Damian Wayne revealed!

Hidden Truth 🤍

Damian Wayne is the elusive youngest member of Brucie Wayne's brood of children.

He is 11 years old, and the only biological son of the billionaire.

Still there are things that are known about the quiet and secluded wallflower to the public:

- his age
- he is an animal lover and wildlife rights sympathizer
- Dick Grayson, WE Heir, coddles him
- he has eastern heritage, not sure which but Arabic is definitely his mother language (speaks it with an accent when frustrated, sometimes with a warble of other languages mixed in - LOA dialect)

Few things, but present nonetheless. The hero community knows much more.

- he is Robin, Gotham's last light
- only sword-wielder of Batman's brood, not counting magic swords (thx Jason)
- remarkably good fighter
- picked fights with his family
- picked flights with JL and other teams
- attitude and anger issues™
- died before through Heretic
- friends with Superman's son Jonathan (Super Sons)

They also don't know everything, but his family are detectives and his most present contacts. As such they know all of the above and select few other things that make Damian himself.

- he is a chosen vegetarian
- he is Thalia Al Ghul's son
- heir to the Demon Head
- he loves drawing and ballroom chess
- he hates being cold for too long

There are things you simply can't hide from the world's greatest detectives, especially not if you're around them 365 days of the year. More a curse than a blessing, really. Privacy is, much like the law to many Gothamites, a suggestion or ideal guideline within this family. The snooping was mostly due to Batman's paranoia, if it didn't enforce stalking or reasons for concern.

Damian, being raised by an entire league of assassins under Ra's Al Ghul's thumb, was finding his hardest mission to be by-passing that same behavior as he learned it. And that wasn't even counting the different ways all of them were doing their own investigations. Sure for at least four of them the basics were taught by Batman, but everything else was their own experience and contact-networks.

Damian has already lost so much information to any of them, mostly Grayson and Drake.

Grayson because-- there's no way he could explain it besides coercion, except he's not being outright blackmailed. Well, at least not in the traditional way.
His well-being is involved, but only genuine concern is spoken.

Drake on the other hand, is utilizing the same tools to dissect him like he did Batman's identity. It's not enjoyable to be under that intelligent scope and he finds himself vaguely- rightfully- horrified if his grandfather should ever acquire it as he aspires to.

Still, there are secrets within this world others are simply not meant to know. Cursed knowledge.

~

Damian was born in and of it.

~

The Lazarus Pits.

A horrid and ethereal waters.
Kills anything living, revives and mends anything damaged.

Owned by the Al-Ghuls for centuries upon decades.

~

Damian finds it both a relief and a concern how nobody discovered the truth lurking beneath its tides and currents.

How nobody finds anything off about him; "The monster wearing human skin" Drake called him before.

His predecessor has no idea how true that is. He's inhuman.

Jason took one dip within their depths and came out different; Damian hides it much better. (He has no idea if he would've been any different were he to have come to his father sooner.)

The dead and the living are not supposed to mix.

~

Damian defied the odds many times before.

~

Jason defied death before, he doesn't know how.

~

Damian figured it out after spending too much time in Gotham and meeting him.

~

Gotham is blessed by death in a way Life doesn't even touch most of the residents.

They think their too stubborn, cling onto Life like persistent parasites and ticks.
It's not that; Death favors them.
Damian has never met Life, he grew up knowing Death more than his own blood.

Jason knew Life and Death as he grew up in Crime Alley, both interested in him.

~

Gotham and Death go hand in hand.
It's in her soul but with Life at her fingertips, in the skyscrapers people jump off from to escape her.

~

Damian isn't favoring the cold much.
He can tolerate it, but not for too long. He died of cold first. But Darkness is in his soul, and the nights are most spend without warmth so he greets it like a reluctant friend.

He swears the icy winds chuckle at the dead child every night.

~

"Aww, are you cold little d? I can carry you back home if you want."

"Tt, just for a little while. But we're staying out."

"Sure!"

Grayson is warm and alive.

~

There's no rest for the dead.
Drake seems like it sometimes.

Damian is too afraid to ask how he stands it. Defies it. He knows Death's touch follows him like a widowed lover.

Drake is a murderer. Not an assassin, but not as good as-- not like Father. Grayson or Brown. None of them are outright, truly good. Without skeletons gnawing at their heels. But not like himself either, thankfully.

Drake is a bigger enigma than he thinks. Damian knows, recognizes it and as such he asks the older Robin only once.

"When did you loose it?"

~

Tim's blue eyes startled, shrink and there's a familiar glimmer.

Damian's spark lazarus green, the blood of the condemned, the dead.

Neither breach the silence that follows.

Cass watches from the side, seeing what both revealed like an ugly bruise. Understanding never dawned quite as shameful as then.

You can't understand what you never were.

There was a time she wasn't human either. An unfeeling weapon wanting more.

~~

The Lazarus Pits are portals to the realm of the Dead.
The healthy enter it to die, the dead pass through and return for vengeance against Life and the living.

Damian made many trips back, even when he didn't want to.

That's probably why he ended up in hell later.

~

He's a living Phantom.