The door swings open on noisy, maddening hinges.
A second passes where nothing happens at all. Damian is left standing there in silence, groping at the door of a tiny church, staring into oblivion. His boots remained glued to the floorboards, the Batsuit's cape a deadweight against the ground.
And then he's blinded.
Every sense is overwhelmed by intense, fluorescent light that cuts off his vision and burns his retinas. Given his past experiences, he knows the "explosion of light" gig is rarely a good one. It means that reality has become flimsy, in one way or another.
Not that it didn't already seem a little questionable.
He steps forward, raising his hands to shield his eyes, trying to call out for the girl he's afraid he's lost. She has to be beyond this point, he's sure of it. She has to be close, because what will he do if she isn't?
His mind races, before the smell of antiseptic hits him like a truck.
No.
The unholy amount of white, incandescent light slowly fades to colors and moving shapes. A high-pitched ringing deepens and becomes the steady beep of a heart monitor, keeping time with someone's exploding pulse. A nails-on-chalkboard shrieking lowers and becomes the squeaking of moving wheels across a tile floor. The sounds of whistling clear and become the uneven gasps of a human being.
Damian is back in the hospital.
He's back in the hospital, he's still wearing Dick's suit and he hasn't the slightest idea how he got here.
But one shudder-inducing scream makes him not care.
Stephanie.
She's here and she isn't lined with the hatch marks of Zsasz's rusted pocket knife.
But she is being pushed down the hospital hallway on a stiff mattress, surrounded by nurses wearing masks over their mouths and gloves over their fingers, and she's shouting in absolute agony.
It takes about two seconds for his circulation to start coursing again, for the adrenaline to reboot his system and hotwire his tendons.
Several women yelp in fright as he thrusts forward after the travelling mattress, shoving aside anyone and anything that gets in his way. This night has made no sense ever since he left the hospital room window, and the stubborn side of his "sensible" manner makes him wonder how much more he can take. Batman rampaging through a hospital after a young pregnant blonde, while having just seen that same young pregnant blonde carved to pieces in front of a Gotham church, isn't exactly the daily quota he's accustomed to.
Oh, and that same Gotham church? Yeah, he just teleported from it. Or something like that.
Another scream and he dismisses everything as nonsense. Too little sleep, too many hours away from the Cave, too much stress over the pregnancy. Maybe leftovers from Scarecrow's fear toxin. They must have caused the earlier visions, because this—this right here—is real. It has to be.
It's real, and it's Damian's worst nightmare come to life.
He catches up with Stephanie and her team of nurses and bellows at one of them, certain that the whole world has gone legitimately up in flames. "What happened?" he demands, resisting the almost overpowering urge to grab the nurse and shove her against the wall.
But she's too busy opening and closing her mouth in shock, tripping as she tries to run alongside the moving mattress. "Batman?" her lips mouth, but nothing comes from the depths of her throat.
Stephanie cries out again and Damian's had enough. He pushes the nurse out of the way and takes Stephanie's hand, staring at the other nurse from across the mattress and seething. "Answer the damn question or I'll—"
This nurse recognizes a threat when she sees one. Thank God. "We—we think there's something wrong with the baby," she immediately replies, cutting him off and explaining as much as she can. "We don't know what, but Miss Brown went into preterm labor again and we're taking her to the OR for an emergency caesarean section." She pauses, then decides it may be safe to ask. "Batman, can I ask why you—"
But Damian stopped listening as soon as he heard "c-section."
Stephanie needs a c-section. That shouldn't sound so awful, but Damian isn't thinking it's just going to be a c-section. There is something horribly, awfully wrong here and no one knows what it is.
Stephanie stares up at him, her face drenched in beads of sweat that fall down her cheeks like tears. Her hair is matted against her scalp and sticks to her forehead in clumps of blonde-turned-brown from perspiration. Her eyes are as bright and blue as ever, but they're drooping and they're scared.
Her lips meld into a soft, exhausted smile. "You're still wearing the cowl, D." Normally, she would be concerned about this. Normally he would too. But it's been established ten times over that this is far from a normal situation.
"Hush. You should have alerted me immediately," he says in his regular, Damian Wayne voice, albeit strained and frightened.
Fear. Huh. It's an odd thing, coming from his vocal chords.
"I couldn't. It was sudden. She—" Stephanie winces and convulses, drawing her legs up in an almost protective instinct over her core. After a moment, she relaxes, but only slightly. Damian watches this helplessly, like a child watching a bank robbery or a back alley mugging.
"She really wants out, that's all," the woman who was once Batgirl continues, laughing weakly. "This one's a little beast, just like her old man."
"It's probably why Mother put me in a tube," Damian replies, but he can't find the heart to put humor in his tone. This isn't funny. This is heart-stopping.
"Probably," Stephanie agrees and tries to grin but can't, because she's shouting again. Her hand squeezes his to the point that it grinds bones together, and Damian grits his teeth to resist pulling away. He doesn't want to let go. He can't let go. He'll lose her if he lets go.
Tears squeeze their way out of Stephanie's eyes in fat drops and she lies flat against the mattress again, as they round a corner and start heading towards the OR doors at the end of the hallway. He's never heard her breathe like this before, in such an uncontrolled, unnatural pattern. He scans her body, as if that will somehow help him solve the problem.
The blood seeping into the white cotton of the mattress nearly turns his feet to lead.
"Stephanie," he whispers, as the crimson spreads and stretches, clawing for more fabric to taint. "Talk to me, Stephanie." He desperately looks up at her, but her eyelids are falling.
"Can't," she mumbles. "Can't, have to…focus…"
No. No, no, no. He won't lose her.
"You listen to me, Stephanie Brown," he says between clenched teeth, gripping her wrists and squeezing. "You listen to me. You are fine. You have always been fine. You are an arrogant shrew of a woman, and you have twice the strength and stamina of any female in this room. You are the only one who could ever go toe to toe with me, optimism versus pessimism. You are stronger than this. I—" He turns and shouts at the nurse, who's looking down at Stephanie with something akin to horror. "DO something!" he roars, practically spitting at the poor lady. She looks about ready to burst into tears, so she starts fiddling with the heart monitor and IV drip and, really, does absolutely nothing to help.
"Damian, stop," Stephanie orders, and even in this weakened position, her voice carries that imperious command that he has come to love over the past few months. Like she's going to get what she wants and doesn't care what anyone else says. "Stop yelling at her. She's doing the best she can. It's me, I'm not—" She hesitates, conflicted. "I was never good at carrying kids. You knew that, Tim knew that—"
"Drake has nothing to do with this!" Damian shouts, his heart pounding. "This is our child, not his, and you are going to be fine. You aren't a child any more, you are a fully grown woman. A fully grown, capable woman. You are going to have a c-section and the nurses are going to—"
She shakes her head and the blood seeps further, reaching the place where her knees touch the cloth.
"I'm so sorry, D," she whispers, and he's truly never seen her look so apologetic. It reaches her eyes in a way that only a few emotions can, and he shuts his mouth, defeated. "I really tried hard this time, I promise," she tells him. "I really tried hard. I didn't want a repeat of me and Tim."
Damian doesn't know which she's talking about—her and Drake with the pregnancy, or her and Drake with their relationship.
Maybe both.
Tim and Stephanie are something Damian rarely likes to touch upon. First of all, he doesn't like the idea of his Pretty Pretty Princess older brother getting to Stephanie before him. He also doesn't like the idea of Tim's thin, chapped lips against Stephanie's full, beautiful ones, but that's just a by-product of jealousy.
Most of all, he doesn't like that Tim was there for Stephanie's first pregnancy. Tim was there through, arguably, one of Stephanie's hardest times, when she was left knocked up by some Gotham jerk who ran away after the earthquake. Tim took her to Lamaze classes and held her hand through the whole thing. He knew what cravings she had, he knew her pregnancy mannerisms, he knew what she was like when she was young and healthy and glowing with a round belly and crooked grin.
And he never would have left her, the way Damian did today.
The shame sends acid churning through his stomach.
"This is not a repeat," he tells her. He wonders where all his cool confidence has gone, as he slips further and further into something akin to hysteria. Of course, Damian hysteria isn't your typical hysteria. There isn't any hyperventilation or rapid-fire tears. Just a growing confusion and frustrated vulnerability. "This time will be different. In a few hours, you will have a perfectly healthy infant in your arms and I will not put her up for adoption, because she is our child. She is—"
"She's Laila," Stephanie interrupts quietly, and her lips—which have gone blue—smile yet again.
This catches him off guard. They haven't really discussed names up to this point—he always expected Stephanie would just come up with a good one when the time came. But, here she is, completely sure about a name he's never even heard her consider.
"Laila?"
"Laila. It means 'the night'. I thought that was," she clenches her teeth again, another tear chasing its way across her cheekbone and disappearing into the stained sheets, "kinda clever. Y'know, considering our background and everything."
"Yes. Kinda clever," he replies, but he's paying more attention to her working throat and blue lips than he is to her level of cunning.
A quiet shriek gasps its way through Stephanie's mouth and she presses her head back against the sweat-soaked pillow. The nurses thrust the mattress through the OR doors and Batman follows because he's Batman and this is who he loves. No one objects to that. No one dares to.
"So…I want you to remember that, okay?" Steph continues after a few haggard breaths. "Laila. Spelled L-A-I-L-A, no stupid 'y's or anything like that. And I want you to take her fishing, because I want her to be a kickass little tomboy like Cass."
"She will be," Damian reassures. Because he has to. What else can he say?
"She's gonna be so beautiful, D," Steph says, her voice suddenly pleased and dream-like. "You're absolutely going to love her. I know you will."
Her body spasms as she coughs, chokes, and reacts to pain simultaneously. But she's back at the races within seconds, chattering away. Classic Stephanie. So classic it's like a stab in the gut, another reminder of all the reasons why Damian has grown so fond of this impotent, impossible, infantile woman.
"You're going to love her so much. I know you're worried about being the Daddy of the house, but I think you're gonna do great," Stephanie reassures him. "You're a lot more easily attached to things then you like to admit, so I think you'll be fine. Dick would be really proud of you," she adds as almost a side-comment, glancing down at his suit.
She recognizes it as Dick's. Probably recognized it several minutes ago.
Damian tries to say something but can't.
"You're going to love her," she repeats again, her voice softer this time. "So much, D."
They're setting Stephanie up for surgery, rustling around her and trying to put things into place, as the blood trickles past her feet now. Her face has gone ghostly white and is still laden with sweat. Her voice is almost an indeterminable whisper, her eyelids heavy over her turquoise irises.
"Shh. Look at me, Stephanie. Look."
"Can't," she says sadly. "Can't now."
"Please."
"Why did you leave, Dami? All you left was that letter."
"I had to leave. I thought it was—I didn't think this would—" He stops.
God, why is it suddenly so hard to talk? He's always had a knack for finding the right words, for wheedling past annoying society women or the GCPD cops. He's always had a sharp, cruel comeback at the ready, a fresh retort for every day's meal.
So why is it so hard now? Why can't he just talk to her the way he always has?
"I saw you, Stephanie, in front of a Gotham church," he finally continues. "Zsasz was there, and he—"
"I believed you would come back sooner, you know," she tells him, searching his face. "And save the day, just in time. I always believed that."
"I'm here now."
She shakes her head slowly, her eyes rolling to stare up at the ceiling. Absent. "Yeah, bud. You're here now. When everything's up in flames and everyone's gone out-of-their-mind bonkers. That's when you like to show up."
"It's what I'm used to." And there's real honesty in his voice, because it's true. It's what he's used to. He doesn't know any better.
He's not sure he ever will know any better. But that's his life. He's a paper plane in Gotham's grey sky morning—he tries to soar over the currents, but there's going to be a time, now and again, when gravity pulls him down. He's the immortal Batman, who can't be there to save the only girl he ever loved.
Stephanie's fading. A shrill ghost of a scream rises from her chest again and she contorts, her muscles flinching.
He squeezes her hand tighter and draws it to his lips, kissing the soft skin of her knuckles. "Stephanie, please." The pleading in his voice is awful. It's weak, it's pathetic, and it's everything he's worked for years to rid himself of. And it's the only thing that feels genuine.
"You're going to love her," she says once again, and turns her sweating face to look directly at him. He's bent his knees now and his chin is pressed against the mattress, holding her hand to his nose.
"Stop saying that," he commands, trying to sound so much stronger than he feels. "We are going to love her. The two of us. Together, as her rightful, biological parents, we will have the duty of raising this—"
When she shakes her head, he breaks down. He leans forward, his teeth gritted in some sort of interior, unbearable pain. His lips brush her cheek as his body turns to stone, his blood to ice, his fingers thin rods gripping a dying figure.
He desperately reaches for the object in his utility belt, the one that he safely tucked away earlier, somehow knowing he would need it sooner rather than later. He digs through the pocket and tries to close his fingertips around the tiny object's smooth surface.
But Stephanie's already fading again, her eyelashes wet with tears, her body going limp, her skin slowly melting into translucence, with everything else in the scene around them. Damian no longer hears anything. The beeping of the heart monitor stops, the voices of the bustling doctors and nurses quiet, the OR doors opening and closing make no sound. They all fade away into darkness, and Stephanie begins to do the same.
"Stephanie, I need to ask you—" He starts, finally closing his fist around the object and bringing it forward in his palm. "I want to ask you and I deeply regret that I haven't yet. This—you—"
Her voice is almost inaudible, but he leans in close. She whispers, and somehow her voice is warm and full of life, in spite of absolutely everything that's happened.
"I know, Damian. Ya rohi."
She smiles one last time, and then disappears completely.
He's left on a cold, colorless floor with his head hanging and his fists clenched around nothing but air. Air and the tiny object that he was never able to give Stephanie. Because Stephanie is gone, and he realizes now what he didn't realize before.
This is a dream. This has all been a dream.
Somewhere, his real body is sleeping. In some outrageously expensive bed, no doubt. Wishing, wondering, and dreaming of the "what ifs." The "might have beens."
Stephanie is dead. She's been dead for three years now, brutally murdered by Victor Zsasz, who had "found God" and was trying to save her from damnation through the slash of a knife. Damian found her nailed to a cross in the same church he searched in the dream.
She was pregnant at the time. Four months pregnant with Laila, the beautiful baby girl he was going to love. Who he will never lay eyes upon.
He weakly raises his head. His face is drained of color, his arms shaking with rage, confusion, and exhaustion.
So where is he now? The dream has sent him through another portal, and this new scene is completely devoid of life—it's stark white and it's completely empty.
Is this life for him now? Without Stephanie, the eternally optimistic, infuriatingly perfect constant?
He drops his head again and figures he'll stay here. There's nowhere else to go.
God, it's quiet.
Seconds pass. Or maybe months. Heck, they could be years, but Damian doubts it. Years pass by so slowly. Love can be so boring.
Silently, he waits for whatever this aspect of the dream will give him. He's like Scrooge waiting for the next Ghost, like Moses waiting for the next sign from God. Sitting and bearing the pain, knowing it's unavoidable, an immovable barrier, and he has no control.
Damian has never had control, and he's just now beginning to see that.
It takes a while, but he slowly begins to hear voices. They're quiet at first, little whispers of inflection and high-pitched tone quality. Feminine breaths, little spurts of words and phrases that don't coalesce for another few moments.
Finally, he starts to understand them. And he isn't surprised when they're all the voice of Stephanie.
"Come here, Laila! Sweetie, you have to get out of the mud. You're ruining the hideous dress Daddy bought for you."
"Get out of the water, baby. Come here. Come to Mama. That's a good girl."
"Laila, how many times have I told you? You can't punch the boys at school. Even when they're mean to Caddoc. And even if they deserve it."
Each voice is a different moment in time, a different stage of Stephanie's life. A different stage of Laila's life.
"Merry Christmas, Lai!"
"You look beautiful, sweetheart. Have I ever told you that you look like your grandma? She was a beautiful woman. You should ask Daddy about her sometime."
"Laila! Rosie! Not too far, okay? Mama's getting too old for all this running around. Kickin' ass as Batgirl was kinda a freakishly long time ago."
"Hmm…bedtime stories? Okay…Lai, did I ever tell you the story about your dad and Uncle Dick? The one where they dressed up as Asian fisherman and helped Catwoman catch a man named Thomas Elliot? Well, it started on a clear night, not unlike this one…"
"Damian! Damian, she's crying again. She won't stop. I've been up since 3 AM, will you please, for the love of all things good and holy, let me go to sleep? Because I will legitimately tear up everything in this house and I will kick Alfred out and sleep in his box if it means getting away from this screaming child."
"Laila. Oh, Uncle Jay let you get a tattoo, huh? Yeah, did he ask Mama if you could get a tattoo? No, he didn't. Yeah, he'll be hearing about this later. He'll be hearing a lot about this later."
"Damian. Shh, come here. She's sleeping. Look, she stole your cowl. Can you believe she's sleeping with your cowl? I'm not sure if that's hilarious or adorable. Or weird. Probably all three."
Moments that Damian will never get back. Will never experience.
He slowly stands up, as the voices curl around him, scene after scene after scene, moment after moment, each one a prize that he wants as desperately as he wants the next.
This is too much. Batman was built to take anything. But not Damian. He can take being cooked alive by fire, he can take making a deal with the devil, but he can't take this. He can't take losing Stephanie and Laila.
And suddenly he's surrounded. Completely surrounded by twenty different versions of his daughter, standing around him in an oblong oval, looking at him with his own eyes.
And, Stephanie was right. She's absolutely gorgeous.
On his right is Laila as a toddler, sitting with her already-long black hair brushing the floor and a pacifier hanging loosely from her lips. On the left is Laila as a nine-year-old, clutching a version of Harry Potter and chewing on the inside of her cheek as she reads. Behind him is Laila as a preteen, dressed in a fashion so utterly like Stephanie's typical style that Damian's gut wrenches. She's clutching a backpack and digging through the thing with all the grace of her mother, throwing about ten items as she searches for a piece of candy.
And in front of him, highlighted beyond all the other ones, is Laila as a teenager.
She is truly beautiful. Every father thinks his daughter is lovely, but this is something different. Laila is stunning. Her black hair falls gracefully down over her shoulders, accented by a stubborn wave. Her eyes are sharp and dark blue, her skin a slightly lighter copy of his own. She wears jeans and a Gotham University t-shirt, as casual and as elegant as her mother. But a scar cuts over the edge of her left eyebrow, matching the ones on her muscular arms.
He can practically hear her say, "Tt."
She walks towards him, and tears are slipping silently down his face. He can't control them anymore. He doesn't wipe them away. He pushes away the shame and lets them fall down his cheeks, onto the blank, endless floor.
She walks until they are only inches apart. He wants so badly to reach out and touch her, to say something, to be her father, to act like her father—but he's frozen. He doesn't know what to do, and doesn't know if he can do anything.
She smiles at him in the exact way Stephanie always did, when things were maniacal and life clawed at them with its relentless scissor cuts. When it just didn't matter, because they were in some kind of love, and somehow it would be alright.
Laila looks up at him, already tall for her age, watching as her father—the undying machine—is tortured from the inside out.
"It's okay, Dad."
She reaches up and presses her hand against his face.
He lets his eyes close, knowing this will be the last and the only time he will ever feel his daughter. He won't ever know her baby fingers or her adult laugh. He won't ever be cared for by her, when he is too old to move from bed to bath to table. She is trapped here, in the cover of his dreams.
"Ya rohi," he whispers, repeating the Arabic he was taught as a child, the Arabic he tried to teach to Stephanie when sitting around the Batcave became a little too monotonous. But the woman had never been the studious type, and she only picked up on a few simple phrases. Ya rohi—my soul—was one of them.
Laila's voice softens, as she whispers back, "Dae'man." Forever.
She wraps her arms around him, with all the solemn gentleness of a mother that Damian never knew. And as she does such, she reaches forward, closing her fingers softly around the side of his cheek.
She rips the cowl from his face.
And, finally, he's free.
When he wakes, it's a grey sky morning.
He stares up at the ceiling, lying in the too-soft silken sheets that used to be replaced every evening by Alfred the butler. Now they are clawed and tattered by Alfred the cat, who only exhausts his game on days like today.
He knows what this day is.
It's September 7th, the three-year anniversary of Stephanie's death. Which is likely why Damian slept so restlessly, but slept so vividly. He stares out the window blankly, knowing this day will be impossible to get through. But he'll get through it anyway. Just like he always does.
He dresses formally, in a well-fitted day suit with a blue tie that matches and accentuates his eyes. He straightens the tie in his father's old full-length mirror that's grown dusty over the years.
The small object is still in his pocket, exactly where he left it.
Alfred knows what today will bring. So he jumps up onto Damian's shoulder, licks his master's ear, headbutts the side of his neck, and rides along with him as he walks down to the car.
It's a busy day, as it always is. They start off with service at the church where Stephanie was murdered, sitting in a pew with a bunch of strangers, looking up at the cross of a Savior. Damian always listens to the sermon. He doesn't understand all of it, but he always listens.
He keeps his eyes away from the great oaken door in the rafters. He's seen enough of it in fantasy, to know to stay away in reality. It's true, he isn't sure it hides anything besides a dark, spider-filled attic. But he isn't going to take any chances. Not today.
People are always surprised to see Damian Wayne, son of the late Bruce Wayne, owner of Wayne Enterprises, at a tiny church on such a random date, but the pastor always seems pleased enough. And the sermons are always fine. They aren't full of hypocritical accusations or demonstrative waving of the hands. They're simple, they're precise. They're the kind of speech Stephanie would have liked, and so Damian listens.
Sometimes, he prays. It's a strange concept to him, and it never feels exactly comfortable. He doesn't know if he believes in God, although he sometimes finds himself wanting to. God might make things easier, might make a light on the path a little more likely. But it's so hard to say, so hard to believe.
But he folds his hands together and listens to the pastor go on about health and welfare for Gotham and its people. Damian rarely throws his own input into the prayer, but when he does, it's always the same:
Help her, God. Help her and help me.
No upstanding vocabulary. No well-turned phrases or happy metaphors. Just the simplest request he can make.
God never gives a direct answer. But Damian isn't sure he wants one anyway.
He stays sitting in the pew long after the sermon is finished, and the church has gone quiet.
He goes on.
He travels to Kelly's Floral and buys a bouquet of roses. Alfred always picks them out, walking amongst the flowers with the tip of his tail twitching against the petals. Of course everyone thinks Damian has gone a little insane—people see you taking a cat to church, taking a cat to go buy flowers, and they're going to assume you're a little unstable. But Damian's stopped caring what the public thinks, and he's stopped pretending like Alfred isn't much more than a cat.
He doesn't patrol, not under any circumstances. Patrol almost always leads to some kind of violence, and Damian can't risk that. Not today. It's too likely that he would lose control, that he would see Zsasz's face in the eyes of a jewelry thief, and would simply beat the man to a bloody pulp without even thinking.
Instead, he and Jason have a silent agreement. Todd claims the streets tonight, so long as he packs away the big guns and takes care of business quietly. He lets Damian mourn and he lets Damian mourn without bothering him, which Damian is thankful for. He can't be around the others. Tim tried to connect with him for the first couple years, but gave up after a long string of unreturned phone calls, texts and emails. Cassandra took off into the wind one day, which Damian understood and respected. Jason was the only one who really stuck around, but he never tried to help Damian back onto his feet. Jason was acutely aware that, for Damian, his feet didn't really exist anymore.
So he wanders the September streets and sips on coffee and buys the newspaper but doesn't read it. He stares at the clouds and lets Gotham dance around him.
Day passes to night on the same melting canvas of grey sky. As the lights start to pop on, one by one, he makes his way to the cemetery. It's always deserted, as if people are expecting Damian, knowing that he will need to be alone.
The cemetery is nothing special. It's a typical one, dotted with sporadically-placed headstones depicting the names of people Damian's never heard of. But they're Gothamites and Stephanie was a Gothamite, so she belongs here. It suits her.
Her grave is at the back of the cemetery, surrounded by a patch of fresh green clover. He likes how far it is from the entrance. It means a long walk to her, a process where he can take a few deep breaths before he has to read her name again, written across a stone in chilling, determined, unchangeable letters.
He gets there eventually, though. He always does.
Then he stands and talks to her. He puts his hands in his pockets and talks for as long as three hours, with Alfred curling between his legs and brushing against his boots. He tells Stephanie how quiet everything is without her. He tells her that he used to like quiet, but now it's almost painful.
He tells her that he finally watched that movie she wanted him to see, the Disney one with the old man and all the balloons. He says it was a downright stupid suggestion and she should be ashamed to believe such an outrageous tale.
He tells her about the Joker and Selina Kyle, who's still in town, believe it or not.
He tells her he's doing alright, and he exaggerates a bit. But that's only to make himself feel better—the last thing he wants is pity from anyone. He brought this upon himself and he knows it.
After a few hours of this one-sided conversation, he takes the small object from his pocket and he sets it on the gravestone.
"I love you, Stephanie Brown," he says and he means it, even if perhaps now it's too late.
The object is a ring. A cheap one, as per usual.
It's from Kay's. Damian always gets the ring from Kay's. He goes every year, buying Stephanie another ring, because he failed to give her one when he could. He always meant to, but the right moment never came. And then he lost the chance forever.
So he goes to Kay's and buys her a new one each year. He goes to Kay's because it was Stephanie's favorite commercial jingle—she would run up the stairs all the time, trilling "Every kiss begins with Kay" while watching "Gossip Girl" or some other nonsense on television. And, though he never admitted it, her humming always made Damian smile. Part of it was certainly that the poor woman couldn't sing to save her life. But part of it was that it was just so Stephanie, and Damian loved just about anything that was "Stephanie."
It's funny, how each year, he manages to find her a perfect ring. He could afford one that's worth three times as much, but he always finds the perfect one at Kay's. A thousand perfect rings, to make up for the thousand perfect opportunities that he missed.
Then he talks a little more. He talks about nothing, but that's fine by him, because he knows that's what Stephanie used to do. She would babble for hours on end, just like Dick, so opposite of Damian's father.
And it's only after a while that something finally interrupts him. Something usually does interrupt him, but this time it's a little different.
This time, it's the light voice of a young girl.
Alfred hisses softly from his place near the gravestone, as the timid voice decides to speak.
"Um, Mister? Are you…are you alright?"
Damian cuts off mid-sentence, halfway through telling Stephanie about an insipid editorial he read in the Gotham Gazette. He can't help the hand that works its way to his armed belt, as he slowly turns to look at his interruption.
It's a girl, yes. A girl who's only been on this earth for perhaps eight years.
And, at first, she looks so much like Laila that his heart skips several beats.
She's a small thing, around four feet tall, with dark hair and familiar blue eyes. Her skin is lighter than Laila's, however, much more Caucasian than Laila's dark Middle Eastern. She's wearing a navy dress that settles right above her knees, and a pair of tall, mismatched, black and white socks underneath suede rain boots.
"Who are you?" he asks, and he can't help the coldness that creeps into his voice. Today is not a good day for him to be visited. Not by anyone.
"My name's Rayne, but I'm not really supposed to talk to strangers."
"Excellent. Then don't."
"But I just—" She protests, breaking her rule yet again. "You looked lonely, and I thought you were talking to someone—"
"I was."
She blinks and her eyebrows furrow. She's utterly puzzled, and another pang of familiarity hits him. He doesn't know why.
"Who?" she asks, and her eyes float around, playing detective with empty spaces and shadows.
"My wife," he replies and turns back to the grave.
Alfred has been curled around the headstone this whole time, staring solemnly at the grey letters, but now he glances over at Rayne, his cat eyes keen and knowing.
"Where is she?" The little girl asks. She walks up to stand beside him, looking up at him with big, innocent eyes that glint in the moonlight.
"Here." He nods towards the gravestone and says nothing more.
"Oh."
Silence. Around a minute passes, and Damian appreciates that Rayne at least respects a mourning process. She's somewhat smart then. Good.
"Look, someone left another ring," she finally says after a while, and bends down, tenderly picking up the silver accessory on the gravestone. "This one's really pretty. It's from Kay's, I think." She chews on the edge of her tongue as Damian regards her, this little stranger who is manhandling his wife's wedding ring.
"Yes, it's from Kay's."
"I like it a lot."
"Good." And Damian, however irked, means it. He likes that another person approves of this ring choice for Stephanie, even if that other person is a stranger and a child.
"There are rings here every year, you know?" Rayne tells him, gently putting the ring back in its place, next to a curl of grass. "Someone always leaves a new ring for your wife." She glances up at him out of the corner of her eye, knowing fully well that she's talking to that very "someone."
"Yes, I know."
"I felt bad after I took the first one. But it was just so pretty, I couldn't help it," Rayne says, a little sheepishly. She slowly stands up and pulls at her shirt, tugging a necklace chain out from underneath the stitched cotton. She brings it up until the chain is fully revealed. Hanging at the end is a different silver wedding ring.
A silver wedding ring, worth a fortune, laced with tiny diamonds in looping patterns, etching across a large clear gem that's in the shape of a pearl.
Martha Wayne's silver wedding ring. His grandmother's silver wedding ring.
It was the first ring Damian brought here. It was the ring Damian kept in his pocket for so many months before Stephanie ran away, always wanting to ask her to marry him, but never knowing when he could. Part of him was afraid of how she would respond. Another part was afraid of the commitment. Yet another side of him just didn't know how to ask—how to be that dependant on someone else's reply.
So when he finally lost his chance, he brought the ring here. And ever since then, he's brought a new one.
And it appears that Martha Wayne's ring now belongs to a little girl.
"I didn't mean to steal it, and I know I shouldn't have. I just…it felt really special, y'know?" She smiles, looking more than a little embarrassed. She knows that she stole the ring from Damian, and is searching for some sort of excuse. Her eyelashes flutter and the smile fades. "So I put it on a chain and decided I would come back here every year with a rose from Wilson's. And then, maybe, after a lot of years, I would pay off the ring by buying all those roses." She pauses, pursing her lips and thinking. "I hope your wife likes roses."
The way Rayne says the sentence in the present tense, as if Stephanie were still alive and breathing, sends another ripple down his spine. He grits his teeth and says, almost incoherently, "Yes. She likes roses."
Rayne beams. "I'm glad. Mom likes roses a lot, so I only hoped."
"Who did you say your mother is?" Damian asks, and the newfound gentleness in his tone surprises even himself. There's something about this girl, something familiar, beyond the fact that she reminds him of Laila.
Rayne bites the edge of her lip and stares at her feet. "I can't really say. Mom says I can't tell her secret identity to anyone, especially not strangers."
Secret identity. So her mother is a Super.
Interesting.
It isn't surprising that he doesn't know the child then. He hasn't exactly been at every wedding, baby shower and family reunion since his father died. Stephanie's passing just made it worse. Damian's lost most contact with anyone outside of Gotham. The Teen Titans mean next to nothing to him, and he only accepts calls from the Justice League on a yearly basis. They don't need him and he knows it. They needed his father—not a broken, dilapidated, sick version of his father.
Still, he must know this child's parents, in some form or another. She looks too familiar for comfort. It's the eyes—the sharp, blue jean eyes are downright unnerving. Like a haunting figure from a dream.
And Damian's had quite enough of haunting dreams.
He bends down to her height, so that their noses are level. His face is already starting to show signs of age, even though it's only been 3 years since Zsasz's last trick, and Damian's still a very young man. But stress, sadness, loss of hope…they do cruel things to a person. And they've done twisted things to Damian.
But his eyes are still very convincing, even if they're tired.
"You can tell me," he says.
She looks back at him and opens her mouth for a moment, before closing it again. The amount of conflict etched across her face is almost comical.
He waits. The impotent child will tell him eventually.
"I—I can tell you my last name!" she suddenly says brightly. Her eyes shoot back up from where they've been grazing the ground, and she beams again.
He cocks a sardonic eyebrow, and resists the urge to twirl his fingers. Go on.
"Yes?"
She stands straight and puts on a self-satisfied smile, as if she's quite proud of whatever heritage and background she's swooped down from.
"Grayson," she chirps. "I'm Rayne Cassandra Grayson."
And, just like that, Damian's blood freezes all over again.
She immediately continues, paying no heed to his widened eyes.
"I mean, Mom has a different last name, but I still go by Daddy's name. Kinda as a memorial, I think." Her voice drops and she sighs. "You see, Daddy disappeared before I was born. He didn't leave, exactly,but…" She bites her lip. "It's hard to explain. Bad things happen to people like my mom and dad, because…they're..." She shakes her head, irritated that she can't come up with better words. "They're special, I guess. That's all I can really tell you." She looks up at him apologetically, her lower lip sticking out the slightest centimeter.
But it doesn't matter because Damian quit listening a minute ago. He's staring at this little girl in an entirely different light, because she's suddenly transformed before his eyes.
It makes sense now—all the odd familiarity he felt around her, all the strange things about her hair and body language that made him think of déjà vu.
Because everything about her screams Dick. Her hair is the exact same ebony, so rare on a Caucasian figure. Her skin is the same light cream, and her eyes…well, they are Dick's. That's how Damian knows them. They have the exact same hopeful laughing glint to them, the same irritatingly optimistic sharpness, the same terrifying, pure blue.
But, damn it, it's impossible.
Dick never had a child, never had a daughter, and disappeared years ago. He disappeared, searching for a way to fix Damian's problem. To fix Damian's damnation. And, somewhere along the path, he was killed. He vanished like dust in the wind. Like Stephanie in Damian's dreams.
Dick wouldn't have left the baby. He would have told Damian he had a daughter. Even if that daughter was an accident—or something—he would have told Damian. Dick had a way about him; he would tell Damian everything, especially the things Damian didn't care about or didn't want to know.
Dick would have loved a daughter. He would have taken his daughter across the world on a tightrope, holding her high above his head and letting her laugh as she dangled precariously on the edge. And he would hold tight to her, never once letting her slip.
It's impossible.
Damian can't take this. Not today, on the anniversary of his love's death, the death that was his fault and that he'll never forgive himself for.
So he reaches forward and grabs the inane child by the arm, bringing her within an inch of his face. She stares up at him with huge, frightened, Dick Grayson eyes. He meets her with his own paire, the eyes of Bruce Wayne, the only irises that knew how to truly chill Dick Grayson's blood.
"Stop," he snarls, and he's shaking her. His thumbnails dig into the pale skin of her exposed arms. "I cannot physically handle any more of this. I have been haunted enough by the cruel devils of my wife's passing, and I refuse to be dragged into any more. You are not Dick Grayson's daughter and this is nothing but another dream."
Her eyes flash back and forth across his face, desperate and confused. "But I—"
He shakes her again, once, whipping her head back and forth, making the tussle of dark hair on her head fly. Alfred mewls his disapproval at this situation, standing next to the grave, the fur on his back bristling. Damian ignores him.
"I am immaculate. I am immortal. I can and will heal from any graze, cut, shot, stab, or flesh wound. But I nothing more than a man," he says through clenched, grinding teeth. "I will break if I am put through any more of this. I have to be—hell, I'm already broken." He is wild, and Rayne gazes up at him, this man who is merely a ghost of who he once was.
"Can't you see that?" he exclaims. Another shake. "Can't you, for the love of God, see that I've had enough?" His face is contorted with pain, a sweat breaking out along his forehead. His canines spit into the little girl's face like the teeth of vampires.
A full minute passes and Rayne merely looks up at him, tears slowly cascading down her petite face. She's frightened—of course she is—but she hasn't fought back, hasn't tried to escape him.
And she hasn't disappeared. All of the others in the dreams have disappeared, but Rayne's arms remain tangible. Her skin is not translucent.
She isn't leaving.
"…How did you know my Daddy's name?" she whispers at length, searching his face for answers to his hysteria.
He drops her arm and turns away, his face growing grim and his shoulders sagging. This day is never-ending. It always is.
"Your father was an ally."
A pause. Rayne is still shaken, but her old inquisitiveness is creeping back. A moment longer, and she opens her mouth.
"Did you love him?"
It's a question only a child would ask, after so short a conversation. And it's the only question Damian can answer with some surety.
He exhales. "Yes."
She contemplates this and is silent.
"Are you done with your haunting, wench?" he asks, staring out into the night skyline of Gotham City. Jason is out there somewhere, fulfilling the evening duties of the Batman, in whatever twisted form pleases him most.
"I'm not a ghost," Rayne tells him. Her voice is louder, gaining confidence. She is very sure that she is not purely a figment of imagination.
"I came to this cemetery a long time ago," she says, when he doesn't respond. "I wanted to see if my Daddy's grave was here, because Mama never told me where it could be. I don't really think she knows."
A pause.
"You look kinda familiar," Rayne continues. She crosses her arms over her small chest and regards him with a cautious, raised eyebrow. "Have you ever been on TV?"
"Once or twice."
"Fox? CBS? Gotham News Network?"
He nods, figuring that will be sufficient answer. He's been on all three.
"Woah. I knew I'd seen you before." Her voice is a little less fearful now, a little more interested. "You, uh…well, you have an intimation factor. Lots of celebrities have that, Mama says."
Intimidation factor, Damian corrects internally. He's heard that one before.
"Was I usually with a young blonde woman?" he asks softly.
Rayne grins. "Yes. She was your wife, wasn't she?"
It takes a moment, but then Rayne remembers exactly what happened to that wife.
Oh, Her face reads. Oh. That wife...that wife died.
The grin disappears and she slowly turns back to the grave. For once, he doesn't follow her gaze. Instead, he studies the way she leans on her right leg rather than her left. The way she digs at the grass with the tip of her toe. The way she cups her hands in front of her. The way her eyelids droop with solemnity.
Childlike characteristics. Ones he might have seen on Laila's stronger, more-developed, darker-skinned body, had she lived.
The two of them stand there for several more minutes, Rayne studying the headstone with Dick's blue eyes, Damian wondering where he's supposed to go from here. He hasn't woken up yet. And, if he never does wake up, he'll have to assume this child—this strange, obnoxious, random child—is the daughter of his older brother. His one true mentor.
It only makes sense. It's about time his life turned upside down again, isn't it? It's been a few years.
Quietly, Rayne reaches into her windbreaker pocket and pulls out a handful of rose petals. White rose petals, freshly bought, like they're ready for a wedding. Or a funeral.
Raising her small fist, she sprinkles the petals over top of the headstone, watching as they drift back down to the dark earth.
"I like it when they fall," she says quietly. "It's like confetti at a New Year's Eve party."
Damian doesn't reply, but instead says his silent goodbye to the only love of his life. Stephanie's bones rest beneath his steel-toe boots, but he can only hope her soul is somewhere else. Somewhere far better. She deserves that much, at the very least.
"I know it's only September, mister…?"
"Wayne," Damian finishes. He remains looking at the headstone.
"Mister Wayne." Dick Grayson's daughter smiles. "It's only September, but my mama makes some really good hot chocolate. And, if you knew my dad…she'd probably like to talk to you." She prods at the ground with her toe again, looking shy. "Would you maybe like to come over? You're not really a stranger anymore."
It's been years since Damian has really "visited" anyone, especially the home of a child he's never before met. And normally he does everything alone on this anniversary. He goes to sleep very late, only after he's read every scrap of paper with Stephanie's handwriting on it, only after he's walked through her closet and tried to smell her on old sweaters and jeans, only after he's walked into the bathroom and stared at his reflection for far too long.
But the eyes of Dick Grayson are staring up at him pleadingly, and he won't say no again. Not this time.
He's made enough mistakes.
"Yes," is his only reply, and Rayne is grinning again, tickled pink by this odd man who she met in a tiny Gotham cemetery.
"My mama will like you," she says, and starts leading him forward, tugging at the sleeve of his coat. He lets her move him forward, as he glances back at the place where Stephanie lies.
He can practically hear her whisper, over years of time and the dimensions between life and death:
Attaboy. Go get 'em, tiger.
And the caress of Laila's fingertips lingers against his cheek, as he looks back down at little Rayne, who is busy blabbing away about all sorts of nonsense, that is of absolutely no consequence to him. All sorts of nonsense that Dick Grayson would have chattered about endlessly, and it is for that reason that Damian follows the little girl.
And, as he's lead away into a starlit night on the anniversary of his love's death, he can't help but wonder. He can't help but think, as he watches the little boots with grass stains trot across the ground, as he sees the dark hair fly back and forth, as he listens to the awful pronunciation of an eight-year-old.
Perhaps, after all these years.
Perhaps he'll have a daughter after all.