Chapter Text
Father didn’t always take off his cowl when he killed, but the doomed man in front of them was someone who knew him; a lawyer for a rival company, a man who had cost Father several million dollars. That amount of money meant little to Father, but being forced to pay it—that meant plenty. Enough that Father wanted him to see his face.
“Please, whatever you want—I have a family, Bruce!”
The doomed man’s family is already dead.
Damian anticipates that Father will want to reveal this to the doomed man soon, and gathers the bodies together.
“Don’t worry about them, Nate. You’ll be with them soon.”
Damian knows his cue. He enters the living room, carrying one large body over his shoulder and two small ones under the opposite arm. He drops them one by one to the floor, thud, thud, thud, all tangled on top of each other. Nothing can hurt them anymore.
The doomed man’s first scream is more of a croak, as though he had been hit in the stomach. The next rips out of him like it’s tearing his throat. So does the next.
“Back in a sec,” Father said, grinning down at the doomed man and striding out of the room at a brisk pace.
He was going to confirm that Damian hadn’t missed any witnesses. Damian had only done so once, when he was still new to this. A little girl’s closet had an entrance to an attic, and she had cut the pull-cord and brought it up with her. He had opened the closet, of course, but didn’t recognize the square outline on its ceiling as anything more than an architectural quirk, unfamiliar as he was with the design of suburban American houses.
Father hadn’t believed that he missed it. He had thought that Damian was trying to save the girl—but the idea hadn’t even occurred to him. Not then.
The fate Father gave her ensured that Damian never left behind a witness again. It would only make things worse for them. The punishment Father gave Damian afterward made the lesson permanent.
“They didn’t suffer,” Damian said.
The doomed man’s face twisted even more, looking barely human, crumpled into grotesquerie.
“Fuck you,” he managed to spit out. “Fuck you.”
Damian didn’t apologize. It would be worth even less than the dubious mercy of a quick murder. That was the only mercy he was permitted to provide to the witnesses and bystanders surrounding Father’s targets.
His most favored method was a thin, flat dagger inserted at the nape of the neck, sliding between the atlas vertebrae and the base of the skull, severing the brain stem.
It was instant, and almost bloodless, leaving only one small wound. His victims would slump over like dolls, like they had never been alive at all. The shock of the stabbing would prevent the brief instant of pain from reaching their awareness before that awareness was snuffed out. A painless death.
It had become something of a calling card at Father’s crime scenes, Damian knew. Bodies all around would be killed in Damian’s fashion, and then Father’s targets would be in the center, ripped apart in his fashion. Damian was given no name in the media. Father was “The Batman” or “The Batman killer,” and Damian was only “an accomplice,” when his existence was mentioned or speculated on at all. That was for the best.
“All clear, chum,” Father said, returning to the room and clapping Damian on the back. “Now, where were we?”
Damian turned away to keep watch as Father drew his knife and opened the doomed man’s body. The screams, which had petered out, started anew. There were always more sounds that a human body in pain could produce. Even after all these years, there would always be a new sound—some splutter, some animal noise that he had never heard before.
He had never understood what happened for Father when he opened a body, but it was clearly something—something that had never happened for Damian.
When he was young, it had been difficult for him to open bodies himself. He never refused, but when he was very little he would cry and try to convince Father to change his mind. It never worked, and only ended in more pain for both Damian and whatever body he was cutting into.
So he stopped trying to convince him. The act didn’t bring Damian any enjoyment—certainly not the bright-eyed, exuberant fixation Father had on it—and there was still something in his stomach that Damian had to push past every time to make the first cut, but it was trivial to do.
Overcoming that slight resistance was like breaking a thin, fragile membrane. It was easy to ignore its presence, tear through it without hesitation. It gave only enough pushback to be felt; not enough to stop or even slow him.
Father rarely asked him to anymore, after Damian’s hands had stopped trembling on the blade. Now they both made their kills the way they preferred. Father even seemed to appreciate Damian’s efficiency, at times.
It was some time before the noises became voiceless, just the wet sounds of raw meat being handled. The doomed man was no longer there to feel what was being done to him, and so Father lost interest.
They didn’t bother cleaning up. The brutality of the scenes they left behind was part of the point, for Father—the fear they inspired. There was no need to try to hide evidence. Their fingerprints were covered, except for when Father took his gloves off to open the bodies, which were too… wet for any usable prints to be left behind on. And if he happened to leave behind any partials, or any hair in the few scenes where he took off his cowl, well, the GCPD was easily bribed.
They returned to Father’s car, dripping blood. The task of cleaning the car would fall to Damian once they arrived at the cave.
Jason and Richard would be upstairs in their bedroom. They hadn’t had any water since around noon. The horizon had just begun lightening as they pulled into the cave, and it would be several more hours before Damian will be able to bring the boys anything, as Father would want one of them first.
Damian would clean the car’s interior and exterior, and clean his own and Father’s weapons and gear and pack them up, ready to be accessed soon. Once that was done, Father would likely be finished with either Jason or Richard, and Damian could bring them food and water and care for their new injuries. Then he could sleep.
The last time, Richard had asked Damian to stay with them afterward. Damian had been surprised.
Jason had never asked him for that. He always wanted Damian gone as quickly as possible, which seemed reasonable. The boy was abused by Father, and Damian knew his own face shared much with the man, not to mention the punishments Damian was asked to carry out himself. Of course the boy wanted to be as far away from him as he could get.
But when he had finished cleaning Richard’s cuts, Richard had clutched at Damian’s sleeve and asked him to stay.
Damian refused the boy without hesitation. Richard saw Damian as a protector—unfortunate, but understandable. The only others present in Richard’s life now were Father, who hurt him, and Jason, a fellow victim.
Damian did not hurt him unless ordered to, and was not hurt by Father in the same way that the boys were. Therefore, because Richard so terribly needed and wanted protection, he sought it in Damian.
Damian couldn’t give him that. He brought them as much food and water as Father would allow, and he tended to their injuries in as clinical and swift a manner as he could. If Father ordered him to handle their punishments, he knew how far to push so that Father would be satisfied, while causing the boys as little pain as possible.
He did what he could. It wasn’t enough. It certainly wasn’t protection.
He knew better than to try for more than Father would allow. He still wasn’t trusted, even nine years after his betrayal. He still bore the scars. His bones still ached where they had been broken.
Scars and aches were a mercy, compared to what Timothy had been given.
They reached the heart of the cave and rolled to a stop. Father was still grinning as he removed the keys and they both stepped out of the car.
“Good work tonight, chum,” he said, rounding the car and slapping Damian on the back.
“Thank you, sir,” he said, inclining his head. Father’s eyes narrowed slightly. He was rarely satisfied with Damian’s responses when in this sort of mood—expecting something more. Something Damian didn’t have in him.
Before Father could open his mouth again, say something else to which no response would pacify him, there was a bang, and a cloud of smoke burst over them.
Father’s silhouette was obscured by the still-hissing smoke bomb, but Damian could just barely make it out.
There were two of him.