Chapter Text
“There is one oxygen tank, only one of you can escape,” the gravely voice devolved into laughter. “Who will it be, Batman? Which one of your children will you save? Or will you decide to save yourself?” The voice laughed again, louder this time.
Fuck, Damian thought to himself. He tried not to devolve into using swear words like Todd tended to, he was raised to know better. But this situation did not look good, the room was slowly filling with water, the villain who had captured them-Batman, Nightwing, Red Hood, Red Robin, Spoiler, Black Bat, and himself, Robin-had thought of everything, Oracle didn’t know where they were, and everyone who could help like Huntress or Batwoman were out of town. They had all been knocked out by some gas while fighting some new villain and had woken up in a cramped room. According to the disembodied voice the oxygen was enough to last ten minutes, once the time was up a door would open up and let them out. But once the mask was put on one's face it couldn’t be taken off. Only one of them was going to make it out of here.
Surely father or Grayson should be the one to survive? They are the strongest and most important to their respective teams, father to the Justice League and Grayson to the Titans. Damian looked up at the rest of the people in the room, his family, about to share his opinion when he realized they were all staring at him.
Weird.
Whatever.
Damian decided to ignore them, they were all so sentimental. He had been prepared to die since he first started walking. “Obviously Batman or Nightwing should be the one to get it, they are the most important to the cause.” Damian announced. Everyone just stared. What is wrong with them, only then did the panic start to set in, What are they doing? We need to be figuring this out right now. The water had just reached Damian's ankle, they didn’t have much time left.
“Why are you all just staring like that? We don’t have enough time for this!” Damian knew he was acting like a child, raising his voice like that but he didn’t know what else to do, they were being so strange.
Dick slowly walked towards Damian, crouching down to his height, “Little wing,” he began hesitantly, “you know that we can’t take it.” His voice was so soft, so gentle, so unnerving.
“Gr-Nightwing?” Damian almost forgot to use code names. “What’s going on?”
“Robin, you have to take the oxygen, you have to survive.”
What? That doesn’t make any sense. As much as he hated to admit it, Damian knew he wasn’t the strongest out of all of them. He definitely wouldn’t be as useful as the others, he knew Grayson and Bruce had savior complexes though, he had assumed they wouldn’t want to be the ones who survived. He thought they would fight it. But why pick him to survive? Damian had Killed in the past, they knew this. Death was a reasonable punishment for killing right? Why not pick someone who hadn’t killed, like Tim? Or Spoiler? And sure Black Bat had killed but surely she had atoned for it by now, and she seemed to be fathers favorite most of the time anyway. Did Grayson really want to save Damian out of all of them, surely the others didn’t agree?
Damian looked at the others, they were all looking at him expectantly and some a little sadly.
“It’ll all be okay, Robin,” Drake said reassuringly, and wasn’t that weird, Drake reassuring Damian. Drake Hated Damian, he was sure of it. What is going on?
“Come here kid, we should put this on you sooner rather than later,” Red Hood said from next to the oxygen tank, suspiciously enough his tone sounded gentle, even from underneath the voice changer. Why are they acting like this?
Grayson started to push Damian towards Todd. No, this can’t be right, most of these people don’t even like me. Father, Grayson, Todd, and Cassandra are all stronger than me, and much more experienced. Drake is much smarter, Brown is much better with civilians than me and she’s being trained to be a doctor.
And they haven’t killed anyone (except Cassandra but she has atoned for it).
Cassandra reached out to stroke his hair gently as Spoiler told him that everything would be okay. That was his breaking point. Because no, everything would not be okay. For some reason they all decided that he deserved to live more than them. And for some reason this was a horrific thought to him but in a weird way warmed him in a way he hadn’t felt since he was five, the last time his mother had hugged him and whispered into his ear and petted his hair comfortingly. However at the same time the thought chilled him to his bones, they are all about to die, seemed to be the only thought he could think.
“No!” He shouted right before Todd could fit the mask on his face, he knew he sounded like an indignant toddler but he couldn’t stop himself now. “Stop doing this, why save me? You're all so much more useful than I am! Most of you don’t even like me, I’ve tried to kill Dr- Red Robin multiple times!” Damian's voice shrank to a whisper, “And I’ve succeeded in killing many more people.” Tears had started pricking his eyes and they were threatening to fall.
The water had almost reached his shoulders at this point.
Strong arms wrapped around him, “Dami, we all love you, so, so much. I’m so sorry we didn’t show it better.” Grayson’s words somehow broke him even further, he’s about to die and it’s my fault. Damian wouldn’t let that happen, he refused to let the mask be put on him, so when Todd took the opportunity of Grayson holding him down as a chance to put the mask on him Damian did the only thing he could think of. He started thrashing. He couldn’t hold back the tears anymore either. I’ve sunk to new lows, was the only coherent thought he managed to string together in his whittling mind currently filled with despair as he threw a tantrum for the first time in his life.
Finally, father spoke, his voice suspiciously thick as though he was close to crying, “Damian, you need to calm down,” then his voice shifted from his Bruce voice to his Batman voice, “You need to put the mask on now. You will get out of this room and forget about all of us until you are safe,” his voice commanded. Grayson was holding his arms to his sides now, no matter how skilled he was Grayson was much stronger, Todd did his best to wipe Damian’s tears before sticking the mask on his face. Immediately despair filled him, he went limp in Grayson's arms. Grayson took that as an invitation to hug Damian even tighter, this time to comfort him. The water was now getting dangerously close to reaching Drake, Cassandra, and Browns’ heads.
The others were now getting closer, trying to comfort him, how messed up is that? They’re the ones who are about to die, yet they feel the need to comfort me? I’m an embarrassment, I shouldn’t be acting like such a child.
“We all love you so much Damian,” Grayson was whispering into his ear, Damian hadn’t even realized but he had been turned around in his arms and was burying his face in Grayson’s neck as best he could with the mask on. Father was rubbing circles on his back, Cassandra was gently brushing her hands through his hair, Brown and Drake were clinging to each other’s shoulders but Brown also held one of his hands and Drake was also whispering that it would all be okay, even though the water was rising and soon they would need to swim to keep their mouths above the water.
Why are they doing this, he thought as he did his best to calm his tears. He knew now that if he was going to have to be the survivor he had to actually try to not die which meant conserving his air and not wasting his energy on tantrums.
“Damian, promise you’ll get out please,” father suddenly paused his circles on his back to plead with Damian.
As Damian's crying slowed to sniffles he just barely managed to choke out a quiet, “I promise, dad.” His voice was muffled by the mask, but the grunt he received in response told him that father was satisfied with this response. The room was so small that it wasn’t like any of them would even need to swim for very long but it meant that the room was going to fill very quickly, and Damian would have to watch his family die slowly once that happened.
He tried to focus on the grounding presence of his family surrounding him for the last minute that they could actually breathe. Not long after though, the room was filled to the brim with water. Damian forced himself to open his eyes and look around at his family, slowly choking and struggling as water filled their lungs.
It was devastating. In all his life he had never seen a more horrific sight than having to watch his entire family struggle for air, thrashing in the water. Minute one was okay, most of the family had an above average lung capacity allowing them to hold their breaths for most of that time. Most of them couldn’t hold their breaths longer than that though, Tim broke first, swallowing a large gulp of water, Stephanie followed soon after. After just a minute and a half every single one of Damian's family members were struggling to breathe, getting only water instead of air in their lungs.
Just as Drake as Brown seemed to be on the verge of losing consciousness a loud bang sounded, just a few seconds later a second louder bang sounded and then one of the cement walls was crumbling and the water was pouring out of the room along with him and all his family.
“Oh golly, are you all okay?” Superman's voice was muffled from the water stuck in Damian’s ears. Damian didn’t waste time even looking at him as he rushed to his nearest family member, Brown, before ripping off his mask and starting chest compressions. He risked a glance to see that Superman had brought allies: Green Lantern, the Flash, Wonder Woman and… Thomas? were also attending to his family along with Superman. Damian decided to not dwell on the fact that Signal came here with Superman.
Luckily, it didn’t take too long for Brown to cough up the water in her throat. Damian looked up to see that the rest of his family was in a similar position, someone holding them up to help them cough up the rest of the water in their lungs. Damian couldn’t help himself, he thought back to her reassuring words, and he looked down to see that she was looking at him gratefully (even though he knew he didn’t deserve it, she would have done the same for him).
He threw his arms around her as soon as she had stopped coughing up water. “I can’t believe you, all of you,” he whispered. “You are not allowed to leave me behind.”
Brown hesitated for a moment, clearly surprised by his showing of affection, before wrapping her arms around him. “We won’t leave you behind again Dami, I’m so sorry you had to go through all that.” Brown responded, her voice low and rough from the water.
Brown started leaning backwards but Damian wasn’t ready to let go, so he leaned with her until he was half laying on her chest. Slowly the tears began to fall. He let them.