Work Text:
That day began like any other. Eight-years-old Damian and Danyal woke up, ran a few laps around the compound, sparred like they used to and then went to freshen up and eat breakfast. At midmorning, their routine changed: Grandfather summoned an extraordinary meeting.
Damian and Danyal exchanged an entire conversation with a look. That’s the way it was to be if they wanted to survive in the League. Any facial or bodily expression would be read, interpreted and snitched on, so they kept their faces blank while they communicated with their eyes. Both their gazes held the same questions: why and why did they not know? As the heirs in training of Ra’s al-Ghul, they were always present when decisions such as this were made, even if they yet had no authority to opine, advice or suggest. They were meant to be seen and not heard, while they soaked in everything it took to lead the League of Assassins.
Damian and Danyal were the first to arrive aside from their mother. Their grandfather was already seated at the front of the room in the customary sen position. They bowed low to him and took their places in front of him. Their mother sat to his left. Their uncle followed and sat on their grandfather’s right hand position. Other select members of the League began to trickle in, including mother’s pet project.
“Today, we witness a momentous occasion,” Ra’s began once everyone was seated, “today, I choose my successor and future heir to the League of Assassins. Everyone present has my utmost confidence and trust in ensuring that my will is preserved.”
Damian and Danyal didn’t outwardly show any reaction, but they did exchange one single sideways look. In it, they both conveyed their surprise, dismay, and terror.
Since the day they were born, Damian and Danny had oscillated in their favor from Grandfather. Some days, Damian was the preferred grandson. Other times, Danyal was. It happened the most after successful missions or a particularly clever solution to a puzzle or a particularly efficient move in training. Damian and Danyal couldn’t reliably predict when Grandfather’s mood would switch; however, they could depend on one another.
When Grandfather was vicious in his criticism of Danyal’s form, Damian would train longer with him to perfect it. When Grandfather ignored Damian for a perceived failure in any given mission, Danyal would help Damian go over the mission to decipher what Grandfather had perceived as a weakness or an error. When one failed, the other picked him up. They knew there could only be one heir. They hoped that if they were evenly matched, their Grandfather would decide they both could be the heir together.
In hindsight, that was only ever going to be a childhood fantasy.
“I will choose my successor by way of single combat to the death,” Ra’s finished and stood in front of Damian and Danyal. They stood up, as well. They took their positions on their usual sparring places in the tatami. They bowed to Grandfather. Then they faced one another and locked eyes.
I don’t want to do this.
Me neither.
How do we get out of it?
I don’t know.
They took the weapons presented to them by an aide. Damian took the katana; Danyal took the wakizashi. They shared another look.
Dami?
I don’t know what to do.
Don’t hold back. I won’t hold back either.
We are the same in skill.
We are the same in stamina.
We can stall.
They bowed to each other, and began the last spar they’d ever have.
They stroke, parried, blocked, ducked. At some point, Damian kicked away Danyal’s wakizashi and Danyal gave Damian a kick that probably bruised his ribs so he could get it back. Then, Danyal locked their swords together and Damian had to break Danyal’s kneecap to break the lock. They had been going at it for hours, much longer than they were used to, neither willing to give way to the other and both willing Grandfather to step in, declare them both worthy and call it a day. But Grandfather’s look only grew more critical, harsher and angrier as the battle dragged on.
Danyal realized that Grandfather was never going to step in. Like a bucket of cold water, Danyal understood that Grandfather’s plan had always been to pit them against each other so they could kill the other without remorse. He locked eyes with Damian, and saw that he had realized the same.
I’m sorry.
Don’t you dare.
There’s no way out.
We can still stall this. Make Grandfather understand his only choice is both of us.
Then he’ll decide who to kill. It will be painful.
Danny.
I’m sorry.
Danny, please.
Danyal moved his blade minutely, so that Damian’s blade would have no resistance or opposition as it pierced Danyal’s heart. And as much as it hurt to have been run through, the look in Damian’s eyes as Danyal faded hurt more.
Why did you make me do this?
I couldn’t kill you.
So you made me kill you?
I’m sorry.
Please, don’t leave me.
But that was one command Danyal couldn’t obey and as he slipped into oblivion, he kept his eyes locked with Damian as he tried to convey reassurance, compassion and love.
In the aftermath of the fight, Damian had been locked in his room by his mother for behavior unbecoming of The Heir. Damian didn’t care. He might care tomorrow, or the day after, or he might never care about anything at all anymore because the one person who he cared for the most in the world was gone. Danyal was gone because Damian killed him.
He'd cried, he’s sobbed, he’d raged and screamed, he’d pleaded with his mother to put Danyal inside the Lazarus pit, but it had all been for naught. At some point between Danyal’s death (murder; you murdered your own brother) and Damian’s return to their room, all of Danyal’s stuff had been removed. Instead of two beds, now there was only one. Instead of two sets of drawers, now there was only one. All of Danyal’s clothes, all of his weapons, all the little knick-knacks that he liked to collect on missions, everything was gone. Damian would know. He’d already upturned the furniture looking for anything of Danyal’s that could have been left behind. But there was nothing.
It was as if Danyal had never existed.
The next morning, Mother came to wake him up. Damian, still sluggish from his exhausted, grief-induced sleep took a second too long and Mother slapped him.
“Pull yourself together, Damian,” she demanded, and while this treatment wasn’t unusual, Damian felt it a thousand times worse because he was alone and he seemed to be the only one who cared about it. She seemed to read his mind, because she slapped him again.
“You better be dressed and ready to begin your new training as The Heir in the next two minutes or you will be punished. Severely,” she said.
Damian went through the motions and did as she asked. He knew what being punished entailed. He’d rather avoid that. Damian told himself that it was his fault Danyal was dead, anyway, so what right did he have to grieve? He pushed away the memories of Danyal and the hollow feeling in his chest and met with Grandfather to go over what his new training regime would entail. Damian threw himself into becoming the Demon Head. He wasn’t a brother anymore, and he clearly wasn’t human, if he could just push away Danyal’s memory and pretend he never existed. He could only be the Demon Head, and if nothing else, he’d made Grandfather proud.
Two years and something later, Grandfather was dead and Mother dropped him off with Father, who spent his days acting like a frivolous business man and his nights moonlighting as Batman. Damian was confused for all of two seconds before he became a spitting ball of rage as he’d never felt before. What was the point of… everything if Grandfather was just going to up and die? If Mother was going to drop him off in Gotham and prevent him from enacting his revenge? If Father was going to treat him like a baby and not allow him to fight?
And then he met Richard Greyson.
Not only Richard, but also Jason, who apparently had also been in the League at some point but managed to escape, and Cassandra Cain and Tim Drake and Stephanie Brown and Duke Thomas and Damian hated every single one of them. How dare they? How dare Father call them his, when Damian should have been the only one? How dare Father call them his when Danyal was buried in an unmarked grave in Nanda Parbat with no one to grieve him and no one to miss him (except him, for since Danyal’s death Damian had been living as half a person but eventually got used to it). How dare they call themselves his siblings when Damian had spent so much time trying to forget he already had Danyal and lost him (murdered; he murdered his own brother)?
And yet…
After the Deathstroke debacle in which he nearly lost his mother (why does he keep losing people he wants to protect?) and deciding to make living with Father a more permanent arrangement, he began to wonder. He observed the way the siblings interacted with each other and with Father. While Father was stoic, especially during their work as vigilantes, he’d always been fair. He’d never hit Damian, or any of the others, when they’d failed –no, not failed, Father called it mistakes– nor punished them, even when their mistakes had cost them to lose a lead, got someone injured or got them injured themselves.
When they lost Father, albeit briefly, Damian saw the siblings grieve.
Damian wanted to slap all of them and tell them to pull themselves together, but he seemed to be the only one who felt like that. They all had their quiet moments in which they had whispered, hushed conversations about Father and shed a few tears here and there. Damian never believed Father could be gone, either way, but it came as a bit of a shock to see them so openly mourn.
His heart throbbed. He’d been away from the League enough years now to realize that most things that happened there were cruel and inhumane. He wondered if forcing Damian to kill Danyal was one of those, but he didn’t know and he didn’t want to ask. Danyal was his biggest regret, but also his biggest shame; revealing to Father that he had a dead son would undoubtedly lead to questions on how said son died, and after so many lectures on the value of life and why Batman and Robin don’t kill, Damian was afraid to lose the trust he’d managed to build with Father. He didn’t want to lose Father, not after he’d already lost so much.
Part of him knew he was being selfish, and seeing his siblings mourn their Father made him think that Father should know he had a son who died before he passed for real. So, when they rescued Batman from the clutches of his mother, of all people, Damian was resolved to tell him. Only to discover that it wasn’t really him, but his mother had him under mind control.
And then Mother died and Damian had no idea how to deal with it. How did he mourn for someone who had harmed him so thoroughly and so deeply? Why did he even feel grief for the woman who stood aside as Damian killed Danyal, who took Father from him and attempted to kill Damian, too, multiple times?
As he contemplated this sitting in front of the fountain, Father joined him silently.
“I don’t know how to grieve,” Damian said, bluntly. Father didn’t respond right away; Damian was grateful for that, as he tried to put his feelings into words, “last time… Mother erased every trace of him, pretended he never existed and expected me to move on. So, I moved on.”
“I doubt you did, son,” Father replied, calmly processing this new information, “do you remember when you arrived with us? How angry you were? How violent? Despite you claiming it was your training, your training was supposed to keep you cold, calm and collected. You were everything but.”
Damian let out a mirthless chuckle, “I suppose I was, wasn’t I?”
“Not being allowed to grieve someone you cared about would do that to a person,” Father continued, “not to mention you had just lost your grandfather, and even though he was not a good person, he was still someone you admired and held in high esteem.”
The words were on the tip of Damian’s mouth, now. He could just tell Father, now, about Danyal. Maybe they could grieve his twin together.
But then he remembered how Father, even under mind control, refused to kill Richard and him. Even under mind control, Father’s will to not kill, especially not people he loved, allowed him to break free from under Mother’s control. Damian hadn’t been under mind control when ordered to kill his twin brother. Would Father look down on him for it? Of course he would. Would Father hate him for being the cause one of his sons was dead? Of course he would. So, Damian let the words shrivel and die on the tip of his tongue, and felt so much worse because Danyal deserved someone to remember and mourn him other than his murderer.
“It’s okay to feel sad, to grieve and mourn the people we lost, not because of their moral character but because of who they were to us. Talia was still your mother, and you’re allowed to feel sad about losing her… maybe even about never having had her, in the first place,” Father finished.
“But how do I do it, father?” Damian asked, hating how it made him seem small and vulnerable. Weak, Grandfather would call him and Mother would agree.
It’s okay, Dami, Danyal would say, even now, I’m at peace now, and you deserve to be at peace, too.
Maybe I don’t, Danyal countered the voice of his dead brother in his head.
Yes, you do. Everyone does.
“By doing things that make you think of them, for example. Or that honor their memory,” Father answered his question, “crying is okay, too. Sometimes screaming helps.”
“Beating up criminals?”
“Beating up the dummy we have in training room,” Father corrected.
“Tch… fine.”
Damian didn’t know how he would mourn for Mother. His feelings were too complicated and complex for him to discern on his own right at that moment. But with Mother gone, perhaps he could now mourn for Danyal the way he’d never been allowed to. And maybe then he’d learn how to mourn for Mother, as well.