When Worlds Collide

87) Damian + Angsty Monolouges = Ate

A/N: I drew this after I wrote this chapter and I kinda love it. It's not my best work, but I love the concept. 

-Damian POV-

Damian stayed with Nico for the rest of the day. He didn't do much, just sat in his bed with his sketch pad, but he would glance at Damian who was at the desk as if making sure he was still there.

Alfred, despite the fact that he was supposed to have the day off, had brought them hot chocolate and a tray of cookies.

Damian had texted Tim to tell him what happened so that he didn't freak out over Nico's disappearance and assume he had been kidnapped... again.

The youngest had already finished all of the school work he could do and he didn't have his supplies for painting, so he had raided the bookshelf in Nico's room.

"Thank you," Nico said quietly, speaking for the first time since the janitor's closet.

Damian glanced at him. "You don't need to thank me. I am simply glad you called."

Nico gave a shallow nod. "Jason has been getting on me about asking for help."

Damian smiled lightly. "It is ironic that Todd is currently the most rational one of us."

Nico gave a small laugh, but Damian could tell that it held no real joy. It was hollow.

"Do you want to talk about it?" the youngest asked hesitantly.

"No," the demigod said, eye still trained on his sketch book. "It was nothing."

"Nico-" Damian began, but he was cut off.

"It was nothing," Nico repeated.

"Tt- it was not  nothing."

Nico glared at the page in front of him, his grip on the pencil tightening. "Its not important."

"I found you on the floor of a Janitor's closet, hyperventilating."

"It was stupid."

"It wasn't stupid if it cause that bad of a-"

The tip of the pencil shattered on the page. "Can you just stop? I said it was stupid because it was. I don't need to be convinced that my open problems aren't crazy because they are." Nico threw down his sketch book, causing it to slide off the bed. "It was nothing. I should have been nothing, but I flipped out. I crumbled over fucking nothing."

"You aren't-"

Nico didn't let him finish the statement. "Yes I am! Normal people don't shut down over such a stupid thing. I should have been able to just ignore them, but I let it get to me. This isn't new. I'm supposed to be used to the staring and the whispers, but apparently I'm not."

Damian looked at his brother in surprise, not expecting the outburst. "What happened?"

In an instant, the fire in Nico's eyes disappeared. He had lost the burning anger and all that was left was dying embers as he leaned back against the headboard, slowly bringing a hand up to touch the scar on his face.

"He won," Nico said, voice barely above a whisper. "Black Mask won. He made sure no one would forget what he did to me. No one can look at me without seeing what he made."

Damian didn't know what to say. They had all had their own struggles with scars, but most of them were lucky enough to not have anything super visible. They had small scars one their faces or hands, but none of them really carried any weight for them.

They could name the person and date of some scars they got— the important ones. The ones that marked a win or a lose. The ones they got fighting their nemeses. The ones that they made themselves remember— but most of them became just another mark. Their bodies were covered in scars from fights long forgotten. They stopped keeping score. 

Nico didn't though.

Damian remembered how his brother could name the person, place, quest, monster, everything, about each of his scars. His bothers would ask about some of them everyone once in a while, and he always knew. He held onto their storied, no matter how much time had passed.

"He didn't make you," Damian said.

Nico looked at him, not understanding what he meant.

"You said that people can't look at you without seeing what he made, but he didn't make you. He made a scar that everyone will probably see for the rest of your life, but that doesn't matter. There is a whole lot more to you than a scar." Damian stood from his seat, grabbed the sketch book off the floor, and moved to sit next to his older brother. "You remember your scars. You keep them in your mind as if they are the only things that define your history— but they aren't.

"Yes, they tell a story— usually a painful one— but they're also just skin. You would be the same person if you woke up tomorrow and they were all gone. You wouldn't loose your history." Damian looked at the scars on his own knuckles. "The past already happened. You don't need to hold on to the scars as if they define you."

Damian handed the sketchbook back to Nico who just stared at it. "But they do," he whispered. "People see them and they can't get past-"

"Other people don't matter. If they can't see past the scars, then that's their problem. People are always going to talk, but you can choose whether or not you listen." Damian hesitated for a moment before lifting up the side of his shirt to reveal a myriad of scars. He pointed to one of them that stretched from his bellybutton to his ribs. "I got this scar on my first mission."

"Robin?"

Damian shook his head, his eyes taking on a dark look. "My first assassination. I was sent after a deserter from the league. My mother wanted to send someone else, but my grandfather insisted that I went. I succeeded, but nearly died." He was quiet for a long moment as he dropped his shirt, hiding the scar away once more. "I will remember that day for the rest of my life... I used to stare at that scar everyday before patrol. I used it as a reminder of what I was, because I thought I deserved to carry around that burden... and then one day Dick walked in on me doing it.

"He told me that there was no point in torturing myself for something I can no longer control. I can't make the scar go away the same way I can't go back and stop myself from getting it. I can't give back the life I took that day. He told me to remember that mission, but not to do it out of spite. He said that if we forced ourselves to remember each scar and connect them with things that might have happened instead, we could never truly heal from them. Scars are wounds that have long since stopped bleeding... We can't keep opening them back up every time we want to remember where we came from."

Nico was silent for a long time. He just stared down at his sketchbook. The demigod hesitated for a moment before grabbing the page he was working on and tearing it out. Damian was able to see what it was for a brief second before he crumbled it up. It was a self portrait that looked distorted. The scars were drawn in red, on top of his clothes.

Damian smiled slightly as the paper was crumpled into a tiny ball and tossed aside as his phone dinged. He glanced at it and saw it was a text from Bruce.

"Bruce says that Will's here to check on you. Do you want to see him?"

Nico nodded slightly. "Thanks."

Damian sent the confirmation to their father as he stood up from the bed. "What else are brothers for?"

There was a soft knock on the door. When the youngest opened it, he saw a nervous looking Will and clasped him on the shoulder.

"I will kill you," he whispered before patting the shoulder his hand was resting on and walking out of the room. 

A/N: this chapter was inspired by a fever dream I had about the J scar that Jason has from the Joker in some comics. I wish I would have included it in this story because it could have been so angsty, but alas, what is cannon is cannon. 

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