He should have been able to dodge it, is the thing.
Damian has faced more than his fair share of goons in his career, both as a hero and as an assassin. He's long become used to facing large groups of them all at once, because one on one combat does not exist in the seedy underbelly of Gotham, where fair fights have likely never existed.
He can handle himself in large mobs, take out a number of opponents twice his size without breaking a sweat on an average Tuesday night. It's not hard. It shouldn't be, with his training.
But tonight, there's an extra distraction that needs to be taken care of. Tonight, it's either dodge the attack and hope the twitching junkie who just so happened to pick the worst possible alleyway to sleep in can get out of the way in time, or take the blow and hope he can still take the thugs out while injured.
Logically, he should move and worry about the consequences later.
Unfortunately, the thought of Grayson's disappointed shock at Damian protecting himself without thinking of civilian casualties – even if said civilian was a homeless drug addict – just had to come to mind at the worst moment, and he'd hesitated too long to move even if he'd wanted to.
The metal baseball bat hits him directly in the side, and Damian can't quite avoid the yelp of pain that escapes him as pain splinters up through his ribs with an audible thwack!
Damn, damn, damn!
He manages to roll haphazardly away from the thug still wielding the bat, gasping hard and blinking stars out of his eyes when his ribs scream in protest at the movement. He's not going to be able to move at full speed now, but for now it seems the attention of all the lackeys has followed him across the ground, the junkie finally managing to stumble out of sight from the scene.
It was the right thing to do, protecting an innocent bystander, but that good deed is doing nothing to help Damian's ribs stop burning with pain or make the goons suddenly give up chasing him.
"I always knew following Nightwing's example was bad for my health," Damian groused sourly to himself as he ducked rather sloppily to avoid a crowbar.
There are about eight men still left after Damian's initial attacks had taken down seven of them. They're closing in now that's injured and visibly slower, but Damian has never been one to go down without a fight.
He sweeps the legs out from under one man and manages to pin another to a brick wall with a well-aimed batarang, punches another hard in the solar plexus and ducks another swing of the metal bat.
He can do this. He can.
It's just a matter of timing his hits a bit more precisely and avoiding any unnecessary movement during a takedown.
It's not difficult for a warrior properly trained by the League of Assassin's.
All he really needs to focus on is the-
The metal shriek of the crowbar scraping along asphalt gives him just enough time to fall sideways out of the weapon's downward arc as the goon wielding it swung hard in a rather terrible attempt to hit him, but then his back hits the ground midroll, and it shouldn't hurt much but it does, and-
A large, booted foot kicks him savagely where the bat hit him, and something splinters-
White fire awakens in his side, and it's all he can do to gasp and try to curl up, ignore the pain-
He needs to get up-
Another foot hits him in the back, and Damian can't inhale for several crucial, endless seconds.
It should be over then and there.
On the ground, curled up and helpless, unable to breath and barely able to see, he should be as good as dead for his good Samaritan act of the day, and won't that be a bitter sweet thing to snipe at Grayson from the afterlife? You see where all that self-sacrifice gets you in the end?
But then there's the flap of a cape, a muffled scream, several distinct thuds of flesh hitting flesh.
Damian squinted through the pain just as a familiar voice growled, "Don't check out on me yet, Demon Brat."
Drake, with his pathetic attempt to mimic Father's Batman voice.
He scoffed under his breath when he had the air to do it.
The one time he needed aid, and Drake was the one to come swooping in. He was never going to live this down.