Chapter Text
Silent Night
Written by Lena Thessa
chapter one
+
“Don’t you dare– don’t you fucking dare.”
Damian has no weapon left. Only these ice-shard words and his dead-eyed glare, cold as the ninth circle.
+
Nightmares are familiar to him. Whatever this is, it isn’t part of his usual dreamscape.
Fire from another world. Yellow-eyed hellhounds snarling and snapping at his feet, gale-force winds ripping blackbirds out of the scorched sky. A booming laugh, dark and sinister, echoes through halls of shattered ruby-red glass.
Encircled by torn feathers and fallen shards, Damian slips through time, space, and demonic dimensions.
In one of them, he tosses and turns, a foreign-born fever burning him from the inside out. Someone tries– someone’s trying– to bring him out of unknown depths. They are less than an afterthought, their presence there and gone again.
He can’t swim in the unsea. He doesn’t breathe. The smell of sulfur suffocates every one of his senses. Decaying ichor fills his lungs, his blood turns to lead.
Damian drowns. When the tides carry his limp body to the shores of his subconscious, he doesn’t have a pulse.
+
Alfred doesn’t fret, but he unfolds his handkerchief for the second time to dab at the damp spot by his temple.
“He’ll be alright,” Bruce tells him, forgetting he’s unmasked– his tenor is made low and gravely.
“Of course, Master Bruce.” Alfred sounds as steady as Bruce stands, neither of them unfamiliar with the aftermath of a lost fight or should-be-fatal wounds.
And yet–
Alfred picks at the handkerchief’s stitches with the blunt edge of a well-manicured nail, then stops himself. His shoulders are already square, or he’d straighten them.
To remove further temptation, he folds the linen neatly and returns it to the pocket inside of his jacket.
Bruce notices. His arms, folded neatly across his chest, loosen just enough to admit he shares in Alfred’s concern.
Damian may lay unconscious before them, but Raven floats as though on a perch, shrouding herself into a cocoon of impenetrable darkness. Layer by layer, she disappears from view.
+
Raven starts with a castle: comparable to Angelokastro, the high city that never fell. She builds it on the bank of the fifth river and looks out from the tallest tower to watch where it meanders. How the river splinters into Hell’s most unlovely streams.
Good enough, she decides half-heartedly, gathering the dark in a rush, ushering it in to support her weakened frame.
She’s threadbare and spent, her half-soul tattered. She can’t afford to fall apart at the seams.
Instead, she studies her surroundings and assigns what is left of herself to the essence of each rivulet. One by one, she is sent downstream: grief and fear and anguish deposited into the mouth of the Styx.
When there’s nothing left but the shell that holds her consciousness, she gets to work.
+
A litany of brass candelabras are posted like sentries, light flickering evenly from each of them. Despite struggling to wake, Damian recognizes them. A safe place, if not a safe situation.
He forces his bleary self to become alert. He’s here because he’s been injured; he doesn’t need to see any flesh wounds to understand that much. Every inch of him aches like torn ligaments and raw, shredded nerves. Worse, an iron-clad grip wrenches his orbital sockets and drills all the way down. A head injury, then.
From whom, by what, and when, he can’t think clearly enough to consider. Only the instincts beaten into him in childhood work to coach his body back to consciousness.
Damian lifts his lids enough to take stock of his surroundings. Beneath the guards of candlelight is the lower half of a familiar sight. Wayne Manor’s library. The private one, part of Bruce’s inner sanctum. Shelves lined with antique weapons and first edition novels, a vaulted ceiling left uncentered by the absence of a chandelier. Instead, an oversized fireplace takes up residence in the back end of the room. The heat of it brushes against his bare skin, waking him up to his whereabouts.
He must be laying on the deep green velvet chaise angled in front of the hearth. His old, preferred spot to retreat to, back when he first came to stay with his father. What’s he doing here?
The real question echoes. Who brought him here?
Despite the protest of every muscle he has, Damian shoves himself up and into a half-seated position. With well-practiced effort, he compartmentalizes the pain to tuck it away from the forefront of his mind. At least for long enough to make a cursory glance at his condition, then to pass an assessing hand over his scalp.
No bandages, bruises, welts, or stitches, but he aches down to his bones. In some fashion, he’s been injured.
Metaphysical. Supernatural. Telepathic. Magical. Subatomic. Their world hosts endless threats, most man-made, but enough not. What do they say about him— that at the end of the day, he’s just a child too stubborn to put away his toys?
That line of thought– bitter, repulsive– is a familiar fuel to get the fuck up.
He’s been dressed in black linen sleep pants with a knitted blanket tossed over his bare chest, then left to rest in the library instead of the hospital wing. Just the thought of the infirmary is enough to sicken his stomach. That’s a place he well and truly loathes.
Alfred must have stationed him here. Bruce isn’t the sort to cater to others’ whims.
Damian tries to recall the last thing he remembers, where he’d been and who he’d been fighting, but in his mind, he meets resistance. Instead of hazy memories or wisps of almost-imagery, the cold steel of a shut door is slammed down into place.
Activated by adrenaline, Damian shoves himself all the way up, ripping the blanket from his lap. Riddled in pain and barely conscious, the foreign nature of metal where organic should be is enough to fully wake him.
In the corner of his vision, a blur of darkness wavers in mid-air. He turns at once to face it.
Her, not it. A young woman levitates behind him, her legs crossed over in a meditative position.
The questions compound. A stranger has been left alone with him in Wayne Manor after he’d been injured. Who, and why? Bruce and Alfred certainly know how much he hates to be tended to let alone by some metahuman freak he’s never met.
Her eyes snap open. Though a hood covers most of her face, her violet-bright eyes are shining. The closest stars on a clear, dark night. As real as any weapon, they pierce through him.
Damian gives as good as he gets. His throat is hoarse, but his words come out as harsh as he intends. “What do you think you’re doing in here?”
She is draped in darkness, but once she steps down from her hovering position and stands, it dissipates.
Most of her face remains hidden, but he guesses she's in her mid to late twenties, same as him. Her cloak is midnight blue, strewn over a skintight suit made of a flexible, high-grade material. It looks as durable as his own.
“Damian—”
His name, spoken lightly from her thin lips, is not as gentle as she intends. A clear threat, as far as he sees it, considering she knows of him when he does not recognize her.
He stands, controlling every muscle in him with military precision. He is already unmasked and shirtless, he won't reward her with any other signs of weakness.
“Who are you?” A question as much as an accusation, Damian waits with narrowed eyes.
She slowly reaches for her hood with gloved hands, her palms open toward him in a pointless attempt to build trust. She drapes it over her shoulders.
Her moon-pale face is not any more familiar to him now that he can see her fully, and he knows for a fact that his eidetic memory gives him perfect recall. If she’s been in any database, record, or file he’s ever laid eyes on, he would know her name, powers, and standing in society, criminal or otherwise.
White-hot pain splinters through his brain, but he refuses the impulse to bow from it.
A ruby-red gem protrudes from the center of her forehead, gleaming from the light of the fireplace. He registers it for reference in future research.
“Damian, I need you to listen carefu—,” she tries, but before she can blink, he snatches the iron-wrought poker from the stand and leaps toward her, sore and screaming muscles be damned.
He slides the lance under her throat. “I don’t need to do anything. Now, who the hell are you and what are you doing in here?”
A thousand times, a hundred thousand times, he’s stared down at an opponent to catalog everything about them for the knowledge necessary to devise strategies that will defeat them. An impulse of his autonomic nervous system more than a habit, he does the same now and studies her.
She smells like night-blooming jasmine, clove dust, and woodsmoke. Witchcraft. Her dark hair isn’t black, but every shade of twilight. Cut above her shoulders, blunt and practical, like her sleek but sturdy utility belt, gloves, and boots.
Her face is—
Unfamiliar. Even though she’s wide-eyed with worry that borders on warmth.
He ignores the sudden swell of nausea that rolls in his stomach, the same as he would any other time he’s been concussed.
As far as he can tell, she has no weapons on her persona. But if she can levitate and command darkness, she likely has other powers. He has no way of knowing what else she can do. His best bet is to subdue her now, ask questions later.
Like falling stars, her violet eyes lose their spark. Abruptly devoid of any and all emotion, she tilts her chin at him, uncaring when the lance slices through the vulnerable skin of her neck. A thin stream of blood starts down her pale throat.
“You don’t remember me at all,” she says, no longer careful or caring.
A spool of darkness spills out like wayward ribbons, drenching him in a black richer and darker than ink. Too late, he is consumed by a false night.
+
Steam rises from her cup of silver needle tea in a wisp frailer than a whisper. Raven can’t afford the time it will take to cool down, but she lets Alfred see her eye the service appreciatively before giving her thanks. He’s pleased, though not convinced, and takes his leave without any further fussing.
She leaves the tea untouched behind her. Stepping into the air like others settle into their seats, she retakes a meditative position.
Raven drapes the darkness of witching hour over her shoulders and summons the Mediterranean stronghold back to her mind. There are times for insolvable labyrinths or endless libraries, but this is not one of them.
Her fortress is built of sturdy stone, set on the highest peak of the rocky island, a thousand feet up with only the Ioanian surrounding it.
She calls on one stream of the infernal river to run backwards, bringing fear back into her awareness. The kind of fear that steals all the air from her lungs, then doesn’t let her catch her breath. Because fear, if she can stomach it, will be useful.
The current of catecholamines rushes her mind and body with singular purpose.
Raven allows for the hammering of her heart, translates its frantic rhythm: survive, survive. No matter that her own survival is not at stake, she’s focused by it, strengthened with it.
The ravager will not rise to the earth. She will keep her father buried in the Hell of her own making.
Usually, he would laugh– dark and deep and manic. But since he’s already won, he has no need to taunt her. He is content to lurk in the corners, a gloating that is loud enough to make her ears bleed.
+
When Damian wakes next, he is right back where he started on the velvet chaise. Only this time, Bruce stands facing the unlit fireplace, hands folded behind his back like he’s in the boardroom.
Damian does not often make mistakes, and he never makes them twice. Without any care for his weakened state, he pushes himself up and off the sofa. A quick scan of the room shows no sign of the witch or her shadows, but he remains guarded.
He snatches a black shirt that is folded neatly on the end table and pulls it over his head in one swift motion. As far as he can tell, he’s as sore as the first time he regained consciousness, but with no new injuries. She took him out without having to take him down.
Bruce waits for Damian to approach him, then greets him with a brusque nod. “Damian. How are you feeling?”
Not one to waste time with formalities, Damian cuts straight to the point. “Who is she?”
Bruce stares, studying him without bothering to hide it. He’s looking for something, and whatever it is, he doesn’t find it. It makes Damian’s skin itch with impatience, though he’s careful not to show it.
“You don’t remember her,” Bruce says, a thin layer of resignation beneath the surface of his blunt declaration.
“I’m sure that’s been established,” Damian dismisses, disinterested in how Bruce feels about it so much as why he feels anything about her at all. “Tell me why I’ve been laid out in the Manor and why you brought her in for it.”
Bruce can rarely be described as hesitant, but he turns back to the cold hearth and that’s precisely what Damian would call it. Clearly weighing how much to share, Bruce lifts one shoulder an inch, a mere fraction of a shrug.
“I didn’t bring her in, she brought you in.”
In the short time he’s been awake again, Damian already considered that possibility. He continues to workshop as many scenarios as his concussed mind can come up, thanks to whatever mental injury he’s sustained that’s left a gap in his memory.
“She brought me to Bruce, or to Batman?”
“Both.”
That is not one of the possibilities Damian prepared for himself.
He takes the necessary time to process, but not a second more. It means she knows Bruce’s true identity as the Bat, but only family, a few friends from the League, and Lucius are privy to that information. Why would his father have hidden someone of such import from him?
“She knows who you are.” Damian says it sharply, an accusation, and they both know what he’s really saying. She knows who I am too.
The realization ricochets through him, joining the pain already pounding against his temples and radiating through the base of his skull. A pain so consuming, too thoroughly everywhere, to have come from a human instrument or mortal weapon.
He doesn’t ask Bruce how he was injured in the first place. The metahuman knocked him unconscious this time, she probably did the first time too.
Incensed without the familiar hilt of his sword pressed comfortably into his palm, he clenches his fist in its absence.
“How did she get the upper hand?” Damian asks.
There are bigger fish to fry, such as what is she, and where is she now, but somehow Bruce— not billionaire playboy Bruce, but the real one, cold-and-nearly-heartless-Bruce— has been compromised by some errant emotion. Whatever it is, Damian won’t allow it to get himself injured again.
“Well,” Bruce considers, deciding on how much to say again. “Either because she knows your tells or because you hesitated.”
Damian lets his frustration off on a short leash, trusting that since it’s sincere, Bruce won’t identify it as a purposeful redirection. People tend to admit more than they ordinarily would when they think he’s not paying careful attention.
“I didn’t hesitate,” he says hotly.
He doesn’t ask the secondary question. Why would I have hesitated against her?
Damian has a second, third, or fourth meaning for every question and sentence he actually speaks aloud. His mind is always crowded with them. Usually, he can parse through his sincerity and subterfuge with the simplicity of breathing, but right now, it’s taking most of his strength to remain standing.
“Right,” Bruce allows idly, but then he turns solemn, and he’s about to say something else, something serious.
Damian takes control, unwilling to be on the defensive. “Considering I don’t remember who or what happened before I was brought here, I’m guessing she has something to do with that too.”
Bruce doesn’t answer. He doesn’t so much as sigh, but there’s a well-hidden worry beneath his stone wall of apathy. Damian is one of the few who could spot it.
“Sit down, Damian.”
“No.”
“Alright then.”
Bruce steps away from the fireplace. He doesn’t sit down without Damian, but he tucks both hands into his front pockets and relaxes into himself. Damian doesn’t buy it for a moment.
“You’ve been telepathically attacked. Your memory has been altered. To what extent of damage, we’re not sure, but we know it’s significant.”
We. Somehow, Damian doesn’t think he’s referring to him and Alfred.
“I would know if someone has been in my mind, messing with things,” Damian counters. “Have you considered you're the one who’s memory has been altered?”
Because that’s just as likely, if not more than likely. The Bat has a host of enemies spanning at least two decades, plenty here in Gotham, whereas Damian has both time and location in his favor. The opposite of a home-field advantage.
It is easier to look out to his father's gallery of rogues than inward, where he felt hard steel instead of soft matter.
“I did. We cross-referenced and took all precautionary measures recommended by the Justice League. I consulted personally with J’onn, as well. He verified your circumstances.”
“Well forgive me if I don’t take your word as face value, but I’ll do my own verification, thanks.”
Damian is already turning away from him when Bruce clears his throat.
“I can’t let you do that, Damian.”
Damian is slow to turn around. “Excuse me?”
“The damage we’re looking at is extensive. This wasn’t a simple attack. You didn’t lose a few days or just the details surrounding a case.”
Damian crosses his arms. “Then what?”
This time, Bruce doesn’t hesitate. “You’ve had an entire chunk of who you are plucked out and then erased. At least a decade of your life now has substantial pieces missing. Most of your recent life will be nothing but incomplete memories. Right now, we’re mending what we can– with telepathic support beams, you could say– but the more your mind tries to make sense of information that doesn’t exist, the more likely it will be to collapse.”
Damian doesn’t blink. “Collapse,” he repeats, unconvinced.
“Yes. You’re already experiencing the physical symptoms now, aren’t you?” Bruce asks knowingly. “Headache, light sensitivity, generalized pain and nausea.”
When Damian doesn’t refute this right away, Bruce goes on. “There will be psychological symptoms too. When your mind can’t reconcile the lack of information and doesn’t have enough to substantiate itself. Anxiety, panic attacks, hallucinations, paranoia.”
“You’re saying I’ll go insane? Full on Arkham?”
Bruce doesn’t answer, which answers enough. “That’s what we’re going to prevent, but we need more time. Take it easy for another day or two, until we’re certain you’ve stabilized.”
Damian shakes him off. “Tell J’onn thanks, but no thanks. Stay out of my head.”
“J’onn isn’t the one working on you, son.”
Damian glares. He hates it when Bruce calls him son. The way he saves it for special occasions, and those occasions are only when he’s decided a situation warrants exerting his pseudo-parental control.
“Who do you have in my head, father?” he asks, wielding the word like a blunt weapon.
Bruce hates it, too. Being reminded of his failure as a father; that for years, he was absent.
“I need you to trust me. I know it’s against your nature—”
“It’s against my better judgment, not my nature.”
“Your judgment is impaired right now.”
“Who do you have in my head?” Damian demands again, with every inch of force he can put into it.
Bruce sighs. “Raven. Her name is Raven. She’s the most suited to assess and repair your memory, believe me.”
“The witch?”
“She has specialties in magic and sorcery, but she’s not a witch.”
“I don’t care. Tell her she’s not needed. Tell her she’s got one chance to fuck off before I get involved and make her.”
“She said you’d say that.”
Damian snaps. “You’re making my point for me. Get her out of my head and get her out of this house.”
“No.” Bruce takes his hands out from his pockets, his shoulders set in a defiant line.
“No?” Damian reels back. “What do you mean, no?”
Bruce has already started to walk out of the room though, clearly not intending to entertain him any longer. “I’ll ask Alfred to bring you dinner later, but you’re not to leave the sanctum.”
“The Hell I’m not. I’m not your kid, you can’t ground me,” he spits out. Given the circumstances, he doesn’t care that it’s a blow below the belt. “You certainly can’t lock me in here.”
“I can and I will,” Bruce says with predetermined ease. “Let me know when you’re ready to be reasonable.”
This was absolutely not in the multitude of scenarios Damian considered. He only forfeits three seconds to his shock, but that’s all Bruce needs to slip through the door and lock it behind him.
+
“You were right,” Bruce tells her.
They’ve made their way to the secondary dining hall. Informal compared to the primary, but grander than most. The table setting, all deep burgundy, ivory lace, and gold-rimmed porcelain, is too ornate to look small beneath the generously arched ceiling.
Raven sits at the polished oak table, though sitting would be putting it generously. She’s too exhausted to mind her manners and hold herself up properly.
Meanwhile, for the same reason, Bruce is tall and stiff-backed as he stands across from her place at the table.
Raven has no appetite, not really, but she’s been up for thirty-six hours and is sick from adrenaline. She’s rinsed her mouth out twice, but the bitter taste of it remains curdled on her tongue. If her empty stomach is going to tolerate more caffeine, which she needs to remain functional, she has to put something into it.
She plucks at her shrimp lo mein. It’s an $8.99 pint from Wok N Roll, and even though the kitchen sometimes operates a full-service staff with the best chefs from here to Paris, Alfred remembered her favorite place for takeout.
Raven hazards a guess. “He wants me to fuck off before he gets involved and makes me?”
Alfred puts a hand to his chest. “Dear me.”
“In so many words,” Bruce allows.
Raven twirls noodles into the prongs of her fork. “In those exact words.”
“Yes,” Bruce pauses. “In those exact words.”
Raven is bothered by a great many things right now, but Damian’s attitude is not one of them. She forces herself to put down another bite.
“I’ll lay low, but I need to be nearby,” she says. “I have to finish bridging the last gaps before it’s too late.”
She can’t bring his memories back, but she can make sure he doesn’t lose his mind from trying too hard to remember them.
Raven doesn’t advertise that she’s out of steam and dangerously close to passing out, they already suspect as much. Actually, this is Batman, there’s no use in pretending— he already knows. If she has to use her telepathy from too far a distance, she might not be able to succeed. Once she does succeed, she’ll most likely slide out of consciousness.
“I’ll prepare a room in the East Hall,” Alfred says.
The furthest hall from the sanctum. That’s for the best. She nods into her white-and-red container.
“Will he be able to tell what you’re doing?” Bruce asks.
“Probably.” When Bruce rests two hands on the chair’s back and lingers, she adds, “Damian keeps his mind mapped out with certain subjects entirely sectioned off. Imagine the meticulous approach to his weaponry and equipment, but tenfold the structure and obsessive attention to detail. As soon as I enter the more protected areas, he’ll recognize an intrusion.”
“It’s his mind, not tools or weapons,” Alfred murmurs, half-wonder, half-worry.
“Yes. Well. Talia didn’t raise a child, she trained a soldier.”
The best soldier. One capable of global subterfuge and succeeding Gotham’s greatest knight.
“Right.” Bruce’s grip tightens briefly, but then he takes that as his cue to deliberately relax. It’s all for show, but she appreciates the effort. “What do you need?”
Raven sets her fork down. She needs a shot of espresso with a dash of oat milk. She needs the endless strength of her demonic father, the dogged vigilance of her siblings. She needs to sleep for a week. She needs to rewind time and make a different decision. She needs Damian to fold her into his chest and murmur right into her ear, butter-soft and gentle as sin: You’re not alone, Raven; I’m right here, do you hear me? Agonizingly sincere in ways no one else would ever know him capable.
“I need his resistance to lower enough for me to slip in,” she says aloud.
“How do we do that?” Alfred asks.
“We can try to introduce information that will help his mind accept what we’ve told him. If it comes from another source that he trusts, or at least one he doesn’t associate with us, then it might work without my having to strong-arm him.”
Bruce considers this. After a moment, he steps back from the table. “Alright. I’ll take care of it.”
+
Damian tears the sanctum inside and out. The room may look like a library, but it belongs to Bruce and is kept hidden from any guests or outsiders. There has to be something he can find to use. He doesn’t have socks on, let alone the equipment necessary to hack into the Manor’s physical mainframe, but if he can find it, he will.
An hour later, he’s able to hotwire a switch from behind a scion that serves as a third secret entrance into the cave. With a croak and groan, the unused door opens.
No doubt, the security system has activated and alerted Bruce on the intrusion. He has a few moments, probably less. Damian makes a few well-placed leaps, then scales the rest of the way down the cavernous walls.
Once he lands on the main floor, he plucks the false molar out from the back of his mouth and settles himself at Batman’s desk. He uncaps the fake tooth, revealing a miniature drive loaded with his most essential cyber-gear.
Damian quickly finds an adapter, plugs the drive in, and sits back to watch it work. Bruce’s blue-lit screens are overtaken by blocks of neon green code that scroll and scroll, automated to hack into networks with the most stalwart of cybersecurity. Within minutes, Damian is in.
There’s no time to weigh his options or worry over his chances. He also doesn’t bother to consider what time it is in the Mashriq, South Asia, or wherever the League is based at the moment. He pulls up the last known site on the dark net, dials in the most reliable number, punches in the security code and his personal password, then does what he hates most: hopes for the best.
After ringing through the various rerouted channels, the black screen pops into full color.
“Mother.”
He’s fortunate to have caught Talia at her desk. The camera trained on her is lifted above and looking down, but not even that can make her appear small. Her hair is pinned back, and her focus is absolute. She glances at the camera to eye Damian briefly, then gives her profile as she returns to reading from an adjacent monitor.
“Damian. To what do I owe this surprise?”
He hadn’t prepared well enough. He accidentally pauses. Like a shark caught by the scent of blood, she notices. Her green eyes cut sharply through the video screen.
“Something’s wrong.”
She’s aged since he last remembers seeing her. Before thinking about it, he tries to recall when he last saw her and what she looked like then. He’s met with a white-hot flash that sears over his vision. He blinks, willing it to dissipate.
“Father hasn’t told you.”
“I’m not sure if you realize this, but we’re not entirely on speaking terms.” Her sarcasm is belied only by the artful arch of one brow.
“He says I’ve been telepathically assaulted and that my memory is impaired. I’m investigating to see if he’s the one who’s been compromised.”
“Interesting.” Despite saying so, her attention remains fixed on the other screen. “Well Raven is the telepath, what has she said about it all?”
Damian turns cold. Her casual reference of Raven is the confirmation he sought, but it does little to satisfy him.
“What’s wrong with Raven?” Talia asks, and though her overt familiarity might answer the next important question he has to ask, it drops the floor out from beneath him. “Has she been attacked too?”
When Damian fails to answer, Talia leans backward into her chair. She stares directly at him, as though there’s no screen or thousands of miles and several time zones between them.
“Oh, I see. Your memory of Raven has been altered, is that it?”
He admits nothing outright. He’s a step behind her, which he hates to admit, but it’s the only place he can find his footing.
“What kind of telepath?” Damian asks instead, tapping onto his knee, aware of the fast-ticking clock until Bruce shuts this down.
“A strong one.” Talia sees right through him. She barely manages not to roll her eyes. “If what you’re saying is true, I’m sure they knew you’d be suspicious by that fact and accuse her of your mental incapacity.”
“I’m not incapacitated,” he cuts in, even though she’s right. “But if she had the means, motive, and access...”
“What motive would that be?”
“You tell me. You seem to know her too.”
Talia returns to focus on her other screen, apparently bored already. “Raven is the last person who would hurt you.”
“How do you know that?”
“Well, I suppose I can’t,” she starts, but then breaks to type, muttering to herself as she handles the task. After a moment, she picks up on their conversation where she left off. “But it sure would be contradicting, considering she’s the only reason you’re alive.”
Damian stops tapping against his knee. “She saved my life?”
“No, my son.” Only his mother can manage to sound as affectionate as she does condescending. “You died, and she brought your body to the Lazarus Pit to bring you back to life.”
That’s impossible. He’s not close enough to anyone who’d be willing to take that risk. Damian simply doesn’t bother to entertain the thought.
Regardless, if he wants to understand his situation, he needs to know more about her.
“Tell me who she is.”
“They haven’t told you?” Talia asks, amused enough to give her attention back to him.
Damian doesn’t know what they haven’t told him. He doesn’t answer her. It might be a tactic she taught him— remaining silent for long enough, the other person will choose to fill the silence of their own volition— but it works.
Talia laughs once. “I’m sure that your father is playing by some heroic code and thinks you’ll be best served by waiting for your brain to catch up on its own. I, on the other hand, don’t intend on coddling you.”
Considering his father still hasn’t shut down the system or showed up to stop him, Bruce must have allowed him to get this far. He isn’t coddling him either. Damian doesn’t find it necessary to say as much.
His mother continues in her customary nonchalance. “Before I returned, you ruled the League with her at your side. Prior to that, you were comrades during your tenure with the Titans. As far as I understand it, you’ve been together for years.”
“Together how?”
His mother scoffs, refusing to indulge his naivete. Despite his adulthood, he feels it like a slap on the wrist.
“Do me a favor, Damian. Let her get your memories back.”
“Why, you like her that much?”
“Well, let’s just say I wasn’t invited to your wedding,” she admits coldly. “But the last time we talked, you made it clear that if I misspoke to her again, you’d cut my tongue out. I’d love to see what you’ll do to someone who isn’t your own flesh and blood that wishes ill upon her.”
Wedding.
Wedding?
Damian has a hard time feigning indifference when that one word is worse than any sucker punch that’s ever made him double over.
“I said that to you,” Damian manages, though he’s barely recovered and it isn't his actual concern. I’ve married someone?
Even that thought is a lie to himself. I’m married to her?
“You did.” Based on the way his mother's emerald-hard eyes rove over him, she knows what he hasn’t said.
You are, she doesn’t bother to say aloud.
Distracted, Damian looks down to his left hand. There’s no ring. There’s no tan line in its absence. But that’s hardly proof of anything; he doubts he’d wear jewelry while suited up, least of all one that signified a personal attachment.
“The next time you call me, let it be when your memories are back and you wish to apologize. Otherwise, the next time I see you I’ll cut your tongue out for talking back to your mother.”
She ends the call. The screen goes black, and in its reflection, Damian sees Bruce standing right behind him.
“Ready to talk now?”