Cats Eat Birds - Damian Wayne/OC

** 68 | LET SLEEPING CATS LIE

hi everyone!! so sorry for the accidental hiatus, I started taking commissions right alongside my finals, so I'd stretched myself p thin. But I'm back! Here's a crazy-long chapter to make up for it :D And a piece of Cristen I asked for by byavason on Twitter 🥰 Let me hear your thoughts on this chapter!! - Ivy

** - edited the ending based on some new ideas I got from the smartness of agents_of_fangirling on Ao3 C:

A LEAGUE OF ASSASSINS STRONGHOLD | YEARS AGO | DAMIAN

     TODAY SHOULD'VE BEEN wonderful.

At dawn, Damian had taken his very first step toward an honorable manhood. That's what Grandfather had said when Damian had chosen to slay the traitor instead of spare him. It had felt like it, too; it wasn't often that Damian was allowed the pleasure of decision-making, especially for something so important. The League didn't often make traitors, but every establishment had them. He, Mother, and Grandfather had listened to the traitor grovel and beg for his life—which Damian always found amusing—at the cliff over the sea around the stronghold. Grandfather would usually employ one of his best soldiers to do the execution, but at dawn, he had turned to Damian instead.

Prove your loyalty to me, grandson, he'd said. Ra's had even given his dagger for Damian to use.

Damian had accepted the knife and the task. I am yours, he'd said, because that was what he had to say in response to Grandfather's orders.

(Then, he would've called it loyalty, but now Damian understood the taking of the knife, the words, and the action altogether as the result of fear. He might have sought Grandfather's praise, but manipulation tricked even the recesses of your mind into what was right and wrong).

Heart beating raciously in his chest, Damian drew off his hood. Only chosen people were allowed to see an al Ghul's face in ceremony, with the exception being the battlefield and the soon to be dead. Grandfather said that the showing of your face to your victim was an act of mercy even the lowest of men should be allowed—all men should know their better, he'd said. So Damian had taken the sword, met eyes with the traitor, and slit his throat on the spot.

No amount of training or preparation could have made the process easy for him. Mother had pressed this into his mind constantly, but Damian had chosen to believe that he was unshakable. He regrets brushing off her warning.

When the man's throat is opened by Damian's hand, a clean plane of blood washes down his front, exposing a maw of red flesh and pink bone. It is nothing like the diagrams in anatomy books Damian had read, with their neat labels and neater illustrations, but messy and far more personal. It was different, doing the killing instead of watching it in ceremony. The gurgles and chokes of the traitor should have been music to Damian's ears, but it isn't.

He feels... disgust. Terror. Guilt, and it puts it's own dagger to Damian's throat and slits it just the same. Standing there above his kill, he feels flayed. He feels wrong, and that is the thing—al Ghul men did not feel guilt or terror. They weren't afraid of Death—and by no means was he, but Death was the man at his feet, (the soul inside Damian's own body, now) and just a glance at him—at the blood—the taut muscle in his neck, relaxed forever now—Damian's hands—and he is well aware that he does fear Death.

Al Ghul men were not afraid of Death.

This was supposed to be easy. Damian was Ra's' grandson; that was supposed to make this easy. But it is perhaps the hardest thing he has ever had to do in his life, even if that only became true once completed. And with the task finished, Damian snaps closed all his hatred and guilt for no one to see—that, at least, al Ghul men could do.