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The League assassins gathered back in their designated meeting spot in Opal City, Maryland, the fourteen of them scattered around the cement paneled room.
Wind whipped into the space, tunneling in a rush through the suddenly wide open door. Damian’s head snapped to the intruder, expecting a speedster, sword unsheathed and already in hand. Only by the time he was charging did he see the blue and red and gold, the S-Shield on an expanding chest that was gearing up for either super- or frost-breath, the windswept black curls, and the inhumanly illuminated eyes that snapped to Damian at the same moment. The Kryptonian faltered on eye contact, losing his breath and his advantage.
Damian latched onto that single thought, the Kryptonian’s hesitance, pushing all else aside as he clasped the hilt of the unused dagger on his belt. The handle’s elaborate engravings became shadowed as the green glow of the blade bathed itself and Damian’s hand with a luminance not too unlike the Lazarus Pit.
A foot from the alien, Damian slid the knife in reverse grip near the exposed skin on the Kryptonian’s neck. Bright eyes snapped to Damian, broken from their trance, and with a speed that assured the offender really was an alien, he reeled away from the glowing knife and leapt, or maybe flew, to the other end of the room.
The proximity to such potent kryptonite would have debilitated, or at the very least weakened Superman, but this Kryptonian only staggered as he landed before straightening back up without a trace of lingering kryptonite effects, much like how the half-human clone reacted to it. So the offender was half human.
At the other end of the room, the Kryptonian was cornered by most of the assassins, but his gaze stayed locked on Damian. It felt like a snake curling up his spine, and Damian half expected the killing bite on the nape of his neck. He shouldn’t feel so threatened by the stare. Even still dressed in the hood and cloth mask covering the bottom half of his own face, the dark green and sparse gold interwoven into his garb set him apart from the other black-clad agents. He was also the first to react. Their attacker would single Damian out as the leader. It was reasonable for the man—teen?—to be on guard, but his focus seemed to ignore all threats in the room but Damian. The other assassins didn’t carry kryptonite on their persons. Could he sense that?
Usually, Damian would never risk giving a weapon to an opponent, but a Kryptonian would not be able to wield his dagger. Damian flipped the knife in his grip again and flung it, the blade cutting through the air with a sharp whistle. Like Damian hoped, the strategy was unexpected, and the kryptonite slit the soft skin of the alien’s cheek as he tried to evade at the last moment. He hissed, bringing a hand to his face.
One of the agents was quick to lunge for the blade after it clanged against the concrete wall. She caught it before it touched the floor and pivoted to leap at the alien’s back. Damian’s heart lurched at the same time the other man swung his body away and into the air.
The assassin continued her swipes and lunges, and Damian remembered how to unglue his feet from the floor. The other agents were closing ranks, trying to block the Kryptonian in, even knowing they stood little chance against him without kryptonite of their own. Damian slipped through their line, positioned just out of the Kryptonian’s sight line and hoping the enhanced senses did not register him any differently from the rest.
Without so much as glancing at him, the engaged assassin tossed the knife around the target, and in one fluid motion Damian caught it and plunged it into the hip of the blue suit. Damian ripped it from the flesh as the man cried out and wrenched away, flying up out of reach. He staggered in the air to spin around and locked eyes with Damian once more, blue-violet irises tearing into him with the same ferocity as the knife.
Then he was gone. The door swung into the wall with a bang from the sudden gale, creaking on its hinges. The room stood still. Each agent hardly gave away the collective exhale they all shared.
Damian’s head dipped, raising his hand to inspect the weapon in it. He ran his eyes over the dull green hue that peeked around the spiderweb coating of blood. The tip was marginally blunted from colliding with the cement. He would need to sharpen it upon their return.
───
Each step through orange coloured dirt and tufts of weeds was even and steady. As he walked ahead of the men and women clad in black, Damian did not let his shoes drag, did not let his shoulders hunch, did not let his head fall to get lost in the rhythmic sight of every step whenever his mind pulled him too far away. His mind pulled often.
Damian had not felt piles of stones tumbling over each other in his stomach when he first encountered Kon-El on a grand scale assassination. He had not had to hide trembling and numb limbs like his blood had really frozen over on the many occasions the League encountered Superman, despite Batman's probable many warnings. He hadn't even thought anything vaguely unusual when Supergirl had been spotted guarding a diplomatic representative.
Damian must have been feeling this way because there was a new and unpredictable enemy trifling with their plans who had the strengths of the Man of Steel. Maybe it was another clone, someone from another Earth, or a long lost Kryptonian who had been floating around in space like Zor-El.
It just couldn't be Jon.
Because if Jon was always, some day, going to return to them—to him—it wouldn't have been now. He'd have returned almost as soon as he left, before Damian had been agonizing over searching for someone who disappeared from his own universe. Before Damian had fought with Superman because he had come back to Earth again without any clues on how to find his own blood. Before Richard sat down with Damian and he was forced to stop running himself into the ground in a futile search. Before Damian finally broke down and accepted aloud his best friend was never coming home. Before Alfred was murdered and Damian had lost some of the only support he still had. Before his father grew so estranged that Damian couldn't even trust Batman anymore.
If Jon was always going to return, he would have before Damian had gone back to his mother and grandfather in light of his crumbling life—before there was no possibility of Damian ever being able to return to Jon now.
The city of ‘Eth Alth’eban swallowed them back into its walls when they returned.
───
The lock clicked and the door to Damian's room opened a moment later. “Damian,” his mother, the only other one with a key, said as she strode in.
“Mother,” he greeted, but his focus remained on removing the heavy and reinforced fabric of his clothing and his weapons, slotting everything into its proper drawer or stand.
She hummed. “You’ve returned—a little later than I expected, but I trust you succeeded?”
Damian met his mother’s gaze then took a half second to judge her posture: arms at her sides, leaning on her left leg and body following along, tilting her head a fraction—relaxed. He did not breathe out his relief as he turned back to removing his armour in front of the mirror. “Yes, Mother. The mission was a success.”
Talia’s eyes sharpened, the weight of her gaze an anvil tying itself to a rope around his neck. “Damian, my darling.” Her right foot shifted an inch, supporting more weight now. Her spine stretched and chin tipped up as she scrutinized him. His father was the world’s greatest detective, but his mother had not survived this long being ignorant to people. “You’re conflicted. Why?”
And that was just it, wasn't it? His reasoning was teetering on the edge of a warzone. At nineteen, Damian had everything and more to be confident in his position: power, control, a legacy, the promise of his birthright as heir to his name. Everything he had left behind was mutual distrust, grief and loss, a shaky past and an even more uncertain future. He knew exactly where his place was. Any desire for what he had before that was irrational, and any chance of regaining it all was impossible. He was trying very hard not to think about the impossible.
His mind should not have been wandering back to smog and rain and polluted water and dilapidated and dark streets. He had the sun and the sand and people who would give their lives for him and a parent who took him back with no questions and no judgement.
All this, yet he was conflicted. “I do not know, Mother.”
Something must have conveyed his sincerity because his mother returned to striding into the room, loose postured and circling around his back. She curved a hand up his shoulder until it rested near his neck. “Tell me, son. What went on during today’s mission?” Her movement ceased so that she loomed over his opposite shoulder. Her presence suffocated him on both sides, testing the pull of rope around his neck.
Damian paused in removing his gear. His gaze dragged back to her same washed green eyes in the reflection of the mirror. The anvil remained a steady threat in the weight of her slim fingers perched just above his collarbone. Damian knew his mother would have gotten a full report already, several if she cared to compare stories. She never needed to. That was, unless she suspected someone's loyalties were misplaced. She was asking Damian now. He doubted it was the first report she mistrusted.
He held her gaze in the mirror as he spoke, “A Kryptonian interrupted, delaying our return. It was–” He mulled over his delivery. “–unexpected.”
“A Kryptonian? Not Superman?” Her tone held no actual curiosity. She knew all these details already. Leaning in over his shoulder, she spoke clearly beside him. “Who was this alien, my child?” Her fingers pressed into the muscle of his shoulder, light but unmistakably there.
Damian swallowed, entirely too aware of the nervous tell, but warm saliva continued to fill his mouth regardless. “I suspect–” The mirror provided no buffer. Talia’s gaze bit into his skin like acid. Damian could not bear it. He closed his eyes. “–it was Superman’s son.” From another Earth. A clone. A secret twin. Because Jon was dead.
He did not need sight to sense her lips spreading into a grin. He opened his eyes anyway. Talia stepped away, striding about the room. The noose around his neck loosened. Damian took a careful breath through his nose.
“What did you do then, my dear?”
She knew of Damian's partnership with the second Superboy. She had met him, tested him. Of course, they had only been children, Jon not yet eleven. All the same, Damian was certain she knew of his disappearance too.
“I reacted to neutralize the threat. He retreated. We carried out the mission.”
Talia was looking for details—details that Damian could not give to her. There had been nothing more to this mission than any other. Foreign threats intervening were hardly a rare occurrence. That was all the Kryptonian had been: a threat to the mission.
His mother did not respond. Damian finished removing his armour until all that remained was a black turtleneck and trousers. He moved to his wardrobe, spotting his mother tracking him from where she sat on the foot of his bed.
Wrapping the green tunic around his torso was natural, right. It was the colour of his lineage. He was an Al Ghul. Everything was as it should be. His shoulders did not lose their tension.
Finally, he returned to his neatly deposited gear and secured his belt over his clothing, sword still carefully sheathed at his side. He returned his usual dagger to the other hip. His hands hovered over the drawer. This was all he ever carried in the comfort of his own room. He was a carefully crafted weapon on his own. He did not need more should some fool attempt his life.
Damian reached back into the drawer and retrieved the elaborately engraved hilt and lead-lined sheath, kneeling to tuck it into his boot. He stood and snapped the drawer shut.
When he turned, green eyes were still on him from across the room. In an expression he hadn’t seen since his mother first offered to take him to his father, Talia’s gaze softened to something he could only now interpret after years with Richard as motherly. Deep behind it and gone as soon as it came, Damian swore he glimpsed the unmistakable sting of pity. It froze his blood.
Had she decided his response wasn’t adequate? Did she think he would betray the League now that some Kryptonian he had been acquainted with had returned after being presumed dead? Was this the sliver of an apology she was granting him before he would be punished?
Talia’s mouth lifted into a gentle smile, the same one Damian had seen pointed at his father’s back. Talia beckoned him with an easy hand. Detached from his own feet, he obeyed, and standing before his mother, she took his hand in both of her own. She gazed at their hands for several moments before tilting her head back up. Damian had once never imagined having to look down at his mother. It never filled him with the sense of superiority he had thought it would.
“My dear boy—habibi” she whispered, low and understanding and hurt and sorry. Damian’s stomach rolled. He struggled not to let his breathing pick up. He could do nothing for the rapid pace of his heart against his ribcage. “You are so much like your father.”
This was it. She was deciding he really wasn’t worthy. He had grown too soft running around in bright colours that had never really been his. She would send him back to his father, but his father wouldn't take him, not now. His grandfather would deal with Damian himself. If a rock wasn’t lodged in his throat, he might have thrown away his station and begged.
“I regret you had to inherit this from me.” Her round lips fell again.
He croaked out a protest, finding a clearer voice as he spoke, “Please, Mother. I will not disappoint you, nor Grandfather. I will make the Al Ghul name proud. I am the Demon Head’s Heir. I am your greatest weapon. Do not throw me away. I beg of you.” Not again. Not again. Not again. He’d been rejected by his father. He was nothing if she rejected him now.
“Silence, Damian.” Her tone was stern, but her hand was gentle when it settled against his cheek. He awaited the cruel puncture of nails in the pliant skin. “I am only sorry I have put you in this situation. I loved your father, and I have never stopped loving him. It is my greatest strength, the source of my passion. I'm sure it will also be my undoing.” The pad of her thumb stroked under his eye. “I had feared the same for you, and my worries were foolishly eased when the Kryptonian boy vanished.” Damian’s breath stuttered to a stop. “I now see that our love will always be our ruin.”
Damian grabbed his mother’s wrist, stilling her gentle, aching touch. “You are wrong, Mother. We had been partners, but he is just a memory from my past now. He means nothing to me.” He was gone.
Talia’s brow dropped. He could not tear his eyes away from hers. The pity was unmistakable now. Damian wanted to scream.
“If he was nothing, he wouldn’t weigh so heavily on your mind now, you would not hide kryptonite on your person, you would not fear his presence in your life again.”
Damian tensed. “I do not fear the Kryptonian!” Jon coming back would have been everything Damian had wanted 6, 5, even 4 years ago. Jon coming back now meant Damian had never had to give up, to accept, to leave. Jon coming back now meant he would meet this aberrant character Damian had become. Damian was a killer. This time he didn't have the excuse of being 8 and not knowing any better.
“You do not even say his name,” she muttered softly. Because Jon was dead. If the boy he knew was anything but dead, Damian would have to face him as he was now. Jon would see how he came back to the life he had sworn and trained to abandon. Damian might not survive what he saw in his eyes. “If you let yourself, he would mean everything to you. More than the approval of your father, of my father.” She stood. Her hand remained on his face, his on her wrist. Their eyes did not break. “If you let him, he could be your salvation. Too much of this family has lived in crumbling ruins pretending to be an unshakeable kingdom. I would not force you to chain yourself to this empty skeleton.” His mother pressed a kiss to the top of his hairline. Then she was gone.
He left the dagger under his pillow that night.
───
Bialya. Damian hated Queen Bee. Either he or his mother had let something in their actions slip because Ra’s was keeping him far from any missions in America the last couple months.
The other members of the League were not blind to it either; the Demon's Head’s trust in him was wavering. The whispers would begin, then they would start testing the limits, until–
Or maybe that had all already undergone during his distraction.
Damian had said to stay low, stay discreet. They still had one more job to make before they left the country, and they could not have this kill be openly advertised as the League within borders lest their final target wall up or run.
One agent clearly neither respected his authority, nor did he value the success of the mission. The politician that had been their second of three marks was dead, body left with an unnecessary amount of slashes over her torso and a throwing star still lodged somewhere in the bedroom that the agent had been too careless or lazy to retrieve. Government forces had been on the scene almost immediately, and Damian couldn't even clean up the sloppy mess.
Rumours of the agent's boasting caught Damian's ear before the man’s return did. It hadn't even taken one minute for Damian to single him out among the company.
While his lower face was covered, the agent's eyes shone so proudly with his head held up that Damian knew he was wearing a smug grin under the fabric. Damian marched up to him. Hardly a second of fear had managed to flash over his uncovered features before blood was spilling from his neck and his body crumpled to the dirt. Damian flicked the blood off his sword and let it splatter across the ground, knowing it would only make more work for the other agents.
“Dispose of him,” he ordered. His icy tone left no room for hesitation as three people jumped into action. He would have cut them down too if there had been any delay.
His own people were betraying him. His grandfather didn't trust him. His mother expected him to be a traitor. Damian truly had no one anymore.
───
On his return when he was once again retired to his room, Damian pulled the beaten down leather notebook from the bottom of his dresser. Its pages were full of different Arabic script, covering all the space from right to left, getting neater and more personalized as the end of it neared. Stuffed between the last page and back cover were dozens more ripped sections of parchment, long yellowed papers folded over five times to fit, and old letters and mission reports where the backs were scrawled in more characters.
Damian carried the book over to his desk and brought out his qalam hibir and ink. He needn’t worry about it fading like charcoal or graphite. Carefully removing the least worn and yellowed page from the back of the book, he unfolded it to lay flat on the wood surface. It was thin, not from age like the others, but from higher grade, and it was almost as white as the paper he used for school back in Gotham. One side was filled with small black strokes, and the other was halfway down its length.
Damian dipped the qalam and wrote the name of a federal official, a local politician, a foreign ambassador, a hired guard, and a woman found in one of their marks’ beds. The name of the agent he killed began a new line.
Damian had been late in his sixth year when he began this journal. It would be just over six years from then that Damian lost his best friend. Six years after that, he would finally see him again, but he had already picked back up the book. Damian thought the world gave in threes. Maybe it simply took in double.
A knock sounded three times on the door. Damian picked up the paper and flapped it a few times to aid the ink in drying. He called out loud enough to be heard through the wooden doors, “What is it?”
“My prince, the Demon’s Head has requested your presence.”
Damian sighed inwardly as he folded the parchment back up and slid it into the book. “Thank you, I will depart at once.”
He imagined the messenger bowing to an unmoving door before tapping quickly back down the hall. Rising from his desk chair, Damian hid the book back in his dresser. He resecured his belt with his sword, and before reaching for the door, he rubbed his thumb across the sheath of his kryptonite dagger. It had only been three months and two weeks since that mission in Opal City, but the stretch of time dragged on longer than the last three and a half years since he came back to the League.
Damian filled his lungs, and with his exhale, he expelled any thoughts not pertaining to the recent mission.
───
The doors opened, and Ra’s al Ghul sat upon his throne like the self-proclaimed king he was. Damian strolled past the agents hiding behind decorative curtains and pillars, cataloging each one. He stopped a few meters from the Demon’s Head, who studied Damian just as he did him.
“You summoned me, Grandfather.”
Ra’s tilted his head, green eyes so much brighter than Damian’s from the Lazarus Pit boring right through him. Damian buried the urge to shiver from feeling peeled apart. “There was an intruder while you were away. I'd like you to take care of them,” Ra’s stated plainly.
“Certainly, Grandfather. In the cells?” Damian asked.
“No, here.” He waved a hand, and an agent exited through one of the side doors closest to the throne.
Damian drew his sword from its scabbard as two assassins emerged with a curled up body—less stumbling, more like being dragged—between them. Damian’s sword stilled at his side.
Glowing green chains bound the Kryptonian’s wrists behind his back. They deposited him limply a few steps to Damian’s side, his face pressing into the embroidered green rug.
With a sword he knew would not pierce this skin, Damian gestured at the prisoner and looked up at Ra’s as he spoke. “You wish for us to kill the kin of Superman, Grandfather? With all due respect, I do not find that decision very wise.”
Ra’s leaned back with feigned patience. “He was trespassing. The Kryptonian knows and should have shared the rules.”
“We have gotten away from Superman’s meddling primarily due to Batman's influence. If we kill this one–” He gestured again with his sword to the curled up body. “–it will be a doubtless provocation. I do not wish to inherit a pile of rubble.” If he lived, he did not say.
“You do not have faith we could take him down?” Ra’s prodded. “Even when we've effortlessly captured this one?”
Ra’s already knew all Damian would tell him. His skin prickled at being so publicly tested. “This one has only half of Krypton running in his veins. Up close, I do not think I nor you would have any trouble restraining him, but Superman would not need to get close, nor do I think he would have many reservations of life if we slighted him so.” What would the god among men do if he lost a son for the second time?
“Then I must assume this trespasser that deigned to get so close was looking for something. Tell me boy, what were you searching for? If your answer satisfies me, I may let you live.” Ra’s would do no such thing.
The prisoner remained unresponsive. His laboured breathing indicated the later stage of kryptonite sickness, unless he was particularly skilled at hiding the immediate effects that would leave any Kryptonian writhing.
Damian unclasped the latch on the dagger on his belt and unsheathed it only an inch. He hadn't sharpened it yet, unable to look at the green glow of the blade without that day in Opal City replaying in his head. This encounter would surely pervade his thoughts entirely instead for the far future. Damian stepped forward, and with his sword he jostled the rather loose chains off the Kryptonian's wrists—the kryptonite did all the restraining—and tossed them aside.
“The Demon's Head asked you a question. Speak,” he ordered. He kept the narrow glow of the dagger within the prisoner's view in case he got any ideas of escape.
The sickness still permeated his blood after the long exposure. The Kryptonian breathed heavily for a few more moments. Then he turned his head until his cheek was pressed into the carpet and met Damian's eyes. Pale blue-violet impaled him. “Damian,” he whispered.
Damian did not flinch, did not show the churning beast that single word released into his stomach. That voice he hadn't heard in years, so familiar yet different than he remembered, bounced off the inside of his skull like a roar.
Ra’s studied them both, sharp eyes threatening to disembowel him for not enforcing his law.
Damian breathed evenly. Ra’s was not his mother. The people in this room did not trust him. He could portray no tells of his uncertainty, of the conflict his mother deftly found in him and pinned to a wall where it could taunt him unremittingly.
“What was your purpose for coming here?” Damian demanded. The venomous serpent from those months ago in Opal City that hibernated in his gut breached his awareness once again. It coiled loosely around his neck, waiting.
“Damian,” he said again, louder, and it undoubtedly reached Ra’s ears. The eyes of each assassin burned like fire picks into Damian’s back.
“Damian,” Ra’s echoed, staring solely at his grandson. “Do you know this Kryptonian?”
The snake tightened. His airways began to close, the hold on his weapons slipping as he fought the urge to reach for his neck. He needed to speak, to answer without hesitance. Silence was not a weapon he could wield here, only a damnation. “He intervened in the mission in Opal City three months–” and fifteen days “–ago. We engaged briefly, but I do not know him.” The shrivelled mass at his feet in the home of his legacy was a stranger. He was an obstacle. Damian had not met this man. He did not know him. He surely did not know Damian either. Damian held the names of only four people who truly knew him, and two of them were dead.
Ra’s’ silence was a weapon. Damian channeled all his training into appearing entirely indifferent. The only reason he had not beheaded the man before him the moment he was ordered was because he deduced the losses outweighed the benefits.
Ra’s slid his gaze over to the prisoner, irises blazing. “Well, boy? What business do you have with my grandson?”
The Kryptonian’s eyes flickered in his peripheral.
Damian’s breath was knocked from his lungs with a colliding force. The weapons in his slack grip slipped, but he did not hear the sword clatter to the floor. The city fell away beneath him, and then he was far enough above that he could see all of ‘Eth Alth’eban stretching across the cave below. Its artificial sun cast an orange glow upon the top of the cavern.
The same stare that had endeavoured to suffocate him drew Damian’s head back up from the fatal fall awaiting him. Firm hands held him underneath his arms like a stray cat.
“There,” his abductor said evenly. “Now none of them can watch or listen in. Thank you for freeing me.”
Damian’s lungs constricted around nothing, and his stomach threatened to crawl up his throat. He protested, “I did not free you! Put me down!” He writhed futilely in the iron grip.
His captor raised an eyebrow. “You'd rather plummet from this height?”
“Yes,” Damian hissed. He wrapped his hands over the other's forearms, determined not to be completely reliant on his grip for survival. The dagger was still sheathed at his side. Damian should reach for it, threaten him, command him to bring them back down. “Why do you seem so unaffected by the kryptonite?”
“I'm half human, y'know.”
“I remember it being much more effective,” Damian countered, but as he studied the Kryptonian’s face, the grey pallor became more evident. The sickness persisted from lingering kryptonite in his veins.
“Some things you grow into,” he said with a shrug that jostled them both.
Damian’s breath stuttered.
“Sorry,” the hero offered, noticing the minute detail.
Damian hated the perception of Kryptonians, but it was not the movement that had stalled him. Damian never thought Jon would grow into anything. He never dared to imagine what Jon might have turned into, whether Damian was there to influence him or not. Most of all, he never expected Jon would see what Damian grew into.
When Damian did not respond, Jon searched his face, but it had been over six years. Jon would not be able to read Damian as easily as he once could. Damian hoped he couldn’t at all.
Jon sighed. “I just want to talk, Damian.”
“We can converse back at your trial, Kryptonian. There will be consequences for your actions.”
Jon leaned in, expression so earnest it stung. “We don’t have to go back, Damian. I’ll fly us out of here right now.”
Damian felt as if Jon was carving out a cavern in his chest. Jon was offering to steal them both away? Damian could not return. It had never been an option. “What? No!”
“You don’t have to stay trapped here anymore, Damian! I heard about what happened. Dick told me. We can leave–”
“You know nothing!” Damian spat. “I am Damian Al Ghul–” Jon flinched. “–and you are interfering with League business. You will not remove me from my people.”
Jon’s expression grew desperate. “Damian, I know you. I know you're not a killer.”
Damian couldn’t feel his feet. The altitude left him light headed. He wanted to wake up from this cruel dream in his room, in the compound, in the only city he belonged to anymore. Before him was a stranger. He did not truly know Damian. That was why Damian could not let him have any delusions as to what he’d become.
He hissed through clenched teeth, “You’re wrong. I killed one of my own men for disobeying me just yesterday. I slit his throat.”
Jon sucked in a breath. This was it. Jon would leave him for good like he was supposed to. He would finally understand what Damian had always been. It didn’t matter that Jon had come back. It wouldn’t have mattered if Jon never left. Nothing had truly changed in the last six years.
“You never really knew me,” he said. “I have always been a killer, Superboy.”
“That’s okay.”
Damian reeled back.
Jon looked at him with misty eyes. “That’s okay, Damian. I forgive you, and I’m sorry–”
“Stop,” Damian breathed.
“I’m so sorry I left. I’m sorry that I was away for so long and wasn’t here for everything you went through–”
“Stop,” Damian repeated, edging dangerously close to pleading. He squeezed his eyes closed, unable to stand the freezing gaze that left his body shivering but throat and chest burning.
“Please, Damian. I was trapped without the sun, in a volcano, for six years, and all I thought about was seeing my family—seeing you.”
No sun for six years would have been torture. Who had trapped him? It didn’t matter. Damian could kill the perpetrator, but it would change nothing. Jon was still wrong. “Be quiet,” Damian whispered with no conviction.
“When I returned and you were gone, I was so scared you had died. It’d been too long, and bodies change too much, so I couldn’t remember your heartbeat. No one would tell me what happened.”
Damian swallowed thickly, still not daring to open his eyes no matter how much it made his instincts scream. The swirling in his gut and tremor in his chest overpowered them.
“When I finally saw you again, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. I confronted Dick about it, and he started crying. He told me what happened after I left,” Jon continued, relentlessly gutting Damian with each syllable until he felt utterly exposed. “I understand why you came back, but I promise you won’t be alone anymore. You’re my best friend, Damian, and I won’t leave you again.”
He carved out Damian’s nerves and spine, and Damian had never felt more helpless, hanging by the hands of a ghost hundreds of meters in the air.
“Please,” Jon begged. “Let’s go home.”
Damian peeled his eyes open to slightly illuminated, pale blue-violet. He could never mistake it for anyone else. Damian opened his mouth.
An arrow whistled through the air. Damian jerked, but Jon’s hold kept him in place. It was a second later that Jon registered the sound. Then the arrow dug into impenetrable flesh, bright green and condemning.
Jon choked on a gasp. They began to fall.
“Jon!” Damian solely held onto him now, gripping the fabric of his suit. The air cut around them as they plunged. Jon tried to catch them with jerky bursts of flight, but it only managed to decelerate their descent.
Damian wrapped one arm under Jon’s shoulder and around his back. With his free hand, he reached behind him and grasped at his belt, still packed from the mission. One of the only things left over from his time as Robin, Damian found security in carrying around the old grapple. He tugged it free, the bat and WayneTech logos sanded off. It was compact and only meant to carry one person, but Damian aimed and fired it at a rapidly approaching spiraling tower.
It had been years since he shot it. His heart clogged up his throat as the grapple sailed towards the tapering roof. It hit, and Damian clicked the lock on the extending line. The claw scraped down the shingles as the two of them fell past it. Finally, it caught on the ledge. The line went taut, and Damian cried out as the jerk almost wrenched his shoulder from its socket, the handle threatening to slip from his straining grip. They swung towards the side of the tower. Damian kicked his legs out to maneuver them away from splattering like bugs against it.
The line snapped, too thin and old for the weight of two people. Damian’s stomach plummeted with the drop.
They met ground with shared grunts. They only fell ten feet onto a raised wall-walkway branching off the tower. Jon took the brunt of the force as Damian landed harshly on top of him, but his arm was crushed underneath Jon’s back.
Damian rolled off and pulled his arm free with a wince. It was definitely broken, and his ribs were surely bruised from landing on top of the Kryptonian who was almost as firm as the stone below them. He ignored it. They were not anywhere near safe, but with the broken line they were momentarily stranded on the wall, vaguely shielded by the parapet. Jon would have survived the fall if Damian grappled off on his own, but he could not have sent Jon into the sure swarm of assassins waiting below.
Damian shuffled on his knees to the arrow sticking out just above Jon’s hip, angled dangerously close to his lungs and right where Damian had stabbed him. Jon choked around groans and aborted cries. Kryptonians didn’t have high pain tolerance because of their invulnerability, and kryptonite was like acid in the wound.
Damian gripped the base of the shaft, and Jon whined. “I need to pull this out, okay? Just breathe.”
Jon nodded weakly and pressed his lips into a pale thin line.
Damian counted, “Three–” He ripped out the arrow. Jon gave a strangled cry as Damian threw the kryptonite to the other side of the wall. “Good, that’s it. Keep breathing,” he said and tugged his green tunic over his head. He pressed the bunched up fabric into Jon’s side and watched as the green darkened to black. “You need to move. Can you fly?”
Jon struggled to sit up. He blew out a slow breath and grimaced. “Yeah, I– I can try.”
“Good.” Damian helped Jon to his feet, keeping the shirt secured against the draining wound. “Get as far from here as you can, and then call your father. You need medical attention.”
Jon whipped his head around to face Damian, inches apart. “What? You sound like you’re staying.”
“Of course, I’m staying. You’re injured. If you try to carry us both, you’ll make it worse.”
“Damian, they tried to kill you!”
“Only as collateral for your life. They will not kill me once you are gone, and I can make excuses for your escape.” They would be futile. He would still be punished, but his mother would step in if Ra’s did decide to dispose of him.
“I can’t leave you here. You’re coming with me,” Jon argued, voice strained.
Damian grit his teeth. “This is not a discussion. They will be upon us any moment. You need to go!”
Jon’s gaze hardened, cool in the orange light. He tightened his grip around Damian, and then they were both in the air.
“You imbecile!” Damian shouted, and he desperately tried to keep hold of the shirt against Jon’s side, but the new angle made it a struggle.
“I promised you. I’m not leaving you again.” Jon’s breath whistled through his teeth between words. Their flight lost more speed the closer they got to the gate that led to the surface. It would be heavily guarded.
“Jon,” Damian said weakly, unsure of what to say, unsure of how to get them both out alive.
When they neared the grand gate like a dark maw, dozens of archers were stationed at its entrance. None carried kryptonite yet. Damian hoped they could escape before reinforcements arrived. The archers drew back their bows. Damian was still vulnerable.
Jon drew in a deep breath, choked, then inhaled further with an expanding chest. Damian tucked his head into Jon’s shoulder and listened to the blast of air knocking the assassins off their feet. The orange light fell away, and Damian looked up to see the inside of the tunnel that steadily inclined towards the surface. The doors of the outer gates approached. Jon turned so his back faced them, shielding Damian, then he crashed right through.
Jon stumbled in the air, and they both coughed around the rubble and dust falling about them. Jon wheezed. Damian remembered to press harder against the wound as best he could with one hand. The fabric felt slippery.
The ravine that hid the gate to the city opened up above them. It was late afternoon, and no clouds impeded the desert sun. They cleared the top of the ravine and veered to the side. Then Jon collapsed into orange sand.
Damian scrambled off of him, his own pulse deafening to his ears. “Damnit, Jon!” He grit his teeth and fumbled with the damp fabric, squishing under his hands. “Come on, come on,” he begged as Jon’s breaths devolved into stuttered chokes and gasps. Damian’s breathing began to match his sporadic pants. Blood welled under his hands, and Jon’s chest began to spasm. The arrow must have pierced his lung. Jon hadn’t shown it. Damian turned his face to the sky and yelled, “Superman!”
The desert responded with silence around them, drying his throat until it shriveled like the last of his dissipating echo.
“Kal-El, please! It’s Jon!”
Remorseless, the sun beat down on the back of Damian’s black shirt, but it was nothing compared to the warmth oozing between his fingers. The air tasted like the metallic tang after sharpening a blade, and nausea rolled through him in fresh waves.
It took seven seconds. Then Clark Kent was standing before them, sand swirling up into the air—no cape, not a hero, just a father with measureless fear painting his face.
Then he was gone. Both Jon and the ruined shirt were taken from beneath him.
Kneeling in red and orange sand, Damian stared at his shaking, blood soaked hands.
Seconds, maybe minutes passed before the sand swirled again. This time, he looked up to see Superboy, the first one, gazing down at him. Damian couldn’t even be bothered by the undisguised pity. He could only think about that worn leather notebook in the bottom of his closet, and if he would need to add one more name to the blood and ink stained pages.
───
Damian fiddled with the engraved knife, still sheathed, in his lap. One arm was wrapped in tension bandages, throbbing in time with his hollow heart. His hands were rubbed raw and dry from his incessant scrubbing. He still felt the sticky blood between his fingers.
“Dami’n…”
Damian’s head snapped up.
Jon gradually blinked into awareness on the medical cot, his black hair splayed out on the pillow. He shot up. “Damian!”
Damian jumped to his feet and pushed back at Jon’s shoulders. “Don’t get up. They had a difficult enough time getting those stitches into you, so don’t pull them.”
Jon stared at him, eventually letting himself be guided back to laying down. “Where are we?” he asked, not looking away.
Damian couldn’t read his expression at all, and it made his stomach turn. “The Watchtower.”
Jon sucked in a breath. “You came. You came with me.”
Not removing his hands, Damian sighed. “You–” he said, “–are an idiot.”
Jon chuckled quietly. “I think you told me that earlier too.”
“Proves something then, doesn’t it?” Damian said, but he couldn’t manage any heat behind his words. It was like they were thirteen and eleven again. He thinned his lips and looked away from Jon’s unmoving gaze. “You’re not allowed to do that again,” he whispered.
Jon frowned, eyebrows drawing together. “What?”
Damian’s eyes burned. His heart sped up, and he sucked in a breath to try and calm it. “I thought you were going to die,” he managed, “again. You’re not allowed to die on me again.”
He couldn’t help but glance up at the smile curling on Jon’s lips, raising his cheeks to curve the bottom of his eyes that cradled an unhidden, vast sorrow. “I promised you, didn’t I? You’re not getting rid of me.”
Damian catalogued every part of his expression, memorizing the few freckles scattered over his lifted cheekbones, his jaw now lacking any baby fat, and pale blue-violet eyes he would never forget.
Jon’s smile fell when Damian didn’t respond. “Damian, don’t tell me you’re–”
Damian pulled his hands away. “I–”
Jon caught them. “No! You can’t go back now!”
“Then what am I supposed to do?!” Damian asked, desperation bleeding into his voice. Jon stared at him wide-eyed. It felt like his world, everything he’d tried to build back up for himself was crumbling around him, and he was going to be buried alive beneath the rubble. “I’m an assassin, Jon. Leaving the League doesn’t change that. I can’t go back to my father. I don’t have Robin anymore. How could I face Richard when I took lives with the skills he taught me? I don’t even know how to face you!” He choked. “I don’t know how you could even want to see me. Everything I said back there was the truth.”
Jon squeezed his hands, and the superstrength felt like a prison. “I told you that doesn’t matter.”
“Damnit, Jon! Stop it with your juvenile optimism! It does matter! You can’t just pretend that the last six years never happened just because you weren’t here!” His breath stuttered to a stop.
Jon reeled back, eyes shining wetly, and Damian wanted to shove his words back down his throat and choke on them. Trapped in a volcano for six years, he had said. Jon hadn’t even gotten a chance at having a life. Damian was the one driving his own to ruin.
Jon stroked his thumbs over Damian’s knuckles, and it was so tender that Damian wanted to scream. “I know things have changed, Damian,” Jon began slowly, staring down at their hands. “I’m not saying we should pick up where we left off. I’ve changed too, but there’s nothing wrong with starting fresh, right? We can get to know the new us.”
Words came up like glass shards. “I don’t want to.”
Jon looked up, and Damian closed his eyes before he could see his expression. The burning there eased with the long blink, and tears threatened to slip out. He swallowed thickly.
“I do,” Jon whispered.
Damian shook his head, pressing his lips together. He couldn’t speak. He didn’t trust himself not to expose whatever sound wanted to rip from his throat.
Jon jostled their hands. “I do, Damian. You think I’m going to hate you for whatever you’ve done, for whatever I see. All I see is how much you care. You refuse to even give yourself a chance as some kind of punishment, but you can atone by living a new life instead. Damian, you care so much. I could never hate you for it.”
Damian choked on a sob.
“Even if you went back to the League right now, even if you killed right in front of me, I’d take another hundred kryptonite arrows to bring you back home. You can make a thousand mistakes in the future, a thousand decisions I won’t agree with, and it wouldn’t matter. I’m not leaving you, Damian.”
Damian sank into a crouch and pressed his forehead onto the rumpled sheets to hide his contorting expression. Jon released his hands, and his heavy warmth draped over Damian’s head and shoulders instead.
Jon’s breath ruffled Damian’s hair. “We’re in this together now, Dami. You’re not alone anymore.”
Damian thought his heart was attempting to cease function in his chest, but the sharp contraction of his lungs, the tremors running down his spine, the salt slipping from his eyes, and Jon’s warmth soaking into his skin proved he was so overwhelmingly, painfully alive. For once, serpents weren’t wound tight and hissing in his gut. It hurt to breathe, but he wasn’t measuring the time and depth of every inhale. The muscles in his face ached, but no one could see whatever shape they made buried in sheets and shielded by Jon.
This was the second time Jon had torn down the foundations of Damian’s life, stripped to a hollow skeleton. Before, Damian was left to crawl among the rubble in search of any brick still intact, but now Jon’s warmth filled his brittle bone framework, and it felt like something close to recovery.
Damian couldn’t convince himself that Jon would never leave again, but where snakes had once entangled with sibilant murmurs in his chest, he cradled close the hope that he would always come back.