Damian wonders if Pennyworth and Grayson are aware of how similar these past weeks have felt to living and training with the League. Homeschooling with Pennyworth did not feel all that different from training under the League's various tutors, neither was sparring Grayson much different from sparring his mother. The dedication, self discipline, and general level of violence were the same – the only change was whether you end your enemies by incapacitating them and arresting them or killing them.

He hasn't shared this thought with Pennyworth and Grayson, of course. He knows that they'd detest the comparison, as they detest everything about the League. The reason seems to be entirely based on death – specifically, it was acceptable for the League, but not for them. If he were here, if Damian could stand the sight of him right, Grand – Ra's Al Ghul – would lecture them for thinking small. Grayson wants to find an individual evil man and beat him up; the League was always about stopping human corruption at its source, even if that meant collateral damage. The only difference, as far as Damian can tell, is that as a child, he was instructed to think like a general; here, he's supposed to be a footsoldier.

It's a demotion. He knows that; he'd be stupid not to. It's going from being the heir to Ra's Al Ghul and commanding assassins – men twenty years his senior – in battle, to being expected to obey his father's lackeys, people who in any right world, he would be commanding.

The Damian from a couple months ago, before he ever met his father, when his role seemed clear and he was still expecting to carry on Ra's Al Ghul's work after his death, would detest the Damian now. He was always supposed to be a leader, not a follower. Of course, the Damian from a couple months ago didn't have to deal with his grandfather's betrayal or his father's strange reaction to him. The Damian from a couple months ago was simply allowed to be what he was supposed to be.

Damian decides that the least he can do is go out as Robin on his own. Not out of contrariness, as he's sure Grayson will interpret it – as if he's a mere child upset at hearing the word "no" – but to prove to himself that he's going out to fulfill his father's legacy independently, rather than relying on Grayson for everything or requiring his direction. Damian doesn't require such things.

Damian's not a fool. He's been paying close enough attention to the medical care Pennyworth has given him that he's sure he can duplicate it, especially if he keeps in mind the knowledge Mother had provided him with earlier. He's watched and inquired as to how the sphygmomanometer and oximeter work. He knows what the readings mean, and he knows that he's ready to go back out – Pennyworth will officially give him permission tomorrow, after the whole week has passed since the last time he asked. One day won't make a difference, but this way, Damian will be going out alone, not relying on father's lackeys.

So, once Grayson leaves for patrol at eleven and Pennyworth retreats to his room to get a couple hours of sleep, Damian sneaks out of the penthouse and rides the elevator down to the Batbunker.

Even though he's been here plenty of times before, every day for the past week and almost every day in the week before that, the bunker feels larger, emptier, without anyone else inside. Grayson's annoying prattle no longer echoes off the walls; instead, silence engulfs the room. The sparring room, temporarily converted into Gordon's holo-room, is inactive, no longer animated with the simulation of fictitious battles. The entire bunker is in power-saving mode; only the security system and a dim light are active.

Damian creeps forward towards the lockers, scanning the peripherals for anyone still watching. Grayson's costume isn't here, so he must be out, but Damian can't help his wariness. The shadows cast by the dim lights provide perfect places for any assassin to hide – he should know. He's done it before.

He approaches his locker and opens it, then quickly changes into the Robin costume. There, hidden in the back of his locker, is still the sword that Mother gave him on his 10th birthday – his grandfather's sword. The handle is as long as his forearm and the blade is longer than his leg. The guard is curved and covered in an elegant white scale pattern, and the handle in leather with a braided pattern. On his birthday, he'd been proud to receive it. You are an Al Ghul first and a Wayne second, Mother had said. Remember that, my little dark knight. Right now, he wishes he'd brought literally any other weapon when he was running from the League, but he hadn't thought about it. At the time, it was his most valuable possession, so naturally it was the sword he grabbed.

He takes it out of the locker and swings it experimentally. It still feels just as natural as breathing, of course, even though he hasn't practiced with it in over a month. But it was the first weapon he was ever taught to use; he learned to walk carrying around his wooden practice sword. It's the Al Ghul tradition, Mother had said. Once we are capable of making a fist, we are capable of using swords. He could no more forget how to wield a sword than he could forget his own name.

Damian sheaths his sword slings it over his back. He probably won't even draw it, and he certainly won't use it to kill anyone, but he'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it. Besides, even Father's people used weapons when fighting metas – Grayson went off on a two minute tangent once about how he missed his escrimas for near-invulnerable foes. Damian reasonably had pointed out that a bladed weapon would work better, depending on the nature of the foe's invulnerability, but Grayson had refused to enter a debate about it. He said Damian didn't need to use lethal weapons, regardless of the circumstance.

Once he's ready for patrol, Damian sizes up his options. He could take the Batmobile when he goes on patrol, of course. He's pretty sure he's finished fixing it up; the theory holds, and the small trial-run he took in the bunker was a complete success, even if Pennyworth protested at the jets on the bottom of the vehicle burning Grayson's jacket. Honestly, the man should have had his civilian clothes stashed in a locker during training, not left out on a chair. It was really an oversight on his part.

Of course, despite his best attempts to silence the engine, the vehicle still was louder than he was, and it was also bigger and much more visible. If Damian doesn't want anyone to know what he's up to tonight, he'll have to go on foot.

Damian creeps out the Batbunker and grapples to the nearest rooftop, giving himself an advantageous birds' eye view. He's unsure exactly where Grayson is tonight, because he's only been on patrol a couple times before – back before he'd received Father's letter, when he wasn't yet Robin and Grayson hadn't yet donned his Batman suit. Back then, Gotham was in enough chaos that it wasn't difficult to find a fight to stop; now, he has to look. Since Grayson had described Gotham to him in training, Damian decides to go by the docks. Grayson had said that if there's something being moved in or out of the city – drugs, weapons, people – it's often on the docks. It's time Damian makes that place a little less safe for the scum of the world.

From his place on the roof, Damian launches himself down a truck going in the direction he desires and lands on the trailer. As he slides, he stabs one of the batarangs into the roof to slow him and let him keep hold. Then, all he has to do is crouch down and keep himself low. Once the truck turns off the right road, Damian shoots his grappling hook at a nearby building and grapples off. Child's play.

When he reaches the docks, Damian remembers his training and sticks to the shadows. Of course, this would be easier without the bright yellow cape. He debates just taking it off and stashing it somewhere, but on the off chance he forgets it, he doesn't want to have to explain how he lost it. Besides, the cape is useful – it's somewhat damage resistant and fireproof.

The first forty minutes of his patrol are obscenely boring. No one's here, except for the occasional security patrol coming through – though they're loud enough that any competent enemies would hear them coming and hide, so Damian's not sure what they're for, unless it's just for show. Scaring off teen vandals and minor threats. Damian internally scoffs. This is why Gotham needs his father's people, obviously.

Predictably, the threat arrives after the security patrol passes, as the enemy had been as acutely aware of the guards' clumsy footsteps as he was. At least, Damian thinks the people arriving are the enemies. He does realize he leapt to a conclusion the first time he was out, but he's confident he won't make the same mistake this time. He'll wait until he knows what's going on.

"The enemy" – four men and one woman, all around their twenties or thirties and dressed in jackets against the coming autumn chill – stand on the dock. One of them reaches for a walky-talky and says something, but their voice is too soft to carry well enough for Damian to make out the words.

Damian shifts from his position in the shadows. He's behind the corner of a warehouse, between it and a stack of boxes. He needs to make his way closer to hear more, to be more certain.

However, he doesn't need to be closer to see what the five are waiting for – a medium sized cargo ship starts coming in.

Okay, that's obvious enough that even the security patrol should have noticed it. All Damian has to do is wait for them to come back and then protect them if they get in over their heads. Not the best use of his skills, but he figures maintaining operational secrecy until it's absolutely necessary is for the best. No need to alert anyone to his presence if the issue might be resolved on its own.

… Assuming this even is an issue. He's yet to put together the entire puzzle.

Damian holds in a desire to sigh disappointment. Waiting around, acting only in response to criminals, still seems not only boring, but intellectually lazy. Reactive, rather than proactive. That can't possibly be how Father operated, can it ?

Damian passes the time by imagining he's just lying in wait to assassinate someone, but it rings false without another target – and of course, it would probably elicit another lecture from Grayson or Pennyworth for… he doesn't know… thinking wrongly? He makes a face at the idea. Even though Father's people yearn to restrain and dictate his actions, they'll never be able to control his thoughts.

Finally, the security patrol comes around again. Damian expects the five newcomers to jump in surprise, or draw their weapons, so he preemptively prepares a smoke grenade, but they don't. They seem to nod at the patrol as they approach.

So they were… allowed here? Not doing anything illegal?

The woman hands one of the security guards an envelope, and the man quickly opens it and then nods approvingly and keeps going on his way. By time Damian's fished his binoculars out of his belt, though, the envelope is shut and he can't tell what was in it.

Damian frowns.

Still, he waits, unsure as to exactly what happened. As far as he knows, the envelope could have contained paperwork explaining their presence – or bribe money.

The security guards do not continue their route, instead they seem to head away, towards the parking lot. Damian loses sight of them as they go and elects to stay on the docks.

But if they were leaving, whatever's happening probably isn't good.

The ship docks and two people come out, holding boxes. One of them takes the top off of the box, showing the five on the dock that inside the box lies a couple rifles and – is that a rocket launcher?

Damian's torn between rolling his eyes – what kind of common criminal even needs a rocket launcher? Talk about overkill – and jealousy – sure, he's never needed to fire one, but he knows how. He's just never had the opportunity to assault anything so heavily armored as to require it, and his instructors always emphasized using the right weapons for the job. A sword, dagger, or even your hands, was more effective at quietly eliminating a target than blowing them to pieces.

Either way, Damian's sure enough that at night rocket-launcher deals are a sign of weapons trafficking that he can safely move in and do what he does best. He tosses his smoke grenade, still ready in his hands, into the fray and prepares to charge in.

An immediate "What the hell?" from one of the men rings out and Damian permits himself a smile at the clear lack of awareness of his foes. He starts to instinctively reach for his sword, but turns the motion into a grab for the batarangs on his belt to match with the fighting style he's supposed to employ here. He listens for the perfect target in the smoke, and it's not too hard to find one – there's a scramble of chaos in the center of the cloud, where the box of guns was.

Of course. They're arming themselves against a superior opponent.

It'd be comically easy to end the situation by throwing an explosive batarang right there and detonating any rockets in the rocket launcher, but that's not allowed, so Damian just throws his regular, sharpened batarang as hard as he can at where he's reasonably sure someone's torso is. There's a squelch as it digs into flesh and an "Aaag", so Damian knows he hit his mark.

Damian takes a deep breath and dives into the smoke. He leaps on where he last heard one man and lands awkwardly halfway off their shoulder and back, but it's good enough. He remembers Mother's lessons about how all humanoids have roughly similar body plans, and if you know where one part is, like the shoulders –

He elbows the man hard in the side of the head and the man wavers on his feet.

– you know where the rest of their body is and can fight accordingly.

Damian feels what he could do – it'd be so, so easy to reach one hand around the bottom of his chin and the other over the top of his head and twist with his entire bodyweight behind it, snapping the man's neck – but he doesn't. He instead elbows the man again to the same spot –

A crunch of his zygomatic bone snapping

– and the man screams loudly and falls to the ground.

Damian immediately rolls away, because no doubt the scream alerted the others to his presence. And predictably, a hail of bullets pierces through the air Damian just left.

And if their own man hadn't fallen down? They'd have shot him. Idiots.

The smoke is starting to dissipate now, and Damian knows he has to act quickly to take out another target before he's painfully visible and in shooting range. He can already hear the footsteps of the men as they evacuate the area for a better vantage point. Damian follows behind one and punches him to the back of his kidney, throws his entire body weight into a stomp down on the back of his knee, spins around so he's at the front of the man's body, and brings a hammerfist hard down on his nose, breaking it. The man screams, not unconscious, but in too much pain to do anything.

Rather than staying in place, Damian retreats back through the smoke to his old hiding place, preparing his next assault. He knows he broke his cover. There's another erratic burst of gunfire, nowhere near him, just aimed wildly.

"Who is it?" someone asks.

And then, possibly because Damian still hasn't been spotted (except for by that man screaming from a broken nose), someone offers "It's probably Batman."

Damian grins.

The four of the people who are still standing are looking around, holding guns, preparing to shoot at any shadow. The fifth, one of the two men who'd helped deliver the guns, has started running back towards the ship.

Coward, Damian thinks, and throws a bolas around his feet. He drops to the ground immediately after the throw –

And good thing, too, because everyone else started firing at where the bolas came from. Damian's practically hugging the asphalt, bullets flying over his head –

"Leave it to me" – the woman's voice. Damian peeks up and -

Hmm, she grabbed the rocket launcher. Unfortunate.

Damian scrambles backwards and ducks behind the boxes and they explode, splinters flying everywhere. They would have pierced the skin on his neck and face if he hadn't held up the cape (he knew it'd come in handy) and he rolls backwards.

The four approach him and Damian busts out another smoke bomb as a distraction, so they can't see where he is immediately. He runs, knowing they'll immediately refocus on him, but while they're taking their time to aim he's grabbing tools from his utility belt –

Got to grab the right tools, because the wrong ones could be deadly in this situation, like if he used an explosive on a person –

And throwing two batarangs, one at each of two men's hands, the woman reloads and aims her rocket launcher still at the smoke cloud, she hasn't spotted him yet, the last armed man is focusing on Damian, he aims, Damian ducks, rolls towards him, doesn't take out his sword, he's too afraid he'll fall back into old habits if he does, gets inside his guard, elbow to the groin, hook to the floating ribs, steps behind him, grabs his wrist and shoves him in an arm bar, keeping the man between him and his enemies, making them fight on his terms.

"Jared, move," the woman says, aiming the rocket launcher at the two of them. The man he's holding between them lets out a terrified eep, but the woman must not want to kill Damian bad enough that she'll hurt her own man, because she doesn't fire. She just groans in frustration.

In his peripheral vision, the two last remaining combatants, the ones he'd disarmed, are reaching for their guns again, and Damian's just thinking that this would have been so much more effective if he'd just killed them, or at the very least, cut off a limb or two.

Before they can get their weapons and prepare to finish him off, Damian finishes his armbar on Jared, pulling his wrist down and snapping it. Jared screams and Damian kicks him in the face hard enough to knock him unconscious. He immediately grasps a –

Bolas? He meant to grab a batarang. Stupid, stupid utility belt and rules and non-lethal weapons –

Ducks down as the woman takes aim, spins towards the man on the right and turns a mistake into a victory by throwing the bolas around the arms and torso of man on the left, preventing him from aiming his gun. A rocket goes off in the distance, having flown over where Damian's head used to be, and hit the ship.

Damian strikes the man next to as hard and fast as he can – groin, solar plexus, face as the man bends down to –

Ugh. Throw up. It got all over Damian's arm as he was punching him.

Now it's just him and the woman and the man with the bolas around his arms and chest who is desperately trying to wriggle out of the trap so he can shoot Damian. It doesn't work – his gun is pointed up at the sky in his current position; all he does is aim at the clouds.

The woman finishes reloading her rocket launcher and takes aim. Damian notes the slowness of the weapon, the click before she fires, the impracticality of having only one shot. He leaps away, acutely aware of how much physical effort it takes to pull that off than it does for her to pull the trigger. But she can't shoot as fast as she could with a gun; she's handicapping herself too.

Damian throws the batarang like an actual boomerang, so it will go behind her and come back to him, and charges. She grabs another rocket propelled grenade and starts to reload the rocket launcher, but her head's knocked forward as the batarang comes back, throwing her off and giving Damian the time he needs to get inside her guard.

At this close distance, the rocket launcher is a hindrance. She can't do anything with it and her hands are occupied. As she's bent forward from the blow of the batarang, Damian steps in with an uppercut to her chin, knocking her head back, then leaps on her torso and elbows her in the clavicle with a shatter.

She drops the rocket launcher and yells.

She falls down and Damian falls on top of her and she tries to hit him with her uninjured arm but Damian blocks, turns his ridgehand straight around her arm and to the back of her triceps tendon, and braces his arm with his other hand to apply the armbar. As she leans forward to headbutt at him, Damian lifts the arm barring hers up sharply, forcing her to lean back again or risk hyperextending her own elbow.

… which he then hyperextends anyway , because really, he needs her out of the fight. He stands up and knees her in the face and she's either unconscious or semi conscious enough for him to not worry about her anymore.

The only people who aren't moaning in pain on the ground are the two he'd thrown the bolases around – one with it around his torso, running away towards the ship, and the other frantically trying to take it off his legs. Their disadvantageous positions makes taking them out easy.

Damian sighs.

As he stands in the middle of the chaos, near the box of weapons, he's just acutely aware how… non victorious? this feels. The semi conscious enemies could regain full consciousness at any moment and surround him, they could try to hold him down with their superior strength or body weight…

No hesitation, no weakness, no mercy for fools. Mother's advice. It'd probably be easier to get out of his head if he didn't agree with it.

Against his better instincts, he goes around and grabs all of the weapons from the defeated enemies and puts them in the box, then just starts… dragging it away. He could take it back to the Batbunker, he figures, and use it as a private weapons stash in case of emergency. You never know when you might need assault rifles or rocket launchers. But he'd be so hindered by Grayson and Pennyworth's moralizing that there'd be no point. He's certain that if he tried to shoot an enemy, they would immediately treat him as such and ignore whatever the actual threat is, probably getting them all killed.

And, he realizes, Grayson would want him to leave behind all of these weapons for evidence.

Slowly – it takes longer than the fight itself did – Damian starts dragging the adults to a lamppost and ties them up against it. One of the conscious men starts trying to bribe him ("Hey man, let us go, come on, I'll give you a cut") and Damian strikes the man in the face for the insult. After that, there's no bargaining, and only a little bit of people trying to crawl away.

So timewasting tying everyone up so they can await GCPD. If Gotham's truly as dangerous as everyone says it is, wouldn't his time be better dedicated to something else? Incapacitating more threats?

Damian stews the entire time he's working on it, then goes to look for his next target.

.

.

.

Damian arrives back at the Batbunker about 2:30 a.m., which he's reasonably sure is before Grayson's return. When he checks, the Batman suit is still out, so Grayson must be as well.

He hurriedly gets changed and starts scrubbing the Robin suit – it's still got a little vomit where that man barfed on him – annoyed at his own haste, at the feeling like he has to hide something. He's not even doing anything wrong, according to Grayson's rules. But he's not doing it on Grayson's terms, so the man would still freak out if he saw. Or do his version of freaking out. Damian, we'll go on patrol together. Damian, Robin's obligated to team up with Batman. Damian, we'd work better operating out of the same building . Damian, Damian, Damian. Incessantly whining. You're small and weak and need my protection when we're working. Or maybe you're dangerous and psychotic and need my permission to work.

It's always the same. First Father, then Mother, then Grayson. Be a child (whose too dangerous to be left alone)! Be a warrior (who I'll remove from action like a child)! Be a superhero (who has to follow me around like a sidekick)!

Damian balls his hands into fists and inhales deeply, trying to prevent himself from getting worked up. He can't punch anything, he can't let anyone know he was down here. So instead, he locks his uniform in his locker, verifies everything is how it was when he left, and makes his way up the elevator to the penthouse.

He tiptoes down the hall and enters his room without being interrupted, then quickly turns on a corner light – not the overhead – to give himself some light to draw. He could try to prepare a nice picture, something that can occupy him for the next couple days, but he just gets out some pencils for sketching. He doesn't want to do something nice; he wants to get his anger and frustration out.

It isn't until the pencil hits the paper that he really thinks of what he might draw. Possibility, he realizes. All of the blows he didn't make. He draws the head of the man whose neck he was about to snap, but hangs his head on his neck at a 90 degree angle, let's his eyes bulge out of his skull with surprise and his tongue hang limply from his mouth. It's an ugly picture – it's supposed to be ugly. There's nothing pretty about the exaggerated expression Damian's associating with death here. He's killed enough people to know that death is only pretty in poems or Renaissance paintings.

He flips to the next page. He wants another ugly picture. If he'd just decided to end the combat in the beginning, he thinks. If he'd just thrown an explosive straight into the box, detonating the warheads in the rocket propelled grenades inside. What's an explosion do to a person that close up? Damian starts sketching the macabre scene. When he's done, he sticks the notebook under the mattress of his bed, knowing he can't let Pennyworth or Grayson see it. They'd use it as evidence that there's something wrong with him, that he's just like the people Batman and Robin are supposed to be hunting down. Don't you feel bad? they'd ask. Why don't you feel bad?

Why don't you feel bad for doing bad things unless you are bad? And with that thought, Damian angrily punches his mattress and tries to force himself to sleep.