DPxDC Prompt
It wasn’t superstition.
It was protocol.
Every Lazarus Pit was to be surrounded—no exceptions—with crimson-rooted blossoms. Not for beauty. Not for ritual.
For containment.
Talia had told him this when he was young, voice calm, as if discussing weather.
“The Pit does not only return life,” she said. “Sometimes, it calls something else to the surface.”
Damian had seen it.
Once.
A shape dragged itself out of the green waters—wrong in every way that mattered. Limbs bending where they shouldn’t, a voice that sounded like too many voices layered together.
It didn’t get far.
The blossoms did their job.
The creature screamed—high, sharp, inhuman—before collapsing into something that didn’t resemble a body anymore.
After that, Damian never questioned the flowers.
When he was sent to live with his father, he was given three seeds.
No ceremony this time.
Just a quiet instruction.
“Keep them close.”
Damian Wayne doesn’t plant them himself.
He gives them to Alfred Pennyworth with precise instructions.
They take root in Wayne Manor’s garden.
They bloom quickly.
Too quickly.
Deep red petals. Almost black at the edges.
Damian keeps one on him at all times after that.
A habit.
A precaution.
A weapon.
High school is… tolerable.
Predictable.
Until the new student arrives.
Danny Fenton.
It starts small.
The first time they pass each other in the hallway, Fenton stumbles.
Not clumsy—wrong.
Like his body forgot how to exist for half a second.
Damian notices.
Of course he does.
The second time—
It’s worse.
Fenton freezes mid-step, hand gripping the edge of a locker hard enough to dent it.
His face goes pale.
Eyes unfocused.
Like he’s trying not to be sick.
Damian feels it then.
A faint warmth in his pocket.
The petal.
Interesting.
He tests it.
Deliberately.
Moves closer.
Watches.
Fenton reacts instantly.
Sharp inhale.
A step back.
Another.
Like prey realizing, too late, it walked into the wrong territory.
“Are you unwell?” Damian asks.
Flat. Controlled.
Observing.
Fenton forces a laugh.
“Yeah—uh—must be something I ate.”
But he doesn’t come any closer.
Doesn’t stop watching Damian.
Doesn’t stop watching Damian’s hands.
The petal is burning now.
Not painfully.
But noticeably.
Damian understands.
He has seen this before.
Felt this before.
Watched something crawl out of green water and try to exist in a world it did not belong to.
Fenton is not human.
Damian’s grip tightens, just slightly, around the petal in his pocket.
Not enough to crush it.
Just enough to remind himself it’s there.
Good.
“Stay away from me,” Fenton says suddenly.
Too fast.
Too sharp.
Like instinct slipped past control.
Damian almost smiles.
He has dealt with demons before.
And if this one thinks it can walk freely—
sit in classrooms—
pretend to be harmless—
It has made a mistake,
Part 2
