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Tied to a chair. In the middle of an abandoned apartment.
That is what the situation that Damian found himself in as he blearily regained consciousness.
His vision doubled when he slowly opened his eyes, his thoughts lagging.
Agh. His head throbbed like a hammer pounding a nail at the back of his head. Repeatedly. And with more force than necessary. He bit his lip at the pain.
What… happened?
He was at school then— the moment he tried to think back to what happened, the memories came flooding back.
The unexpected call to the front office, the stranger who claimed to be sent by his father, the struggle when he realized he was being kidnapped, being knocked out.
He looked around and found the two kidnappers sitting on the couch of the musty, empty apartment, talking. He shifted and immediately, they noticed.
“Well look who’s awake.” The man drawled. “Took ya long enough.”
The man stood up and made his way towards him. He knelt to look Damian in the eyes, when he tried to turn his head away the man just gripped his chin and forced him to look at him.
“Don’t tell me you forgot who I am?”
Damian racked his brain to try and remember but the killer headache made it hard to focus.
He tried to pull away from the grip. “Unhand me this instant, you filthy proletarian!" He meant to sound defiant and confident but instead he just ended up sounding whiney. Not his best delivery.
“Aw, little kid wants to go home?” The woman who was lounging on the couch prowled forward to stand by the man’s side.
Damian rolled his eyes (or tried to, the headache made it hard to tell). “That would be ideal, yes.”
The woman tilted her head and grinned. “You’re kind of cute.”
Insufferable woman. When he got out, she would be tasting blood in her mouth as he was.
She tilted his head up and moved him towards the overhead light (given that the curtains were drawn, covering the windows. The light was too bright nonetheless). She hummed with a smile, got up and spun on her heel. The man who was with her got up too. Without a word, they both left.
That would not not bode well.
He shifted to scope out his bindings.
The chair was metal, so not very breakable. Both of his hands were tied together with zip-ties looping to meet at the back of the chair. His feet were tied with zip-ties as well to the front legs of the chair. The chair wasn’t bolted to the ground, but it was too heavy for him to move it in his sluggish and dizzy state.
At least he wasn’t blindfolded. Their mistake.
The setting itself was poor in being. The paint peeling from the walls, the weird stains, the foul smell. It was gross enough that Damian could feel a thousand diseases entering his system.
Probably in Crime Alley then, they never had good apartments. Crime Alley was pretty obvious, though. They couldn’t be that dumb… could they?
Just then, the door burst open and three men entered, all of them grinning toothily.
Damian raised an unimpressed eyebrow. Did these mammals even brush their teeth?
“Little punk’s cocky,” one of them commented. He brought his hands up and pressed his knuckles together, cracking them.
He stalked closer, pulling out a paring knife from his pocket. He cut the zip-ties with it. That definitely spelled mischievous intent. The only question left was what it was.
“What is it?” Damian drawled, not moving. He kept his hands by his sides, resisting the urge to rub his wrists and stand up.
He was pulled out of the chair and thrown to the ground.
The mischievous intent in question turned out to be beating him up.
The old fashioned way, without any tools.
As soon as Damian landed on the rough carpet—mouldy—he was kicked in the stomach, hard enough to send him rolling the other way. Before he could get a normal full breath in, he was kicked again.
Damian curled into himself and covered his face with his arms, blows raining everywhere. And two of them were wearing steel-toed boots.
He gasped, grunted and groaned in pain, trying his best to cover as much of his body as possible. He would fight back. Use the moves taught by his mother, grandfather, father and brothers and annihilate these idiots.
But they must have drugged him pretty heavily. His limbs weren’t listening to him, all sluggish and slow. Damian hated this. He hated feeling helpless way more than he did getting beaten up by embarrassing low-lives.
Then they hoisted him upright. The world had tumbled over and was spinning around like a top, so Damian fell back down. One of the men picked him up by his shirt collar and slammed him against the wall. He pulled him away and threw him against the wall again. Damian’s head drooped with dizziness and pain.
He didn’t know when he had signed up for another session of his grandfather’s favorite sport of beat-the-child-assassin-and-you-don’t-die, but he would really like to retract that signing now.
At some point his brain switched off and everything became a blur. Richard had called it dissociation.
He was thumped against the wall once more before being thrown roughly. He landed against a pair of feet, whose owner pulled him up by his shirt with a fist and punched him square in the face.
And on it went. He didn’t know for how long. He didn’t know when it stopped either. He was lost in a haze of painful blows, agony and tears.
“And this is just the introduction,” one of the men leaned down and crooned into his ear. Then he dropped Damian back onto the metal chair and the other two tied him back up with zip-ties.
Damian’s head lolled to the side. One of his eyes was slightly puffy and his vision was blurrier than before. He could barely raise his head or move through the heavy rasping, his chest rattling as the men closed the door and left him.
As soon as the footsteps faded, Damian felt the panic in his chest tighten.
He was alone. He was tied up. He was injured and drugged to the point where he couldn’t move.
The pain increased a little more, his brain sorted through a million thoughts in his head. But despite it all, he could only focus on one feeling:
Safety. Need to feel safe.
“Father,” Damian sobbed, his lagging brain called. He bit his lip to hold in the sob but tasted the blood of the slit on his bottom lip. “R— Richard,” he called hoarsely. “T— Todd. Drake.”
A fit of coughs shook his whole body and he could barely breathe.
“Father,” Damian hiccuped. “Please come soon.”
--------------------------------------------------
Damian glared at his kidnappers.
Children, utter children, they were.
“Maybe if you’re a good boy, then you can have the blood cleaned off your face,” Dirty-Teeth grinned.
Damian wrinkled his nose. “Perhaps if you brushed your teeth, your mom will actually hug you for once.”
Dirty-Teeth’s grin dropped faster than a fly. “Little shit. You don’t even know who we are, do you?”
“Tt. Would I care?”
Dirty-Teeth growled, tightening his fist to hit him.
“Settle down,” Bald-Head sighed from the musty couch, head buried in a magazine. “He’s just goading you.”
“He is aware that those snarky remarks won’t get him any closer to getting any medicine for his bruises, right?” Fat-Face asked, playing a game on her phone.
Dirty-Teeth humphed, crossing his arms and scowling at Damian. “Can’t wait to slice his smug little head off.”
Damian smirked. “Maybe if you slice your cake pieces a little thinner, you might be able to actually cross those arms over that bulbous, fat chest.”
Dirty-Teeth tackled him with a scream of rage. “I’ll gut you! I’ll fucking gut you, you little—”
Damian grunted at the fists hitting his already sore face. The other two in the room darted forward to pull the guy off him.
“Wait, you idiot! Not yet!”
“We gotta wait for the right time—”
Damian quickly grabbed the knife he had spotted in Dirty-Teeth’s pocket and clutched it in his hand. Hiding it from the others, he started sawing at his zip-ties.
They managed to pull the guy off him, all of them panting heavily.
“The hell is wrong with you?” Bald-Head yelled at Dirty-Teeth. “Logan had a whole plan for us to execute and you could have nearly ruined our revenge.”
Logan, hm?
“Don’t you know how bad of an idea it is to get into close proximity with that brat without preparation?” Fat-Face shoved at him.
“She’s right.” Damian snapped the last of the zip-ties on his feet and stood up. “Your mistake.”
“Fuck—”
They barely managed to get a word out before Damian launched himself at them, brandishing the knife. He pierced it through Fat-Face’s arm and punched Dirty-Teeth in the jaw. He blocked a hit from Bald-head and was about to twist his arm, when the door banged open.
“What’s going on here?” Two more people entered the room, led by a guy with a dragon head tattoo on his head. Damian hadn’t seen him before. But that tattoo looked familiar…
Damian froze.
Amidst his distracted mind, Bald-Head snatched the back of his school shirt and locked him in a headlock.
Dirty-Teeth, recovered from his blow and shot forward to grab his arms and restrain him.
“You?” Damian hissed. “I thought my grandfather got rid of you years ago.”
Logan, his old League of Assassins trainer, smiled, stepping closer. “He did. I got away.”
Damian struggled, but the two had him in a tight grip, his injuries were still a problem and the drugs hadn’t entirely left his system yet. “What are you doing here?”
“Getting revenge.” Logan grabbed his hair and yanked it painfully. “Your grandfather threw me away, left me to rot at sea. After everything I did for him, everything I sacrificed for him, he just discarded me like a used fucking wrapper, just because I lost to a fight against a stupid child.”
“Tt.” Damian was unamused, sneering up at the man as much as he could. “This ‘stupid child’ was smarter than you in the end. You were too inadequate and poorly skilled.”
Logan huffed amusedly. “I was able to capture you adequately enough.” He let go of his hair. “My preparations are almost made. I have collected as many assassins I could find who managed to escape the Demon Head’s unfair sentences. Now, we will take our revenge with you.”
Damian yelled and broke through Dirty-Teeth’s hold. He slipped through Bald-Head’s arms.
He had to play this carefully. Now that he knew who he was dealing with, there was no way they would let him live for long after this. He needed to buy time.
Damian struck Bald-Head in the chest. A precise strike, fueled with all the strength he could muster (which was still a lot, obviously). The impact to the chest, caused enough trauma for a commotio cordis, making Bald-Head’s heart stop. He would die, unless he received immediate medical attention.
It was a move personally taught to him by Grandfather. He had never once failed it.
Bald-Head immediately dropped to the floor, a pained gurgle leaving his throat.
“What the fuck did you do?” the ex-assassins behind Logan shouted, immediately darting forward to check on the man.
Dirty-Teeth grabbed his tired arms again and pushed him back on the chair, getting more zip-ties out to tie him.
Logan’s eye twitched. “We need to take him to the hospital,” he said, gaze not leaving Damian’s. “And Seremene too. Alise, drug him.” He went over to Fat-Face, who was groaning at the knife in her arm, while the other ex-assassin handed a syringe to Dirty-Teeth before she picked up Bald-Head.
Dirty-Teeth pressed the syringe into Damian’s neck. “Can’t wait to fucking kill you,” he muttered into his ear. “In the end, all this useless fighting— It’ll be for nothing.”
Damian didn’t react, the drugs already setting in. He breathed through it, watching the assassins leave with the injured. Once the doors closed and the footsteps faded, he jumped into action.
His head already started to feel heavy, he didn’t have much time. He dragged himself and the chair he was tied to, to the nearest window. He used his body to move the curtains and face the window.
It was day, the sun shone brightly out on the dirty, familiar streets. He was right, he was in Crime Alley. The assassins probably didn’t know Gotham as well as he did and thought this was the most obscure place to keep him in.
Gritting his teeth at what he was about to do, Damian banged his head against the window. He didn’t stop to let the pain settle in, banging his head against the glass again. And again, and again, and again.
His forehead bled and throbbed, and his vision doubled and swam. But he didn’t stop until the glass crashed and the window broke.
Damian wheezed at the pain. He reached down, gripping the fabric of his shirt with his teeth, and pulled, tearing the cloth. He waited till the blood streaming down his face reached the fabric and coated it. Then he spat the cloth out into the fire escape in front of the window.
It was a small chance, practically miniscule, but it was all he could do.
The drugs and the pain settled in, making his head droop. Hopefully, when the ex-assassins came back, they would just assume that he had been trying to escape but had failed and got knocked out before he could. Hopefully, they wouldn’t notice his bloody scrap of cloth on the fire escape. Hopefully… his family would.
Damian drifted away.
-------------------------------------------------------
Damian’s eyes fluttered open, his pupils dilating at the bright light above him. He blinked a couple times then looked around.
He was in a new location. A different abandoned apartment. Though… It looked more like a house. It was dark, droughty and empty, though better smelling than the last one.
“Lovely, you’re awake.”
Damian looked up to see Logan standing in front of the rest of the ex-assassins, holding a sword. Bald-Head was missing, he noted. Though Fat-Face was there, angrily clutching a bandaged arm.
“This will be much more satisfying for when you’re aware enough to feel it.”
He stalked forward and rested the sword against his neck. He grinned.
“Goodbye, brat.”
Damian swallowed against the steel of the sword and squeezed his eyes shut.
But before the sharp steel could cut through his skin, the roof crashed down around them.
The metal disappeared from his throat and Damian opened his eyes.
Batman, Nightwing, Orphan, Red Hood, Red Robin, Spoiler and Signal surrounded them, pointing their weapons at the ex-assassins. His family was here. His whole family.
He snickered at the panicked expressions on the ex-assassins faces. “Took you long enough,” he told his family.
“Blame Spoiler,” Jason jerked tilted his head towards Stephanie, not lowering his guns from where they were pointed at Logan. “It’s her fault she took so long to find your bloody shirt scrap sooner.”
Stephanie scowled at him, her batarangs still pointed at the assassins. “At least I found something, asshole.”
“With help!” Timothy added, his hands unwavering from where he was holding the electrified blade of his bo-staff. “And what were you doing, Hood, while I was investigating that sudden cardiac arrest and stabbing case in Crime Alley? Oh, that’s right, you were crying. Like a little bitch.”
Duke snorted. “Oh, snap.” His Batchet blades spun, making Dirty-Teeth recoil at them.
“Red…” Father warned, glaring at the kidnappers. “Not now.”
“Batman’s right,” Cassandra said, dangling her kyoketsu-shoge.
Richard electrified his escrima and grinned savagely. “Time to show these jackasses exactly what happens when you mess with our Robin.”
Damian beamed. He loved his family.
(Don’t tell them that though.)