Chapter Text
Sometimes, there is a crippling pressure in Damian's chest, making him feel as though his entire body is being sucked towards his heart with the force of it. It aches to the point he wishes he could focus on anything else, and it takes far too long for him to realise it's a ball of grief left to fester for far too long.
It's not often Damian hides behind his nature, but that first year, when faced with a celebration that made that pressure spread to his entire body, he'd been snobbish, and brash, and stand-offish. It had gotten him a ticket back to the safety of his room, and if he spent the rest of the day sobbing in the dark of his bathroom, that was nobody's business but his own.
By the third year, he'd been able to admit that birthdays in the League were not the happiest of affairs. He doesn't associate many memories closely with the date, in truth, but if his family chose to blame Grandfather for his mixed feelings instead of the hidden truth, then that sorted Damian much better than the alternative.
It's the fifth year, when that familiar pressure is building in his chest and is stinging like a stab wound, that Damian breaks.
He presses himself into Richard's side, one hand digging into his shirt. Silent tears begin to slip down his face, and at some point one of his brothers pause the documentary playing on the television.
"Hey," Richard says, his voice soft but echoing to the point it's nearly unintelligible in Damian's brain. "You need anything?"
Another twinge, but Damian does not insist that yes, he does, because that would be childish, and ultimately, the only thing he truly wants is far out of Richard's reach. There is a body buried in the Lazarus waters, and there is no soul who ever plans on retrieving it.
He considers, briefly, lying. Richard would offer comforts that would serve as a small distraction to Damian until he could sleep this miserable day away, but the thought of continuing the pointless ruse for yet another year no longer seems worth the effort.
"I was not the only child in the League," he states, and there's a part of him proud of how steady his voice is, and another part that screams at him that he's falling back into old habits, that he's not letting himself be. "There was another. We were allies, and we were enemies. We tried to kill each other with every opportunity, and we were best friends."
Damian remembers nights spent under the stars, his brother reciting the story of the constellations above while Damian did his best not to fall asleep while lying on the shingles. It would have been far too disrespectful, but his brother's presence soothed him in a way little did.
Damian remembers gruelling fights, the stench of sweat and blood mixing together as he and his brother left one another battered and bruised. He remembers the smile their trainers would give when one would finally acquire the upper hand in their spars, and the disappointment that would always come from Grandfather when it was Danyal.
Now, he can identify all that was wrong in the way that he was raised. This does not stop him from desiring to return, to spend one more day with his brother, to have one more chance to patch one another up underneath the constellations.
"It was a simple misstep. I- he was stabbed, he did not survive. Mother brought him into the pits. He drowned."
There had never been much consideration as to what would be too much for a child to witness in the League. Damian has seen many people entering and exiting the Lazarus waters, but nothing had been quite like when Danyal had started coughing and thrashing, sinking below the green surface and leaving behind only a few air bubbles before he was no more. The Lazarus waters healed the sick and hurt the healthy, but never before had they hurt the same person they'd healed.
None of his siblings make the connection that he'd purposefully left out. Richard gives Damian a firm squeeze, and acknowledges, "That must have been hard to see."
"No harder than any of the other horrors," Damian dismisses, but he knows it's weak. "The only difference is that this one was beyond my understanding. He wasn't supposed to drown. He was supposed to live."
Cassandra settles herself on Damian's other side, and places a hand on his knee. "What was his name?"
It's a confession, a sob, and a release all at once.
"Danyal."
Damian's eyes sting with the next wave of tears, but thanks to Richard and Cassandra, he does not possess a free arm to wipe them away.
"Wish we could have met him," Cassandra offers.
The ball of pressure in Damian's chest twinges, and then something in the air shifts.
With their training, they're all suddenly on high alert, reaching instinctively for their concealed weapons. Damian frantically wipes away the evidence of his weakness, scanning the room for the sign of any intruders.
A voice, slightly raspy and with an echo that does not match the cluttered state of their living room, declares, "So you have wished it, and so it shall be."
What happens next is something of a dream, something of a nightmare.
There's a flash of blue light that engulfs the room, temporarily blinding Damian. As he blinks the lights out of his vision, he looks up to see a swirling, lazarus green portal in the middle of their living room. Several of his siblings, have their knives aimed up at it, and Todd has procured what must be one of Pennyworth's firearms.
Nobody attacks when the figure falls through the portal, not when the figure does not rise. They watch as the portal closes in on itself, and right at the point of collapse flutters a note on obnoxiously green paper, which is pushed by an invisible wind until it lands right at Damian's foot.
A piece offering from Desiree. He will understand.
Damian's eyes go from the note to the supine figure on the ground, and mechanically he notes the oddly slow rise and fall of their chest, the blood staining their shirt, and the way their exposed wrists are rubbed raw. Less mechanically, he notes the familiar skintone, jawshape, and pained expression even in sleep.
The tension bursts, and Damian's heart knows before his brain can confirm that this must be Danyal.
"Another fuckin' clone," Todd growls, still keeping the gun ready as he approaches the teen on the ground. He hesitates just a few steps away as specks of green begin to join the red stains on the boy's white shirt, and as the stains spread the green flecks only become more apparent.
He couldn't care less.
Damian storms forward, ignoring any exclamations from his siblings, and kneels above Danyal. He carefully pries open the teen's eye, and a familiar shade of crystal-blue eyes are now mirrored in his own face, rather than being only something seen in Father.
There is no explanation that he can conceive that would explain Danyal, here before him now, outside of League clothes and alive, but that is a worry for another time. For now, he spins around to glare at all of his siblings, making sure they understand the silent order not to approach. Then, as loudly as he can manage, he calls for Pennyworth.