Ohh boy, just wait till Talia knows it..
"I'm so disappointed in you, Damian."
The boy stiffened, feeling as if a knife were held to his throat. But that wasn't the case; this was his mother, she'd never hurt him.
But he'd disappointed her; he could see it in his gaze, in the hard line of his shoulders, in the way he kept the distance between them.
He'd disappointed his mother, and it was worse than any punishment his grandfather had ever given him.
"I don't come to Gotham often," the woman didn't let him speak. "And I'm sorry, because I'd like to see you more, and spend more time together. Now, imagine how I felt when you called me Mother, and your father by his name..."
"He's okay with that, Mother, he never punished me for..."
"Of course your father never punished you for the total disrespect! He's too soft, and he doesn't want you to hate him! But now he believes it, Damian. He's sure you hate him because you don't even give him the minimum amount of respect he deserves!"
Damian stiffened his shoulders. "I respect him..."
"You respect his other charity cases more than him."
"Those charity cases are his children, and none of them call him father."
Talia sniffed, "So you want to be like them? Like Grayson?"
"They're family, and if family..."
"If family disrespects him, then you do too?"
His mother's gaze was sharper than a hundred knives. "I raised you better than that, Damian. Your father deserves better than to suffer from your lack of strength."
"Then you've also gone blind, Damian. Every time you try to be like the rest of the family, you stab him in the heart. But it's more important to you to be like everyone else, isn't it? You don't care that your legitimate father feels like he did everything wrong and that he's a terrible person! You're killing him, Damian!"
The boy swallowed, and asked, hating how uncertain his voice sounded.
She gave a sad smile. "I know beloved like the back of my mind. His suffering is my suffering. His pain is my pain. We may no longer be married, and our paths may have taken us in different directions. But I know him. I know how much you're hurting him. And sadly, I know that it's a pain that isn't caused by you alone."
A long pause, then, "I'll talk to him. He must know that it's not his fault, but that Fate has punished him with unworthy children."
"Bruce has no unworthy children!" he blurted out defensively, before being filled with the same horror he now saw on his mother's face.
Bruce, not a father. He can no longer call him father or any other nonsense. Why couldn't he?
Talia seemed like she was dying as she said,"You don't know how much it kills me, Damian, to have to consider you as unworthy as them."
