SWAN SONG / damian wayne

NINETEEN, BROTHER-IN-LAW

ODILE KNOCKED ON the door of Damian's bedroom. It was Dick's voice that answered.

Damian was still on the bed, arms crossed, while Dick turned to look at them and smiled. "Welcome back. Done with your top secret discussion?"

Remiel rolled her eyes. "Don't be annoying. Damian, you good?"

"Good as always." But his voice was a bit hoarse. "I'm hungry."

"I'll get Alfred to bring you food," Odile offered.

"I'll go get Alfred. I'm thirsty anyways." Remiel gave Odile a small push forward. "You three talk. I'll be back in a moment."

And then it was three.

Dick's attention was on her now. "How does living without Remiel feel like?"

"You'd know, wouldn't you? You spent most of the last nine years living by yourself."

"Ouch, Odile. Why did you turn so mean? Damian's rubbing off you."

"She's always had a mean side," Damian snorted. "Nothing to do with me, I assure you." He looked far better than he did last night. More colour had entered his face, though his lips were still relatively pale. Frowning, Odile moved forward, pulling up the blankets a bit more to cover his exposed upper body.

He pushed it back down. "It's fine. I'm not cold."

"If you get a cold—"

"I won't."

Their eyes met. Her eyes narrowed. His green eyes just glared back. Finally, Odile let out a huff and sat down.

Dick watched them with curiosity. "Turns out you can't tell him what to do either, huh?"

"She usually has a higher chance of success than the rest of you," Damian hummed.

"And how much is that?"

"Just around half the time." He seemed to be in a better mood. Talking to Dick had helped, then. But at the same time, he was surrounded by the people he was the most comfortable with in the world. He didn't like talking to Jon about his own inner life all that much either, quite frankly.

Jon was a lot more like his father. Both boys, really, had taken after their fathers. It was what made them special. And even back then, when she was only sixteen, she'd always had a thought in her head: one day, when Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne decided to retire their mantles, it would become Jon Kent and Damian Wayne. The titles would always exist—Superman and Batman were the stuff of legends. A living myth.

But the person behind the mantle would change.

And what would I be, in a world like that?

She'd watch them shine from a distance, of course. A girl haunted by ghosts. She had no right to go into the light.

She wasn't even meant to be alive. She was living on borrowed time, she'd always been living on borrowed time. But she couldn't give it back, so she'd give back to this world somehow. She didn't have the drive to be a relentless vigilante, to constantly go in search of justice and fight against evil. So she'd choose the battlefields she could win.

A part of her was wondering if her best bet was to just stick with the Martha Wayne Foundation. Starting her own charity initiative could wait. It might not need to happen at all. The infrastructure was already there, why not just built atop it? She was already thinking about expanding her art sponsorship programme. Why not make it so that artists could apply for the grant? She wouldn't always have the time to search up new, struggling artists.