Selfish. Cruel. Patronizing. Unapproachable. Deceitful.
Dad.
Bruce was all of these to Damian—at least for the moment—and it wasn't exactly boding over well with the latter (it was all boiling up, as a matter of fact, all boiling up to the pained, wounded surface in hot, sizzling blisters of water). Bruce, his father, who had lied to him—something of which Damian had expected, deep down inside himself; although he hadn't expected the sting—was now, quite frankly, tainted in the kid's mind; corrupted, the evil having sunken its teeth into him after all those years of fighting it, turning his will against the ones who loved him the most. And perhaps it was these same thoughts, or maybe it was just the scars and the memory of what that pasty-faced bastard had hissed into his ear back at the zoo, but now. . . Now Damian couldn't even look into his father's eyes without feeling hurt.
Hurt and betrayed.
Yes, Bruce had finally found a way into his child's heart, the way so many others had tried—to no avail, of course—and he had probed that soft spot inside him, his most vulnerable area, his "weakness" . . . And then he promptly tore it all to pieces. His own father had destroyed him in a way more than any supervillain alive could have hoped for.
And, god-damn-it, it hurt.
It's actually kind of funny: he could've took being horribly disfigured by a man whom he—and everyone else—had always hated; a man who had shown him nothing more than the worst that humanity had to offer.
But he couldn't take being lied to by a man he had always loved.
Damian goosed the throttle on the bat-cycle and the thing went flying against the heavy, rippling wind at full spate, his red-and-black windbreaker screaming and kicking against his chest in protest, but he didn't care, he was too angry to care.
After all, this is why he had always expected something like this to happen: he knew his life was far too broken and messy and complicated to merit some "happily-ever-after" in his new home; living in a big, sterile mansion with a compliant, sassy butler, spending the better half of his days and nights alongside his father, protecting the world from people like his mother and his grandfather. He knew that, deep down, real-life didn't work that way.
In real-life . . . Nothing perfect lasts forever.
The big, looming oak tress bookending him grew closer and closer together, narrowing down the slope in front of him, and he loosened his grip on the accelerator a little, letting the cycle leisure down the trail before it leveled out on the embankment, guardrails suddenly popping up into view as the road extended. He saw the forest meander off the sidehill and snake its way through smaller mounds of green until it reached the tower.
But Damian didn't notice the building right away. No, he was too busy gritting his teeth and contemplating his decision once more.
After all, he couldn't go back to the mansion now, right? He couldn't. It was too. . . Too what? Hard?
no, that wasn't it; he could endure anything hard, that's what he was born to do. Literally. So what was it?
It was too . . . Haunting. Like a part of him had died in that cave that night, and now he had to walk around with a dull, dead feeling inside him; the feeling he had always presumed others felt when they have lost a member of their family or someone else of whom they deeply loved.
He had lost a part of him, he was sure of that, and the mansion, his father, all the other… they just didn't do any good not to remind him of it.
After the recent unpleasantness, and psychological trauma, and grief, he had been left feeling empty and heartbroken.
Then the slope climbed up again and he looked to the sky and saw the big "T" hulking there, a fairy ring of clouds dancing around the glistening sheets of glass and reflective steel edges.
And suddenly . . . He smiled.
It was time to start over.
It was time to feel alive again.