Whatever It's Worth?

I write fanfiction for myself and the happy few who wish to read it: Writer, Lover of Music, Shakespear, Oxfordian, Cats and anything Batman.

[opheliawillowbrook]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

This Chapter is for my Damirae readers and artists ❤️😜🤡

Chapter One: A Little Bird

“Beware the Court of Owls, that watches all the time,

Ruling Gotham from a shadowed perch, behind granite and lime.

They watch you at your hearth, they watch you in your bed,

Speak not a whispered word of them, or they’ll send the Talon for your head.” 

The room was silent; the only exception was  ticking of his antique clock.

Tick.

Tick

Tick.

There was something to be said for simplicity—or at least that’s what Damian told himself as he drew his brush across the white canvas, leaving an inky swirl of black in its wake.

He followed the faint charcoal sketch beneath, letting the still-shining oil paint set just enough to feather the edges with practiced precision. The warm, earthy scent of linseed oil sweetened the air, undercut only slightly by the sharp bite of turpentine from the jar at his elbow. Not that he dipped into it often.

Damian was far too disciplined for that. Every stroke, every medium, every choice was intentional.

​​Oil paint demanded patience and punished impatience. It lingered. And Damian preferred it that way—over the childish safety of acrylics. He loved the weight of the brush, the resistance of the canvas, the way the surface remembered him long after the monotone colors dried.

Still… there was a disconnect.

Between him and the image taking shape before him.

A city—suggested rather than defined. Spires and arches rose in shadow and distance, framing the glow of a carnival below. Lights bled softly into the dark, halfway between memory and myth. Not Gotham. Not exactly. Something cleaner. Elevated. Idealized.

A poet’s city in the distance.

An artist’s heaven at its heart.

And watching it all from the periphery—a figure rendered in shadow. Timeless. Indistinct. As though he belonged to another era… or another lifetime entirely. The focal point meant to bind the inspiration together.

But Damian frowned.

Something about it didn’t land. The balance felt wrong. The story incomplete—caught somewhere between Heaven and Hell, observed rather than inhabited. 

It seemed the devil just wasn’t in the details.

Off to his left, within easy reach, a slim, worn hardcover lay open face down, its jacket faded by time.

He.H. P. Lovecraft.

Damian hadn’t meant to leave it there. He told himself it was coincidence. Reference. Atmosphere.

Still, his gaze kept drifting to it between brushstrokes.

“The city was older than memory, and haunted by a thousand unremembered evils.”

The line replayed in his mind, uninvited.

His grandfather had once described his father’s home city the same way—a heaven rotted through to its core. A lost utopia. A shining city on a hill that could never be reclaimed, not so long as humanity refused to distinguish between the greater good and the lesser one.

It had sounded like a harsh judgment at the time.

Now, staring at the canvas, Damian wondered if it was simply inheritance.

The face—if it could be called that—hovered near the center of the canvas. Not defined. Not human. Just the idea of one. Observing. Waiting. Impersonal enough to feel safe.

“You should really try using more color,” a voice chimed behind him—far too casual for someone who had just violated his space.

A familiar spike of irritation crawled up Damian’s spine.

“Not really a colorful guy,” he muttered, rolling his eyes. “Ever heard of knocking, Logan?”

Gar—decidedly not knocking—ambled in anyway, leaning over Damian’s shoulder to snoop.

He watched Damian drop his brush into the solvent jar with a soft clink.

“What are you even doing in here?” Damian demanded. This was his room, after all. His sanctuary.

Gar gave a sheepish grin, the kind that always meant trouble.

“I was, y’know… just curious what you were up to.”

“Fly on the wall?” Damian deadpanned.

Gar nodded—way too quickly and with zero shame. “Pretty much.”

“Well, as you can see,” another voice cut in.

Both boys turned.

Raven was perched at the foot of Damian’s bed, book open, gaze steadfastly on the page.

“…neither of us are ‘up to’ anything,” she finished calmly, turning the page without bothering to look up.

Her tone was flat, but that subtle twitch of her eyebrow betrayed she was just as annoyed as Damian. Gar barging in wasn’t unusual, but lately his timing had become… suspiciously convenient.

Raven finally lifted her eyes, expression unreadable.

“If we were doing something,” she asked, “would you have stayed and watched?”

Gar froze, his green face turning an impressive shade of red.

“I mean… I wouldn’t have stayed the entire time.”

Damian groaned and set his palette down, as if whatever artistic muse he had simply died from witnessing Gar’s audacity. “For God’s sake, Logan—doors close for a reason.”

“A concept lost on him,” Raven added, lips curving in a subtle, traitorous smirk.

“Well maybe if you two didn’t spend so much time together?” Gar shot back. “I mean, come on—there’s no way all you do is read while Damian paints the same tired black-and-white thing for the fiftieth time this year.”

Raven finally looked up—partly to defend herself, partly in the faint hope Damian would put Gar’s head through the same monochrome canvas he had just insulted.

“Since when are you concerned with my work?” Damian asked, tone bristling. Not quite murderous, but close enough for Gar to consider his life choices.

“Since I overheard you complaining about it.”

Damian’s scowl sharpened. “What do you mean, overheard?”

Again, Gar flushed tomato-red, a color that did not flatter him. “I may have been… y’know… a fly on the wall.”

Damian’s expression went blank—the dangerous kind of blank—as he remembered that night a few weeks back. 

He’d returned from his painting class in a foul mood, storm rolling off him like a pressure front. Raven had followed him to his room, only to stop him from annihilating every canvas in reach.

“Get out,” Damian said flatly. “And if I catch you sneaking in here again, I’ll make sure you meet the business end of an electric fly swatter.”

“I second that,” Raven added.

“Okay, okay!” Gar said quickly, realizing just how spectacularly he’d misplayed this hand. “Anyway—I originally came to ask if you guys have your costumes ready for tomorrow?”

“I’m not wearing a costume, Logan.” Damian began gathering his brushes and jars with a level of dignity he absolutely did not feel. “Why do I need one?”

“Because it’s a costume party,” Gar said, staring at him as though this were the most obvious fact in the known universe. “Y’know, for a guy with an IQ north of 180, you seriously don’t understand the basic concept of fun, dude.”

“I understand the concept,” Damian snapped. “I simply have no desire to participate in it.”

“It’s Halloween!” Gar groaned. “When else do you get to be something you’re not?”

“Technically, the work is sound,” his professor told him, as his classmates tore into his piece with the enthusiasm of piranhas stripping a carcass. “You execute the fundamentals with precision and discipline. But it tells me nothing about you. There is no vulnerability—no thread for the viewer to follow. Without that, the work is empty.”

Every day, Damian thought bitterly.

He didn’t say it aloud—God forbid he hand Gar that kind of insight—but the truth landed with an uncomfortable weight. It was, in fact, the very reason his latest art assignment was falling flat.

She paused, studying him as if expecting contradiction.None came.

“The carnival scene is the strongest,” she continued. “There’s narrative there. But the figure at the center—the thematic center—is vacant. It’s as if he isn’t allowed to exist. When I look at it, I see nothing.”

Damian didn’t answer.He never did.

Vulnerability had been trained out of him—treated as liability, as weakness, as something to be cut away until only function remained.

His gaze drifted instead to another piece—one no assignment had asked for. Something he’d painted in the solitude of the tower.

A confrontation with a version of himself he refused to acknowledge, yet carried everywhere regardless.

On the canvas, a humanoid figure loomed—its body human, crowned with a goat’s broken skull. Hollow eyes stared down at its reflection, mirrored by a version of Damian clad in dark, ornate armor.

Judgment without expression. Control without mercy. Identity reduced to inherited violence.

Stark black-and-white strokes defined both figures, while faint crimson accents bled through like an unhealed wound.

It was both accusation and confession: control, consequence, and the uneasy boundary between human and something made.

Damian exhaled sharply, turning away from it.

“Easy for her to say,” he muttered under his breath.

The door shut behind Gar with more force than necessary, the sound cutting cleanly through the room.

Silence followed.

Not empty—heavier. Settled.

And in that stillness, Raven’s gaze remained on him, steady and unreadable, like she had been waiting for exactly this version of him to resurface.

She sat cross-legged on his bed, book still in hand, but her attention shifted fully to him—his bruised pride and the storm cloud that never quite dispersed above him.

“Y’know,” she said gently, “criticism helps us grow.”

He paused mid-wipe of his palette knife. “I know that.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

The thought didn’t finish. It broke.

Damian rolled his eyes, but the deflection was weaker this time.

“It’s deeper than that,” he muttered. “I can’t exactly be an open book.”

His father’s world had nearly gone up in flames.

The last time he let his guard down without knowing it was safe—

the last time he was seen too clearly—

A memory surfaced, not fully formed. Not linear.

Damian’s grip tightened on the palette knife  

A voice—almost right. Almost human.

Too precise in its praise. Too careful in its attention.

Like it already knew what part of him was missing.

He’d mistaken what he thought was guidance and mentorship--it was in reality--

assessment.

And when the truth broke through, the shape of it—

it wasn’t understanding that followed.

It was classification.

The Talons.

Not violence.

But correction.

“And they’re gone,” Raven said, trying to ground him. “He’s gone. The Court hasn’t resurfaced in years.”

The night the Court descended on Gotham’s elites, half its aristocracy was slaughtered in hours. The papers called it a purge.

Damian knew better.

A failure state.

A failure to recruit him.

Damian didn’t answer.

Because somewhere deep down, he wasn’t convinced.

Not entirely.

Something he called the Circle Behind the Court.

Because the man hadn’t just spoken of the Court.

He’d spoken of something older.

Something just out of sight.

Damian exhaled slowly, fingers tightening around the solvent jar.

As if the Owls were only the mask.

As if something else was wearing it.

“You may think that…that’s how it appears,” he murmured, barely audible. “But the greatest slight they ever pulled was convincing my father they weren’t real.”

He set the jar down carefully, almost surgically.

“And I don’t plan on giving them anything to use against me ever again.”

Raven’s expression softened—not pity, never pity—but a deep, steady understanding.

“Well then,” she said, a slight smirk tugging at the corner of her lips, “if they ever show up again, cue me in on your little vengeance plan.”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” he replied, lighter now, sinking down next to her on the bed. His eyes drifted to the open page in her lap and caught the text:

“In the ninth circle, betrayal is not just sin—it is absence, a void where warmth and mercy once lived. But now, in hell, no more.”

“Uplifting,” Damian muttered, not taking his eyes off the page.

“You don’t say,” he replied. Not that he had any issue with her taste in literature; they often shared overlapping interests. But Raven had always nursed a deeper fascination with the occult—an inclination that made sense, given her lineage.

Raven glanced down, catching the edge of his sarcasm.

“It’s a modern retelling of Dante’s Inferno,” she said.

“What?” she challenged playfully.

“Nothing… just seems a little too on-the-nose for you,” he teased.

Raven rolled her eyes, taking in the horned figure she had lovingly dubbed Unhallowed. It was a stunning piece, she had to admit—haunted by ghosts older than his escape from the womb. Beauty and torment intertwined in every shadow, crimson bleeding into the darkness.

“Y’know,” Raven said lightly, “you could always swap out the paintings.”

“Or I could just give up and apply to medical school,” Damian replied with ironic defeat.

“Hm,” Raven hummed, considering. “I can’t see you tolerating people complaining all day.”

“That’s why I’d specialize in trauma surgery,” he added, as if it were a mundane detail. “Can’t complain if you’re under anesthesia.”

Raven smiled and shook her head. “Solid plan—if the whole starving artist thing isn’t your jam. But maybe consider switching the painting out first before you give up and follow in your grandfather’s footsteps.”

She didn’t mean it that way, but the shadow of that sentence hit him harder than he wanted. 

Damian followed her gaze, then shook his head. “You’re lucky I even let you see that.”

“And I feel privileged,” she admitted, sensing he wasn’t entertaining the idea. “Just a suggestion. I know you’re really struggling with this.”

“I know, Raven. But I’m not ready to be that open. Especially not with people I don’t trust.”

Raven leaned a little closer, tilting her head as she studied his brushwork. “Y’know,” she murmured, her voice low and almost playful, “there’s something kind of… hypnotic about how precise you are. Even when you’re frustrated.”

Damian felt the heat rise to his cheeks, a rare burn of awareness. He shifted slightly, careful not to draw too much attention to himself. “It’s not… hypnotic,” he muttered, though his tone lacked conviction.

“Sure,” Raven said, amusement dancing in her eyes. She reached over, brushing a stray smear of black paint from the edge of his chin with the tip of her finger. It was rare to see him with even the smallest speck out of place.

“Some cosmic force must be at play,” she quipped. “You’re always so meticulous.” Her touch lingered just a moment too long, and Damian’s pulse stuttered.

He swallowed, caught between the magnetic pull of the moment and the walls he had carefully built around himself. If he were honest, he ached to lean in, to bridge that gap. But they were friends—teammates—and letting it become anything more was reckless… yet tempting.

“Maybe you should… go back to your book,” he suggested, his voice tighter than intended.

Raven’s smirk widened. “Or maybe I could just stay here and…”

Damian’s chest tightened. Part of him wanted to—no, needed to—close the mere inches between them. The air felt charged, alive. They were too close, too attuned, breaths mingling, the quiet hum of the tower fading into nothing.

Her eyes flicked to his lips for the briefest moment. Damian felt the pull—the unspoken invitation—but his resolve wavered.

He straightened and rose, exhaling sharply. “I—I need to… finish cleaning up before patrol,” he said, stepping away. His hands trembled slightly, not from fear, but from the sudden awareness of how close they’d come to crossing the line.

Raven studied him for a beat—teasing, soft, understanding—and then, mercifully, let the tension loosen.

“Okay,” she said lightly, the corners of her lips tugging up into a knowing smile. “I’ll see you later.”

Damian busied himself gathering his brushes, solvent, and paints, each motion careful, practiced, painfully aware. The moment lingered anyway—heavy, unresolved.

“…So,” he added, a little too casually, “what do I owe you for the therapy session?”

Safer this way, he told himself.

For now.

Raven paused at the door, amusement flickering across her face. “I should bill hourly,” she said. “But I’m feeling generous.” She glanced back at him. “Buy me a tea on patrol tonight.”

Raven’s deep violet eyes fell from his indecisive shade of green and on to the black and white contrast of his sketch pad. It wasn’t like him to leave it out in the open, but then again, she was the only person he allowed in his space. He let her flip through from time to time. 

Damian smiled—small, genuine. He always paid for her tea.

“Deal,” he said, then hesitated, wanting to say more, but could not find the words.

Or better still, he had the words, but to say them aloud felt too raw.

So when her eye traced the soft charcoal line of a pretty young girl, about their age, gilded in the glory of a Valkyries armor and holding her sword toward divinity in a moment of triumph, she couldn't look away. Not without asking.

“Who is she?”

Damian looked down and saw the Valkyrie he’d sketched the night prior, all he could say was, “I don’t know.”

Raven smiled, finding the imagery endearing in a way. “As long as this isn’t your way of telling me I have competition,” she teased.

Damian shook his head. The idea absurd. “You have nothing to worry about.

“Good,” she turned and made her way to the door.

“And, Raven… thanks.”

“Any time, Boy Wonder,” she replied with a soft smile, glancing once more toward the painting. “And don’t be so hard on yourself. It’s still a good painting.”

Damian turned back to the canvas, the wet oil paint faintly glistening beneath the low light in stark blacks and whites—full, yet vacant.

That wasn’t the point.

“No,” he sighed, not taking his eyes off it. “It’s not.”

Without warning, he stepped toward the work and, to Raven’s surprise, dragged his hand across the empty figure, smearing the paint and any trace of himself along with it.

The oils shifted beneath his palm with a wet hiss.

Damian took a step back and studied it.

“That’s an… interesting creative choice.”

Was it an improvement? No.

But it would do. Better this than risking exposure.

Damian pivoted toward her, his hand slick with monochrome paint. “If nothing else, I can spin it as an exercise in creative abstraction.”

A soft laugh escaped her. “If by ‘creative abstraction’ you mean erasure… how very Damian Wayne of you.”

“Entirely the point.”

“You are the artist,” Raven quipped, moving toward the door. “Who am I to argue with artistic suffering?”

Damian said nothing. But he didn’t regret the choice.

“I trust you,” he said quietly.

Raven lingered in the doorway a moment longer, her expression softening as she looked back at him.

“Y’know… It’s okay to trust people, Damian.”

A pause.

“But not other people,” she challenged.

Raven’s gaze lingered on him for a second longer, as though she wanted to challenge that answer and already knew she wouldn’t change it.

“My point exactly.”

Then she slipped into the hallway, leaving Damian alone with the ruined figure still drying at the center of the canvas.

Continue Reading Here 👈

[diaxnna-or-dia]

I've been wanting to draw these two for a looonngg time! I hadn't rlly tried digital art....at least not coloring it.Any tips would be amazing!!!❤️

[beautyflowersss]

My beatiful family

[lemonsherbertzzz]

my gcese are finally over dude I’m soooo happy (gcese are like the exams up you take at 16 in England)

Which means I get three months off way longer than usual so hopefully I’m gonna be able to post way way more….i really won’t to open commissions but low-key I don’t think anyone would buy them

[usernameee6]

I hate when people degrade my opinion by saying robrae isn't canon

wdym they're literally canon

also, it may sound crazy - astronomical even - but I have opinions!! devastating that i don't ship bbrae or robstar

[thatblondiegya69]

His little crush

[opheliawillowbrook]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

The carnival was dead.

A haunting melody drifted through foggy air. Delicate metallic notes chimed, each one cold and mechanical, lingering just a heartbeat too long in the silence.

His eye scanned his surroundings.

Lights flickered across cracked asphalt, reflecting off warped metal and shattered funhouse mirrors. The faint hum of electricity vibrated beneath Damian’s feet—like something still alive underground. Desperate. Restless. As if the souls of lost children stirred beneath the soil, reaching upward from forgotten graves.

He found the source of the sound, a black and white doll, painted porcelain, cracked and unsettling as it looked up from its expressionless eyes.

The music continued as he lifted from the broken path. 

Damian’s gaze left from the black and white face and tracked the rows of his own reflection.

His face carried his father’s stoic restraint—jaw set, expression controlled—but his eyes stared back in that unmistakable al Ghul green. Each reflection followed him precisely, every movement fluid, obedient. Him.

All of them—except one.

As he stared, a single reflection lagged half a second behind. Then it shifted—just slightly—moving with a will that wasn’t his.

It smiled. Not warm. Not cruel. Expression without heart.

There was no clear way out. Years of neglect had swallowed the exits, paths eroded into nothing. From somewhere beyond the rusted rides and sagging structures, he felt watched—eyes lingering from the granite hillside bordering the grounds.

Silent. Patient.

The mechanical melody slowed to an uneven grind. One final note rang out. Then nothing.

Still, Damian moved. Wandering. Searching for a way home.

He stopped when he came upon the flyers.

A sea of gray faces stared back at him from weathered paper, stapled to warped boards and peeling walls. Missing children. Their names blurred, their photos fading with exposure and time.

One face remained clear.

Emily….  Emily Crane.

The name echoed, hollow and insistent.

And suddenly, he was no longer wandering.

Damian stood at the center of a crime scene.

A ride half-collapsed nearby. The haunted house loomed in the distance, its structure groaning softly as if breathing. Police tape fluttered weakly in the wind, sectioning off dark pools that soaked into the ground. Flashbulbs erupted in sharp bursts, freezing moments in harsh white light. Evidence bags lay scattered—blades, hair, scraps of fabric, small personal effects stripped of meaning by plastic and tags.

Every instinct sharpened.

Study.  Catalog.  Observe.

His gaze moved with precision. Angles. Distances. Placement. And then—snow.

Fresh and untouched. It’s familiar biting scent unearthing a memory he wanted to forget. 

The scene felt familiar in a way that made his stomach tighten. The sleek sound of a blade slicing through frozen ground flashed through his mind. A batarang striking true. Snow turning red.

Not by his hand.

The memory cut deeper than he expected.

Then he saw it. A doll.

Black and white. Porcelain cracked. Its painted eyes stared ahead—empty, accusing. As gray and lifeless as the faces on the flyers.

It lay there, forgotten, small, fragile, heavy.

It reminded him of what he had been once. Still lost. Still trapped inside something he hadn’t chosen.

The carnival blurred.

Lights smeared. Tape dissolved. The world fell away into an abyss.

It felt like being swallowed— overtaken by something vast and unspeakable.

Like screaming underwater.

Each breath felt borrowed. Each second sinking deeper.

When sensation returned—if it could be called that—everything was dark. The air was cold and damp. Metal pressed in from every side, close enough to steal breath. Shadows crowded the walls where they shouldn’t exist, thick and suffocating.

The room smelled of iron and rust. Blood. Sharp and invasive, clinging to his skin like a memory he could never scrub away.

There were sounds.

Soft sobs. Small cries. Voices pleading for lives that existed before this place.

Sounds he never forgot. Sounds that found him every time a child cried—proof that his body remembered what his mind tried to bury.

Panic surged.

Not the kind that sharpened the mind—but the kind that hollowed it out.

He crawled back. And stopped.

Cold bars bit into his palms. A cage.

Too small. Too close. Built for something waiting to die.

A light flickered on.

And there he was—

No.

Damian’s thoughts reeled, correcting instinctively. You’re not Schott.

He wasn’t the Dollmaker.

He was the clown.

Perfectly still. Black-and-white costume stained with something dark. Everything about him was wrong—not chaos’ hand, but by design. His features were exaggerated past comfort: limbs too long, frame too thin, proportions stretched like a cruel joke. A pointed, witchlike nose marked with a single black dot.

And that grin— Too wide. Too empty. A smile carved where hope should have been. The same heartless smile he’d seen in his rogue reflection.

His eyes locked onto Damian’s.

Unblinking. Watching. Waiting.

A metallic clang echoed. A lock shifted.

Footsteps brushed the floor. Slow. Predatory. Inevitable.

Damian’s instincts screamed—plan, strike, escape—but his body refused him. Here, he wasn’t the predator. He wasn’t even in control.

He was a child again.

Small. Trapped. Exposed.

The doll appeared beside the cage, propped just outside his reach. Its cracked porcelain face tilted upward, smiling wider now—as if it understood.

This wasn’t chaos. This wasn’t madness. This was intentional.

The violence wasn’t a means to an end.

It was the end.

And this place… This place wasn’t simply the old toy factory where Anton Schott twisted innocence into abominations. It was something worse. Something personal. A hell he wasn’t meant to escape. 

The clown’s shadow crept closer, stretching across the bars. The room reeked of iron and cold oil. The doll’s gaze followed Damian’s, unbroken.

He tried to think. To calculate angles. To find weakness.

But the frightened child inside him—who remembered the cages, remembered being watched—froze.

“If it were me in one of those cages… would you have killed him then?”

The question echoed as it clawed itself from the depth of his memories. 

His heart hammering. Ribs too small. Breath  too shallow.

The clown’s grin never faded.

Another dim light flickered to life across the cold room.

It wasn’t sterile.

Damian’s breath caught as his gaze dragged upward, taking in the biological fragments that lined the walls—meat and marrow arranged with deliberate care. Not random. Not frenzied. Curated. The greatest tragedies, dissected and displayed.

His stomach lurched. For the first time, he wanted to fold in on himself—to disappear into the corner of the cage like the others had.

Then he saw the writing.

Blood streaked across the wall in uneven strokes, still wet. Still fresh.

Not a warning.

A declaration.

CONTROL IS SUBJECTIVE

The letters bled downward, staining the concrete in slow crimson threads. The blood had soaked so deeply into the wall it felt permanent—as though the room itself had absorbed the message long ago.

Damian stared.

His breathing slowed without permission.

The cage hadn't changed. Yet something about it felt less certain.

Smaller.

Or perhaps he was.

His gaze dropped.

Black paint coated his hands. Thick. Fresh.

It pooled in the lines of his palms and beneath his fingernails, creeping into every scar and crease as though it had never belonged anywhere else.

He turned one hand over. Then the other.

The paint wasn't drying. It wasn't dripping. It looked absorbed.

Like it belonged there.

A memory surfaced—not fully formed, but close enough to feel. A brush dragging across canvas. The sweet smell of oil paint.

The careful pressure of a hand making choices. His choices.

Control is subjective.

The thought arrived quietly. Not spoken by the clown. Not written on the wall.

His own.

The realization hollowed him out. Because the paint wasn't evidence of something done to him. It was evidence of something done by him.

The doll sat motionless beside the cage, its cracked porcelain face turned toward him.

Waiting. Remembering.

The clown remained exactly where he had been. Perfectly still. Watching.

And somehow that was worse.

No threats. No violence. No pursuit.

Only certainty.

The same certainty Damian felt every time he looked at the canvas in his mind and recognized the hand that created it.

His hand. Control is subjective.

The words echoed again.

And for the first time, Damian couldn't tell whether the cage was holding him— or whether he had spent years building it himself.

The clown tilted his head. Not a movement. A punctuation mark.

The grin never widened.

It didn't need to.

The world dropped out beneath him.

“DAMIAN!”

Dick's voice tore through the darkness like a lifeline thrown into deep water.

—

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[hannrum]

Bruce and his baby

[eunisyn]

"All this for lil ol' me?"

[ao3commentoftheday]

reasons why people don’t comment on fics

an incomplete list based on observations via this blog

enjoyed the fic but didn’t have anything to say

worried that a general “I love this!” wasn’t a good enough comment

not a native speaker of the author’s language

so overcome by emotions after reading that words were impossible

reading on a device where commenting is difficult

intended to come back later and didn’t

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doesn’t have an AO3 account (+ doesn’t know about the guest option or isn’t comfortable using it)

was going to say something but another reader already commented it

not enough mental/emotional energy to try to craft a ‘good enough’ comment

worry about bothering the author

shy / social anxiety

reading fic before bed and fall asleep

reading fic while sick and in a haze

interrupted while reading the fic and thought they finished it/commented but whoops!

didn’t like the fic / didn’t finish reading

[ao3commentoftheday]

Just to be clear, this was in no way meant to be a call-out post on readers. It was intended to explain to writers that there are dozens of reasons why people don’t/can’t comment. Writers tend to assume commenting is a binary: if you like the fic, you comment and if you don’t, you don’t. I wanted to show that there’s a lot more to it than that. 

[han-pan]

I support this list so much. It really bothers me that there is this pressure in fandom that readers who don’t comment are TRASH and shouldn’t partake. But the are so many reasons someone may not comment and I wish people believed this.

[faficowrimo]

Given some of the feedback we have received, we would like to clarify a few points: 

We see comments as one half of an interaction. “A writer prompts an interaction by posting their work; it is up to the reader to then acknowledge (or not acknowledge) the interaction…” [x]

“Some readers have yet to develop positive commenting habits, others have fallen out of the habit of commenting for various reasons, while still others face issues which can hinder them from commenting consistently. Whatever a reader’s reasons for not commenting, we’re here to help.” [x] (See our “Commenting Made Easy” and “How to Comment” tags for some great posts to help get you started!)

“If you do find yourself unable to comment on every fic (for whatever reason), remember this: we forgive you, zero judgement.” [x]

“Don’t punish yourself for your past fandom mistakes. Instead, focus on developing better commenting habits…”  [x]

Comments are a courtesy, not a currency. For every reader who has left us a note to say they already comment on everything they read, we have another reader confess how stressful commenting can be–and we sympathize! We are not here to condemn or punish. Our sole purpose is to help readers build better commenting habits for the betterment of their fandoms.

[opheliawillowbrook]

So relatable XD

[shewhowillnotbenamed1]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

The Fledgling by shewhowillnotbenamed1

Raven is cleansed of Trigon at last. While Damian fears for her safety, a small part of him fears her. Just who is this stranger who wants to disrupt routine to try something new? Does she still want the same things? After all the avoidance, it's finally time to contend with change, and the end of an emotional drought. This is 1 of 2 pieces I completed for the 2020 DamiRae Fanzine.

This piece actually began as a response to a prompt taken past the point of no return. Which I am often want to do. I couldn't stop writing it until it became this. This answer was the alternate path I ended up posting. There is something about the vagueness of those prompts that I enjoy; it really opens up several possibilities at once.

Prompt List

2026 DamiRae Fanzine

[opheliawillowbrook]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapter 2: Work of Art

Red. That was all he saw. Red like truth. Red like inheritance. Red like bloodlines.

Now it wasn’t a metaphor. It was everywhere: splattered across the walls, dripping from the ceiling, soaking the floor beneath his boots. Thick. Pungent. Inescapable.

Control Freak’s head sat grotesquely inside the shattered TV screen, while his body—or what remained of it—lay maimed and broken in a sea of blood and gore, not far from the motif it seemed destined to become.

Raven shivered, wrapping her arms around herself. “It’s… awful.”

Damian didn’t respond.

Instead, his eyes traced a trail of crimson across the floor, arcs and smears forming a pattern only he could read. Others saw carnage; he saw sequence, logic, a story written in blood.

While the others recoiled, Damian crouched, analyzing every arc, every splash. The direction of the spatter told him the force of each strike. The pooling revealed where the victims had struggled, where they had been moved. He noted the angles of impact, the distance between splatters, even the rhythm in the pattern. There was no panic… just precision. This wasn’t a frenzied attack. It was choreography.

The thought came too easily. Too clean. He ignored the unease that followed it.

He stepped deeper into the scene, where yellow tape fluttered over scattered flesh. Gizmo’s dismembered body had been repurposed, reshaped into a macabre sculpture reminiscent of the opening Grind House sequence. Limbs propped against a cybernetic frame, as if the tech itself were wearing him like skin.

“This is a fucking mess,” Gar muttered, doing all he could not to lose his lunch in the middle of the crime scene—of which a rookie cop had already done.

Damian didn’t look away from the carnage. He stared into the red abyss a moment longer than necessary.

Something in the pattern clicked. Not emotional. Structural. Distinct, and undeniable.

“This is a masterpiece,” he heard himself say.

The admission unsettled him—less for what it meant, than for how quickly his mind had arrived there.

His teammates paused, peering back at him as if he’d just praised the carnage itself.

“I mean, this wasn’t done at random,” he clarified, trying to put what made sense to him into words. “Whoever did this… enjoyed it. Knew exactly what they were doing. Made art out of it.”

He crouched again, eyes scanning closer now. The blood arcs suggested movement between attacks, choreographed strikes. The way the bodies were positioned—it wasn’t just mutilation; it was a frame exposed beneath it all. Damian could almost read it like a canvas split wide for an audience of one.

This had a signature, consistent enough to mark a mind at work rather than a mind in frenzy. 

It unnerved him, even as it drew him in. This was Death by design. 

“Okay then, Dexter,” Jaime quipped sardonically. “What can you tell us based on the blood?”

Damian’s jaw tightened. Wrong comparison.

Not because the fictional profiler was inaccurate—but being reduced to a television analogy felt… insulting.

“The blood,” he began, voice low and even, “is deliberate. See the direction of these splatters? The strikes weren’t random.”

He traced a smear leading from the floor to the shattered TV.

“Control Freak’s head—severed by blunt force, likely a dull cleaver or similar instrument. The angle here… and the pooling beneath it indicates he was still alive when it happened. The heart hadn’t stopped yet.”

He moved his gaze over the rest of the scene, noting Gizmo’s limbs and their arrangement. “The other injuries… all controlled. Staged. Each body, each strike, has a rhythm, a pattern. 

“This isn’t rage,” Damian said. A pause. His eyes didn’t move. “It’s… structured.”

He almost hated the certainty of it. The clinical ease with which his mind accepted carnage as if it were afternoon reading.

The others exchanged uneasy glances. Damian’s words were clinical, almost appreciative, but there was an edge of alarm beneath them that even they could sense.

“What tipped you off?” Tara grimaced, not entirely convinced. “The writing on the wall?”

Damian rolled his eyes—leave it to Tara Markov to doubt his finely tuned instincts and jump straight to the superficial.

Still, his eyes scanned the wall. Messages scrawled in blood—and other fluids—ran wild, profanities and aimless words that likely meant nothing in particular. Yet one message stood out, loud, and unmistakable:

“Life Ends, Art Remains.”

Damian stepped back from the wall, letting the others absorb his observations. His gaze lingered on the arcs of blood across the floor—subtle traces others would have missed. 

Raven shook her head, her dark hair falling into her face. “I can’t… I can’t even look at it.”

Gar muttered something about needing a shower and a strong drink, already moving toward the exit. Tara just scowled, brushing blood from her gloves.

Damian said nothing, cataloging the scene in his mind. Every mark, every placement, every gruesome detail. He would revisit this, replay it, dissect it. There was intelligence here—something dangerous.

He stared at the blood beneath his boots. Dull brown. Hours had passed since the suspect had been here. As he looked down, a distant memory surfaced—a pit so deep he wished he could forget. The familiar rusty scent of blood in the air, a reminder of carnage and the unforgiving question of mortality.

With a soft exhale, he followed the others toward the yellow tape. Before leaving, he went over his findings with the lead detective. Already filing the report in his head.

As they left, Damian cast one last glance at the scene—Control Freak. Gizmo. The scrawled message on the wall. There was a rhythm here, a design waiting for someone perceptive enough to decipher it. 

He would…  Eventually.

Exiting the condemned building,  the night air bit at his skin, the city heavy with smoke and rain. Even in the darkness, the echo of the killer’s “Art” lingered in his mind.

“Well,” Gar exhaled, staring at the floor like it might move, “that was a real mood ruiner.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Jaime muttered.

Tara’s voice cut through sharper. “That was fucked.”

Raven didn’t correct her. “It was… cruel.”

“They must have really pissed someone off,” Tara added, flippant.

“They didn’t deserve to die like that,” Raven reasoned.

“Maybe not,” Tara shrugged, “but y’know, they weren’t innocent.”

“Innocent or not, that was still inhuman,” Jaime muttered from beneath the safety of his armor. The scarab at his back chirping in a foreign, mechanical rebuttal Jaime only rolled his eyes at. 

Damian paused. Something about that word hit a chord. “It takes a certain kind of depravity to achieve something like that,” he said quietly, eyes lingering on the receding crime scene. “And the one who did it… understands it fully. Understands fear, control, and the limits of life in ways most never will.”

The group fell silent. Even Gar, usually quick with a quip, felt the weight of Damian’s words.

“How do you do that?” Gar finally asked, voice low.

“Do what?” Damian replied, his voice calm beneath the mask.

“See evil… and be totally unaffected by it?”

Damian didn’t flinch at the accusation, though it left him slightly stunned. The truth was, he had been deeply affected by the inhumanity he’d just witnessed. The difference was he’d been trained not to show it—not to let the world see he’d been moved. To see it for what it was, an evil that needed to be stopped. And he could only do that by understanding it.

“Sometimes the only way to stop a great evil is to rationalize it,” he said, though he knew it offered his teammates no comfort.

No one answered. Damian wasn't sure if he'd been explaining evil… or himself.

Gar shook his head. “No, seriously. How do you—?”

Damian’s gaze returned to the darkened street, already cataloging the scene in his mind. “I observe. That’s it. It’s not a superpower.”

“Maybe not to you,” Jaime noted. He turned as Gar and Tara headed toward the tower, already eager to put the night behind them. Jaime followed a moment later, leaving Damian and Raven behind.

They started moving again, the space between them filled with uneasy silence.

Raven slowed her pace until she was walking beside Damian. Not quite looking at him, she murmured, “Ignore them.”

His gaze flicked toward her, sharp. “I wasn’t—”

“I know,” she said softly. “They don’t see what you see.” A beat. “That doesn’t make you wrong.”

Damian said nothing, but something in his posture eased—just slightly.

“They still see me as an al Ghul.”

“They know you’re more than that,” Raven said as she turned to follow the others. “You’re the one who hasn’t quite let that go.”

Damian lingered, the words settling heavier than he expected.

She wasn’t wrong. The name was carved into him as surely as bone and sinew—inheritance written in blood, sharpened by training and expectation. Al Ghul. Wayne. Legacy wasn’t something he could discard. It was the framework that held him together.

Even here, beneath the towering spires of Jump City, he stood in shadow—Wayne Tower crowning the skyline behind him, granite and glass bearing down like a silent reminder. There was no escaping it. Not really.

Then the air changed.

It was subtle. A pressure at the base of his skull. The instinctive prickle that had kept him alive since childhood.

Damian stilled.

Slowly, his masked gaze swept the street, the rooftops, the darkened windows. Nothing out of place. No movement. No sound.

Yet the feeling remained. Not the presence of a watcher. The certainty of one.

Somewhere beyond the reach of light, something observed him with patient interest. Waiting. Measuring.

Damian’s hand curled at his side.

Recognition.

He turned.

His reflection stared back at him in the dark sheen of a plate-glass window of an abandoned storefront.

And behind it— something else.

A figure stood across the street. Black and white. Wrongly still. A grin stretched too wide across a pale face, dark eyes locked directly onto him.

The shape did not move like a person should. It simply was there.

The clown lifted a white-gloved hand. Red stained the palm. Slow and eerie.

It waved. Not greeting. Not mockery. An invitation.

Damian’s breath caught—a sense of inevitability he had yet to name creeping in.

His head snapped toward the street. Empty.

Only a flickering streetlamp remained.

“Hey,” Raven called behind him. “Everything okay?”

Damian glanced once more at the glass. Nothing.

Whatever it had been—if it had been anything at all—was gone. For now.

“It’s nothing.”

Read More 👈

[opheliawillowbrook]

TERRIFIER: ART OF THE KILLING JOKE AUDIO

Great stories are built on rivalries.

Not just between people—but between ways of understanding the world.

Meaning against force.

Order against rupture.

Control against the slow inevitability of entropy.

Damian Wayne was trained to impose order on chaos.

But sometimes the world produces something worse than chaos.

Something that refuses meaning altogether.

Damian didn’t inherit the Joker.

He inherited Art the Clown.

And this time, the joke isn’t the point.

[opheliawillowbrook]

Hey guys! Sorry for the delay, but the audiobook format of Terrifier: Art of the Killing Joke will start posting on TikTok tomorrow!

I've been super busy with chickens this week. My husband and I recently finished—who am I kidding, we still have a bit more work to do—the new chicken fortress to keep my girls safe from predators... especially bears.

On top of that, we added a few new chicks to the flock! We now have more Cream Legbars, French Copper Marans, and a new mix called a Crypt Walker.

We also successfully hatched our own chicks for the first time, so please congratulate my rooster, Parm—he's officially a proud papa to four adorable babies that I'm absolutely obsessed with. So far, we've named one Lucky (as in "lucky to be alive," but that's a story for another time) and Mini Parm. That kid's tough as nails.

So understandably, I've been busy getting these babies settled, fretting over incubation, and making sure the coop is secure.

Anyway, I'm finally getting back on track with my fanfiction projects, including this audiobook format, which I'm hoping will make the story more accessible for people who don't always have the time or energy to sit down and read.

This whole TikTok endeavor is still super new to me, and learning how to navigate it has definitely been an experience, to say the least.

I've added some chick pics for those of you who love chickens. If you want more chicken updates, feel free to DM me for a link to my "ChickTok". Otherwise, you can follow my fanfic account for teasers, fan edits, and audiobook updates!

Ophelia Will-Brook Tiktok account 👈

Also isn't Parm a handsome son of bitch!

[opheliawillowbrook]

TERRIFIER: ART OF THE KILLING JOKE 👈

Great stories are built on rivalries.

Not just between people—but between ways of understanding the world.

Meaning against force.

Order against rupture.

Control against the slow inevitability of entropy.

Damian Wayne was trained to impose order on chaos.

But sometimes the world produces something worse than chaos.

Something that refuses meaning altogether.

Damian didn’t inherit the Joker.

He inherited Art the Clown.

And this time, the joke isn’t the point

Gotham: a city where reason and insanity shared the same sidewalks—split just enough to trip the careless. Joker always loved that. Gotham was his city as much as it was the Bat’s. Gotham didn’t hide its rot.

It wore it like stage makeup—garish, imposing, impossible to ignore.

Unless the Bat showed up, of course—and his little brats too.

Lucky them, Joker thought, a dull, irritated irony settling in as he stared at his latest muse.

He checked his watch. The carved-up face of a policeman’s daughter stared back at him—eyes void, fixed on something beyond him. Something empty.

Normally, the sight would have brought a smile to his face. But tonight, the spark wasn’t there. The joke refused to land.

It had all grown so mundane.

He remembered when the city had a rhythm—an off-beat drum only madmen could hear. A time when sirens didn’t interrupt the night—

they harmonized with it.

Gotham still had that pulse—

that hell-born heartbeat—

where everything that could go wrong inevitably would, and your life was nothing more than a punchline scrawled in blood.

Most days felt like a joke no one else understood: heroes scrambling for meaning, villains scrambling for a bit of fun—

usually at your expense.

Joker always loved that part.

The futility.

The comedy.

The audience participation.

“I’d kill to feel that zest again,” he cooed, sighing his frustrations up at the moon like it might sigh back. “Looks like I’ll just have to settle for the incontinence factor." He made sure to leave as much of a mess as humanly possible—call it muscle memory.

But something deeper gnawed at him, a kind of artistic block he refused to name. Stories of a killer clown—some painted nobody out of Miles County calling himself Art.

“Of course his name is Art,” Joker grumbled upon first hearing of this new Clown.

“Another jester. How original,” Joker scoffed dismissively as he flipped through the headline and its lovingly photographed gore.

At first he was impressed—flattered, even.

But as the clown continued to terrorize, maim, and reduce his victims to little more than a puddle of pink slurry, Joker found himself… wondering. Not about the horror—no, he adored horror. But about the intent.

What drove this thing?

Ead MORE HERE 👇

https://archiveofourown.org/works/86125266

[opheliawillowbrook]

Great stories are built on rivalries. Not just between people—but between ways of understanding the world.

Meaning against force. Order against rupture. Control against the slow inevitability of entropy.

Damian Wayne was trained to impose order on chaos.

But sometimes the world produces something worse than chaos. Something that refuses meaning altogether.

Damian didn’t inherit the Joker. He inherited Art the Clown.

And this time, the joke isn’t the point.

🎡 Terrifier: Art of the Killing Joke Dropping June 4th on AO3 and Wattpad

Set in DCAMU × Terrifier canon

🎵 Audio: “Work of Art” by Ice Nine Kills Mixed my yours truly (Batman vs. Robin) 🎤 Voice Over: Taissa Farmiga & Stuart Allan and the Legendary Kevin Conroy