Chapter Text
"Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star."— T.S. Elliot The Hollow Men
“It’s called a harbinger,” Superman explained.
Behind him, the hologram sharpened into the creature’s full, awful clarity: five feet tall, eight feet long, built like a heavy-boned dog. Dark, needle-like spines ran the ridge of its back. Six eyes—deep red, light-catching—looped around its skull, granting it an all-but-constant view. Rust-colored fur stood out in thick, unruly tufts. The projection caught its lips curled back, canines like daggers.
To Damian, it looked like a cross between a hyena and a hellhound.
“It travels in packs,” Superman continued. “Scattered across the universe. When tragedy strikes, they act as detritivores, feeding on abstract decay.”
Nightwing raised a hand, leaning against the wall as he studied the image with his head tipped to one side.
“Yes, Nightwing?” Superman called.
“What do you mean by ‘abstract decay’?”
Damian had been wondering the same.
Superman’s mouth tightened into a grim smile.
“Abstract decay includes grief, desperation, longing—any negative emotion tied to the loss or absence of something loved. They arrive in droves during planetary deaths. Make no mistake—they may not be predators, but they are still highly dangerous.”
Grief made carrion.
Damian’s gaze lingered on the creature’s eyes. The vision of a prey animal, built to be a small part of a greater whole. A fawn to its herd. A lamb to its flock.
“There’s only one,” Red Robin pointed out. “Should we be preparing for a pack?”
He was tapping away at the holographic screen on his gauntlet.
“No.” Superman sighed. “This one is by itself.”
Alone.
Damian’s attention sharpened. He wondered how it’d been separated, if there was any possibility for return.
“Then why are we here?” Red Hood sounded put out at having been dragged to the Batcave at all. “Can’t you just send it back?”
“Normally, I would. But—” Superman faltered. The hesitation was small, but it fractured the room more effectively than any alarm. “Kyptonian’s are not immune to them, their teeth or their feeding. I can’t subdue it peacefully. It’s just a cub.” He glanced wistfully at the hologram. “There were myths on Krypton—legends about them. They occupy the same place in our stories that unicorns do in yours, except instead of appearing only to the pure of heart…” His voice thinned. He let the rest hang.
No one spoke.
“Harbingers only appear to those experiencing great loss.”
Silence settled like dust.
Then Hood barked a laugh, sharp as a snapped wire. “Oh great. So your first thought was, ‘I know whose lives suck. Batman and his merry band of orphans.’”
Superman opened his mouth.
Red Robin cut in before he could find the words. “That can’t be the only qualifier. I can’t think of a single cape who hasn’t lost someone. There’s a reason you didn’t just call Batman for this—no offence, B.”
Batman did not respond, which meant, of course, that no offence had been taken.
“You’re right,” Superman admitted. “Juvenile harbingers are more particular than the adults. The loss has to be permeating the individual, and they have to be young. Many heroes have lost loved ones. Few are under the age of twenty-one, have suitable training for the circumstances, and have allowed the loss to color them so completely.”
Nightwing nodded. “We aren’t the first people you asked, are we?”
“No. Kon-El, Beast Boy, and Wonder Girl have all tried. The moment they entered the containment crater, the harbinger went on the defensive.”
The atmosphere became more grim.
“Alright,” Hood muttered. “Fine, let's go pet the wild alien.”
Damian barely heard the rest of it. Words moved around him, but his attention remained fixed on the projection. On the way the creature held itself—too rigid, too alert, waiting for the universe to rob it of more than it already had.
He recognized the posture.
He wondered, distantly, what it saw when it looked at them.
A cluster of wounds, perhaps. Walking, speaking wounds leaving trails of lifeblood behind them.
Or a feast.
The crater was ringed in floodlights and yellow caution tape that snapped in the wind like thin, nervous flags.
Damian stood at the edge, the smell of scorched earth still rising from the impact site. Someone had tried to hose the place down. It had done nothing except turn the ash to slick, black mud.
Below, the containment crater yawned like a mouth. A shallow bowl of broken pavement and vitrified soil, half cordoned off by portable force emitters that hummed low enough to set teeth on edge.
Nightwing checked the straps on a field pack and passed Red Robin a compact case. “Remember,” he said, voice forcefully jovial, “no sudden movements. No hero speeches. No clever tricks.”
“Aw,” Red Hood deadpanned, rolling his shoulders. “There goes my entire personality.”
Superman hovered a few feet above the rim, arms crossed tight. His brows were knit together. Worried, then.
If this didn’t work. They would be out of heroes to try.
Batman said nothing. He never did, not when silence could do the work for him. His gaze moved over each of them, a final inventory.
Damian felt it like a spotlight.
He kept his hands loose at his sides. No blades. Bruce had insisted.
Nothing but the neutralizing collar currently looped around Hood’s wrist.
The force emitters flickered, and the air thickened with that strange, prickling sensation of alien tech communicating amongst itself, using them all as conductors in its circuitry.
“Containment field is stable,” Red Robin reported, his gauntlet throwing pale data across his knuckles. “Minimal bio-signature movement. It hasn’t tried to breach in… twelve hours.”
“Because it’s asleep,” Superman murmured.
Damian knew, instinctively, that Superman was wrong.
The harbinger was not asleep. It had simply found somewhere to wait, tense and alert, for danger.
Damian’s eyes tracked down into the crater, trying to see through the angle and the shadows. His father’s teams had cleared debris, but they had left a scatter of twisted metal and shattered stone near the center.
Something moved behind it.
Not fast. Not aggressive. A cautious shift, like a creature testing whether the world had changed while it rested.
Six eyes caught the floodlight and flared red.
Damian’s breath went shallow.
It did not look like a myth from a storybook, or even entirely like the hologram. It looked terrified.
The harbinger rose to its full height, spines lifting along its back. Its fur fluffed, the rusted color almost glowing. Posturing. Defensive. It stared at the figures on the rim one by one.
Not hunting.
Not here to consume—yet.
They sent Hood first. He failed quickly. Predictably.
Drake lasted longer. Careful, measured. He approached like something could be reasoned with.
It could not.
Or perhaps it simply refused.
When Drake returned, the collar passed hands.
“Your turn.”
Damian took it.
The synthetic polymer felt weightless. Insufficient. A tool meant for cooperation, not control.
He stepped forward.
Last.
The word settled into him with quiet familiarity. Not dramatic. Not bitter. Just a fact.
Damian had been late to his own life. Last in a lineage meant to be his and his alone.
He descended the ladder, each rung a measured distance from the world above. The floodlights cast his shadow ahead of him, long and distorted—stretching him into something taller, thinner, less human.
The hum of the barrier effectively muted the outside voices. Damian was alone.
Halfway down, the creature’s attention shifted.
It tracked him.
All six eyes.
Not a blink among them.
Damian kept his breathing even. He forced his shoulders to loosen. The collar hung from two fingers, a loop of neutralizing fabric that would not scorch, would not cut, would not shock. A leash, if the creature allowed it.
At the bottom, the mud sucked at his soles. The air tasted of burnt concrete and ozone from the emitters. The harbinger stood near the debris, angled away—but not retreating. Cornered by its own caution.
Damian stopped well short of striking distance.
He lowered himself to one knee.
He did not soften his expression. Did not lower his gaze.
Damian would not insult the harbinger with lies.
“You’re afraid,” he said.
The harbinger’s lips peeled back in a soundless warning. Spines rose higher. The growl that followed was low enough that Damian felt it in his ribs.
He did not flinch.
“Yes,” Damian added, quietly. Answering the unasked question. “So am I.”
For once there was nothing strategic in Damian’s actions.
The words felt strange in his mouth—unadorned by pride or duty. He did not offer them to comfort the creature. He offered them because through the ambient hum and the creatures constant growl, this was the one place on earth Damian could speak without risk of anyone hearing. This frightened animal the only confidant fit to judge the admission.
He set the collar down between them.
Damian kept his gaze on the creature and lifted his empty hand, palm open, fingers spread.
No weapon.
No trick.
No sudden movement.
Time stretched. He listened to his heartbeat, counted his breaths. His knee ached.
Then—
The harbinger’s ears—if they were ears—twitched. One of its eyes narrowed. It took a step.
Toward the collar. Toward Damian.
Damian’s pulse stuttered, then steadied. He remained still. The cub took another step.
The harbinger inhaled sharply, repeatedly, as though searching for some underlying note deep in the air.
Damian understood, slowly.
It was not scenting his body.
It was searching for absence. For the places where something had been taken and never returned.
Grief, Damian realized, was not a wound in the way he had framed it. Not something clean-edged, defined.
It was erosion.
A quiet wearing-down that left the shape intact but hollowed the structure beneath.
The creature was not drawn to loss. It was drawn to the cavern left behind.
The harbinger’s growl faded into a rough, uncertain sound, as if it had reached the edge of a language it did not know how to speak.
Damian swallowed.
“I don’t want you,” he said quietly.
The words came easier than expected.
“No one here wants you. They just want you to go home.”
Home.
For all Damian knew, there was no such place for this creature.
The creature glanced toward the rim. Toward silhouettes. Looming shadows watching eagerly for Damian to finish the task assigned to him.
Then back to Damian.
And in that gaze— Fury. Exhaustion. Something young and unbridled.
Hunger.
Damian’s fingers curled, then forced themselves open.
He thought of snow. Heavy and constant in the mountains cradling Nanda Parbat. Cold and numbing on battered skin.
He thought of breath, rapid and burning, and the liquid heat of tears trespassing down the planes of his face in thick, shameful lines. Of a stillness far removed from peace. A stillness that cracked something deep inside of Damian and broke it in precisely the manner his mother intended.
He remembered her voice. Proud and regal, praising five-year-old Damian for his first kill.
The body before him, present and unreachable. The touch of small hands to cooling flesh, and the soft, mumbled apologies that shifted a mother’s pride to a mother’s fury.
Finally, he thought of himself. Reconstructed and misplaced. Expected to function as if continuity had not been broken.
Another step.
Closer now.
It crouched low, stalking forward on strained limbs.
“Come here,” Damian said.
A pause.
Then, quieter: “It’s alright.”
The creature lunged.
Damian did not move.
It stopped inches from him. Its breath hot and uneven across Damian’s face. The creature lowered its head, just slightly. Permission.
Damian reached forward and pressed a hand to the coarse fur at the base of its neck. Bristling. Alive with viscous fear. Beneath it—tight muscle, coiled and resistant.
The cub shuddered.
Damian wondered if harbingers feeding was supposed to be a physical feeling. If this moment, this quiet, invasive awareness from a fearsome young beast, was a product of Damian’s imagination and nothing more. He could feel the vast, empty chasm reflected in the cub, and he wondered if harbingers maintained the ability to self-feed. Some desperate, mangled oroboris.
Damian’s vision blurred.
He did not pull away.
There was movement beyond the rim. Someone small and quick and frantic.
Irrelevant.
The cub pressed forward, insistently, almost angrily, forcing contact deeper—as though proximity might resolve something it did not understand.
Damian steadied it with both hands.
“You should not be here,” he murmured, though the words held no force. No command. Only a quiet observation, as if he were noting something already decided. “There is nothing here worth devouring.”
A lie, and they both knew it.
The harbinger’s eyes—too many, too bright—held on him. Not searching now, but fixed.
Its muzzle nudged forward again, insistent in a way that bordered on pleading. Its spines had flattened entirely now, the ridge of its back no longer a threat but a quiet line, like a horizon after a storm has passed but not yet cleared.
Damian let one hand shift, fingers moving carefully along the coarse fur, mapping the shape of it. The creature flinched at first contact there, then stilled.
“You are not a monster,” he said, almost absently.
The statement felt incomplete.
He corrected it, softer.
“Neither am I.”
That, too, was uncertain.
The creature’s spines lowered.
Its growl thinned into something fractured.
Slowly, carefully, the creature opened its maw until Damian was looking down the wide expanse of his throat—and here he truly understood what it is for a harbinger to feed.
“It feeds,” Superman had said. On what remains when something irreplaceable is taken.
Damian had expected it to feel like an intrusion.
Instead, it felt like confession.
Not a tearing, not a theft—nothing so crude. The sensation moved through him with a patient, searching quiet, like fingers sifting ash for still-warm embers. It did not take everything. It did not even try. It lingered only where the grief was oldest, most settled. The places Damian had abandoned long ago.
Damian’s loss was sediment.
Layered. Compressed. A slow burial of things that had once been immediate and unbearable, now dulled into something heavier. Something structural.
The harbinger pressed closer, its long, sharp teeth brushing at Damian’s forehead and chin.
Damian’s hands steadied on either side of its skull.
You are not the only one who survives on remnants, he thought, though the words felt too deliberate for the truth they carried.
His life had not been built from beginnings. It had been assembled from relics of bygone times. His parents had loved each other—not anymore. Father had wanted a protoge—not anymore. Grandfather had needed an heir—not anymore.
Damian had inherited nothing but legacies. Been made for no one but ghosts—fragments of people who no longer existed in any whole way. Not even the womb in which he grew was truly alive.
So how was Damian meant to be?
The creature beneath his hands trembled.
So did Damian.
There are things that do not diminish when consumed. Only redistribute.
Above them, the world continued—voices, the low hum of machines, the distant weight of expectation. He could feel it pressing at the edges of this moment, waiting to reassert itself. To turn this into a problem to be solved, a task to be completed.
He did not move to end it.
The harbinger shifted its weight. Not entirely at ease, but no longer braced for violence. Its head raised, just slightly, knocking teeth into the edge of Damian’s jaw and nudging into the cradle of his hands.
An answer.
Or perhaps a question.
For a moment, he allowed himself the smallest, most dangerous thought:
If something could take this from me, even in part—
Who would I be without it?
The answer did not come.
The harbinger did not take enough to find out.
Instead, the barrier shuddered.
Then it broke.
A blur of red and blue slammed into the crater, all reckless momentum and panicked strength. The impact drove the harbinger down hard, spines scraping stone, its startled cry tearing through the hum.
Damian hit the mud on his shoulder and came up on instinct, the taste of ozone and rage flooding his mouth.
No.
His hand went for a blade that wasn’t there.
“Get off—” The words shredded on his tongue as he lunged, vision tunneling to the cub’s heaving ribs, the flash of teeth, the helpless pinning weight.
He collided with the intruder and seized fabric at the collarbone, ready to tear.
The figure’s head snapped up.
Damian froze.
Wide blue eyes, bright with tears. A mouth trembling around an apology it didn’t know how to form. A kid’s hands locked white-knuckled in fear around a creature Damian had just taught himself to trust.
Jon.
Superman’s son.