Angst Damian Wayne One Shots

The Silent Scream

Third Person 

Damian Wayne stood on the rooftop, the cool night air brushing against his skin. He watched the streets of Gotham, a city that always seemed alive with chaos. Tonight, however, the chaos was inside him. He felt the familiar pressure in his chest, a tightness that had begun to suffocate him ever since the mission had gone horribly wrong.

The plan had seemed simple: infiltrate a warehouse suspected of holding illegal weapons and apprehend a small gang that had been terrorizing the area. But what had started as a routine operation quickly spiraled into something much more dangerous.

Damian remembered the moment clearly. The gang had been waiting for them, armed and ready. Shots rang out, echoing through the darkened alley. He had ducked behind a crate, adrenaline coursing through his veins, but something inside him shifted. The panic that had been bubbling beneath the surface began to rise. He felt trapped, like a wild animal cornered by predators.

"Damian, cover me!" Tim Drake's voice broke through the noise, pulling Damian back to reality.

He nodded, but his mind was scattered. His thoughts felt disjointed, like pieces of a puzzle that refused to fit together. His pulse hammered in his ears, and for the first time, the chaos outside wasn't the only thing that felt overwhelming. The voices of his brothers, Dick and Tim, seemed distant, fading into the background as his mind spiraled into darkness.

The mission had fallen apart, and in that moment, so did Damian. He wasn't sure how long he crouched there, frozen in place, while the rest of his team tried to salvage the operation. It wasn't until it was all over—when the gang had either fled or been captured—that Damian realized the weight of his failure.

Back in the Batcave, he couldn't shake the feeling that he had let everyone down. His father, Bruce Wayne—Batman himself—had been watching, had witnessed his moment of weakness. Damian didn't need anyone to tell him that he had failed. He could feel it in the way Bruce looked at him when they returned to the cave.

The moment he stepped into his room, Damian shut the door behind him, the silence thick and oppressive. His heart still raced, the echoes of the night's chaos replaying in his mind. He slumped onto his bed, the tightness in his chest refusing to loosen.

The panic attacks had been coming more frequently in the days leading up to the mission. But now, after the mission had fallen apart, they seemed relentless. He wasn't sure when it had started, this feeling of suffocation, but it had been building for weeks—maybe months. Now it was unbearable.

Damian tried to push away the memories of the mission. He sat on the edge of his bed, staring blankly at the wall, clenching and unclenching his fists. He should have been fine. He was a warrior. The son of Batman. He had been trained to fight, to survive, to never falter.

But the truth was, something inside him had cracked. The panic clawed at him, making it difficult to breathe, difficult to think straight.

Taking a deep breath, Damian hoped to calm the storm brewing inside him. "You're okay," he whispered to himself, as if saying it aloud would make it true. "You can handle this." But the words were empty. His mind betrayed him. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the gang members, the chaos, the panic that had seized him in that dark alley.

His father had barely said a word to him after the mission, but that didn't make it any easier. In fact, the silence was worse. The disappointment had been palpable, and Damian couldn't shake the guilt that followed him, like a shadow lurking in the corners of his mind.