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this-world-of-beautiful-monsters · 1 year

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consider my age, please don’t take me at this stage

Damian Wayne stands in a room of dead children and tries to remember that he’s not one of them. Not right now, anyway.

(Coda to Streets of Gotham #7)

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@amonthofwhump‘s 12 Days of Whumpmas Prompt: Christmas Wishlist

Titles taken from the song O'Death by Amy Van Roekel.

You can find resources related to the current Roe crisis on my sideblog here.

(tw vomiting, discussions of graphic violence, past child abuse, internalized victim blaming, unreliable narrator, child death, graphic corpse description, implied decomposition, dissociation, mental health issues, trauma)

You can also see this on Ao3.

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“Have you been a good boy this year?” Dumpler asks, blinking at Damian from the shadows of the Arkham wagon. He’s still wearing that ridiculous red suit, pale ruff tickling his chin like a mockery of a beard.

Damian stares back at him. The standards of “good” and “bad” have been rearranged rather abruptly for him since last winter, after all. He’s not sure how well he would perform, by either his mother’s standards or his father’s, if it was all tallied up.

Well...his eyes flick past Dumpler’s head, towards the mock-orphanage and the shadows of police officers moving in and out. Grayson is still in there and Damian is out here, sent to “watch” Dumpler, as if the man’s got anything resembling fight left in him right now.

The aftertaste of vomit stings in his mouth, bitter like shame. He has a good idea of what both of his parents would think of his conduct tonight.

It’s not like he’s a novice with corpses--he’s made plenty of his own, after all. Dead children shouldn’t bother him any more than dead adults would; there’s absolutely no excuse for his disgraceful conduct. Grandfather would probably beat him for it, and Damian would deserve every blow.

Dumpler’s humming Christmas carols and Damian suddenly can’t stand this anymore. He squares his shoulders and turns abruptly away from the wagon, marching back towards the lit doorway like he’s going off to war. He’s not afraid, he isn’t.

When he steps inside, teeth gritted, the first thing that hits him is the smell--a mix of melting ice, a shame-inducing waft of cooling vomit, and the first dark wisps of rot. The cold had kept the corpses preserved up until his and Grayson’s idiotic blunder, but not the space is filled with light and heat. The place will smell like a charnel house, like the proving grounds at high noon--

Enough. Damian clenches his fists at his side, palms sinking into his flesh hard enough to leave marks. He forces his gaze down over the bodies, tracing the outline of bruised flesh and crooked limbs.

Dumpler had washed the bodies, hidden them in shadow, but there was a lot he couldn’t get rid of. Now the lights are up, every one, dead children laid out like a feast. The toys watch at their sides like sentries, jewel-bright eyes blinking.

Deep breaths--one, two, three. Assume command of the scene.

Mother’s hand on his shoulder, breath warm in his ear. He takes care not to look over his shoulder, because her eyes are glowing green again and the sight makes him nauseous. Look at the faces. Tell me what you see.

I see my father cutting through the crowd like a shark.

I see the target’s eyes when she watches her wife.

I see my cousin’s face smashed in with a rock. Mara’s father was never the favorite child--I had to start brushing maggots away before Grandfather deigned to bring her back.

I see dead children and one of them is...

“Robin?” He stiffens a little, glancing up. Grayson and two police officers whose names Damian doesn’t care to remember are coming from a back room, closing the door on more bodies, more children. “I told you to watch Humpty.”

“Dumpler is fine,” Damian snaps, crossing his arms over his chest. It’s not just Dumpler they’re talking about, and they both know it. Grayson bites his lip, but thankfully has enough self-restraint not to get into things in front of the police.

One of said police is turning to look over the corpses. “Dumpler fits the bill,” he declares. “There’s probably enough of his DNA in here to fry him--”

“Because he took care of the bodies after,” Grayson points out.

“He says he did,” the cop shoots back.

Grayson huffs. “Humpty’s mental state--”

“He didn’t do it,” Damian cuts in. “They did it to each other. Some of them, anyway.”

They both look back at him. Damian bites his lip, trying not to feel pinned down by their gazes. Keep it together.

“See those handprints?” he says, gesturing to one boy’s throat. “Too small for Dumpler’s--or any adult or teen’s, for that matter.” He curls his hand over markings, lets them see how small they are.

He hits a man in the throat, and he falls back, twitching. The mark he leaves is smaller than the one his instructor did when she showed him how to do it.

“She’s missing hair,” Damian says, pointing to another girl. “And judging from corresponding length, texture, and coloring, he’s got some of it under his nails,” he explains, gesturing back at the other boy.

Mother cried out the first time he tried to yank on a strand of her long, dark hair during a fight. He let go on instinct and the pain vanished from his eyes, instantly placed by a triumphant smile. “You cannot let your enemy’s suffering distract you,” she’d told him afterward as they bandaged each other up.

“Small fist here, with no training.” He waves at a child’s cheek, the only part of their face not covered by matted brown hair. “The opponent broke their fingers.”

He does not remember where he learned to throw a punch--the same place he learned to wield a sword, that strange, hazy part of pre-memory.

“Robin--” Grayson asks. What is his problem? Damian is calm, calm, calm. Words fall from his lips like stones, cold and hard, laid out neatly for perusal.

“They didn’t know what they were doing. There are much more precise ways to fracture a skull.” He gestures to the side of a girl’s head, smashed dark red and twisted, before moving to the raggedly sliced neck of the body.

“And these cuts are sloppy. Most of them were holding weapons too big for them.” Damian’s cuts are never sloppy but the sight of a too-big blade in a too-small hand leaves distinctive marks that he knows all too well.

The officers are looking at him the way Drake used to, fear edged with a hint of contempt. Damian ignores it.

Mother gave him an island once, then left him on it, weaponless, for three months. He almost died many times that first month and discovered he was happier with animals for company than people.

The second month she started sending people in to kill him and he discovered how many times you have to bash someone’s head in with a rock until they stop twitching. After the third month he had to relearn how to speak. That made her unhappy, although whether out of disappointment or sorrow he never dared to ask.

“Fighting over food, maybe?” one officers asks the other other. “Or drugs?” Neither is directly at Damian; he suspects that his presence makes them uncomfortable. This happens a lot.

“What kind of kids would do this to each other?” One of the cops, he can’t tell which. There’s confusion in his voice, maybe even horror.

What kind of child indeed.

“Kids who have no choice,” Grayson snaps. “None of the fatal handprints are from adults, but there are bruises from larger hands, and some are almost as fresh. They were...dragged.”

Shoved. Pushed. Stumbling onto hot sand, holding a blade tight. Everyone is watching. His shoulder aches and the fight hasn’t even begun.

“There are bruise marks from cage bars, too,” Grayson adds. He takes a step towards Damian and Damian’s legs twitch with the sudden urge to move back, to cover his exits. “Like they were kept somewhere and then released.”

Damian has the vague sense he’s supposed to nod but can’t entirely remember how. “...Yes.” The handprints on the wrists or shoulders are large, the ones on the throat are small. The nail marks, gouged frantically through each other’s skin, are small. He can see the small, small shimmer of teeth come loose, buried in flesh.

You could put one under your pillow, Grayson says as they look down at Damian’s tooth. Damian can’t imagine being foolish enough to openly invite a stranger into their home.

“They didn’t think about what they were doing,” Damian tells the corpses. “They weren’t thinking clearly.” It’s something Mother would say, and he can’t decide where that would put him on a list like Dumpler’s. Good or bad?

“They couldn’t,” Grayson says, deliberately gentle. Chiding, maybe? It’s hard to tell.

“Too much all at once for a gang initiation,” Damian says. “More like a...” Blood splashes across his feet. “...fighting ring.” Show us what you can do.

An al Ghul would never fight for the entertainment of the unwashed masses. But that does not mean the al Ghul’s would never fight for anyone’s entertainment. Damian can feel his grandfather’s eyes burning into his back. Unless it’s the police looking at him instead. Or the dead children, glassy-eyed and dull, like a fish display.

He doesn’t want to look. He has to look. Watch or die. Damian’s face is reflected in every child’s eye, every glimmer of melting ice. He brushed bugs off Mara’s face as she rotted in the sun, while Dusan begged Grandfather for the right not to deem his daughter a failure, to let her be brought back. Her foot had skidded--it could have happened to anyone on the dusty fighting grounds. It had happened to Damian before.

“We’ll need to look at shelters, foster homes, see who’s missing,” Grayson says. His voice curls into something--anger, maybe, or frustration, directed nowhere in particular. “Who wouldn’t be missed. This is a--business--that needs a steady supply of product.”

He sits with her because he feels he must. He’d stabbed her because he felt he’d had to. One of those actions was some kind of moral weakness, he’s sure of it, or maybe both, but he can’t remember which one.

Follow the trail. See who holds the strings. Mother, Father, Grayson. In the end, they all sound the same.

"Some of the cuts are neater than others.” Damian’s voice sounds far away. He can see them, poking out through the layers of bruises and brokenness, older, sloppier marks folded on top of each other, to the red flowers beneath them. “Especially on the older ones, or the better-fed ones, with injuries to the knuckles or hands than the face. The ones who won more fights. They rose higher and higher until they faced--”

After he fights Mara, he fights Dusan, face blank with fury that will never be directed at Grandfather. He wins, but barely, and is left shaking and bleeding. Then Grandfather decides to spar, and Damian’s memories are all green fire and screaming afterwards

“Someone who knew what they were doing.” The words sound so cold, so empty. The words of someone

Damian usually fought adults, not children, as befitting one of his position. There were other children in the League, of course--it was a good way of bolstering their numbers from the best stock--but he was mostly kept apart. Sometimes he trained them, or was set against a pack of them

or was ordered to punish a particular one for the sins of their parents

but none of them were started quite as early as he was, none finessed from the womb like he was. Not even Mara, skilled as she was.

Damian was greater than the children, greater than the adults. He was the best, he had to be. He’s beyond this stinking room, these cold, staring bodies. Or he should be, but he still looks down and reads the corpses like his own history.

“The cuts are precise, designed to cause suffering,” he tells them. “To draw out the display as long as possible.” Pay attention, Grandson. This is how you make it hurt. The knife sinking into his flesh, the knife he uses to sink into someone else’s. It all feels the same. “The watchers stop betting on who wins and start betting on how long this one will last.”

Mara jabs her blade into his ribcage. The traitor screams as Damian breaks her child’s neck between his palms. Everything tastes of blood and ice.

"They are told that the strongest, bravest, fiercest of them will be allowed to survive, but none of them get that far. There is always someone better, someone greater, waiting in the wings. It was set against them from the beginning; they got blood on their hands for nothing. Foolish to--”

“Robin.”

Damian blinks. Grayson is kneeling in front of him, light glinting off his white eye coverings. His hand hovers in the air like he’s going to touch Damian’s shoulder, but he isn’t sure if he should.

It dawns on Damian that at some point, he’s shifted into parade rest. Why is he in parade rest? Grayson hates it when he gives reports in parade reset.

“Robin, can you look at me?” Grayson says, voice soft.

He is looking at Grayson. Isn’t he? Or is he still looking at the corpses, laid out so carefully for his perusal? Body after body after body. Smashed, broken, too, worthless to both sides.

“The more precise cuts all come from a downwards angle,” Grayson says, voice soft, eyes burning into Damian like hot coals. “An adult was responsible, not a child. An adult was watching and let it happen. This was done by adults. The kids didn’t do anything wrong. They were just trying to stay alive.”

“I...” Damian’s mouth is dry, like sand in his throat. Exactly like sand in his throat.

The cop behind Grayson turns to his partner. “Crazy as Humpty, that one,” he mutters, jerking his head in Damian’s direction. “Last Robin was a known-it-all, but at least he wasn’t a--”

“Do you have something to contribute, officer?” Grayson’s voice is cold and sharp as glass. It’s not a Batman growl; it’s something else, something all his own and designed to cut. The officers both go still.

“My partner and I will be leaving now,” Grayson says, rising to his feet. “Thank you for your assistance.”

We have more to do, Damian wants to protest. I can look longer, I’m not weak, I’m not-- But the words are swept away in a blast of cold as the door closes behind them. Dumpler’s wagon is gone and the frost beads cold against his skin. He stands on the doorstep, feeling himself sway slightly in the breeze, but unable to stop it.

“Can I pick you up?” Grayson asks.

His lips form the words I can walk, but nothing comes out. When Grayson reaches for him, Damian can’t even make a pretense of wriggling away. His fingers are numb and tingling, his head ringing, blood pulsing behind his eyes.

He grabs for anger--anger always helps--but it slips from his fingers, fire winking out in his hands. Anger won’t bring the children back, anyway. The Lazarus Pit is a gift/curse offered to very few (and to be honest, there are plenty of nights when Damian’s not entirely sure it did its job at all).

“You’re okay, Dames,” Grayson says. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” He sounds like he really believes it.

The world slips by in a buzzing gray blur, snow and sand and ash all melting into each other. The distant press of Grayson’s fingers against his skin feels like the only thing keeping Damian grounded.

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