⭐️FANFIC DIRECTOR’S CUT PLEASE⭐️
Ah h HHH picking a specific fic myself oh damn---
dhsjdhj ok seeing as I know you're here from the Suren posting 🤭 I'll do bits from Welcome Home (?), Suren Darga!
So, probably my like....it doesn't have proper commentary but I am OBLIGATED to shout out these lines:
“But I am also- better. A better choice, a better fit to make the journey. He did not want to go – and I did. I knew that Damian was there.” “How?” “How do you know when the sun has risen, or night has fallen?” Suren replies sharply, “Where I was had no application of sense – I just knew.”
I just think it's like, FIRST OF ALL. I do still hope I can get them to enough of a point that the fic is clearly romantic so I can change the tags, aha. But second this is like, not even one of the first scenes I did but it does stand out as one of my favourites? This idea that...to Suren, Damian exists as a cardinal point, as a force of nature, is literally a guide the same way the sun is, the same way sunset or nightfall just exist. I think it's just...a really romantic - albeit delivered straightforward - sentiment, and as the one who got Suren to...realise the life he was living was supposed to be his own, the imagery of light, to guide, to show, is probably just...intertwined with how he perceives Damian. In my head as well - and potentially disclosed in the fic, but both Suren and Damian are contrary, secretive bastards (in different ways but equally as annoying, jfc y'all) - Suren even being able to respond to the call was largely because of his connection to Damian/being able to see Damian's soul. And to him, since Damian is a light, he had...enough to guide him out of the dark again.
(AUGHHHH). Ahem.
Anyway my second favourite passage was one I DID have since basically the beginning, but with some overhauls to figure out where to fit it/how to say it. I knew I wanted this, 'cause the fic was so much of Damian's POV, and I do think he does kinda...have this paranoia that his mum WOULD constantly be testing him with these things? Mostly because she's proven she will. So Talia needed to come up:
His mother had never been so callous. Or perhaps he just gentled her too much. It was hard not too, with memory of her hands through his hair or her lips, featherlight on his forehead. She loved him; ardently, fervently, protectively. Of that he had no doubts. No other childhood would have left him able to survive in a place known as the League of Assassins, and his father's upbringing…well, he doubts his father would even have been involved in his upbringing, when he takes the time to think shrewdly on it. Maybe a baby would have softened the Batman. Maybe a child would have made Bruce Wayne, master of the meaningful grunt, actually communicate. More than likely, Damian's childhood would have been odd, stilted, and full of the drama that seemed inherent to anyone who claimed ‘neé Wayne’.
I love a complicated relationship!!!!!!! I love it!!!!!
I think for me personally there's this really complex struggle to trying to fit the two "versions" of Talia together (her OG pre-character assasination vs. newer assassian!Talia) and I don't know if I necessary do well at it - I am, afterall, still writing Batfam fic, not LoA fic, and my sympathies extend to "nooo I want them to be fambly<333" which means a further gentling of canon!Bruce - but I want to at least TRY, you know? And also! I think it's much, much sadder - and more interesting - if they were in love! If it WAS a sacrifice for Talia to let Bruce go, knowing the LoA would ruin him (and yet, and yet, refusing to let Damian go - that's her son)
So I'm very much into this aspect of Damian fully acknowledging Talia loves him while ALSO dealing with the fact that his childhood was Fucked Up (how much of that was her fault, he has to think, how much of that was her trying to protect me and make me strong in a place that belittled weakness...). The complexities of the fact that he had to be the best and trying to give that to him while also sheltering while also so very VERY painfully aware that she couldn't shelter him from everything?
I think you can potentially have this aspect of Talia still viewing that ecoterrism/extremism as necessary and still have her be a good mom. In my personal taste I think it's kinda boring where every villain is "evil" because they're abusive in the same way, over and over again - you can still have Damian's childhood be bad while acknowledging Talia loves him, in any way you like (for me, personally, it is...both selfish, not wanting to give up her son, but also, enforced; she cannot leave the LoA because she knows Ra's would kill her and take Damian regardless. And...if she is all he has, like he is all she has, she will not let herself fall prey to such an easy trap). The only reason she risks it later - and finally surrenders to losing her son - is when Ra's decides he's going to take Damian's body. At that point, she loses her son either way.
WAIT THAT'S SO LONG LMAO and yet I still have so much to say---
ANYWAY IT'S LIKE. TALIA LOVES HIM AND CARES ABOUT HIM SO MUCH BUT POTENTIALLY ACCEPTS KILLING AS NECESSARY, AND BEST HE GET USED TO IT EASILY, BUT THEN, GODDD, THE AGONY OF KNOWING BRUCE AND HOPING HER SON STILL FOLLOWS THEIR WAYS BUT NOT BEING ABLE TO BE CERTAIN AND EXPECTING, ALMOST ENTIRELY, THAT WHEN HE IS AN ADULT HE WILL LOOK TO HER WITH HATRED; THAT HE WILL NOT SEE WHAT SHE DID (out of love out of love out of love) the sacrifices she made, the protections she gave, the wall she was forced to put her back against, knowing, inherently, they will be on either side of the same ideological divide for the rest of their lives and she will never be allowed to cross it (she will never hold her son again, the son who loves her, for her son no longer loves her-)
And then ofc on the Bruce side of things by the time Damian is around I think Bruce has kinda....just super unfortunately gotten really jaded. And with Damian? His own kid being a murderer (seeing no problems with it???) it's so hard to seperate the standards he has for himself, for his family, for others, against. The fact that Damian is a child, and a child raised in a cult, at that. Tbqh in canon I think Bruce is unnecessarily harsh; in this paragraph I don't think Damian is seeing the actual truth of the matter (in line with how I, at least, am choosing to characterise Bruce), but I do think he is right. At any instance when Damian is in his life, there's....
If it's Damian without Talia, I have doubts that a colicky child would work for Bruce; he's too pragmatic, and to have lost Damian's mother? Ow. He takes all his grief inwards, with him. That leaves very little space for a baby, especially in the potential wake of Dick leaving or. Just. Numerous things!
And/or, then, a baby!Damian or younger!damian just after Jason's death (which is largely the turning point as presented in fic for the fact that Bruce is undeniably changed by grief), that's not...I think it is painful, that Dick and jaybin got a different version of Bruce - that Tim, who saw Bruce recover from grief, knows fully well the differences - but Damian never will - so all he knows is a Bruce who wouldn't be able to do those things. Who is a bad communicator, who doesn't listen to him and expects obedience and offers no privacy but still expects and enforces his own, because Bruce is, at least at the start, worried that Damian will continue to kill. And all he knows how to do, to stop that, is be insanely controlling.
By the point of this fic, Bruce is well aware that Damian has changed and is horrified and traumatised by his past, so I do view Bruce as trying to be "better", but I think, within that aspect, it has also meant him trying to slowly "ease up" is...fully combatted by the groundwork he laid in Damian's first years; I think I mention as well, in the fic, a line about Damian never asking three times/trying to be quiet (having learnt to be quiet) so he can stay involved in the cases etc. And I think that informs a lot about how he perceives Bruce; from the author POV I am well aware Bruce cares.
From Damian's POV? A traumatised perfectionist who was judged without clear boundaries or explanation on the adjustment in norms that was required when he first came to Gotham, who had freedoms systemically denied until he learned to "be good" (and yet, was/is still judged for his past)? Yeaaaaah. It's a 50/50. Because I do think Damian is at least partially right; he can dream that meeting him as a baby would have made Bruce softer, would make Bruce love him (openly, easily, without the ceveats-), but at the same time Bruce's communication issues are VERY deep set. They still would have had this struggle of control and communication...it just probably would be easier for Damian to recognise that Bruce loves him.
anyway. AS ALWAYS, THE THESIS STATEMENT......the love is there; it doesn't fix anything, but god, the love is there.