Esme

Just added @esme0013 marvelous art to my story on Ao3 and it is the prefect touch to this Shakespeare inspired fanfic. I can not sing her praises enough! These sketches were an amazing surprise and exactly what I needed to get me inspired Thank you Esmee! 🖤

Summary: After the horrific death of his grandfather, Damian is brought to America to meet his father, Bruce Wayne. Years later, after being raised and trained by the father he’d come to love and respect, The Dark Knight’s untimely death drives Damian into self-destruction and despair. Haunted by both the past and present, his mother’s new marriage marks a sickening betrayal that leads him to discover a truth so vile it could destroy him and everyone in his path. Based on Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy, Hamlet.

He arrived in Gotham dressed in solid black, as though mourning the day he was to meet the man who fathered him. The black line of Lincolns drove along the city streets, as if a funeral procession delivering him to his final destination, deep within the earth. The people of the city watched the peculiar, but impressive site. Unbeknownst to them, their once lost prince had returned, hidden just out of sight beyond the darkened glass. His face was heavy, as though he’d been dragged to America in chains, leaving behind the life he’d known somewhere in the east: leaving behind the only father he’d known. Damian was regarded as the Son of the Demon’s Head, after all. His only heir, but far too young to sit atop his throne.

Damian al’ Ghul was born the son of Ra’s al Ghul’s only legitimate and favorite daughter, Talia. A woman of great status, bred from a long line of warriors and noble blood. She was formidable in combat and remarkably intuitive: As deadly as she was beautiful, and beautiful she was. Damian inherited many of her finest qualities. He was a brilliant fighter, his keen senses lending themselves to his ability to strategize, his sharpened wit ever at work playing through scenarios and sequences of battle. But it was unknowingly his father’s obsessive nature that absolutely made him such an accomplished young swordsman.

Damian, though pleased with the treatment and training of his beloved grandfather, would have been lying if he said the identity of whom his true father never crossed his young mind. He’d suspected, based on his proper Christian name and some of his features, that his father was of western descent. There were also a few rumors among the servants as to whom the boy’s father may have been: Mainly several of his mother’s past lovers, or more disturbingly, Ra’s himself. Damian found that little more than shallow gossip. There was only one name he felt had any real standing: A Mercenary, well known and well trained. A commemorated war hero, notably respected and possessed many of the qualities that Damian was so fortunate to inherit. It made sense, but in the end, maybe it didn’t? Nor did it fully matter to anyone but Damian. So it appeared no one truly knew his parentage. Every man was a story or conquest, passed down second hand by the cleverness of their servants. Until the day his mother told him she would take him to America.

The cars travelled beyond the heart of Gotham and entered its outskirts, heading towards Wayne Manor just off the coast. Damian watched as this new world rolled by, the trees grey through the light fog and drizzling rain. It was nothing like he’d imagined it, not that he’d imagined it much at all. Still, he expected more from what they called the land of promises .

“You’ll have to get used to rain,” his mother said, seated beside him. She too dressed as if she’d flee this world.

“Why are you doing this?” Damian asked from stormy eyes, still making sense of his grandfather’s death.

“Because it is what is best for you now,” she reasoned through her thick accent, “it’s what he would have wanted.”

“Why?”

“Because, Damian, you’re not just an al’ Ghul, but a Wayne. And you’re about to find out how impressive that is.”

The pain seared through her entire body; a deep agony tearing through tissue. Her own blood stained her white nightgown and the sheets she found herself curled up on, alone and afraid. She wanted her mother, more than anyone, but to suffer in secret she must: She’d gotten this far.

“AAAAHHHHH!” she cried out, her knees pulled close to her swollen belly. The contractions were getting stronger and closer.

“Just a little while longer.” Talia imagined her mother praising in her ear, even if she was just a ghost.

She rolled on to her back, the next wave of anguish filling every nerve and dripping from every pore. Talia could feel the child’s head crowning, her fingers clutching the headboard as she pushed through the pain: pure fire and torment. The lone cries fell upon her own deaf ears, her mind engulfed in the moment’s fury. To deliver a child she’d carried for 9 months and struggled to feel nothing for. Fathered by a man she admired and loved. But she knew what needed to be done.