A/N: Heavy Teen for disturbing descriptions. Originally posted on ao3 under the pen name of youngjusticewriter. Third part of the series How to build a home in a graveyard.
Drake stares down at him. His eyes cold as the heavy chains around Damian's wrist and ankles.
His brushs an overgrown piece of his bangs to the side before he speaks. "Do you know how many people it takes to screw in a lightbulb?"
Despite the tightness in his throat and hammering in his heart, Damian can't help but feel annoyance. What his grandfather sees in the blithering teenager before him. The very thought of Drake having his damned grandfather's interests makes Damian wish to take his white teeth one by one. Drake's blood would make it hard to scream or make some clever jab at how he was right for the teenager would be chocking on it like he well deserves. What right did Drake have to so easily earn his grandfather approval?
But Damian can not take his time in taking Drake's teeth because he is here to die.
"One, you imbecile of a heir," he snarls. He can't escape. He can never escape. He can only die. And unlike Todd, insane Todd who is alive after being brutally murdered (and Damian thought he knew life's unfairness but that was a new level), Damian will not come back.
He thinks of Grayson's warm hugs and wretched quips that remind him of Terrance. His twin's jokes had been atrocious things that weren't funny, but did deserve a bar of soap in the mouth.
He thinks of his father who does not hug him or say warm approval towards Damian, but whose jaw had been tight in anger, eyes harsh, as he told the principle that Damian would be leaving since the imbecile of a man couldn't keep his students from bullying Damian for his skin color and mature way of speaking. (As if Damian would say duh, omg, and other such things so he would fit in. Please, he had more dignity than that.)
Fatgirl with her Disney movies, warm, crunchy waffles that she often snuck into patrol, and also terrible attempts at comedy.
His throat tightens more and not because of the knife slowly moving back and forth on his shoulder blade, making his nerves feel aflame. Surely they know he grew attachment to them. Surely Damian is not regretting not saying something- anything - to them before he dies.
He lets out a hiss as the knife digs further into his flesh, nearing his bones.
It's ironic, he thinks. He'd thrown out the leather bound, glossy paged book of Greek mythology because of the story of Medea reminding him of his grandfather. Not because Drake had gifted it to him despite what the others had thought. Now he is going to be slowly chopped into pieces and eventually, Damian imagines, his throat shall be cut roughly. Not lovingly and soft as Damian had done his brother's.
Drake, with his free hand, slaps his cheek. The blow stings. Damian raises a composed eyebrow only to let out a loud whimper of pain as his shoulder finishes being amputated. A ninja of Drake's steps forward to address the bleeding as Drake gets up from his left side. The teenager straddles Damian as his knife ghosts the skin of Damian only arm. Cold eyes look down at him as Damian fruitlessly struggles against the teenager.
Cold, bloody finger touch Damian's cheek gently like one could attest to love. It makes Damian feel sick in his chest and his skin crawl. He, of all people, knows enduring and inflicting pain onto the ones he cares for.
Damian knows he's broken even if no one besides Drake dares voice such a truth. He is a dropped glass vase. Broken with edges that so easily cut those around him. Most of life he had not cared what he inflicted on others, besides what he'd naively inflicted on Terrance, but than Grayson has easily slipped under his thick skin and entered his heart try as Damian might to tear his father's first stray from his heart.
Drake, with the grace a Bolshoi ballerina has, leans down to Damian's ear. Cold lips touch his warm ear as Drake keeps petting his cheek and Damian fights back puking.
"You deserve this you know," Drake tells him and Damian tightly slams his eyes shut as if do so will keep him from hearing Drake's bitting truths.
"You murdered Terrance. You tried to murder me. What family member will you attempt to kill next? Jason for simply coming back? Grayson for loving you and reminding you of your brother? Bruce before he finds out you murdered his son?"
His throat tightens and Damian doesn't let out a word. Not even a sound as Drake begins on his shoulder.
He doesn't say he didn't mean to because that would be a lie. He opens his mouth though only to wake up.
His face feels wet, his heart feel likes that of a scared rabbit's, and someone is touching him. There's no thought nor hesitance. Such things were trained out of Damian since a moment is all that was needed to kill a person. He lunges to the side and rolls ontop of his assailant. The covers and sheets he's under follow his movement and twist. His fingers immediately find themselves squeezing his attacker's throat.
"It's just me little D," Grayson says instead of saying everything is okay (because it's not and hasn't been since he was five) or easily getting out of Damian's grip with an elbow to Damian's face, rolling onto of Damian and trapping Damian with his weight.
Grayson doesn't do the last option because despite the occasional fool he acts he is Grayson is far from an idiot. Grayson knows that Damian far from okay, and is allowing the comfort of his position even as Damian's small fingers dig into his throat.
The truth is: Damian is not okay. He may never be okay because of how his early childhood had been. Unlike Drake and father, Grayson gets this and that is a reason Damian holds him in high regard.
Slowly with harsh pants of breath, Damian releases his sweaty grip on Grayson. There's a soft thud as Damian simply proceeds to collapse onto the first stray orphan his father collected (and Damian is grateful that he did unlike with Todd and Drake). Fingers reach into his sweaty locks of hair and proceed to run through them like one would a dog. It's comforting even though Damian shall never voice it. But then again if he doesn't passionately yell his objections shouldn't that tell Grayson all he needs to know?
There's comforting silence and noise wrinkling body odor between them before Damian has to ruin the moment. He has to know.
"Would you hate me if I had succeed in killing Drake?" He asks softly against the shoulder he's comfortably pressed into despite Grayson desperately in need of a shower.
Grayson stiffens under him and Damian's heart hurts even though he suspected the outcome. Damian's sure that Grayson is remembering the fight about Drake's wretched contingency plans. How angry Damian had been on being on it. He's trying so hard; controlling aspects of his up-bringing are not easy. Not when they had been all he had known and ingrained into him for years. It had not been fair. Life is not fair. Damian knows that despite how Drake calls him spoiled and Fatgirl jokes about his Draco Malfoy personality. That, however, doesn't make Drake's actions alright.
"Do you know the French folktale of Bluebeard?" Damian asks Grayson, there's exhaustion in his voice just like there's been a sort of exhaustion in his bones since he was five. Grayson only nods as though he fears if he speaks Damian might stop telling him what this all about. Damian supposes that is not an illegitimate fear considering he is not a very sharing person when it comes to Terrance. Even though his brother has been dead for years that still is the same.
"As you Americans often like to start your folktales, once upon a time in a kingdom far, far away there were two brothers that were biracial twins. They, Damian and Terrance, were five and still stupidly naive to the cruelty and unfairness of not just the world they lived in but their family."
Grayson stiffens further at the realization - the all but confession - that this fairytale might not be a fairytale. That Damian once had a brother if this was true and sadly this was.
"Terrance had been confined to the twins room for the past few days because he became ill after being an idiot and rescued a stray cat for his brother that had been in a storm. Despite this or perhaps because of the days he'd been bedridden Terrance refused to left out of an adventure that Damian was planning with the help of the blacksmith's daughter. You see when they were free of their studies Damian and Terrance could go anywhere in the fortress but one chamber their grandfather had forbidden. Like the eighth wife from the fairytale of Bluebeard, they were curious. But the thing was their story is not a fairytale. It doesn't end with a happy ending," Damian confessed into Grayson's shoulder. Grayson had stopped running through his hair, Damian noted as he breathed in and out before he continued his story, instead he had been listening rather intently to Damian's story.
"They were caught in the chamber that had a pit with a shade of green neither of the boys had ever seen. They were caught by the very person who'd forbidden them entering, Ra's al Ghul, their grandfather. Instead of being angry at them Ra's al Ghul told them how the pit, the Lazarus Pit being its proper name, could extended the life of person. It could cure a sickness someone was struggling with. But you see to do that the person had to be dead."
If it all possible Grayson stiffens further having guessed where this story is going and the lie Ra's al Ghul had told Damian.
"He gave Damian a knife and told him to kill his brother before chopping Terrance to pieces. With Terrance eager permission - the five old year boy had no patience to keep staying in bed - Damian gently slit his brother's throat. His grandfather helped Damian desecrate his brother's corpse but only Damian put his brother's pieces in the Lazarus Pit."
"Terrance did not come back like Damian's grandfather had promised," Damian chocked out. "When asked what was wrong Ra's al Ghul simply explained calmly to the crying boy that the pit could not bring back the dead. That he had lied. He only needed one heir. Despite his daughter's argument on the subject, there was no need for a spare. This was her punishment for fighting with her father. Her son killing his brother."