Every time I think I’m finally free you guys drop another chapter and I am pulled back into the inescapable void that is this fic.
Anyway here’s my third analysis that I wrote at 1am last night while rereading this fic for the 300th time. No apologies this time cause you told me to stop doing that and also the last chapter made me suffer so I am not sorry.
Something these last few chapters have made me curious about is Damian’s relationship with his family, because we do know they care about him (obviously) but we haven’t really seen Damian interact casually with anyone other than Jason and even then that was technically work related.
I reread the first few chapters (seeing Damian before all the trauma was jarring) and the whole conversation between them is pretty brief and ends with Jason hanging up on him and calling him a liability and while Jason didn’t mean the comment personally Damian still took it as such and then went off to find Lamont and got kidnapped.
It’s clear he had some pretty bad self worth issues even before this whole thing started and his tendency to tie how loveable he is to how useful he is and therefore evaluate himself based on the approval of others definitely started way before Micah was ever in the picture.
Of course Micah took those insecurities and then dialled them up to 100 which sucks because I don’t like seeing how absolutely in the ground Damian’s self esteem is, but I wonder if things would’ve played out differently if Damian’s self worth wasn’t already so fragile to begin with.
Tbh as much as I hate to say it his family has been pretty neglectful, despite caring for him. The fact that it took them more than 12 hours to notice he was missing at all and even then it was because the school called is crazy in hindsight.
I get that they’re superhero’s and it’s pretty normal for them, but normal doesn’t make it right and I feel like they should’ve been paying a little more attention to the 13 year old even if he is a trained assassin.
And then there’s the additional factor of Damian’s childhood with the league making him very dependent on external validation and approval and I think him lacking in it so severely made it pretty easy for Blade to basically take over Bruces place as the voice of reason and comfort in his head.
Another thing I thought was interesting was Damian in chapter 24 saying he imagined Blade one day getting bored of him and just leaving him on the roadside, it’s mentioned previously in another chapter after he breaks his leg:
“What if Blade doesn’t come back? What if he decides to leave him now that he’s broken?”
And even if it is unrealistic I think it speaks to a deeper issue regarding Damian and being abandoned.
I mean he was left on a strangers doorstep by his mother when he turned 10, that stranger who was also his father then promptly ‘died’ and he went to live with one of his sons and then later after establishing somewhat of a routine for himself with his brother his dead father returns and he is once again being left on his doorstep.
Within the span of a year.
And of course within the fic itself you have Jason hanging up on him and Dick later also unintentionally hanging up on him, the first chapter revolves around him waiting for his dad to text him, which he doesn’t do and I wonder if for Damian there was some comfort to be found in Blade at least being a constant in his life. Since the man made it pretty clear that he was not letting Damian go willingly.
Which makes me wonder how exactly he’s gonna handle being ripped away from yet another parental figure in his life. As terrible as Blade is Damian does still care about him even if he’d rather not.
I sound like a broken record but the layers between Blade and Damian are so good.
I like their similarities with Blade having also been abandoned by everyone is his life at this point.
Even Dick who he previously thought to be the nicest most understanding person ever has condemned him, so when Damian was unable to pull the trigger and kill him despite having more than enough reason to do so Blade sees it as Damian choosing him in the same way that Blade taking Damian with him when he went on the run was in Damian’s eyes Blade choosing him too.
At this point Damian and Blade are both convinced that the other is the only person who would ever choose them. Which has worsened their emotional dependency on each other.
In Damian’s eyes Blade is the only person who could ever love him or at least Blades love is the only kind he thinks he deserves.
And Blade now feels as though he has someone who actually loves and accepts him for who he is.
Of course neither of them are correct. Because obviously Damian’s family still love him and Blade doesn’t have unconditional love and acceptance what he has is a severely abused child who he has groomed and manipulated into a trauma bond in order to use him as an emotional crutch.
Micah using Damian as emotional support is also something I wanted to talk about especially after hearing his internal narrative during ‘Still lingering in Flesh’.
It has been especially prevalent during the passenger arc with the way their interactions with each other shifted, but Micah was still parentifying Damian within the basement to a much larger degree than I previously realised. His internal narrative is crazy by the way. What a sociopath.
Anyway, them leaving the house and Blade being so vulnerable due to his stab wound meant Damian had to be far more active than when Blade was just using him as an emotional support teddy bear.
There’s also something interesting about the language Damian (and others) uses to describe himself.
He’s constantly likened to a small child or a toddler or a baby throughout the story and yet he’s also told in several chapters that he needs to grow up and take responsibility and that he’s no longer a child.
It gives a lot of mixed signals. Especially with Blade viewing Damian as something weak and helpless and yet also being smart enough to recognise that he is still capable and very much a threat.
And also Damian being expected to provide comfort and emotional stability to this full grown man while of course getting none in return despite desperately needing it because Blade is inherently selfish with his love.
I also like the natural progression of the language Damian uses to describe himself.
He goes from referring to himself as a child to a toddler to just straight up dehumanising himself and comparing himself to an animal and then an object. I think it really shows how his autonomy has been stripped from him and also how Blade has gotten more comfortable about using Damian for his own emotional gratification.
Though I have to say when it comes to Damian being infantilised I can’t really tell how much of it is him acting like a child of his own volition vs Micah forcing him to behave in ways that make him come across as younger than he is to people.
Like in chapter 13 Damian says: “It is an image that isn’t not aided by Damian now, and hasn’t been aided by Damian this whole time”
He blames himself for the way Micah has been treating him like a child, because in his eyes he’s been acting like one, but also the only reason he acted like that is because Micah beat him so badly he couldn’t walk and then proceeded to spend weeks drugging him and making it so Damian had no other choice but to rely on him.
And then in chapter 25 you have him basically clinging to Blade and the cart as they go through the store the same way a small child might, but that’s because Damian’s scared he’s gonna get people killed if he doesn’t.
But then there’s also moments where Damian acts a lot younger than he is, completely unprompted and I wonder if that’s just because he’s put in situations that are usually reserved for small children (like sharing a bed with Blade) or if he’s just gotten used to being treated like a child I.e Blade literally helping dress him in kids clothes.
(Also the fact that he fits in children’s clothes at all? How malnourished is he?)
It’ll probably be easier to tell now that he’s no longer being held captive I’m very intrigued about how much of an influence Blade has had on his personality.
He’s also still alive so I’m super excited to see if his and Damian’s dynamic shifts again because of the new circumstances. A lot of things I’m excited about tbh.
I was thinking about the idea of Damian having to go through physical therapy because of his leg the idea really hooked me for some reason.
He definitely needs a hospital though and I also really want to see what he looks like from someone else’s pov because of the way Damian’s been treating his injuries.
He refers to the pain in his arm as “manageable” and when Blade slaps him he says it was “almost more debasing than painful”. He’s really minimising how badly he’s being treated and I wouldnt be surprised if we find out he’s in a far worse condition than he’s been letting on.
I’m guessing that part of it is to cope, because Damian spends a lot of this fic refusing to admit how bad his situation is and even when it gets to the point where he has no other choice but to confront how fucked he is, he still tries to downplay it as much as humanly possible.
Which of course then opens the door to a bunch of victim blaming, because according to Damian being beaten, starved, dehydrated and chained up is not an excuse for not attempting to escape and because all these factors have prevented his escape he’s clearly a useless, unlovable burden who would be better of dead.
Damian is so obviously drained. Like physically and mentally, and he’s really tired of escaping. Which makes sense, at this point who wouldn’t be? He’s failed every attempt and in his eyes has only gotten himself and others hurt and killed as consequence.
(Side note Damian referring to Blades murders as their kills. I’m sure that won’t be a massive problem for later.)
Of course he can’t really admit to himself that he just doesn’t think trying to escape is worth it anymore, because his number 1 coping mechanism is basically just denial and avoidance.
To Damian not fighting back is a moral failing. He previously didn’t even want to consider the risk of accepting his current reality as normal, because if he’s not fighting he’s given up.
Which I assume is why he craves the lack of control he had in the basement, because being physically unable to escape meant that he didn’t have to hate himself for not trying.
He wasn’t being complacent and even if his fantasies and escape plans were unrealistic it didn’t matter because that was all he could do and therefore it was enough.
I also think there’s a level of his own comfort involved to. When he was in the basement he knew what to expect and when. He knew how Blade operated when he was in control and could adapt to that, but now he’s in a completely new situation that he’s not used to and he’s scared.
I think for Damian there was control in his lack of control. When Blade was making all the decisions it was easier to pick and choose his battles and it was easier to read the man.
And then the dynamic changed and Damian was forced to become an active participant in his own captivity. He’s forced to make choices that will have actual consequences not just on him but on Blade too and on random strangers he’s never met.
And of course it’s the first time since he’s been kidnapped that he’s been forced to reckon with his actions having any tangible consequence beyond being beaten or not beaten and Damian’s mental state was already fragile after all the abuse so yeah it only went downhill from there.
In Damian’s eyes he has autonomy now, which I guess is true to some extent. Autonomy is the ability to make choices and Damian certainly has far more choices than he ever did in the basement he just can’t really make any because if he chooses to do anything Blade doesn’t like someone gets shot.
So I guess sort of autonomy in the sense that he can make decisions that actually matter, but also not anywhere near the degree to which Damian is imagining.
But of course the way he sees it is if he chooses to stay quite he is complicit and therefore okay with what is happening to him but if he chooses to try and escape, or to get help or really just to defy Blade in any way he gets himself and other people hurt.
Which, already just an awful situation to be in and then Blade had to go and make it worse by forcing him to self harm. The way he goes about it is so insidious too, the manipulation and emotional abuse and the very obvious projection of his own situation onto Damian.
And of course at this point Damian is so broken down that he just accepts it, because on some level he needs to. He needs to cling to something, needs to give himself some excuse to stay, because he knows he can’t leave.
All that being said it makes me very curious for how he’s going to deal with everything now that this is no longer the case.
I’m really interested in how he’s going to handle actually having autonomy over his own life again after so long without it.
Also scratch what I said. I am sorry, but only for any typos. Nothing else!!!
god DAMN anon i adore you. I'd like you to know that about 3 paragraphs into this chem looked up at me and was like "we're posting again today." This is amazing. I have more thoughts that I'll reblog with later but right now i'm just aweotihaowieht
