Angst Damian Wayne One Shots

Drowning in Silence

The streets of Gotham had always been cruel, but tonight, they welcomed Damian Wayne like an old friend. Rain slicked the pavement beneath his boots as he wandered through the labyrinth of alleys and neon-lit signs, drowning in the noise of the city's underbelly. Here, among the lost souls, there was no expectation to be a hero, no mask to wear, no Bat lurking in the shadows to judge him.

Here, no one cared.

He didn't know exactly how he had ended up in this part of the city. Maybe it had started with Bruce forgetting to show up at his school play—a rare moment Damian had hoped might bridge the ever-widening gap between them. Or maybe it was when Dick canceled their weekend plans without explanation, leaving Damian waiting by the door with his training gear packed. Or perhaps it was just another family dinner where no one really saw him, their conversations washing over him like he wasn't even there.

Each moment had chipped away at him, and now, he was here. In the only place that seemed to offer any kind of solace.

He found them in a dingy back alley, a group of wayward teens and runaways huddled under flickering streetlights. They were loud and reckless, laughing too hard, speaking too fast, and living like they had nothing to lose.

They welcomed Damian without question, not because they knew who he was, but because they didn't care who he was. There were no expectations, no pressures—just the lure of escape.

"Hey, you good?" one of them asked—a boy named Kade, his sharp blue eyes glinting under a mop of dirty blond hair. He flicked a lighter open, igniting the end of a cigarette. The air around them was thick with smoke and the sour stench of cheap liquor.

Damian gave a stiff nod, feeling the familiar weight of exhaustion pressing down on him.

"You wanna try something stronger?" Kade asked, a sly grin pulling at his lips as he held out a small, crumpled plastic bag. Inside, white powder glimmered under the weak light. "It'll help. Trust me."

Damian stared at the bag for a long moment.

He thought of Bruce—his father, who always seemed to look through him instead of at him. He thought of the nights spent training until his knuckles bled, hoping, just hoping, that one day he might earn Bruce's approval. But the praise never came.

He thought of Dick, Tim, Jason—his brothers—always off saving the day, always too busy for him, leaving him to wonder if he was just a burden in their lives.

Damian exhaled slowly. What did it matter anymore? The bag felt like freedom. It felt like relief.

He took it.

The first hit was like slipping underwater. The chaos of the world around him dulled, and for the first time in a long while, the noise in his head quieted. His limbs felt light, and the tightness in his chest eased, as if the pressure to be something—anything—finally evaporated.

He kept coming back.

Days bled into nights, and Damian sank deeper into the city's underworld, his life a haze of dim alleys, crumpled bills, and the steady rhythm of inhaling, injecting, escaping. The pain became distant, a shadow he could push away with each new dose. He stopped going on patrol. He ignored Bruce's calls and the texts from his brothers. The Bat Family, once his anchor, became a distant memory—a part of a life that no longer felt real.

But the highs never lasted.

When the drugs wore off, the silence always returned, louder and more suffocating than before. It wrapped around him, a crushing weight that gnawed at his mind, whispering that he wasn't enough. That he would never be enough.