“ fiore mio, fiore della mia anima… ”
(flower of mine, flower of my soul…)
my name is Sofi! I’m 18, going 19, and I love writing on all platforms ( Ao3, Wattpad, Tumblr…), as well as photography, reading and music!
MY WORKS:
› BASE OF FIRE (covering up for those who still prepare) , on Ao3
a MHA x f!amputee!reader: after a villain attack that leaves you at loss for life, you find a purpose in being a hero, joining the prestigious UA High. That is just the start of your new, chaotic life with 1-A.
[ON HIATUS, UNDER REVISION]
› ACE !! - Blue Lock + Haikyuu! X reader , on Wattpad
a Blue Lock + Haikyuu! crossover x f!Isagi!reader: while your twin brother shines through Japan's football excellences, you're determined to be the best volleyball player that the Female International League has ever seen. Boys get in your way and chaos ensues.
[UNDER REVISION, STILL POSTING]
› NOSTALGIA , on Tumblr
a yandere!Platonic!batfamily x f!Hawkeye!reader: you’re life is all good, in the end. You have a loving father, awesome siblings, excellent grades, a good group of friends and a talent for archery, enough to almost convince your father to let you start being a vigilante. But when your mother tries to get back into said life you start to realise that, maybe, you were just living in a pretty cage.
› ASHES AND ECHOES , on Tumblr
a jondami fiction: Damian runs away: Jon is not his, he is not a Wayne, he is not an Al Ghul. In the hope of finding himself in the destruction of the League, he finds instead the latest experiment, the latest innovation: his and Jon’ son. He flees. With the baby. He dies. (Does he?). While his family mourns him, he learns to live again. or, Damian haunting the narrative for everyone while being a very much alive single father in his lil beach house
fandom etiquette as a whole died when people who didn’t grow up on fandoms became stans during lockdown, yes, but why am i seeing people openly mocking fics on twitter. why am i seeing screenshots of fics with captions like “bro what is this 😭.” why am i seeing people mock fic writers for not knowing how sports or theater or college or any other organization operates in the real world.
“college is absolutely nothing like this” “why are we writing four people on the team scoring a hat trick in one game” “so tech work is nothing like this, hope that helps!”
if you don’t like a fic, and if you can’t suspend your belief enough to enjoy a fic that exaggerates or ignores real-world orgs, you don’t have to read it. you don’t have to screenshot it and put it on blast for twitter. you don’t have to post a link to it in the replies. the back button is literally there on your phone. it’s not giving baby’s first fandom anymore, it’s giving entitled asshole and it isn’t as cute as you think it is.
We really needs to talk about how the popularization of fanfiction thanks to Tik Tok has brought into fandoms a kind of "fanfic police" that constantly shames people for reading other things than character x character fanfics. Because why is it suddenly cool to read fanfiction but the moment it’s an x reader or an x oc it automatically becomes cringe?! Let people read x reader or x oc in peace!
Damian runs away: Jon is not his, he is not a Wayne, he is not an Al Ghul. In the hope of finding himself in the destruction of the League, he finds instead the latest experiment, the latest innovation: his and Jon’ son. He flees. With the baby. He dies. (Does he?)
While his family mourns him, he learns to live again.
or, Damian haunting the narrative for everyone while being a very much alive single father in his lil beach house
06. HEAVY GAZE
masterlist ;; «previous || next »
“Death was an old friend, among us. It would, eventually, claim us all. thinking back at what we have lost.. how cruel, it can be.”
Damian’s most noticeable feature…
The camera shakes slightly as it captures a wide courtyard, scorched by fire and smoke. Shadows run across the edges, figures in black descending from rooftops.
Damian stands at the center. Blood mats his hair to the side of his face. His sword trembles in his grip — the handle slick with blood and ash — and it’s clear the arm holding it is injured. He plants his feet, unwilling to fall.
…was always his eyes.
There’s a moment — just a second — where the camera catches his face in profile. His eyes flick upward, catching the movement of an incoming assailant.
They are green. Not just green — unnatural, luminous, furious.
Green. Magnetic. Like staring into two gleaming emerald orbs.
Then the chaos hits.
Five men leap toward him at once. He meets them with violent, controlled precision — flips over one, disables another with a swift elbow. His left arm falters, the blade drags low. A slash rips through his side. Still, he moves.
But there was something else.
More attackers arrive. Too many.
It wasn’t just the color. It was the way he looked at people.
Another cut — the camera blackens for a second.
When it returns, Damian’s staggering. There’s blood on the floor — a lot of it. His sleeve is torn. He grips his side as he steps over a fallen opponent.
A blur moves across the camera. The man behind it (Hashim — though unnamed, unseen) charges. The footage cuts again.
Another flash. Damian is on one knee now, sword braced into the ground. Breathing ragged. But even in this state, his eyes — his gaze — scan everything. Calculating.
His gaze always felt… heavy. Tired.
A groan of effort. He rises to fight one last time.
It isn’t enough.
The camera shakes violently — impact. Someone shouts in a foreign tongue. Then silence.
The image blurs before stabilizing again.
Damian lies on the floor. His chest rises once — barely. A tremble moves through his fingers.
It felt like he knew everything but understood nothing.
He whispers a word, barely audible through the static:
«Waalid.»
Father.
His hand lifts, reaching for something. Someone. It falls before it makes it halfway.
His head turns, ever so slightly — a final instinct to look toward the light.
And then… stillness.
At times, I hoped I could get out of it.
The footage holds on him — too long. His eyes are open. Fixed. Empty.
His sword lies beside him, abandoned.
Damian Wayne is dead.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
finally back guys... I APOLOGIZE GREATLY FOR DISAPPEARING FOR LIKE TWO MONTHS... i had my finals then went on vacation, plus summer makes it SO hard to write. BUT I'll be soon entering college, so I'll go back to writing.
hoper you enjoyed the chapter!!!
This chapter is brief, but a key to the main story. Btw coming soon with the next chapters🎀
Damian runs away: Jon is not his, he is not a Wayne, he is not an Al Ghul. In the hope of finding himself in the destruction of the League, he finds instead the latest experiment, the latest innovation: his and Jon’ son. He flees. With the baby. He dies. (Does he?) While his family mourns him, he learns to live again.
or, Damian haunting the narrative for everyone while being a very much alive single father in his lil beach house
05. DAYS IN THE WIND
masterlist;; « previous | next »
The first night, Damian didn’t stop running.
Not when the cold bit at his face.
Not when Thomas began to fuss against his chest.
Not when his feet bled inside his boots.
Not when his bruised side throbbed with every breath.
The high-altitude wind tore through the thin cloak he’d wrapped around them both. Damian pressed Thomas closer, letting his own body take the worst of it. The child whimpered once, then fell quiet — too quiet — and that scared him more than anything.
By dawn, they were deep into the mountains, and he was trembling. Not from pain. From adrenaline’s crash, the silence, the terrifying finality of what he’d done.
He’d run.
Not from a mission. Not from a fight.
From everything.
From the League. From the weight of his name.
From the man who had watched him grow up like a puzzle to be solved.
From the woman who had given him life and never let him own it.
And for what?
He looked down at Thomas, still wrapped in his cloak, sleeping with one tiny hand curled in the fold of Damian’s tunic.
For this, he told himself. For him.
He set up camp in a ruined shepherd’s hut, half-collapsed from wind and years of neglect. Inside was nothing but stone, dirt, and a rusted fire pit.
Still—walls.
He huddled with Thomas in the farthest corner, blocking the entrance with a fallen beam. The baby whimpered and kicked against his chest.
It was the first time he’d said the nickname aloud.
Trouble.
It made sense.
Thomas Al Ghul. Thomas Wayne. Thomas… Kent. Whatever he would become, whatever his name truly was, he had wrecked every plan Damian had ever known—and yet Damian wouldn’t give him up for the world.
The baby opened his eyes, blinking blearily. Emerald green.
His eyes.
His mother’s eyes.
Bruce’s scowl in his mouth when he frowned.
He was his.
Damian had no idea what to do with that.
The second day, they reached a bus station.
Not in any big city — a small, freezing mountain town mostly populated by goats and the occasional suspicious old woman.
Damian bought passage with stolen money. He sat in the back, eyes shadowed beneath a borrowed hoodie, Thomas asleep in a sling beneath his coat. His hand never left the knife in his pocket.
People stared.
No one said anything.
A boy with a baby. A ghost with dark circles under his eyes.
The third day, it rained.
Damian found shelter beneath an overpass. He ripped a hole in the bottom of his duffle bag to sew a makeshift diaper. He melted snow in a cracked thermos lid for formula. He held Thomas all night, willing the fever in his tiny body to break.
He almost cried.
He didn’t.
The fourth night, Thomas laughed.
Just once. Just a giggle, while trying to chew on Damian’s collarbone with two new teeth.
It startled him so badly he dropped the plastic spoon.
And then, for a second… he laughed too.
By the sixth day, Damian had started talking to him.
Not full conversations. Just small, quiet things.
Little truths he’d never said aloud.
“Your grandfather would know how to fix this.”
“I was trained to break things, not raise them.”
“You look like me, but I hope you’ll be better.”
“I’m going to find him. I’ll prove it to him.”
“We’re almost there. I promise.”
He didn’t know if he was lying.
But he said it anyway.
Because Thomas was listening.
Because someone needed to believe it.
Because for the first time in his life… Damian wasn’t alone.
And that terrified him more than anything else ever had.
They made it to the States.
Illegally. Quietly. Desperately.
It had taken four months.
Four months of sleeping in station corners and rundown hostels with paper-thin walls. Four months of swapping identities and burner phones like clothes. Four months of stolen SIM cards, burned fake IDs, baby wipes and old flannel shirts turned into diapers.
Damian Wayne had never been hunted so closely in his life. And he’d never felt so fragile.
He couldn’t take a plane.
Too easy to track. Too many biometric controls. Too much risk.
The League was patient. The League was everywhere. And they weren’t the only ones that might want what he had wrapped in a blanket strapped to his chest.
So, they took trains.
He used a Slovakian passport forged with help from a former League deserter, bribed a border guard with cash and information, and gave himself a new name: Damian Thorne. The birth certificate he had forged for the baby bore the name Thomas Alfred Thorne. It burned a little in his chest—using Alfred’s name—but it also gave him a strange kind of strength.
The cold in Slovakia bit through fabric like fangs. Damian’s fingers were red and raw from holding Thomas against him inside his jacket. The baby fussed constantly, unfamiliar with cold winds and unfamiliar beds.
They moved like ghosts: never staying longer than a single night, never trusting the same route twice. Damian became a master of “not being seen”—something Ra’s had trained him for, but something he’d never done like this. Not with a baby. Not with a heart tied to his ribs by a thread of laughter and tiny fists.
He broke into pharmacies for fever medication. He hacked into booking systems and deleted every trace of hotel records. He used hand-scratched aliases that changed from city to city.
In Budapest, he stole a bag of groceries and left an apology note behind.
In Vienna, he memorized new metro patterns while cradling Thomas through his first major fever. He didn’t sleep for three days.
He practiced calming Thomas in whispers—Arabic, French, broken lullabies that Talia had never sung, but that he tried to make up from scratch. «Ya ‘omri, ya habibi, hush now» he’d murmur, his voice low against the baby’s hair. «I’m here. Baba’s here.»
They traveled by freight car through Switzerland and into France. The League had eyes everywhere, but especially in major cities. Damian changed directions constantly—zigzagging between small villages and market towns where cameras were rare and no one looked too hard at a boy with a stroller.
He dyed his hair with cheap supermarket dye—dark brown, indistinct. He used makeup to dull the scar on his face, applying it while balancing Thomas on his hip in rest stop bathrooms.
In France, they got stuck in a blizzard for two days. Thomas got sick.
Damian spent the second night awake in the corner of a hostel stairwell, holding his child upright against his chest, measuring his fever with his lips, whispering reassurances in Arabic and English.
He used a spoon to steal hot broth from a stranger’s bowl in the communal kitchen. He felt no shame.
The Spanish coast was warmer. Damian could finally breathe in salty sea air that didn’t feel like glass in his lungs.
They stayed for a week in an abandoned villa off a cliff road. Thomas learned how to stand, wobbling around on the marble floor like a chaotic crab. Damian filmed it—just for himself. Just once.
They didn’t speak to anyone. Damian fished during the mornings and made fire at night. He wrapped Thomas in two layers of old wool and held him close. There was peace there, and guilt that came with it.
At one point, Thomas laughed uncontrollably at the sound of seagulls. It startled Damian so much that he almost dropped the bag of fish bones.
He smiled for the first time in weeks.
«You’re a menace» he whispered, touching the boy’s cheek. «You know that?»
Thomas beamed and replied with a loud «BA!»—his first real syllable.
But Thomas laughed again, pointing to his father’s face with a hand sticky from overripe peach. Damian didn’t correct him again.
In Portugal, they crossed the border on foot. The baby was teething again. Damian’s boots were worn to the sole, and his right arm still ached from the fight in the monastery. He only rested for a day in a beach town, watching as Thomas tried to eat sand.
And then they found a boat.
A man owed him a favor. Or rather, owed Ra’s a favor—and Damian had never cashed in a debt before. He did now.
It was a rusted shipping vessel, unofficial and crawling with rats. But it was unregistered and heading for the East Coast. That was all that mattered.
Eleven days at sea.
Damian kept to a storage unit deep below deck, sleeping on a rolled tarp, his son curled under his arm. The sea was relentless, and Thomas hated it—he cried at every groan of the hull, at every slam of wave on steel. But eventually, he slept. Damian fed him canned milk and played soft recordings of Alfred reading to him as a child.
He counted days by tally marks in the corner of the crate.
They didn’t arrive in New Jersey.
Too dangerous.
Instead, the boat docked discreetly in New Brunswick, Canada, and from there Damian made contact with a man he’d once saved in Istanbul—a grizzled, one-eyed smuggler who owed him a personal debt.
He helped them cross into Maine.
Damian chose it on purpose: sparse, forested, isolated. The kind of place where no one cared who you were if you paid in cash and kept to yourself.
He bought an old Chevy Impala with rust around the wheels and a gas gauge that didn’t work. The man he bought it from had four teeth and didn’t even ask for a name.
They settled briefly in a one-bedroom cabin outside of Waterville. No cameras. No prying eyes. Just the wind in the trees and Thomas’s slow-growing vocabulary—now filled with “duck”, “baba”, “no”, and “uh-oh”.
Damian didn’t dare drive to Gotham. Not yet. He needed to wait. He needed to know they weren’t on his tail.
«Two more months» he said aloud to Thomas, sitting on the porch while the boy gnawed on a wooden spoon. «On my birthday, we move.»
He didn’t say what he feared most: that someone would find them before then. That his choice—running, taking this child—had already written his fate in blood.
But Thomas babbled happily beside him, face smeared with applesauce.
And for a little while, that was enough.
The cabin wasn’t much: two rooms, old plumbing, a fire stove that coughed black smoke on bad days. But to Thomas, it was paradise. He would toddle from corner to corner in heavy socks, dragging a collection of twigs and buttons Damian couldn’t figure out the origin of.
They had a routine.
Mornings started with porridge and blueberry juice. Damian always pretended not to see when Thomas spooned half of it onto the floor for the birds. After breakfast, they went for a walk — Damian with a hood drawn low, Thomas strapped to his chest or skipping beside him with fat mittens and mismatched boots.
They found a nearby creek, frozen at the edges. Thomas tossed pebbles in and laughed each time they cracked the ice.
At night, Damian read to him. Old paperbacks left behind by the cabin’s previous owners — mysteries, westerns, a few romance novels that he skipped through awkwardly when Thomas refused to sleep. He translated them into French or Arabic as he read, and Thomas, even if he didn’t understand a word, clapped when Damian used voices.
He kept a small burner going for heat and stayed close. Most nights, Thomas fell asleep curled up like a cat in the crook of his arm. Damian never moved him.
Some nights, he lay awake, eyes on the ceiling, wondering if his father would even want to see him again. If he’d even recognize him.
He was thinner now. Paler. With callouses on his hands from chopping wood and bruises on his knees from falling asleep beside a toddler’s bed too many nights in a row.
But he was also softer. Calmer. The League was a shadow now. He had changed. Hadn’t he?
«You made me a father» he whispered to the boy one night, cheek pressed to Thomas’s hair. «You made me… real.»
The day before they were meant to leave, Damian bought a burner phone and encrypted it to send a single, non-traceable message to an old contact in Canada who owed him safe passage down through Vermont. From there, he would avoid Gotham still—cutting toward the Appalachians and ending up around Blüdhaven.
He bought a secondhand car. Gray Honda, no plates. Cash only. No questions asked.
He packed light: just clothes, supplies, and the carved wooden horse Thomas had come to love. Everything else, they left behind. He burned old notes and wiped clean the laptop he’d been coding from.
They crossed into Vermont just before dusk. The backroads were unplowed, slick, but Damian drove carefully, glancing at Thomas in the rearview mirror every ten minutes. The boy was humming. He’d started doing that when he was bored.
«Hold on a little longer» Damian said aloud. «We’re almost there.»
They stopped at a lodge for truckers. Damian slept in the backseat while Thomas slept on his chest, wrapped in blankets. He dreamt of his father’s voice, calling his name, and woke up in a sweat.
In the woods of New Hampshire, their path was blocked by a fallen tree. Damian had to carry Thomas on his back while he hiked four miles to the next stop. Thomas never complained, just tapped his fingers against Damian’s shoulder and asked softly, «Juice?»
They shared protein bars and old tangerines in the cold. That night, Damian used a tarp and sleeping bags to set up camp behind an abandoned ranger post. He made a fire with flint and steel.
Thomas fell asleep staring at the stars.
A brief stop in Massachusetts. He picked up medicine and canned food. Thomas got a fever from the windchill, and Damian panicked, held him close all night while wiping him down with water and medicine.
He didn’t sleep. Just stared at Thomas’s pink cheeks and whispered things in Arabic — things his mother never said to him.
«Ya roohi. Baba’s here. You’re strong. You’ll be fine.»
And he was. The next morning, Thomas was laughing again, tugging on his scarf and giggling at a dog they saw outside a gas station.
They reached southern Pennsylvania. The fog was thick on the road, trees swallowing them whole.
Thomas was asleep in the backseat, and Damian looked at his reflection in the rearview mirror.
He didn’t look like the boy who left Nanda Parbat. He looked older. Tired. Scared. But his grip on the wheel didn’t shake.
The small town was quiet — painfully so.
A coastal fog crept over the streets, swallowing streetlights in a yellow haze as Damian stood on the front porch of the motel, arms crossed, hoodie drawn over his head despite the warmth. He watched as Thomas, inside, tried to conquer a stubborn juice box with the absolute intensity of a small war general. The faint sound of cartoons played in the background, muffled by the walls.
Damian had hoped they’d stay unnoticed here, just another tired young parent with a toddler in tow, living out of borrowed time and travel-sized toiletries.
They were so close now.
He could feel it.
Father was only a few hours away. Gotham. Just across the water
But something gnawed at him. A sensation he’d learned to trust: the creeping cold along the spine, the pressure at the base of the skull. Surveillance. Shadows.
Someone was looking for them.
No.
Someone had found them.
He turned his head just slightly and scanned the street again — nothing. But the scent of incense still clung to his jacket, and in the quiet hum of the air conditioning unit beside him, he could almost hear the familiar rhythm of steps trained to fall silent.
He exhaled the winter air through his nose, slowly. Controlling it. Preparing.
Thomas called out then, his small voice cutting through the growing dread. «Babaaa!»
Damian turned and let the fear go — just for a moment.
Inside, Thomas was holding the leg of a chair, standing proudly, droplets of the outside rain clinging to his curls and cheeks. Damian stepped in and knelt, wiping his chin, eyes softening. He pulled his son into a hug, tighter than usual.
He nearly broke then. Instead, Damian stood, kissed his forehead, and started packing. Quietly. Quickly.
They’d leave before dawn.
He didn’t need to look at the rooftops to know who was watching.
ALMOST FINISHED WITH MY FINALS YALL
Now this chapter is directly connected to the prologue! I advise you to reread that for a better understanding of next chapter🩷
While I finish chapter 3 of Nostalgia (it’s a core point but it’s hard to describe istg) got a future idea
Spider!Wayne!Neglected!reader X yandere!batfam X spiderverse X DC boys
IN WHICH Reader is Bruce and Selina’s kid and grew up with a foot in both worlds, but is in second place in her parents’ failing love story, so not really a part of the Batfamily and bitter about this
Cue to her being VERY VERY smart and selected for a special program in these research lab. What happens? You guessed it, she gets bitten by a radioactive spider.
In particular, a Black Widow (special characteristics to figure out)
She doesn’t tell anyone about this, but as she learns her new powers (well aware of the no-meta policy) she figures out how to become Spiderwoman and gets involved with multiple people from across everywhere
Also she’s like the socialite face of the Waynes, since she wasn’t vigilanting with the bla bla
And the Bruce+Selina genes? Absolutely killing it. Reader is a menace. “What do the best detective in the world and the best thief make?” “A nosy bitch” “ahahaha, that’s funny”. Makes crude sex protection to Bruce. They find out about Damian? “You do have a type. World class criminals”
But also so so charming and mesmerizing. People on the internet genuinely thank her parents for not sleeping that night. Boys and girls and men and women all fall to her charms
Damian runs away: Jon is not his, he is not a Wayne, he is not an Al Ghul. In the hope of finding himself in the destruction of the League, he finds instead the latest experiment, the latest innovation: his and Jon’ son. He flees. With the baby. He dies. (Does he?) While his family mourns him, he learns to live again.
or, Damian haunting the narrative for everyone while being a very much alive single father in his lil beach house
4. THE PRODIGAL SON
masterlist;; « prev || next »
It was snowing heavily outside. The kind of snow that swallowed the world in quiet.
Damian sat cross-legged on the floor of the study, a heavy wool sweater swallowing his small frame, sleeves pushed up to his elbows. He had a sketchbook open in front of him and a pencil tucked behind one ear, tongue poking out slightly as he tried to draw the curve of a horse’s flank from memory.
Bruce sat at the desk across the room, reading over a case file, glasses perched on the bridge of his nose.
It was quiet. The kind of silence that, at first, made Damian twitchy. The League had taught him silence was a weapon, but this silence was… soft. Unthreatening. Full.
At one point, his pencil broke. The sound startled him.
Before he could snap at himself or grab another, Bruce looked up.
«Problem?» he asked.
Damian hesitated, then mumbled, «Pencil broke.»
Bruce rose from the desk and crossed the room. Damian tensed slightly but didn’t flinch when Bruce knelt beside him and gently took the broken pencil from his hand.
From his back pocket, Bruce pulled a small hand sharpener — the old kind, silver, slightly worn.
He held it out. «You ever use one of these before?»
Damian eyed it. «We used blades at the League.»
Bruce huffed softly, then offered the sharpener again. «This is safer. Try and use it»
Damian took it without a word and sharpened the pencil carefully, eyes narrowed in concentration. He handed it back once finished, but Bruce shook his head.
«Keep it. You’ll need it.»
There was a long pause. Then, quietly, Damian said: «I was going to draw you next.»
Bruce blinked, caught off guard. «Me?»
Damian nodded once, face heating. «Only if you sit still.»
A flicker of a smile touched Bruce’s lips — real, quiet, rare. He sat down in the armchair near the fire.
«Alright then. But only if I get a copy.»
Damian ducked his head to hide the small smile curling at the edges of his mouth.
The corridor was no longer safe.
He could feel it in the stillness — the kind of silence that only came before the storm.
A faint vibration echoed through the floor. Voices. Shouts. The alarm hadn’t been triggered — not yet — but someone had seen the fire.
Someone had gone to the lab.
Damian didn’t wait.
He pulled the bag from beneath the cot in his room — pre-packed, as always, with the essentials. Emergency rations, fake IDs, currency from six different countries. His old League exit plan. Irony burned in the back of his throat.
This wasn’t an exit. This was a heist. A kidnapping. A rescue.
Thomas squirmed as he was wrapped in fresh layers. Damian tucked him into the sling across his chest, heart hammering against the weight of the child now pressed protectively to him.
He looked over his shoulder once.
The silks. The incense smoke. The dagger on the pillow.
He would not miss it.
The destruction was absolute.
Sparks flickered from blackened steel. The containment tanks were shattered. The console was burned down to slag.
The data was gone. All of it.
«Who did this?» hissed a voice from the shadows, sliding into the smoke-choked room.
Another figure entered behind them, breathing shallowly. «The files—every last copy has been scrubbed. He knew what he was doing.»
A low hum of fury built in the first speaker’s throat.
Then a flash of realization.
«The child.»
There was a pause.
«Gone.»
The servant hallway was narrow and rarely used. Damian slipped through it like smoke, hugging the wall as he pressed a concealed panel open with one hand.
His grip tightened on the cloth around Thomas, who had begun to stir faintly.
«Not yet» Damian muttered, low and urgent, eyes scanning the shadows.
He could hear them now — running feet. Doors opening. Orders shouted.
Too late.
Someone had noticed. And they knew who.
«Find him,» Talia’s voice said, calm but low with fury. «No alarms. Quietly. Bring back the child intact. Damian—»
She paused.
Her expression was unreadable. «Bring him back alive. If possible. If not, do what you must do»
He needed to find Father.
The words repeated in his mind like a mantra. A breathless rhythm between each thud of his boots on the cool temple floor, each shift of Thomas’s weight against his chest.
Father. He would know what to do.
He gritted his teeth, ducking beneath a hanging curtain as the hallway twisted into another staircase. His shoulder slammed into the wall as he rounded a sharp corner, the scent of incense and old steel thick in the air.
Father. He’d help. He had to help.
The baby stirred slightly, tiny fingers gripping the edge of Damian’s tunic with unknowing, complete trust. Damian adjusted his hold automatically, pulling the infant closer, cradling the fragile head against his collarbone with the same instinct he used to steady a blade in a fight.
He hadn’t stopped running. Not even when his legs began to burn. Not when the alarms first sounded. Not even when the sound of footsteps echoed behind him — searching, fast, furious.
«Shhh» he whispered low against Thomas’s hair, kissing the top of his head as he ducked into the shadows of a stone archway. «We’re almost out.»
He didn’t know if that was true. Didn’t care.
All he knew was that his heart was pounding in a way it never had before — not even in battle. Not even when dying.
He had to get Thomas out.
He had to reach Gotham.
To reach him.
Father. Dad. Please…
Damian’s throat tightened.
This wasn’t betrayal. This wasn’t desertion. He hadn’t come here to join the League. He’d come to sever the thread that still held him in its chokehold. To prove to his father — to himself — that he wasn’t his mother’s weapon anymore.
But now?
Now he was running with a child — a child who shared his eyes, his ears, his blood. A child born from secrets and deception, locked away in a dark room like an experiment.
And he wasn’t just running from the League anymore.
He was fleeing with a reason to live.
He skidded to a stop at a rusted metal door. There. That led to the rear tunnel — the same escape route he’d mapped out days earlier. A backup plan. In case the League turned on him.
He set Thomas gently down on the stone floor beside the door, wrapped tightly in his cloak, as he pried the security panel open and rewired it with trembling fingers.
His mind was screaming.
He’ll think I betrayed him. Bruce. He’ll think I went back.
But he didn’t. He hadn’t.
And this — Thomas — was proof of it.
Proof that he was no longer a blade. That he had chosen life.
The door creaked open. Cold mountain air swept in, biting and sharp. Thomas whimpered at the chill, and Damian gathered him up again, shielding his small body with his own warmth.
«I’ll show him» he whispered, half to himself, half to Thomas. «I’ll show him I’m not the League’s weapon anymore. Then, we’ll be fine. Happy.»
He pulled the hood low over his head. Tightened the straps of his bag. Checked for shadows, heat signatures, drones — anything.
And then he ran into the night.
The wind howled. The moon bled through the clouds.
Behind him, the League’s walls burned with secrets.
Ahead, the world waited. His future waited.
Father… please see me. Please understand.
And in the warmth of his arms, the baby cooed softly.
The only thing that mattered now.
The only thing that ever would.
He reached the stable.
The League kept horses still — for terrain planes couldn’t cross.
One responded to his whistle. An old grey, eyes dark and sharp. He saddled it in record time.
Another shout echoed behind him.
They were close now.
«I’m sorry» he murmured to Thomas, cradling the baby to his chest as he mounted.
He gripped the reins with one hand, pressed a hidden detonator into the far wall with the other — a failsafe charge he’d placed days ago.
The corridor behind him burst into flame.
He didn’t look back.
The dusk wind swept across the rocks, sharp and dry as a blade.
Damian’s boots touched down softly as he dismounted, Thomas strapped securely against his chest, bundled in layers of cloth. The baby stirred faintly but didn’t wake — not even as Damian adjusted his stance, eyes locked on the cloaked figure blocking the mountain path.
Hashim.
He stood relaxed, blade in hand, one eyebrow lifted with a maddening calm.
«Running away, my prince?» the assassin asked smoothly, voice like velvet over steel.
Damian didn’t answer.
He stepped to the side, shifting his center of gravity. The slope to the canyon pass was just beyond the bend — if he could get there, they’d lose him.
Hashim noticed. And smiled.
«You could have had command of the League, you know,» he continued, drawing closer in slow, deliberate steps. «Instead, here you are. One hand holding a child. The other barely steady on your sword. Tell me, is this rebellion or desperation?»
Damian moved first.
The clash was brief — blinding fast.
Steel scraped against steel, but Damian was sharper. Quieter. He ducked a wide slash, pivoted his weight, and landed a bone-rattling kick to Hashim’s ribs. He kept Thomas steady with every movement, eyes never leaving the man in front of him.
Hashim stumbled back, breath knocked out of him.
And then — laughter.
He wiped blood from his lip with his thumb and grinned.
«You really are extraordinary.» His eyes lit up with something more than amusement — something dangerous. «No wonder they fear you. No wonder she built the child from you.»
Damian’s grip tightened on his sword.
«The League was never meant to contain you. But I see you now. Clearly.» Hashim stepped closer, lowering his weapon, opening his hands — as if Damian might welcome him. «Let me serve you. Let me follow you. Let me protect—»
Crack.
It was fast. A blur of movement.
Damian headbutted him. Full force.
Hashim reeled — eyes wide in startled disbelief — and Damian’s elbow followed, catching him right at the temple. The man crumpled soundlessly into the sand, unconscious before he hit the ground.
Damian didn’t waste a breath.
He dragged Hashim off the trail, kicked sand over their tracks, and leapt onto his horse in a clean motion, clutching Thomas close once more.
The baby stirred.
Damian exhaled through his nose, brushing a finger over his son’s tiny cheek.
«We’re almost safe,» he murmured, pressing his heels into the horse’s sides.
And they vanished into the night — gone before the League could find them.
He’s a baby he just wants to go home to his dad and hug him it was a teenager tantrum okay. Also Hashim and Damian’s dynamic cracks me up because this boy just knocked out cold the man with a head butt and this mf is like “🤭my prince🤭” and still will be
Damian runs away: Jon is not his, he is not a Wayne, he is not an Al Ghul. In the hope of finding himself in the destruction of the League, he finds instead the latest experiment, the latest innovation: his and Jon’ son. He flees. With the baby. He dies. (Does he?) While his family mourns him, he learns to live again.
or, Damian haunting the narrative for everyone while being a very much alive single father in his lil beach house
3. FEAR NOT, SWEET CHILD OF MINE
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The crackle of static was the only sound in the Batcave.
Tim’s fingers flew across the keyboard, eyes bloodshot and fixed on the streams of distorted footage and data fragments. Camera feeds. Satellite sweeps. Traffic surveillance. Airport logs. Every trace of digital dust Damian Wayne might’ve left behind.
Nothing. Again.
The cursor blinked. Mocking.
«Come on, come on,» he muttered, scrubbing backwards on the security loop of a Gotham bus terminal. Third time that hour. Same result. No Dami. No trace. Nothing.
Behind him, the argument continued to spiral.
«You pushed him too hard!» Dick’s voice cracked across the stone. «You always do this, Bruce. You expect him to be a soldier, and when he acts like one, you act surprised.»
«He is a soldier.» Bruce’s tone was steel. Tired steel. «And he knows better than to vanish without protocol. No word. No trace. He didn’t even—»
His voice caught. Just for a breath.
«He didn’t even say goodbye,» Dick said softly. The words landed like a wound. «Do you know how messed up that is?»
Jason didn’t speak. He leaned against the cave’s rock wall, arms crossed, mouth tight. Not his usual smirk, not a clever quip waiting. Just silence. Heavy and tight and aching.
He had been the first to notice something off. The way Damian hadn’t responded in their shared patrol channel. How his tracker had gone dark.
But he’d stayed quiet then.
And now?
He didn’t have words.
Not for the way Alfred had closed the boy’s door too gently. Not for the extra plate still getting set at dinner. Not for the ache he knew Bruce was trying to bury under orders and blame.
«He’s not some… kid with a tantrum, Bruce. He doesn’t run» Dick continued, louder now. «And he doesn’t leave without a reason. So what the hell happened? What did you say to him?»
That landed.
Bruce turned, jaw tight. «You think I don’t blame myself? You think I haven’t played every conversation we’ve had the last month on loop in my head? You think I—»
He didn’t finish. He looked away.
The screen Tim was staring at buzzed with new static.
Jason exhaled through his nose and finally muttered, «We don’t even know if he’s—»
He stopped. Didn’t say dead.
He didn’t have to.
Tim flinched at the word that hadn’t been spoken.
Dick ran a hand through his hair, pacing, jaw locked in frustration and helpless fury.
Bruce stood still in the middle of it all. The eye of the storm. A statue carved out of grief and guilt, trying not to feel any of it.
But the cave felt it. Every wall. Every shadow.
It felt the hole Damian had left.
And no one — not even the great Batman — knew how to fill it.
«I spoke with Jon» Dick said, voice tight.
The words made Bruce look up sharply, as if yanked from some unspoken spiral.
«He was worried» Dick continued. «He couldn’t find Dami. Said that he saw him after your fight, and that Dami had said—some worrying things.»
Tim stopped typing. His fingers hovered over the keyboard.
«What kind of things?» Jason asked, finally breaking his silence. His voice was low. Dry. Too calm to be safe.
Dick ran a hand through his hair, glancing between all of them before settling his eyes back on Bruce. «About the League.»
The silence hit like a cold snap.
Tim turned in his chair. «Wait, you mean like… going back?»
«I don’t know» Dick admitted. «But Jon said Damian looked—broken. Like he was trying to prove something. That he wanted to ‘show Bruce he wasn’t a weapon anymore.’»
Bruce’s face didn’t change. But something in him did.
«He said» Dick added, voice quieter now, «that Dami looked like he was saying goodbye.»
Jason stepped forward. «So you’re telling me he had a fight with you» he looked at Bruce, «said cryptic League-flavored shit to his ex-boyfriend or something» he nodded at Dick, «and then vanished off the face of the Earth, and we’re only putting it together now?»
«He’s not a runaway» Tim said, tense. «He planned this. It’s surgical. Everything’s wiped.»
Jason turned to Bruce, fire behind his stare. «What did you say to him, Bruce? Because if he walked straight into the League’s arms, you pushed him there.»
Bruce looked down at the floor for a moment—then turned toward the Batcomputer, the light of the screen painting his face with something cold and harsh. Then he confessed.
«I told him he was acting like one of them.»
No one breathed.
«And when he asked me if that’s what I thought he was made to be…» Bruce exhaled through his teeth, voice clipped. «I didn’t answer fast enough.»
«Oh my God» Tim muttered.
The Batcave felt like it had grown colder.
Bruce’s jaw clenched. His voice, when it came, was low and almost hesitant.
«And if—» he said, after a long moment, «if he joins back the League?»
The question hung in the air like a blade suspended by a thread.
Tim didn’t even look up from the screen this time. «Wouldn’t be surprised.»
The silence after that was immediate and sharp.
Bruce turned toward him, something dark flickering behind his eyes. «Tim.»
That was all it took. A single name. Sharper than a batarang.
Tim blinked, but didn’t back down. «What? I’m just being honest. He’s been trained his whole life to go back to them. Maybe he never stopped being one of them. Maybe he just—»
«That’s enough» Dick cut in, hard.
Tim fell silent, lips pressed into a thin, bitter line.
Jason pushed off the wall. «Whether or not he’s going back to the League isn’t the point. The point is, he didn’t tell any of us. That means he didn’t trust us. Not even you, Bruce.»
Bruce didn’t answer.
«Which makes me think,» Jason added, a little quieter now, «he doesn’t think we’d come for him.»
«He should know better» Dick muttered.
«He doesn’t» Tim said, quietly.
They all turned to look at him.
Tim stared at the screen, guilt smoldering in the shadows under his eyes. «He really doesn’t.»
The corridor was darker than the others.
A servant had pointed him toward the older storage wings for some peace, claiming few patrolled that side of the mountain at night. Damian had followed out of habit more than trust. But it wasn’t peace that greeted him now.
It was the faint, raw sound of a cry.
It was soft, wavering—unsteady. Young.
Damian froze mid-step, hand on the hilt at his side. The League had been known to keep prisoners, but this wasn’t a sound he associated with interrogation cells.
This was… a child.
He moved carefully. His boots didn’t make a sound. The faint flickering torches along the hall cast long, trembling shadows. He paused outside the door the sound came from, pressing a hand against the cold wood.
«Tt.»
A quiet, annoyed breath. He could feel his heartbeat in his palm against the door. One last glance around the hallway. Empty.
Damian shifted his weight, gripped the handle, and pushed the door open slowly.
The hinges creaked softly, dust shaking loose with the motion.
Inside, the room was dim. The light of a monitor screen cast a pale glow over the far side of the space — where a small cradle, surrounded by high-tech machinery, stood like something forgotten.
The cry paused.
Then, a giggle.
The baby — a few months old at max — blinked up at him. Big blue-green eyes glistened in the glow, and a little hand reached upward. A toy lay discarded beside him. His legs kicked slightly under the light blanket.
Damian stepped inside, slowly. Disbelief settled over him like dust on glass.
His mouth opened. No words came.
The baby giggled again, louder now, bubbly and warm. He reached both arms up this time, as if recognizing something familiar. Or maybe someone.
Damian took a cautious step closer.
«Who left you here…?» he whispered, voice so soft it barely existed.
He knelt, arms staying by his sides. The child wriggled in response, still watching him. That same, toothless smile didn’t leave his face.
Something twisted in Damian’s chest.
His eyes flicked to the sides of the room.
He stood slowly, sharp gaze surveying the space. In the corner, by the machinery, a terminal still flickered — the interface ancient, but still active. Files, half-loaded scans, genetics data. A few hard drives were stacked messily beneath the desk.
Damian moved to the terminal. His fingers hovered over the keys.
He didn’t want to look.
But he had to.
Wayne. Kent. Subject 001. Viable.
He stared.
«No…» he breathed. His eyes narrowed, darting across the file headers. “Gene stabilization. Clone cycle 3. Blood samples. Viability spike in dual-strand merging…”
He turned slowly back to the baby. «No no no…»
The child squealed in delight, kicking his feet, his tiny hands stretching toward the ceiling like he was trying to touch the stars.
A red thread of silk — tied loosely around one wrist — caught the light.
Damian knelt again, slower this time. He stared at the baby’s face, at the shape of his nose, the softness of his skin, the slight curl of his dark hair.
Then his own hands lifted.
Without really deciding to, he reached forward.
The baby didn’t cry. Didn’t pull away. He leaned into the arms that finally scooped him up, resting against Damian’s chest with a pleased, sleepy sound.
Damian looked down at him.
For the first time since arriving, the armor didn’t feel like protection. It felt like weight.
His voice was just a whisper.
«What did they do to you, little one…?»
The baby rested in the crook of his arm now, head nestled under Damian’s chin — warm and trusting, utterly unaware.
He had wrapped him in the green scarf he wore under his armor, one of the few soft things he had on hand. It didn’t seem to bother the infant. In fact, he looked more content now than he had moments ago.
Damian adjusted his grip, then turned back to the monitor.
He pulled a flash drive from his utility belt — small, high-encryption, carried for emergencies — and slotted it into the terminal. The screen pulsed.
[TRANSFER INITIATED – FILE COUNT: 462]
He scanned the filenames as they zipped across the screen.
Subject_001.DNA_Sequence.fullmap
Cycle3_implantationProtocol.txt.
KentWayne_CompatibilityReport.pdf
T.A.G.L.. Memo: Viability Confirmed
BrainWiring_AggressionControl_Alpha7.log
Thomas.WK.V3.HeartStabilizer.reading.
Thomas.
That was his name.
Damian’s jaw tightened as a slow, cold realization settled over him.
They had named him.
They had built him.
He reached to open one of the audio files. A recording played — his mother’s voice, eerily calm. «We’ve refined the base structure. Using Jonathan’s alien genome as a stabilizer, and Damian’s as the foundation. It will be my perfect heir. One that will not question its purpose.»
The baby cooed lightly.
Damian stood frozen.
«He will be loyal,» Talia’s voice continued. «He will be strong. And he will be mine.»
Damian yanked the drive free.
The screen blinked once.
He reached down, reset the OS manually, and began typing.
> DELETE ALL FILES? Y/N
«Yes» he said out loud. Pressed the key.
> DELETE CONFIRMED
Then, he turned to the machine — the cradle of this twisted project. Transparent pods. Wires like veins. The heart of what they made.
He laid Thomas down gently on a soft blanket in the corner, made from old silks stacked for experiments. The baby squirmed, but stayed quiet, watching him with curious eyes.
Damian drew his katana.
«You will never be someone’s weapon,» he said to the child, before turning to the machine.
The blade sliced through wires, tubing, support beams. Sparks burst and glass shattered. The power core cracked with a hiss, releasing a noxious smoke. Flames licked at the circuits. The lab flooded with heat and the scent of burned metal.
The baby didn’t cry.
Damian pulled him back into his arms.
Behind them, the machine collapsed in a final burst of sparks, flickering in the shadows of the League’s stronghold.
The flames reflected in Damian’s eyes as he turned away.
He wasn’t a prince.
Not anymore.
He was a father.
And he was getting them out.
Damian sat with his back against the damp wall, the baby in his arms again. The firelight behind them had long dimmed into flickering shadows, and Thomas had drifted into sleep — one tiny fist still curled in the scarf now wrapped around them both.
The silence roared in his ears.
He couldn’t move. Not yet.
His hands — steady in battle, unwavering in precision — trembled now, barely noticeable. The baby’s head rested against his chest, his breathing slow, rhythmic, innocent.
«Thomas.»
He said the name out loud. Quietly.
It didn’t feel like a title anymore. It felt like something real.
He leaned his head back against the stone. Let the cold seep in. He couldn’t think too fast, or it would break him.
They made him — from him. From Jonathan. A genetic template. An heir to the League.
Damian’s mouth curled bitterly.
He knew what they wanted: a perfect soldier with a heart designed only to obey.
But the boy in his arms — warm, squirmy, alive — was not a weapon. He was a person. Already full of his own sounds and moods and spark. Already something more.
Damian looked down at him, watching the tiny mouth twitch as he dreamed. A bit of drool clung to his chin.
«You’re not what they wanted you to be,» he whispered.
He said it to the baby, but also to himself.
And then, after a moment — a thought slipped through like a whisper in the fog.
You’re mine.
Not in the possessive way his mother might mean. Not as property. But as something… fragile and fierce. Like a part of himself he had never planned for but could no longer ignore.
«I’m a father now.»
He didn’t realize he had spoken until the words echoed back to him in the stone corridor.
It felt unreal. Stupid. Impossible.
But the warmth in his arms was not.
Damian let out a quiet breath. His hand moved gently over the back of Thomas’s head, smoothing down fine, curling hair. He was so small. Smaller than he remembered babies being.
«You have no idea what you’ve been born into,» he murmured. His voice shook just slightly. «But I’ll make sure you’ll never feel it.»
He closed his eyes.
«No labs. No chains. No blades in your future.»
Then, quieter still: «No League. No Al Ghuls. Just… us.»
Thomas shifted slightly, murmured in his sleep. Damian stilled, arms tightening instinctively, every nerve on alert — then relaxed again when the baby simply sighed and curled closer.
Damian lowered his head, forehead brushing against the baby’s soft crown.
His whisper was almost reverent.
«You’re not my legacy. You’re my beginning.»
He’s going through a lot guys from now on he’s really in full desperation okay. Also shorter chapter because I wrote too much and I had to split (which is why you’re getting two chapters, just need to review chap 4)
Damian runs away: Jon is not his, he is not a Wayne, he is not an Al Ghul. In the hope of finding himself in the destruction of the League, he finds instead the latest experiment, the latest innovation: his and Jon’ son. He flees. With the baby. He dies. (Does he?) While his family mourns him, he learns to live again.
or, Damian haunting the narrative for everyone while being a very much alive single father in his lil beach house
2. NIGHTS OF SUGAR
masterlist ;; « prev || next »
To move unnoticed in Gotham was an art.
To move unnoticed while being Damian Wayne — Robin, heir, target — was a near-impossible feat, especially under the surveillance net Barbara and Tim had woven over the city’s veins. Every corner held a camera, every rooftop a listening ear, and every shadow might as well have whispered we see you.
But Damian had trained for ghosts.
His face — sharp with the symmetry of Talia’s bone structure, heavy-lidded with the weight of Bruce’s tired eyes, and marked by a skin tone just dark enough to draw lingering stares from Gotham’s largely pale palette — was hidden beneath a dark hoodie, a low baseball cap, and a black surgical mask.
He’d caught a glimpse of himself in the cracked bus window — barely a silhouette, but even that made him flinch. The cap was old, familiar. He didn’t want to remember where it came from.
He didn’t want to remember Jon’s laugh the day he’d shoved it on Damian’s head after a training match in Metropolis, calling it a “civilian uniform.”
He tugged it lower. Tighter.
It didn’t matter now.
Damian sat at the very back of the bus, knees drawn in, his bag clutched to his chest like a lifeline. Inside were essentials — old forged IDs, his knife, his trusted sword, ration tabs, some cash, a burner phone with no contacts.
No tracker. No signal. No line home.
The city passed by in blurs of orange streetlight and smeared neon. Everything looked washed out by the rain, bleached of color — as if Gotham knew he was leaving, and had already begun to forget him.
He leaned his head against the cold glass, closing his eyes for a moment.
The road to Nanda Parbat was long, yes — but not unknown.
Most would say it took two days at best, cutting across cities and borders with planned routes and clean passports. But Damian wasn’t most. He couldn’t afford clean. He couldn’t afford trails.
So he moved like a rumor. Vanishing from bus terminals just before arrival. Boarding freight trains in the dark. Walking border crossings at night, past old contacts who owed him favors. Changing his name more often than his clothes.
Every step closer to the League felt like moving backwards in time — shedding years, regressing into a version of himself he thought he’d outgrown.
But the silence that surrounded him now was too loud in Gotham.
And in it, he could still hear Bruce’s voice: You’re acting like a League soldier again.
Damian’s hand tightened around the bag strap.
Good, he thought.
Let him believe that. Let him fear it.
Let him understand what it meant to be shaped in blood and steel — and still choose something else.
Because that was the point, wasn’t it?
He wasn’t going back to join.
He was going back to finish it.
To burn it from the inside, if he had to.
And when he returned—if he returned—his father would see. Would have no choice but to see.
He wasn’t running back to the League.
He was walking in as the son of both Bruce Wayne and Talia al Ghul.
And for once in his life, he would decide which name to carry.
But first—
First, he had to disappear.
No great parade or feasts were there to greet him.
No open arms. No warm embraces. Only silence, heavy and stretched across the stone corridors like a shroud. The only sound was the soft echo of his boots against the marble — sharp, deliberate, unhurried.
As Damian passed beneath the vaulted gates of the League’s hidden compound, the ancient doors shut behind him with a low groan, like the jaws of some beast snapping closed.
Still, he walked tall.
His head held high, eyes sharp and cold — the color of winter rivers, steel-gray and merciless. There was no flicker of softness left in them now. The warmth that surfaced around his family — that rare, quiet light that bloomed in Jon’s presence — was buried. Replaced by something harder.
There were whispers behind the columns.
Ghosts in black and crimson, slinking between shadows.
The prince had returned.
He wore his pride like armor — but it was the weight of control that cloaked his shoulders.
Up above, on the second-floor balcony, a figure leaned into the shadows. Cloaked in black, face half-covered, he observed with idle interest — eyes following Damian’s every movement like a predator memorizing the rhythm of prey.
His gaze lingered on the precise movements, the way Damian’s fingers twitched near his belt, the subtle drag of exhaustion behind the perfect posture. He was studying. Measuring. Almost smiling.
A quiet voice reached into the gloom behind him.
«The prince has arrived, Master.»
A placid smile curled his lips.
«Indeed a shame, they let him grow teeth. Makes the game more entertaining.»
He leaned on the railing, shadows dancing across his cheekbones like smoke.
He had a new, interesting toy.
At the top of the stone staircase, bathed in low golden lamplight and a cloud of incense, stood Talia al Ghul.
Her smile had always been a thing of beauty. And fear. And now, as she looked down upon her only son — a man in form, still a child in her eyes — it softened. Slightly.
«My beloved Damian,» she greeted, descending with slow, regal grace. «Welcome home.»
Damian didn’t flinch. Didn’t speak.
But his jaw was tight.
He was led to his old quarters, though they had been altered — modernized, refreshed, as if someone had anticipated his return.
Servants came wordlessly. They brought him garments of green silk, finely cut and embroidered with the sigils of the Demon’s Head. Over this, he donned his trusted black and gold armor, newly polished.
He was bathed, dried, perfumed — the rituals of his childhood repeated in chilling silence.
Gone was the scent of smoke, of Gotham rain, of fried food and Jon’s shampoo lingering on his hoodie.
Now he smelled of foreign incense. Of sacred oils.
Of belonging.
He sat before the mirror, shirtless, while a servant bound golden cuffs around his wrists. Another tucked a ceremonial blade into the sash at his waist.
Damian didn’t look at his reflection. He didn’t need to.
He already knew what they were dressing him as.
A prince.
A weapon.
A legacy in the making.
But not a son.
Not really.
The breeze off the mountains was thin and sharp — colder than he remembered, colder than the last time he’d stood here.
Damian stepped out onto the private balcony of his chamber, now stripped of its Gotham clutter and filled with the ceremonial exactness of League culture. Gold and green drapes shifted gently behind him, perfumed incense trailing from within.
The cold air touched his skin, slid over his collarbone and through the thin silk of his underrobe, cooling the warmth of the oil still resting on his neck and chest.
He breathed in — finally alone.
Or so he thought.
Because the moment he stepped to the carved stone railing, his instincts flared.
A gaze.
Trained. Focused.
His eyes flicked left — fast, subtle.
Across the narrow interior courtyard, above the training square, stood another balcony. Perched in its shadows leaned a figure in League black, one foot propped on the railing, arms crossed casually.
Watching.
Damian didn’t move. Neither did the man.
Their eyes locked — and in that moment, something shifted, quiet and precise as the click of a loaded chamber.
The man straightened, stepping fully into the moonlight.
Tall. Broad-shouldered. Not older by much, but carrying the kind of stillness that only came from years of quiet killing. His jaw was marked by a fading scar. His hair was cut short, dark, pulled back loosely — and his eyes, oddly, were not cold.
Not fully.
More curious.
Amused.
He inclined his head slowly in greeting, almost like a mockery of nobility.
Hashim stood on the stone balcony above the training yard, wrapped in the shadowed folds of night, one foot resting on the ledge, arms loosely crossed. Below, the fortress slumbered beneath the incense-stained wind. His eyes, however, did not.
They were locked.
Fixed across the square.
The door to the opposite balcony had opened moments ago — silent, but not to him. And there he was.
Damian.
Hashim didn’t breathe for a moment.
The prince of the League. The prodigal son. The boy no one expected to return.
He stepped forward, almost in slow motion, bathed in silver light — the moon catching in the soft silk of his inner robe, casting pale gleam against darker skin and the sharp definition of his collarbone. His hair was damp, pushed back carelessly from his face, still heavy from ceremonial oil.
But it was his face that held Hashim still.
It was sharp. Unforgiving in its geometry. The cut of cheekbone and jaw like something sculpted rather than born — too precise for softness, but not without beauty. The kind that bruised.
His mouth — firm and unsmiling — looked carved for silence. His eyes, heavy-lidded but focused, carried a disarming stillness, like he was always waiting to strike. Or flee.
And yet—
Hashim couldn’t look away.
So this was him.
This was the boy the stories were about.
The one who bled kings and defied his birthright. Who vanished and survived and chose to return.
He had expected arrogance. Sharpness. Maybe even a boy pretending at control.
What he hadn’t expected… was elegance.
Not the fragile kind — no. Damian Wayne was elegance forged from fire and pressure, from a lifetime of being watched and tested and shaped. The elegance of someone who carried his body like a blade sheathed in silk.
Hashim tilted his head, gaze trailing without shame. He studied the line of Damian’s exposed throat, the faint movement of breath, the long lashes that shadowed his cheeks when he blinked.
Beautiful, he thought.
But more than that — unreachable.
A thing locked in glass. Unaware that he was art.
When Damian turned and met his gaze — sharp, alert, already assessing — it was like being hit with a current.
Hashim straightened, letting his body shift into casual stance, but there was heat rising behind his ribs. Amusement curled at the corners of his mouth before he could stop it.
He offered a single nod, mock-genteel.
«Enjoying the mountain air, my prince?»
Damian’s reply came flat, poised. «You’ve been watching me since I arrived.»
Truth. No flinch.
Gods, even his voice was something — low and clear, trained not to betray. But it did, just slightly — a grain of fatigue buried beneath the control. A thread of loneliness Hashim hadn’t expected to hear.
«You tend to draw eyes,» he said honestly. «Not many legends walk through the gate unguarded.»
Damian didn’t blink. «I don’t need guards.»
Hashim’s smirk deepened. «Clearly. But even statues get stolen, sometimes.»
A flicker — subtle — passed through Damian’s expression.
Not offense. Not reaction. Just… restraint.
Hashim liked that.
Liked the way Damian didn’t give him anything.
Because it meant earning his attention might matter.
«Do you always loiter in the dark corners of League property?» Damian asked, tone cool as the night.
«Only when something interesting walks back in.»
That earned him a sharper look — not quite anger. Not quite intrigue either.
When the prince finally turned away with a cool remark — «If you’re expecting me to be flattered, I’m not» — and disappeared behind his silk curtains, Hashim let out a slow breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
He chuckled under it. A whisper of a sound.
So. That was him.
Not a soldier. Not a prince. Not even a weapon.
A storm wrapped in silk and gold, walking on bare feet across a cliff’s edge.
And Hashim, he realized, had just been struck by lightning.
The breeze was gone.
So was the gaze.
Damian let the silk curtains fall back in place as he stepped away from the balcony, locking the door with quiet precision. His room smelled like cedar, myrrh, and something fainter — the oils they had used in his bath. The soft rustle of fabric beneath his armor made him feel like a ghost in someone else’s skin.
He hated this place.
No—he hated how easily it still fit. The rhythm, the customs, the cold respect. His body remembered every step. Every ritual. Every formality.
He hadn’t come here to slip back into old habits. He had come to end them.
He unhooked the necklace they’d made him wear — some ceremonial nonsense — and placed it on the table with too much force. His fingers itched for his Gotham clothes. For something real. Something that smelled like sweat and metal and streetlights, not incense and silk.
“I just want him to see I’m not the League’s weapon anymore.”
The thought returned like a heartbeat. Dull. Relentless.
Bruce hadn’t listened. Hadn’t looked at him and seen the difference. Maybe he never had. Maybe Damian had always just been the extension of a sword to him — sharp, useful, dangerous.
Not a son. Never a son.
His jaw clenched. He began pacing, silent on the tile. His mind ran angles, possible next moves. Speak to Talia again. Push harder. Demand to see what project they were hiding — he knew his mother too well. Something had changed here. Something deep in the bones of the League.
I’ll find it. I’ll destroy it. Then I’ll go home.
But even the word home felt… untethered.
Damian stilled.
A sound.
Faint. Echoing.
He turned.
There it was again.
A cry.
—A baby.
Not loud. But unmistakable. Broken. Short.
He was already moving before logic caught up.
The halls were dark. These inner corridors weren’t used by servants or initiates — they ran beneath the old wing of the temple, where the archives and storage were. He didn’t need light. His feet knew the way.
Every step sharpened his focus.
What would a child be doing here? No child but him had ever been raised in this place — and not even he had cried here, not openly. Not safely.
The sound echoed again. Clearer now. Closer.
A breath hitched — not his.
A coo, then a whimper.
Damian’s steps slowed. He pressed himself to the wall, scanning, ears tuned to every heartbeat in the stone.
And then, ahead — down a half-collapsed corridor shrouded in black velvet and dust — he saw it.
A faint glimmer of movement behind a cracked wooden door.
The sound came again.
Closer. Desperate.
A baby. Real.
Alive.
He reached for the hidden dagger at his hip and stepped forward.
Heart thundering. Mouth dry.
Because whatever lay behind that door… wasn’t part of the plan.
And yet—
Something pulled.
A strange, aching gravity in his chest that made no sense, made everything worse.
Damian runs away: Jon is not his, he is not a Wayne, he is not an Al Ghul. In the hope of finding himself in the destruction of the League, he finds instead the latest experiment, the latest innovation: his and Jon’ son. He flees. With the baby. He dies. (Does he?) While his family mourns him, he learns to live again.
or, Damian haunting the narrative for everyone while being a very much alive single father in his lil beach house
1. ALL THAT’S LEFT
masterlist ;; « prev || next »
six months earlier.
The night in Gotham clung close to the skin — thick with humidity and city rot, cut only by the occasional gust of wind off the rooftops. The skyline stretched ahead like a line of broken teeth, jagged and restless.
Damian stood on the edge of a gargoyle’s wing, arms crossed, cape still. Gotham pulsed beneath him — home, battlefield, cage. The static in the comm line buzzed faintly in his ear before a familiar voice broke through.
«It’s been a while, Dami.»
The name hit like a half-remembered melody. Warm, sharp, undeserved.
It was Jonathan Kent’s voice. Clear. Calm. A little deeper now — older in ways Damian could hear before he ever turned to look.
Not that he turned.
He didn’t need to.
He could already see it in his mind: the too-tall posture, the hopeful frown, the way he hovered just enough off the ground to feel like he didn’t belong anywhere anymore.
Jonathan Kent.
Once his best friend.
Now? Just a familiar figure slipping from his fingers into someone else’s future — one that Damian wasn’t a part of.
They hadn’t fought. Not exactly.
They just stopped fitting.
Ever since Jon came back — taller, older, six years ahead and impossibly kind despite it all — they’d been drifting. One beat at a time. One missed call. One awkward patrol. One moment where Jon laughed too loud at something Damian no longer found funny.
They didn’t get to grow up together.
That thought alone made something bitter and feral scrape at the back of his throat.
They were supposed to be partners. Idiots together. Side by side.
But now—
Now Jon looked at him like he didn’t know where to stand.
Damian didn’t answer. The silence stretched long between them, weighted and heavy.
«You seem well» Jon offered again, softer this time. Cautious.
It was a lie. Or worse, a kindness.
Damian wasn’t well.
He was angry. And tired. And always just two steps from breaking something that cared about him.
He looked like a ghost in his own home. A soldier without a war.
His father watched him like he was trying to find someone else beneath his skin. Alfred sighed more these days. Grayson tried too hard not to look worried.
He didn’t feel “well.” He felt hollow.
Still, Damian only replied with a faint scoff — wordless, dismissive, careful not to look at Jon.
Because if he looked, he might remember the sound of them laughing side by side in the Fortress.
Might remember how it felt when he had someone who never flinched at the shadows around him.
But that boy was gone.
And this man — too good, too bright — wasn’t his.
Not anymore.
«I’ve got to go now» Jon says gently, the kindness in his voice soft but not patronizing. It’s that same tone he’s used ever since he came back older — like he’s afraid of speaking too loudly and breaking something that’s barely holding together.
He doesn’t move right away.
Instead, he steps just close enough to reach out and place a hand on Damian’s shoulder — light, steady, familiar.
The touch is warm. Real. It doesn’t linger long, maybe only a second or two, but Damian feels it down to his spine. The weight of it is nothing and everything.
Jon smiles — hopeful and a little unsure. «Let’s meet somewhere these days, okay? I miss our burgers post patrol.»
The laugh he gives after is small, forced, casual. Like he’s trying not to sound like he means it too much.
Damian doesn’t respond at first. He stares straight ahead, jaw tense, every instinct screaming to say something cold — to cut it off before it reaches him.
But instead…
He nods. Once.
A tiny, rigid motion. Almost mechanical. But it costs more than he’ll ever admit.
Jon’s smile flickers — not quite happy, not quite sad. He gives his shoulder a last squeeze, then rises slowly into the air.
«Take care, Damian» he says.
And then he’s gone. Up into the night sky, cape billowing like a comet’s tail behind him.
Damian doesn’t watch him leave. Not directly. He waits until the wind settles again, the warmth fades from his shoulder, and the rooftop feels just a little colder than it did before.
Then he exhales, slow and silent.
The truth is, he does remember the burgers. And the bickering. And the too-long milkshake arguments. He remembers everything.
But he doesn’t know how to reach for it anymore.
Not when the time they lost still hangs between them like a locked door neither of them knows how to break.
The sounds in the Cave had settled into routine: clicking keys, the occasional flicker of electricity, the distant whine of a Batcycle cooling in the corner.
Bruce stood behind Damian again. Watching him, maybe too long. The tension built in quiet increments. Neither of them spoke.
Damian could feel it pressing at his back — that familiar weight of his father’s silence, always demanding, never explaining.
«If you have something to say» Damian snapped without turning, «just say it.»
Bruce didn’t flinch. «You’ve been reckless lately.»
That did it.
Damian turned from the console, sharp and fast. «Reckless? I neutralized four armed hostiles before your sensors even picked them up.»
«You engaged alone, without backup.»
«Because no one backs me up!» Damian shot back, voice rising. «You’ve made it clear I’m a liability the second I make you uncomfortable.»
Bruce’s jaw tensed, but his voice remained low. Controlled. «You’ve been unpredictable. Emotional. Distracted. I can’t risk—»
«You can’t risk me? Or you can’t risk seeing me fail again?»
The silence after that was different — colder. Deeper.
Damian stepped forward, fists clenched, armor still streaked with dried blood. «Ever since Kent came back, you’ve treated me like a child again. Like I’m the one who didn’t grow up fast enough. Like I’m still waiting for some version of the son you wanted to return.»
Bruce’s eyes flashed, but his voice stayed level — too level. «This isn’t about Jon.»
«It’s always about Jon!» Damian shouted, voice cracking. «He gets to come back. Older. Better. The golden son of two worlds. And I’m just… the one who stayed. Who stayed and bled and broke and watched everything fall apart.»
Bruce stared at him. Unmoving. But his expression had shifted.
There was something raw in his eyes now. Something close to hurt.
«You think I don’t see you?» Bruce said, quietly. «You think I don’t notice how hard you’re trying to fall apart right now? You know why I worry about you going out alone?» he finally said, voice tight. «Because the last time you disappeared without a word, you ended up with the League. You came back colder. Sharper. And barely fifteen.»
Damian didn’t turn. His voice was flat.
«I came back alive.»
«You came back broken.»
That landed. Hard.
Damian’s shoulders jerked before he could stop it. But his eyes snapped back, venom-laced and defensive.
The cave was humming with cold tension. Neither of them had backed down, though the conversation had long left reason behind.
«You’ve been reckless. Short-sighted. Your patrols are unfocused—»
«They’re efficient,» Damian cut in sharply. «Unlike your lectures.»
«Efficient doesn’t mean controlled» Bruce shot back. «You go in like you’re looking for a fight. Not to protect anyone.»
Damian’s voice lowered into a bite. «Maybe I’m not protecting people for you anymore.»
Something behind Bruce’s eyes hardened. His voice turned sharp.
«You’re acting like a League soldier again.»
The silence that followed was immediate. A snap of stillness.
Damian froze. Just for a second. Then blinked — slow and deliberate.
He scoffed. Low and bitter. Tried to play it off.
«If that’s what I was made to be.»
Bruce’s expression shifted instantly. «No—Dami, wait. I didn’t mean—»
«We both know what you meant, yeah?» Damian said, smile curling tight and cruel at the edge. He turned away, picking up his gloves, re-strapping them with slow, deliberate movements. «Thanks for the reminder.»
Bruce stepped forward. «You are not—»
«What, a weapon? A mistake?» Damian’s eyes flashed as he looked back. «You think I don’t already hear that in every order you give me? In the way you flinch when I go too far?»
«You’re my son, Damian.»
«You didn’t say that until I was already bleeding for you.»
That landed like a punch.
Bruce’s mouth opened — then closed. His expression fractured. He reached for words that wouldn’t come.
Damian beat him to it. Quiet. Cold. «You only love me when I’m trying not to be who I am.»
He moved past Bruce, cape brushing against his side as he headed for the Zeta tube.
Bruce turned after him, voice hoarse. «Where are you going?»
«Out.»
«You’re not on duty tonight.»
Damian glanced over his shoulder — eyes sharp, smile bitter. «Exactly.»
And then he was gone. The sound of the heavy doors cutting through the silence.
Bruce stood alone in the blue glow, jaw tight, hands clenched.
The words he wanted to say were useless now. He knew that look in Damian’s eyes.
It was the same one he used to see in the mirror.
Right before he ran away, too.
The rain dripped down from the corners of the cracked rooftop, hissing softly against the gutters. It had soaked their shoulders despite the small metal awning above, pooling around their boots, and turning the air heavy with city steam.
Damian paced in tight, tense circles. His cape was plastered to his back, boots kicking against a loose pebble that scattered across the concrete. He looked restless — not in his usual sharp, efficient way, but in the way someone did when they were unraveling at the seams.
Jon watched him from the edge of the roof, half-sitting on a broken AC unit, a crumpled fast food bag in one hand.
The blues of his eyes followed every twitch and snap of movement. He didn’t need to hear the sharpness of Damian’s words — he could feel it, thrumming off him in waves. And beneath it all, steady but shaken, he could hear the boy’s heartbeat faltering. Not in strength — but in rhythm.
Uneven.
Like it had been ever since Damian started pulling away from everyone but him.
Jon shifted, his voice low, trying to coax him down from wherever his mind was.
«I’m sure he’s just scared, Dames. He worries that something bad might happen to you if you keep jumping in first and alone.»
Damian didn’t stop moving. Didn’t meet his eyes.
«He’s not scared of something happening to me» he snapped. «He’s scared I’ll go back. That I’ll retreat to the League the moment he stops looking.»
Jon bit the inside of his cheek. He knew better than to argue when Damian’s voice took on that edge. But he also knew the look in his eyes — the way he kept searching the skyline, like there was something out there he was trying to outrun.
He stood. Took a step forward.
Damian finally paused. Just a breath.
«I just want him to see» he muttered, barely above the rain, «that I’m not the League’s weapon anymore. That I’m a good Robin»
His jaw clenched.
«I’ll show him.»
Jon’s heart ached. He could feel the sadness in those words — buried under all the pride and fury and need. He took another slow step forward, voice gentle. «You don’t have to prove that to anyone. You already left them, Damian. You’re here.»
Damian shook his head once, sharply. «It doesn’t count unless he sees it.»
«Why not?»
«Because I was made to be one thing. And every time I mess up, every time I lose control—he thinks they were right to make me that way.»
His voice cracked at the edge, like it almost wasn’t meant to be said out loud.
Jon moved closer, slow, careful.
«You think this is about him thinking you’re a weapon» he said softly. «But I think you’re trying to believe it too. And you’re scared that if you don’t prove it, it’s going to swallow you whole again.»
Damian didn’t answer.
The rain got heavier. Thunder rolled low in the distance.
«Dames» Jon tried again, quieter now, «you’re not alone in this. Just wait. Just come back here. It’s still raining»
Damian turned his head, voice brittle but still sharp: «I’m not made out of sugar, Jonathan.»
