THE TOLL OF DEATH AND RESURRECTION
Pairing: Damian Wayne x Reader
divider by: @cafekitsune & @thecutestgrotto word count: 1.9k synopsis: Damian would do anything to bring you back, no matter the consequences. a/n: Am I back from my hiatus? Not sure, but I wrote this at 3 am and figured I might as well share it. This is angsty and dark, so don't say you weren't warned.
You had died in his arms.
He held you long after the warmth of your blood had cooled, his fingers sticky where they pressed against your red stained skin. They hadn't stopped trembling, Your final words—a fragile whisper of love that had barely reached his ears—now echoed endlessly in his mind, looping through the hollow silence.
He had been trained since birth not to weep. Taught never to yield, never to break, no matter the cost. But that night, all those lessons meant nothing, all of it fell away as he faced the consequences of his arrogance.
He hadn’t thought the criminal would go through with it. He’d thought he could stop it—that he could protect you, as he always had. But in a single, earth shattering instant, his certainty turned to horror and you were crumpling into his arms, your blood soaking through his gloves, warm and slick.
The man lay dead only a few feet away, his vacant eyes fixed on nothing. But Damian didn’t care. He could hardly remember killing him—the moment had passed in a blur of instinct and rage. All his focus, all his trembling desperation, was on you. On keeping you from bleeding out. But he was too late.
Damian’s tears slipped silently down his cheeks, falling to the marble floor where they mingled with the spreading pool of your blood. For once, he made no effort to hide his grief. The discipline drilled into him since childhood shattered in the face of loss, leaving only a boy broken open by love and the unbearable weight of that realization that he had been too late to save you.
It was unacceptable. You weren’t meant to be gone. Not you.
So, against all reason and every ounce of discipline beaten into him since childhood, he chose the unthinkable.
He went first to his mother. Talia’s lips thinned at his words, her gaze flickering with something between pity and pain. She had seen her son determined before—unyielding in battle, unflinching in blood—but never like this. Not with desperation cracking his voice and tears shining in eyes too much like her own. For a moment, she wavered. But even love has limits, and she knew what he asked would damn him far more deeply than loss ever could.
She refused, ignoring the way something in his eyes broke at her perceived betrayal.
So he went to the devil himself.
Damian knelt before Ra’s al Ghul—the man he had sworn never to bow to again. Pride, that sharp-edged armour he wore so fiercely, had been stripped from him. Damian’s voice trembled, cracking as he pleaded for access to the Lazarus Pit, for a chance to bring you back. He would give anything. Trade anything. His soul, his honour, his legacy—it meant nothing without you.
Gone was the arrogance that once laced every word, the cold composure that made him his father’s son. All that remained was a boy choking on grief.
And so, Ra’s granted his grandson what he desired. Not out of mercy, nor familial affection, but because he knew well the price of defying death, and he saw in Damian’s grief an opportunity—a chink in the boy’s unyielding armour. Love had made him weak, and weakness could be molded. If the consequences of seeing you brought back through the Lazarus Pit did not destroy him, it would remake him into the heir Ra’s had always envisioned.
The pit seethed like a cauldron of emerald fire, steam curling up the stone walls and clinging to the air like a living thing. Damian’s arms trembled as he carried you forward, his steps unsteady, his breath shallow. The heat rose in waves, the scent of brimstone and decay thick enough to burn the throat.
He hesitated at the edge.
“Al-mawt lā yastatīʿu an yaḥtafiẓa biki. Sa’arāki ʿāidatan ilā al-ḥayāh, walaw iḍṭarrartu an amzaqa as-samāwāt bi-yadayya.” The vow left his lips in a trembling whisper that echoed through the cavern’s hollow dark. Then, gathering what remained of his strength, Damian sank to his knees and lowered you into the pit’s churning depths.
The waters hissed when they touched your skin, swallowing you whole with a greedy, bubbling fury until there was nothing left—no body, no shadow, no trace of you at all. The pit had claimed you, and now he could only wait, praying it would choose to give you back.
He pressed his forehead to the cold stone, his voice breaking as he repeated the vow again and again—no longer a command, but a plea. Time lost meaning. The air grew thick with steam that burned his eyes and stung his lungs, yet still he did not move. His heart pounded in his chest, every beat a desperate call to yours.
Then, at last, the water broke.
Your body burst through the surface with a ragged, violent gasp, air tearing into your lungs like fire. Steam clung to your skin, dripping in rivulets of green-tinted water. For a moment, Damian could only stare—his chest caving with a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh. You were alive. He had you back.
But the joy curdled almost instantly.
Your eyes snapped open, glowing an unnatural shade of green—the same eerie hue that was permanent in his grandfather’s gaze, the same green that sometimes flickered in Jason’s when rage overtook him. A guttural scream tore from your throat, echoing through the cavern walls. It was almost inhuman from how raw it was.
You clawed at your own arms, nails raking through skin as if trying to tear something unseen away. Your teeth gnashed, bared like an animal cornered and feral. Damian moved toward you, desperate, whispering your name, words of comfort breaking apart in his throat. He reached for you pleadingly, his hands trembling as he tried to pull you into his arms but you thrashed violently, striking out with unnatural strength that was a side effect from the pit.
The Lazarus Pit had given you life, yes, but it had taken something precious in return.
Your sanity.
When he brought you back to Gotham—back to Wayne Manor—the family was already waiting. No one knew where he had gone or what he had done, only that he had vanished in the wake of your death, leaving behind nothing but the corpse of your attacker. But when Damian stepped through the doors, bringing the remnants of what you had become, horror rippled through the room at the sight of you.
Bruce was the first to speak.
“What have you done?” he whispered. The words were soft, but the tremor beneath them was unmistakable. It wasn’t anger that twisted his face—it was dread.
His gaze was fixed on you, watching the way you snarled and paced inside the reinforced cage you'd been forced in to keep you from attacking anyone.
You were no longer the sweet, smiling girl they had once known. The creature before them bore your face, but your movements were feral, your eyes glimmering with that unnatural green light. You hissed when anyone drew too close, teeth bared, fingers flexing like claws against the steel bars.
Dick stood nearby, his hand hovering near Damian’s shoulder—not quite touching, but close enough to offer comfort if it was ever accepted. His expression was composed, but his eyes betrayed only sorrow.
Damian’s voice cut through the heavy silence, steady but brittle. “I brought her back,” he said, chin lifting as if defiance alone could make it alright. “She just needs time to adjust.”
But the look on Bruce’s face said what no one dared to voice. You were gone, whatever was left was a shattered shell of who you once were.
Jason said nothing. He only stared, the horror twisting his features betraying what words never could. In your feral eyes, he saw his own reflection—the same rage, the same torment that had clawed its way out of the Lazarus Pit years ago. Part of him had always wished he’d stayed dead; contrary to what some believed, the pit was no gift. It was a curse. And now, it was a curse you both shared.
He remembered the madness that had consumed him, the way it had turned scrambled his thoughts, feeding off his pain and rage until it nearly consumed him. He had been lucky—if survival could be called that—to claw his way back to sanity. But the pit had never truly let go. Its effects haunted him still, lurking deep in the darkest parts of his mind. Through years he learned to push back the madness and he could only hope you might find a way to do the same.
Around them, silence settled heavily. Tim, Stephanie, Duke, Cassandra—all of them watched you with a mixture of shock and fear. Their eyes moved from the trembling bars of your cage to the anguish in Damian’s face, their hearts breaking not only for him, but for you—for the peace you’d been robbed of, and the mercy that had been denied you.
Yet Damian refused to listen to any of them, adamant in his belief that you could find your way back. The remnants of your mind were fractured, scattered like shards of glass, but he swore he could still see you within them
You weren’t the same. But there were nights where a glimpse of the old you broke appeared. He'd seen a rare moments of clarity—when your trembling hand reached out to brush his cheek, when his name shakily fell from your lips like a plea.
You begged him to help you, to save you from the madness before it swallowed you whole again. And though the everyone told him to let you go, Damian refused—clinging to those shattered fragments of you as if his love alone could save you from the darkness.
He would not give up. Night after night, he fought—not against you, but against the chaos devouring you from within. He bled for you, held you through your violent fits, his arms torn and scored by your nails as you screamed and thrashed against him. Still, he never let go.
He whispered your name over and over, hollow comforts spilling from his lips as he prayed—silently, desperately—to anyone who might listen. Bring her back. Please, bring her back to me.
But outside those walls, the family’s whispers grew heavier with each passing day. They watched the toll it took on him, the way the light had drained from his eyes. To them, his devotion had become cruelty—the act of keeping you alive, of keeping you like this.
“She’s gone, Damian. You need to let her go,” Bruce said, finally after months of watching his son unravel beneath the weight of his obsession to bring you back. His eyes, shadowed with grief, flicked toward you and then away, as if even looking was too much to bear. “This isn’t her,” he murmured, the words breaking under the strain of a truth Damian didn't want to face.
The mansion had grown dark ever since your death and resurrection. Like Bruce, the rest of Damian's siblings couldn't bear to look at you for long and face what the pit had turned you into.
Guilt consumed them all. They knew you deserved peace, that keeping you alive like this was an act of cruelty. Yet none of them could bring themselves to stop it—not when doing so would destroy Damian completely.
The only thing keeping him from spiraling into the same madness that had claimed you was the fragile, flickering hope he clung to—the desperate belief that somehow, against all odds, he could still bring you back.
Damian’s response came out as a snarl, his voice breaking beneath the weight of it. “You’re wrong,” he hissed, the words trembling with fury and grief in equal measure. “She’s still here. I will save her.”
He had been warned of the consequences, but he ignored them all. Love had blinded him to reason, to mercy, to the inevitable truth. Salvation had come with a cost and Damian was paying the toll.
Translations
Al-mawt lā yastatīʿu an yaḥtafiẓa biki. Sa’arāki ʿāidatan ilā al-ḥayāh, walaw iḍṭarrartu an amzaqa as-samāwāt bi-yadayya — Death cannot keep you. I will see you return to life, even if I must tear the heavens apart with my own hands.
Absolutely FIRE
