Chapter Text
Day eight began like the rest—quiet, methodical, and irritatingly predictable.
Damian moved along the rooftops parallel to Rin’s route, keeping a careful distance while still maintaining a clear line of sight. By now, Rin’s patrol patterns were familiar. He favored the longer paths, the ones that cut through poorly lit streets and half-abandoned blocks—places where people needed someone to notice them. Damian had already adjusted his own movement to match, leaping down fire escapes and crossing alleys with practiced ease.
He was just recalculating a shortcut when the air shifted.
Too quiet.
Damian landed lightly in an alley several yards behind Rin’s last known position—and immediately felt the prickle of being watched.
“Wrong turn, kid,” a voice drawled from behind him.
Damian pivoted, already counting. Five older males. Poor spacing. Concealment attempts bordering on amateur. Thugs, not trained combatants—likely the same caliber Rin had been dealing with all week.
One stepped forward, cracking his knuckles. Another blocked the alley exit. A third produced a knife that was more rust than threat.
Damian’s hand twitched toward his belt. This would take less than thirty seconds. Minimal noise if he was precise—
“Hey.”
The single word cut through the alley like a blade.
Every one of the thugs froze.
Damian glanced past them and saw Rin standing at the mouth of the alley, hands in the pockets of his jacket, posture loose and unassuming. He looked… normal. Calm. Almost bored.
“Didn’t I tell you guys,” Rin continued mildly, tilting his head, “that picking fights around here was a bad idea?”
The shift was immediate.
One of the men swore under his breath. Another took a step back. The one with the knife dropped it outright, metal clattering against concrete far louder than it had any right to.
“Shit—it’s the demon,” someone hissed.
Rin blinked. “Wow. Rude.”
They didn’t wait for anything else.
The group scattered like startled animals, bolting past Damian, over fences, and down side streets without so much as glancing back. No threats. No bravado. No attempt to test their odds.
Just fear.
Rin watched them go, then sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “Man… I was hoping they’d at least apologize.”
He turned his attention to Damian, smile soft and utterly unguarded, as if he hadn’t just ended a confrontation without throwing a single punch.
“You okay?” Rin asked. “They didn’t get you, did they?”
Damian stared at him, mind already cataloging the details.
No aggression. No posturing. No satisfaction at having frightened them off.
Just concern.
“…I am unharmed,” Damian replied stiffly.
Rin smiled—and that was when Damian noticed.
Up close, the smile didn’t quite fit. It was the right shape, the right timing, but it didn’t reach Rin’s eyes. The brightness Damian had always seen was dimmed, like a light left on too long. His shoulders sagged a fraction once the danger was gone, and there was a tiredness there that hadn’t been present before.
It was subtle. Damian would have missed it entirely if he hadn’t been standing this close.
Rin nodded, apparently satisfied. “Good. You should probably avoid this area, though. People around here can get… weird.”
With that, he turned and walked away, slipping back into his route as if nothing unusual had happened.
Damian stayed where he was, gaze fixed on Rin’s retreating back.
Damian changed his routine after that.
Observing Rin only after school and from a distance was no longer productive, so Damian refined his approach. He adjusted his routes and timing to overlap with Rin’s movements between classes. It took several days of careful tracking, but by day twelve he had a reliable sense of Rin’s schedule and the paths he used to get from one building to the next.
That was when the inconsistencies became obvious—if you knew what to look for.
Damian rarely saw Rin inside the classrooms themselves. What he observed came from the halls: Rin sprinting around corners seconds after the bell rang, skidding to a stop outside a door, or slipping in late with his head ducked and a rushed apology he didn’t wait to be acknowledged. Other days, Rin drifted through the halls long after classes had started, movements slow and unfocused, as if he were walking underwater.
The rest Damian pieced together from others.
Students complained loudly and often, never bothering to lower their voices.
“Okumura was late again.”
“He fell asleep in class—again.”
“Sensei had to repeat everything because of him.”
“Why does he even bother showing up if he’s just going to pass out?”
They said it with irritation, not concern. Like Rin’s exhaustion was an inconvenience rather than a warning sign.
Damian listened. He compared their complaints with what he saw in the halls.
On the days people griped the most, Rin looked the worst—eyes dulled, shoulders slumped, reactions a fraction too slow. His usual chaotic energy wasn’t gone, just uneven, flaring up briefly before collapsing back into something quieter. He lingered near stairwells or empty corridors, as if gathering enough strength to make it to the next class.
And yet no one stopped him. No teacher pulled him aside. No administrator intervened.
To everyone else, Rin was just irresponsible.
To Damian, the pattern was blatant.
This wasn’t simple carelessness or teenage laziness. It was chronic exhaustion being misread as misbehavior, and the misreading was so ingrained that no one questioned it anymore.
That night, Damian updated his notes, the language clinical but the conclusion unavoidable.
Subject frequently late and reported to fall asleep during class. Observed behavior in halls aligns with secondhand accounts. Fatigue appears persistent and unaddressed by staff.
He closed the file with a faint scowl.
Damian’s pencil moved lightly across the page, sketching in clean, controlled lines. Every few seconds he glanced up at the fountain, then back down again, making sure he captured the angles and the fine details correctly. The stonework was old, weathered in a way that suggested intentional neglect rather than age.
Rin had disappeared back to the Order’s base and would be there for an another hour.
Or, at least, he should have been.
When Damian looked up again, Rin was there—stumbling toward the fountain as if he had taken a wrong turn or forgotten where he was going. Damian’s pencil stilled.
He watched.
Rin didn’t notice him. He sank down beside the fountain and slumped against the low stone wall, shoulders sagging as though something heavy had finally been set down. His hands drifted to the rose bushes circling the fountain, fingers absently brushing over the petals, plucking one loose and turning it between his fingers.
For a moment, Damian considered approaching him.
He dismissed the impulse just as quickly.
Instead, he returned to his sketch and added a new element to the page. Rin, folded into the scene. Damian focused on posture rather than detail—the slight curve of his spine, the way his head tipped forward, the loose, unguarded sprawl of someone who believed himself to be alone.
Time passed quietly like that.
Rin made no move to leave. He remained by the fountain, lost in the small, repetitive motion of petal after petal slipping through his fingers. By the time Damian finished the final shading, the page felt… complete.
He exhaled softly and snapped the sketchbook shut.
Decision made, Damian slid down from his perch and crossed the courtyard with measured steps, keeping his movements quiet. Rin was still completely absorbed in the roses, unaware of anything beyond the circle of stone and flowers around him.
Damian stopped a few steps away.
“Okumura.”
Rin startled like he’d been shocked. He scrambled upright too fast, nearly losing his balance before catching himself on the edge of the fountain.
“O–oh! Hey—!” Rin laughed, a little too loud, a little too quick. He dragged a hand through his hair and turned, forcing a grin onto his face like it was something he could simply put on. “Didn’t hear you there. Guess I was spacing out.”
The smile didn’t hold.
It flickered, strained at the edges, then settled into something passable—convincing enough if you weren’t looking closely. Damian was.
Rin shifted, rolling his shoulders as if to shake off stiffness, and in the movement his shirt slipped down one side. Just for a second.
It was enough.
Rin was thinner than Damian had realized. Not wiry. Not athletic-thin. There was a hollowness to it—collarbone too sharp, shoulder lacking the muscle someone who fought as often as Rin did should have had.
And beneath that—
An injury.
Dark and ugly where it disappeared under the fabric, the edge of bruising and poorly healed damage trailing farther down than Damian could see. Old, not fresh. Reinjured often, if he had to guess.
Rin noticed immediately.
He sucked in a sharp breath and yanked the shirt back into place, tugging it up his shoulder with a practiced motion. Too practiced. He laughed again, softer this time, eyes skittering away.
“Sorry—uh—uniform’s kinda messed up,” he said quickly. “Guess I should fix that.”
Damian didn’t react.
Didn’t comment. Didn’t stare. Didn’t change his expression at all.
Rin visibly relaxed a fraction at that, though the tension didn’t leave him entirely. He hugged his arms loosely around himself instead, posture closing in.
“You, uh… need something?” Rin asked. The words were polite. The tone was careful. Like he was bracing for a reason he wouldn’t like.
Damian studied him quietly.
Up close, the exhaustion was unmistakable. Not just physical fatigue—something deeper. Rin’s movements lagged just a beat behind his thoughts. His eyes were dull in a way that had nothing to do with sleep.
There was an emptiness there.
Damian had only seen that look once before.
A student who used to go to Gotham Academy. Brilliant. Quiet. Polite. The kind no one worried about—a teacher found them in hanging from a noose half way through the school year, and everyone had insisted there had been no signs.
Damian felt something cold settle in his chest.
“I was sketching the fountain,” he said evenly, giving Rin a neutral explanation instead of the truth. “You entered my line of sight.”
Rin blinked, then laughed weakly. “Oh. Wow. Sorry about that. I can move if you want?”
“No,” Damian replied. “Remain.”
The word came out sharper than he intended. Rin froze for half a second, then nodded.
“Okay,” he said softly.
They stood there in silence, the sound of water filling the space between them. Rin’s forced smile faded the longer it wasn’t needed, leaving behind something quieter. Something honest.
Damian didn’t say anything else.