I was gonna put this scene in a story with Slade, Talia, and Damian naming him. But damn, I am way in over my head. So, since it's a little too short for AO3 yet, I'm posting it here until I find the energy to continue.
The first time he said it out loud, the name felt like an armor that was too big for him to wear. Still, it was something, a shape he could fit into if he tried hard enough.
Specimen 8 stared at his reflection, his pale green eyes searching for something—anything—that felt real.
“I’ll call myself Respawn.”
His body was aching, bruised and battered from the violent process of being brought back to life. The aftershocks of his revival made his head pound with memories—disjointed, jagged fragments of battles fought and lost, accompanied by the grim, finality of death that never quite loosened its grip on him.
He wasn’t supposed to exist. That much was clear. The first thing they told him when he woke up was that he was a failure. Not in so many words, but he understood it well enough from the hushed whispers of the scientists and the way they avoided his gaze.
“He’s unstable.”
“A flawed clone.”
“A backup experiment at best.”
And yet, every time he died, his body rebelled against the very idea of staying dead. His heartbeat would stutter back to life. His lungs would drag in air. Over and over again, he clawed his way out of the darkness, refusing to give them the satisfaction of calling him finished.
The scientists hated it. He could see it in their tired faces and hear it in their clipped voices when they checked his vitals.
“I die, and I come back. I survive.”
The words came out rough, like a jagged edge scraping against something soft. His voice felt strange in his throat, unused for weeks, but it was still his.
He reached up to touch the shallow scar running across his cheek—a reminder of his most recent failure. They’d thrown him into a fight with someone bigger, stronger, more experienced. He’d lost. Again. But even as he lay crumpled on the ground, blood pooling in his mouth, he’d refused to stay down.
They could break his bones. They could tear his body apart. But they couldn’t make him stop coming back.
He staggered to his feet, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He stared at his reflection in the cracked mirror, his fists clenching at his sides. He wasn’t Specimen 8, wasn't just another failed clone of Damian Wayne. He was alive. He was here.
He dragged a hand through his disheveled hair, as if to steady himself. Bruises marred his skin, fresh scars overlapped old ones, and yet there he stood. Still breathing. Still fighting.
“So call me Respawn.”
It didn’t matter that the facility wasn’t a place for names. It didn’t matter that no mother had cradled him, or that no father had taught him who he was. It was a name born out of spite. A name that was just as fractured as the memories that clawed at the edges of his mind.
And as he returned to his cell that night, he repeated the name to himself like a mantra.
Respawn. Respawn. Respawn.
It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t poetic. But it was his. And from that moment on, Specimen 8 ceased to exist.
