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Thanks to CampionSayn for Beta-ing, you're an inspiration to me.
This... well, it's just something that's always been coming ...three more chapters to go! a least...
First Born
Damian Wayne was a man who scared the people around him. Intimidation was a cloak he wore the way others wore a smile or a frown – it was a constant, fundamental part of who he was. His face, if it wasn't full of disdain or mockery, was cold, blank and echoing with emptiness. When people said he felt nothing, that he had no heart, they weren't far from the truth. It was...one of his more apparent inherited traits, which was probably why he was so disliked.
No one had liked Batman, but he was irreplaceable. Damian, for all his life, had been...expendable.
Even now. It was his birthright – it was his... no longer. He should be angry, he knows, livid, outraged – hurt possibly. After all, it wasn't everyday your father blatantly disinherits you by replacing you. With a sixteen year old delinquent, no less.
And he had thought being replaced with a sister was bad enough; at least Kyle had potential, refinement, skill. Damian had yet to see what Terry offered his...their...father that he couldn't. He didn't think he was going to find it. He didn't think he would find in the boy the reason for his...rejection.
A part of him, a very strong part of him, wanted to hate the boy, the same part that openly mocked the boy he had never met – he wanted to hate the person, who, apparently, was everything he wasn't. Who had everything he should have had. A father who cared. A mother who still loved him and protected him. A possibility of a future. A firm legacy. An unbroken heart.
Did he fight better? Was he smarter? More cunning? More efficient? Damian doubted it, but a part of him wanted to know, needed to know what it was that made Bruce Wayne so openly favor him. What trait compelled their father to accept him, to love him, when Bruce had been indifferent to the rest of his children?
What made Terrence McGinnis the better son?
A month, a year, five years, a decade, two decades later, Damian still wouldn't know the answers. While he grew to care, as much as he could, for the boy – who wasn't really a boy anymore – a part of him almost couldn't forgive him for him being the better son. For being born the perfect heir, being Batman, everything Damian had ever wanted... and he realized he wasn't.
Terry...was born everything he wasn't. He might have been tainted by Gotham, but he was never born a monster like Damian was, or become one like Helena believed so strongly that she did. Terry...Terry had never once fought for their father's love or acceptance. He had wanted it very much, but he had always separated those feelings from those of Batman's; Damian...couldn't. Bruce Wayne wasn't his father, his sire, Batman was.
And he couldn't let go of that...
Stories never end well when the firstborn is usurped by the second (or was it third?) born – however, Damian...just this once...might find it in his heart to forgive him. Eventually. At the least, he'd make damn sure that boy doesn't show him up anymore that he already had.
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