I decided to boraden my reading spectrum from manga to comics, and DCU comics have been pretty great. Hope you like it.
Freudian Slip
He pushed against the tinted glass, as he felt the air becoming thinner with each passing minute.
The woman on the other side let out a shrill giggle as she turned up the heat inside the enclosed chamber, watching the young boy tear off his cowl in desperation before pounding against the impenetrable barriers. He had lost his tracker hours ago, therefore limiting the chance that Pennyworth could inform the others of his location.
"Damn you, Damn you, let me o-" he started before his throat started closing up in desperation. His lungs burned and his eyes started to go fuzzy.
"Oh my dear, I would advise you to save your breath, Auntie Mania wouldn't want you to die so soon... or maybe I would," she screeched, heaving out laughter as though she had told the funniest joke in the world.
Adenine Mania, a 34-year-old aerospace engineer, driven mad by the abuse she had suffered at the hand of her biomedical parents who used her for extreme mutation experiments, leaving her face disfigured...
And her mind surrendering to homicidal madness.
She ran her hands through the remnants of the auburn hair, yanking out chunks of it and letting them run through her fingers before falling to the ground. She let out another giggle, before hiking up the temperature a little more. Damian Wayne let out a gasp before falling to his knees.
"Too hot... c-can't breathe," he whispered. Despite his dire state, he still had to give Mania credit to be able to engineer an enclosed cage with absolutely no vantage point. Not only that, but she was able to knock him out with a non-lethal gas and get him in there with no resistance.
He had to admire her gusto.
But at that moment his brain was too fuzzy to indulge in his reluctant admiration. He was just about to go dark when he saw a bullet head towards the cage.
Well, there was a flaw.
It wasn't bulletproof. It shattered like porcelain and air came flooding in.
All the more argument he could hold when his father told him he was too young for guns.
Damian heaved large gasps of breath, trying to stand up only to tumble back down. His ears were ringing and his brain wasn't getting any less fuzzy.
He could hear Mania's screams around him and the sounds of fist meeting skin. But he couldn't see any of it.
The last thing he felt was the man in black taking him into his arms and outside of the steaming laboratory.
.oOo. .oOo.
He woke up after what felt like 2 months when in reality it has been 2 days. Bruce and Dick told alternate shifts watching over him and the city.
Mania had been given to the authorities and her lab was infiltrated. Batman had half a mind to kill her right then and there, if not for Jason to keep him away while Dick and Tim dealt with her.
He was going for a surprise attack up until he saw Damian suffering in the chamber and it wasn't until he heard Damian whimper for help, that he couldn't think straight and let out a titanium bullet towards the enclosure.
Batman left the crazed woman to his other sons and took Damian to Alfred for help. He had been victim to Mania's deranged torture techniques, his arms having incisions and his face covered in bruises from her angry episodes. Alfred had said thathis brain was oxygen deprived and that he would be in comatose for at least aweek.
Of course, leave it to Damian Wayne to prove them all long by being as stubborn as he could. Bruce heard his son's rustling and turned towards him as he moved to sit up and Bruce got up from the chair he was sitting in to help him.
Damian shook his head gently before letting his blue eyes fall on his father's.
"H-hey dad," he began, glancing at the bandages around his arms, "what happened to me?"
Bruce was startled and it showed on his face. He hadn't called him dad... ever at all. Due to Talia's brutal conditioning, he had always been told to address a parent with full honourific, so he had only ever been addressed as 'father' and 'Batman' when in public.
Bruce immediately knew something was wrong. He backed away from the confused boy to page Alfred.
"Yes sir. Dinner will be ready shortly. How is our young master Damian?"
"Alfred, did you give him anything?" He asked tersely, watching in horror as his boy's eyes filled with tears.
"Sir... I didn't want to show you this but, when he came in, he was crying deliriously and I know that he would oppose painkillers of any kind but... I had to give him some morphine. It was difficult to see him like that, to say the least," Alfred's face was replaced with a clip of Damian on the operating table crying profusely from pain.
Bruce watched in an uneasy awe as his emotionally constipated child acted like... a child.
"It would seem that the morphine in addition to the suffocation left more of an impression on him than he would let on," Alfred continued as the video ended, "as for now, I would suggest that you get back to him."
He ended the intercom and turned back to Damian– who was gripping at the plain, white blanket resting in his lap– was holding back tears and shivering in fear, face paler than deemed normal.
Bruce took a deep breath and approached the boy.
"D-Dad what happened?" He held his arms up and Bruce motioned to pick him up. Even without the morphine, Damian always enjoyed being pampered and almost never outrightly opposed being picked up. As he carried him out of the Batcave, he was relieved to see the tears drying up.
"Nothing, Damian. You're safe and that is all that matters right now."
The dark knight placed him on the couch in the common room before sitting down next to him.
He was more than surprised when Damian leaned over, placing his head on his father's arm, he supposed that he held an inquisitive gaze because Damian looked up nervously, "my head hurts," was his only explanation.
"Okay," was his only response. They sat in silence for almost 20 minutes when Damian had begun to ramble about any and everything. Things that he would usually never bring up.
"One time when I was much younger, mother had taken me into this little town in Germany and I saw this firetruck in the window and I asked mom for it. I had just started my training and I sometimes saw kids in the town playing and having fun and I thought that I was going to do that too. But she hit me and told me that I didn't deserve it and that I was an assassin and not a child," he begun solemnly, "so I listened to her and I never asked for anything again. Not even food. Part of me was hoping that when she left me with you, you would get me a firetruck. But then I realized that instead of an assassin, I was a vigilante and that I am still not a child, only a biological accident made to kill."
"Damian, I have told you many times that your first priority is to be a child and then secondly, to be a hero," he interrupted. He couldn't believe the things he was hearing. His son never asked for anything; not because Bruce forbade him from ever wanting but because he genuinely believed that the boy wonder held no interest in such things, "all you had to do was ask, Dam-"
"A child is not expected to train 5 hours a day and not go to school. A child doesn't have to protect a city and pretend that they don't exist to the public," he muttered solemnly before looking up, "you know, you told me six months ago that you were going to get those adoption papers signed but you still haven't. Pennyworth calls me 'Master Wayne' but I am still an Al Ghul. I sometimes think it's because you don't want the prestigious Wayne family name to be attributed to a person like me. Damn, I know I wouldn't. I know Todd and Grayson were officially yours in the first year, but I suppose I know why I'm not the same."
He was slowly beginning to sound much like his son but Bruce couldn't help but be stunned, "Damian... you never told me it meant that much to you."
"Of course I didn't. I'm supposed to be Robin, there's no time to be weak and ponder over such things."
Just as Bruce was going to reply, Alfred came in with two trays of smoked salmon.
"Sirs, your dinner is ready. Young Master Wayne, when you are done, please allow me to look over your wounds."
Damian looked up from his food, chewing thoroughly, before replying, "Sure, but it's Al Ghul, Alfred."
Bruce looked away, embarrassed. It wasn't that he didn't want Damian to be his son– not at all– but with everything happening with Aquaman and Atlantis, not to mention the increasing crime rate in Gotham, it had become second priority.
His son had become second priority.
Bruce watched his boy eat and reflected on what he had just heard. He had been aware of the trauma in Damian's past life, the torture, the neglect but only now, with Damian's help, did he realize his lack of effort in order to change it. It took drugging up his son to understand the silent pain he had endured even after leaving Talia three years ago.
"It would seem that the morphine has worn off. Once again, I apologize for administering it but you would not stay still and I couldn't bear to hear your pain," he said sadly.
"Thanks Pennyworth... thank you," he mumbled. For caring.
But that remained unsaid.
He then turned to Bruce, "It isn't Sunday but may I also have ice cream?" He asked casually as though nothing had everything happened. As though they had spent the last 10 minutes discussing the weather.
He must have been stunned and unresponsive for a second too long, because The boy had begun to backtrack, "Hm, I suppose no ice cream. I better go to b-"
"Chocolate or vanilla?" Bruce quickly interrupted. He and Damian followed Alfred to the kitchen and Bruce scooped out a large portion of Vanilla gelato for his son who sat stunned at the large portion before digging in.
Wayne watched him silently. He had spent so many years protecting the city. Now he had to do the same with his son.
He had some work to do.
.oOo..oOo.
Two days passed and Damian was almost fully recovered.
So to commemorate his healing, he went out on patrol. But it was difficult.
Because he remembered everything he had said under the influence of morphine, and he was disappointed in himself to no end.
Weakness, he had thought, had been washed out of his mind years ago by his mother. But clearly, he thought wrong. And he revealed it to Batman... to his father.
He cruised into the Batcave and saw that his father had already arrived, in his civilian clothes, working at the computer. They hadn't talked since Damian had sobered up but as he heard his son come in, he turned to look at him.
Damian cautiously approached him.
But before he could even reach arm's length, the other held out a letter to him.
"I want you to open that. But first, let's go to your room," he said ominously before heading towards his son's bedroom. Damian held the pristine letter in his hand and walked next to his father.
"Father, if this is about the other day then–"
"I know what you are going to say Damian but don't," he said shortly, "Just follow me."
And so he did.
When they arrived at the door of his room, Bruce motioned for him to open it.
And so he did. And what he saw, made his breath get caught in his throat.
A red firetruck, almost as big as Damian himself, sat in the middle of the room. Damian approached it slowly and he ran his small hand on the rim of the shiny red paint, letting his fingers move to the rubberiness of the tires as he kneeled down in front of it.
"I wanted one when I was three father," he spoke softly. He felt Bruce crouch down and put his hand on his shoulder.
"Better late than never," he replied, "speaking of which, open the letter."
And so he did.
Dear Mr. Wayne,
On behalf of the Gotham Child Protective Service, I would like to congratulate you on your official adoption of Damian Wayne, formerly known as Damian Al Ghul. Attached to this letter is Damian's new birth certificate...
Damian didn't even bother reading the rest and instead rushed to look at the birth certificate which was proof of his new identity.
Damian felt tears pooling in his eyes as his father pulled him up into a light hug.
Nothing more had to be said.
Everything was clear enough.
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