Damian and Barry are bff's. That is all.


"Where the fuck was Batman?"

"I don't know, West." His voice was raspy, weak. "I don't know."

His words weren't comforting in the slightest, and for a moment, all I could remember was the diner.

That damned diner from Star City, with that damned robber and his gun and my inability to protect myself, and it'd happened again, except the guy didn't have a gun.

And I wasn't just protecting myself. There was Damian, beaten at his own game and his own abilities, but not nearly as much as I was. Not a fraction of what I'd been. Sure, he'd been foolish before, jumping into battle before I could, but this time… this time, I'd been the foolish one.

I attracted bad luck, and I suppose the stars decided that I hadn't had enough in my life lately, because that fucker damned near…

I didn't want to think about it. I didn't. I wasn't dead, so none of this mattered.

"You - you okay, Dami?"

"Yeah," he responded, his voice hushed, but I knew it wasn't out of choice. "How about you, Bear?"

We never spoke like this. We were never this tender nor this loving, and I knew he was afraid and concerned, just as I was, if not more so. He'd been at this longer than I had - been working Gotham longer than I ever would - but he was still only fifteen and I was still only seventeen and we could have gotten killed.

"I…I don't know. I don't want to look."

"Can you stand?"

"…I don't know."

"Get the fuck up, West."

I couldn't help but chuckle; that was the Damian I knew, replacing his emotions with callous words, unused to being so kind and expressive. With shaking limbs and throbbing knees, I staggered to my feet, examining the boy sitting up against the alley way's brick wall.

He'd be fine. He was the goddamned Batman's son, for Christ's sake. Judging by the way he was sitting and the blood on the side of his lip, he'd maybe cracked a rib and bruised his lungs, but he would be fine.

"You're a pussy if you think you're injured, West."

I sighed, glancing down at myself, taking a mental inventory. My shoes were scuffed, my shorts torn, a huge hole causing the hem to dangle by a few courageous threads unwilling to give out. My knees were scraped to a hellish degree - I'd fallen, a rookie mistake, and I was a rookie, so who was to blame? It wouldn't 've been so bad if the guy didn't grab my hood and yank me across the pavement.

My face was bruising, I could feel the blood thrumming in my cheek, a sensation far too familiar for my liking. My ribs were fine, my lungs were fine as I breathed in, and a quick look at my hands…

I think my retching proved humorous for Damian; it was almost a little comforting to me, proving that I was just human. I made mistakes. I was allowed to make mistakes.

I had four mistakes on my hands, my fingers bent at angles that made me shudder and vomit, and the disgusting feeling of my shoulder being knocked out of place was enough to make me want to dry-heave.

Why not? My dinner was already on the alley's floor. I didn't have much else to lose.

"We'll be fine, Wayne," I wheezed, making my way over to the boy and offering him a hand, glancing away from the mal-shaped digits. "We'll be fine."

He took my hand, and the pain I felt was enough to remind me that mistakes were not going to be allowed any further.

Mistakes cost lives, and I didn't want to think about how close I could have come to losing my best friend, even as he thumped me on the back and I let out a shout of pain.

I couldn't risk it. Any of it.

I didn't want to think about it.