone. Micah hands him the coffee mug, his expression upset.
“We should get going.”

“Yeah probably,” Dick agrees. He kisses Micah’s cheek. “I'll see you soon though, right?”

Micah nods absently, his eyes on the photo again. Receives a distracted yeah in response.
Probably already thinking of the case, and what new threads of non-information they won't
get from this crime scene either.

Dick leaves Micah in his apartment. Usually they’d drive together, but it’s not often that the
other man will spend the night twice in a row, and Micah’s house is in the opposite direction
from the station. Plus, if there is any new leads on the Executioner’s case, Dick will most
likely be putting in an appearance at the cave, if only to hear Bruce complain more about the
lack of unified response from the DA and GPD.

Dick’s heard the rant three times already. All murder is wrong and vigilante killing is still
killing . It’s not like he can sway public opinion about that, or strong-arm the captain into
putting more people on the case. It’s not his fault the only reason gives a shit about finding
this guy is because he's a fucking creep.

The BPD on this case is new, they found a body on the docks three months ago, and now
Bruce is in panic mode because this means that the Executioner is leaving Gotham. The joint-
case operation has been a bitch.

Micah does meet him at the station, and Gonzalez has a bullpen full of evidence techs at their
disposal. Dick almost does a double-take when he’s briefed on the victim.

Edward Lamont. It’s not the first time the Executioner has cross-sectioned into other
criminals on the Bat’s radar, but this one’s rather pointed given how recently Robin had a
run-in with Lamont. He'd gotten both Bruce and Damian's ranting perspective about the man,
and the broken arm that could have been an amputation if Jason was any slower.

Dick’s mouth tightens. He doesn't feel anything about the man’s death, but it seems like he
should. Bruce would. It's still a life taken, but it's just impossible to give a shit. Numbing out
has been Dick's way of coping with all of this. With anything. It's easier to crack jokes and
pretend it's not happening than stare it in the face.

“Any witnesses?” Dick asks Gonzalez.

“Are there ever?” Micah mutters, beside him, flipping through his own case file. His mood
has soured again, not that Dick blames him overmuch. Gonzalez, predictably, shakes his
head.

“What kind of time frame are we looking at here?”

“He was in and out in under an hour,” Gonzalez’s hands are twitching, like he needs another
cigarette, though Dick can smell the nicotine on his breath even five feet away. “Blood
spatter analysis is still underway. The forensics team wants to have a conference.”

Great. Cause those are always enjoyable and waste no time ever.

“Okay,” Dick agrees. “Any reason why?”

Gonzalez grunts. “Said there was something weird about it this time.”

Dick raises his head from the photos he's thumbing through, but Micah beats him to the
punch when he says, “Blood spray stops here. There was some sort of object he took with
him when he left.”

That's new. The Executioner has left the scenes relatively the same since he started, why
change up the MO for Lamont? It's not like the man hasn't killed a drug trafficker before.
What was different about him? And what did he take with him when he left?

“Like what?” Dick asks.

“Not sure, looks small,” Micah admits. “Maybe some sort of furniture or a bag? The shape is
kind of fucked. Look at this.”

He hands the photo to Dick. He's right. The shape of the missing blood spray is small. Not
tall enough to be a human, even a child. And there was no evidence there was a third person
anyway. No witnesses. So what the fuck was it?

“If he bled onto it he might want to take it with him,” Gonzalez speculates. “We might be
able to find DNA at the scene this time.”

He doesn’t remark on how unlikely that is. The Executioner is meticulous, half the time the
blood of the victim isn’t even able to be processed, because he goes over the place with a
peroxide cleaner.

“This one’s rushed,” Micah says. “An hour? Really. The guy’s more neurotic than that.”

“Friends of the victim showed up at the apartment at six, M.E’s rough preliminary time of
death from the blood sample is around four pm, something must have interrupted him.”
Gonzalez explains.

“Lamont is a physical threat,” Dick points out. He’d gotten a hit on Damian, after all, and the
kid is made out of pretty strong stuff. “He could’ve injured our guy.”

Micah frowns, shaking his head but not offering up any argument. It’s just speculation,
anyways, at least until they have something concrete to back it up. This one at least breaks
pattern. It's a slip-up. Mistakes happen, Dick relies on that, and it could be a sign that
something is wrong with the Executioner. It's not a reassuring thought.

“If he’s taking risks like this he’s devolving.” It’ll be five minutes before Gonzalez takes a
smoke break, tops. The man’s leg has started shaking. Dick wonders if he’s taken his blood
pressure medication. “This is the third one dead in as many weeks. How long’s it gonna be
before he gets bored of the shitbags and starts going after anyone.”

“He wouldn't,” Micah protests. “Gotham's got enough shitbags to keep him busy for the rest
of his life.”

“Oh cool your fanboy crush Jorgenson, he’s not a hero.” The file folder is snapped shut.

“Who’s been studying this case for months, detective? I know him better than all of you.
That's why the captain made me DIC.” Micah’s voice is cold.

“Just don’t forget what he's doing to those fuckers. You might not like them but no one
deserves that kind of violation. Our unsub is a freak through and through.”

Micah’s teeth set. “It's just necrophilia, Gonzalez. He's not exactly raping children, is he?
He's got a moral code. A fucked one sure, but there is a code.”

Dick rests a hand on Micah’s shoulder. Squeezes it in warning. Getting into fights isn't going
to fix anything, even if Gonzalez is irritating as hell. The man can't take anything as a
statement, it's always an invitation to argue. Besides. Dick isn't really sure there's a worse
between the two options.

“Not yet,” Gonzalez says. “Guy like that doesn’t know morals . We’re dealing with a psycho.
He'll show you what he is eventually.”

Micah scoffs. “Right.”

Gonzalez glares at him, until the younger man backs down, tossing aside his file folder and
reaching into his coat pocket for a pack of cigarettes. “I need a smoke,” he says. “Try and do
something other than salivate over a corpse fucker for once, Jorgenson.”

Micah takes a physical step forward, but Dick reels him back in. “He's not worth it, MJ.”

“I'm not an idiot,” Micah whirls on Dick. “You know that right? I'm perfectly aware of what's
at stake.”

“I know,” Dick says, “But Gonzalez isn't wrong either. People like this do devolve.”

Micah makes a frustrated noise. “I’ve been working on this profile for ages, Dick, that’s not
what this is. The Executioner is smarter than that.”

Right, and intelligence makes guys who get off to dead bodies the most stable, well-adjusted
people in society. Dick raises his hands placatingly.
It’s not worth arguing about. Micah’s been putting everything he has into nailing the
Executioner, and it’s clearly stressing him out. More and more he’ll come to Dick frayed and
needing. He hopes, for both of their sakes, that they get a break soon.

Bruce is getting his third cup of coffee in as many hours when he gets the phone call. The
noise startles him despite himself, causing the cup to tilt, spilling all over the countertop in a
gushing wave. He digs the device out of his pocket with one hand as he reaches for a paper
towel.

Last night dragged into early morning. He’s feeling the effects of a two-hour power nap and a
twelve-hour patrol keenly, eating at his reflexes and reaction times. It sees him blinking in
morbid fascination as the puddle of muddy brown liquid expands, hot enough that the skin
he’s splashed it on is quickly turning red, threatening to blister the longer he leaves the coffee
sitting.

The phone rings insistently. It’s Alfred’s ringtone, not the manor’s rotary, which means it’s
urgent enough that he isn’t bothering to text. Bruce almost sighs.

Jason was loitering around Bristol last night. It’s not his usual territory, far from the Narrows
and Alley and downtown Gotham where his route intersects with Tim’s. Between examining
the latest Executioning victim, running his own route, Bruce didn’t have time to pick apart
Hood’s erratic movement. He asked Tim to follow up with Jason, got no response whatsoever
from the teenager, and decided it was a problem that could wait until tomorrow.

If Alfred’s calling, it’s no doubt about one of his wayward sons.

“Alfred? What’s wrong?” Bruce asks.

“I was wondering if you know where Master Damian is,” Alfred says, with far too much
calm. It’s that perfect edge of smooth that is ragged under the surface. It makes Bruce’s heart
rate pick up.

“It’s ten thirty.” Bruce leans back to check the clock. It is; 10:31 . “He’s at school.”

Bruce had gotten in too late to see him to bed, and left for Wayne Ind. too early for him to be
awake. Sleep is important for childhood development, and Bruce has learned better than to
disturb his sons’.

“No, I’m afraid he is not,” that careful professionalism again, “the school just called to
inform me he was absent. I was hoping you’d know.”

Bruce pinches the bridge of his nose. He’d thought they were out of the truancy phase. It’d
taken several benched patrols, and a visit from social services to convince Damian that yes,
actually attending school was necessary and not a side quest that he could choose not to
complete. They’ve got a streak going.

Had . They had a streak going.

“I’ve taken the liberty of checking his room and the cave. His suit is still here, he wasn’t out
as Robin last night.”

Shit.

Bruce smooths his hand down to cover his mouth, scratches at it roughly once. Damn it. He
doesn’t even know when the last time he saw Damian was. Yesterday morning? After he’d
gotten his arm attended to for sure. He has vague memories of asking Alfred to drop him off.
He works to keep his voice calm, too.

Be rational. Think. “Have you called any of his siblings?”

“Not yet. I thought you might have him working on something.”

“I don’t,” Bruce doesn’t care what complaining Damian worked up to last night. “Did he
come home last night?”

“I’m consulting the security footage as we speak, Bruce,” Alfred reassures.

They need to check with Dick. Bruce can’t imagine Damian choosing to crash with Tim on
purpose , and Jason is a lot more likely to send him right back to the manor than actually let
him stay the night. The watchtower as well, and maybe Stephanie Brown’s apartment, if she’s
in town this week. He wouldn't be with Cass.

Tim came into the office today, he can also drop by and make sure he hasn’t seen him.

“I’ll make some calls on my end,” Bruce reassures. “Where’s his phone? He hasn’t been
picking up, right?”

“No,” he can hear Alfred’s frown, “he hasn’t. I’ve called several times. His location isn’t
active, I believe it’s off.”

Or destroyed. Bruce refuses to let himself leap to the worst conclusion. This could be
nothing. There’s been times that he’s let it run away and it was nothing. Damian’s never been
good at staying in one place. He gets into moods . There was an incident just a few years ago
where he disappeared and Bruce found him in Bali, looking for Talia. They’ve been getting
better, yes, but that doesn’t mean his youngest is anything but unpredictable.

Damian is probably fine. About to be grounded for the rest of his natural life, but fine.

“Alright,” Bruce can hear the unsteadiness and curses himself for it. This is Alfred, but he’s
still in a public place, and he can see his employees watching him and trying not to be
obvious about it. He can freak out later, in private, when he has no fronts to put on. “Check
the tracker.”
“Of course, sir.”

Bruce hangs up. Shoves the coffee into the break room sink and leaves the mess for someone
else to deal with. He pulls up his messages, already texting Dick before he’s out of the room.
His oldest is the only one who both reads and answers his texts almost immediately. Tim has
to be jabbed with a cattle prod to respond, and Jason and Damian both decide to keep their
own time.

Lucius catches his eye on the way out of the exec offices, watching Bruce’s path to the
elevator with thinly veiled disapproval. They have a board meeting in twenty minutes. Bruce
doubts he’ll be back in time to make it.

He hits the button for the fourth floor—R&D, Tim’s active project manager for the Wayne
Tech infrastructure division. Bruce hasn’t gotten a lot of updates on what, exactly, the boy is
up to. Mostly just reassurances that they aren’t making bombs, which double as threats that,
at any point, Tim is certain they can start.

Dick responds to his where are you as the doors close.

DICK:

Busy. what do you want

(received 10:39 a.m.)

YOU

Do you have a location on Damian?

(sent 10:40 a.m)

DICK

No. Why?

(received 10:41 a.m)

YOU:

Gotta go, ttyl

(sent 10:41 a.m.)

Dick is typing…

Bruce closes the app before Dick can finish with his thought, swearing under his breath. He
presses the palms of his hands into his eye sockets, the phone vibrating against his forehead.
Then again. And again.

Have kids, they said, it’ll be fun.

He’s not even sure anything is wrong with Damian, but he can still feel sweat beading on the
back of his neck. His Robins know the danger of going radio silent, and Damian was online
all day yesterday soliciting updates about the Lamont case. He wouldn’t shut up.

He’d gone quiet after school, but Bruce had figured that he’d finally found something to
entertain himself beyond pestering them.

He was benched from patrol. How much trouble could he have gotten himself into?

Bali, Bruce is reminded. Bali could happen.

Jesus fucking Christ.

The elevator opens and Bruce steps into R&D, moving as quickly as he dares to without
drawing any unnecessary attention. It’s not hard. The tech department is dominated by
software development, rows and rows of computers and alternative seating , which,
according to HR, is good for employee morale. Bruce has never needed any special lighting
or cushioned chairs to do his own work.

The actual hardware is kept in the computer labs further down, and Tim’s dominates them all
of course. Bruce isn’t invited here very often, but the few times he has come it’s always to a
spectacle.

Today is no different.

“If you had problems with the timeline ,” Tim is leaned halfway out the door of his office,
one hand clenched around a can of what Bruce really hopes is a yellow soda, and not an
energy drink. His voice has gone high and tight, lips curling around a sneer. “You should
have told us that we were going to start in September. Forty-eight hours notice is not enough
time to complete this.”

“Do you know how bad it looks that we didn’t have this done weeks ago?” The director of
R&D, Patrick Morrison, is standing in front of Tim, his expression equally unhappy. His dark
hair and violent brown eyes make him look almost ethereal. “It’ll be my ass on the receiving
end of the fire, but I will make sure that yours is there too.”

“My ass is none of your fucking concern.” The drink, energy or not, looks dangerously close
to being pelted at Morrison in a fit of rage. Bruce hesitates.

Tim doesn’t look like he’s slept very much, either. Or showered, or reintroduced himself to
the idea of daylight in a while. His skin is waxy and shadowed in a way that speaks to quite a
bit of time in front of a computer. Bruce doubts his mood will be improved by an
interruption.

“Isn’t it, sweetheart?” Morrison sneers. He takes a half step forward. Tim leans back. Bruce’s
eyes narrow on the man. “You’re supposed to be competent, but then again I guess I
shouldn’t expect more from a child, you’re only here because of your pretty face, not because
you have any actual skillsets—”

Tim has looked up and seen Bruce. His expression splinters visibly, warring with relief and
anger, lips twisting up to match. The can of soda in his fist crunches, loud and sudden enough
to cut off Morrison’s vitriol.

Bruce tucks his hands into his pockets, inhaling deeply before his own anger can show on his
face. He forces a smile, opens his mouth, but Tim beats him to it.

“The hell are you doing here?”

He doesn’t let the smile waver, though it feels brittle on his face. “I do own the building,
son.”

“No, I’m pretty sure Lucius is major shareholder at this point.” Tim throws open his office
door fully, revealing the darkened interior, lit only by a string of LED’s around the perimeter
of the ceiling. They’re flashing red, blue, and green in slow, strobing patterns. “What do you
want?”

Morrison’s face has gone an interesting shade of red. The only thing the man can seem to do
with consistency is put his foot in his mouth. “Mr. Wayne!” his voice has changed
completely, losing the hard edge and going silky. It makes Bruce’s teeth set. “I didn’t know
you were down here.”

He seems to think that makes it better, that he would lay into Tim in private.

“Obviously,” the smile he flashes is too sharp for Brucie, but it’s not like there are cameras on
him right now. “I would hope you don’t speak differently to my child when there are
witnesses present. What I heard just now will never be repeated again. Am I understood?”

Morrison’s expression flickers with visible irritation, but the words he says are only a cordial,
“Yes, sir.” Bruce doesn’t have time for this. God but he wished he had time for this, if only to
make this miserable rat squirm.

Bruce turns his gaze on Tim, who stares back with gritted teeth. There are nail marks in the
aluminum now, knuckles white with the pressure. Bruce’s intervention doesn’t seem to have
smoothed his hackles whatsoever. “I need to speak with you. Now, preferably.”

Tim runs his tongue over his teeth, silent for a moment while his jaw works, before he finally
seems to remember what the drink is for and tips back the rest of it. He drains the can in one
long draw, turning his shoulder to toss it into his office once it’s empty. “Yeah,” he says. “I
figured that one out when you showed up at my office.” He nods Bruce into his space
anyway, stepping back with a second glance at Morrison.

Bruce gives Morrison one of his own, a lasting glare, since he can’t do anything about the
man’s unfortunate employment here. A transfer is somewhere in his future. Hopefully. Damn
him if he can’t make that work.
Tim shuts the door behind Bruce, flips the lock, too, plunging them into an incomplete
darkness. The window has been covered with blackout curtains, and faintly Bruce can hear
music playing from Tim’s headphones, abandoned straddling his monitor. There’s a stack of
takeout containers in his trash, which clearly hasn’t been taken out in at least a week.

“What was that, Bruce?”

“I was about to ask you the same thing.”

Tim’s entire body has gone stiff, rigid with unrelenting, unrepressed tension. There’s
something else that Bruce can’t quite name, but it’s almost coating him. “I’m not a child. I
don’t need you to beat up my bullies for me. I was handling it.”

“ That was handling it?” Bruce’s anger is rising, too. He can’t help himself. “No one has the
right to talk to you like that, Tim. You’re not—”

The kid laughs. He almost looks hysterical. “Do you think that I’m just letting him?”

“I didn’t say that.”

Tim rounds on him sharply, jabbing a long, bony white finger into Bruce’s shoulder. “The
only reason he is here is because of you. You’re just letting him get away with whatever the
hell he wants to until you can prove that he’s funding Sionis’s shit. You dumped him in my
lap and told me to deal with it while you do fuck all to help!”

“It’s a passive surveillance op,” Bruce can feel a headache flaring behind his eyes. He’s here
because his thirteen-year-old is missing, not to get into it about division of labor with Tim.
“If you need him reassigned—”

“Oh, bullshit. Who’re you going to put on it? Gonna give Jason a monkey suit and order him
to rub elbows with your shareholders?”

“ I am perfectly capable of investigating my own cases.”

“Funny, that you didn’t do that.”

Tim offered to take it. He wanted to. Bruce stares at him incredulously. How is this his fault?
What the hell is wrong with him? He’s not usually this—Bruce doesn’t even know what word
to put on it. It’s erratic. It’s almost terrifying in its own right.

“Have you seen Damian?” Bruce asks. Tim’s eyes flare, expression flickering with confusion.
His mouth parts, then shuts again with a click .

And, like Bruce expected, all of the anger seems to gust out of Tim in one breath. He’s never
been good at holding onto it when presented with something unexpected.

“What?”

“Alfred can’t find him,” Bruce says, “we can talk about Morrison later, but I need to know
where he is.”
“And you think that I—?” Tim’s expression closes off. With clunky, obvious movements, he
leans down to grab his phone from off the desk. Rips it out of a charging cord as he goes.
Bruce waits with his stomach tight, but he’s not hopeful. “No. Last text he sent me was
yesterday.”

“What time?”

Tim scrolls. “Three seventeen.” he puts on a falsetto. “' Timothy, your phone sends read
receipts. You will answer my texts or receive my ire.' ”

Bruce grimaces. Tim snorts to himself, swipes up on his phone before turning it off again,
chin lifting to look somewhere above Bruce’s left eye. “Why?” he says, sounding entirely
unbothered. “Did you lose him again?”

“Yes,” Bruce admits, bothered very much. “Let me know if you hear anything. I’m going to
call Jason.”

He’s going to get sent to voicemail. He’s going to send texts that won’t be answered for
hours. He’s then going to convince Alfred to call instead, because Jason always picks up for
Alfred.

“Don’t know why you bother,” Tim mutters, more to himself than Bruce, tossing his phone
with a clatter that makes Bruce wince. He thinks Tim has a screen protector. Hopefully. The
kid leans back against his desk, digs his nails into the edge.

Bruce starts to turn, but stops. His concern for Damian wavers in the face of Tim’s blatant…
whatever this is. Not anger. Not really. Fear. Bruce’s stomach goes tight. That something
other. It’s fear. Tim is afraid. It’s in the way he holds onto things, like he’s unsure of the
ground beneath his feet, waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under him.

“What’s wrong with you?”

Tim almost stutter-starts at the question, freezing before relaxing. He knows that it’s not
something Tim would do in front of anyone else. He couldn’t. But he’s Bruce’s Robin, and he
knows better than to believe the facade that he’s putting up.

“Nothing,” Tim says between his teeth. “I’ll tell you if I hear from the gremlin.”

Bruce considers that. Feels the pitfall where he’s supposed to say something, and just doesn’t
know what it is. Doesn’t know how to ease the tension in Tim’s expression, except to apply
the same methods that worked when Tim was fourteen. “You should come to the Cave
tonight. We can go over the Sionis case.”

“Right,” Tim says, faint. “Maybe.”

If it were any other circumstance, Bruce would stay and try to wiggle it out of him, if not try
to fix the problem. He still needs to call Jason. Whatever is going on with Tim can wait, he’s
not in any danger. Bruce doesn’t know if there’s a timetable for Damian.
Bruce leaves. He tries not to feel like an asshole for doing so, already pulling up Jason’s
contact. He expects to go to voicemail. He almost wants it to. Instead, Jason picks up on the
second ring, and starts talking before Bruce can get the chance.

“Where’s your tiny demon spawn?”

Shit.

Bruce resists the urge to hit something. He can feel an anxious pit opened in his stomach,
emotions circling the drain of it, “When did you hear from him last?”

“Fuck.” Jason’s voice is loud, pitched and urgent, even over the phone. Bruce can hear
movement on the other end of the line. It’s harder to catch Jason when he isn’t moving, but
this seems frantic. “That’s the fucking problem, you useless fuck.”

Apparently all of his children are mad at him today. Bruce can’t wait to hear from Dick.
“Jason,” he says, warning.

“No. No. Do not lecture me, old man. I do not have the patience to put up with it right now.
Just tell me where the fuck the kid is.”

“I don’t know.”

Jason swears again. “Did you call—”

“You’re my last call,” Bruce interrupts, “if you don’t know then I don’t know who will.”

“That’s great,” Jason says. “He called me after school yesterday and asked me to shoot
someone.”

Bruce is not, much to his immeasurable exasperation, surprised. “ Why?”

“His teacher’s a fucking pedophile, Bruce. His math teacher at that fancy ass school you send
him to. He asked me to shoot him, and now he’s not answering my calls. That was yesterday.
Helmstutler’s gone, and so’s your demon spawn. I’ve had my people looking all morning.
Did you just fucking realize something is wrong?”

Bruce takes all the information in stride, burying the growing panic. Pedophile. And Damian
called Jason? How long has that been going on? How long has he known about it? “Why
didn’t you call me?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know your condom slip was suddenly my problem.”

“ Jason .”

“I’ve been busy , Bruce. The Executioner’s dropped another one in the Alley. Or did you not
get that memo, either?”

“I only got to the office an hour ago. Where do you think I was?” Bruce asks. He’d seen the
crime scene, he’d watched as Detective Gonzalez arrived on scene and been there until he
 left. There wasn’t any more information to be gleaned so he’d left until the labs were
concluded. He’d looked for the missing object from the blood spatter, but hadn’t had any luck
before he called it.

“Yeah, well it was Lamont . As in our favorite drug distributor, Lamont, and now that he’s not
shivering in his fucking boots waiting for Batman to knock his teeth out, there’s a line of rats
out the door to replace him. The laced shit hit the streets again last night.”

“Okay,” Bruce officially has too many problems and things vying for his attention. “Can you
handle that?”

“Can you find your kid?”

“I’m trying to,” Bruce says pointedly.

“Good. And tell the replacement to get me a location on Kyle Helmstutler. The little
fucker knows his phone sends read receipts."

Chapter End Notes

thanks for reading! <3

next time: our regularly scheduled beat up the 13 year old child returns 👨‍👦
 but you just won't let me go, won't let me go
Chapter by Chemical_Processes

Chapter Notes

DAMIAN'S HAVING A GOOD TIME I SWEAR

Galaxy says "he's not but I am :D"

See the end of the chapter for more notes

His head is aching. There’s cotton between his ears, and a plastic taste at the back of his
mouth, tongue too heavy to even swallow. Damian tries to shift to his side, in a vain attempt
to ease the pressure on his shoulders and knees. It feels like he’s been grappling for ages, or
hit by a truck, or some combination of the two.

But he can’t move.

He’s met by a wall on every side. It gives beneath his fingers when he pushes at it, snapping
back. It’s not a wall. It’s fabric. Course beneath his fingertips. He can feel a zipper above his
head, lined over him like a guillotine.

Tight fabric, pulled taut around his folded legs. His head is cocked at an awkward angle,
shoulders hunched to fit. He’s…

He’s in a bag.

Why the fuck is he in a bag?

His hands start to move more frantically, pushing at the seams, pressing against the zipper.
He can’t wiggle much, everything pushing against him, seeming to shrink the more he
struggles.

His skin abrades the bag without a barrier. He’s been stripped down to his underwear. He
can’t feel his clothing in the bag next to him, taken at some point while he was unconscious.
His skin is covered in goose flesh, and his toes are completely numb. He isn’t certain if it's
from the cold or the position.

He takes in a breath. Then another. Forces himself to compartmentalize.

He was on the phone with Jason. About Haleema. He went to Crime Alley. And. And he
what? There’s a blank hole where memory should be, leaving nothing but an aching
emptiness, filled with a fresh wave of terror. He knows he was looking for Lamont. Did he
succeed? Is that why he’s here? Surely the man didn’t best him again.
He kicks out sharply, like he can rip the seams compact and industrial grade as they are.
Backstitches layered over with ladder stitches. He can’t pick that apart with his fingernails or
his teeth. If it was just straight, maybe.

Shit.

He can hardly get his hands up to his face. There’s no light coming through the fabric, so he’s
being kept somewhere dark. The ground beneath him is too hard to be earth, to ridged to be
flooring in a house. There’s something solid jutting out beside his hip, and when he kicks out,
his foot hits the edge of whatever small space he’s in. The sound it makes is dull and metallic,
rattles the entirety of the container. Damian winces, the throbbing pain in his head spiking
with the vibrations.

Alright.

Alright.

Breathe. He’s had far too much invested in his training to panic, but he can feel it bordering
the edges of his fingertips even now. Every breath in borders on hyperventilation, the rush of
adrenaline rattling his thoughts free from his head. He doesn’t know what to do. He’s been
taken somewhere, he has none of his clothing, or the weapons that he’s sewn into the lining.

Assess, Father would say. Always so few words compared to Mother’s advice, but the
succinctness cuts through the haze of fear-driven thought looping like he supposes it was
meant to. Robin training, always practical even at the cost of dignity. Assess the situation. He
needs to understand before he can act.

With effort, Damian rolls onto his back. He hits something else, segmented, with more give
than the rest of the compartment. It moves with the impact. Damian decides he’ll be able to
do a lot more assessment outside of this fucking bag.

He hasn’t been restrained. Small mercies. Or perhaps an indication that his captor is a fool.
He hopes for the latter.

It takes a bit of squirming to get his arms out from underneath himself and into a position that
he can use his fingers, but he miscalculated how useful they would be.

He needs a knife. His knife, in his bag. With his phone. Father will want an update. Damian
has no idea how long he’s been here, or why he’s here, and if Father has to rescue him from
Lamont again, he will never hear the end of it from Timothy.

He inhales deep, pressing his palm into the zipper, pushing out as far as he can go before
rearing back and hitting it with the blade of his knuckles. It does little. Not enough
momentum, he supposes.

Damian blows out a breath, controlled and forceful between his teeth. Assess. Except he’s
trailing the nail of his thumb along the zipper instead of taking stock of his injuries, needing
to do something so he doesn’t start thrashing his way free.
The bag is locked. Damian’s not surprised, just irritated to wriggle his smallest finger into the
space between the teeth of the zipper and find the cold metal of an unyielding padlock.
There’s no room to pick it.

He can—

He doesn’t know.

What if Lamont doesn’t come back? Has Damian been buried? What if he doesn’t figure
something out? What happened? Why does this place smell so stale? Bloody? What if
Lamont doesn’t come back? What if Lamont—

Damian stays in the bag for a long time before light pools through the zipper teeth, and the
bag is dragged back and then up. Dropped to hard gravel. Damian feels it crunch beneath
him, feels his skin threaten to tear, and the cortisol deadening his limb raises his heart rate
once more, every muscle in his body tensing. He opens his mouth, but the sound that comes
out is raspy and pained, and Damian bites down on it before anything more humiliating can
escape.

It’s cold, is the worst part. The air, and the ground, and the bag itself without anything but a
pair of briefs on. He can feel hands on the bag, moving it, and he tenses to run, even as he
hears the clink of a key ring.

No words are spoken, not even a threat or an order to behave. The padlock is undone, and
then the zipper is dragged down.

Damian gets his first glimpse of sunlight in hours, and it’s blinding. A man is leaning over
him, dark hair messy around his eyes, his features cast in shadow as he looms. A fabric mask
has been pulled over the lower half of his face, a loose hoodie hiding most of his torso and
neck. He blocks out the sun, bent over double, holding the bag open slightly.

Damian, of course, wastes no time for escape. He flails, jerking up and slamming his fist into
the man’s face. It’s sloppy, his body moves with the blow, and Damian’s muscles spasm even
before it connects, elbow locking. Mother would be horrified.

The man is knocked back onto his ass with a shocked grunt. Damian thrashes, pushing at the
bag still holding his legs in place, having to crawl his way out.

He re-estimates how long he’s been in the bag, and how severe his injuries must be, when the
world crackles into static as soon as he’s upright. Gravel bites into his palms, colors and
shapes swimming over his vision in a violent rush of vertigo. Bile surges up his throat,
pooling in his mouth and wetting his lips.

Damian scrambles, puts weight on his injured arm. It buckles, Damian crashes to the ground
in a graceless sprawl, gritting his teeth to bite back the scream.

“Christ,” the man hisses, aggrieved, and a hand clamps down on Damian’s ankle.
“Let go,” Damian orders, breathless. He kicks out, but he can’t get a good enough angle, or
strength to make the blow anything more than pestering. He’s dragged back toward the bag,
then his good wrist is clenched in tight fingers and he’s hauled up to his feet.

He sways violently, nearly crashing into his captor. It’s humiliating, but he can’t stand upright
without their aid. He’s standing next to a large black Ford Bronco. There’s a house behind
them, a long stretch of woods off to his right. The property is enormous, sprawling in a way
that only makes Damian hopeless.

He can’t see the road. Doesn’t even know what direction it would be in from this angle.
There’s no point in screaming, then. The only thing it will do is empty Damian’s lungs and
leave echoes of his distress pulsing back at him in the air. No one is out there.

“That’s the ketamine,” the man says, shifting his grip on Damian to dig into the skin under
his arms, hitching his weight up. He tips his head back to see the man’s face, can’t make out
much with the wild hair and the dark eyes. Not Lamont, though. Lamont was blond. Skinnier.
His Gotham accent was thicker. “It’ll wear off in a few more hours. Don’t hit me again.”

As if Damian would take commands from someone like him.

Damian scowls at him in return. Jabs backward with his elbow, squirming weakly against the
man’s hold. It does nothing—Damian’s limbs are stiff and weak, likely more side effects of
the sedative. No wonder his thoughts are so scattered and disjointed, he’s been drugged.

The thought is unpleasant, but not entirely unfamiliar.

The man’s grip on his arm doesn’t loosen as he hauls Damian forward a few steps. He
stumbles as he’s pulled off of the duffel bag onto the rough earth, which digs against his bare
feet like it’s trying to bite him. He’s pushed past the car, and the open trunk, where dead, cold
eyes look back at him.

Lamont. It’s Lamont in the back of this man’s trunk, where Damian was just a moment ago.
He’s gone blue and pale, blood drying stiff in his light blond hair, eyes held permanently
open. His body was there the whole time, the thing Damian kept bumping into in his attempts
to escape the bag. He’s dead.

Damian remembers, suddenly, the spray of blood when this man slit Lamont’s throat. The
way it coated him, the desperate scramble away before he was captured. He looks down at his
own hands, and in the light of day he can see the flecks of Lamont’s blood drying there,
brown and flaky.

Damian’s knees lock, feet like lead weights attached to his body, and Lamont’s murderer has
to haul him up that much more, taking all of Damian’s weight in his own hands with an
irritated grunt.

The yard is fenced in, blocking off a squat little farmhouse with a wraparound porch. There’s
a shed next to where the truck is parked, the doors open but the inside is dark enough that
Damian can’t make out anything beyond vague shapes. He twists his neck, craning to see the
landscape beyond the fence.
He’s shoved forward, up against the side of the house, and the man lets Damian fall when his
legs refuse to hold him up. The earth is not forgiving as it catches him. He feels his elbow
scrape raw with hot pain, above his cast. The pressure is blinding, and by the time that
Damian has managed to catch his breath, the man has returned with a chain.

“Wait,” Damian finds himself babbling, much to his humiliation, “wait, wait, don’t —”

There’s a body in the trunk.

The metal is cold against Damian’s skin as he’s shoved against one of the posts for the wrap-
around porch and his arms roughly pulled over his head. Thick, unfinished wood, almost as
wide as he is. The man’s eyes are cold, movements quick and efficient, despite Damian’s
graceless squirming.

He tries to sweep his foot out, the way Tim and Cass sometimes do, in a delicate arc before
following up with a high attack. But their legs are longer, and likely stronger than Damian’s
are now. The kick bounces harmlessly off the man’s shins, and he gets his own in return, a
bruising blow to his calf.

Damian’s wrists are chained above his head. No amount of squirming or hitting gets him
released. His breathing has picked up speed, he’s hyperventilating and acutely aware of this,
but that doesn’t stop it. The air is cold as it scrapes in and out of his lungs, dry and
unforgiving. His skin is crawling.

The man shushes him, dropping the length of the chain at his feet before cupping the side of
Damian’s neck, bending down and tipping Damian’s head up at the same time to meet his
gaze. His thumb digs into Damian’s ear, forcing his neck at an odd angle. “Breathe. It will be
over in a second, kid.”

What will?

The man lets him fall again, the warmth of his touch fading quickly in the harsh late October
air. Damian drops from his tiptoes to the pads of his feet. The wooden planks are smooth and
wet from last night’s rain.

Damian doesn’t know what to say to make this man stop. He can’t get enough air in his lungs
to breathe and speak. It’s humiliating, the erratic spasms of his diaphragm, the way fear
seizes his chest, skin tingling with the hypoxia.

The man turns away. Likely to retrieve his murder weapon of choice. To slit Damian open, let
him bleed into the grass like a pig. Like Lamont. The idea makes Damian’s throat go dry. He
shouldn’t be afraid to die. Mother has ensured that, and the League has always prepared him
for the possibility. But Damian is. He is afraid.

Father trained him for kidnapping differently than his mother did. Her priority was always
that Damian’s conduct would bring her the least shame, Father’s was that he live. No matter
what secrets he would reveal, what he had to comply with, or what ignominy he would bring
upon his father’s name, Damian was to survive.
“Enough,” he gasps, at the man’s retreating figure. His voice isn’t loud, seems to fall flat
between them, his words dead and small. Too much empty space.

He is ignored.

Damian struggles weakly against the chains, trying to yank down. The harder he pulls the
more he scrapes the back of his hands against the wood and sends pulses of pain up his
thumb tendons. “Stop! I’m worth more to you alive!”

Again. Nothing.

“I am the son of Bruce Wayne. He will pay you for my safe, unharmed return.”

“I know who you are, Damian,” the man says, without looking back at him. He opens the
door to the shed and vanishes inside.

Damian tries not to let the new wave of panic overwhelm him. His heritage means nothing to
this man. It always means something to someone, but to his captor, it is empty syllables
attached together. There is no power behind them.

Damian pulls harder. Survive, he reminds himself. He just needs to survive. His mother
would be shamed by his behavior, begging for his life like a common street urchin, dying
stripped naked chained to a post like a feral dog. Father, perhaps, will forgive him, and have
enough mercy to spare Mother details for her dignity.

Damian wraps his right hand around the chains, testing his weight, muscles trembling as he
hangs by his wrist. It puts pressure on the cast, and he stops quickly. The post isn’t going
anywhere. He can hear the man moving things in the shed, the thud of tools and hollow
metal.

He has mere moments.

He yanks harder on his left, pulling down. The chains slide up beneath the rough plaster of
the cast. It’s straight and clunky, providing a leverage for him to work with. Hope smashes
through him painfully. The pain is agonizing, but nothing that Damian won’t ignore in favor
of escape.

He squirms his wrist further, twisting it like a cork screw against the chains. Plaster scrapes
against his skin painfully, threatening to leave welts. The man made the mistake of only
wrapping his wrists once across. In comparison to the careful planning of the duffel bag, it’s
nearly embarrassing how foolish he’s being now.

The man returns with something in his hands. Damian works faster. His captor doesn’t make
any effort to stop him, just comes to a stop several feet away and lifts up his weapon.
Damian’s vision is blurred with tears—instinctive tears of pain, he’s not Jason— and he can’t
make out what it is.

Something hits him in the face. He goes completely still without intending to. It takes him a
demeaning amount of seconds to realize that it’s water. Not some type of acid, or a blunt
object slammed into him. He’s being sprayed down with water.

There is no weapon in his captor’s hands. It’s a garden hose.

The stream is concentrated, the water frigid. Damian gasps on instinct, inhaling a mouthful
that immediately sees him doubled over and coughing. His captor moves slowly, aiming the
hose first at Damian’s head, dousing his hair, before arcing a methodical trail down his bare
chest.

It’s freezing.

Damian is shivering in seconds, choking between long, gasping breaths. The water stings like
getting shot with needles, dripping from his hair and into his eyes, leaving trails of ice down
his spine. He can’t do anything but shake, twisting his body rabidly to try and escape the
punishing jet from the hose.

It seems like it takes the rest of the evening for it to be over. Damian knows that only a few
minutes have passed before the water stops, and the man drops the garden hose to the ground
before turning around and walking back to the shed. Damian watches, teeth chattering and
dripping wet, as he turns off the water.

All his muscles feel almost contracted, squeezed taut against his bones underneath his skin.
He’s shaking.

Damian yanks on his wrist again. The cast, now softened from the soaking, gives easily
underneath the pressure like wet paper, tearing down the side. The lack of structural integrity
surprises him, despite Alfred’s warnings not to get it wet, but it’s a welcomed one.

Damian’s hand slides free. Painfully. His vision is blurred with tears. He’s dizzy. Nausea is
curling at the base of his throat, and he can’t see straight. But he’s free, and that’s all that
matters. With the extra give, his other hand is unshackled. He stumbles forward, nearly
bowing over, but managing to tighten his core and get upright.

“What the—!?”

Damian is already running by the time his captor spots him. It’s nothing impressive, his body
moving at a lag from his brain, but Damian’s feet know the movements well enough. Even in
this state, he’s confident in his ability to clear the fence if he can just—

The wood yields to grass yields to gravel, rocks digging into his bare feet. Damian slams into
the fence without slowing, unable to ease his momentum without giving up precious seconds.
He can’t hear anything except the pounding of his heart in his ears, breath coming fast and
shallow. The world has narrowed to a single point—tunnel vision, dangerous, Mother would
say, but he can’t stop it.

Damian grabs the top of the fence, pulling himself up, grateful for years of training making
this into muscle memory, easier than breathing.
And then a pair of hands grab him around the waist, wrenching so hard that Damian’s nails
rip into the fence posts, leaving claw marks.

Damian is thrown to the ground roughly. The impact knocks the air out of his lungs again. He
squirms anyway. The man doesn’t waste seconds to curse or shout at him, just grabs
Damian’s shoulders and rolls him onto his stomach, straddling him, and pulling his arms
behind his back.

Damian cries out sharply as his left wrist is moved. The cast did provide more support than
he thought.

“Stop fighting me. I’m not going to hurt you,” the man hisses into his ear, “the only reason
you’re here is because you saw what happened to Lamont, but if you make yourself a bigger
problem than you need to be, maybe I’ll re-evaluate my stance on killing kids. Do you
understand me, Damian?”

Damian can’t get the words out around the soundless scream building in his chest. His lips
part and only a ragged exhale escapes. There’s no part of his body that isn’t in pain, pulled
tight by the cold.

“Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Damian wheezes.

“Good. Now let’s get you inside. You’re going to get hypothermia out here.”

He’s not given any sort of tour. The man’s home looks nothing like what Damian had initially
suspected, what glimpse of it he does get before he’s dragged into the unfinished basement
entrance and hauled down a set of wooden stairs. Its neat, well-organized and furnished,
filled to the brim with eclectic odds and ends and thick rugs. A homely arrangement, more
befitted to a family of three, not a cold-blooded murderer.

The basement turns that image on its head, somewhat. Every step creaks beneath their
combined weight. It’s a single room, unfinished concrete decorated solely by water stains.
There are shelves, but they’re all well out of reach of Damian, and the only thing that
occupies them is sealed cardboard boxes. A single window illuminates the place, small and
rectangular in the uppermost right corner.

He can see the insulation in the ceiling, and stapled wires running the length for lights that
were never put in.

The man pulls him off the last step, then just stands there for a moment, looking. He doesn’t
know what to do with Damian. That much is obvious. He was clearly not planning on having
a captive. There should be some amount of comfort drawn from that, but Damian finds none.
Impulsive decisions lead to others, and there is still a dead body in the trunk of this man’s
car.
The threat to kill him had not felt like an attempt for control, but a promise, and Damian is
very aware of this.

“My father is a dangerous man,” he says, anyway, because he’s naked and shivering and any
semblance of control would be appreciated. The words are hollow, and, out loud, they sound
more like comfort meant for him than a threat for his captor,

Father is a dangerous man, though. He’s Batman. Even if Damian were to twiddle his thumbs
and laze about, he would be out of this place within the week, he’s sure.

As long as he’s still alive at the end of the week.

The man sighs. Quietly.

He pulls Damian forward, fingers tight around his bicep. He’d zip tied Damian before
entering the house, the grating pressure digging into his broken wrist painfully. It’s taken
most of his composure to hide how agonizing it is.

His captor rounds the staircase, then shoves him underneath it. Damian, shivering, glares at
him.

“The sooner you return me to my father, the less likely it is he will do you irreparable harm. I
will say nothing.”

He couldn’t. This is too humiliating to speak of.

“That’s great, kid,” the man says absently, eyes roving over the space. He looks behind him,
then back at Damian, then up at the window. Every passing look grows more resigned.

He really had nothing prepared for this. It might be an advantage. He certainly hadn’t been
expecting Damian to run after the impromptu shower. If he’d been just a little faster, Damian
probably could have made it.

“My mother will also—”

“I am not ransoming you,” his captor looks back at him. “I don’t need the money. I don’t
want the money. Stop trying to negotiate.”

Damian glares at him to hide the rush of terror. If the man does not want to kill him, and
doesn’t want him for money, there must be only one other reason.

Alright. Fine. Re-approach. Damian tilts his head, drawing his knees up against his chest.
The wet fabric of his underwear is chafing uncomfortably, but even that is providing more
warmth than his skin right now. The wet hair isn’t helping anything.

“If you touch me,” Damian says, surprising even himself with how level his voice is. “I will
bite your dick off.”

The man releases him sharply. “What the fuck— no. No. I don’t do that shit. You’re what?
Ten?”
“Thirteen.”

“That’s—fuck.” The man wipes a hand over his face, then buries his head into his hands.
Damian stares at him. The reaction is reassuring, but Damian doesn’t dare to let himself
relax. Not after what happened with Helmstutler. He looks back up at Damian after taking a
deep breath. “I am not going to rape you. I told you why you’re here. Do you remember?”

Damian’s eyes narrow. “My memory is faultless, I assure you.”

His captor’s eyebrows raise a fraction. He looks Damian’s state over like he’s seeing it for the
first time. “Did… has someone…?”

“Assaulted, kidnapped, and stripped me naked?” He gets a wince for that, which is
interesting. A violent murder and kidnapping is fine, but the implications of pedophilia grate
against his sensibilities. What an idiot.

The man decides to ignore that. “Look, I don’t know how long you’re going to be here. Don’t
make things worse for yourself than they have to be. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You could let me go,” Damian points out, “then you wouldn’t need to.”

The man shakes his head, wordlessly. He glances at the window one more time, and then
back to Damian. “We both know that’s not going to happen.”

“Fortunately, I have not yet seen your face, as I’m certain it is a burden to behold. I have
nothing to identify you from. ” Which the man would know, had he thought about this for
longer than two seconds. Damian has a voice, a height, and now this man’s home. He
couldn’t sketch him for the police.

For Batman, however, it would make short work of the man’s anonymity.

The man laughs, short and cut off, but incredibly condescending. Like Damian is a small
child that’s said something remarkably stupid. He shakes his head again, and Damian’s
shocked to not hear the few brain cells he has rattling around in an empty skull.

“Right.” His captor agrees. He reaches for Damian again. He withdraws a knife from his
pocket to slice through the zip ties, quick to press the blade against Damian’s throat before he
can take advantage of it. “Move.”

Damian moves. Another zip tie is withdrawn from his back pocket, and Damian’s hands are
tied in front this time, around one of the lower steps. The angle is awkward, and painful, but
nothing unlike the common throb that has settled over his entire body now.

“I’ll be right back,” the man says, then slips out from underneath the stairs to retreat up them.
The basement door doesn’t close behind him. Not a long journey, then.

Damian assesses the zip ties. They’re thicker than standard, but if a single zip tie could keep a
Robin in place then the world is in a sorry state. Dick would laugh at these kinds of
restraints.
Damian breathes out to steady himself. The stair has an edge. It hasn’t been sanded down,
and he twists his wrists carefully— shit, fuck, shit—until he can get the zip tie pressed against
it. He starts carefully applying pressure.

Father will come for him, no doubt, but it will be far simpler for everyone if Damian can
make his way home by himself.

The sawing motion is it’s own exquisite kind of pain. Starts out bad and only gets worse, as
the friction heats his numbed skin, the blood flow sending throbbing pulses up and down his
injured arm. Damian grits his teeth until he can taste blood, working faster.

It’s not meant to hold a human, plastic never is. Father told him that Timothy used to carry
around a BIC lighter solely to melt the plastic because he got irritated with having to chew
through them.

He believes it. In the League, restraints were only ever of the highest quality. By the time he
can hear his captor’s footsteps ambling overhead, he’s reduced the ties to mere strained
threads of plastic.

Damian exhales, pulling harder on his bound hands, and the tie comes free with a snap. He
staggers to his feet, tucking his hands close to his body, both because of his broken arm and
the friction rash that threatens to break skin.

The window is a lost cause. Too small even for Timothy’s scrawny stature, let alone Damian.

He scrapes his fingers along the edges anyway, desperate for something. It has to give. It has
to. Something.

He’s Robin. He can’t be conquered by a dingy basement and a man that didn’t even want him
here to begin with. This isn’t how this is supposed to go. Damian turns, reassessing. He goes
for one of the boxes next, tears it off the shelf and throws it to the floor, scattering the
contents across the cold concrete.

Camera lenses. Light bulbs, what looks like a folded umbrella, and several different tripods.
It crashes violently. Loudly.

Damian looks down at the equipment hopelessly for a long second. Footsteps pound down
the stairs.

His captor and him make eye contact, and he sees the incredulity flash over the man’s
expression. The disbelief is refreshing in its own right. He’s underestimated Damian again,
the idiot. Did he truly believe that Damian would just sit and let this man have his way with
him?

“What the hell did you do?” his captor shouts. He’s got cloth over his arm. A blanket,
Damian believes. Perhaps he’s finally changed his mind and come to smother him.

Damian looks between him and the photography supplies on the floor. He slides one foot
back, bending his knees and clenching his fists. He can fight. Maybe it won’t be his most
visually appealing match, but Damian does not doubt his own capabilities.

The man just stares at him for a long minute. There’s a vein pulsing in his temple. His voice
is working to be measured as he says through gritted teeth, “What are you doing, Damian?”

Damian gestures him forward with three fingers. It’s always good to be on the offensive.
More likely that his opponent will overextend, and in the case of a match as unevenly
weighted as this one, Damian would very much like it if the man overextended himself.

His captor’s jaw shifts slowly. He reaches behind himself to his waistband and withdraws a
pistol and fires. Damian flinches violently, but the bullet buries itself next to his foot instead
of in his shin. The sound reverberates off the walls, echoing in his head long after the man
has flipped the safety back in place.

Damian’s arms fall limply to his sides.

The man steps off the stairs and rounds them, weapon aimed steadily at Damian. He doesn’t
waver, and his grip is secure and familiar. Someone who has received training. His captor
steps over a broken lens, pressing the weapon’s barrel to Damian’s cheek.

“Do I need to make myself more clear?”

Damian licks his lips, trying to put moisture back in a mouth that has gone very, very dry.
Maybe his captor isn’t the only one who’s been underestimating people. The muzzle pushes
against his cheek, forcing his head to the right. A prod to respond.

Fine.

Damian lets the saliva pool in his mouth, collects it on his tongue, sucking in before spitting a
wad of saliva and phlegm at the man’s face. It hits the side of his captor’s nose, dripping slow
and sticky down his cheek.

The backhand is not unexpected. Damian’s only surprised the man was kind enough to use
the fist not occupied by the gun. He’s been pistol whipped before, it is not an experience he
wishes to repeat.

The man looks like he wants to say more. He doesn’t. Grabs a fistful of Damian’s hair and
shoves him back toward the stairs. When Damian has been thrown on his ass, the man
crouches down in front of him, dropping the blanket and a T-shirt into his lap.

“Have you ever been gut shot?” the question is calm. Damian props himself up on his good
hand’s elbow to try for a glare. “First there’s the pain, here,” he jabs Damian’s stomach with
one finger, “and the hole is neat, this big.” two fingers, held together. There’s a faint smile on
the man’s face, Damian can tell by the creasing at the corners of his eyes. He flicks his
fingers, miming an explosion. “Exit wound is always worse. Outward explosion of skin.
Looks like a burst pomegranate. Then it bleeds. You think that you know what it feels like to
hurt? Because until you’ve felt that, twisting up inside of you, wrenching everything any
time you move, I promise you, you do not know pain.”
 Damian takes in a sharp breath.

The man pats his shoulder. “I want you to think about what that would feel like the next time
you try something. I don’t want to hurt you, kid, but you should remember that I will. As
much as I have to for you to cooperate. You understand? ”

He looks at the gun, still pointed in his direction, down at the clothes in his lap. Damian has
been shot before. He knows exactly the kind of pain the man is referring to. But that doesn’t
mean he wants a repeat.

His body carries more scars after he was left largely in his father’s care. Mother was better at
keeping his skin clear of the impact of his life. Father can only do so much. Damian has been
shot since then, knows that if his captor were to look at his body for long enough he’d notice.
Maybe he already did, and this is nothing more than a long-winded vituperative speech.

“I understand.”

His captor nods once, “I’m glad we have an understanding then. Stay still.” He reaches back
into his jacket to withdraw a syringe.

Chapter End Notes

Thank you for reading <3

 Don't get close, they got eyes of stone
Chapter by Chemical_Processes

Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

The windshield shatters with an explosion of glass as the man’s body slams into it. Jason
sighs, racking the slide on his glock as he steps over broken glass, hopping up onto the curb.
He has to lean down into the car to grab the dealer by the neck, hauling the man up by his
shirt.

The car alarm is going off now. Jason hopes the poor fucker has insurance.

“You never call,” Jason says, letting some of the actual irritation seep into his voice, “you
never write, but you’ll throw a man through a car and expect me to be glad you’re here?”

The head in his hands explodes. Blood, tissue and viscera splatter onto Jason’s armor, his
gloved hands slipping, the still-warm body falling back into the wreckage of the car. The
alarm goes quiet with a sputter. Jason sighs again.

He turns around to look at Avery Ramirez still on the overhang at least twenty feet above
him. His lieutenant lowers his pistol. His dark eyes meet Jason’s evenly.

“Where have you been?” Jason demands, shoving the remains of the body back down onto
the car. The alarm starts going again. Temperamental bastard. “I’ve been trying to get a hold
of you all night.”

Avery leans against the railing. “I was busy.”

Busy, the fucker says, like that’s an excuse. Jason has only texted him that it’s urgent about
ten times. He’d started to think the man was dead. “With what?”

“Things.” Shifty. He hasn’t put away his gun yet, even though the street has long since
vacated. No one’s willing to stick around when an armor-clad Red Hood starts fights in the
Alley.

The dealer hadn’t been so wise. Chose to pick a fight instead of turning tail when Jason came
knocking, put up enough of a struggle that his lieutenant felt the need to get involved. Not a
mistake most people live to make twice.

Jason holsters his gun, unholsters his grapple. Winds back the lever and aims it directly at
Avery’s face. The man smiles at him, all empty eyes and bared teeth.

“Do that shit on your own time.” The grapple hits the railing with a thunk, claws digging into
the metal before the line goes taut. Jason clips it to his belt, flipping the switch for the gears
to start hoisting him upward.
Avery rolls his eyes, turning to face him better as soon as Jason’s feet hit the ground of the
overpass. “Like you give me any. The fuck do you need to talk about so urgently, Jace?”

Jason ticks off his fingers. “Pedophile that I did not find, laced drugs are on the streets again,
new body from the Executioner, and my brother is missing.”

“Again?”

Jason jabs a finger into Avery’s chest, hard enough to hurt. “You’re not funny.”

“I feel like only two of those things are a real problem.” Avery looks, pointedly, down at the
car beneath them. “And one of them just got solved. You’re welcome.”

“My hero.” Jason says dryly. “Whatever would I do without you?” He takes a step back,
peels off his blood-soaked gloves to shove them into his pocket. He’s not going to get the
blood out of it, probably, which sucks. He liked those gloves. He studies Avery’s face for a
moment.

His dark hair is messy and matted on his head from some sort of hat, and his brown eyes are
almost black in the lighting. His dark blue jacket is zipped up to his chin. “And I found your
brother, he’s been looking for you.”

Shit, really? That was even easier than Jason thought. He’s going to rub this in Bruce’s face
until the end of time.

“Where?” Jason demands.

Avery gestures vaguely behind him. “I can take you. He was like a block away that way.”

Jason follows behind him, holstering his grapple as he walks. “But the pedophile thing?”

“No luck,” his lieutenant says, “still missing. Got that girl and her family some protection
like you asked, though.”

Jason nods. It’s good. He’d looked into what Damian said, the hospital records for one
Samirah Khan, the SANE kit that came back positive. Police records indicated that the elder
Khan was unwilling to come forward about who hurt her, and Jason has little doubt that an
interview with the younger one would be any more productive.

Doesn’t change the fact that Helmstutler is exactly as fucked as advertised. Jason’s going to
have fun putting him in the ground. He still needs to unleash the full power of Dick’s big
concern eyes on Damian for questioning, because Jason is painfully aware the kid was
withholding things from him about just how personal Helmstutler was. He really hopes that it
wasn’t.

If it wasn’t just his classmate, and the man did lay hands on his brother, Jason will make it
slow.

“I need more people patrolling the Alley.”

Avery snorts. “You’re supposed to be running a mafia, not a militia.”

“Same difference.” Jason fits his nails behind the latches of his mask, listening to the hiss as
the seal releases, pulling it off. The chilled night air feels good on his face, a welcome relief
from the slowly suffocating stench of body sweat and fresh blood. “Bats wants the
Executioner found yesterday. Starting to think the only way to catch him is in the act.”

“Hm. Guy’s too good. We need something faster.”

“Faster?” Jason rounds the block, tucking his helmet under his arm. There’s a familiar silver
camaro pulled up onto the curb. Jason stops in his tracks. He turns on Avery. “I thought you
said you found my brother.”

“What?” Avery’s eyebrows pinch. He gestures at Tim, who is standing outside the car,
glaring at them. “You said brother, I found brother, what more do you want from me?”

“Wrong fucking brother.” Jason snarls. That edge of panic, the one that has been seeping into
the crevices of his skin all day, comes back at full force. The relief that he’d gained from the
half block of believing Damian was on the other end was more powerful than he’d let himself
realize, and now that it’s gone, Jason is left scrambling again.

“Wow,” Tim folds his arms over his chest, jaw set. He doesn’t move to approach, and Jason
forces himself to close the distance. “Really feeling the love today. And to think I got you the
phone records you wanted.”

“Gimme,” Jason makes a grabby motion, then flicks Tim’s forehead. “And relax your
complex, Timbo. You’re just not the brother I wanted. Have you seen Dami?”

“Amazingly, no. I do not keep track of Bruce’s children for him.” Tim’s expression has gone
flat. His body language is tight, eyeing Avery just behind Jason’s shoulder. “Which is what I
tried to explain to him before he sent me to drag you back to the house. Apparently the
message is not sinking in.”

“Okay,” Jason draws out the a in the word for as long as he can, “someone’s feeling bitchy
today. Do you need a hug? Do you want some milk?”

“Get in the fucking car.”

Jason throws an arm around Tim’s shoulder, pulling him in tight, so it’s more of a chokehold
than anything else. He digs his knuckles into Tim’s scalp, ignoring the blood he gets on Tim’s
three piece suit, and the savage cursing from the younger man.

“Aves,” he says, over Tim’s shoulder, bullying his brother into the passenger seat. There’s no
way he’s letting Tim drive. “Patrols. Up them. And get some guys to clean up here.”

Avery salutes, mockingly. “Si, jefe.” His eyes linger on Tim for a long second, before
snapping away again.

Jason climbs into the car, tossing his helmet into the backseat and stretching theatrically. He
brushes Tim’s shoulder with his arm, gets a violent flinch in response, and stops, looking over
at him. Then looking at him.

Tim looks like he hasn’t slept in a week. He’s definitely lost weight since the last time Jason
saw him, and his skin has taken on that waxy gray color that never means anything good is
on the horizon health-wise. There’s no flush to his features, which is the only thing that stops
Jason from injury frisking him. He looks like he has when he had something infected brewing
underneath the surface, but there’s no other indication of a hidden injury.

“10-4?” Jason says, dubiously, hitting the button for Tim’s special little EV to come to life.

“Big WI project, short deadline,” Tim props his elbow on the window ledge, chin resting on
his palm. For all his bluster, he doesn’t look anything except for tired as Jason pulls out onto
the street, staring out the window instead of meeting his gaze in the rearview. “Plus this shit
with Damian.”

“Yeah,” Jason says, sober.

Tim still doesn’t look at him. “Do you think something is wrong? Like, actually? He didn’t
just fuck off to Bali again?”

Jason thinks that none of them are ever really going to get over that. Bruce had them worked
up to expect another dead baby bird, but instead, the little shithead popped up three days later
completely fine, just. Y’know. On a different continent. As one does when they are twelve
years old and left unattended for two seconds. At least Jason was fifteen before he was
pulling that shit.

Jason debates for a second how to play this. He wants to admit that he’s freaking out some,
but Tim looks like he couldn’t handle someone telling him dinner is going to be an hour late,
let alone be a sounding board. “Kid’s tough,” Jason shrugs, “he’s probably fine. Just gotta
drag his ass back here. He’ll be back in like twelve hours tops. How long are flights to Bali
again?”

Tim’s lips twitch. It’s almost a smile. Jason decides to take that as a win. “Three. If he’s
taking the jet.”

“Y’all check to see if it was missing?”

“Probably first thing Alfred did before calling Bruce.”

Jason smirks. “Kid’s never gonna live that down.”

Tim huffs. Goes back to staring silently out the window. He must’ve inherited the brooding
from Bruce. Can’t do that with adoptions Jason’s ass.

“So. Helmstutler,” Jason prods, when they’ve come to a stop at the next redlight. “You got
any more info on him that I don’t know?”

“No.”
Oh good. That was expansive. What the hell is wrong with him? This can’t just be
exhaustion. Dick needs to drag out whatever crawled up Tim’s ass before Jason has to shoot
him for being so goddamn annoying.

“Thought you hacked phone records?”

“I submitted an official request,” Tim gives him a sour look in the mirror. “To the phone
company. Because this isn’t a Bond movie, Jason.”

God, the kid needs a kitkat or something. Jason flicks him again. “Aguafiesta.”

“Yeah, that’s me,” Tim agrees, sinking, somehow, more into his depressive episode, “always
ruining the mood.”

Dick is in the cave when Jason and Tim arrive, decked out in Nightwing armor, sans domino
mask. His hair is pulled back in a half-bun, eyes locked on the supercomputer screen. There’s
an ongoing call to the clocktower, muted for now. The display indicates it’s been going on for
nearly two hours.

This does not bode well.

Jason takes a breath to steady himself. “Where’s B?”

Cass, who’s perched in one of the chairs in a way that looks like it’s bending a couple laws of
physics, gestures across the room to where Bruce and Alfred are hunched over a tablet. Bruce
isn’t wearing his armor, arms folded across his chest, face carefully blank in a way that has
every Robin instinct not blown sky high by the Joker perking up.

Dick turns, glancing over Jason to land on Tim and stay there. “They’ve been at it for a
while,” he says, faintly. “No luck so far. He didn’t come back last night, last eyes we’ve got is
security footage of him leaving the school.”

“Traffic cams?” Tim asks.

“Oracle’s on it right now, but it’s slow going. We don’t have a clear shot of how he left. He
never made his bus.”

Jason glances at Bruce again. “Did he leave? Or was he taken?”

Dick shakes his head, returning to the screen. Cass has a laptop in her lap, and she’s carefully
scrolling up something. “Not sure,” Dick says, “we’re thinking the latter now. I found his
phone on Mulholland before I came here when I was canvasing, it was smashed. Cass is
going through the card to see if there was anything on it and who he talked to last.”

“It was me,” Jason doesn’t mean to say that thought out loud, but there it goes, revealing
itself to the outside world before he’s ready. All eyes land on him. Jason doesn’t squirm, but
he kind of wants to. That gnawing panic is back in his stomach. “He called me after school to
talk about his teacher. He was pretty freaked.”
As freaked as Damian outwardly gets, anyway.

Bruce puts down the tablet, moving closer, though Jason’s already told him. He supposes
news like this hits differently when you think your son might have been abducted.
“Helmstutler?”

Fuck.

Fuck.

“He’s missing,” Jason says, slower, “Dami said that he made a lot of threats. He didn’t come
out and say it, but I got the impression that his classmate wasn’t the only person that
Helmstutler had been sexually abusing.”

Beside Jason, Tim goes incredibly still, his breath hitching faintly. Cass’s eyes lift from the
computer to look at the kid, then narrow.

Dick’s face has lost all its color. “ Damian?”

“Now they’re both missing,” Jason adds, voice darkening, “right after Damian reports the
fucker. What do you think the chances of those being completely unrelated are?”

A round of cursing, echoed between the five of them like a mutual prayer.

Dick stands, grabbing the headset off the computer stand and unmuting the call, talking low
and fast into the receiver. Bruce circles closer. “What do we have on Helmstutler?”

“His phone was clean,” Tim pipes up. There’s an off quality to his voice. SA cases are hard,
but Jason thinks this one must be different. Damian’s just so young. “Nothing of interest.
Checked out his credit card records too, they don’t offer any insight into his movements,
except some large cash withdrawals a few months back. I didn’t check vehicle records.” Tim
eases off his suit jacket, sitting down heavy next to Dick and reaching for the nearest
keyboard.

“Putting O on it,” Dick announces, still with his shoulder turned away from them.

“Did Damian give you a list of known or suspected victims?” Bruce asks.

“I don’t—” Jason shakes his head to clear it. “No. There was a kid. Two, actually. Haleema
Khan and her sister. Sister’s in the hospital, Haleema’s in Damian’s class, probably who told
him about Helmstutler to begin with.”

“I should talk to her,” Cass pipes up, looking to Bruce for approval. He nods.

“I’m going too,” Jason says. Glares at Bruce when the man opens his mouth. Whether or not
it was in approval or argument is anyone’s guess, because Jason carries on, “Khan’s a kid.
You can’t show up as Bruce Wayne on her doorstep and expect her to be fine with that. And
Bat’s worse. ‘Sides, I know the most about Helmstutler out of any of you.”

What little that is, but Jason’s not going to advertise that.
“Fine,” Bruce concedes, with surprisingly little fight. “Tim, I want you to work on building a
larger suspect pool if this doesn’t pan out. Dick, run a canvas at Gotham Academy.”

“If I may, sir,” Alfred says. He’s closed the tablet and taken a step next to Bruce, his
expression tight. “Edward Lamont was murdered yesterday evening. He also broke Damian’s
arm. The two events may not be unrelated.”

“The BPD is clocking that as an Executioner kill.” Dick hands the headset over to Tim, who
puts it on gratefully. “Damian shouldn’t have been anywhere near that. He was benched.”

Tim snorts, then mutters, “Right, like that’s stopped him before.”

“We don’t have Lamont’s body,” Bruce says.

“No guarantee it was from the Executioner.” Jason catches Dick’s eye, and sees the argument
brewing and appends, “Yet. It’s not like there’s any shortage of people who’d want Lamont
dead.”

Jason has wanted Lamont dead for a while. He wanted him dead a lot more after the shithead
broke Damian’s arm, which is fair. The man’s list of enemies was longer than Jason’s.

Dick inclines his head in acknowledgement. Cass pulls a sweatshirt over her under armour. It
reminds Jason that maybe he shouldn’t show up in front of a twelve year old girl covered in
blood. He looks at his sister, then down at himself. Her single, judgmental eyebrow stares
back.

Jason leaves to find a clean shirt.

He commandeers one of the many, many vehicles in Bruce’s hangar. A motorcycle this time,
because Cass doesn’t mind his driving and the inner city traffic will be a bitch to get through.
He leaves his armor in the changing rooms, goes in a pair of Bruce’s jeans and Dick’s
sweatshirt that he copped from the lockers. Their own faults for having such predictable
combinations.

Cass saves her words for the front porch of a charming two-story home in the deepest
suburbs of Bristol, as they’re waiting for the door to be opened by someone in Haleema
Khan’s household, turning to him. “I’ll take point.”

“What?” Jason steps back from the door, head tilted to listen for movement inside the house.
The drapes are drawn on all of the windows, the garage door shut. There aren’t any cars in
the driveway. “I’m great with kids. Kids love me.”

Cass doesn’t bother to answer that. Just pats his shoulder once, like she’s trying to be
consoling. Rude. Why is everyone so fucking mean to him all the time?

After a beat of nothing, Jason leans on the doorbell again, listening to it echo throughout the
house to no response. Unsettling, edging all the way toward concerning. It’s—Jason glances
at his phone—four p.m. on a Thursday, late enough the kids should be home from school at
least. Where are they? Surely he and Cass don’t look that intimidating.

Cass shifts back with him, eyes up, on the second story windows now. Jason knows that look.
She’s gauging the distance, trying to estimate the effort it’d take to get up there.

“Uh-uh.” Jason says. The neighborhood is quiet, for Gotham, anyway, but it’s not dead.
Plenty of people are circulating the streets, neighbors milling about their yards, raking away
the leaves that decorate the deadening grass. “Nope. Not here, hot shot.”

She jabs a thumb over her shoulder, across the street at a van Jason had clocked and then
dismissed as the necessary purchase of a soccer mom with too many kids. “We should go in,”
she says.

Jason turns, gives the van another look. At this angle, he can see the lack of a license plate.
The windows, tinted too dark to pass road-ready regulations. Avery’s people, probably. Tim
said that the only vehicle that Helmstutler had registered was an SUV. Garish orange.

Something about the van strikes Jason as weird. It’s hard to clock what. He trusts Cass’s
instincts more than his own, though, and he turns back to her, releasing his lower lip. “Okay,”
he agrees, “window or door?”

She makes a looping motion with her hands, an unkicked habit from when she mostly had to
charades her way through conversations. Jason thinks it’s endearing. “Round the back. Over
the fence.”

Breaking and entering. That’s gonna make Khan really want to open up to them. He’s getting
the sinking feeling that she’s not here, though.

The two of them slink around the house, making quick work of the fence. Jason withdraws
his lockpick kit, kneeling in front of the door as Cass ties up her hair, mouth grim. She’s
expecting a fight. Jason wishes he’d brought more guns. It was a thirteen year old girl. How
much could she possibly bring with her?

Jason jimmies the lock open, twisting the handle and pushing into the house, careful to keep
his body angled behind the cover of the door. It’s not exactly a fire fight that they stumble
onto.

The back door feeds into the mudroom, which is empty. The dryer is on, lights flashing on
the sensor to indicate that the cycle is finished. Jason eases open the door to the kitchen
slowly, reaching for the knife on his waistband. Cass taps his shoulder.

He tips his chin in her direction, acknowledging. She points at the door they just came
through, the alarm mounted to the door. It’s off, the LED in the corner dead. Disabled then, or
maybe someone disarmed it.

Jason moves a little quicker, Cass hot on his heels.

At the base of the stairs is a body, crumpled. Jason doesn’t have to look for longer than a
second to know he’s dead from the angle his neck is twisted at. Nearly a clean 360. It’s one of
Avery’s people. Jason’s people. He stops for a moment despite himself. Guy’s name was
Alejandro.

“Shit,” Jason mutters, but Cass is faster, vaulting over the corpse on the stairs like she doesn’t
even see it, taking the steps two at a time.

Alejandro’s gun was undrawn. Taken by surprise, then. Maybe pushed down the stairs. He
reaches down, pressing his fingers against the man’s neck. No pulse, which isn’t a surprise,
but the body is warm enough that he’s only been gone for a few hours, tops. The start of rigor
has only begun in his fingers and jaw. He peels back Alejandro’s eyelid, well aware that once
he calls this into Bruce he’s not going to get anything more than second-hand forensic data.

First impressions are important. The cornea isn’t cloudy at all yet. Under two hours, for sure.
Haleema could still be in the house.

And so could her attacker.

It’s a vain hope, and a bold, stupid assumption, but one that he clings to anyway.

Jason lets his eyes linger on the man for another second before stepping over Alejandro’s
body. Cass is already at the top of the stairs by the time he starts, and he sees her disappear
down the hall, resists the urge to hiss at her to wait.

Silence is probably their best ally at this point, whatever advantage they can have.

Upstairs shows more signs of a fight than downstairs did. There’s broken plaster on the wall
from where someone slammed into it. A fully grown someone, because Jason really doubts
that Haleema could make a dent that big. He’s not sure if that’s a good thing or not, tries to
take reassurance that it wasn’t the kid who was getting damaged.

Cass is stopped in the doorway of a room and looks back at him, resignation settled over her
face. Her fists are clenched at her sides, but she isn’t moving.

Jason wets his lips, steels himself. He’s seen worse. There’s always worse to see. It hasn’t
been long enough for her to do a full sweep. He can’t let his guard down.

Cass steps back from the doorway, giving Jason a clearer visual. It’s a child’s room. If the
size of the bed weren’t enough evidence, it’d be the glowing stars pasted to every available
surface, pink and purple fairy lights lining the canopy of her bed. There’s a nightlight in the
far corner, and Jason’s eyes land there despite the gruesomeness of the rest of the scene. It’s
clearly old, caked with a layer of dust like it’s been pulled out of retirement. It’s still on, too.

“She’s gone,” Cass says, though there’s no way she could have checked the entire house.
Jason feels it too, a sinking pit of dread in his gut.

There’s another body soaking blood into the rug on Haleema’s floor. Gutshot. Jason moves to
Lucas’ side, kneeling in the pool of drying blood as he jams his fingers into the side of the
man’s neck, and forces his own heart rate to calm.

“Jay,” Cass’s hand settles on his shoulder. He looks up at her, and she shakes her head, “he’s
dead. I’m sorry.”

She would know, right?

Shit.

Jason withdraws. Stays kneeling there, but forces his eyes to take in the rest of the scene.
Window is shut and locked. They hadn’t seen any signs of forced entry downstairs. The alarm
was disabled. All the struggle happened here—a lamp tossed to the floor, a desk chair
overturned. It was muted, restrained. Helmstutler is three times the size of Haleema; it
wouldn’t be hard for him to subdue her.

And the only way he could have gotten in is if she let him. Jason’s people had been down the
street, not in the house. They must have come to the door once they realized what was going
on, but by that point, it was too late.

The hallway is more of an indication of Lucas and Alejandro’s efforts. Jason doesn’t know
them well enough to speak to their skill. Helmstutler might have gotten the jump on
Alejandro, and he was clearly armed. He could’ve gone right out the front door, he could be
anywhere by now.

Jason needs to call Avery. And Babs. Add this to the list of traffic cam footage they need to
cycle through.

Fuck.

Jason scrapes his hands through his hair. He releases a sharp breath. Think. “What does this
mean for Damian? Did he come back for her?” Did he even have Dami to begin with, Jason
wonders, but doesn’t say out loud. That would mean admitting that he doesn’t know where
the hell the kid could be. Damian has been missing for close to thirty-six hours now, and they
still have no idea where he could be.

If he ran off to Bali again, they would know by now. Someone took the kid, and if it wasn’t
Helmstutler, then who was it?

Cass is looking at the bed. Carefully made, decorative pillows and stuffed animals piled high.
It hasn’t been touched, at least. “No witnesses. If he thought Damian didn’t talk to you.” she
aims her finger at Lucas. “No witnesses.”

But Damian did talk to him. And Helmstutler’s had him for a day and some change. No way
he wouldn’t know that by now. Damian’s phone was smashed, Dick found it this morning,
right? So he would have seen that Damian called him.

“Great,” Jason mutters. He gets up to his feet. The knees of his pants are wet with Lucas’
blood. Seems like all he’s done is get his clothes stained with it today. Maybe the next
 person’s he’s soaked in will be Damian’s. He looks at Cass, feels his defenses drop. It’s not
like they mean anything to her anyway. “Do you think Helmstutler already got rid of him?”

He wants, desperately, for her to say no. Dick would have. Because Dick likes lying to make
Jason feel better, and Jason lets him do it even though he knows.

Cass doesn’t answer for a long while. Jason doesn’t know how he feels, that he’s more of an
equal to her than he is to Dick. Than Tim is to Jason. Maybe camaraderie. Maybe she’s just
too much like Bruce to sugar coat things. “He has a new one,” she says, eventually. “He
doesn’t need Damian anymore.”

Jason knows he can’t keep the flare of panic off his face. He buries it anyway. “Right.” He
looks back at Lucas, then reaches into his pocket to withdraw his phone. Damian is Robin.
That has to make up for something, right? Who the hell can keep that kid pinned down?

He looks at Bruce’s contact name for a moment before pulling up Avery’s.

Cass’s knuckles crack, audibly. She finally looks away from the bed, ambling over to
Haleema’s desk. The bookbag. She picks it up, dumping out the contents on the floor and
rifling through them, before picking up a journal and tossing it at Jason’s feet, careful to
avoid spattering it with blood. “I want more videos,” she says, more to the empty room at
large. She’s got a tendency to think out loud. “From the school cameras. Of Helmstutler.”
Then, to Jason, “You should read that.”

Jason’s finger hovers over the call button. He picks up the notebook—plain composition, just
black. But the cover is bent and creased with use, the pages inside well-worn. Jason flips it
open and dials Avery up, reading the scribbled letters of Haleema Khan.

I think that my teacher likes me…

Chapter End Notes

Thank You For Reading <3

 How dark is it in your mind?
Chapter Notes

hi.

>>>>>> warning for witnessed necrophilla in this chapter <<<<

See the end of the chapter for more notes

He wakes up gagging. The taste at the back of his throat has gotten strong, compounded by
his violently contracting stomach. His guts feel like mealworms writhing inside of him,
gnawing through the delicate flesh of his innards. There’s bile pooling in his mouth, stinging
the cuts on his lips.

Damian rolls over, pressing his feverish face into the cool hard floor beneath him, trying to
swallow around his heaving stomach. It hurts to move, hurts more to lie in place, aches
flaring up on every inch of him. The nausea has only gotten worse as time has compounded.
He spits saliva onto the floor, but his tongue is weak, and the drool drips out of the corner of
his mouth.

There’s little for him to puke. It’s been long enough since he was taken that his stomach has
emptied, and the most he does is heave and spit up, like an infant.

When the worst of the stomach aches have passed, he manages to roll to his back, hands
wrapping around his abdomen. There’s cloth there. The sensation of fabric manages to drag
his eyes back open. He’s been dressed in a large T-shirt—his captor’s, Damian presumes—
and several blankets have been dropped on top of him.

Damian shifts again, testing his movements. The give of the quilts pinning him in place.
They’re heavy, but it’s for warmth, not restraint. His legs move freely, if stiffly. He sits up
unhindered.

He hasn’t been tied down. The realization almost makes his eyes bulge out of his skull.
Damian pushes the blankets away, regretting it almost immediately when the cold basement
air nips at his uncovered legs. But his skin is clear, no zip ties, no chains, not even a half-
hearted pair of handcuffs. He’s completely free.

God. What an idiot.

The basement looks different than Damian remembers before he was drugged. What little
light did come through the small window has been muffled greatly by the boards nailed in
place. It was done from the exterior, which means that Damian can’t peel them off and use
the nails as a weapon or a tool. The shelving units have been removed as well, all the boxes
taken.

It’s too dark to see into the corners of the room. Perhaps some new torture device has been
set up he has yet to behold. A thick fleece blanket was spread out underneath Damian’s body
to try and leach up the worst of the cold. Damian is loath to put his bare feet on the concrete,
but he’s well aware of the necessity of it.

A brace has also been wrapped around his wrist. Drug store quality, cheap and flimsy, but the
support is welcomed nonetheless.

It’s been a while, then. Hours. While his captor, what? Worked diligently around Damian’s
limp body? Prepared his home for a more cohesive set up? How long does he plan to keep
Damian here?

It doesn’t matter. He has still forgotten the most simple aspect of a kidnapping; the moron
made the mistake of leaving him unbound. Damian is leaving at once.

It takes some effort to weasel his way upright. The cold bites into his bare skin, and the T-
shirt does little to stave off the worst of it. He steps carefully out from under the stairs,
squeezing his eyes shut at a swirl of dizziness.

The worst of his headache has passed while he was unconscious, but the dizziness lingers.
His throat is also dry to the point of pain, and no amount of saliva he tries to swallow eases
the sting. Dehydration is a reality, not a looming threat now. No matter. He’ll simply have to
steal water from his captor or find some after he leaves. Damian is resourceful.

He’s careful on the stairs, aware of how creaky they were last time. Damian is too groggy and
uncoordinated from the sedatives, he doesn’t need to attract the man’s attention. If he’s even
still here.

The basement door, at least, is locked. It’s just a common pin and tumbler lock. He has
nothing to pick it with on him, and he gets the impression he won’t find any downstairs
despite searching. The hinges are on the inside of the door, and Damian digs his fingernails
underneath the head of the pin, wrenching upwards. It takes a bit of effort, but he manages to
pop all three out, wiggling his fingers in and out as leverage.

He catches the door before it can clatter, nearly tumbling down the stairs himself at the
weight. It’s heavier than he’d been expecting given the state of disrepair, and he grits his teeth
and digs his toes into the cold floorboards. He sets the door on the floor beside the entrance
and holds the pins tightly in one fist. They may come in handy later.

Damian steps into the main house for the second time. It’s no less bizarre to see now. There
are pictures framed on the walls, generic landscapes, yes, but also of a family. A married
couple and a young son, smiling genially for the portrait. It’s too dark to make out their
features.

He pauses in the hallway, both in an attempt to remember where the exit is, and also because
he can distantly hear noises. Muffled grunts, dull thuds. Damian stops for a moment, staring
into the darkness.

He’s been Robin for long enough to recognize the sounds of someone being beaten. Damian
wars with himself for long seconds between sprinting for the door, and the deeper instinct. He
might not be the only one here. Ultimately, it’s the memory of Haleema’s face as she sobbed
helplessly, begging not to be alone that pushes him toward the noise.

He’s still Robin. Underneath it all, despite the fear cutting out everything inside of him. He’s
still Robin.

He can best his captor. A man who’s relied on drugs and weapons to keep Damian compliant.
If he has the element of surprise, if the man is preoccupied with someone else, Damian can
save them both.

There are rooms in the hall that are dark, but he can see a light coming from what looks like a
kitchen. The living room is just past that, and Damian slinks through the kitchen quietly
before taking a step through the entryway and stopping completely.

There’s a lamp glowing softly, illuminating the space, and the figures on the couch. Only one
of them is moving.

Damian knows what sex is, even if he remains a virgin. Damian isn’t stupid. He stares at
Lamont’s dead body, stripped naked and limp. The first rigor has allayed—Damian doesn’t
know what that means. Doesn’t like that he notices it. The way Lamont’s pale hand flops as
the couch cushion shifts beneath it. There’s deep purple tissue at his back and shoulder blades
where the blood has pooled. The wound on his neck has been aggravated, yawning open like
a second mouth, the tissue still moist, despite the drying of the blood.

Above him, Damian sees the face of his captor for the first time. He’s younger than Damian
thought.

That’s the only coherent thought Damian has.

A noise escapes him, something awful and ragged. The pins drop from his hands, landing in a
clattering heap on the floor at his feet. He can’t breathe.

His captor stops, twisting around to look back. Damian stares, and stares, and stares, but can’t
make any sense of what he’s seeing. The smell is what shakes him out of the shock—sex, and
bacteria, a humid mess that sears his insides as it enters his lungs—and he scrambles
backward,

“ Shit ,” the man is breathing hard behind him. Damian has already turned his back and is
scrambling through the kitchen. He hears the stutter thumps of the man moving up to his feet,
and it seems like every sound is echoing in his head. The door. Where was the—

Oh god.

The nausea is overwhelming.

Door.
He was having sex with a corpse.

Just find the door.

Lamont wasn’t moving, but he was moving.

Just—

He finds the back door, lurches for it, nearly falling over discarded shoes and other dropped
supplies before a strong arm loops around his waist and he’s dragged back just as his fingers
touch the handle.

“No!” Damian screeches, the sound ripping out of his throat. “Don’t touch me! Let go! Just
let me go !”

The man pulls Damian against his bare chest, ignoring the thrashing, pinning Damian’s arms
to his sides with one strong forearm. He hitches Damian up, taking a shaky step backward.
He can smell the sweat on the man, can feel him breathing against Damian’s ear, short.
Exerted. Bile and terror churn an uneasy mix in his gut.

“No, no, no, come on,” the man grunts when Damian’s flailing legs drum against his shins.
Damian is still shouting, wordless screams that do nothing but make him hurt. He’s dragged
to the stairs again. If the man is surprised by the removed door, he shows no indication, just
hauls Damian down the steps like he’s nothing more than a sack of potatoes.

Damian can smell death on him.

“You’re okay, you’re fine ,” he’s told, with no small amount of exasperation. His captor
nearly trips down the last of the stairs, has to readjust his grip, shifting Damian up, his arms
digging into the boy’s stomach enough to make him gag again. “Shit. Don’t throw up on me.”

He would. If he could. His throat is too swollen for that to matter.

The man drops him back onto the blanket pile, but doesn’t let go of Damian’s arm. In the
brief seconds between the couch and getting up, he pulled on a pair of pants, even if his chest
is still bare. He crouches beside Damian for a moment of rest, visibly collecting himself
while the boy tries weakly to squirm out of his grip.

“You weren’t supposed to see that. I’m sorry,” his captor rubs his forearm over his forehead
to wipe away sweat. He pulls Damian toward the corner of the room like he’s an unruly child
needed to be guided through a busy market. “The ketamine wasn’t supposed to wear off for a
few more hours, I thought…sorry.”

He feels like he can’t move. Like he’s the next dead body, yielding and moldable. His chest is
full of ice, limbs locked in place, another scream building up in his throat.

His captor pushes him down to his knees. Damian goes. The man’s hands pat down on the
concrete for a moment before grasping something metal. Damian stays still, working to ease
thin, ragged gasps out of his throat.
“Hold still,” his captor instructs. The majority of the guilt is gone from his voice now,
replaced with the familiar ice. Like it’s an embarrassing quirk Damian stumbled on. You’re
fine , he’d said, just another of his endless instructions.

Damian can see Lamont’s face. All the different versions of it. The way it twisted up
sadistically when he broke Damian’s wrist, the acrid fear of death instants before this man
killed him, the slack emptiness in the trunk, on that couch, eyes clouded over and features
like stone.

He thinks he’s going to throw up again.

Of course his captor doesn’t want to touch him. He’ll kill Damian first. Then he’d touch his
corpse. Fuck his corpse.

Damian gags. The man’s cold hands come up to the sides of his throat, dropping whatever
metal he was holding to do so. “Hey, stop. It’s fine. Kid, honestly. You’re good. I’m sorry.”

There are tears in his eyes, blurring his vision. It’s the second time he’s cried, and Damian
can’t even stop himself anymore, feels them spill over and trail down his cheeks silently. The
man brushes them away with rough fingers.

“This is why I told you not to move,” the metal is picked up again, the rebuke callous.
Damian can’t even see what he’s doing, doesn’t want to know, just wants the hands that
touched a corpse in that way to never come anywhere near him again. “I just— God, you’re a
stubborn one, aren’t you?”

Damian’s hair is swept away from his neck. He flinches as something cold settles over his
skin, resting on his collarbones, moves to look down but his captor clicks his tongue, pushing
Damian’s chin up with a thumb.

He hears a lock click shut. His hands raise of their own accord to feel the cool metal of a
collar. It’s loose enough that he can clamp all his fingers around the inside, but it doesn’t give
when he tries a half-hearted, instinctive tug. His captor pushes him toward the center of the
room. Makes Damian stand there, while he holds a length of chain in his hands. He circles
Damian, pushes his head down until his chin touches his chest. He can hear the slide and
snick of a metal padlock, can feel the weight of it when it hits his back.

The man pats his shoulder, like Damian is a puppy that’s finally learned to heel. The stirrings
of resentment in his gut feel muted, distant. Damian just sort of sways.

Shock . It’s the highest bullet point on Dick’s handbooks for civilian victims. Except Damian
isn’t a civilian, so maybe this cold, numb feeling is just a side effect of the ketamine and head
trauma.

His captor raises on his tiptoes, the other end of the chain in hand. He’s tall, reaches the
ceiling with minimal effort, and Damian finally notices the D-ring nailed overhead, dead
center in the room.
He clasps the chain to the D-ring, yanks on it, once, to test the give. Lets the rest of the chain
drop to the floor. It’s heavy enough that Damian’s back hunches at the added weight, the
metal collar heavy on his shoulder blades. He blinks, looks down at it, nearly having to cross
his eyes to get a glimpse of it.

His eyes raise slowly. His captor is still shirtless, still coated with a thin layer of sweat that’s
leaving goosebumps in its wake. In the darkness, the man’s eyes look wider, strong features,
an angular nose.

“Can you breathe?” his captor asks, mildly, “Or is it too tight?”

Damian shakes his head. He takes a step back, wishing he could shrink into the shadows. The
chainlinks are loud, sliding across the ground with his movement, and Damian flinches at the
noise. His captor studies his face for a long second before sighing. “Are you going to say
something? C’mon kid, I know you’ve got a mouth on you.”

Damian opens it, but he can’t think of a single word to. He just takes another step back,
trying to hide from the man’s eyes. Out of grabbing distance, with the fingers that have—

Survive , Father would say. But he isn’t here, and neither is Mother, and they didn’t see what
he did. They don’t even know that he’s here, Damian has no guarantee that they’re coming .
The only thing that surviving does is ensure his body won’t be fucked for that much longer.

But it’s a waiting game now. It will happen. Damian can’t escape this.

His knees tremble under his weight, and, for once, Damian lets them buckle. Crashes to the
ground in a clang of metal and thud of his body against the concrete. He curls in on himself,
tucking his limbs as close to his core as possible, shivering spasmodically.

“Calm down,” his captor chides, “it’s okay.”

He keeps saying that. But it’s not okay. It’s never going to be okay again. Damian thought he
was made of steel. His lineage ensured it. Never has he felt more like wisps of a dandelion at
the mercy of a strong wind

“It’s not even that bad, right?” the man tries for a weak smile. Reasons with Damian, as
though he is a toddler throwing a tantrum, to be gentled and coaxed into better behavior.
“They’re dead. It can’t bother them. It’s not hurting anyone. It’s just a body.” Damian stares
at him. That’s not how death works. The man is not fucking an empty shell, the soul is still
attached. They feel that. It does hurt them. Damian is going to feel it eventually.

“Jesus,” the man mutters, shaking his head before reaching out to grab him again, “fine. If
you’re going to mope, at least do it where you’re warm.”

He grabs the collar, fits three of his fingers underneath the metal, right up against the pulse of
Damian’s carotid, and hauls him toward the pile of blankets. Doesn’t even bother lifting
Damian to his feet, just drags his ass along the concrete until he can drop him on a nest of
fleece and acrylic. Damian is glad it’s only the two of them here, the least possible number of
witnesses to the frail, high-pitched whimper that escapes him.
The man smooths down Damian’s hair. “Look. Just…just don’t come back upstairs, and we
won’t have any more problems, right?”

Damian can’t imagine going up there ever again. Lamont’s body is still on the couch. What
the fuck does he do with the bodies when he’s done fucking them? Does he do it more than
once? This man is the Executioner, isn’t he? Surely Father would have told him if the
Executioner was fucking the corpses. Does Father know? Father has to know. This must be
why he wants him off the streets so much. Damian didn’t understand, because the man’s
victims reminded him so much of Jason’s, but this is nothing like his brother.

Oh god.

Oh god.

“I’ll give you some space,” the man decides, patting Damian’s head like a dog again. “Unless
you’re going to cause problems?”

He shakes his head, mutely. Can’t help the profound relief when his captor finally lets go of
the collar, and Damian is left alone. His hand goes, but the touch of death lingers on
Damian’s skin for much longer.

Dick slaps the flash drive down on the counter, somewhat grateful that the executive decision
to move to the kitchen has been made. “Here’s your security feed.”

It was surprisingly difficult to get. GA’s security footage was analogue, had to be pulled
directly off the local computers, else Oracle might’ve helped out. Dick grabbed it on his way
back, by request from his very ticked off little sister.

Cass grabs the flash drive without looking up at him. Still ticked off. She doesn’t like dead
bodies, and doesn't like being too late. Has gotten it into her head that she’s responsible for
every death she doesn’t stop. It’s Bruce’s guilt complex, echoed down into a younger, smaller
version of him.

Dick puts a hand on her shoulder and leaves it there until Cass shrugs him off. If Jason hasn’t
already talked her through a debrief, he’ll have to later. Cass doesn’t write up her own
reports, and Dick still feels out of the loop on the Helmstutler half of the investigation.

“Good work, young sir,” Alfred says, sweeping into the kitchen like Dick’s presence is what
summoned him. Jason’s disappeared, Bruce, too, but Tim is sitting at the dining table in the
far corner, hunched over a laptop.

Dick smiles, thinly. Accepts the protein shake Alfred foists on him with the grace of someone
who’s long since given up trying to dissuade the man from putting kale in his diet.

“I’ll start looking this over with Cassandra,” Alfred says, “you should get some rest.”
“I can start,” Tim offers. He looks worse than Dick feels, and the pale skin and gray circles
beneath his eyes are only worse since the last time Dick saw him. “It might give me
somewhere new to start looking.”

“That’s alright, Master Tim, but thank you.” Alfred reassures. It’s pointed. Dick watches him
take the thumb drive from Cass before leaving. His sister follows after him, lurking like an
angry shadow, but she does that, so Dick doesn’t give it a second glance before he’s plopping
down at the table next to his younger brother, setting the glass on the table.

“He added a mild sedative,” Tim warns, because he’s actually Dick’s favorite. The teenager
doesn’t look up from his computer, the rhythmic click of his fingertips against the keyboard
almost soothing.

Dick slides the shake further away from him. “Thanks. You know where Jay went?”

“Ramirez.”

Great. That’s what they need, the Alley’s underground getting involved with this.

“Ah,” Dick nods knowingly, glances out at the now-empty kitchen, and then back at Tim. Not
a great sight. Between the bloodshot eyes and the twitching muscles—either from cortisol or
too much caffeine, Dick couldn’t say—Tim looks like he should be the one getting served a
laced protein shake.

Then again, Tim only would have known that if he’d been on the receiving end of one. Alfred
didn’t prepare it here.

Dick rubs his hands over raw eyes. Settles into his seat more, slouching down and folding his
arms across his chest. He rolls his head along the back of the chair to study his brother’s face.
Tim endures it for about fifteen seconds before snapping, “What?”

Dick extends a leg under the table, nudging the boy’s shin with his foot. Tim twitches, his
scowl deepening. “Making any progress, babybird?”

Tim’s lips twist unhappily. He shifts his laptop over so Dick can see. “I’ve got a couple of
names, I guess. Mostly working on eliminating them. The list was larger when I started.
Damian doesn’t make friends.”

Dick scans them, ignoring the jibe. There are a few no-brainers. Rogues that might be pissed
off with Robin, anyone who’s even touched any of Damian’s recent cases. Adults in Damian
Wayne’s life, teachers, Talia’s less savory associates, Bruce Wayne’s most vitriolic enemies.

His eyes catch on one name in particular, though. Only because he recognizes it from Bruce’s
case files, and Tim’s late night venting. “Patrick Morrison?”

Tim’s body tries to both hunch and straighten. He looks away from Dick. “Yeah. He’s.
Yeah.”

“Isn’t he connected to that Sionis’ case? That has nothing to do with Damian.” Dick knows
this, because this has everything to do with Bruce Wayne, who Damian’s life orbits, but
purposefully never touches. It’s safer. Dick doesn’t even think that Morrison and Damian
would have even had the opportunity to meet.

“He likes them young.” Tim answers after a long hesitation, addressing the wall. “He’s got
porn on his computer. Underage shit. He mentioned Damian was cute.”

Dick blinks. That, somehow, was not what he was expecting. It feels egregious, that Damian
is the center of so much heinous attention. It’s the circles they run in. He knows that Bruce
was keeping Morrison around to keep an eye on him. That Tim was supposed to be keeping
an eye on him, solely because of how shady the man seemed. The offer for a WI job was a
cover to spy on him. It’s always been that.

“Have they met?” Dick asks.

“Yeah,” Tim says, dully. “At a gala once last year. Damian said that he was lucky his father
was rich because it was the only reason ‘someone as insufferable as himself’ would be there.
Pissed Morrison off.”

“Does he have an alibi for the day Damian went missing?”

“If he did, do you think he’d be on this list, Dick?”

Dick tries to figure out how to say this delicately. “I think it’s a little thin. One comment at a
gala months ago doesn’t really strike me as a motive for a kidnapping.” Tim opens his mouth,
and Dick adds, more gently, “Even if he does have underage shit, he hasn’t really had any
physical proximity to Damian, right?”

Tim’s jaw clenches. “He’s more than capable, trust me.”

“Okay, but that doesn’t mean he’s likely.” Dick frowns at him. If this is the qualifications that
it’s taking to be on the list, then it had to be fucking huge to start with. “Tim…why is he
really here?”

Tim scoffs. Shoves the laptop away like it’s burned him. He puts his face in his hands. His
shoulders are wound tight, voice taut to match. “I told you. He’s a pervert. Stuff has happened
at WI.”

“What stuff?” Tim doesn’t look at him. Dick sits up straighter, abandoning his loose sprawl,
putting his hands on the tabletop. He reaches over and grabs Tim’s wrist, tugging. “What
stuff, Tim?”

Tim shrugs. His throat works. “ Stuff .”

He used to be such a sweet kid. Dick’s stomach feels hot, thinking of how much innocence
he’s let get stolen from him. All the anger that’s taken it’s place. Dick’s chest squeezes with
dread, “Tim, if something has been going on, then—”

Tim shoves away from the table. “Taxi,” he says, apropos of nothing. The subject shift
blindsides Dick for a moment. “I need to talk to Bruce about Damian’s credit card. And see if
Oracle has pinned his phone’s location before it was turned off. He took a taxi. And the blood
—I…Dick. What if Damian is the missing blood from the Executioner’s kill?”

When his captor returns, he has a take-out bag in his hand. He hasn’t replaced the door, and
the light from the hallway streams in unhindered.

Damian has sequestered himself beneath the blankets. Partly to guard his lower nudity, partly
because it really is cold , and partly because it’s the only place he can reach to hide. He’d
tried to drag his nest under the staircase, but the chain didn’t reach that far. He can’t even
make it to any of the walls, forced to orbit a small circle in the center of the room.

At least he can lie down comfortably. As long as he lays on his back, the collar doesn’t dig
into his throat. It feels heavy, pulling on him constantly. His skin itches underneath it. He
keeps reaching up to scratch at it, but the inflamed skin hurts worse than the itching sensation
does.

His wrist is aching. There’s a knot on the back of his head where his captor slammed him into
the steps. Bruises, scraped skin, a combination from Damian’s escape attempts and the man’s
ungentle hands. His feet are scraped raw from the gravel, but the worst of the cuts have
scabbed over. It’s one of the few blessings Damian has left to count.

He curls tighter under the blanket when he hears the man’s footsteps descending the stairs.
Tells himself it’s for the cold, not cowardice. Damian hasn’t hidden since he was a toddling
babe, he will not now.

The man’s steps falter, then slow. Damian can feel those filthy eyes on him, tracing him.
Father would call it tactical, his decision to play limp and dead, but it only reminds Damian
of Lamont. What’s the difference between a sleeping boy and a dead man?

He sits upright at the thought, pulling the blanket tightly across his shoulders. He is
disgustingly bare. The blanket is not any real level of protection from the man’s hands, but
still, it makes Damian feel better to have it, which only furthers his self loathing.

“Hey kid,” the man says, when Damian has turned to meet his gaze. The chain rattles with
every minute movement. He supposes his captor has successfully belled the cat. He hasn’t
bothered with the mask this time, his face bare and boyish. It puts Damian on edge, the
slightly awkward crease in the man’s brow, after so much sure-footed control. “You hungry?”

He isn’t. Damian can’t imagine ever being hungry again, after what he witnessed. He feels
like his insides are rotting just as quickly as Lamont’s, spoiling the flesh. He wants to carve
himself out, starting with his brain, so maybe he’ll forget what he saw. What this man did .
What this man will do, undoubtedly, when he decides he’s had enough of Damian’s living
vessel.
The smell of the takeout is strong. Fried food and cooked meat. Damian can imagine the
contents, he doesn’t need his captor to come any closer.

The man does anyway, lifting up the bag. “It’s a burger. Been a while since you ate, kid.”

Damian is aware of this. His appetite is not.

The man sets the bag on the floor next to Damian, along with a plastic water bottle. The cap
is sealed. No drugs. Not that the man has shown any need to lace anything he gives Damian,
he’s injected him plenty now, while Damian has done little to stop him.

The man turns, as though to walk away. Damian shifts forward. The chain links clank
together, collar pulling against his throat. “Wait.” His voice is fainter than he’d wanted, more
a beg than an order.

His captor stops. Turns again. He’s changed clothes. His hair is damp, like he’s come from
the shower. “Yeah?” he says, gaze darting to the D-ring on the ceiling, like it might have lost
structural integrity since he looked away.

Damian runs his tongue over his teeth. Survive . It’s what’s imperative, especially now that he
knows what's at stake if he doesn’t. Damian knows how to do that, knows a victim’s
playbook. It’s surprisingly similar to interrogation. Humanize yourself, build a rapport.
Damian rarely bothers with such pedestrian tactics, not when he can take what he wants by
force, but now he can’t .

“What,” Damian can’t finish it. What will make you let me leave isn’t a question his captor is
likely to answer. “Is your name?”

The man seems thrown. His expression curves with sympathy. “You can call me Blade if you
want, Damian.”

He does not want, he would like to know the man’s actual name. To be on equal footing with
him.

“You can’t…” he’s never deliberated his words more carefully. Not even speaking to victims,
when he’s supposed to be on his best behavior. Blade is eyeing the door again, like he might
leave if Damian says something he doesn’t like. “Keep me here forever.”

Blade looks at him. “Maybe. You should eat that,” he gestures with his chin to the bag.

Damian scowls. He emerges one hand from the blanket to snatch the bag off the floor and
withdraw it back to himself. It’s on the lower end of lukewarm, almost cold. If he purchased
it on his way here, that means the restaurant was far enough that it’s cooled considerably. Not
within thirty minutes or so, then.

Civilization looks further and further away.

He pulls it out of the generic brown paper bag, examines the wrapping paper. The brand is
too big to pinpoint where Damian’s captor might have driven in from. He rips the parchment
covering the burger, holds it in one hand. The bun is soggy, the lettuce wilted. He can smell
the ketchup. Alfred would throw a fit to know something so mundane had disgraced his
palette.

Not that Damian is eating beef .

“Didn’t know what you liked,” Blade says. He hesitates, before folding his legs beneath him,
sitting on the ground in front of Damian. Still at least six feet away. “Figured hamburgers are
always pretty safe. Kids like burgers, right?”

Damian is unlike most children. He looks down at the burger. There are times when it still
appeals to him, the taste and the texture of meat, but now he feels no such compulsion.
Especially not with the memory of Lamont still so fresh.

Blade rubs a hand up his shin, visibly uncomfortable. Damian doesn’t know what it is that he
does that makes the man look so perpetually out of place. “How’s your arm?”

The brace is helping more than Damian will ever admit to him. His palm feels wet, still just
holding the food, trying to muster up the appetite to peel off the bread and just eat that. Jason
would tell him to keep his strength up. He knows it’s been too long since he’s eaten anything.
“Fine,” he says, neutrally.

“How’d you break it?”

The dead man on Blade’s couch did the honors. Somehow, Damian’s stomach sours further.
“That’s none of your concern.”

“Does it have to do with why you were in Edward’s apartment?” Blade asks.

His first name. Blade calls the man he murdered and then raped the corpse of by his first
name. Like they’re friends. He calls Damian by his first name.

His fingers twitch, clenching without his permission, nails digging into the burger. The
ketchup smears on his thumb, wet and sticky.

“What were you doing there, kid?” He leans forward, elbows on his knees. There’s
something about Blade’s eyes, the intensity in them, that strikes Damian as familiar. As if
they might have met before. “Why were you at that apartment?”

“I was purchasing drugs.” Damian explains, with no small amount of sarcasm. “Fentanyl.
Lysergic acid diethylamide. The like.”

“You’re buying acid, at thirteen. Right.”

This, at least, is familiar. Damian is able to pull on Robin as he answers, “I have had a
complicated childhood.”

Blade snorts, despite himself. Damian doesn’t know how to feel about amusing the man
keeping him chained to the ceiling. “Your brother wouldn’t let that happen.”

Damian stills. “What the hell do you mean?”

 Blade doesn’t blink. His body language doesn’t get tighter, like Damian is stupid for taking
this seriously instead of laughing, too. “Richard Grayson is a cop, isn’t he? I’ve been doing
research on your family. Been in the BPD for what? Five years? Your other brother, Tim
Drake, he’s in charge of one of the biggest corporations in the world and quite sensitive to
bad press. And Jason? He’d never give you bad shit, would he? If he was going to get you
high, he’d make sure you were safe.”

Jason. How does he know about Jason?

“Stay away from them,” Damian says. He can hardly hear himself speak over the whining in
his ears. Jason is dead , for anyone who cares to look. That’s not research; Blade has watched
them. His fists clench. This is not, perhaps, as innocent of an abduction as it first appeared.
Regardless of whether or not Blade was ready for him, that doesn’t mean he didn’t want
Damian.

“That’s up to you,” Blade answers, “I’d hate for you to get company like that.”

Damian launches the squished burger at Blade’s face. His aim is impeccable, even under the
circumstances. It slaps wetly against the man’s cheek, flops into his lap like a dead fish.
Damian wishes he could make the man choke on it.

Blade wipes smeared ketchup off his skin. He visibly collects himself before saying, evenly,
“We’ll continue this conversation later. Drink your water.”

Damian flips him off.

It looks like it takes everything in Blade not to do it back.

Chapter End Notes

p.s.: chem's birthday is the 25th, so! happy birthday sweetheart <3

thanks for reading!! <3<3<3

 I close my eyes and feel the weight
Chapter Notes

chem says "you're all spoiled, it hasn't even been a month since we updated. do you
know what the deimos readers are going through"

i am a deimos reader and i know :(

warnings: discussion of sexual assault/rape, brutal violence, brief discussion of

necrophilla

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Bruce is scrubbing a towel through his hair, the motions more automatic than conscious,
when there’s a knock on his bedroom door. He’s half-dressed and too tired to bother with
finding a shirt. He feels kind of tipsy, a level of exhaustion that hasn’t petered off or gotten
better, no matter how little or much he tries to sleep.

He thinks it would be easier if his dreams weren’t haunted by the weight of Jason’s corpse in
his arms. Whenever he looks down at the body, it’s never Jason, but Damian, staring up at
him lifelessly. His son’s body is already decaying, weighted, and gone.

Dick is outside the door, chewing on his raw lower lip, looking just as exhausted as Bruce
feels. He wonders when the last time he’s slept is, or if everyone has been running on empty
since Haleema and Helmstulter were confirmed missing nearly two days ago.

“I need to talk to you,” Dick says. His arms are folded over his chest, hair loose around his
shoulders. Unbrushed and slightly greasy, which means he never showered after last night’s
patrol. The circles under his eyes indicate that he might not have slept, either.

Damian has been missing for sixty-seven hours. Bruce has slept maybe seven of those, he
thinks that Dick has gotten even less. Patrol last night hadn’t helped, in nearly any capacity.
Tim and Barbara had scoured everything, but all their leads fizzled out.

Tim had solicited Damian’s credit card records. The jump he’d made—from Damian hailing
a cab after school, to the missing object in the Lamont case, had been a bit unsubstantiated.
But he followed up, as he usually did. Tracked down the cabbie and wrung a location out of
her, corroborated it with the last pinged cell location. Jason is still insistent that Lamont’s
killer might not have been the Executioner after all, but that is baseless for now. It matched
the Executioner’s MO, down to most of the fine details.

And it only casts more uncertainty on where Damian is, and who his captor is holding.
Damain Wayne, or Robin. Damian had been helping him with the case, but Bruce had
skimmed details on purpose. Dick has been better at trying to protect the frayed remains of
the kid’s innocence than Bruce ever was with any of his other kids.

Bruce thinks, maybe, in a best-case-scenario, that Robin was there for Lamont, and the
Executioner was there for Lamont, and Robin was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But the Robin suit is still here, and Damian isn’t. And Bruce doesn’t want it to have been
Damian. There’s been no ransoms, no demands, no nothing. There’s no reason to make
demands on a dead person.

Joker hadn’t made any for Jason.

Bruce had just found the body.

Please, please, please.

The expression on Dick’s face doesn’t bode well. Thinned lips and furrowed brows. He won’t
meet Bruce’s gaze, eyes fixed on the wallpaper over his shoulder.

“Dick?” Bruce asks, catching the endearment in his throat before it can escape him. Dick is
more than willing to delve them out left and right, but Bruce has never felt he earned the right
again after—

God, what not after?

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s about Tim,” Dick explains, finally looking at him.

Tim. Bruce tries not to let his expression show any surprise, but he knows that it must,
because Dick’s expression darkens. Damn it, did he get hurt on patrol and neglect to tell them
again? How many times does he have to tell Tim that it’s not an optional note to leave on his
reports?

“What about Tim?” Bruce asks, letting Dick into the room. His oldest closes the door behind
them. Bruce tries to brace himself emotionally for whatever is about to come out of his
mouth if this is a closed-door conversation.

He scrapes the towel through his hair again before moving to drop it off in the master bath to
give Dick the entirety of his focus.

“I was talking to him before patrol last night about the suspect list he compiled. You saw that
right?” Dick says to his retreating back. Bruce makes a noise of the affirmative. Honestly, he
saw that last night, and at work today, and he still can’t remember most of the details of it.
It’s like the harder he tries to hold onto particulars the more his mind refuses to grasp them.
He’s fixated on the feeling of Jason’s broken ribs beneath his gloves, and his heart stopping
against his fingertips, and Joker —

“One of the guys, Patrick Morrison, he got weird about it. Weird for him, at least.” Dick
continues, “He works at WI. He’s part of that smuggling case for Sionis.”

Right. The problem Bruce had forgotten about, in the midst of things. It’s not like Tim had
returned to WI since Damian went missing, unlike Bruce. It shouldn’t be a problem until they
find him again. Morrison isn’t a high priority right now. His case has always been something
that was intended to be the long game.

“Tim put Morrison on the list?” Bruce didn’t see that. He thinks he would have mentioned it.
Maybe it wasn’t on the one that Tim gave him specifically, because he thought that Bruce
wouldn’t take him seriously after seeing him.

“He might have taken him off before he gave it to you, but yeah, he was there.” Dick
confirms, brushing hair from his face. “Tim said he put him on it because Damian and
Morrison met at a gala last year or something, and Damian was difficult, but when I tried to
point out that was kind of thin he got really defensive.”

“Tim’s leaps of logic aren’t always articulable.” Bruce frowns. It is thin, though. Bruce didn’t
even know that Morrison and Damian had met. He steps into the closest and retrieves a shirt.
“Defensive how?”

“Tim said he found child pornography on his computer, and that he’s seen Morrison be
‘weird at WI,’ and I thought it was weird, so today I did some digging on him.” Dick fidgets
with his fingers, his eyes dropping to the floor again. His body is tight, and he seems like he’s
regretting coming in here period.

“...And?” Bruce prods, pulling the T-shirt over his head. The fabric is soft, it’s from some sort
of WI expo.

“He’s…got a history,” Dick admits, finally, “of sexual assault. A couple of people filed
complaints with HR, he got kicked out of his dad’s company for it. It was all put under
wraps, I had to call someone at the precinct to even get any of this, and then there was a
lawsuit, about two years ago.”

Bruce’s stomach is sinking and tightening all at once. He feels like he’s trying to breathe in
liquid cement.

Fuck.

Fuck.

“Morrison had been sexually abusing one of the board of director’s kids. He was fifteen.
God, it,” Dick runs a hand through his hair, closing his eyes, “It was disgusting. He did a lot
more than rape him, Bruce.”
“How did I not know about any of this?” Bruce demands. He’d known about the shady
history surrounding Morrison, of course, but he’d been sticking to the financial side. The
only part that he’d cared about was how Morrison was funneling money to Sionis. Dick has
accused him more than once of getting stuck on one track and burrowing out until he’s
reached the end and exhausted it.

It’s not the first time that Bruce has known it was justified.

But—

Shit. Shit. Bruce was not supposed to put his people in the jaws of a monster. Why the hell
didn’t he do more research? Wasn’t that what Tim was just telling him two days ago, that he
didn’t care what was happening?

Bruce hadn’t known.

What has Morrison been doing?

“The lawsuit was dropped for a settlement, and you were—gone.” Dick explains. Bruce has
to stop himself from gritting his teeth. In the time stream. Seems like most of the important
things happened during those months.

“What’s your point?” Bruce asks, finally. “You said this was about Tim.”

Dick fidgets. He takes in a deeper breath, that clearly struggles to reach the end of his lungs.
His eyes are far away. “I think that Morrison has been doing something to Tim. I don’t
know…I don’t know how far it’s gotten, but he’s…”

This had nothing to do with Damian. It had everything to do with Damian. It should have
been enough of a warning sign that Tim genuinely thought that Morrison would be capable of
kidnapping a child.

Bruce considers the conversation he ran into two days ago over with new light. Not just
Morrison being an asshole, but how close he’d been to Tim physically, and how oddly
intimate the thing had seemed, like it wasn’t two coworkers, but a married couple in the
middle of a diner trying not to make a scene.

A rush of disgust and horror whispers through him. Too late, his brain insists, too late again.
Too late.

Bruce looks at the time. It’s just after three, if he leaves now, he can still make it to the office
before Morrison leaves. He starts moving for his shoes.

“Where are you going?” Dick sounds resigned.

“Where do you think?” Bruce demands, “If Morrison has been sexually assaulting Tim, or
anyone else, I’m not going to let that continue.”

Dick hesitates. “Do you want me to come with you?”

“No,” Bruce says, flat. “Stay here. Run point with Damian. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

Since he was hired, Bruce has only been in Morrison’s office one other time, when he was
showing it to the man. It was back eight months ago, when he was still trying to make
Morrison feel important and wanted in WI. A corner office with a view was enough to earn
Bruce a pleased smile.

Morrison can be bribed. Morrison can be sweet-talked. Morrison is a dipshit.

He’s settled in, as the months have passed. There’s a couch now, white, with a small black
throw blanket tossed carelessly over the back. There’s a minibar set up at the bookshelf, rows
of books that haven’t seen the spine cracked in years settled above and below that.
Morrison’s certificates and degrees are framed in gold.

Plants. Fake. Aesthetically placed.

Bruce hates it.

Morrison is seated behind his desk, at a computer, and looks irritated until he makes eye
contact with Bruce. “Mr. Wayne,” he says, smiles, but his brow is pinched, “I was told you’d
already gone home for the day. So good to see you. What can I do for you?”

Why does he always talk like this is the first time they’ve spoken? As if Bruce hasn’t spent
months cozying up to him, to get a leg in on the corruption he’s peddling.

He invites himself in, doesn’t meet Morrison at the desk, trailing a hand over the decorative
statues on the coffee table instead. Pretends to survey the room, gathering his thoughts
instead. Child pornography. Bruce knows all the nasty secrets Morrison might want to hide.
The depraved shit that gets him off.

Bruce knows enough now to tank his reputation. Even if he can’t take down the whole
syndicate like he wanted, he can at least cut off their money. It would be a start. Sometimes
it’s better to work with something than nothing.

Bruce closes the door behind himself. Looks the man over and tries to decide how to play
this. Stupid, he decides. “My son is missing,” he says.

Morrison blinks. Pales. “Tim?”

“No. Damian, but Timothy suspects you’re involved.”

Morrison frowns. His face creases with his confusion, then clears, as though coming to a
realization. Cool irritation replaces it. “Your boy is pointing fingers at me, now, Wayne?”
“Is it without reason?” Bruce questions pointedly. He comes to a stop on the other side of
Morrison’s desk, plants his hands to lean in. “He found some incriminating videos on your
work computer, Patrick. Wayne Industries has strict policies for computer usage.”

“What exactly are you implying?”

“Why does my son think you’re a pedophile?” his eyes flash, and Bruce sees all he needs to
in them. Rage sparks in his gut, hot and righteous, but Morrison beats him to it.

“Why the fuck would I know? Your son throws accusations left and right. It’s what he did
with his parents, isn’t it? About how they were abusing him? Poor, neglected Timmy, no one
loves him, he’s going to run off to suck the nearest billionaire's dick.”

“ What ?”

Morrison gets up to his feet as well, closing the laptop. He’s pissed now, enough that it’s
showing visibly, breaking through the wall of professionalism and ass-kissing that’s been
clinging to his every action since Bruce met him. He’d known this part of the man existed,
just underneath the surface. Bruce saw his dealings at his previous employment—a higher-up
in an insurance company—and he knew that something violent existed. It’s different to see it
in person.

“I have done nothing but work for you, and work well. Now you’re coming in here with
baseless accusations because what? Tim Drake and I have trouble getting along and now he’s
set me up? You know what that little shit is capable of. If he didn’t sleep around for his
business dealings he wouldn’t be anywhere. He’s insufferable.”

Bruce’s knuckles itch. He steps closer to Morrison, feeling his height, the weight he has on
the man. He lets his voice drop, low and menacing. Watches the instinctual flash of
uncertainty, as Morrison seems to realize the difference between his bluster and Bruce’s
power .

Then comes the second-guessing. Bruce has done well in building up his persona. No one
will ever fear the shining prince of Gotham. Not until he gives them a reason to.

“Effective immediately, you are dismissed from your position at Wayne Industries.”

“What?” Morrison splutters. “You’re firing me because of what some slut said to you?”

Bruce grabs him by the front of his shirt, clenching his fingers into the cloth, scratching his
nails against the breastbone. He hauls him forward, until his hips smash into the rim of the
desk. “You will watch your mouth.”

“Or what ?” Morrison has grabbed Bruce’s wrist, and he’s trying for calm. In control. There’s
sweat beading on his forehead. “Is Brucie Wayne going to hit me?” He laughs, “You don’t
have the fucking balls .”

Bruce slams his fist into Morrison’s face. The man goes crashing first into the desk, then hits
the floor. There’s a beat. Morrison groans weakly.
Bruce takes in a breath, rounds the desk and calmly hauls him up off the floor. He drags the
man to his feet, or some semblance of it, tilting his head to examine the blood that drips from
Morrison’s nose into his gaping mouth. His eyes have blown wide, a pained wheeze all that
escapes his working jaw.

“I don’t?” Bruce says. He straightens Morrison’s suit coat. “I have some questions for you,
Patrick. You’re going to answer them without the bullshit this time. Am I understood?”

“Fuck you, you fucking crazy bast—”

Bruce hits him again, in the kidney this time, robbing the man of the air in his lungs. He’ll be
pissing blood for weeks, based on the exquisite pain Bruce can read in his expression.
Morrison spits blood.

“That doesn’t sound like no bullshit to me.”

The man curls in on himself, takes a deep breath. Then another. He seems to recognize his
position in this finally, and sits up with effort. Bruce keeps one hand on his shoulder. “What
did you do to Tim?”

More spitting. Morrison’s mouth is a mess with it now, he must have bitten his tongue,
canines gnashing pink and red. His nose is bleeding steadily, clearly broken. “I didn’t touch
your brat, Wayne.”

He puts a hand on Morrison’s shoulder, forces him into the desk chair, squeezing with
bruising force. “Don’t play dumb with me, you’re not smart enough.”

Morrison scoffs. Bruce digs his thumb into a pressure point on the back of his neck, earning a
sharp cry. He lets go of Morrison, both to give him space to answer, and because he’s taking
too much sadistic pleasure from it. Morrison may be scum, but that doesn’t give Bruce
permission to take out any dark impulses on him.

“Yeah, I get it,” Morrison says, breathing hard. The sweat has soaked through his dress shirt,
he leans forward to cup his broken nose gently. “You think you’re hot shit, don’t you Wayne?
All that money, all that power. But let me clear up one thing for you. You may think that
you’re on top of an empire, but you can’t see what’s happening right in front of you, can you?
I guess your little whore took me seriously when I said his brother was pretty when I fucked
him.”

Bruce goes rigid. “ What ?”

Morrison leans forward. He smiles, his teeth bloody. “That’s right, Brucie. Tim has been my
slut for months and you haven’t done anything but watch it happen. You proud of yourself?
You can’t protect any of your sons, you just let things happen, over and over. I’m sure all
your kids are really glad you stole them—”

White rage settles on him with a level of tranquility that doesn’t seem to fit. He can’t breathe,
can’t exhale, all he can see is Tim flinching back from this man.
My ass is none of your concern.

Isn’t it, sweetheart?

Bruce grabs Morrison’s lapels, feeling cold. He cuts his knuckles on the man’s teeth, hits hard
enough that he can hear the roots tear through gum, feel them loosen under his blows. Twice
in the mouth, for daring to say that shit, and then he lets Morrison go. Drops him to the floor,
and kicks him with the pointed toe of his dress shoe into the man’s abdomen to roll him onto
his side. Morrison is panting, groaning like a stuck pig. Bruce digs his heel into the man’s
stomach, leaning down low.

The writhing beast of wrath has seized his chest, those dark impulses rising to the surface,
just waiting to crest the still surface of his mood. Morrison’s blood looks good flecking the
pristine white rug beneath his desk, looks right there.

Morrison laughs weakly, turns into a wet cough. “What? You think I’m lyin’? A-Ask him.
Ask. He’s got freckles on his back. Shaped like a constellation. There’s a scar on his
abdomen, here,” Morrison gestures to his own to indicate it, “scars everywhere actually. Kid’s
fucked. Birthmark on his hip. Got a pretty kid, Bruce, I wouldn't blame you if you went a
round or two with him, too.”

A cold well opens in his stomach, swallowing him. Tim was scared. Tim was scared, and
Bruce walked away. He didn’t even make this man apologize for what he’d said, he’d been
too focused on Damian to notice what was going on in the same building he worked in.

Tim has been nothing but scared and angry since he got to the manor, even in the midst of all
of this shit, like his head was a million miles away, and Bruce couldn’t fucking reach him up
there. How long would this have gone on? How long would Tim have let it? Why the hell did
Tim let it? He can’t imagine, he can’t even begin to process what Tim has been going
through.

All while Bruce was several floors above him.

Dick had put it together in less than twelve hours. Bruce has been working this for eight
months.

How dare Morrison. How fucking dare he? What gives him the right to put hands on Tim?
For anyone to? That’s Bruce’s kid, and no one has the fucking right to hurt them.

Bruce listens to it, all of it. Knows that he’s not leaving this room until the writhing pit of
rage is satisfied. He feeds the monster inside him with it, can feel the way his hands tremble
around Morrison’s neck, blood rushing in his ears.

The man is right. He’s been blind. Complacent. Damian is missing , because he hasn’t been
vigilant enough, he hasn’t been watching out for his sons. Too much has gone on behind his
back, but that ends now.

Morrison has the audacity to look shocked when Bruce closes a fist around his throat, a
choked, awful noise escaping him. Bruce cuts it off with his air flow, lifts Morrison again,
sliding his grip to the man’s hair before slamming his temple into the corner of the desk.

Morrison goes limp for a full ten seconds. Bruce shakes him awake again. Strikes the heel
of his palm into the man’s solar plexus. Pain over damage. But the damage will come, too.
Bruce’s limbs feel cold with it, the kind of frosting rage that leaves him hollow on the inside.

“Stop,” Morrison wheezes, as Bruce pulls him close, so they’re face to face. His eyes are
swelling, lips, too, the plea comes out garbled and slurred. The satisfaction from hitting him
has cooled. Bruce takes him to his knees instead, grabs the man’s wrist and picks up a finger,
twisting it until it crunches, dragging a scream out of Morrison.

Bruce doesn’t stop. He doesn’t care. The scream doesn’t feel him with any sort of
satisfaction, it only makes him more furious.

Tim is nineteen. He’s a teenager. He’s his Robin. His kid. His son. He’s supposed to be under
Bruce’s protection .

Bruce slams his heel of shoe into Morrison’s groin. There’s not enough air in the man to
scream anymore, but Bruce feels the way he writhes . Bruce does it again. And again. And
again . Morrison is a bleeding mass. He doesn’t even look human anymore.

Good.

He gets up to his feet, wiping the blood off his hands onto his pants. He spares a glance at
Morrison’s body. He’s not done. He needs to be done. He’s not. There is nothing he could do
to that man that would ever quell the fury in his chest. It’s what makes him turn away.

His knuckles are torn. He’s shaking from adrenaline. He has to work to force his jaw to
relax.

He licks his lips, taste the tang of his own sweat, and drops Morrison to run a hand over his
forehead. His body makes an audible thud, followed by a prolonged pained groan.

The monster in him hasn’t quieted, still so hungry to hurt. It would be so easy to finish this
now. To make it permanent. To make sure he never hurts anyone again. Never hurts Tim
again.

Bruce leaves Morrison there, alive, lying in a pool of his own blood and spit.

Damian sleeps easier and harder than he thinks he should. After the sedatives, after spending
who knows how long in a dark trunk, consciousness still slips away from him only hours
after Blade leaves. The basement is cold, despite the blankets, and the chill pulls him under
more than once, has Damian curling in on himself and squeezing his eyes shut, succumbing
to sleep once again.
When he wakes up for good, he feels no less tired than he did before he fell asleep. Almost
more , somehow, like the longer he stays in this basement, shackled and debased, the more
his life force drains. His throat is raw and dry, lips cracked to the point of bleeding. Whatever
reprieve the water gave him, it’s long since gone. He hasn’t urinated since he got here, since
before that. He hasn’t eaten in longer.

His appetite has roused itself once more, its apparent death at the sight of Lamont not nearly
as permanent as it felt. There’s a pulsing ache at the base of his gut, tendrils of dull,
beseeching pain up his spine. Bile churns, but he has nothing to throw up but acid.

Damian lies there, feeling pathetic. His forehead cushioned by a blanket provided to him by
his captor, swaddled in cold comfort. The metal has warmed to his body temperature, but the
skin underneath is already sweaty and chafing. It’s not tight at all, but it does smell . Like wet
pennies.

Every breath heaves the chains a little, not much, but the faint tinkling noise reminds Damian
of windchimes in Shirakawa. Short, crisp spring mornings before the height of tourist season
drove Talia to more populous cities.

With little else to do, Damian has slowly bent the plastic of the water bottle into as sharp a
point as he can make it. It’s useless against his current restraints—he did try to forge a
lockpick out of it earlier to no avail—but he thinks he might be able to use it as some sort of
weapon against Blade.

The man has been careful to keep his distance, but if Damian keeps it close and fakes some
sort of injury then—

Then nothing .

Blade had no key on him before, when he’d chained Damian to the ceiling, and despite his
inane behavior, the man has shown to be capable of learning. That’s a dangerous attribute for
a captor to have, and Damian is painfully aware of this. He wouldn’t have the key. If Damian
damages him enough he falls unconscious, and he’s within reach he might be able to pilfer
through his pockets for more tools.

Maybe Blade would have his gun on him. He could shoot through the chain. Release himself.
But if he fails, then Damian will remain on this floor, and Blade will get up and he’ll be right
back where he started. Or worse, Blade will be dead, and a moldering corpse will remain on
this floor with him as they both rot to nothingness.

Father and his siblings will find nothing other than proof of Damian’s lack of resourcefulness
and his blundering incompetence.

It would give Timothy too much satisfaction.

So Damian lies there, with his windchime chains and the slow fading warmth of sleep to
cradle him in the darkness. It’s hours before he hears movement upstairs, ambling footsteps,
unhurried. A murmur of sound. One voice. It puts a shudder down Damian’s spine.
Mother always stressed the importance of observation. Of negotiation. There was never a
compromise Talia Al-Ghul would be made to settle to, never a deal she wouldn’t come out on
top of. She’s had the smartest man in the world wrapped around her finger, and Damian was
meant to inherit her silver tongue.

He didn’t.

It is his mother’s shame. His own as well, now.

If this was Mother, she would have already talked herself into being released by now. If it
was Father, he would have had the resourcefulness to actually free himself, unlike Damian,
who is not creative nor capable. He is only here because he is pathetic. Father will never
come for him, not when he knows what shame Damian brings. Mother would have left him
for a time to teach him a lesson.

Blade descends the stairs slower than the last few times. Or maybe that’s just Damian’s
perception, making time drip by like molasses, a side effect of the damnable civilian shock.
His eyes feel dry in his skull, they hurt from the effort to hold them open. Damian doesn’t
want to face the humiliation of learning that he can’t sit up on his own, so he doesn’t bother
trying.

“Dames? You up, bud?”

He talks like Dick .

Soft voice, soft words. Probing. Damian can’t even hear the echoes of the glacial apathy from
before. It’s like he’s two different people in one, leaving Damian feeling off-kilter and wrong-
footed.

Damian can’t get enough saliva on his tongue to form words. His mouth went dry hours ago
when he slept, leaving everything hot and sticky. It feels like the skin of his soft palette is
cracking. He shifts his head somewhat, tilting back to look as Blade approaches.

Damian’s hand curls weakly around the water bottle.

He had, perhaps, overestimated his strength. He doesn’t think that he could scratch Blade, let
alone fight him enough to escape. He can’t even raise his head. Father would still be capable
of fighting, even as malnourished and dehydrated as Damian is.

Damian is just weak.

Blade looks at the shiv. He seems resigned to it. He’s got another tray in his hands. A cookie
sheet. Damian smells more food. Somehow, the scent of it makes his stomach roll more, and
the nausea returns with full force.

Blade sets the cookie sheet on the floor before nudging the shiv out of Damain’s fingers with
the edge of his boot. Damian doesn’t let him, but it doesn’t matter. The water bottle is kicked
out of Damian’s reach, clattering loudly on the other end of the basement.
“Seriously kid?” Blade crouches in front of him, reaches into Damian’s nest to pull back the
blanket. He can feel the man’s eyes on him, raking over his prone form, before coming to the
conclusion that Damian hasn’t somehow managed to hide anything else on his person. Jokes
on him. The cap is tucked inside the brace, just in case Damian can find a use for it.

Damian glares.

Blade drops the blanket. “I told you. You’re not going anywhere. The sooner you accept that
the easier it’s going to be on both of us, don’t you think? I brought you more food, and some
water.”

The tray is tugged closer. Damian lifts his head. There’s another water bottle, and a glass of
milk, too. The food is a bowl of malt-o-meal. Damian can smell the cinnamon in it. He’s
never felt more hungry in his life. He thinks that even if Blade had offered him a bowl of
steak and nothing else, he would have begged to eat it anyway.

Damian swallows painfully. He makes no show of defiance, reaches out with a trembling
hand for the water bottle. His fingertips feel numb, and he can’t quite grab the plastic despite
his best efforts. Blade seems to take pity on him, because he takes the water bottle and twists
off the cap. Shifts closer.

Damian’s breathing picks up despite himself as the man scoops a hand under his shoulders to
help ease him upright. “Okay, kid, just take it easy,” he says, words low and soothing.
Damian lets himself give into the fantasy for a moment, that this is his older brother, and he’s
safe at home, but sick. And the hands that are touching him haven’t made love with a corpse.
The water bottle is pressed to Damian’s lips. “Gotta get you hydrated, alright?”

It almost hurts going down. Too cold against his cracked lips, too sudden on his parched
throat. Damian chokes on the first swallow, aspirates, and he’s pulled up higher, further into
Blade’s chest, a harsh hand slapping at his back while he coughs.

He squeezes his eyes shut, tries to steady himself, but the chains are rattling again, and they
don’t sound like wind chimes anymore. There’s no mistaking the harsh clang of metal on
metal, the way it pulls at his throat until Blade worms a finger beneath the collar and lifts it to
give him some breathing room.

“Slower,” he says, and forces the water bottle against his lips again.

Halfway through it, Damian feels uncomfortably bloated. He can feel the water slosh in his
stomach, sitting heavy, igniting the nausea. He’s gone longer without food, but that doesn’t
stop the effects of starvation. His stomach has shrunk.

“That’s not good,” Blade tells him, when Damian pushes away the water bottle without
finishing it. “Kid, you’ve gotta finish this.”

Damian pushes weakly at him again when Blade tries to press the bottle back to his lips.
“Can’t,” he manages.
Blade deliberates for a moment before relenting. “Right. We’ll try again later. Do you think
you can eat anything?”

Not prepared by this man’s hands. Damian lies limply in his arms like a doll, but still
manages to swallow several times before saying, “Fuck you.”

Blade sets the water bottle on the floor. Doesn’t let go of Damian. Instead, he starts petting
him. “Shh,” Blade murmurs. His fingernails are long enough it hurts to be touched by him.
“It’s okay. I know you’re upset, Dames. This is a big change from what you’re used to, huh?
We’ll be fine, though. Just gotta make it through the next couple of days.”

How long has he been here? How long before Father finds him? Damian gave himself a
week, but that was when he thought he’d been taken for hours. Given the state of his body,
the number of outfits he’s seen Blade cycle through, it’s days at the least. Time has run
together, and Damian doesn’t know when he should expect a rescue. If he should.

What does Blade anticipate changing in the next couple of days ? Does he think Damian will
cede to him? That his will is so flimsy? Damian will not bow to a man like him. He is the heir
to the League of Shadows, the heir to the Bat , his lineage has built empires.

Damian takes in an unsteady breath. “My father would—”

The hands tighten in his hair, painful now instead of soothing. “I don’t want a ransom,
Damian. I thought we went over this.”

“You’re asinine,” Damian says, frustrated. “A ransom would end far more favorably for you.
You could leave the city, get out of this dilapidated shack, procure a new identity.”

“I don’t do this for the money .” Blade points out.

“No,” Damian mutters, “you aberration. You do it to satisfy your sick paraphilia.”

Blade shoves him off. Damian smashes into the floor. The blow is weak, and the collision
even more so, but the pressure makes him ache hard enough he has to grit his teeth. The swirl
of dizziness is overwhelming.

“That’s not what this is about, you stupid— ” Blade snarls, stops himself. The switch has
flipped again, the warmth drained from him like it was never there in the first place. He chose
his namesake well. The edge of his temper is as thin as the dao Damian trained with as a
child.

Damian keeps his eyes closed. Curls a hand into a fist. He wishes he had his water bottle.
“Isn’t it?”

“You know any of the shit that Lamont did? That man was a monster. You want to talk about
the dead and dignity? He didn’t deserve any. Sure, whatever, it’s a little fucked, but in
comparison to what they were doing? This is nothing.”

Damian opens his eyes into slivers. Stares into the blurry mass where he knows Blade is. His
tongue is sharp, and ready to delve out more verbal blows. Survive, his father’s voice urges in
his head. Survive.

How could this be to your advantage? Mother’s asks, calm. Clinical.

He’s supposed to humanize. Make his captor like him. He’s supposed to live.

And right now, that isn’t being defiant, or hurling insults, it’s compliancy. He has already
proven his capability for escape, which is dangerous. Now, he must play the long game, if
Father does not come for him, then Damian will simply have to wait out his captor. He can’t
hold him forever. Blade will make a mistake.

It’s Damian’s job now to make him commit it.

Damian’s eyes slide down. “He broke my arm.”

Blade pauses. Follows Damian’s gaze to the wrist brace. It’s not something Damian should
advertise—a tenuous connection between Robin and his civilian identity—but it’s not like the
man hadn’t already caught him at Lamont’s apartment. “You’re a kid. What could you have
possibly done?”

Raided his drug stash with Red Hood, stealing millions from the man’s grasp.

Damian shrugs, mutely. He doesn’t really have an excuse for being there.

Blade seems to realize that he’s not going to get any more information. His shoulders get
tight, and his face goes unhappy. “I’m sorry that he did that to you. You know what kind of
person he was. Do you really think that what I do is worse? At least I’m cleaning up the
streets while I go.”

Damian swallows his instinctive answer. Survive. “I understand.”

Blade’s expression flickers with relief. “Good. That’s good, Dames. We need to understand
each other, if we’re going to get along. And I want us to get along. Don’t you?”

Damian wants to go home. He wants to roll over and sleep until his stomach has stopped
aching, and his head doesn’t spin anymore. He wants Mother, or Father, or Dick. Jason. He’d
settle for Tim here with him, if only it meant he wasn't alone with this man.

Instead he nods, biting his tongue for the umpteenth time. Doesn’t bite his captor when the
man loops an arm under his back and tugs him closer again, forcing Damian to sit up in his
nest and try a bite of the porridge.

It’s sticky and the grains mush in his mouth unpleasantly, but it coats his stomach and warms
his chest. And as long as he’s very still, and keeps his eyes squeezed shut, he can almost
pretend like it isn’t Blade behind him, spoon feeding every bite.
Chapter End Notes

thank you for reading <3<3

 Something's in my head That I'm not sure that I can fight
through
Chapter by Chemical_Processes

Chapter Notes

TW: discussed sexual assault & non-sexual nudity

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Dick is acting weird.

Tim doesn’t know what’s wrong with him, but he’s been twitchy all morning, like he’s
waiting for worse news to land in the middle of their bad news. He’s checked on Tim twice,
even though Tim hasn’t left the kitchen or made moves to do so. He gives Tim an awkward
smile every time it happens, and always has an excuse ready, but he’s still being weird .

“You should talk to him,” he tells Jason. The man is pacing a rut into the floors. His visit to
his lieutenant did nothing for his nerves, apparently, and now all that anxious energy is Tim’s
problem. Eight thousand square feet and he just had to choose the six that Tim is occupying.

“Not my anxiety attack,” Jason dismisses immediately. Then seems to actually process the
words, and looks back at Tim. “How weird is weird?”

“He’s—” Tim’s nose wrinkles, “ hovering .”

Jason’s eyebrow raises. “Oh. So. It’s like a day that ends in y for him?”

He gives his brother an exasperated expression. “You know what I mean.”

“He always hovers,” Jason points out, takes another lap around the room. He stops to sigh
loudly. “Where is he?”

Like Tim knows. Like Tim is going anywhere near the powder keg that is Dick Grayson right
now. He’s going to explode, and then Tim will get to know exactly what kind of weird it is,
and he’d much rather have a human shield when that time comes. Good thing Jason is always
willing to do the martyr play.

“Not sure,” Tim admits, “probably in the cave. He’s been running point while Bruce is out.”

No one—I.g. Dick—will give him an answer when he asks where the man vanished to, and
it’s starting to make Tim anxious. There’s not a lot of information that Dick and Bruce won’t
share with each other, but they can be selective when it comes to including the rest of them.
Damian has been missing for seventy-eight hours now. They’re past the three day mark. The
chances of Damian’s recovery are dropping every hour.

Tim has been trying to ignore the idea that they might have found the kid’s body.

Bruce wouldn’t be this quiet about it, would he? He wasn’t for Jason . He practically
screamed his grief into every person he met for months after. Damian wouldn’t be any
different. Tim is terrified. He’s trying to pretend he isn’t.

Focusing on finding him hasn’t been nearly as distracting to that gnawing anxiety as he wants
it to be.

“Timster, honestly, I think he’s probably just like, y’know, freaked the fuck out like the rest of
us are.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Tim says, and neither of them addresses the underlying issue of Damian’s
corpse.

He turns back to his computer. The traffic camera outside of Lamont’s apartment building
was a dead end. He’s been tasked with going through all the known Executioner victims and
their profiles, any evidence recovered from either the crime scenes or the dead bodies.

Jason takes a seat next to him, releasing a gusty sigh.

He stares at the computer for a while before rolling his head along the back of the chair to
look at Tim’s face. He reminds Tim sharply of Dick with the motion, doing the same thing
yesterday. In some ways, Tim has no idea how they could be mistaken for siblings, adoption
papers or not, but there are times like this, where their haptics have bled out all over each
other, that it’s hard to ignore.

“Hey, be straight with me. You good? You look worse than last time I saw you.”

“Haven’t slept.” Tim dismisses. “And I’m bi.”

Jason slaps a hand over his heart. “You homophobic asshole . You knew you were gay and
didn’t tell me? When was your coming out party? Are you stealing my shtick again ,
Replacement?” The nickname is fond, but it still makes something in Tim’s stomach sour.
Jason huffs, opens his mouth, likely to make more jokes, but he’s interrupted by the door
bursting open. He doesn’t want Jason to be funny.

Bruce Wayne all but explodes into the space. Jason jerks forward, hand on Tim’s shoulder in
instinct, the other going for his gun. Tim’s reaction time is slower, but he’s already halfway to
his feet before he actually looks at his father.

Bruce is covered in blood. Some of it has dried, most of it hasn’t. It’s splattered on his face,
and up his sleeves. The knuckles on his right hand are split, oozing softly. There are no
defensive wounds that Tim can see, but he still opens his mouth to try and ask, but can’t.
Horror and terror war for dominance, severing his vocal cords.
The look on his face is somehow worse. A mask of cold anger, too controlled for the way he
prowls into the room. For all the world a predator, lithe and graceful. He looks like he killed
something, in a three-piece suit, his gelled hair in disarray.

“Bruce?” Jason says, because it’s been longer since he’s been Robin. Because the kind of
conditioned paralysis isn’t as effective on him. He’s still frozen in place, halfway to his feet
and watching Batman approach, but Tim feels welded to the floor. Bruce’s eyes are pinned on
him .

“Hey,” Jason continues, hand tightening on Tim’s shoulder, “what happened? Did Damian
—”

Tim watches the distance between them decrease with every flailing heartbeat. He doesn’t
know what’s about to happen and leans back into Jason on instinct, but by the time his
brother seems to realize that’s what he’s doing and reciprocates the desired protection, it’s too
late for it to be effective.

Bruce grabs hold of Tim’s shoulders and drags him into an embrace.

It’s squeezing, the pressure painful, and Bruce releases a half-choked sob. Gross and
explosive, and Tim feels every muscle in his body tense up. Strong, familiar arms wrap
around him, a hand on his head pushing his face into Bruce’s shoulder. He’s taller now, could
nearly be eye-level with the man on even ground, but he feels dwarfed by his father’s bulk.
Enveloped completely, practically cradled , in a way Bruce hasn’t since he was a kid. He’s
been hugged since then, but not this desperately.

Tears drip onto Tim’s shoulder, soaking through the thin fabric of his T-shirt, and despite not
knowing what the hell has gotten into him, Tim feels his own throat clog up in turn, eyes
burning.

“Bruce,” Jason’s voice, behind them, is straining for calm and landing somewhere south of
panicked. “What happened?”

Bruce pulls back some, not to release Tim, but to look up at Jason. “You should go. I need to
talk to Tim. Alone.”

“Uh,” Jason says, eloquently, “yeah, that’s great. I’ll just take a seat then. Right here. While
you explain what the fuck is going on. Tim, are you…did something happen? You’re not
dying, right? He’s not dying? You’re not dying. I’d know if you were dying.”

“Jason shut up,” Tim wheezes.

“Hey, I—” Dick stops mid sentence in the doorway of the kitchen. His presence seems to
ease something in Bruce, because the man finally lets Tim go. He grips his arm, his eyes
filled with so much sorrow that it hurts to look at it. Tim avoids his gaze, settles on his chin
instead.

Jason rounds the table to stand next to Dick, hands crossed over his chest, looking between
all of them. Tim hates the pressure of his eyes. The panic is growing in his stomach, and with
it, the urge to flee. He feels like he’s six again, and he’s hiding from his parents after getting
into trouble.

Dick’s mouth gets tight. “What happened at WI?”

At—

Shit.

Bruce’s face is wet with the tears. Tim doesn’t know the last time he’s seen the man cry. The
last time he saw him this unhinged, uncaring of the mess he’s made of himself. Tim feels a pit
drop in his stomach, dread winding around his neck like a snake.

Bruce cups his face with one hand, says, quietly, “Tim,” and he knows exactly what Bruce
has found out. His skin crawls.

“Did you kill him?” Tim’s voice is empty.

“I hope so,” Bruce whispers. The confession makes Tim cold. His father releases a
shuddering breath. “I’m so sorry. Tim. Tim, I should have—I didn’t know. You know that,
right?”

Tim shrugs, looks away. His chest is tight, almost too tight to speak, face hot with
embarrassment. He never meant for Bruce to find out, for anyone to find out. He’d just been
doing his job, completing a mission. He’s seen Bruce’s logs from the earliest days, how far he
went to solve a case. He knows the kind of dedication his father expects. Part of him didn’t
want to come clean about what he did, how far he let it go, for fear of finding approval in
place of condemnation.

He doesn’t feel any sort of relief, looking at Bruce’s tears. The wash of guilt is worse.

“Know…what?” Jason again. Lower, more sober. Or maybe just more dangerous. There’s an
edge to him now, soothing the frayed strands of panic. Dick puts a hand on Jason’s shoulder,
face grim.

More of that squirmy humiliation. Tim wishes he could sink into the floor.

The longer he stares at Bruce’s tears, the more that Tim finds a new, unexpected feeling rising
in his stomach— wrath . There was a part of him, inside that coiled dread waiting for
approval, that assumed Bruce just knew. He had to. He’s the world’s greatest detective. How
could he not know? Tim was right there.

He looks at Bruce’s tears and feels nothing like sympathy.

“About Patrick Morrison molesting me,” Tim’s voice has more strength than he was
expecting it to. It sounds hard. Like steel. He feels like he’s shattered glass, split into dazzling
pieces and waiting to be stepped over and broken into millions more. He turns his attention
away from his brother to look back at Bruce, and reaches up with shaking hands to peel back
the edge of his shirt to reveal the line of hickies on his collarbone. “You didn’t know. Look at
me. How could you not know!?”
His brothers are making noise. Jason is making noise, because Jason’s never known when to
shut the fuck up and sit the fuck down. Tim doesn’t bother listening to them, to Dick’s
cursory attempts at settling his younger brother. It burns ; the anger that’s been eating at him
since he was assigned this case, since the first comment Morrison made about his pretty
mouth . He knew it was an occupational hazard, that Dick’s tolerated worse and Jason’s made
a game of blowing out kneecaps whenever it happens, but this time still felt uniquely
violating. Maybe because of how close his proximity was to Bruce. Because it was Tim
Drake getting defiled, not a mask, not Caroline Hill, or some other fake identity. Because
Tim hoped he was worth more than that to Bruce.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Bruce sounds like he’s being tortured.

Tim shoves him back. He doesn’t want to sympathize. He doesn’t want to make Bruce feel
better. He wants someone to be just as hurt as he’s been for weeks now. “Don’t you fucking
say that to me. I did! I said something to you yesterday!”

“That wasn’t—”

Tim is getting angrier. “Enough? What? Was I supposed to sit across from you and list out
what he’s done to me for you to care? For me to talk about when he pinned me in the elevator
and made me kiss him, or when he shoved his hands down my pants in the middle of a
budget meeting? Or how about four fucking days ago, when he pinned me in my office and
gave me these?” He gestures wildly at the hickies. “He was going to rape me, he talked about
it constantly, and I was supposed to bring that up to you?”

“ Yes !” Bruce explodes. “What possessed you to keep this to yourself?”

Tim wants to break something. He wants to shake something. He laughs, wet and desperate. “
Did I?! I told you he had child porn on his computer, it’s not like I was hiding his faults from
you.”

“God fucking damn it, Tim!” Bruce grabs his shoulders, and the contact is gentle despite his
fury, “You are too important to me for you to pull shit like this anymore!”

Tim blinks. “ What ?”

“I’m not Jack Drake. You’re not on your own anymore,” Bruce says. His voice is trying for
patient, but it isn’t. “If you tell me things, I will actually help you. That’s my job. I’m your
father. You don’t need to allude to something in the hopes that someone will pick up on it.
You’re my son. I would never have let something like this happen if you’d told me.”

Tim is breathing hard. “I see,” his voice is flat, “so it’s my fault for not talking. Got it.”

Bruce’s expression screws up, mouth opening to argue, but Tim doesn’t need this right now.
He’d been handling Morrison just fucking fine, would’ve gotten the case wrapped up, too.
Not that it’s possible anymore, now that Bruce has undoubtedly put him in a body cast. That
means none of it matters. Everything Tim tolerated, every uncomfortable touch and lingering
glance. What the fuck was the point?
Tim shoves past him. Miracle of miracles, Bruce actually lets him. Tim scampers around the
edge of the table, avoiding Dick’s arm that tries to snatch at him. His eyes are red with
unshed tears, and he’s gone deathly pale. Jason has gone completely still, Dick’s vice grip on
his arm meaningless. Tim doesn’t think Jason could move if he tried.

“Tim,” Bruce calls after him. “Tim!”

Tim pushes through the door and slams it shut behind him. It’s a childish move, one he hasn’t
pulled since he was five or six, and Jack had made sure he didn’t do it again. That doesn’t
make it any less satisfying.

Not as satisfying is the empty hallway, the way the impact echoes around a vacant manor.
Tim turns his back on the kitchen, still breathing hard, too warm. He needs some air, needs to
clear his head. Everything is stiff and aching from sitting too long, eyes burning from staring
at the computer. Not the threat of tears. Just the computer.

He finds the back door before any of the idiots in the kitchen can get it in their head to follow
him. Pushes out into the garden without once losing speed. The weather has turned in the past
few days, gone from cold to frigid, dew frosting beneath his feet. November is almost upon
them, the end of October sneaking up faster now that his days are a void of searching for
Damian. He doesn’t have a jacket.

Whatever. He circles the edge of the garden before slipping inside and easing his way down
on the ground next to a tree. He buries his face into his hands and breathes in and out as
steadily as he can manage.

He feels disgusting. He hasn’t showered in days. It’s the longest stretch since he’s been
working with Morrison consistently. He was up to four a day, but it felt like no matter what
he did, he couldn’t get the touch off of his body. Out from under his skin.

But of course Bruce had to go in and react with his stupid bullshit, and now Tim has spent
months listening to the detailed planning of his rape for nothing but the nightmares.

It doesn’t take long for Dick to find him. Jason is unexpected, looking sort of lost. Dogging
Dick’s steps like an overgrown puppy. Tim swallows the vitriol. Jason’s been getting too
much of it, he has nothing to do with this. Tim barely even saw him before Damian went
missing.

“We’ve got trampolines,” Dick says, as soon as he’s in ear shot. His voice is purposefully
light. The shock’s worn off, then. His talking to victims voice is somewhat condescending,
given the circumstances. “A swingset. Loveseat. Two jungle gyms. You chose a wet patch of
grass.”

“Yep. At least I chose it.”

It’s mean. Unnecessarily. He really succeeded in biting back his anger.

Jason flinches. Dick doesn’t. Takes Tim in stride, the way he always does, stopping right
beside him lowering himself to the ground, careful not to touch Tim. His hair has been put up
again, a thick aviator jacket pulled on, like he’s anticipating being out here a while. He thinks
it was Jason’s at some point. Tim feels abruptly like a tantruming child, throwing a fit that
Dick plans on waiting out.

Jason pulls off his own jacket and settles it around Tim’s shoulders before just standing there,
hands folded across his chest. He looks like he would rather be anywhere else, and, at the
same time, like there’s nowhere he would rather be more, if stubbornly. No one says anything
until Jason finally squats down, sitting on his haunches. He pokes Tim in the forehead.
“You’re kind of fucked in the head, kid.”

“ Jason ,” Dick chides, as Tim mutters, “Fuck you.”

Jason’s lips purse. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Oh please,” Tim pushes his hand away, leans away from him. In turn, it puts him closer to
Dick, who puts off heat like a furnace and doesn’t quite manage to restrain himself from
wrapping an arm around Tim’s shoulders. “I was Robin . Morrison didn’t do anything I didn’t
let him.”

“That’s…really not how that works, kid,” Jason says, more carefully.

Dick exhales. He presses a chaste kiss to Tim’s hairline, smoothing Tim’s bangs away from
his eyes. His brother’s victim voice is back, “So why did you? If you could have stopped
him, why let him?”

Tim looks at Dick. It’s too dark, his features are sharp and slanted with it. But their eyes
meet, blue on blue, and in the end Dick is the first to look away.

Like he has any room to talk about letting . Tim could be cruel enough to point it out, the
hypocrisy. He could .

But he doesn’t think he could ever be angry enough to dig his heel into that particular sore
spot. Not when Dick hasn’t even done anything wrong.

“You know why,” Tim says, “mission comes first.”

“Not at the expense of you ,” Dick protests. “Trust me.”

“Damian,” the name makes them flinch, Tim can see the tightening in their expressions. Too
soon. “Broke his arm trying to bust a few kilos of fentanyl. What I was doing could have shut
down a billion dollar human trafficking ring.”

“Yeah,” Dick agrees, “it could have. But you can’t help anyone if you chip off too many
pieces of yourself.”

“Plus,” Jason pipes up, nudging Tim’s knee, “I personally would rather the ring remains
untouched if it means you don’t get raped or sexually assaulted or like. Y’know. Kidnapped
and held in some guy’s basement.”

Tim doesn’t know what to say to that. There’s warmth pooling in his stomach, somewhere.
“Yeah, I guess,” Tim agrees, empty.

Jason blows out a breath. “Okay, look at me. You’re like. A baby. Sometimes when shit like
this happens to us it doesn’t feel as easy to stop. It doesn’t make you a bad Robin or
whatever. You’re just…normal.”

Dick makes a face. Tim shifts, uncomfortable. “I get it, Jason. Thanks.”

“Next time someone bad touches you, don’t keep that shit to yourself. Bruce is right, you
don’t have to handle it on your own.”

Bad touches. As if that can be used to summarize everything that’s happened. Like two words
encompass the entirety of this, and the haunting panic that has been circling him for months.
All it boils down to. Right.

“Yeah.”

Dick kisses the crown of his hair again. Tim lets himself give into the comfort and leans into
Dick’s arm, burying his face into his brother’s shoulder. He hides there, like it can keep him
safe from anything when he knows it won’t. He has marks on his collarbones to prove it.

“I love you,” Dick murmurs.

I wish that meant anything. “ I love you, too,” Tim promises, and buries himself into Dick’s
arms the way he’s wanted to for months, and pretends, even for a moment, that his family can
actually keep him safe. It didn’t do shit for him, or for Damian, and Tim feels that in every
fiber of his being.

At least it wasn’t the kid’s body. Just Tim.

Blade has left a bucket in the corner. Its purpose is not lost on Damian.

It’s not the only change to his living quarters. He decides to take it as a boon, the extra
blankets that Blade has pulled from some dusty crevice for him, the heater on the stairs, far
out of Damian’s orbit, plugged in and sputtering a smokey sort of warmth. He thinks it runs
on propane, but wonders why Blade hasn’t just run an extension cord down to the basement.
If it is a ploy to poison him with toxic gaseous byproducts, it is a needlessly elaborate one.
His captor appears to be a complete fool.

Evidenced again by the pedestrian bribery he offers Damian the third time he comes to feed
him.

“He’s soft, isn’t he?”

Damian holds the stuffed dog in his hands, cradled against his stomach. The tufts of fur
contrast with the smooth button eyes. He runs his thumb down the side of it, black coat
spotted with brown, stuffed with cotton but also something heavier at the bottom. Sand,
maybe? Or some sort of grain. It fits in Damian’s palms perfectly, a stitched tongue
perpetually lagging.
“You should name him.”

Damian will not do so. To accept such a task would be to cast approval on Blade’s actions,
and he has none. He’s nearly fourteen, not four , and he neither needs nor wants a stuffed
animal. This is a child’s toy, and Damian is a man.

He can’t make himself let go, though. Or stop stroking over the dog’s fur. It is soft, softer
than the blankets Blade has brought him, even softer than his shirt. Which has started to smell
like sweat and dust, now. Damian’s trying not to think of how dirty this particular pair of
underwear has gotten, and instead be grateful he is afforded the luxury of them.

Blade crouches, setting the tray in front of Damian again. He’s sitting up on his own today,
though it’s not without effort. Blade had come back often—yesterday? The day before?—
before he fell asleep to force more water down his throat. The rehydration process had been
painful and slow.

Damian doesn’t feel much better today than he did before, but he has enough coordination
and strength to be upright of his own volition.

His silence offends Blade. He thinks he should have thought of something to say by now.
Maybe Mother would instruct him to play into this farce of civility, or Father might suggest
he take comfort in the affection Blade offers. He can do neither. His jaw is clenched and his
eyes are locked on the stuffed dog, fingers moving in a mechanical petting motion.

If this is still shock, it’s getting old. Damian would like to be done with it now. There is a
surreal film covering the world; the lethargy is largely unhelpful to his greater schemes.

“Dames,” Blade says, wheedling. “Are you going to eat today?”

Blade has brought a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Only that. The idea of eating it, the
motion of chewing and swallowing mechanically, seems exhausting. He’s picked up the
water and set it down twice, he doesn’t know what Blade is expecting out of him.
Uncontrolled hunger, perhaps, wild like a beast that’s been starving.

Damian is not a beast. Not after Mother sophisticated him, and Father tamed him. Damian is
a boy, and his hunger has made him hollow instead of wild. The chains echo his emptiness.
He’d gotten tired of the sound of dragging, had coiled them all on top of one of the blankets
and folded it over to muffle them. It gives the illusion of freedom, as well.

He reaches for the sandwich, still holding the dog in hand. Imagines throwing either of them
at Blade, screaming at the man, wrapping the heavy chains around his throat and choking him
until his eyes bulge out and his face turns blue. It’s a vicious little fantasy.

He tears off the edge of the crust and jams it into his mouth. Chews. Swallows. It tastes like
nothing. He follows it with water. Does the same motion again. Blade relaxes. He’s sitting
just on the outskirts of Damian’s reach, legs in butterfly, arms resting loosely on his thighs.
He nods approvingly when Damian accidentally catches his eye.

The chewing motion stops. Damian has to work to get it going again.
“That's it, kid, good job,” Blade’s praise only makes Damian angry. It’s belittling. He’s not a
child.

He stops thrice to retrieve the water bottle. It’s not a large sandwich, but the peanut butter is
thick, and Damian’s mouth is dry. His jaw hurts by the end, like it’s somehow forgotten the
motions of eating in Damian’s short break. Let the muscles atrophy. Pathetic.

“Have you ever read Shakespeare?” Blade asks, scooting closer to retrieve the cookie sheet
acting as a tray when Damian is finished. “Romeo and Juliet? Maybe for school?”

“I am familiar,” Damian answers, vague on purpose. He hasn’t covered any of Shakespeare’s

plays in Gotham Academy’s curriculum yet, Timothy said he wouldn’t start until high school,
but Damian’s studies beforehand already introduced him.

Damian didn’t like it. Shakespeare is too long winded.

“When I was in college we read the Two Gentlemen of Verona.” He’s chattering. He’s
burdening Damian with his chatter . About Shakespeare. Death by propane fuel would have
been preferable. “Don’t remember much except the dog; he was funny. His name was Crab.
What do you think, think our buddy looks like a Crab?”

No.

What kind of name is Crab? It’s not strong, or meaningful. It’s an observation from someone.
There’s an animal. And in this case, it’s not even accurate.

“He doesn’t,” Damian says. “He’s a dog.”

“Well, yeah, so was the one in the play,” Blade points out.

“Being wrong twice doesn’t make you any less of an idiot.” Damian squeezes the dog. The
sand, or grains, or silicone beads, they squish in his hands. It eases a coil of irritation in his
chest. Makes him soften his voice. “He will be Titus.”

Blade frowns. It is not lost on him, his proposal of a light-hearted comedy, rebutted by
Damian’s selection of a violent tragedy. He’s not brave enough to point it out, though. “Titus.
That’s a pretty tough name.”

The little stuffed dog in Damian’s hand looks back at the both of them, tiny pink tongue on a
thread smile. Damian closes his palm over the toy. “Yes.”

Blade takes the tray back upstairs. Thus far, this has been an indication that the man will
leave him alone for a few hours, but to Damian’s displeasure, the man returns back
downstairs in under ten minutes. Just enough time for Damian to hear the faucet running in
the sink, the clang of dishware, and then Blade is back descending the stairs and inflicting
himself on Damian once more.

This time he has a silver key in hand. A holstered gun on his belt. His jacket has been
removed, revealing bare arms.
Damian narrows his eyes, tugs the blanket up to his chin. Blade sighs when he catches the
look on Damian’s face. “Kid, you’re rank. We’ve gotta clean you up.”

He smells fine . His hair might be greasy, and the underwear has certainly seen better days,
but it’s not like Damian’s been running laps. It’s not even warm enough to sweat. It’s
ridiculous. The man fucked a corpse, and now he’s complaining about Damian’s state?

He bites back his initial protest. The tub is upstairs. Upstairs provides more opportunities for
escape than down here, where the entire room has been stripped bare. Blade will have to
remove him from the collar as well.

Blade steps right over Damian’s nest, only just having the courtesy not to stomp on the
bedding with his muddy boots. He reaches above Damian, for the D-ring on the ceiling, not
the collar. Damian scowls.

The chain is gathered up in Blade’s fist. He clicks his teeth at Damian. “Up you go. Come
on.”

If he wanted a puppy so bad, he should have just taken Titus for himself. Damian presses his
palms into the floor, pushing himself up slowly, wobbling his way to his feet. He hasn’t
moved in hours, maybe days. He feels like a newly birthed fawn, coltish and stumbling.

Or like Blade’s puppy. Toddling after the leash Blade tugs him along with. Humiliation
makes his stomach turn. Blade has little patience for Damian’s weakness. The chain is pulled
roughly to redirect his attention when Damian stares too long at the knives in the kitchen.

The bath is on the second story. Damian’s legs don’t want to cooperate with a second
staircase, and he would have slipped, falling back and likely smashing his skull open, but the
collar catches him roughly around the neck, the chain snapping taut as Damian, choking, tries
to orient himself.

Blade curses, jerks up instinctively which does not help Damian’s sudden lack of oxygen,
before he reaches down and wraps his hand around the boy’s bicep, picking him up by one
arm and putting him back on the step he fell from. The obstacle stresses Blade, but not
enough for him to call off the impromptu bathtime.

“You okay?”

Damian rasps, fitting his hand under the collar to massage the abused skin there. Seething
rage settles in his stomach, and he snaps out before he can stop himself, “Have you always
been this stupid? You have eyes. Make use of them.”

He’s jerked up another step, ungently. Blade does not ask again.

The bathroom is cramped. Barely any space between the toilet and the bathtub, lit up by a
single un-shaded light bulb. Blade turns the knob on, a torrent of water spluttering from the
faucet.

Damian stares at it, bare foot, and remembers all that bathing entails.
“Hands up, over your head.” Blade is reaching for the hem of his shirt. It’s long enough to
cover most of his thighs, a paltry offering against the immodesty of his underwear, one that
the man now seeks to revoke. Damian recoils. Blade makes an impatient noise. “I’m not
going to do anything. You’re fine.”

“I don’t want to,” Damian says. It’s blurted, a compulsion he can’t keep at bay. Mortification
swirls through him.

“You’re dirty.”

Damian shakes his head. He is, he feels it, he’d never go to school like this. But he would
rather be caked in his own filth than undress in front of this man any more than he already
has. Why couldn’t he just stay in the basement? No one is going to see him down there. If he
grows a skin mold, who’s going to complain? The only person it will affect is Damian. It
would even make his corpse less appealing.

“Look, kid, I don’t want to make you,” Blade says, like he’s being the reasonable one here,
and Damian is wild and unruly, “but you can either do this by choice or I will force you.
What do you want?”

“Don’t touch me,” Damian says immediately.

“Deal.”

He still hesitates to pull off his shirt. The man has already seen him mostly naked, he’s
already stripped him once before. This should be nothing. It still feels different, almost
intimate, to be the one to choose this vulnerability.

The air is cold. He hadn’t noticed how much warmth he was getting from the propane heater.
Gooseflesh prickles his skin, and he stands there, beholden to Blade’s stare. The shirt gets
caught on the chain.

Blade frowns. Threads the chain through the neck hole, displeased at the split second he has
to let go of Damian’s collar to get him naked. The shirt is dropped to the floor. Damian thinks
it started out blue when he was first put in it, it’s a dull gray now.

Blade reaches over him to dip a finger into the building bathwater. He seems satisfied,
shaking the water off his fingertip. He looks back at Damian. “Everything off. You need to
wash down there, and I’ve gotta do a load of laundry for you.”

Damian slips out of the underwear, kicking it off his feet. It’s the same as after a bad injury,
stripped down in the med bay in front of his entire family. If he can bear that exposure, he can
do it now. There’s nothing Damian has to be ashamed of.

He takes off the brace, fumbling with the velcro long enough that he can hear Blade shifting
his weight, impatient. He hands it to the man to be set on the bathroom counter, holding his
weak arm still in the other.
Blade nods him into the tub, making good on his promise not to touch. He loops the other end
of the chain over the shower rung, locking it in place.

Damian braces himself on the lip of the tub, not trusting his own balance. The water is hot,
bitingly so, stinging against his cold skin. His legs lock up, and Damian has to force himself
to sit down in the water, wincing at the pins and needles that go up his spine.

“If I close this,” Blade nudges the curtain, “are you going to behave?”

Damian’s eyes rove over the supplies that have been laid out. A bar of soap. 2-in-1 shampoo
and conditioner. The bottle looks flimsy but breakable. If Damian could snap the plastic right,
he’d have a blade far more effective than the waterbottle ever was. His eyes land on the
shower rod. After he breaks the bottle, the rod is flimsy, so he could also—

“No, then,” Blade says, and sits on the toilet seat. He sets a syringe on the bathroom counter
pointedly before withdrawing his gun and resting it on his lap.

Damian scowls. He needs to control his expressions better. “I do not need a minder.”

“You took the fucking door off its hinges,” Blade says, flat, “Every time I turn around you’re
causing problems. You need a babysitter. You can get more freedom when I can trust you.”

Damian bites his tongue hard enough that the skin threatens to split. He reaches for the soap,
rubbing his hands over it into a lather. Now that he’s adjusted, the warm water is nice. His
skin is turning pink beneath it, and the clear bath is already turning murky with the layer of
dirt and sweat on him. Maybe Blade was right about him needing to bathe.

“Get your hair really good,” Blade says, stooping to pick up the shirt and Damian’s
underwear. He turns the latter inside out, squinting at it. At first, Damian thinks he’s checking
how dirty it is, to see if it can withstand more time against Damian’s skin, but then he realizes
that he’s looking at the size printed on the back.

That, somehow, is much worse.

That means planning. Planning means that Damian is here long-term. How long has he been
here? He thought it had only been a day or two, but the state of his skin suggests otherwise.

“Blade,” Damian says, when he’s worked the bar of soap over most of his lower body, taking
a break now, because even that much is exerting. The man looks up, seemingly startled at
being addressed. “What is the date?”

Blade hunches forward. Elbows on his knees, thinking about it. He doesn’t break eye-contact
with Damian, and the boy can see the weight he gives the question. Like it’s the most
important question he’s ever been asked.

He won’t tell you , Damian thinks. If he does, it won’t be the truth. Blade’s goal is not only to
keep Damian compliant and still, but to ensure that he won’t ever leave. The man has proven
himself a resourceful foe. Clever. He will not give Damian even the advantage of knowing
how long he’s been here.
“You’ve been here for ten days,” Blade says.

“It’s November?” The last date that Damian remembers was the twenty-seventh of October.
That would make today the seventh. Ten days. How has Father not found him after ten days?

“Sure,” Blade agrees evenly. He drops the clothing into a pile at his feet. “Slept through
Halloween, kid. Hope you didn’t have a costume.”

As if Damian would ever debase himself enough to go trick-or-treating. He’s not Timothy. Or
Dick. He never had time for such childish pursuits. He remembers Haleema discussing it in
class, though. Her family didn’t celebrate it either.

“Hair,” Blade says, with some insistence, and Damian drops the conversation. Eases back
against the wall of the tub, bending his knees until he can submerge himself completely
beneath the water. He stares up at the ceiling from below the surface, the chain stretching up
above him. It blurs, in his vision, until he closes his eyes. The water covers his mouth.
Damian feels not unlike a small pebble, sunk to the bottom of a pond, resting peacefully until
he is disturbed.

He doesn’t make any move to wash his hair, enjoys the water pressing in on him, wishing
only for a larger tub.

He’s down for long enough that Blade must be convinced he’s drowning—he isn’t, Damian
can hold his breath for far longer, all of Batman’s Robins can, but Damian is not only his son,
but also Talia’s—because there’s an insistent tug on the collar. Then another one, sharper,
until Damian is yanked upright.

He breaks the surface, coming up glaring. Blade has moved closer, standing now, a furrow in
his brow. The concern is touching . He looks over Damian carefully, looking like he wants to
reach out, before he stops himself. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Are you trying to
drown yourself?”

“Of course not,” Damian snaps, “I would never be felled by something as simple as
drowning.”

“Yeah, of course not,” Blade agrees, “of course not. Why would you? Not like you’re mortal
or anything.”

The man seems constantly surprised by the most basic of Damian’s abilities. There’s
something shameful about it. Does Blade truly expect so little from Damian so as to
anticipate mediocrity or even stupidity?

Nonetheless, Blade keeps a firm hold on the chain. Damian isn’t able to duck his head
beneath the water again, as much as he would like to. He reaches for the 2-in-1. It smells like
Timothy does, in the midst of a particularly rough case, when simple things like hygiene have
taken the backburner. Damian finds it more comforting than he would ever admit to the boy.

He scrapes his fingers through his hair, then glares at his captor until the man allows him to
dip his head beneath the surface again. He doesn’t test the edge of the man’s patience. His
neck is beginning to ache from all of the manhandling.

“Do it again,” Blade says, when Damian has cleaned out everything, nudging the 2-in-1
toward him.

Damian has no will left to fight him about such simple things. He reaches for the bottle and
lathers it through his hair once more. It does feel better with a second go around, like the first
only picked at the surface of the grime, and the second swept it clean.

The water has gone from clear to brown. Dried blood, dust, and dirt that accumulated over
the last ten days, he supposes. The drool and bile that stuck to his face and irritated the skin
into a rash has been scrubbed away. He is clean now. More so than he has been since he left
school on the twenty-seventh.

Blade is satisfied as well. Turns his back on Damian long enough to retrieve a towel from the
linen closet. “Get the drain,” he says, when he returns. Fishing the key out of his pocket and
reaching for the chain above his head.

Damian pulls the drainstop. Watches the water swirl down the pipe, a spiraling vortex,
disappearing into the darkness. Damian wishes he could follow it, compress himself into the
same sort of slime and ooze and be washed away just as easily.

Blade holds out a towel to him. “Come on.”

Damian scrubs it against his hair, then wipes down his body as best he can. It’s not until
Blade grabs the chain to guide him from the room that Damian realizes he meant follow me.
Blade has Damian’s clothing gathered in one bundle.

Damian wraps the towel around himself as best he can in a mockery of modesty.

They stop first in the laundry room, where Blade loops his fingers underneath the collar, his
cold skin pressing against Damian’s neck. He pointedly jerks Damian back into place any
time he fidgets, or starts to move. The man’s gun has disappeared into his clothing once
more, and Damian looks for it fruitlessly with his eyes.

He’s dragged around the laundry room by the collar while Blade starts a load, the man
adjusting too well to using one hand. The tile beneath his feet is cold, starts leaching all of the
warmth from the bath almost immediately. The towel grows damp, hair dripping onto his
shoulders.

“Give me a minute,” Blade says, frustrated, trying to scoop detergent into the wash and stop
Damian from inching away at the same time. It’s the cheap shit, it’ll ruin Damian’s clothes.
Alfred always uses fabric softener, and he never washes Damian’s underwear with the rest of
the clothes. The man hasn’t even separated the whites from the colors.

“I’m cold.” Damian leans against Blade’s hold, forcing the man to support his weight or let
him fall over. His legs hurt from standing. From standing . Like Damian is a helpless waif,
who can only make the walk to her fainting couch before dramatically collapsing once more.
It only sours his mood further.
His head hurts and his arm hurts and he’s tired of being up here in this house, tired of playing
along with Blade. He wants to go back to sleep. Blade forgot to grab his brace from off the
counter. He wants pain medication.

Blade pulls in a breath between his teeth. “Just wait a second.”

Damian is going to fall over. His limbs have relaxed from the bath, which isn’t a good thing.
The warmth has made him tired, and the cold has produced something horrifically needy in
him.

It seems like it takes the man ages to go through the entire process. Damian is expecting to be
pulled back downstairs, is almost looking forward to it. Even if he is naked, the blankets are
warm, and the heater will be running, and Damian will be allowed to be flat. He isn’t.
Damian is pushed into the kitchen, and shoved into a chair at the dining table.

Blade clips the end of the chain to his belt. Moves to the sink. Damian sits there, naked in his
kitchen, as the man grabs the dish soap and starts washing dishes .

Damian twists his head around to look back through the entryway. He didn’t even make it out
of the kitchen last time before he saw Lamont and Blade. He can see the couch now, but the
drug dealer’s body is gone. Damian’s stomach churns uncomfortably as his mind spins new
ideas on where Lamont could be.

They’ve only found the bodies of five victims of the suspected thirty plus. Damian knows
that it took about a week before the five did resurface. Father said that they thought the
Executioner kept them for about that amount of time. He did not say why.

Damian knows now . Decomposition will have set in to an extent the illusion of life is no
longer achievable after that point. Not unless the man put them on ice. Maybe the basement
has been used for such a purpose before. The idea makes Damian’s skin crawl. He wants to
take another shower.

“Where is Lamont?” Damian is horrified to hear himself ask.

“Why do you care?” The bowl is set down in the dish drain, and Damian doesn’t know if he
imagines it or if it clatters harsher than is strictly necessary. He wraps the towel around
himself tighter, drawing his knees up to his chest. “Guy’s dead.”

That’s the problem.

“Is he still in the house?” Damian asks.

Blade stops. Most of the sink is empty now. The man is almost as efficient as Alfred. If he
lives alone, Damian guesses he’d have to get very good at doing dishes by himself. The
man’s eyes are dark, like they always are, but there’s something distinctly interested in them
now. The monster under the surface rearing its ugly head again. “No, kid. The smell’d be too
much. There’s pus, too. Blisters. It gets messy. The skin gets loose, when the water starts to
leak from lysed cells. The bloating is…” He trails off. Trying to replace whatever word was
on his tongue. Damian can only stare. “Unsightly.”
Things Damian already knows. Forensic clues Father walked him through. His studies have
allowed him to navigate the stages of decomposition with the experience of a seasoned
criminologist. It still sounds different coming from Blade. Something to awe over. His
dedication to turning the morbid divine.

“Where is he?” Damian doesn’t know why this is so important to him, but it feels crucial.
Maybe it’s just that it’s fortune telling for his own corpse. Also, if Damian can get to it before
Blade disposes of the body, perhaps he can leave a message for his father.

“The shed,” Blade says, rinsing the last of the suds off the clean dishes. His tone is absent,
casual. “He still needs to be cleaned off of DNA. I’ll do that tonight, probably. After you go
to sleep. Bleaching that off can take a while.”

Damian doesn’t want more details. If he asks any more questions, he knows he’s going to get
them. Blade isn’t afraid to talk about it, almost seems eager to. He knows that his disgust
must show on his face, because Blade looks defensive.

“It’s not as gross as you’re making it seem.”

“I have witnessed dead bodies,” Damian says. “It is.”

Blade’s brow furrows, face screwing up with irritation, before it smooths. He laughs, and it
seems to startle him, but his voice is amused when he says, “Whatever you say, kid.”

The dishes go into the dish drain. Damian can hear the washing machine going. Realizes,
uncomfortably, that he’ll be here as long as it takes for his clothes to be clean.

Blade works around the kitchen, and Damian shifts along the seat to stop the chain from
tugging too sharply, has to keep an eye on the man so he’s not yanked out of the seat. When
Blade has finished cleaning the kitchen, he takes a seat across from Damian and turns on a
laptop.

“What are you doing?” Damian asks, after a minute of watching Blade poke around with the
computer screen turned away from him. Apparently he hasn’t learned his lesson about
questions.

“Work.” Blade’s voice is sharp, unkind. He glances up only once.

It had never occurred to Damian before that the man might have a profession outside of
killing. It must not pay well, given their accommodations. “Where do you work?”

Blade pulls the computer closer. “Nice try. What, are you bored, kid? Want me to find
something for you to do?”

Damian does, is the thing, but the rush of irritation at this realization keeps his tongue
quelled. The fear has mostly dulled, and Damian is too exhausted to craft any escape
attempts. Mostly, he wants something to distract himself from how miserable he feels.

Blade shoves a piece of paper toward him. No pen or pencil, unfortunately. “Here. Make a
paper airplane or something.”
 By the time that the laundry is finished, Damian has folded the paper into a plane, dagger,
and ripped it apart to make several cranes. Blade only looks up every so often, feigning
disinterest, despite the clear intrigue at each new creation.

“You want to take those with you?” he asks Damian, when he stands to drag Damian back to
the laundry room.

Damian scowls. He nods.

The basement is colder when he’s returned to it. Blade reattaches the chain to the ceiling, and
Damian hates how grateful he is for it, because at least he’s not chained to the man’s waist
anymore. He waits until Blade returns upstairs before he settles the cranes on the floor next to
Titus.

There’s four of them. Damian is not a child. Not anymore. He still pretends that the cranes
are his brothers and Father anyway, keeping watch.

Chapter End Notes

Thank You For Reading <3

 I've always been afraid of the shadow In my closet
Chapter Notes

warnings: discussion of pedophilia/underage sexual abuse, violence/gore

See the end of the chapter for more notes

The evidence room is cold. Dark. The tech takes Dick’s name down in a log book. There’s
not much that isn’t digital, but Dick’s long since exhausted all the investigative work he can
do from the photographs. Plus, it’s something to do , that isn’t running comms in the cave or
circling Gotham or Bludhaven aimlessly.

It’s been a week. Officially. Clocked in at one hundred and sixty-eight hours at four p.m. this
afternoon. Dick doesn’t know what to do with that. By this time when Jason was missing, the
boy was dead. They had a body. Dick did nothing then, and he’s done just as much now. No
leads, no solid suspects, nothing except stumbling over that shit with Tim and Morrison.

Bruce reported Damian missing to the police on the third day, but they might as well have not
filed anything for all the good that it’s done. It’s just another sieve for information to flow
through. Damian Wayne is missing. Everyone has a tip to offer if it means they get their
name mentioned in the inevitable news story. None of it is useful.

So he combs through the physical evidence collected from the crime scene for the third time.
Sprawled on the floor of the lockroom, several plastic bags strewn about his feet. It’s not
protocol, certainly not proper handling, but Bruce always emphasized the importance of
looking at the bigger picture.

They’ve only found one murder weapon. On a crime scene with no body, not even technically
a confirmed Executioner kill, just one of the suspected thirty-six. A hunting knife, stainless
steel, brand new. The victim’s blood was left on the serrated edge, like some sort of taunt.
Micah theorized that the kill was personal, and that’s why the weapon was left. A message to
the cops, or maybe the victim’s affiliates.

He pulls out that knife now, examining it. The blood has been scraped off, taken in for DNA
testing. They tried pulling fingerprints off the hilt to no avail. Gonzalez managed to track
down the specialty shop their killer brought it from. Paid in cash. The shop’s cameras were
only for show.

Dick had pulled security footage from the building across the street, who did have exterior
security cameras, but all he’d gotten was a glimpse of a tall man wearing a hoodie. Could
have been anyone.
No demographic data, no age ranges. Barely even a physical profile. Forensic data from the
bodies and blood spatter analysis told them little more.

The knife was a dead end, a game the Executioner was playing. He does that sometimes,
making up a new wild goose chase to keep them occupied. Dick doesn’t know why he’s
fixated on it now.

He’s still holding the knife when the door to the evidence room is opened, and he looks up,
watching as Micah steps into the room. “Dick?” his voice is hesitant, “Are you back here?”

“Yeah,” Dick calls. He flips the knife around, holding it by the blade, staring down the length
of it to the handle. It’s a well-built knife. Jason would probably covet it.

Micah rounds the edge of the shelf, coming to a stop across from Dick. He looks at the knife,
then the box. “What are you doing?”

Dick drags a hand over his face. His hair has come loose, strands escaping the bun to frame
his face, getting in his eyes. “Just going through some stuff, MJ. Looking for another angle.”

“I admire the dedication,” Micah says, “but it will be weeks before we get another body. If
we get another body. You should go home.”

Dick shakes his head. He leans back against the wall, dropping the knife into the box. “No. I
can’t. Not yet.”

Micah steps next to him. He rests a hand on Dick’s shoulder, ducking his head to look him in
the eyes. “Hey. When was the last time you slept? You’re not looking so hot, babe.”

He laughs. It’s humorless.

No, he doesn’t imagine he would. He may not have sworn off showering or changing clothes
like Tim and Bruce, but Dick’s seen all of about five minutes of his apartment in the last
seven days, and that was only to drop by and lock everything up, make sure nothing was
plugged in. The commute between Blud and the cave is brutal, he’s started crashing in his car
in the parking lot before his shift starts.

“Dami is gone,” Dick admits, brushing his hair back, tucking it behind his ear, “He’s been
gone for days and everything else hasn’t panned out, so I just wanted to find something.”

“Your brother?” Micah takes a knee, eyes wide, alarmed. Shit . Dick definitely has not been
keeping his situationship updated on his life. Another thing that he’s failing to keep on top of.
“Damian is missing?”

Both hands on Dick’s shoulders, now, holding him there. Micah doesn’t look angry, just
blindsided. Somehow that only makes the guilt worse. “Yeah.”

“Oh God. Dick, are you okay?” Micah brushes Dick’s hair back from his face, cups Dick’s
face to raise it up so they can meet eyes. There’s a swirl of emotions in the man’s gaze,
nothing that Dick can pin down. “I’m so sorry.”
Dick feels himself caving underneath that gentle concern. He’s spent the last week running
from family member to family member trying to help repair everything, there hasn’t been a
lot of time to be the one who needs it. Tim’s a mess. Bruce has been handling everything with
Damian and Tim as well as he does any other major stressor—i.g. badly— and Dick has been
worn down to the last streams of his emotional energy.

He’s sitting in an evidence locker for God’s sake, hoping that he receives some sort of
epiphany.

He shakes head mutely. Miach sighs, his expression twisting with sympathy. He pulls Dick
against his chest, settling his hand on the back of Dick’s neck to hold him there.

It’s crushing, almost too tight. Micah is never gentle with him. Dick buries his face in the
other man’s shoulder, takes his first deep breath in what feels like days, inhaling the scent of
him. Stale coffee and fresh laundry. It’s been a while since he’s really spoken to the man
outside of police work. Dick hadn’t even texted him, even after an impromptu couple of sick
days when Damian first went missing.

Micah holds onto him like Dick never left at all, doesn’t falter when the frustration,
exhaustion, and fear finally bubbles over, and Dick starts crying.

“Shh,” Micah soothes, “it’s okay, Dick. I’m sure Damian is fine.”

Dick has to bite his tongue to stop himself from exploding about Jason. Jason wasn’t fine .
Jason died . They came so close to never getting him back. Second chances like that only
come once in a lifetime. Damian is only thirteen. He may act older, but Dick is painfully
aware of how young his baby brother still is.

“I’m terrified, Micah,” Dick whispers. Confesses. He hasn’t even been able to bring himself
to admit this to Bruce.

Micah brushes his hair behind his ear, pulling back to rub his thumbs under Dick’s eyes,
cradling his face. “I know,” he says.

“My brother thinks it was the Executioner,” Dick gestures at the evidence boxes around them,
the cold, clinical leftovers of a homicidal sadist. “That Damian is the missing object on the
Lamont scene.”

Micah is quiet for a long beat. “The Executioner doesn’t hurt kids, Dick. Why would Damian
have even been there? He didn’t have any affiliation with Lamont, did he?”

Dick looks at him. The urge to admit that yes, Damian did have a connection, when Robin
raided his house with Red Hood. Because Bruce is Batman. Because Dick is Nightwing. He
wants to tell him. Tell him in a way that he hasn’t really wanted to with anyone else.

Micah would hold that secret close, Dick is certain of that. He knows the man well enough
now. But that wouldn’t just affect Dick. Telling Micah would be telling on the others, too,
and he wouldn’t want to force that confession from them.
“Not that I know of,” Dick lies. “He didn’t have any reason to be in that part of the city. But
Tim is pretty sure, and he’s not wrong about a lot of things.”

Micah brushes Dick’s hair back again. “Yeah. It’s just a pretty wild deviation from his MO,
don’t you think? I’m not saying you’re wrong, I just can’t think of a reason why the
Executioner would want your brother. He’s not secretly a killer, is he?”

Dick couldn’t either. Micah’s profile has been spot on this whole time. The Executioner goes
after criminals, Damian’s done nothing to be on his radar. Tim thinks he interrupted the killer,
saw his face, but Bruce doesn’t like that theory. It means Damian is dead, disposed of.

“I just don’t know where else to look anymore,” Dick grinds the palms of his hands into his
eyes, “I just wish I had something. Even if he was dead, I’d want the closure.”

Micah frowns, lowering himself to the floor in front of Dick. “Yeah. I guess the not-knowing
is worse. Leaves room for imagination to run wild.”

Yeah. Dick shrugs. “I just want to take him home.”

Micah kisses his forehead. “Yeah. I know, babe. I’m sure something will turn up.” He rests
his chin on top of Dick’s head. “I can help you look if you want? Where did you get with the
evidence?”

Dick huffs.

“Then I’m taking you back to your apartment, and you’re going to eat something and
shower.” He flicks at Dick’s hair, offering a gentle smile. “Wetting your hair isn’t the same
thing as using shampoo, Dick.”

… I don’t know what to do anymore. Mirah said that I need to tell mama, or even baba, but I
don’t want to get them involved in this. So much has already happened, and he said that he
was going to hurt Mama next.

She works in the school , she’s right next to him all the time and she has no idea what kind of
danger she’s in.

Mirah doesn’t even know all that’s going on. I want to tell her, but i don’t want her to say it
was my fault. She’s making things worse. She said she was going to tell baba.

I don’t know what to do, but I’m scared. I’m really, really scared. He’s been showing a lot
more attention to Damian, and I think—

A mug is set—slammed—down firmly on the table Jason’s sitting at. Hard enough that the
contents slosh over the side. It’s steaming, visibly, the smell of fresh brewed Colombian
wafting from it. Black. It’s not Jason’s preference, but Avery doesn’t make it any other way.
Insists that anything else is unhealthy.

“You’ve been reading that for hours,” Jason’s lieutenant says, crossly. He looms over Jason’s
seat, jaw set. “Don’t you think you should take a break?”

“Don’t you think you should get off my back?” Jason picks up the mug without a thank you.
Takes a bracing sip. If there’s one thing Avery’s good at, it’s coffee. Probably the only thing
keeping Jason upright at this point. He’s lost track of how long he’s been awake, or slept for
more than a couple hours at a time. He’s burning the candle at both ends, broke it in half, to
burn it at four instead of two. Because he’s efficient.

Because the kid has been missing for a week, and Jason is fucking terrified.

“What is that?” Avery takes a seat on the edge of the table, propping his hip next to Jason’s
hand.

“Haleema Khan’s diary.” Jason returns his attention back to the book. The girl is spiraling.
She has been for months now. The first date in the journal is for two years ago in sporadic
intervals, she’s written almost every day for the past month. The first entry about Helmstutler
that Jason could find was on September 4th, when Haleema opened with I think my math
teacher likes me.

Avery frowns, reaches for it, his expression souring when Jason yanks it out of his hands.
“That’s a lot of glitter, man.”

Yeah. She’s been writing exclusively in gel pen for the past ten pages. It’s throwing Jason for
the worst kind of loop. The doodles in the margins haven’t helped. Just driven home the point
that she is a child , living in a fucked-up adult situation that she never should have touched.

When it’s pen, and the pages blank save her cramped, tiny handwriting, Jason can almost
pretend she’s older than thirteen.

“She’s allowed,” Jason says, “it’s not illegal.”

“Okay. But you look exhausted,” Avery points out, “do you want to take a break?”

Jason shakes his head. He’s two weeks away from the last entry, which isn’t a lot in the grand
scheme of things. Damian has been getting mentioned more and more. It’s making Jason feel
nauseous, that the only reason that she noticed Damian at all was because Helmstulter do it
first.

I think I should warn him to stay away or at least about what’s coming, she’d written after
going into graphic detail about what happened when she was asked to stay after class to go
over “grades”, but Damian is so mean .

“What exactly are you hoping to find?” Avery prods. He’s been sticking around a lot more
since Damian went missing. Hovering , instead of just fucking off for days at a time. Jason
would appreciate the concern, but the distraction isn’t exactly appreciated.
This is the longest consecutive stretch he’s been able to read. Haleema writes a lot for a kid, a
lot more since Helmstutler started molesting her. After the fourth, Jason couldn’t make it
through a passage without being sick to his stomach. The kid is not one to spare details.

Every entry is more than ten pages now. She added paper to the composition notebook to
keep going, and the bulge is damaging the spine and makes it hard to close.

Jason hates reading this.

Avery leans further into his space. “You think it’s the Executioner that took your brother,
right? Not this Helmstutler guy. It’s not like some kid’s written out his location in her secret
journal.”

“We don’t know it’s the Executioner.” Jason doesn’t snap. Avery doesn’t deserve to be
snapped at. It’s their leading theory, since Tim connected the taxi ride to Lamont’s apartment
with the missing blood from the BPD, but Jason’s not fond of it. Helmstutler’s proven
himself capable of murder, able and willing to kidnap kids. There’s no guarantee he didn’t
just follow Damian to Lamont’s house and take him from there, no matter how convoluted
that is.

And if it is the Executioner, the odds of them getting Damian back alive are almost nothing.

Damian was on the phone with Jason about Helmstulter. He’d wanted to do something. Jason
had said he shouldn’t, and then he’d hung up on him. If he’d waited a few more seconds, or
let the kid help him, maybe he’d be at home right now. It’s not hard to imagine Damian went
after Helmstulter himself, in some misguided attempt to prove Jason wrong.

“I’m just looking at all the angles,” Jason answers, “Tim’s doing his thing, I’d rather we
know for sure.”

Besides. Either Jason goes over the creepy molesting diary, or Tim does, and Jason’s not
letting that happen right now. Tim would freak. He’s avoided the topic studiously any time
it’s been broached, like he can pretend it away. He’d caught Tim looking at articles about a
vicious attack in WI on the director of R&D yesterday, looking like he was seconds from
spiraling into an anxiety attack.

So yeah. Tim’s coping great .

Jason’s not letting him read the creepy molesting diary.

He’s been slightly—very—tempted to stop by the hospital and finish the job that Bruce
started with Morrison. The only thing that had stopped him from making an impromptu visit
to Patrick Morrison was looking over his hospital records. Morrison is fucked. His life quality
has been shot, and Jason likes the idea that Morrison won’t get to move again without having
to think about what he did to Tim, and the consequences of his actions laid out in his skin.

“Fine,” Avery says. He grabs for the journal again, and this time Jason lets him pry it out of
his hands, reluctantly. He flips to the end. “Lay it on me. What’ve you got so far?”
Jason rubs a hand over his face. Takes another long draw of his coffee. Where does he even
start?

“Car was ditched a couple blocks after Khan’s house. He withdrew money before running, so
he was planning on running. Gun registered in his name. Apartment was a bust. No other
properties listed. Haleema said that he keeps saying he’ll ‘take her back home’, but she
doesn’t mention the apartment. I don’t think he meant there. Probably like. His sex dungeon
or something.”

Avery nods along. His dark brown eyes skim over the journal, lips thinning the longer he
reads. There’s a furrow in his thick brows, concentration. Disgust. Jason sits back in his chair,
arching his spin until it cracks, feeling something like tension release from his shoulders.
“She talks about Damian a lot.”

Apparently Helmstutler did. Guy’s chatty . And Haleema’s the listening type. His words
come through her hands in shaky, jagged handwriting, usually accompanied by big water
stains, or worse, ripped out pages. He remembers her bedroom, how pink it was, how
meticulous the stuffed animals were arranged on the bedding. Haleema’s anger is deep down
inside of her, comes out in the little ways.

“Said Helmstutler was eyeing him as his next victim.” Jason puts his elbows on the table.
“Mentioned a few other kids, but I followed up on all of them. They either transferred
schools or matriculated. My sister went to talk to a few, but no dice with any. The ones that
did talk to her were cagey and didn’t know anything.”

“When did he go missing again?” Avery asks. “The twenty-ninth?”

“Seventh.”

“Yeah, she wrote about him that day.” He leans forward, shifting so that Jason can see the
journal as well. There’s a lot of the usual shit, but toward the end, everything is about
Damian. Mr. Helmstulter didn’t break his arm, I was so sure yesterday. He seemed offended
when I suggested it. I don’t know why he was so mean to me, it’s not like I was doing
anything. Mr. Helmstulter has been getting closer to him. Last week he looked like he was
going to kiss Damian and I was freaking out.

I told him about Helmstulter, and he acted like he didn’t even know what was going on. As if.
He said his brother is a cop, but I don’t want anything to happen to Mirah. I feel worse now
that I’ve told him. I wish that I’d just kept my mouth shut.

Mr. Helmstulter knew that I talked to Damian.

He was so angry. I don’t think the bruising will go away until next week. Baba is going to see
it when he comes home, and I’m going to get into more trouble.

Mr. Helmstulter told me what would happen to anyone I told. Mirah is in the hospital because
of me. Damian is going to be next. I wish I hadn’t told him.
And then, on the twenty-ninth, Damian didn’t come to school today, and neither did Mr.
Helmstutler. It’s all my fault. Damian’s probably in a lot of trouble and it’s all my fault . Why
am I so pathetic?

“Shit,” Jason says. It’s heavy. He knew it would be. Has been trying to shove the disgust and
horror and righteous anger somewhere that won’t make his chest go tight and his stomach
rebel. Compartmentalization. Neat little boxes for all the terrible shit he has to see.

It’s easier when there aren’t kids involved.

“This is sick, Jace.” Avery’s face is screwed up. “These are just kids.”

“Yeah,” Jason agrees. He takes a sip of the coffee to have something to do with his hands. It’s
delicious, which irritates him. He thinks it should taste like shit to match his mood better.
Avery keeps reading. Jason watches his face go through a wide range of bad emotions as he
flips pages.

“She knew he was coming for her,” Avery narrates. “Started talking about what she wanted to
do before she died. Helmstulter wanted to take her to the ocean. She said she was scared to
drown because she can’t swim.”

“Okay,” Jason perks up. Ocean. Ocean is something. Finally. Does Helmstulter own a boat?
Jason doesn’t remember seeing any other property listed to his name beyond the apartment
and his car. His mother is alive and well, but Jason has had people monitoring her house to no
avail. Helmstulter’s sister lives in Cali. It’s a long-ass drive, but across the country, with a
new ID and a large city, Helmstulter could effectively vanish.

Haleema wouldn’t be that lucky.

Once she’s served her purpose, Helmstulter will dispose of her.

Avery frowns. “No entry the day she went missing. He probably got her before she could
start one.”

She couldn’t have been home for longer than an hour or two before Helmstulter came for her
then. He and Cass barely missed her. Jason scrubs his hands down his face, then opens his
phone and dials Tim.

“Hey,” he says, “Beaches.”

Damian can hear the swish of plastic bags, a new and exciting sound paired with the now-
familiar thump of Blade’s boots above him.

The man never put the door back in, seemed to realize that it was purposeless. Now, if
Damian crawls to the edge of his nest of blankets and cranes his neck, he can almost see up
the stairs and into the kitchen. Can make out Blade’s shadow moving on the wall of the
hallway, back and forth. There’s a backdraft of cold air despite the heater, one Damian’s
come to associate with the back door being left open.

Blade talks to himself sometimes, mostly too quiet for Damian to hear through the walls, but
today he doesn’t. His movements are urgent, determined. He goes back and forth from
outside three times, the plastic swish of grocery bags loud with every movement.

Damian tells himself that it’s nothing to be anxious over, even though nothing like this has
happened in the two weeks that he’s been here. Blade usually doesn’t move around this
much.

He hears knives. Drawers opening. Things being set on what Damian has now come to
recognize as the sound of the metal cookie sheet Blade uses as a tray.

He’s coming down here.

Damian backs away from the edge of the stairs, centering himself in the middle of the room
and looking around himself desperately. The collection of cranes and Titus aren’t going to do
anything. Blade hasn’t indicated he has a desire to hurt Damian yet, but this has never
happened, and Damian doesn’t know what to expect from it.

Sure enough, Blade’s heavy footfalls start at the top step, and Damian’s breath hitches as he
watches him descend. He comes down slower than usual, holding something heavy in his
arms. It reveals to Damian’s blurry vision a package of water bottles, tray balanced
precariously on top. A tupperware full of sandwiches. Damian squints, standing on his tip-
toes to see them. At least five. White bread, grape jelly, and too much peanut butter if
Damian had to bet. The only thing Blade seems capable of preparing.

He says nothing on his way down. Stops beside the heater to set down the water bottles, still
out of Damian’s reach. It’s only then that Damian spots the hunting knife sheathed on his
belt, a millimeter of the silver blade visible behind the leather.

The Executioner’s murder weapon of choice. Damian takes another slow step back, feels the
chain run taut, tugging at his neck. Blade’s hair is in disarray, like he’s been running his
hands through it, his clothes visibly old and stained with bleach.

He’d told Damian he’d be cleaning the body today. Last night? He’s not sure he remembers.

“Come here,” Blade’s voice is calm. He gestures with two fingers, like Damian is a trained
dog.

Damian doesn’t move. Blade’s expression fills with vague annoyance before he reaches up
and grabs a handful of the chain, looping it around his palm until Damian is dragged off his
feet, scrambling to get closer to stop himself from being strangled.

Blade’s fingers loop beneath the collar, as they often do now, and he holds Damian in place
while he reaches with his other hand for the hunting knife. “Stay still. You’ll make a mess if
you don’t, and I don’t have time to give you another bath before I leave.”
Bath.

Bath implies mess. Hunting knife implies blood. What is he about to do? A rush of cold, dark
terror surges through him. Blade doesn’t have a body anymore, and now he has nothing to
fuck. Damian is the closest thing, isn’t he? Blade’s going to kill him.

“What,” Damian’s voice cracks from disuse. He needs water. “What are you doing? Don’t
touch me. Stop .”

Blade doesn’t listen, shifts his grip from the collar to Damian’s good arm, stretching it out
away from his body. Damian tugs, trying to get away from him, but Blade’s nails just dig in
tighter, squeezing hard.

A flash of panic kickstarts Damian’s heart. It’s almost surprising, the way adrenaline floods
his body, demanding that he run before this man kills him. He hasn’t felt anything other than
a miserable resignation in days.

Damian digs his heel in, dropping his weight, forcing Blade to haul him upright or let him go.
The man makes a low, frustrated noise. Damian can’t see his eyes in this lighting, only the
edges of his expression, twisted up with impatience. It makes his face look hollow,
otherworldly. The fear that trickles icy down his spine and settles at the pit of his stomach
makes him want to be sick. He’s not strong right now, and he’s injured. Starvation has already
made quick work of him. Blade manhandles him like he weighs nothing at all.

He’s dragged to the edge of the chain’s length, his captor still holding his arm at an odd,
nearly-painful angle. The collar cuts into his larynx, and Damian tips his head vainly to get
back air flow. He can’t fight it this time, when Blade lifts the knife to his forearm.

He says nothing to Damian, more silent than he has been this whole time, and somehow
that’s worse . To not know any of the machinations behind that awful, blank expression.
“Stop,” he says, and the sound of his own voice surprises him. It’s high and reedy, hoarse
from the dehydration. He sounds like a child . “Don’t. You said you wouldn’t—”

Blade digs the point of the knife into the crux of his elbow. Damian bites down a scream as
the skin is pierced, the steel sliding upward. It’s not fast, and it’s not easy. Father keeps his
weapons far sharper. Blade saws upward in a thin line, deep enough that Damian can feel it
rend muscle and fat. The pain is exquisite.

Damian can’t hold back a scream. It’s loud and hot in his throat. The sound of it shocks him
enough that he tries to jerk back, only for the knife to slice sharply across his arm. Blade
swears under his breath.

He drops the weapon to the floor, kicks it out of Damian’s reach, not that he can focus on
much more beyond the burning sensation. He wants it to stop. Oh god he wants it to stop.

“Stop,” Damian hisses, when he gets the breath to speak. Blade ignores him again, withdraws
a glass jar from the bulge of his jacket. There isn’t a lid. It’s a mason jar, for canning, the
ones that Alfred pulls out in the summer when the garden has apexed. “Stop, I didn’t do
anything!”
“I know,” Blade snaps, yanking on Damian. It’s not to position him. Damian feels the collar
dig into his throat sharply as a warning rebuke. “Stay still .”

The chilled glass is pressed up against his arm, right beneath the jagged cut, and Damian
realizes abruptly what the man is doing. The blood flow is sluggish, oozing from Damian’s
dehydrated veins in dark spurts, thick and almost black in the darkness of the basement. It
spills over the lip of the mason jar, seeps down the side like sweet molasses. Like the
blackberry jam Alfred makes in the dying heat of August.

Damian thinks he’s going to be sick.

A noise escapes him, something close to a mewling whine, and he bites his tongue to stop
himself.

Damian watches as it fills the bottom of the jar slowly. His captor watches, too, dark eyes
fixed on the blood pool. When it’s reached some arbitrary internal limit, Blade lowers
Damian’s arm from above his head to his side, keeping the one hand on his wrist. The jar
stays, collecting.

Damian blinks at Blade hazily. This is to be his murder? Not some grand battle for escape,
but being blooded like a pig and left to die? This is nothing like Lamont’s death was, where
the man was given the opportunity to defend himself. Damian isn’t afforded the dignity.

Father will never forgive him.

Damian didn’t survive.

The world is starting to tunnel. He can feel his legs getting weak. He wants to sit down. He
needs to sit down. He has to lock his knees, because when they give out, he’s suffocated, and
even if that’s Blade’s end goal for him, Damian will not give in so easily.

The jar is still pathetically empty. Not halfway full, maybe not even a quarter. Damian can’t
bear to give it more than a few glances before affixing his gaze to Blade’s dark amber eyes.
The warmth was always artificial, Damian knew that. The Executioner is unfeeling, without
remorse. Blade might be the permissive counterpart, the soft underbelly that Damian was
allowed to witness, but there was always an extent to it. A line that Damian crossed just by
existing too closely.

He knew the man had it in him to kill Damian, that’s not surprising. But it still feels almost
like a betrayal, to have sat at this man’s table and folded cranes with him, and now die by his
hands.

His knees do give out. A copper taste at the back of his throat, a mirage over his vision. The
chains clink together again, and it’s almost peaceful, the way the pain numbs out into nothing
at all. Damian buckles.

Blade drops Damian’s wrist to wrap an arm around his waist, pulling him upright again.
Damian’s head lolls, his neck a wet noodle attached to his spine. He hears more than sees the
mason jar being set down, oh-so-carefully on the concrete floor. Blade puts a hand on the
back of his head, thumb scooping at the base of Damian’s neck.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Blade’s voice is soft, for all the violence and bloodshed that he’d just delved
out. Damian is pulled toward the center, where the collar doesn't strangle him. His captor
eases him to the floor, drags Damian up into his lap, and grabs Damian’s arm. “You did so
good. So good. We’re okay, Dames. Just take some deep breaths.”

Damian stares at him. The words don’t make any sense. He must be misunderstanding.
Mishearing. A gentle hallucination before he dies.

Damiam makes a strangled sound. Blade shushes him, leans forward and presses a soft kiss
on Damian’s forehead. It reminds him of Father, and the comparison makes Damian’s heart
ache with want. “I’ll be right back. Don’t touch that, kid.”

He sets Damian’s arm on the floor, then gets up to his feet. He grabs the jar as he passes it,
and the knife, then ascends the staircase.

Damian makes vain noise of protest, reaching out weakly toward him with his broken arm,
but Blade doesn’t even glance in his direction before he’s gone. Damian lifts his head from
off the floor feebly, trying to look at the damage. He gets a mass of blood in hazy after blinks
and nothing else.

His head flops back against the ground.

Blade should have left him in the nest, with the blankets. He’s frost over a lake, cold to the
deepest, darkest parts of him. His teeth are chattering, even though Blade left the heater on.

He thinks he could crawl his way to it, if his limbs weren’t so stubbornly frozen solid to his
sides. Instead he lies there. Stillness is the enemy of work, of heat. Damian knows he should
move, apply pressure to the wound. He saw the jar, he didn’t lose that much blood.
Dehydration still ails him, then.

Blade returns from upstairs an intermediate amount of time later. He has a first-aid kit in
hand, and seems unhurried. Damian is lying in a pool of his own blood, his arm wouldn’t
stop gushing, no matter the feeble attempt at pressure he tried.

Blade kneels next to him. Pops open the kit. “How are you feeling?”

Damian glares at him. Tries to, at least. “How…” his tongue is so thick, “how do you…
think…fucking cretin.”

Blade sighs. He withdraws paper towels from the kit to wipe up the worst of the blood on
Damian’s arm. “Look, this is for the best. You took it really well, okay?”

Is this to be a regular occurrence then? A new fetish for Blade to visit upon him. First
necrophilia, now a twisted sort of vampirism? What kind of freak is this man?

“I’m proud of you. Didn’t even scream that much.” Blade pats his shoulder with approval.
The paper towels are removed, replaced with rubbing alcohol. Blade spares a moment to
meet his eyes. “This is going to hurt.”

It does.

Damian’s vision goes white for a few seconds as the liquid makes contact, and he can’t string
two thoughts together for what feels like decades. He’s panting when he comes back to
himself, looking at Blade’s hands, which are cradling Damian’s arm like it’s something
precious.

A string of thick glue has been diligently laid across the skin. Blade pinches it together, and
Damian grits his teeth so hard the enamel grinds.

He’s had worse. Pain is pain. Damian forces himself to breathe in deeply, ignores the way his
chest hitches and tears overflow.

Blade shifts to kneel beside Damian’s arm. It’s a typical position, one Timothy or Dick would
assume. Sometimes the best way to apply pressure to a stubborn wound—or to keep someone
still—was a well-placed knee on a strong limb. Father never did it to Damian, the man was
too big and too strong to need to. Blade looks like he might, if Damian starts fighting him.

The glue is set aside. Part of him is relieved to recognize that it’s medical grade, and not
superglue from the man’s shed. A pad is pressed to the length of the wound, and Blade starts
wrapping his arm in tight spirals of gauze.

“Little more, kid,” he says. Damian is sweating now, despite the persistent chill in his bones.
“You’re doing so good.”

Will he stop saying that?

Damian inhales raggedly. The gauze is cut, pressed down to stick, and then Blade is moving
away again. Damian allows himself to take the moment of reprieve, to brace himself for
whatever pain is coming next.

Blade doesn’t return with a knife. He gathers Damian up into his lap, smoothing the chain
over Damian’s shoulder like it’s long hair before settling Damian’s back against his chest. He
has a water bottle at Damian’s hip, and a can of 7up. Cherry flavored.

Damian sits in the v of the man’s legs, trying to convince his extremities that they are still
attached to his body. His head rolls onto Blade’s shoulder, and he lets his eyes pin to the D-
ring in the ceiling, staying there. It is no act of rebellion, no brave stand. It is all Damian has
in him.

“All done, now.” The water bottle is lifted. Damian feels like a fox kit, abandoned by its
parents and invited to suckle at the silicone teat of a poorer substitution under the guise of
rescue. It’s only when the first few drops of water land on his tongue that Damian realizes
how thirsty he is.

Blade, however, refuses to let Damian guzzle it like he wants to. He feels like he’s been
dropped back into two weeks ago, water being coaxed down his throat. How weak is he, that
 this has to happen again ? He is a shame to his family. It’s no wonder they haven’t come for
him yet.

When his captor has finished with the water, the cherry-flavored soda is forced down him as
well. Damian does not enjoy the taste of it. Is surprised he has the mental capacity to be so
aware he hates it.

Blade settles him in the blanket nest, and moves the heater closer to Damian’s shivering
frame. He squats in front of him for a moment, just looking. “I’m gonna be gone for a couple
days,” he says, “I’ve left you some food, and water. You aren’t going to get anything else
until I’m back, you understand?”

He is expected to starve himself then. Damian nods.

“Are we going to have any problems, Damian?” Blade is threatening him. Damian can tell.
“Because I’d hate to have to come back earlier than planned.”

Damian doesn’t ask where he’s going. There’s a body to dispose of in the shed. Maybe he
takes them out of state, and that’s why Father has had such a hard time tracking him. Damian
nods again, saying nothing.

Blade seems to realize he won’t. His posture relaxes some, and he reaches out to smooth
Damian’s sweaty hair off his forehead. “Be here when I get back.”

Damian will be.

Blade has seen to that.

Chapter End Notes

thanks for reading!! <3 please leave a comment if you're comfortable with that
 I won't stop until I can find the dead in all of you
Chapter Notes

tw: child abuse, vague suicide ideation, casual ableist speech

chem says peace out <3

See the end of the chapter for more notes

The heater is connected to a propane tank. It resembles a TV from the ‘90s, made of thin,
flimsy plastic. It’s gone brittle from the cold and old age. There’s a long, jagged crack down
the side that’s been covered with fraying duct tape. Blade clearly pulled it out of storage for
Damian, and however long it had sat unused, likely in the man’s shed, is unclear.

He didn’t mean to break it. It’s almost comical, that after all the carefully calculated
destruction he has wrought, this perfect accident presents itself, a far better solution to his
problems than anything Damian had concocted.

His head feels like it’s been spun from sugar. Crystalline and fragile, cotton stuffed into every
orifice. A dull throbbing radiates out from his left arm. Two down, now. He can flex his
fingers, still, but they won’t stop trembling, made clumsy and useless by the blood loss. It’s
truly pitiful that his good hand is now the one with a broken bone.

He’s still cold. Had curled up next to the heater in his sleep, trying to regain some of the
warmth. His skin is flushed, now, lips cracked. He might have burned himself, if he’d stayed
any longer under the concentrated stream of hot air. But he’s still cold.

He fell asleep at some point, dreaming only of Blade—Lamont’s death again, a familiar scene
now—and when he’d kicked out in his sleep, he’d knocked the heater over. The crash is what
had startled him awake, as the plastic splintered and broke open, scattering across the floor.
It’s not spread out like a broken mirror, it’s more like the shards of a chunky plate.

He should check the regulator. A propane leak would be bad, now, with Blade unable to
remedy it. Father would never have allowed them to keep the tank inside, but Blade was
unbothered. Maybe it didn’t matter to him, the risk of explosion. It’s surprisingly blase,
considering the lengths he’s gone to to keep Damian away from any sort of weapon.

Damian watches, tense, for some sort of explosion, but the tank remains largely unbothered
by Damian’s destruction.
The heater is sputtering. Threatening to start its own fire if left unattended. Damian reaches
out with shaking hands for it, shoving aside the broken outer plastic to look on the inside. It’s
hot to the touch, and he can’t hold onto anything for long without dropping it. His nerves are
raw. The slightest discomfort is the greatest insult to them.

The inside of the heater isn’t what Damian had been anticipating. It’s not just a mess of wires
and the bits for a motor, there’s structure inside. Heating rods. A duct. Other bits of metal to
line the inner surface.

He flips the safety switch, watches it power down. The smell of ethyl mercaptan would be
evident if the propane were leaking, wouldn’t it? It’ll be fine to touch in just a minute, when
the innards have cooled to match the air temperature.

Blade won’t be back for days. That means he’ll be out of heat for days. A bored, fanciful part
of his mind imagines sparking a flame in a controlled stream of propane gas; the logistics of
keeping the fire from blowing up the entire house. They do it in the lab buildings of Gotham
High, maybe not with propane, but the concept can’t be all that dissimilar.

It is just a flight of fancy, though. Twelve feet of chain and four paper cranes does not a gas
line make.

The temperature cools rapidly without the heater. Damian is shivering despite wrapping
himself in all the blankets, and he scowls at the heater from across the room. Why now? Why
couldn’t he have broken it before Blade left? He’s going to freeze in this stupid basement,
then his captor will return, and see Damian’s dead body, then—

Damin shakes off the thought. Forces himself to.

Fine.

Fine.

He returns to the heater. He looks it over from all angles, helpless on where to begin with
repairs, but as he dismantles it to repair it, Damian stares down at the set of tools in his hands.
Not weapons. Not really. But lockpicks?

The wires are copper, thin and moldable. Damian twists one in his hand, consideringly. There
are several just like it, about the length of his palm. He could twine them into something
stronger. It wouldn’t be impossible. The lock to the collar is behind his neck, but Damian has
picked locks in less opportune positions.

A surge of panic washes through him. He should be relieved, and seize hold of this
opportunity immediately, but Damian isn’t. What if Blade comes downstairs and sees
Damian holding the wires and he knows? What if he orchestrated the heater breaking to begin
with, to teach him what will happen if Damian tries to run?

This could be a test. It’s all too opportune. The promise of several days without supervision,
the heater finally pushed within his grasp, only to be shattered at the slightest touch.
He retreats to the other side of his orbit. Picks up the box of sandwiches Blade left him and
flops back down to the floor. Turns his back on the heater, a child exercising will power not
to give into temptation.

Damian eats half a sandwich robotically, finishes a full water bottle. Goes back to the heater.

It wouldn’t even be that hard. Damian’s been picking locks since he was old enough to
practice a pincer grip. He’d heard Blade drive away in his Ford Bronco. The man bled him to
the bone, he has no reason to believe that Damian would ever even be capable of attempting
an escape right now.

Which is why he must have set this all up.

Right?

Damian returns to the sandwiches. He eats another one and finds himself sitting in front of
the heater. Fine. If this is to be a test, Damian will simply best Blade. He hasn’t succeeded
before, but Damian is pathetic enough now, that Blade has begun to underestimate him.

Damian reaches for the broken heater.

It takes a while to pick. Every sound upstairs from the creaking wood settling to the heating
running makes Damian flinch and wait for several breathless seconds before continuing.
Damian’s hands hinder him, but not enough to stop him. He has to take breaks, and what
should have taken a minute at most stretches out into well over an hour.

The collar clicks open.

Damian goes completely still.

His breathing is loud in his ears. The metal sides part, going slack, threatening to fall off his
shoulders now that they aren’t locked in place. Damian reaches up gingerly and pulls it off,
flinching at the clang of the chain when it drops to the floor. He watches the stairwell with
bated breath, waiting for the timer to be up, for this to all be revealed as a test.

Nothing comes. Damian gets up to his feet shakily. His shoulders feel like they’re made of
air, the sudden lack of weight jarring. He’s too light-headed to be standing, but he takes a
wobbling step forward anyway. Just one, at the very edge of his radius, staring at the collar
by his feet.

Nothing pulls him back.

Damian takes another. He stares at the pile of blankets and the cranes. He feels sick with
anticipation. Leaving. He. What does he need? He’s dizzy, and he’ll need food. To eat food.
He needs to grab the blankets for warmth, if the basement is any indication of the weather
outside. He should make sure that Blade really left the building. He should arm himself with
more than a broken piece of plastic.

He should find a phone.

He—

Father. He needs Father. Or his siblings. A phone would be ideal. A call for aid before he
runs.

He should go upstairs. He has to.

The idea of crossing over that unspoken line makes Damian anxious. The last time he’d done
so, he saw what had become of Lamont, and a wave of fresh dread crashes into him. What
new, horrible thing does Blade have to offer?

It doesn’t matter, though. He’s not here. Damian prays he’s not here.

He grabs another sandwich from the box, eats it as quickly as he can before drinking more
water. The blankets he pulls across himself like a cape, knotting it in the front, flinching as it
makes contact with the bare skin of his neck. It’s gone raw, blisters lining the worst of the
chaffing, and the bruising must be something to behold.

Damian wraps the blanket as best he can to hide it. He abandons the cranes, but the thought
of leaving Titus here, alone in the grimey basement to be forgotten in the cold after Blade’s
arrest, makes Damian unbearably unhappy. He grabs that, too. The fur is familiar. It’s been
one of the few sources of comfort he’s had in the last two weeks.

Supplies gathered, and nerves as mollified as they’re going to get—which is none, the
adrenaline is making it impossible to take even a deep breath, let alone ease his racing heart
—Damian starts his way up the stairs to the landing.

He goes slowly, and feels like he shouldn’t. Clings to the railing and listens to the creak of his
footsteps, remembering vividly what climbing up the first time was like. The brazen
confidence, arrogance . He’d stopped in a naive attempt to help another victim, unaware that
Lamont was doomed far beyond his capabilities. Maybe, if he’d just run that first day, he
could’ve made it out before things escalated to this point.

Or maybe Blade would have just shot and killed him when he chased Damian down. Hard to
say.

The house is empty. Damian listens, easing around corners, walking through the halls on the
balls of his feet. He goes to the kitchen and rises to the tips of his toes to stare out the back
window. It looks down at the backyard. The SUV is gone, the padlock is back on the shed.

There is no phone that he can find, even though he looks for it. Blade must only have a cell,
and no landline. He probably took his phone with him when he left. He doesn’t check
upstairs, it would take too much time. He’s only seen the bathroom up there, and he doesn’t
want to see where this man sleeps. It’s not worth the extra time.

Damian starts opening drawers. Pulls out a lighter on the third one. He should blow this
house to smithereens. Go back and open the nozzle, let propane fill the basement. The cranes
would burn, and so would his nest. If it got hot enough, it might melt the steel of the chains
that kept him here.
He moves for the back door, instead. Winds the blanket a little tighter around his shoulders.

The air is crisp, thin and biting. He inhales and feels like he’s breathing in shards of glass,
and laments that it might be the best sort of pain he’s had in a while. The sting of freedom.

The adrenaline makes it so that he hardly feels the frigid ground beneath his feet as he steps
out onto the gravel. The driveway is gated, house concealed by a tall privacy fence and trees
that loom just behind it. His breath is visible when he exhales, a cloud of white that leaves
him like the nafs leaving it’s flesh prison. Damian just stands there for a minute, trying to
calm himself, panting like he’s run a marathon.

This is good. This is very good.

Damian’s vision spins on the second step. Black spots, a wash of dizziness. He’s down a
significant blood volume, dehydrated and malnourished, he can’t forget that. There’s still a
long way to go.

Damian tucks the little dog into his blanket cape. It was childish to take it with him, and he
knows that, knows it’s more childish, how he can’t stop drawing comfort from the fact he has
it. He clutches at it with a white knuckled grip with his good arm, one of the little paws
tucked in next to the water bottle cap.

The driveway is long. Damian had anticipated distance, but not to this severity. This isn’t like
Gotham, where the houses are cramped and practically stacked on top of each other. Damian
could have gotten help in seconds there.

He looks out on Blade’s property, thick and wooded as far as he can see. The driveway
curves, giving no clues as to which direction it leads. To a road, though. It has to. Why
would his captor own a car if it didn’t? This wilderness cannot go on forever.

The darkness is spreading fast. Thick, like ink being spilled down a page. Damian is losing
track of where the driveway is. He flicks on the lighter when he has to for glimpses of light,
but it only seems to make the stygian that much more obvious.

The end of the driveway comes, shifting from gravel to asphalt beneath his feet. He can tell
by the sharp sting of fresh cold. Road.

Road.

Damian tries to quell his hope. The rush of relief. He needs to keep himself calm and
focused. If he lets himself run away with the joy that he’s almost out, he’ll get arrogant yet
again with his hubris. Damian refuses to go back to the basement.

He keeps moving. Tense. Waiting for something to go wrong. He wants a flash of headlights
behind or in front of him, and for it to not be Blade, so Damian can flag them down and
demand to use their phone and call his family. It doesn’t happen. Damian hasn’t gotten
anything that he’s wanted since the Executioner first laid eyes on him.
He walks on the road. He regrets eating so many sandwiches now, with how they’re churning
and twisting in his stomach. The nausea is making it hard to focus on anything. He walks.
Feet cold. Breath hitching. Shivering. He’s started to cry.

The blankets aren’t enough.

Damian throws up twice, the aftertaste of peanut butter lingering in his mouth.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been on this highway, the harrowing journey of feeble
escape, when he spots lights in the distance. Glowing street lights from a building. He can
make out a cross carefully placed on top. It’s a church. Damian’s entire body tenses. For a
moment, he thinks that it must be some sort of mirage, he’s willed help into being, simply
because he wants it.

But as he walks on the church grows larger. Trees thin out. Damian can see the stained glass
windows, a light behind them, giving the illusion of a heavenly glow. The parking lot. There
are three cars in it. He forges onward, makes himself go faster, and only succeeds in nearly
face-planting on the pavement. Every muscle in his body is aching, atrophied even after so
little time. He can barely keep himself upright in a forward trajectory.

Damian grasps the handle of the door and pulls. He loses his balance, has to tighten his hold
to keep himself upright.

The inside of the building is warm. The lighting is soft. It’s small, and cramped, and the foyer
leads directly into the nave. Damian takes several steps into the building. The carpet is soft
against his feet. The warmth is overwhelming, and Damian’s head spins, the world sliding
into streams of long color.

He doesn’t remember collapsing, but the next thing he knows, he’s on his back, laying on the
ground. There’s a face looking down at him, old and weathered. A man, dressed in black.
There’s a clerical collar. A priest.

Damian recoils.

“Shh,” the priest says, “it’s alright, child. Just try to breathe. You’re safe now.”

Damian reaches up with trembling hands, wrapping his fingers around the man’s wrist. His
brace looks like a dark, all-consuming void against the man’s pale skin. The tips of his
fingers have started to go white and blister.

“Help—help me.” He begs. His voice comes out gargled and dry. “Please.”

Damian wants to cry again. He did it. He did it. Survived, like Father said. Got himself out of
that damnable collar in that damnable basement. Blade thought he had Damian, and maybe
he did for a while there, but he’s free now.

The rush of relief comes in sputtering bursts, but he can’t cling to it, can’t make this real, no
matter how much he tries to force himself to process it. He wants , so desperately, that it
makes him hurt everywhere.
The old man kneels beside him. Damian can hear his knees crack. He’s broader than Alfred,
face more rugged, short-cut hair that might’ve been blonde when he was younger,
maintaining a copper sheen despite the gray. He has kind eyes.

“Your skin is like ice,” he clicks his tongue, “let’s get you warmed up. Can you stand?”

Damian nods sluggishly. He can’t, as it turns out. He collapses immediately upon getting up,
the headrush apparently too much for his battered body to handle. This doesn’t seem to be
inconvenient to the priest, who hauls Damian up like he’s a small child and carries him into
an office.

Damian can’t hold onto consciousness for long periods anymore. The adrenaline has
abandoned him before Damian was ready, but apparently it saw its job completed the moment
Damian stepped into the churchouse.

He can’t keep his eyes open. There’s the distant sensation of being put in a chair. Of looking
up and seeing a statue on a bookshelf, surrounded by thick tomes. A long-haired man nailed
by his hands and feet to a cross, his expression despairing. What a morbid god to worship.

He’s swaddled in a blanket, in warmth. Damian’s hands have been curled around a cup. The
priest is crouched in front of him again, urging him to drink it. “My father,” Damian tries to
tell him, around mouthfuls of water he doesn’t want .

The priest shushes him. Damian’s eyes slip closed again. He can hear the man moving, the
cup pried out of his hands and set to the side. More fabric over his shoulders—maybe another
blanket? Maybe a jacket.

The sound of a phone ringing. An old rotary, like the one Alfred keeps.

“I need to call,” Damian tries again, only to get shushed once more.

“Just focus on warming up right now,” the priest instructs, “there’s no need to get yourself
worked up.”

Damian would like this ordeal to be over. He can’t relax until his call for aid has been
received. Until he hears Father or Dick, or anyone tell him that they’re on their way. Damian
has never wanted to be burdened by their overprotectiveness more in his life. He wants to
hide in Dick’s embrace until it’s easier to breathe and everything gets a little quieter.

Damian cracks an eye open. Watches the priest pick up the phone, listens to the buzz of an
empty line. The man’s mouth is pulled down, brow furrowed in deep concern.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” he starts with, and even though his accent is deep south, and his
voice like hail on a tin roof, Damian still manages to hear Alfred in the baritone rumble.
Polite, mild-mannered.

He can’t wait to go home . Father will rejoice. His brothers and sister are waiting for him.
He’s so close. Maybe sleeping the rest of the way wouldn’t be that bad. To just drift off and
let someone else handle things for a while.
“He’s small, and hurt. I think the cold bit him. Mm-hmm. Closest ambulance is forty minutes
out. I figured I might call you and see what you think before I make the drive.” A longer
pause. “Oh. I see. Yes. Oh, this is your boy?”

Damian frowns, looking up at the man, squinting. Who is he calling? Does this man know
Damian’s father?

He can’t remember what breed of Christian Jason claimed. His brother hasn’t been overly
religious since returning from the dead. Said a thing like Kazarus was a real faith-shaker. He
doesn’t think Jason knows any priests.

Not unless they’re working in Crime Alley.

It takes him an embarrassingly long time to remember who his father is, and the fact that
Damian has been missing for days, and has likely been reported so. Perhaps, under all this
dirt and filth and starvation, he is still recognizable as Damian Wayne.

“Yes, I can do that. No, it’s not an inconvenience at all, I’ll make sure he gets home safe. Yes,
of course. Sorry to pull you out of work. I’ll see you in an hour, son.” The man puts down the
phone. Looks back up at Damian, and smiles gently. It’s not even forced anymore, and the
worry has eased some. “Hey, kiddo. Let’s get you home, hm?”

Damian makes no move to get up. “Can I.” Damn his stupid, useless tongue. “Talk. To my
father?”

The man’s expression smooths with pity. “You should rest,” he says, “don’t worry about that
right now.”

It’s all he can think about. The nonsensical phone conversation. They’re far from the hospital,
the priest said as much, so he’s just going straight to the manor? Or is home a pretty
euphemism this man is using to console him, and they’ll just go to the police station? If he
could just talk to Father .

Your boy, the priest had said. Damian belongs to many people, but none of them should be the
first call of a catholic priest in the middle of nowhere.

Large, old hands tuck under his body. Damian squirms in the man’s grip, trying to push the
priest away to no avail. He’s pulled up to his feet.

“Come on now, it’s a short walk to my truck. If my old back can make it so can you.”

Damian is finding that with every passing second he doesn’t want to be with this man
anymore. He doesn’t understand, but he thinks that his father would have demanded to speak
with him. He wouldn’t entrust Damian’s care to strangers.

Damian reaches for the phone. The priest gently but firmly puts his hand back under the
blanket. “I’ve taken care of it boy, we’re alright. Come on.”

Damian doesn’t know what else to do. He can’t mope in here. He can’t even fight off an old
man for a phone. Going outside and wandering the road, praying for another random stranger
to help him seems like the stupidest decision he could make right now.

“You have to take me to my father,” Damian tries to insist. Finds himself leaning into the arm
the man wraps around his shoulders when they step out into the cold

“I’m taking you home,” the priest promises. “Let’s just take some breaths.”

Damian gets into his car. The man leans over him to buckle his seatbelt. He gets into the
driver’s seat. Glances at Damian again before winking and reaching into the glove box to
retrieve a snickers bar. He holds it out to Damian. “I won’t tell your folks.”

It’s a full size bar. Probably the sweetest thing Damian’s had in weeks. His stomach rebels
just looking at the wrapper. He looks back up at the old man, shifting the car into gear, one
foot on the clutch.

Folks ?

“How did you get my father’s number?” Damian asks. “Do you know who I am?”

The priest nods, humming. “He’s helped me out with some things in the past. He’s a good
man. Of course I know who are. Your father and I have been talking about you for the last
few weeks. He’s been worried sick about you.”

Damian stares. Blinks. Damian’s Jewish father found a catholic god in the midst of his
distress? Who knew his convictions were so malleable. Perhaps Damian’s father knew him
from when he was younger, or he met him on some sort of case. But why would Father tell
him about being Batman?

None of this makes any sense. Maybe it’s just the hypothermia and starvation making it hard
to understand, but it seems like everything that comes out of this man’s mouth is
contradicting.

“Who are you?” Damian hears himself ask. Registers dully the right-hand turn the man
makes, down a long, winding road. The snickers bar is getting mushier in his hands. The
truck’s heater is blasting him, but he can hardly feel it.

“My name is Father Kenley.” His voice is so kind. Too kind. Almost cooing. The way Dick
talks to only the smallest children, as though coaxing compliancy out of a feral, stupid
animal. He knows what he looks like. Donned in a blanket cape, without pants and clutching
a stuffed dog to his chest. He knows what he looks like. “What’s yours, son?”

Damian Wayne. Al-Ghul. Heir to the demon’s head, son of the Bat. Robin. What isn’t
Damian, anymore? Who could he claim that would convince this man to let him use his
phone, make a call.

“Damian.”

“Not Dames?” the man asks.

Dames? Who calls him Dames? His family calls him Dami , if they burden him with a
nickname. Damian frowns at him. “No.”

“Hm. We’ll be there before you know it. And eat that.” He nudges the candybar toward
Damian’s mouth, “You look like you could use it.”

Damian leans his head against the window. He doesn’t mean to fall asleep, but the lull of the
car and the adrenaline rush of the last hour have left him exhausted. He stays in some place
between sleep and wakefulness, trying to jerk awake intermittently.

He feels the road shift from asphalt to gravel.

Damian blinks his eyes open groggily. The car turns off. The headlights are dark, and Damian
can’t see anything in front of them. Father Kenley gets out of the car and rounds it to help
Damian out as well. His elbow is grabbed firmly, and then he’s herded across the gravel to a
porch.

They can’t already be at a police station. Or a hospital. Damian wouldn’t peg that drive as
longer than ten minutes, if that. Didn’t he say the ambulance was forty minutes away? If
Damian was ten minutes from his father, Batman would have already found him.

A shift again, to wood planks. A wrap around porch. Damian knows this house.

Fuck no.

“You conniving devil!” Damian roars, wrenching backward, “You fucking— no! You would
dare to bring me back here!? I threw myself at your mercy! I begged you, and you—”
Damian is yanked on. Father Kenley hasn’t let him go.

“Calm down,” the priest says, “everything’s fine, Dames. I’m just taking you home.”

“ Home!?”

There is only one person who calls him Dames.

The priest hushes him again, grabbing hold of Damian’s hand. The one with the cut, a lesser
of two evils, if the wound weren’t so fresh. The pain as the skin is tugged makes his teeth
hurt. Damian’s chest is burning, the scream ripping up from somewhere raw and inflamed.

“ Damian,” Father Kenley grasps his shoulder. “I know that things have been difficult with
your new guardian, but it will be okay.”

“Let me go!” Damian shouts. Screams. “Let me fucking go!”

“Your uncle loves you very much,” Father Kenley promises, “he’s doing everything he can to
help you, even though it’s been a rough adjustment for both of you. I know he’s not your
father, but this is for the best.”

“He kidnapped me!” Damian’s voice is wet, the words coming out garbled. He doesn’t know
when he started crying. Maybe he never stopped. Maybe it started in that basement with that
collar and the respite has been a fever dream. Something his mind created to cope with
everything else.

The tears feel too casual. Familiar on his face. This is not a nightmare, it's a cold reality he’s
only now just sinking back into.

“I know that it feels like that,” Father Kenley soothes. “Custody change is never easy on
children. My parents got divorced when I was younger, I know.”

“I’ve been chained in the basement. Look at me!”

Father Kenley pulls him into an embrace. It’s forced, and Damian hates him. Hates him. Had
this been a month ago, Damian could have killed him. Would have. Could have escaped his
grasp easily, but now, as weak and broken as he is, he can do nothing.

He claws his fingernails against the man’s skin and tries to bite anything that is within the
distance of his mouth.

The man is startled. Shouts an expletive. Damian starts cursing him in Arabic, the most vile
things he can think of. He sinks his teeth into the man’s upper arm, deep enough that he
draws blood. He can taste it on his tongue and relishes it.

The man shoves him back. Damian slams into one of the posts of the wrap around porch, his
head thumping loudly. He feels it rattle through his teeth to his collarbone.

He’s panting heavily, vision blurred, but doesn’t miss when Father Kenley makes the sign of
the cross at him.

Damian bares his teeth at the man. He can still run. Fuck this stupid priest and his useless
god. Damian doesn’t need either of them.

He takes a fumbling step backward, off the porch, hands outstretched at his sides to try and
keep his balance.

“Damian!” Father Kenley calls after him, not moving to follow. “Calm down, child.
Everything’s okay. You need to come back.”

Damian licks the man’s blood off his teeth. Spits into the dirt next to the house, walking
backward until there’s enough space between them, before turning on his heel and sprinting
back down the driveway.

The car is too much of a hassle right now. It was stick shift, and Damian can’t remember how
to do that. Just another way that he’s useless and a shame to anyone who has wasted time in
his training.

His knees hurt. Everything hurts. The gravel is cutting his feet to shreds. Damian doesn’t
stop.

The driveway seems longer his second time down it. He can’t tell if Father Kenley is
following him. He might in his truck.
Was it Blade he was on the phone with? Blade was his good man . The thought makes
something twist up inside him.

Damian is not Blade’s boy . Blade is not his uncle. The man has spread out a fabrication. In
the hopes that what? If Damian were to escape, his neighbors would do this exact scenario?
Was this all merely a test of the system, to make sure it was set up enough, and that’s why
Blade left him unsupervised?

There are headlights in front of him. Damian freezes. It’s Blade. He knows it’s Blade, can feel
it with every fiber of his being. His captor in front of him, Father Kenely behind him. Damian
takes a hard right and starts for the woods. The road was ahead, if he can manage to make it
back out there after curving some, then. Then .

Then he’ll figure something else out.

He can’t go back to the basement.

“Damian!” Blade’s voice is a roar of sound behind him. Damian hasn’t heard him this furious
before, and the danger in it makes every part of his body tense. A new wave of adrenaline
crashes through him. “Damian, get back here!”

He crashes through the woods. Branches whip at his face, he stumbles over tree roots, falling
forward with every other step. All he can hear is his heartbeat in his ears and Blade behind
him, in hot pursuit. Damian could outrun him. If he were stronger, less injured, if he had a
greater head start.

He doesn’t trip, doesn’t falter or look back. In the end he’s just not fast enough. Can’t outpace
a strong, healthy grown man, not even with the edge of adrenaline and hysterical fear of
death spurring him on.

Blade wraps him up in some grotesque parody of a hug. Lifts Damian bodily off the ground,
ignoring his thrashing, arms tight around his waist. Damian screams with all that he has in
him.

Blade squeezes him harder. “Shut up,” his breath is hot against Damian’s ear. “Shut the fuck
up, you little shithead.”

Blade’s fist slams into Damian’s stomach, knocking the air out of his lungs. Damian gasps,
mewling, but goes silent, leaning over the fist, clasping at his forearm to try and keep himself
from falling. Blade pulls him back up, hands around the back of Damian’s neck to hold him
there.

The gun is pressed into Damian’s abdomen.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” he says, his voice low and dangerous, still panting from the
exertion “we’re going to walk back, and you’re not going to say anything. If you scream, or
you shout, I will shoot the fucking brains out of that priest and make you clean up every last
cell of brain matter off my porch. Do you understand? Yes or no. Nod.”
Damian looks at him. It’s always like this, some version of darkness, some brand of cold. A
question that isn’t a question.

Damian nods, feeling numb. There’s blood in his mouth and he doesn’t know if it’s his, or the
priest’s, or Blade’s. Do you understand ?

He’s starting to, he thinks. It’s sinking in.

“That’s right.” Blade puts a hand on the back of his head, fingers threading through his hair.
Uses the grip to bob Damian’s head up and down himself, taking even that much choice
away, before shoving Damian back toward the road. “Now move your ass.”

Damian walks past Blade’s car, abandoned in the rood, the door still open, the seatbelt
warning pinging every few seconds. Damian looks at it with longing. Blade smacks him on
the back of the head for the lingering stare.

Back down the road, to the house. Blade’s fingers are iron on his collarbone, like he wishes
he could squeeze his nails underneath the skin and grab hold of the bone like it’s a staircase a
railing.

“Oh good,” Father Kenley says, when they’ve come into view. He’s gone paler, his old face
almost waxy with sweat. He looks worried . “You got to him. Are you boys okay?”

“Yeah,” Blade’s voice has melted. He’s fond of this man, Damian can tell that immediately.
Part of him is tempted to leap forward and start ripping and clawing at the old man, just to
punish Blade. “Sorry for the scare. We’re still settling in, trying to get used to each other. His
episodes aren’t usually this—intense.”

Episodes.

Sure. They can call his escape attempts episodes. Fits of insanity, for thinking he could ever
get away from this man. Your boy, the priest had called him. Damian knows that now. He
belongs to Blade for as long as the man decides to keep him. There is nothing else now.

“That’s alright,” the priest pats Blade’s shoulder. “I’m just glad you boys are okay.” Now the
man is eyeing Damian, with wariness. Fear of him instead of for him, the fool. “Your boy
definitely has—” the man stops for a moment, then settles on, “ special needs.”

Blade nods. Damian looks down at himself. The blanket fell off, he doesn’t know when. Shirt
and underwear. No Titus. Where did the little dog go? Damian feels fresh tears spring to his
eyes. He didn’t mean to lose it. It could be anywhere out there. Damian just fucked up
something else.
“I know Dames is real sorry about the trouble he gave you,” A pointed squeeze to the back of
his neck. Blade shifts, just enough that he can feel the gun strapped to his captor’s hip again.
Warning.

Why should Damian care if this stupid man dies? Why does it seize up his chest, weigh on
his shoulders? He brought Damian back here, to this wretched man.
“I’m sorry,” he says anyway, chokes out between muffled sobs.

“That’s alright,” Father Kenley pats his shoulder. “By the grace of God all is forgiven, child.”
He looks up at Blade, “I’ll see you on Sunday for service, won’t I? I think you may need
more help than I first thought.”

They both laugh.

Damian doesn’t.

Blade promises he will be there, gives the priest a warm half hug, then the man climbs back
into his truck and drives down the driveway. Blade waits until the brake lights can no longer
be seen in the dark before he grabs Damian by the back of his neck and moves toward the
door. Damian feels like he’s underwater. Everything is so distant, he’s observing himself in
third person.

He watches Blade pull out his keys. A flash of other gold metal shoved back into his pocket,
almost like a rose. The screen door is unlocked, then the front, and Damian is hauled up the
steps and thrown into the living room.

He smashes into the coffee table. The one that Blade had his clothing folded on when Damian
walked in on him fucking Lamont.

The edge of the hardwood digs into his shins, promises to leave bruises. Damian lets himself
crumple.

Maybe Blade will kill him. He hopes so.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Blade explodes, flipping on the light. He slams the door
behind himself. “I left for four hours, Damian! You little fucking shithead, do you have any
idea what you could have done? You almost ruined everything .”

Blade grabs Damian’s shoulder, wrenching him upward to hit him across the face. The blow
is shocking in its simplicity. Just a backhand.

“I should kill you,” Blade says, “I should. Do you know how fucking easy it would be?
You’re pathetic, reduced to a bag of bones, but still causing me so many fucking problems .”

Being hit reminds him of being Robin. The conviction Damian once possessed, staring death
in the eyes. He almost made it out today; surely that’s enough for Father. Proof that he tried.
Didn’t just lie down and take it. “Do it,” Damian runs his tongue over his teeth again. He’d
bitten the inside of his cheek, the fresh blood is nauseating. “Kill me, then.”
Blade holds his stare. His lip curls into a sneer. Damian is breathing in unsteadily, but even
past the blood in his mouth, he imagines that Blade almost smells like Dick does. He tries to
take comfort in it.

His captor releases a sound of frustration through his teeth before slamming Damian back
onto the coffee table. He releases him to take several steps away. Runs a hand through his
hair. It’s shaking. Blade’s anger has made him erratic, wild-eyed and frantic. He paces a tight
circle while Damian just sits there and watches, his gaze skimming the room. “What do I do
with you?” he asks, voice high and tight. The question isn’t directed at Damian until it is,
until Blade is whirling on him again. “What the fuck am I supposed to do about you?”

Damian is shaking, too. “Kill me. Fuck me. Drop my body. Do you ever do anything
different?”

At least his family would get closure. At least Damian wouldn’t be in the basement anymore.

“No, no, no.” Blade turns again, his back to Damian. There’s a vein pulsing in his forehead,
movements jerky and rigid. He’s dressed in a suit jacket, Damian realizes belatedly. A white
dress shirt. It’s the most professional that Damian has seen him. It also makes the lines of his
figure that much sharper.

Blade crosses the living room, towards the fireplace. The canvas portrait overhead is a
landscape shot of an open field. There are others surrounding it, pictures of a smiling happy
family. Blade slams his fist into the wall like he wishes he could punch through it, gritting out
an angry scream between his teeth.

For long seconds, there’s nothing but silence.

“I can’t kill you,” Blade says, pressing his hand flat against the dent in the wall. “I won’t.
You’re just a fucking kid. I could never live with the guilt. I don’t want you gone in three
days. Fuck me. You’re thirteen.”

“I won’t stop.” Damian leans forward, watching, intently. Blade has always seemed in
control, and it’s gone now. Replaced with that erratic rage. Impulsiveness. He threatened to
kill a priest, what guilt could he possibly feel? This is all just theatre. Damian knows theatre,
the ramblings of an unhinged killer. They can be finessed. “I won’t stop running, not ever.”

He shouldn’t goad this man. Father told him to survive. But to what end? At what cost?
Damian doesn’t want to be his boy. If he’s never going to make it out of this damn house,
then what the hell is the point . His father isn’t coming for him. He would have already found
him by now if he was.

Blade’s heavy breathing is the only sound in the room for long seconds. He reaches out with
a trembling hand and grasps the fire poker. “Yes,” his voice is collected, settled. Resolved.
“You will.”

He pulls the poker out, and stalks toward Damian. For all his bravado about dying, Damian
still makes a feeble attempt at escape, scrambling over the edge of the coffee table to try and
make for the door. Blade grabs a fistfull of his hair and slams him back down on the
furniture, like a sacrificial lamb.

He lifts up the fire poker.

“No,” Damian gasps, ragged, “wait, don’t—”

 Damian screams when the first blow hits. The center of his shin, hard and fast. A brutal sort
of force. Applied to a vital area, his gut or his head or his chest, it would kill him.

This is probably how Lamont felt, in his last moments. Facing down the ochre, lustful eyes of
the reaper himself. Marked for death. Did he know what would become of his body before he
was killed? Would he have struggled harder if he did?

He hears the crunch of bone on the next blow, a wave of nausea that supersedes the pain.
Chills down his spine, a grinding, ripping sensation.

The next blow isn’t any easier. Or the next. Damian loses count. The pain is overwhelming,
and he doesn’t have the air to scream, sobs and tries to wail to ease some of the pressure in
his chest. His leg is on fire. Damian is dying.

“Please,” he’s begging, rambling it, over and over. “Please, please…”

Blade’s hand squeezes over his throat. “I thought,” he hisses, “I told you to stay quiet .”

Chapter End Notes

thank you for reading!

betcha were alll sooooo relieved at damian getting free lol. (bud, buddy, my bestest pals
smh) what if we killed a child instead???
 But down this road, I don't see a ghost
Chapter by Chemical_Processes

Chapter Notes

CW for implied child rape, gore and violence, character death (not main)

Chem here. Hope y'all had a good week. we kinda forgot we left y'all on a cliffhanger

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Avery slams the door of his shitty little Toyota, stepping out onto the street. Jason is directly
behind him, looking out at the private jetty. “Last one at this pier.”

Thank god.

Jason’s tired. It’s been a rough day. A rough couple of days, if he’s honest. Ocean went about
as far as any single-word clue in a case as big as this one could. Tim and Barbara split the
majority of the tracking work, but in the end it’s been a shit ton of ground coverage. Red
Hood doesn’t use warrants, doesn’t wait to get invited into places or ask polite questions. He
got it into his head that it’d be a good use of his and his men’s time to go boat by boat
through the Gotham and Bludhaven marinas.

They only hit up the most suspicious ones, with shady registration details and the like, but it’s
still taken three days to get as far as they have. It felt like a better idea to just go through the
boats before they started, and Jason hadn’t realized the sheer magnitude of what they’re
looking through.

“The guys we sent to Sandy’s didn’t turn up anything,” Avery reports. The boat in front of
them is smaller than the others have been, older. It needs a new coating of paint, and some
desperate maintenance. The thing barely looks sea-worthy. “I told Lewis to call it a night,
they can start up again at the Anna Point Marina in the morning.”

“Yeah, that’s good,” Jason agrees. He pulls his jacket over his shoulders to block out some of
the chill. The early November air isn’t restraining itself, and the late hour has only made that
worse. It hasn’t snowed yet, but Jason is expecting it to start soon.

“You still going out in the mask after this?” Avery shoves his hands in his pockets. The guy
has been inviting himself to stay over at Jason’s apartment, crashing on his couch some
nights. Asking dumbass questions. He’s Jason’s lieutenant for a reason, but this is
overstepping and invasive. “You’ve been at it for a while, could turn in early.”
“We’ll see,” Jason answers vaguely, with no intention of doing so. He starts down the
walkway toward the creepy ship. He definitely will be going out later as Hood. It’s been ten
days since Damian went missing, and they still aren’t any closer to figuring out where the
little bastard is. Jason has been helping Dick cover patrol routes for Bruce and Tim, which
has made sleeping more of a fond memory than anything else right now.

Up close, the creepy-ass ship looks just that. There’s a light on in the cabin, which lets Jason
see the poorly maintained deck. It’s late enough that most of the other people have cleared
out, what the hell is this guy still doing here?

He presses a finger to his lips for silence back at Avery, who nods. The mount onto the boat
looks rickety, Jason thinks he could climb it without making too much noise with effort. He’s
not sure he wants whoever is inside to know they’re coming.

“You have something against knocking on doors?” Avery asks.

“Yes. Shut up.”

Avery sighs loudly, but nonetheless goes quiet as he moves to Jason’s side. The two of them
clear the mount without much difficulty, and Jason lands soundlessly on the deck, creeping
forward. He withdraws one of his guns, wishing he had his helmet. He’d dropped it off on his
bike when Avery picked him up two hours ago. Red Hood has been tagged out by Jason
Todd, who’s face generally makes people less hostile on sight.

He gestures Avery behind him, crouching low on the deck. He rounds the cabin for the door,
easing it open with light fingers. It’s unlocked, creaks slightly, but the sound is absorbed by
the constant rush of wind over the sea.

The inside isn’t very impressive. Lit by a flickering edison bulb overhead, the ship’s nav
system dusty with disuse and probably only semi-operational. This is a stationary vessel,
Jason realizes. A houseboat?

He takes a few steps inside, followed by Avery. There’s a map on the nav, small arrow
stickers covering a beach. Jason frowns, getting closer. “Am I crazy, or is that the drop sights
for the Executioner?”

He looks back at Avery, who squints at the map. “I guess? I’m not familiar enough to know.
Those are in the middle of the ocean.”

“Yeah,” Jason agrees, “but that’s where he dumped the bodies. Where they wash up on shore
is different. This is…a fuckton of math.”

“Um. Okay. So we found the Executioner’s boat?” Avery sounds dubious. “In the middle of
some pier, when we’re looking for Helmstutler? Who the hell is this registered to again? That
Howard guy, right? The one your brother said didn’t exist five years ago?”

Jason flips the map, to the pages underneath. Stacks of notes, carefully maintained.
Complicated physics. Wave patterns, weather predictions. Tracing the trajectory of the bodies
from their endpoint to where they were originally dropped. There’s a sixth star on the map, in
blue ink instead of red, that doesn’t come from a body Jason recognizes. He opens the drawer
beneath it, pulls out the boating registration from a cabinet full of manuals, tossing it over to
Avery.

“Look at that, I’m going to check the hull.”

Avery makes an unhappy sound. “What? And I sit here and read a manual? I don’t think so.”

Jason doesn’t have time for this. Or the patience. He hasn’t had the patience for shit since he
hung up on Damian. Since he left Damian to be thrown into whatever mess he’s in now. Left
him to get fucked over by some rapist. “I give the orders, Ramirez. Stay here.”

Avery flips him off, irritated and frustrated. He never handles busywork well, Jason thinks it
reminds him too much of getting bossed around by his shitty older brother. Jason releases a
frustrated breath through his teeth. He’ll deal with him later. For now, Jason pulls the
flashlight off his belt and slips out of the cabin.

He sees the deck in a different light, now. The clutter of fishing equipment, rope and hooks
and nets, the odd stains. Sea worthy it does not seem, but for most of his bodies, the
Executioner hasn’t been going that far out from the shore. They knew he’d need a way to
dump them, but Tim and Dick had abandoned hope of tracking down his boat a while back.

Given what Jason knows about the victim profile of the Executioner, the man behind the
hunting knife probably isn’t a pedophile in his spare time. That’s just Helmstulter’s toxic
quirk. If the map upstairs was the Executioner’s, then all thirty-something bodies would be
penned out, not just six.

The door to the hull has a padlock on the outside. The frame is rusted, hinges practically
welded in place. There’s no way that’s not creaking when he opens it. The element of surprise
will not be on his side.

Jason racks the slide of his glock, checking the chamber and taking off the safety. No one
ever said things couldn’t be accomplished with brute force.

At least this will give him some element of surprise.

He plants the sole of his boot on the wood and kicks the door open. It slams hard into the
wall, a snapping sound echoing down the stairwell. There are lights on below, casting
shadows Jason can make out but don’t resolve into figures. Voices that come to an abrupt
stop at his entrance.

Jason moves down the stairs, pointing the gun out. The flashlight he slips back into his
pocket, unneeded. He doesn’t know what he was expecting to see at the bottom, because over
the last couple of days, Jason has walked in on all sorts of shit, but he doesn’t think that he’d
ever really expected to find Helmstulter.

It was something to occupy his time instead of panicking about Damian. Something he
promised his brother he’d finish. Something he was hoping Damian would, magically, be on
the other end of.
But no.

Helmstulter is here. Alive. Relatively unharmed. The man scrambles at the sight of Jason,
back against the wall, keeping his eyes on the emerging threat. Posture tight and controlled,
and it’s no wonder he managed to take out two of Avery’s men, there’s something vicious
about the way he moves.

Almost as surprising is the girl behind him: Haleema Khan, the stuff of legends.

Spending a week pouring over the graphic account of her extensive molestation didn’t
prepare Jason for the sight of her tied up in the hull of Helmstutler’s boat. She’s smaller than
Damian, her black hair matted to her head, arms tied in front of her with fishing wire. There’s
a rag shoved in her mouth, taped over with thick, gray electrical tape. She’s completely
naked, covered in dirt and bruises. Dried blood smeared down her thighs.

But she’s alive, too. Jason was starting to think he wouldn’t find her that way.

The shock makes him slow, makes him hesitate, eyes locked on Haleema for a beat too long
as he swings the muzzle of the gun to aim at Helmstutler. It gives the man time to reach
down, grab the girl by her hair, ignoring the sharp cry of pain to hoist her upward. Jason
swears, jerks his arm away, unwilling to risk shooting Haleema as she’s propped up like a
human shield in front of Helmstutler.

The man draws a knife from his belt, cowering behind a teenage girl like the pathetic scum he
is, hugging her tight against him and shoving the blade up against her throat. Haleema cries
out, and the sound of her scream, hoarse and terrified, makes his chest tight with rage.

“Put down the gun,” Helmstulter’s voice is deeper than Jason had been expecting. “I’ll kill
her. Put down the fucking gun.”

Jason’s head dips, tilting a fraction as he narrows his eyes. He stares at Helmstulter, who
takes him in slower.

The weapon is pressed to Haleema’s throat, cutting a thin line of red that streams toward her
collarbone.

“Don’t fuck with me.” Helmstulter growls.

The girl is crying now, silent tears, holding herself carefully still so that the knife doesn’t cut
any deeper. Jason works his jaw, forcing himself to ungrit his teeth, flipping the safety on.

He pulls one hand away from the gun, flips his grip with the other, holding it out at a
harmless angle. Hands up, at his sides, smile as easy as he can make it. It’s more of a baring
of teeth than anything else. “Hey, hey. Easy now. No one’s fucking anyone.” Jason’s voice is
cold, the humor like a razorblade instead of a balm.

Haleema whimpers. She’s exposed like this. She must be fucking freezing. Jason can’t make
himself look at her body, lets his gaze skim over the damage Helmstutler wrought. What he
let Helmstutler do to her. This is on him, on his inability to protect an innocent child, even
though Damian had given him plenty of warning that she was in danger. Make that two for
fucking two of the kids he should have kept safe and didn’t.

“Put it down.”

Jason crouches. Watches the knife against Haleema’s throat. He sets the gun on the floor of
the hull, pushes it to the side, just out of reach. “Alright, happy? Let her go. She’s just a kid.”

Helmstulter doesn’t. “You a cop?”

Jason rises, taking the opportunity to ease closer to the man. Haleema’s staring at him now,
wide-eyed. There’s no hope there, nothing but fear and anticipation. “Oh, buddy, I’m a hell of
a lot worse than that.”

Helmstulter’s expression gets tighter. “Fed?”

“Don’t got a badge on me,” Jason says, “which is shit for you, ‘cause I’m going to kill your
ass nice and slow, Kyle.”

Helmstutler considers this, eyes darting to Haleema for a moment before taking Jason in
again. Thinking through his options. It’s not the drowning rat look Jason was expecting—
hoping for. There’s something so satisfying about watching a man realize he’s going to die,
but Helmstutler remains calm.

“Put the girl down,” Jason tries again, aiming to keep his voice level. Non-threatening. “And
I might not cut your dick off and shove it down your throat while you’re still alive.”

Helmstulter laughs outright, causing Haleema to flinch underneath him. “The hell do you
think you are, kid?”

Jason studies the distance between them carefully. Assessing. They’re about fifteen feet apart.
Jason couldn’t cross that space in one leap without Haleema getting hurt in the process. If he
was slow enough, Helmstulter might even slit her throat first. The distance chafes. Fuck, he
wants his gun.

“Gun’s down,” Jason changes tactics. He’s still got guns on him, and a switchblade. A couple
of other knives. His hands are still raised above his head, and he starts to slowly, slowly lower
them, “you can drop her now.”

“Show me your badge.”

“Not a cop,” Jason promises. Another careful step. Apparently Bruce’s lectures on de-
escalation weren’t completely useless. “No badge, just me and you, buddy. Let her go.”

Helmstulter’s eyes rove up and down Jason pointedly. “Good. You’re pretty, maybe I’ll do
you next.”

Jason feels his face curl with disgust, and he recoils, taking half a step back. Helmstulter was
counting on it, finally shoving Haleema aside to leap at Jason while he’s distracted.
The guy’s got moves. The bodyweight and strength to back them up. He fights like a
footballer, lunging forward to tackle Jason, knife still in his grasp. Jason keeps his gaze on
Haleema for a beat too long, watching her hit the ground, the blood on her neck, relieved that
it’s still just a small cut.

He lets Helmstutler tackle him. What the hell, might as well give the guy a sense of
accomplishment before he dies.

Jason rolls with the impact, flipping them as Helmstutler tries to drive the knife into his gut.
He closes his hands around the man’s wrist, wrenching them until he feels something grind
and crunch. The scuffle is short lived, ends up with Jason on top and Helmstutler groaning in
pain, the knife dropped between them.

Jason shifts back, kneeling now. Picks up the knife, looks once over his shoulder to make
sure Haleema hasn’t moved, before turning back to Helmstutler. The man is on his back
beneath him, trying to sit up, cradling his wrist like it’s broken.

Might be. Jason shoves a hand against his chest to force him back down, rears back with the
knife before driving it into his shoulder, between the blades, right through the meat. It sinks
into the flesh with surprising ease, hitting the floorboards beneath Helmstutler. Jason drives
in a little harder, pinning him.

Helmstutler makes a choked, gasping noise, wheezing. Jason leans in, “What’s the matter,
Kyle? Not as much fun when they can fight back?”

There’s that drowning rat look. Real, raw fear. The whites of his eyes are showing, irises
swallowed by pupil. Jason grins.

There’s blood welling up behind the knife, coating Jason’s hands. He wipes them on
Helmstutler’s shirt, rising to his feet with some effort, stepping over the man’s body to
retrieve his gun.

“You know how long I’ve been looking for you, asswipe?” Safety off. Jason’s ears are
ringing and he hasn’t even fired yet. He ambles back over to Helmstutler, bends down to grab
him by the collar, lifting. The man screams at the pressure applied to his new stab wound.
Jason makes sure not to pull hard enough to unpin him.

Hemstutler’s mouth opens. Jason doesn’t want to hear it, whatever it is. More disgusting filth
or helpless begging. It’ll just piss him off more. He slams his fist into Helmstutler’s jaw, feels
some relief from it, like lancing a blister. Ease of tension. The second hit is just for fun.

He rests the gun against Helmstulter’s uninjured shoulder. “You know what a six-pack is,
Kyle?”

The man stares at him. There’s blood dripping from his mouth. Jason thinks he popped a few
teeth loose. And yet the fucker still has the audacity to talk back, words garbled and slurred.
“Like the muscle?”
Jason taps the gun against his shoulder. “No. Six bullets. One here,” he taps the shoulder,
“here,” other shoulder, “elbows. Knees. Six joints. Nice and slow. We’re going to have a chat,
and you’re going to answer my questions. I’m feeling generous, so you can get six chances.”

Jason is not feeling generous. This is going to be slow. It’s going to fucking hurt, and Jason is
glad. Haleema—

Haleema, who is still in the corner, still tied up, still watching them. Still terrified and
bleeding and naked. Shit. Shit.

This will not be slow. This will be very fast, but still painful. Kid should come first. The fuck
is Avery? The commotion wasn’t quiet. Jason needs to get the kid upstairs, out of here, and
getting medical aid. If he can’t hand that off to Avery, then Helmstulter is just going to have
to wait.

He chews on the inside of his lip, turns, peeling his brown jacket off. The leather is warm
with his body heat, lined with shearling. Maybe one of the most expensive pieces of clothing
he owns.

Haleema flinches when he kneels beside her and wraps it around her shoulders. “Hey, kid,”
Jason says, gently. He pulls a knife.

The little shit kicks him in the shin, scrambling backward, screaming behind her gag. The
fear isn’t satisfying on her face like it was on Helmstutler’s, makes something inside his
stomach twist up, remembering all the shit he read in her diary.

She sounds different in person. Maybe because her diary never included a very terrified fuck
off, muffled to incomprehensibility by the duct tape.

“Hey, we’re good,” Jason raises his hands, spreading as many fingers as he can, “I’m not
going to hurt you, just going to cut your wrists free when you’re ready, alright? Here, I’m
going to remove your gag.”

He waits a beat, for Haleema to process the words, then reaches forward slowly to untie it
from her messy hair. The girl needs a lot more than a shower.

The duct tape is old, wet with saliva, so clearly it’s been on for a while. It comes off easier
than Jason was expecting, but takes a few strands of hair with it. Haleema gags when he pulls
out the rag, doubling forward to heave and choke and cough. Jason sits on his haunches,
waiting for the fit to be over, hands held loosely at his sides.

Helmstutler is groaning behind them, an animal for the slaughter. Jason tries not to be
impatient.

“Everything’s going to be okay, now,” he says. Reassurances. She’s just a kid. “I’m gonna get
you home, Haleema. He won’t ever hurt you again.”

“Home. My parents are alive?” Haleema’s voice cracks when she speaks, dry from disuse and
raw from what Jason imagines are screams. “He said,” her eyes drop toward the man behind
him, rage overtaking some of the fear and the relief, “that he killed them.”

Jason shakes his head. Last he heard the Khan’s were splitting their time between the police
station and the hospital. “Yeah, no, kid. Your parents are fine,” he promises. He wiggles the
knife, looks down at her wrists, “can I?”

She offers them up without ever quite looking him in the eye. Her gaze stays pinned on
Helmstutler. Jason can empathize with that, the refusal to let the threat out of eye sight. Even
pinned like this, even with Jason between them. He takes her hands in his own, careful as he
slides the dull edge of the knife between her wrists, holding counter pressure so the wire
doesn’t dig in too bad as he cuts up. She still winces, grits her teeth. Her pain is silent, despite
the welts and bruising, and oncoming infection that Jason can see under the restraints. Tough
kid. Jason is a little proud of her.

“Who’re you?” she asks eventually, once Jason has pulled the wire from the mutilated skin of
her hands.

“My name’s Jason,” he says. Then offers, “Damian’s brother.”

It gets her to look up at him, finally. Her eyebrows rise, lips parting, the picture of shock. She
searches Jason’s face for some sort of confirmation, a resemblance between the two of them?
Jason quirks a half smile. She won’t find that.

“Let’s get you upstairs,” Jason says, wrapping the jacket more securely around her shoulders.
Not just for modesty, the kid is shivering. “You need some EMTs kid, and some blankets,
c’mon—”

“You’re going to kill him,” it’s not a question. Haleema is making a statement, cold and
interested. She’d listened to Jason’s explanation about the six-pack, too. Is still obviously
aware of the gun on Jason’s person.

Jason hesitates. “Yeah. I am. You don’t need to see that, Haleema. He’s done enough.”

“I want to.” Haleema says, looking away from her rapist for the first time to meet Jason’s
eyes head-on. There’s something in those dark eyes that Jason recognizes in his own face,
staring back in disbelief at the Joker walking free. At Bruce having done nothing, and Jason
watching him choose to leave the fucker unharmed.

Jason didn’t learn until a while later about the body cast. Alfred hadn’t been mean so much as
pointed. The desire to see your brutalizer hurt, to watch someone punish them—that Jason
understands.

Because at least if they’re hurt, that means that Jason was worth hurting them for.

It’s all he’d wanted from Bruce. That reassurance that it mattered that he was killed by the
Joker. That Jason was worth that pain.

What innocence could Haleema have that this man hasn’t already taken from her? Wouldn’t it
be better, for her to know that Helmstutler is dead, that he’ll never hurt her again? That’s what
Jason would have wanted.

“It won’t be pretty, kid,” Jason says, softly. He won’t deny her this, not if it’s all that she’s
going to ask for. Not when Jason already wants to beat the shit out of Helmstutler, make him
pay for what he did.

Haleema’s chin raises. Steel in her eyes. “Good.”

Jason takes her to the stairs, lets her take a seat on the edge, making sure that she’s as warm
as she’s going to get until this is over. She zips up his jacket to her chin after finally slipping
inside it, grimacing as her wrists are rubbed against the fabric. “Don’t look if you don’t want,
or wait upstairs,” Jason says. She nods. Looks at Helmstutler with a gleam in her eyes that’s
dangerous.

Jason knows she’s not moving.

He returns to Helmstutler. Blood has oozed in a pathetic little puddle around his shoulder, and
the man has ripped the knife out. He hasn’t made it off the floor, but holds the bloody weapon
out in defense. He uneasily starts to make his way upright.

Jason laughs. He digs in his belt for his silencer, screwing it onto the muzzle of the pistol. A
consideration he usually wouldn’t bother with—it doesn’t make much difference in close
quarters—but Haleema’s hearing needs to be spared.

He nails Helmstutler in the shoulder, the same one that he stabbed. Gets a hoarse scream in
response. Jason pauses to glance at Haleema, make sure she’s not checked out and
traumatized by the show, but she looks fine.

“That was for the kid,” he says, conversationally. “Now we’re gonna chat. Question one,
where the fuck is Damian Wayne?”

Helmstulter doesn’t look surprised or confused. His expression gets dark, eyes filling with a
smug sort of relief. He adjusts his grip on the knife. Jason makes lazy note of its position, but
isn’t that concerned about it. Helmstulter can hold onto it if it makes him feel better. Not
going to matter in the end.

Helmstuttler spits bloody saliva at him. “Why the hell would I tell you anything?”

Jason shoots his other shoulder. Helmstutler screams. His back arches off the ground, and he
finally loses his death grip on that little security blanket of his, knife clattering to the floor.
“Because I didn’t think masochism was on your list of fetishes you freak. Four more
answers.”

“Fuck you,” Ah, he’s the unhelpful sort. Jason should’ve gone with fingers; a lot more
opportunity for an idiot like him to change his mind. “Your little princess isn’t my fucking
problem anymore.”

Jason steps on his shoulder, leans in, watches the blood squelch on the floor. He feels
something grind against his boot. “And why is that?”
Helmstulter sucks in gasping breaths. Jason eases up, only so he can drag up the air to speak.
“That map upstairs, I’m sure you saw it, right?”

“Yeah, so?”

Helmstutler lets his head drop back, laughing wetly. “Where I drop the bodies when I’m
done. Damian Wayne’s dead, probably gonna wash up on the shore in the next couple of
days.” His head cranes back up, trying to meet Haleema’s eyes. Jason shifts, but not before
Helmstutler can say, “you were next, you bitch. Was going to take you out tomorrow.”

The gun shifts downward, Jason pulls the trigger. Left elbow, a long, cut off groan. The sound
is almost enough to drown out Haleema’s hitched breath.

She’s crying again.

“Don’t. Don’t talk. Don’t look. She’s off limits now.” Jason says, resisting the urge to kick
him again. He’s bleeding out too fast, now. “Where is Damian?”

A bloody sneer. Teeth bared, eyes flashing. He can see the nightmare in Haleema’s journal,
the boogeyman. “I told you. At the bottom of Gotham Bay. Guess his—” Helmstutler sucks
in a breath, “his parts haven’t washed up yet, huh?”

Jason can’t control his face. Helmstutler sees it, the flash of horror. The man’s smile only
grows wider. “You,” he spits the word, “are never going to stop him. Head’ll wash up one
day, his leg in a few weeks, clothing six months from now. Some big brother you are. Damian
goes to you for help, out of everyone in your family—not your father, not your siblings, you.”
He drops his voice high, pitchy, “‘I would like you to kill someone—as a last resort’,” he
mimics. “And you hung up on him.” He clicks his tongue in shame.

Jason shoots out his left elbow. Does the knee, too, before he can stop himself. His tongue
feels numb, that ringing in his ears starting up again.

No, no. This is not how this was supposed to go. Finding Helmstutler was supposed to fix
things. Damian can’t be dead, not by the hands of some pedophile, not like this. Jason fists a
hand in Helmstutler’s shirt, but it’s weak. Reeling, at the information he asked for but only
really wanted one answer to.

Helmstulter coughs up blood. It’s leaking down his face like drool. Red and thick. Dark. He’s
still smiling. “You…you really…wanna know what happened? I didn’t kill him, but I
watched the Executioner do it. Slammed…slammed his head. Over. And over. He’s dead,
fucker. He’s dead.” Helmstulter starts laughing, choked and garbled. Spitting up blood.

The words won’t load, even though Jason can see the honesty of it, wielded out as a last
defense. He had been watching Damian for days. Haleema had noted that, in her glitter pen.
He saw what happened.

Jason’s hands are too loose on the gun. It stays limp by his side. He should do the other knee,
he should finish what he started. What Damian asked him to do.
“He put…put your brother’s corpse…in a duffle bag…and then into his car.”

Jason lets go. Takes a step back. He can hear himself breathing, now, the press of anger and
panic swirling something dark inside him. He just needs a minute. Compartmentalization.
Damian might be dead. He is dead. They knew it, when they connected his disappearance to
the Executioner. That’s what Tim said, right? What Cass did? This was always a possibility.
An inevitability.

And Jason hung up on him.

Helmstulter coughs. Gags. “Funny. Executioner…Executioner turning out to be—”

The gun discharging is the first thing that registers, loud, like an explosion in comparison to
Jason’s muffled bullets. Helmstutler’s head explodes at Jason’s feet with a spray of viscera
and blood, brain matter splattering across the floor like a dropped snow globe.

Jason is breathing, he knows he is, but he can’t feel it in his chest. His reflexes are shot,
broken somewhere between seeing Haleema down here and now, like he’s moving at a tenth
of his regular speed.

Helmstutler’s body is limp and bleeding, broken in so many different places. It barely
resembles human anymore. The shards of his jaw bone stick out of his marred skull,
gleaming a sickening sort of pink and yellow. Jason turns, follows the path of the bullet up.
He should pull his own gun, aim it at the threat, but his hands stay at his sides limply,
shoulders stiff from holding himself still.

Avery stares down at him, gun in hand, still aimed at Helmstutler’s corpse. The scent of
gunpowder has grown unbearable, acrid and smoky. Avery’s face looks like it’s coming from
behind a haze, wide-eyed, jaw set.

Haleema makes a baby-bird type noise, soft and scared, half-stumbling down the stairs to get
away from Avery and his gun. It shocks Jason back into his body, has him lurching forward
to meet her, to catch her before she can fall into the pool of gore that was once Kyle
Helmstutler. She crashes into him and clings to the front of Jason’s shirt, still moving,
scrambling despite there being nowhere to go.

“Jace?” Avery says, not quite alarmed. There’s a coolness to his voice that eases some of
Jason’s nerves. Unbothered detachment. Helmstutler is just another body in a line of them,
nothing to make note of. “What—”

Jason is still furious, despite all of this. “He was talking! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Avery bristles. “With me? I was trying to help you. He was clearly lying, but you believed
him because? You want to have an interview session with a pedophile who might have
information to soothe the complex you have about your brother?”

“What, like you? I don’t have a fucking—” Haleema has curled back from him. Jason stops.
Breathes. Let the anger get sucked out of him in one heave. He pulls the girl closer, shifting
her weight until he hoists her up bridal-style, taking care to make sure she’s as comfortable as
he can get her. “We’ll talk about this later,” Jason warns.

Avery’s expression is furious. He nods once.

Haleema doesn’t protest the hold, which is good, because Jason’s not sure she could walk out
of here on her own. Her hand fists weakly in Jason’s collar, knees drawn in as tight as they’ll
go, cringing away from Avery.

It’s almost funny. Jason—the man she watched graphically torture Helmstutler in front of her
—he’s fine, but not Avery, who delivered a relatively merciful headshot.

He hitches her up higher. He can’t do much about the blood covering him, but it’s not like
she’s clean.

“Get the fucking car, Avery.”

The drive to the hospital consists mostly of calming down Haleema, who has started to cry.
Jason lets her. Gathers the kid against himself in a half hug and lets her cry however the fuck
much she wants to. She’s more than earned it. He runs his hand through her grimy hair,
withdraws his phone so she can call her parents.

It sets off another round of tears, but the relief in her eyes is worth it.

Jason takes her into the ER alone. Avery is being pissy, which is going to be hell to sort out
later, but whatever. Jason lets him go.

The hospital staff eye him. Jason deserves that. He’s a strange man, spattered with blood,
carrying in a half-naked child, and being generally vague with his identity and where he
found her.

The nurses don’t press him too hard. He watches them call for security, for the police. He’s
still armed, hadn’t really planned on doing more than dropping her at the door and leaving,
but Haleema’s got a death-grip on his hand and Jason doesn’t have the heart to leave her.

They don’t make her sit in the waiting room at all, just hurry to grab her another blanket and
set her in a wheelchair before taking her back. The RN stops him before Jason can follow to
Haleema’s hospital room, body moving on autopilot.

“Can I ask your relationship to the patient?” she says, voice thin. Her hand is shaking where
it’s held out, not quite touching Jason’s chest. A physical barrier.

She’s a Gotham city ER nurse and her hands are shaking at the prospect of denying him
access to her patient. Jason mentally re-evaluates what he must look like.

“I’m not,” he says, even though at this point it feels kind of like a lie. He takes a placating
step back, palms out at his sides, trying to project harmlessness. “She’s my brother’s
classmate. I don’t know her very well, we just…” he shrugs.
Haleema looks back at him. Her eyes are filled with tears, but her jaw is set. “Thank you,
Jason,” the words are a whisper. Jason nods once, mimics exhaling. She does so. He tries to
muster up some margin of happiness that the girl is safe, that this is over. Helmstutler is
relegated to rotting in the hull of that ship.

A numbness settles over him. Jason turns back to the nurse. “I have her parents phone
number, can I give it to you?”

The relief is plain on her face. Her subordinates wheel Haleema out of sight, behind a set of
swinging doors, and Jason is herded to the nurses station. He gives her as much as he knows
about the kid, which by this point is extensive. He could start listing out her least favorite
foods, from brussels sprouts to dried apricots.

“Make sure she’s okay,” Jason doesn’t mean for it to come out as a threat, but the nurse
seems to have calmed enough to just give him a fond huff instead of calling security.

Jason finds a bathroom before he leaves, looks up at himself in the mirror. He looks about as
good as he expected. Drying blood coating him in spurts and waves. Dirt. Grimy hair.
Exhausted, pale.

He washes off his hands, sucks in a breath. He needs to tell someone about Helmstuttler. He
opens his phone. He has seven missed calls, three from Tim of all people, the other four are a
mix between Dick and Cass.

Given that Tim’s is the most recent, Jason calls him first, swearing under his breath. Fuck.
What now?

Tim picks up on the first ring, which immediately sends Jason’s stomach south. “How
quickly can you get home?” Tim’s voice is quiet.

Jason’s eyes roll skyward. He can hear his heartbeat in his ears. “I’m at Gotham Memorial.
Maybe half an hour, if I push it. What happened, Replacement?” There’s a lag. Tim’s
breathing is unsteady, and it’s the only thing that stops Jason from asking if he’s still there.
“Hey.”

“GCPD found a body,” Tim says, “Edward Lamont’s. Washed up on shore a couple hours
ago.”

“Okay.” Tim should not sound this close to—or in the midst of—tears for that.

“You should come home, Jay.” Jason pushes away from the sink on numb legs. Edward
Lamont was the last person to see Damian alive. Helmstutler’s words replay in his head.
Bottom of the Gotham bay.

The man was a liar, that much is obvious. Changed his story halfway through telling it. But
he sounded so sure about Damian being dead. So smug.

“Lamont wasn’t the only body,” Jason says. Closes his eyes. Exhales.
 “No. Police notified Bruce twenty minutes ago. Damian’s been declared dead.” Tim’s voice is
calm. Numb. “You should come home.”

“Yeah,” Jason hears the words leave his mouth, doesn’t feel them. “I’ll be there in thirty.”

He hangs up. There are no words of consolation he can offer his sibling, no words of relief or
comfort or understanding. Jason is useless. Jason has been useless since Damian called him
ten days ago, asking for help that Jason didn’t even fucking deliver on for two weeks.

Damian goes to you for help, out of everyone in your family, Helmstulter had said, and the
words ache now for the truth in them, not your father, not your siblings, you. And you hung
up on him.

The phone shatters against the wall when Jason throws it. The mirror is next, shards of glass
snapping sharply beneath his knuckles, digging into the skin. A scream is building in his
chest, but Jason only presses the back of his bleeding hand against his mouth, moaning lowly.

The glass crunches underneath his shoes as he leaves for home.

Chapter End Notes

Galaxy says Bruce is about to handle this very normally

(he's not)

Thank You For Reading <3

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