Chapter Text
He regrets many things in his life. The list is long, longer than he would ever admit aloud, catalogued somewhere in the back of his mind alongside every failure his mother and grandfather never spoke of but always seemed to notice. And yet, lying here with his blood seeping into the cracked pavement beneath him, Damian cannot truly convince himself that he should be regretful of his fast-coming death.
After all, all things must have an end. He has known this since he was old enough to hold a blade, since his grandfather first explained to him, with the patience of a man discussing the weather, that death was simply the price of a life lived with purpose. Damian had never feared it the way other children might have. He had simply expected it, the way one expects the sun to set.
What he had not expected, what he had never allowed himself to imagine in any detail, was how.
He had always pictured something grander. Dying with honour, in the heat of a battle worth fighting, his blade in hand and his enemies before him. Or, on the nights when the exhaustion of the cowl wore him thin enough to admit softer things to himself, he pictured something else entirely: an old man's death, decades away, lying in a soft bed with Alfred the cat curled against his chest, purring low and steady, and Titus sprawled heavy and warm across his feet. A quiet death, one that could never come true. A deserved one, after a life spent earning it.
Maybe it was a result of his upbringing — the League's particular obsession with honourable ends, drilled into him before he could properly understand it for himself. Or maybe he was still searching for some kind of purpose, some proof that his existence had mattered.
But even with all that thought given to his eventual end, Damian never imagined it would happen this soon. Though, if he was being honest with himself, and actively dying seems an appropriate time for honesty, it was something of a miracle he had survived this long at all. Not even legally an adult and yet, he had cheated death more times than men three times his age. He supposes the universe was simply calling in its debts.
That philosophical late-night thinking did nothing to stop the paralysing, white-hot fear from seizing him when the cool metal slid between his ribs and out the other side, pinning him to the ground like some grotesque specimen mounted for display.
There had been no warning. One moment he had been mid-motion, blade arcing, and the next, the world had simply stopped, his body betraying him with a suddenness that felt almost insulting. He laid there afterward, blinking up into a sky he couldn't properly see, Gotham’s haze swallowing whatever stars might have been visible. He could feel something warm and slick pooling beneath him, spreading slowly along his back, soaking into his suit.
Was that his blood?
It seemed an absurd question to be asking himself in the moment, but his mind kept circling back to it regardless, almost lazily. Some objective part of him, the part trained to assess injuries, to kill, to survive, noted distantly that there was a great deal of it, more than should be possible to lose and still be conscious enough to contemplate the loss.
He heard Nightwing scream.
The sound cut through the fog settling over his mind, sharp and immediate. It was a sound devoid of words, devoid of anything except raw, unfiltered despair, the kind of sound Damian had never once heard his older brother make, not in all their years of fighting side by side, not through broken bones or burned skin or the dozen other catastrophes that came with the family business. Grayson did not make sounds like that. Grayson made jokes in the face of disaster, made quips while bleeding out, made the kind of forced levity that the rest of them had learned to lean on because the alternative was unbearable.
This was the alternative. This was unbearable.
Damian tried to will himself to be present, tried to force his fading senses to focus, to hear his brother's frantic words (reassurances, no doubt, that he would be alright, that he just needed to hold on, that help was coming) the same lies they all told each other in moments like this, because the lies were sometimes the only thing that kept a person breathing long enough for help to actually arrive.
It was useless. The words wouldn't resolve into anything coherent, just a wash of sound and panic that seemed to come from very far away, even though he knew, distantly, that Grayson must be right there above him.
He could feel himself slipping. Not in any dramatic, cinematic way, there was no tunnel of light, no looming darkness reaching for him. Just a quiet, creeping numbness that started at the edges of him and worked steadily inward, like ice spreading across a pond, and a heaviness behind his eyes that made the act of keeping them open feel like the hardest thing he had ever done.
Suddenly, there were hands on him, gripping his shoulders, shaking him with a force that should have hurt and somehow didn't. He realised, with the kind of detached surprise that should have alarmed him more than it did, that he had closed his eyes at some point without noticing. There was no pain accompanying the realisation. Just a floating sensation, weightless and strange, that even Grayson's desperate hands couldn't seem to anchor him against.
From one moment to the next, everything paused.
Not stopped, paused. As though some great cosmic hand had reached down and pressed an invisible button, freezing the scene mid-motion: Grayson's hands still gripping his shoulders, the warmth still pooling beneath him, the scream still echoing somewhere just behind his ears. A held breath, stretched out into something that had no discernible length, no weight, no end that he could perceive.
Then, he gasped.
His chest expanded with a violence that bordered on agony, air rushing into lungs that felt suddenly, achingly empty, and his hands scrabbled instinctively for purchase against ground that was no suddenly different. He registered, somewhere in the chaos of returning consciousness, that the texture beneath his palms was wrong, gravel and grit instead of the smooth pavement of the battle, cool and slightly damp instead of slick with his own blood. He started hacking, deep, wracking coughs that bent him forward, his whole body convulsing with the effort of reclaiming air it had been denied.
Through eyes squinted nearly shut against the assault of returning sensation, Damian could make out darkness, proper darkness, not the dim haze of a Gotham night sky, but the close, suffocating dark of somewhere narrow and enclosed. Buildings stretched upward on either side of him, their walls rising high enough that whatever sky existed above was reduced to a thin, distant ribbon. An alley, most likely.
That's strange, he thinks, the observation slow and sluggish through the fog still clinging to his mind. He's fairly certain there hadn't been a magic user involved in the fight. He runs through his list of known metahuman and mystical threats currently active in Gotham, a habit so ingrained it surfaces even now, disoriented and freshly stabbed. None of them fit. Unless, of course, there had been someone hidden, some unknown variable waiting patiently in the wings to strike him while he was unaware, while every ounce of his attention had been consumed by simply staying alive.
But, and here the thought stutters, refusing to resolve into anything sensible, that doesn't make sense either. Why would an enemy bother teleporting him somewhere at all? If someone wanted him dead, they had a sword conveniently already lodged in his chest to finish the job. Transporting him elsewhere accomplished nothing except complicating their own murder attempt, and whatever else Damian's enemies tended to be, they were rarely that inefficient.
The tightness in his chest, sharp and insistent, pulls his attention violently away from that puzzle and back to the more immediate problem of his own breathing. Or, more accurately, the alarming absence of it.
The air simply isn't going anywhere. He can feel his chest moving, can feel the muscles straining with the effort, but nothing seems to be making it past his throat, and the world is beginning to narrow at the edges in a way he recognises with mounting horror.
With a panicked, visceral realisation of I can't breathe, Damian's hands fly to his own chest, clawing and pulling at the material there with a desperation entirely unbecoming of his training, but the Kevlar of his suit refuses to give, unyielding beneath frantic fingers that can't seem to find purchase or strength.
'Damn,' his muddled brain supplies, with all the useless clarity of a thought arriving several seconds too late to matter.
His breath comes in fast, shallow gasps that don't seem to be doing anything except making the panic worse, his chest constricting painfully with every failed attempt, stuttering on air that refuses to be sucked in no matter how hard he tries. He can feel his pulse hammering somewhere in his throat, frantic and uneven, each beat seeming to echo the rising static creeping into the corners of his vision.
He rolls bodily onto his side, an action that takes more effort than it should, his limbs heavy and uncooperative, and attempts, futilely, to force more of the precious, scarce oxygen into lungs that don't seem inclined to cooperate. Black spots are edging steadily into his peripheral vision now, blooming and receding like ink dropped into water, and beneath the panic there is a creeping, horrible sensation of his entire body weakening, betraying him, slipping from his control inch by inch despite every ounce of will he throws against it.
Drool drips down his chin as he gasps, an indignity he would, under any other circumstance, be deeply embarrassed by. Here, now, alone in a strange alley with his lungs apparently refusing to function, he can spare no thought for dignity at all.
Suddenly, a car horn sounds nearby, deafening in the otherwise quiet alley, sharp and jarring enough to cut clean through the panic fogging his mind.
Damian startles violently at the sound, and in the involuntary jolt of surprise, he sucks in a breath. A real one. Then another, smaller, more controlled, as though his body had simply needed the shock to remember how the mechanism worked in the first place. He starts to relax, fractionally, as his lungs finally, blessedly, accept the oxygen being offered to them. It still feels wrong somehow, his chest stuttering painfully with each inhale, as though some part of him remains convinced that breathing is a privilege that might be revoked again at any moment, but he eventually manages to even his breathing out, settling into something steadier, if still faintly shaky.
Damian remains on his side for a long moment afterward, simply breathing, simply existing, before he trusts himself enough to take stock of his surroundings properly. Now that he can think clearly again, or clearly enough, at least, he can make out heaps of trash lining the walls of the alley, along with graffiti sprawled across the brick that he can't quite make out properly in the dim, uneven light. He wrinkles his nose in distaste.
He's in Gotham, probably. The smell alone is something of a confirmation.
Slowly, carefully, Damian gets his legs underneath him, pausing to make sure they'll actually hold his weight before committing to the motion, and pushes himself upright. He is careful, to avoid touching the walls on either side of him, an instinct born of long experience with exactly what kinds of things tend to accumulate on Gotham alley walls. Once upright, swaying only slightly, he turns his attention toward what he assumes must be the entrance of the alley, a faint suggestion of greater light somewhere ahead of him.
It is dark, properly dark, with only a single streetlamp visible, casting a weak, flickering circle of illumination some distance away. The sight tugs at a memory, surfacing unbidden: one of the countless galas he had been forced to attend over the years, most of them lost entirely to the monotony of perfunctory small talk and overpriced champagne he wasn't legally permitted to drink that Dick would slip to him when father wasn’t looking. But he does remember a gala dedicated to his father giving a substantial sum, handed over with practiced philanthropic charm of course, for the installation of additional streetlamps throughout the city's more neglected areas. Supposedly, as his father had spouted at the time, studies had shown that increased lighting reduced crime rates.
Damian scoffs aloud into the empty night, the sound bouncing flatly off the brick walls around him. Not only does he suspect that particular study was commissioned by whichever lighting company stood to profit most from the contract, but he has absolutely no faith that the money in question ever actually became streetlamps in the first place. Trust Gotham's government to accept a generous donation with one hand and quietly pocket it with the other, leaving districts like this one in exactly the same darkness they'd always been in. He has never fully understood why his father continues to throw money at corrupt local politicians with such unwavering, almost naive optimism. There is more practical value, he thinks, in using that money as toilet paper than in trusting any of them to actually act in the interest in the people of Gotham.
Reaching the mouth of the alley, Damian steps out and looks around properly for the first time, his eyes adjusting to take in more of his surroundings. Immediately, a fresh wave of unease settles over him: this is unfamiliar territory. Not vaguely unfamiliar, the way an unremarkable street corner might be if he'd simply never had reason to patrol it before, but entirely unfamiliar, in a way that makes something cold settle low in his stomach. His League training, reinforced relentlessly by his work as Robin, had drilled into him the absolute importance of always knowing exactly where he was. A person who loses track of his location loses every advantage that knowledge provides. There should be no street in Gotham, no alley, no forgotten corner of the city that he doesn't at least recognise on sight.
That's odd, he thinks again, the phrase becoming something of a refrain at this point.
A breeze slips past him then, gentle and unremarkable, ruffling through his hair , but it also slides across his chest in a way that makes him abruptly and uncomfortably aware of something he had been too distracted to notice until now. There is a rip in his uniform. Right in the centre of his chest, precisely where the blade had gone through.
The realisation sends an unpleasant chill skittering down his spine, sharper and colder than the breeze itself. He doesn't dwell on it, can't quite bring himself to, not yet, not until he has a better grasp of where exactly he's ended up. But, the awareness lingers regardless, an itch at the back of his mind he can't quite scratch away.
Unsettled now, and feeling oddly self-conscious in a way he would normally resent, Damian cautiously steps further out of the alley's shadow and onto the street proper. He turns left, scanning the empty stretch of road, then right, finding much the same: no signs of life in either direction, no indication of where he might be or how he might have gotten there. After a moment's consideration, he decides to head right, reasoning somewhat thinly, that the car horn he'd heard earlier had come from that general direction, and a car implies a driver, and a driver implies someone who might be able to tell him where, precisely, he has ended up.
Still a little unsteady on his feet, the residual weakness from his ordeal lingering in his muscles, Damian makes his way down the sidewalk with none of the practiced grace that years of rigorous training had instilled in him. It is, he thinks distantly, almost embarrassing, the great heir of the al Ghul legacy, reduced to stumbling gracelessly along a Gotham sidewalk like some common drunk. He's grateful, at least, that there's no one around to witness it.
That gratitude proves short-lived. Before long, he comes upon a man and a woman, standing in the middle of the road, locked in what is very clearly the middle of an argument.
The woman is the more immediately noticeable of the two, yelling, her arms flailing about with theatrical abandon, every gesture exaggerated to the point of performance. The man, by contrast, stands frozen, an expression of overwhelmed, slightly panicked helplessness fixed on his face, the universal look of someone who has long since given up trying to get a word in.
"—ook at my car! It's completely totalled!" Damian hears her shriek as he draws closer, watching her jab an accusing finger toward a blue sedan parked nearby, its rear end visibly dented from what appears to have been a fairly minor collision. Damian eyes the damage critically. It's barely dented. He's seen far worse inflicted on vehicles during routine patrols that didn't warrant nearly this level of hysteria.
"Again, I'm so sorry, Ma'am, but I don't think it's complet—" the man stammers, visibly cowed, clearly intimidated by the sheer force of the woman's fury, before she cuts him off entirely.
"It's ruined!" she screams, the word practically reverberating off the surrounding buildings, before she collapses dramatically onto the pavement. "I can't even afford car insurance," she moans, the pitch of her voice dropping into something more pitiful, as she gazes up at the man with wide, desperate eyes. "I won't be able to drive to work, and then I'll be fired, and then I won't be able to afford my rent, and then—"
She cuts herself off abruptly, her gaze snapping away from the man entirely and landing, with sudden and unsettling precision, directly on Damian.
He hadn't realised, until that moment, that she had already noticed him standing there.
"What?" she snaps, her voice sharpening instantly, all traces of pitiful helplessness evaporating into something far more defensive, far more hostile. Her expression twists into a pinched mask of anger as she scrambles back to her feet, rounding on him fully now. "Is my life being ruined entertaining for you?" she demands, the accusation landing with surprising venom. "You freaks in costumes, always parading around, never actually helping real people, unlike the bullshit Spider-Man likes to spout, only ever looking for glory, or fame, or — or maybe some weird sexual kink."
'Wow,' Damian thinks, momentarily, genuinely stunned into silence, the sheer astonishment of the accusation knocking loose whatever response he might otherwise have had ready.
Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore, he thinks hysterically.
He becomes, all at once, acutely and uncomfortably aware that he is, in fact, still standing there in full costume, rip in the chest and all.
That, he thinks, with no small amount of bewilderment, came entirely out of nowhere. Also, Who’s Spider-Man?