#⊰ ℜ ⊱ ┊ midnight damn right; wound up too tight. ┊ TIMELINE: BOY WONDER.

[exghul]

*randomly waits until he's home and sits in his bedroom with the lights off because she's mad he hasn't sent her any art recently.

these early days, he will one day realize, are the hardest of them all. these are the days where his hand is unguided by surety, these are the days that he sizes up his father with distrustful eyes & a swallowed sneer.

these days, he sizes up his own mother with the same distrust --- if she were to keep a good man from him, why? these are the days where she offers pretty words & a kiss to his forehead rather than an honest answer. she looks at him with such kindness, such gentle love. her eyes regard him as if he alone hung the sun in the sky & turned its dial to the evening to mark the passage of time.

that kindness corrodes against his faith now, leaving more questions in her wake than ever the answers she offered.

the door swings open on silent hinges, freshly bloody fingers leaving careless streaks down the wood. the butler will clean it later.

in that same kindness, she now perches at the edge of his bed. the warm light of the hall spills into the dark space, curling around the warrior woman in all her grace. her posture reeks of self-righteousness.

his nose wrinkles & that streak of blood falls free of the hardwood as damian moves further into his room. no pain flickers up his arm, this blood was never his.

but he does not acknowledge it, instead tilts his chin towards the easel propped against his locked balcony doors but she has less interest in the swirling fountain of colors on the thick canvas. she will fawn, she will dote -- in her way. nimble fingers comb through his hair, confirming no head injuries before those same cold fingers slide against his cheeks. then a kiss to his forehead & the boy cannot help the tug of a smile against his lips.

this is how we could stay forever, he decides in the moment, we could go home & never look back. mother & son, bathed in the manor's years of fracturing light as it dances from one reflective surface to another, lock eyes. she looks at him with that sweetness, that gentleness only a mother might offer as she asks after his health.

and there it is again, that bubbling unexplained frustration stains his tongue & he drops her gaze. the moment of forever encapsulated is gone, replaced with the reality that he stands in a bedroom given to him by a father that did not know of his existence, held by the mother that sent him to the billionaire's doorstep without so much as an explanation.

he had thought they were better than that, that she & damian would never have the one-sided darkened relationship that talia weathers with her own father. she PROMISED him honesty, had PROMISED that she would protect him from the cruel world past the borders of nanda parbat. she fucking PROMISED she would never abandon him.

then his twelfth birthday crested the dawn, his sword at her neck. that day ruined everything they had built, that day brought him into a world unknown and the only anchor the child had ever known left his side.

he can name that bitter taste in his mouth now, as he stares wordlessly up at her. that taste is betrayal.

the crinkle in his nasal bridge increases to a scowl as the thoughts shuffle into clear view. still, she looks at him with such unguarded eyes. how can she show such softness as if she did not uproot his entire life without more than a rushed apology?

a single finger lifts to address the canvas once more with its dazzling minutiae of stars. a painting from memory, to remind him of how the familiar sky looked without the suffocating smog of gotham city.

❝ that one --- is for you. ❞ she will leave soon, after collecting the bounty & a few teasing words to his father -- wherever he might be in the manor, talia will find him.

damian's eyes turn downcast. she should just leave without acknowledging him, for how little she must sincerely care.

lips press to his forehead again. she whispers words of encouragement & love against the wisps of coal black hair that sweep his cranium, the closest to a prayer the great talia al ghūl might get.

if he were childish, if he had the range of human emotion of a toddler, he might weep right here. he pulls away.

silent as the night winds that bow to her step, talia is gone when he finally lifts his gaze again. good, now his self-inflicted pity party can begin.

he crosses the threshold back towards the door, shoves it closed with too loud a slam & slides the singular lock into place. then the traps are placed, tight wires meant to rouse him from sleep at the first sign of disruption. room now secure, the boy walks to his easel & picks up the thickest of brushes. he squishes it between his fingers, the blood of gotham strangers mixing with the damp brush fresh from use hours prior. he tilts his head, listening for his mother's soft tinkling laughter.

only the silence & the faint ring of his eardrums greet him. @pitborn !

[exghul]

kisses her sweet boy on the head

stares forward in Teenage Angst™ -- but affords a soft smile nonetheless. once a mama's boy....

[exghul]

the crushing weight of a father's disappointment slopes the boy's shoulders, folding damian's frame smaller in his seat. despite the bitterness etched into the boy's brow, eyes are downcast to avoid that steely, judgemental gaze. that voice booms as it slams around in his skull, the distaste for his own son splattered in his words.

the disdain in the batman's eyes --- in the eyes of bruce wayne, his newfound father --- is too much for a boy upturned of his familiar life to bear. gloved hands reach up, adjust the ill-fitted mask that covers his eyes. he barely had a single glance in a reflective surface before departure: he saw a boy standing there, staring back through cold, milk white eye slits. he saw a boy who was thrust into a world that is not his own, one that picked up a weapon and kept moving. he saw a warrior, talia's pride.

now as he fixates his gaze on the city racing past him, he feels nothing of that warrior's strength. he is a boy in a city. they do not worship him.

there is too much rain here, every night this week has been a monsoon threatening the city's bones.

it appears, however, by the bustle of calm citizens & their umbrellas in the night air that this is only concerning to damian. damian, the outsider. damian, who knows only dry deserts & deep, underground utopias teeming with flora. this amount of water in a day alone would have spelled untold disaster in eish al'afeaa or within the peaceful walls of nanda parbat.

here, there is an infrastructure he had only ever read about: giant storm drains, miles of complex sewer routes, and filtration systems before the downpour above is redirected into the rivers weaving throughout the city. if he were here with his mother, damian might have recited facts about the area, might have regaled her with tribulations that all converged into modern sanitization practices. if he were to glance over his left shoulder, that enthusiasm would drain cold in his veins into pools of anxiety.

surely, they have traveled kilometers from the cave. surely, his father might cut through their silence & display the worldly charisma that damian read about.

the billionaire playboy, gotham's son.

was his mother nothing more than a means to an end? or is he obligated by some noble duty to care for her ilk, regardless of any reservation of his own?

lips part, then are wetted, then close again. he cannot find words that do not bite, nor words that ask meaningful questions.

his gaze falls from the overload of the city & the night's neon colors to his lap where hands clasp. hands stained in blood, crimson soaking through synthetic leather down to skin.

this costume is not his own, not his to sully. and yet, he dishonors it for his own means. @batsie 🖤

[exghul]

brows furrow , lip juts .    it’s UNFAIR !   why does grayson get to sneak away with an entire group of new friends , away from home ?    why can’t he at least tell damian where he goes ?     when faced with a secret , naturally damian does what he does best ----- he melted into the shadows and followed his oldest brother .    so now here he stands , perched on the edge of a chair with arms folded wearing robin gear far too big for his body .   it’s jason’s .

❝    it’s your own fault , richard .   ❞

       @asterbatics     +    ♥   !