Kintsugi

Chapter 4

August 12, 2017 - Wayne Manor

Damien POV-

Five years. 

Her bright eyes still haunt me. I think of her as I train, as I paint, as I wake from nightmares. 

She had been my equal in every way, on the battlefield, as a friend. No one had even come close to replacing her. Jon and my brothers had tried, but they couldn't even begin to fill her shoes. Especially when they don't know the person who's hole they were trying to fill.

I had completely shut up once she had left. Try as they might, my brothers did not hold the same power over me that she had. Try as I might, I could not fully open up to them. They didn't understand me. How I was raised. They made fun of the way I spoke, the way I acted. Didn't they know that this is how I survived all those years in that underground castle of horrors? Had I not acted like a "Demon-Spawn" or an "Ice Prince" I would've been sent to the chopping block years ago. Thalia would've scrapped me and tried again. She wanted the perfect heir, and wouldn't hesitate to do away with the imperfect ones.

But my brothers didn't know that.

They didn't even know me.

I sat on the floor of my room and stared at my reflection in the mirror.

Ice Prince

Brat

Demon-spawn

That was what they thought of me. I stared at my calm and passive image. Underneath was a whirlwind. An unstable tornado that picked up every emotion, blended it together and spat it out. This mess of feelings clogged my chest and throat. It threatened to escape through my eyes but the tears wouldn't come. I hadn't been able to cry for 5 years. Not without her.

God I missed her so much.

She had been my safe place. My home. I would never be whole without her. I listened to the sounds of my brothers playing a game. I wish I could join in. I wish they could understand. I wish that I could be like them. It would be so easy to be so open.

My hands balled into fists as I thought of her again. Her bright eyes and bubbly laugh. Her calm words after a nightmare or panic attack. I hadn't told my brothers about those. It felt odd admitting weaknesses to my family. I wanted them to see me as their equal, not as a liability.

Enough of this.

She wouldn't want me to wallow. She would want me to create.

I walked over to my sketchbooks, and I picked up the biggest one I owned. I settled down and placed my supplies within arms reach. I was going to be here for a while.

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Jason POV-

The demon-spawn had disappeared into his room a hours ago. It wasn't his night for patrol and he had walked by our game of Uno without a second glance. He was being oddly quiet. No training, no yelling, not even the scratching of a pencil on paper. And I knew this because me Tim and Dick, being the nosy people we are, decided to see what he was up to. He was never this quiet.

It was frightening. Who knows what the little brat was planning.

The three of us had been crouched by his door for close to 30 minutes now. And we were fairly certain he wasn't in there.

Time to snoop.

Dick picked the lock carefully, and we slowly inched into the room. A kind of shocking scene before us. Demon sitting on the floor, knees drawn up with a sketchbook resting on his lap. His head was back, leaning against the wall, and he was sound asleep. I chanced a look at the sketchbook. The scene he had made was hauntingly beautiful. A still of a girl spinning, her dress floating. One hand was running through her hair while the other was flung out, relaxed into the turn.