NO CELESTIAL / dick grayson

thirteen, the maze

WITH ALL THAT had occurred with Cecily, Remiel had almost managed to banish her conversation with Bruce from her memory.

But now, faced with the suffocating silence of her own room, all the tidbits of the conversation rushed back into her. She buried her face into her hands.

Fuck. So what now?

She rushed to the vase, glancing inside.

Gone. It was gone.

Bruce must have done it sometime in the past few days. Hadn't left a sign of it. She doubted he'd told anyone else to do it—Alfred, perhaps, but not the others. If any of they'd known, she'd have realised it by now.

Or was she underestimating Dick? Had he figured it out too?

There was a knock on her door. Remiel straightened, putting the vase back into its original position and heading to open the door, revealing Damian in the doorway, arms crossed.

"Is something wrong?" she asked, raising one brow. "It's late, you should sleep."

"May I come in?"

"Of course."

And so Damian walked in, and Remiel shut the door behind him. And once that was done, Damian turned to face her, fishing a piece of paper from out of his pocket.

"What's this?"

It wasn't Bruce. Or Alfred. Or Dick.

It was Damian.

Which made things worse.

Damian watched as Remiel sucked a deep breath in. Watched as she took a few steps forwards. "You're smart enough to piece it together. What do you think it means, Damian?"

"It's a map of the ley lines in Gotham City."

"Yes. I went through quite some effort to get it, thank you very much."

"You're looking for a Lazarus Pit. But the one under the Yuyan Building was already destroyed, so it doesn't make sense for another to emerge in Gotham City so soon afterwards."

"Gotham has a strange tendency to form Lazarus Pits. According to Ra's research, it has three times higher chance than most other locations to form a Lazarus Pit. He can't explain it either, but there's a reason your grandfather was always so intrigued by this city."

"You want to revive him. But his body..."

She shot him a look.

"You've found his body?"

"I assume your mother and Seraphina have, if they instructed me to seek the Pit."

"This was their instruction? Why was I never informed about this?"

"There was no need. It was meant to be a covert operation. Though I suppose my cover's been blown now, so it doesn't matter anymore. Your father confronted me about this earlier. Not a very pleasant experience, I assure you." Remiel let out a sigh, holding out her hand. "May I please have the paper back? I do actually need to find the Pit, and I assure you it's in your interest to let me do so."

"Why not tell me?" he demanded, not content with her response. "I thought Grandfather was lost to us forever. I mourned for him, Remiel. You could have told me this."

You did not explain things to Damian through emotions and feelings. You did not tell him it was to protect him, to not hurt him any more than he already had been harmed, to not give him false hope. You explained it to him through rationality, logic, and strategy.