𐔌 ⋮ ''the mirror of the sea''
''You look as pretty as always,habibati...''
feat. d.wayne x reader
wc: 1373
The mirror faces the sea.
It’s an odd place for it—propped against the wall of a quiet coastal house that no one visits anymore, where salt gathers in the corners of the windows and the wind hums through the cracks like something half-alive. The glass is old, slightly warped, as if time itself has pressed its fingers into it.
He keeps it because it was yours.
Because you once stood in front of it, tilting your head slightly, like you could see something in it he couldn’t.
“You don’t like it?” you had asked, barefoot on cold floorboards, the ocean stretching gray and endless behind you.
“It is impractical,” he’d replied.
You smiled—soft, knowing. “That’s not what I asked.”
Even during the day, the light comes in muted—filtered through clouds, through salt, through something heavier than weather. It settles over everything in pale grays and washed-out golds, like a memory already fading.
Damian stands in front of the mirror.
There’s a bruise on his shoulder—dark, spreading. He hasn’t treated it. Pain is easier when it has a shape.
The reflection looks back at him.
Your voice comes from behind him.
A quiet exhale—almost a laugh.
“You always say that when you don’t want to admit something.”
“I do not avoid admissions.”
“You do when they matter.”
He closes his eyes briefly.
The sound of the sea presses closer, louder—like it’s trying to fill the silence you leave between your words.
“I am not avoiding anything,” he says.
He doesn’t hear your steps.
But he feels it—the shift in the air, the way the room seems to narrow around your presence.
“You’re hurt,” you say quietly.
His gaze flicks—just slightly—to the side of the mirror where your reflection should be.
“You always say that too.”
“Or because you don’t know how to say anything else.”
The kind that stretches too long.
“You used to argue more,” you murmur.
That lands deeper than anything else.
“You’re here,” he says, quieter now.
The sea is restless today.
Waves crash harder against the cliffs, sending up sprays of white that catch the dim light like shattered glass. The wind rattles the windows, hums low and constant, like something grieving.
You said it sounded like the world breathing.
Damian thought it sounded like something breaking.
He just didn’t know what.
“Do you remember the first time we came here?” you ask.
Every shift of light and shadow.
“You said that about the ocean.”
“It serves no functional purpose.”
He doesn’t answer immediately.
The memory presses in—sharp, vivid, unwelcome.
You, standing at the edge of the cliff, wind pulling at your clothes, your hair wild in a way he never quite understood.
“You don’t have to like it,” you had said. “You just have to stay.”
“I do not understand the appeal.”
“You don’t have to understand everything.”
You turned then—looked at him like he was something complicated and human and trying.
“I know,” you said softly. “That’s why you need things like this.”
“Things that don’t make sense.”
“Those are not comparable.”
The words feel heavier than they should.
“No,” you whisper. “You didn’t.”
His hands curl at his sides.
Truth, quiet and inescapable.
“You never left that night.”
The words hit like a blow.
Damian’s breath stutters.
“I had responsibilities.”
Had every intention of keeping his word.
But Gotham demanded something else.
By the time he remembered—
“I waited,” you say softly.
His throat tightens painfully.
“I thought you were hurt.”
“I thought something happened.”
“I stood there,” you continue. “For a long time.”
“I kept checking my phone.”
“I kept thinking you’d show up.”
“I did show up,” he insists.
The words don’t need force.
Like something irreversible.
“I found you,” he says, quieter now.
That part he never forgets.
The space where you should have been—
“I found you,” he repeats.
He presses his hand against the mirror.
Your reflection doesn’t appear.
“You never do,” you whisper.
The house feels smaller now.
“You can’t stay here forever,” you say.
Because the answer is unbearable.
Because leaving would mean accepting.
And he does not accept what he can still fight.
“I remember you,” he says instead.
“You’re in everything,” he says.
The wind rattles the window.
The mirror reflects only him.
Shattered by the truth that follows.
Just the sound of the sea.
there is nothing behind him.
No illusion stitched together from grief and memory and refusal.
His hand slips from the glass.
“She died,” he says again.
there is no one left to argue.
No one left to soften it.
The mirror reflects a man standing alone in a quiet house by the sea.
Only the ghost of a girl who waited in the rain.
Only the echo of a voice that no longer exists.
The mirror holds its silence.
has nothing left to hold onto
A/N: For the anon who keeps asking for damian Wayne angst 😭
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