A/N: This story means the world to me. It is actually a translation of a multi-chapter fic that I finished a year ago. My view on Jack/Damian in all details. Back when I wrote this fic none of their episodes had been translated, but amazingly enough it still matches them very well.
This was the first and only fic that ever just came to me. I was in the middle of something when it hit me and I started writing. It is very personal for me, too, as the time I wrote it in was one of the worst in my life. A lot of my own feelings went into this work.

I hope you can feel a bit of the intensity with which I wrote this, with which I love Jack and Damian and their relationship.

This is, now until forever, dedicated to my girlfriend Soup, the Damian to my Jack.


The HD Academy was a dull and con-formal place. Day in, day out Bladers entered the building, the gym halls, the classrooms. Day in, day out, the same rhythm, a machine with eternally unchanging sound, alike to an artificial heartbeat.

The heartbeat was Damian's second self, so in sync with his own that he threatened to forget its existence. The Academy was all he knew. An existence one the other side of these walls seemed to be only a vague, incomprehensible secret. Damian didn't need it. Damian didn't need anything except for food and sleep and the eternally unchanging process of learning and training.
Damian was good. He was the best of the best and all other students obeyed the silent law of 'oppose him and you can stop hoping for any sort of career here'. His reputation was whispered from person to person, making him half human half a mystery and always ensured him a nice spot in the cafeteria.

For Damian all of that was only natural. He accepted it like he accepted anything else. He got better, always better and stronger. He didn't waste a single thought on the idea that anything might change sometime. Eternally unchanging, day in, day out, a proportional procedure of effort and improvement.

Step by step, day by day, in a world that had been robbed of all its depth by neon floodlights. Grey, gray, grey and grey again, step by step... and then colour. Bright and blinding.

Damian blinked, but the image he saw did not disappear. He lifted his head from his hand and turned to the window. Unnoticed by the class that was fully focused on the behaviour of blade tips in soft gravel, unnoticed by the world, by everyone except for Damian, an exotic garden grew in the courtyard.

Colours over colours, soft lines and wild edges playing catch with each other, a seemingly random pattern that formed an own world in itself.
The last time Damian had cared to look out of the window, the courtyard had still been plastered in grey.
Damian was staring out, tracing single colour trails with his looks and trying to comprehend what had happened and what he should think of it, when a part of the colours moved.
Damian tilted his head and as his eyes got used to the dazzling colours, he could identify the cause of change, that collection of different colour shades as a boy.
From the emptiness of Damian's mind a faint notion of irritation grew. The stranger stood in an ocean of paint buckets and used his hands and feet to finish that enormous painting. He simply didn't belong here.
The notion of irritation rose and couldn't quite decide if it wanted to turn into confusion or anger. Damian had forgotten about the lesson, the teacher's voice was reduced to a mere background sound now.

The artist seemed to notice his gaze and turned around and without even the shortest moment of searching he looked up to Damian's window, directly into his eyes, and grinned, a grin in between manic madness and deepest superiority.
Damian didn't avoid the look, only encountered it with stoic expressionlessness, a bit as if he would look through the other. But that wasn't the case. Nobody could have ignored that presence.

And the artist laughed, his lips, painted in a full blue, curved as he talked. Through the distance and the glass Damian couldn't hear a single sound, but it was as if he could sense the predatory intonation. He wasn't impressed.

A few seconds later the moment was over. The bell tore the spell apart and everyday life, the artificial heartbeat, called Damian back. Apruptly he stood up, not giving the window a single further look.

With thorough avoidance of any visual contact to the courtyard Damian finally could suppress his disturbance - possibly even curiosity- and finish the day just as usual.

Only the evening proved to be a challenge, because the dorms weren't part of the main building. Instead, they were build on the other side of the courtyard.
And like that Damian found himself in front of the door, staring at an ocean of colours that couldn't be fully tamed even by the darkness of the night. But who would Damian be, had he let himself be stopped by that?

With secure steps he moved over flowers and blossoms. Only at the center of the yard he came to a halt and looked around, feeling almost overwhelmed by the tasteless, effect-seeking and unbelievably logical, attractive combination of colour shades. Not that Damian had cared for art though.
He shook his head and continued walking. Even as he had shut the door of the dorm behind him the acrid smell of paint didn't leave his nose, stuck to it like a unwelcome parasite that you couldn't get rid off.

Damian slowly walked up the stairs, turned left to his wing and then almost would have bumped into Dr. Ziggurat who looked at him appraisingly.

"Damian," he greeted and Damian didn't say anything in return. That wasn't uncommon. Not in the slightest disturbed the doctor went on: "We have a new student."

Damian raised his eyebrows. Was that really so unusual?

"I gave him the room next to yours. I know, it has been empty for years but he is... special. In every sense."
Damian nodded and went past him, further in direction of his nightly sleeping routine, but he couldn't shake the slight apprehension that crept around him like mist.

The door to the neighboring room was opened as he passed. Damian shortly looked inside and instantly regretted it. In between red strands of hair green eyes glimmered and surrounded by spider webs the stranger from this morning stood in the room.

"Ah!," he said and gestured widely, "the admirer from earlier!"

Damian stopped walking, not used to being approached and gave a sceptical frown. "Don't just makes assumptions like that."

The stranger didn't appear bothered by the comment. He merely stepped forward a bit, which confronted Damian with his stomach, causing him to have to lift his head to keep sight of the other's face.

"Sweet. You're really tiny." The artist smiled and even dared to pat Damian's head lightly. For the duration of a bit of reaction time nothing happened, then Damian vehemently pushed off the hand and glared, hissing not to touch him.

The redhead flailed his hand melodramatically as if Damian had actually hurt him, but his smirk proved his gesture a liar. "How snappy. Not a nice start for a beautiful neighbourship. Who are you even, poisonous little man?"
Damian huffed and was already about to leave his ditch his new acquaintance as something held him back. He thought of the colours, that change, and turned around again.

"Damian Heart."

"How cute. My name is Jack," the other purred as Damian was already walking away. The dramatic gesture got lost to an empty hallway.

Damian went to bed and stared the ceiling. From next door he could hear how suitcases were unpacked. The walls were thin, way too thin, way to thin to keep Jack apart from him for real. Jack was like an alien element to the school, but a purposely inserted on as Ziggurat had been the one to bring him here. He had to have some sort of talent sleeping inside of him that could make him a part of the logic again.

Damian fell asleep to the sound of his everyday life. One single wrong tune didn't have to mean anything...

But it could, apparently.

The next morning Damian woke up to paint smell, a scent that he already hated. Paint smelled artificial and acrid, hurt his throat and burned itself into his sell of smell so that he had to endure it for hours.
Seeing that staying in his room and opening the windows wide wasn't an option, he had no choice but to follow the smell as if it was some sort of trace. Inevitably it led directly to Jack. Not that it was much of a distance.

The redhead boy stood in front of the door to his new place of residence and completed last lines on the surface, using his fingers that were protected by rubber gloves.

Damian wanted to move past him, but he couldn't stop himself from glancing at the artwork.

It was something completely normal, almost too mundane to fit its artist, if it wasn't for the way it was done. Actually it was some sort of doorplate. At least the letters of Jack's name were clearly to be read, but 'clearly' was in no way to be understood as 'plain and undecorated'.

The lettering was full of flourishes and tied together with each other as much as tied to the background, but still obviously differentiated by the attachment colours.

Without noticing Damian had stopped in his tracks, but luckily it didn't matter, because Jack didn't seem to notice him at all. He was completely lost in his own world. His breath went fast and a manic grin graced his face.

"Beautiful," he whispered passionately, "Excellent!"

It was a dedication like Damian had never seen it in the Academy before. Disapprovingly he clicked his tongue. "You're too sure of yourself."
It took a second for Jack to wake up from his trance fully and for the real world to pull the corners of his mouth back into a normal position.

Damian had already been about to move on as Jack finally spun around and looked into his eyes determinedly. "Your comprehension of art is truly lacking, Damian Heart." For a moment Jack's eyes were filled by a hint of danger, but then he just grinned again and dramatically spread his arms. "But I'm going to change that!"

Damian gave a shrug. "Well, I'm going to get breakfast now."

And Jack followed, just like he would ever-so-often in the following days, weeks and months. All that kept the other students away from Damian seemed to magically attract Jack. Ziggurat probably had placed Jack next to Damian because he feared for the balance of the other, weaker students und he thought Damian to be stronger, able to not be tinted by Jack's colours. But his worry had been unfounded in one regard. It wasn't that the other students weren't fascinated by the shimmering glowing Jack. It was Jack who basked in their attention, but otherwise kept his distance. Instead he attached himself to Damian, made it his hobby to provoke reactions from him and confront him with his art at every convenient occasion.

Damian didn't know how to feel. It was unfamiliar... unfamiliar to hear steps behind him in the halls, unfamiliar to have somebody next to him at lunch (somebody who did the most amazing things with his food before he ate at that), unfamiliar to actually be talking to somebody. Not that he would have liked to, but Jack forced him, provoked him extraordinarily, sometimes even by doing nothing. He could always make him give short comments.

Jack was everything that Damian wasn't, that the Academy wasn't.

Jack was unique, invincible... almost blinding, hypnotizing, one single kaleidoscope that made Damian dizzy when he tried to observe it.

In the world of school Jack was his own little island that successfully defied any monotony. Damian stood at the border to Jack's world, monitoring it without either being sucked in nor mustering up the will to turn away once and for all.