redemption.

     It took him a few more moments to recognize that he was lying on the ground, flat on his back. Soil, wet from a recent rain, dampened his clothes where they were pressed against the earth and made him shiver. He wanted to move. There was some kind of danger, Damian knew, something approaching that he could not defend against while rooted to the ground as he was. 

     Titus looked perfectly content to snap his jaw playfully at the fireflies, entirely oblivious to his master’s plight. Dread pooled in his stomach. Something was making noise in the distance; it wasn’t Titus, or anything that he could make out. The sound was droning and ugly. Damian wished he could cover his ears to block it out, but his arms wouldn’t move.

     The noise continued, and Titus stopped chasing after the fireflies, going abruptly stock-still and alert. His ears perked and he stared, intense, at something that Damian could not see. This went on long enough that Damian began to fear that the terrible stillness in the air had overtaken Titus, too.

     And just when Damian thought that the dog might never move again, Titus took off running. Like a gunshot. Like–

     The hand stroking through his hair paused. The world snapped to horrible, startling clarity around him like setting a broken bone, and Damian became acutely aware of three things:

     The hand in his hair was his mother’s.

     The sound in the distance was screaming.

     The loose earth he was laying upon was the overturned soil of a grave.

     Almost of its own accord, Damian’s hand snapped up to grab the one in his hair, and he knew without looking that her nails were painted a deep, glinting red. With his ability to move restored and his heart jackhammering in his chest, Damian rolled to one knee and turned to look his mother in the eye, still holding her wrist tight enough to bruise, though she was not trying to pull away.

     Her eyes were cloudy and dull. There was a bullet hole in the center of her forehead that oozed blood and fluid and he didn’t have to look to know that the back of her head was even more gruesome. Her expression was serene and angelic.

     “I miss you, Damian,” she crooned, reaching to cup his face with her free hand, “Come home.”

     “Get away from me!” Damian shrieked, releasing her wrist just to shove her away hard enough that he fell backwards himself. He pushed off to his feet and broke into a dead sprint, uncaring of where he ended up as long as it was away. Titus was long gone, not even a speck on the horizon, and Damian longed to be, too.

     He didn’t make it far before nearly stumbling into an open grave, sneakers skidding right against the edge as he tripped over himself in his haste. When he peered into the depths, the grave was empty. He had to keep running–he could tell without looking that Talia wasn’t far behind–but when he stepped back from the open maw in the ground, he found himself staring down a circle of near-identical headstones, each with a matching hollow for its dead.

     Different names were inscribed on every marker. Damian read all of them.

     Grayson. Drake. Todd. Cain. Brown. Thomas. No, no, no.

     The graves were not empty. Only two were–the ones labeled Wayne. Damian and Bruce.

     There was a wail behind him–Talia had caught up–but when he turned to face her, he did not see his mother. His father stood before him; imposing, furious, riddled with grief.

     Neither of them made a move towards each other.

     “What have you done,” Bruce whispered. It was not a question.

     “I–I didn’t–I wouldn’t–”

      “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?” He roared, barrelling towards Damian–a bull in a china shop. Damian was glass. He froze in place, and Bruce shook him by the shoulders hard. “How could you do this to us?”

     “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he gasped out. 

     “You,” Bruce spat, “were my biggest mistake.” 

     The grip on his shoulders was painfully tight. Bruce was red in the face with fury, but tears stood out in his eyes. Damian shoved him hard, and Bruce went careening backwards into his own grave. His foot slipped over the edge and he landed with an anticlimactic thud, then was silent. Damian knew without looking that he would not get back up. His legs gave out from under him.

     There was one empty grave left.

     His mother was back. Damian could sense her presence crouched behind him, but could not bring himself to turn around and look at her. She put a hand on his shoulder. He did not lean into the shallow comfort it offered.

     “Haven’t you realized by now? This is who you are, Damian. You bring ruin to everyone around you.”

     He looked down at his own hands, and they were no longer his. They were larger, but not older, youthful skin stretched grotesquely across a too-large skeleton. There was a broadsword held tight in one of them, caked in drying blood. Damian had no control over these hands. 

     He turned around and, in one deft movement, the blade was buried deep in Mother’s chest. 

      Except, when he looked at the figure in front of him, it was no longer his mother. Red-tinted through his visor, Damian was looking at himself–hoisted aloft on the end of the blade like a sick proclamation of an empty victory.

     Damian jolted awake. His room was empty, save for Titus, who was whining at the foot of his bed to go outside. The light of early dawn streamed through his window.