Father takes Damian to his rocket and prepares him for the trip to the mediterranean. It's shouldn't take long, but it feels like forever to Damian because of how antsy he is.

He knows he messed up. He's not quite sure how, but Father's acting like he did. He thought he had it all figured out - he thought Father just was sad because for some reason, Drake was more irreplaceable or important than Damian had anticipated.

No, that's not true. Damian knew why Father reacted that way to him trying to kill Drake - the same reason Damian had done it, without being able to articulate it to himself at the time. Father was treating Drake how he wanted to be treated. Father was treating Drake like his son. And with Father having been so upset at it, it's clear he viewed Drake as his real son, which only made Damian hate the kid more.

Funny, he doesn't think he's ever had a reason to be jealous of anyone before.

There was more though - Father instead seemed to take objection with the act of killing itself - an act he'd never partaken in. It seemed as if he'd somehow made it through forty-some years of life without ever resorting to the surest way to dispatch an enemy that existed.

Not Damian.

Damian can remember with perfect clarity the face of the first man he killed.

Not every person he killed, obviously. There were too many for that, and some of them were his brethren from the League of Shadows on training missions - like the one he finished not three days ago, when Mother fought him. He never even had the opportunity to see their faces.

But the first person he killed - he remembers their face.

He was not yet five. Like many first kills for the League of Shadows, he was supposed to execute a criminal. Someone who'd wronged Grandfather in some way.

However, his job was not just to hold a sword and cut off their head. Instead, Grandfather wanted Damian to find the man and bring his head back. He wanted Damian to prove himself. That all his training would not be in vain.

It wasn't hard. The man just lived in the next town over. Damian had prepared enough supplies to walk the distance - he had light leather armor under his clothes, a backpack full of supplies, a first aid kit, a bedroll, and a sword - but on his way over, a woman offered him a ride. She asked if he was lost. Damian said no - he was just going to see his uncle. That's his cover story, he thought. That he was going to see family. Can you please help me find him?

The woman didn't bother to ask any questions. After all, who would suspect a four-year-old of being an assassin? Even moreso - who would suspect a four-year-old of lying about this in general? She took Damian to the town and insisted on coming with him to find his uncle. She couldn't bear to leave a child alone. Damian tried to convince her otherwise - it was no trouble, he'd been this way before. But she would not be deterred.

They found the man's house, a little outside of town. Damian shifted uncomfortably, now. He knew the man would know something's wrong. The man would know he didn't have any nephews who look like Damian, he'd maybe even be suspicious that any unexpected visitors were assassins in disguise. He knew he'd angered Ra's Al Ghul, and now the wrath of the demon was upon him.

The woman knocked on the door.

The man answered - he was a little old, about fifty, with strong cheekbones, large circular eyes that seemed to jut from their eyesockets, a wide nose, and no hair. He eyed the woman with suspicion, and Damian grabbed the hilt of his sword, prepared to kill the man the instant he had to.

"Hello," the woman said, "I'm here with your nephew - "

The man ran inside. He came back wielding a pitchfork like a weapon, and brandished it at her. "I know why you're here!" he screamed. "Liar! I won't go back!"

The woman backed up so quickly she tripped over her own feet and fell down on her butt.

He must think she's the assassin, Damian realized. And I'm just a cover story .

Damian withdrew his sword quickly. He didn't have much time during which the man would be distracted. He swung his sword at the man's knee, the easiest thing in reach.

The sword only embedded itself partly inside his knee with a thick splunk sound. The man wheeled on Damian so fast he lost grip of his sword, which was still in the man's knee.

The woman screamed.

The man started stabbing desperately at where Damian was with his pitchfork. It took all of Damian's considerable training to avoid it - he jumped back, dirt flew up in his face from where he was not a second ago. The man attacked him, once, twice -

Damian sprawled on the ground.

His head was ringing. He got clipped by the pitchfork - badly. Blood was dribbling into his eyes from a cut over his browline.

The man was standing above him, pitchfork raised, prepared to bring it down in the kill. The only thing that saved Damian was his sword - the man crumpled on his weakened leg and fell to the ground.

Damian withdrew his sword painfully and quickly from the man's knee. The man screamed. Damian backed up and got to his feet, the man started to brace himself with the pitchfork so he could stand up -

If he does, Damian realized, he'd be dead. The man was too strong, with too long a reach, for Damian to get past his guard. Damian swung his sword at the man again, this time at his neck height. Again, he wasn't strong enough for the blade to go all the way through. It got stuck at his spine after having sliced through his trachea, esophagus, and blood vessels. Blood sprayed across his face.

The man made a sick gurgling noise. His eyes seemed to bulge out of his face even further. Five years or so later and Damian can still remember them, the smell of blood, and the way the inside of a man's neck looked nothing like his anatomy books had prepared him for. Everything in the books was so neat, so clearly labelled, as if you could unzip a human being and see how they worked. What was in front of Damian instead was an unrecognizable mess.

Damian was faintly aware of the woman who drove him here making some type of noise. He wasn't sure whether she was praying or crying for help or babbling in disbelief. Damian didn't even believe it. He couldn't get his hands to let go of his sword, he couldn't get the sword out of the man's neck. He was just standing there, embedded in his… victory.

Shadow assassins sprung up from behind the house or bushes and Damian realized he'd never been alone. There had always been someone with him, in case he failed.

Insulting, he should have thought. But he still couldn't remove his sword from the man's neck. He could, physically, he should have been able to. He'd practiced cutting through lots of materials in training. Wood, hunks of meat, training dummies. But his hands wouldn't obey him when he tried to force them to withdraw the sword.

Blood had dribbled down his arms and Damian was taken back by the League. He can't remember letting go of his sword and he can't remember walking back - maybe he was carried? Nor can he remember what happened to the woman. She stopped making noises, but he never found out if it was because she ran away, calmed down, or was killed by another assassin.

Damian felt cold the entire trip back. He had no clue why. It was summer. It was sweltering. Why did he feel cold?

"I am proud of you," Grandfather had said while greeting him back at home, with his arms outstretched. "You will surely prove yourself worthy of being my heir."

Damian basked in the praise and the cold feeling dissipated from his stomach as Grandfather told him how the man was disloyal to the Al Ghul family and how Damian did the right thing, and now everything would be safe. It wasn't until Mother had arrived back from her mission that things seemed to get weird again.

"Oh, no," she'd said softly. "Oh, Father…"

She didn't say much more - she just looked at her father with these sad eyes again and took Damian to his quarters and started cleaning his face with a handkerchief and sewing up his wound.

It's petty, and it's the worst thing he can think of with how everyone is acting right now, but deep down where he doesn't have to say it out loud, Damian wishes that Father would do the same for him. He wishes he'd grab his shoulder and hug him again, like he did that morning at breakfast, so Damian wouldn't have to be waiting for his wrath.

But it seems that rage is the only thing Father has for Damian right now, because all he's done is yell at him or tense in a way that makes Damian think Father's intending on fighting him. It shouldn't even bother him - being yelled at. Yet it does. It's so much worse than when Grandfather tells him that he failed, because at least then Damian knows how to fix it - all he has to do is try again and succeed. In fact, he doesn't know if he's ever consistently failed at something Grandfather gave him to do. He doesn't know if he'd have been allowed to.

Either way, it means he has no clue how to salvage the situation with Father. Father seemed completely unwilling to use him as a weapon and heir, like Grandfather did. At first, Damian assumed that Father merely believed he couldn't do it. Now…

Now, he's not sure if Father would ever have a use for him. A reason to love him.

Damian shuts his eyes as the rocket decelerates over the base near Gibraltar. Maybe, when they see Mother, she can explain it. Why Father seemed to operate on such a different level than everyone he knew. Then, things will make sense again…