Whatever It's Worth?

Damian groaned and set his palette down, as if whatever artistic muse he had simply died from witnessing Gar’s audacity. “For God’s sake, Logan—doors close for a reason.”

“A concept lost on him,” Raven added, lips curving in a subtle, traitorous smirk.

“Well maybe if you two didn’t spend so much time together?” Gar shot back. “I mean, come on—there’s no way all you do is read while Damian paints the same tired black-and-white thing for the fiftieth time this year.”

Raven finally looked up—partly to defend herself, partly in the faint hope Damian would put Gar’s head through the same monochrome canvas he had just insulted.

“Since when are you concerned with my work?” Damian asked, tone bristling. Not quite murderous, but close enough for Gar to consider his life choices.

“Since I overheard you complaining about it.”

Damian’s scowl sharpened. “What do you mean, overheard?”

Again, Gar flushed tomato-red, a color that did not flatter him. “I may have been… y’know… a fly on the wall.”

Damian’s expression went blank—the dangerous kind of blank—as he remembered that night a few weeks back. 

He’d returned from his painting class in a foul mood, storm rolling off him like a pressure front. Raven had followed him to his room, only to stop him from annihilating every canvas in reach.

“Get out,” Damian said flatly. “And if I catch you sneaking in here again, I’ll make sure you meet the business end of an electric fly swatter.”

“I second that,” Raven added.

“Okay, okay!” Gar said quickly, realizing just how spectacularly he’d misplayed this hand. “Anyway—I originally came to ask if you guys have your costumes ready for tomorrow?”

“I’m not wearing a costume, Logan.” Damian began gathering his brushes and jars with a level of dignity he absolutely did not feel. “Why do I need one?”

“Because it’s a costume party,” Gar said, staring at him as though this were the most obvious fact in the known universe. “Y’know, for a guy with an IQ north of 180, you seriously don’t understand the basic concept of fun, dude.”

“I understand the concept,” Damian snapped. “I simply have no desire to participate in it.”

“It’s Halloween!” Gar groaned. “When else do you get to be something you’re not?”

“Technically, the work is sound,” his professor told him, as his classmates tore into his piece with the enthusiasm of piranhas stripping a carcass. “You execute the fundamentals with precision and discipline. But it tells me nothing about you. There is no vulnerability—no thread for the viewer to follow. Without that, the work is empty.”

Every day, Damian thought bitterly.

He didn’t say it aloud—God forbid he hand Gar that kind of insight—but the truth landed with an uncomfortable weight. It was, in fact, the very reason his latest art assignment was falling flat.

She paused, studying him as if expecting contradiction.None came.

“The carnival scene is the strongest,” she continued. “There’s narrative there. But the figure at the center—the thematic center—is vacant. It’s as if he isn’t allowed to exist. When I look at it, I see nothing.”

Damian didn’t answer.He never did.

Vulnerability had been trained out of him—treated as liability, as weakness, as something to be cut away until only function remained.

His gaze drifted instead to another piece—one no assignment had asked for. Something he’d painted in the solitude of the tower.

A confrontation with a version of himself he refused to acknowledge, yet carried everywhere regardless.

On the canvas, a humanoid figure loomed—its body human, crowned with a goat’s broken skull. Hollow eyes stared down at its reflection, mirrored by a version of Damian clad in dark, ornate armor.

Judgment without expression. Control without mercy. Identity reduced to inherited violence.

Stark black-and-white strokes defined both figures, while faint crimson accents bled through like an unhealed wound.

It was both accusation and confession: control, consequence, and the uneasy boundary between human and something made.

Damian exhaled sharply, turning away from it.

“Easy for her to say,” he muttered under his breath.

The door shut behind Gar with more force than necessary, the sound cutting cleanly through the room.

Silence followed.

Not empty—heavier. Settled.

And in that stillness, Raven’s gaze remained on him, steady and unreadable, like she had been waiting for exactly this version of him to resurface.

She sat cross-legged on his bed, book still in hand, but her attention shifted fully to him—his bruised pride and the storm cloud that never quite dispersed above him.

“Y’know,” she said gently, “criticism helps us grow.”

He paused mid-wipe of his palette knife. “I know that.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

The thought didn’t finish. It broke.

Damian rolled his eyes, but the deflection was weaker this time.

“It’s deeper than that,” he muttered. “I can’t exactly be an open book.”

His father’s world had nearly gone up in flames.

The last time he let his guard down without knowing it was safe—

the last time he was seen too clearly—

A memory surfaced, not fully formed. Not linear.

Damian’s grip tightened on the palette knife  

A voice—almost right. Almost human.

Too precise in its praise. Too careful in its attention.

Like it already knew what part of him was missing.

He’d mistaken what he thought was guidance and mentorship--it was in reality--

assessment.

And when the truth broke through, the shape of it—

it wasn’t understanding that followed.

It was classification.

The Talons.

Not violence.

But correction.

“And they’re gone,” Raven said, trying to ground him. “He’s gone. The Court hasn’t resurfaced in years.”

The night the Court descended on Gotham’s elites, half its aristocracy was slaughtered in hours. The papers called it a purge.

Damian knew better.

A failure state.

A failure to recruit him.

Damian didn’t answer.

Because somewhere deep down, he wasn’t convinced.

Not entirely.

Something he called the Circle Behind the Court.

Because the man hadn’t just spoken of the Court.

He’d spoken of something older.

Something just out of sight.

Damian exhaled slowly, fingers tightening around the solvent jar.

As if the Owls were only the mask.

As if something else was wearing it.

“You may think that…that’s how it appears,” he murmured, barely audible. “But the greatest slight they ever pulled was convincing my father they weren’t real.”

He set the jar down carefully, almost surgically.

“And I don’t plan on giving them anything to use against me ever again.”

Raven’s expression softened—not pity, never pity—but a deep, steady understanding.

“Well then,” she said, a slight smirk tugging at the corner of her lips, “if they ever show up again, cue me in on your little vengeance plan.”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” he replied, lighter now, sinking down next to her on the bed. His eyes drifted to the open page in her lap and caught the text:

“In the ninth circle, betrayal is not just sin—it is absence, a void where warmth and mercy once lived. But now, in hell, no more.”

“Uplifting,” Damian muttered, not taking his eyes off the page.

“You don’t say,” he replied. Not that he had any issue with her taste in literature; they often shared overlapping interests. But Raven had always nursed a deeper fascination with the occult—an inclination that made sense, given her lineage.

Raven glanced down, catching the edge of his sarcasm.

“It’s a modern retelling of Dante’s Inferno,” she said.

“What?” she challenged playfully.

“Nothing… just seems a little too on-the-nose for you,” he teased.

Raven rolled her eyes, taking in the horned figure she had lovingly dubbed Unhallowed. It was a stunning piece, she had to admit—haunted by ghosts older than his escape from the womb. Beauty and torment intertwined in every shadow, crimson bleeding into the darkness.

“Y’know,” Raven said lightly, “you could always swap out the paintings.”

“Or I could just give up and apply to medical school,” Damian replied with ironic defeat.

“Hm,” Raven hummed, considering. “I can’t see you tolerating people complaining all day.”

“That’s why I’d specialize in trauma surgery,” he added, as if it were a mundane detail. “Can’t complain if you’re under anesthesia.”

Raven smiled and shook her head. “Solid plan—if the whole starving artist thing isn’t your jam. But maybe consider switching the painting out first before you give up and follow in your grandfather’s footsteps.”

She didn’t mean it that way, but the shadow of that sentence hit him harder than he wanted. 

Damian followed her gaze, then shook his head. “You’re lucky I even let you see that.”

“And I feel privileged,” she admitted, sensing he wasn’t entertaining the idea. “Just a suggestion. I know you’re really struggling with this.”

“I know, Raven. But I’m not ready to be that open. Especially not with people I don’t trust.”

Raven leaned a little closer, tilting her head as she studied his brushwork. “Y’know,” she murmured, her voice low and almost playful, “there’s something kind of… hypnotic about how precise you are. Even when you’re frustrated.”

Damian felt the heat rise to his cheeks, a rare burn of awareness. He shifted slightly, careful not to draw too much attention to himself. “It’s not… hypnotic,” he muttered, though his tone lacked conviction.

“Sure,” Raven said, amusement dancing in her eyes. She reached over, brushing a stray smear of black paint from the edge of his chin with the tip of her finger. It was rare to see him with even the smallest speck out of place.

“Some cosmic force must be at play,” she quipped. “You’re always so meticulous.” Her touch lingered just a moment too long, and Damian’s pulse stuttered.

He swallowed, caught between the magnetic pull of the moment and the walls he had carefully built around himself. If he were honest, he ached to lean in, to bridge that gap. But they were friends—teammates—and letting it become anything more was reckless… yet tempting.

“Maybe you should… go back to your book,” he suggested, his voice tighter than intended.

Raven’s smirk widened. “Or maybe I could just stay here and…”

Damian’s chest tightened. Part of him wanted to—no, needed to—close the mere inches between them. The air felt charged, alive. They were too close, too attuned, breaths mingling, the quiet hum of the tower fading into nothing.

Her eyes flicked to his lips for the briefest moment. Damian felt the pull—the unspoken invitation—but his resolve wavered.

He straightened and rose, exhaling sharply. “I—I need to… finish cleaning up before patrol,” he said, stepping away. His hands trembled slightly, not from fear, but from the sudden awareness of how close they’d come to crossing the line.

Raven studied him for a beat—teasing, soft, understanding—and then, mercifully, let the tension loosen.

“Okay,” she said lightly, the corners of her lips tugging up into a knowing smile. “I’ll see you later.”

Damian busied himself gathering his brushes, solvent, and paints, each motion careful, practiced, painfully aware. The moment lingered anyway—heavy, unresolved.

“…So,” he added, a little too casually, “what do I owe you for the therapy session?”

Safer this way, he told himself.

For now.

Raven paused at the door, amusement flickering across her face. “I should bill hourly,” she said. “But I’m feeling generous.” She glanced back at him. “Buy me a tea on patrol tonight.”

Raven’s deep violet eyes fell from his indecisive shade of green and on to the black and white contrast of his sketch pad. It wasn’t like him to leave it out in the open, but then again, she was the only person he allowed in his space. He let her flip through from time to time. 

Damian smiled—small, genuine. He always paid for her tea.

“Deal,” he said, then hesitated, wanting to say more, but could not find the words.

Or better still, he had the words, but to say them aloud felt too raw.

So when her eye traced the soft charcoal line of a pretty young girl, about their age, gilded in the glory of a Valkyries armor and holding her sword toward divinity in a moment of triumph, she couldn't look away. Not without asking.

“Who is she?”

Damian looked down and saw the Valkyrie he’d sketched the night prior, all he could say was, “I don’t know.”

Raven smiled, finding the imagery endearing in a way. “As long as this isn’t your way of telling me I have competition,” she teased.

Damian shook his head. The idea absurd. “You have nothing to worry about.

“Good,” she turned and made her way to the door.

“And, Raven… thanks.”

“Any time, Boy Wonder,” she replied with a soft smile, glancing once more toward the painting. “And don’t be so hard on yourself. It’s still a good painting.”

Damian turned back to the canvas, the wet oil paint faintly glistening beneath the low light in stark blacks and whites—full, yet vacant.

That wasn’t the point.

“No,” he sighed, not taking his eyes off it. “It’s not.”

Without warning, he stepped toward the work and, to Raven’s surprise, dragged his hand across the empty figure, smearing the paint and any trace of himself along with it.

The oils shifted beneath his palm with a wet hiss.

Damian took a step back and studied it.

“That’s an… interesting creative choice.”

Was it an improvement? No.

But it would do. Better this than risking exposure.

Damian pivoted toward her, his hand slick with monochrome paint. “If nothing else, I can spin it as an exercise in creative abstraction.”

A soft laugh escaped her. “If by ‘creative abstraction’ you mean erasure… how very Damian Wayne of you.”

“Entirely the point.”

“You are the artist,” Raven quipped, moving toward the door. “Who am I to argue with artistic suffering?”

Damian said nothing. But he didn’t regret the choice.

“I trust you,” he said quietly.

Raven lingered in the doorway a moment longer, her expression softening as she looked back at him.

“Y’know… It’s okay to trust people, Damian.”

A pause.

“But not other people,” she challenged.

Raven’s gaze lingered on him for a second longer, as though she wanted to challenge that answer and already knew she wouldn’t change it.

“My point exactly.”

Then she slipped into the hallway, leaving Damian alone with the ruined figure still drying at the center of the canvas.

The admission unsettled him—less for what it meant, than for how quickly his mind had arrived there.

His teammates paused, peering back at him as if he’d just praised the carnage itself.

“I mean, this wasn’t done at random,” he clarified, trying to put what made sense to him into words. “Whoever did this… enjoyed it. Knew exactly what they were doing. Made art out of it.”

He crouched again, eyes scanning closer now. The blood arcs suggested movement between attacks, choreographed strikes. The way the bodies were positioned—it wasn’t just mutilation; it was a frame exposed beneath it all. Damian could almost read it like a canvas split wide for an audience of one.

This had a signature, consistent enough to mark a mind at work rather than a mind in frenzy. 

It unnerved him, even as it drew him in. This was Death by design. 

“Okay then, Dexter,” Jaime quipped sardonically. “What can you tell us based on the blood?”

Damian’s jaw tightened. Wrong comparison.

Not because the fictional profiler was inaccurate—but being reduced to a television analogy felt… insulting.

“The blood,” he began, voice low and even, “is deliberate. See the direction of these splatters? The strikes weren’t random.”

He traced a smear leading from the floor to the shattered TV.

“Control Freak’s head—severed by blunt force, likely a dull cleaver or similar instrument. The angle here… and the pooling beneath it indicates he was still alive when it happened. The heart hadn’t stopped yet.”

He moved his gaze over the rest of the scene, noting Gizmo’s limbs and their arrangement. “The other injuries… all controlled. Staged. Each body, each strike, has a rhythm, a pattern. 

“This isn’t rage,” Damian said. A pause. His eyes didn’t move. “It’s… structured.”

He almost hated the certainty of it. The clinical ease with which his mind accepted carnage as if it were afternoon reading.

The others exchanged uneasy glances. Damian’s words were clinical, almost appreciative, but there was an edge of alarm beneath them that even they could sense.

“What tipped you off?” Tara grimaced, not entirely convinced. “The writing on the wall?”

Damian rolled his eyes—leave it to Tara Markov to doubt his finely tuned instincts and jump straight to the superficial.

Still, his eyes scanned the wall. Messages scrawled in blood—and other fluids—ran wild, profanities and aimless words that likely meant nothing in particular. Yet one message stood out, loud, and unmistakable:

“Life Ends, Art Remains.”

Damian stepped back from the wall, letting the others absorb his observations. His gaze lingered on the arcs of blood across the floor—subtle traces others would have missed. 

Raven shook her head, her dark hair falling into her face. “I can’t… I can’t even look at it.”

Gar muttered something about needing a shower and a strong drink, already moving toward the exit. Tara just scowled, brushing blood from her gloves.

Damian said nothing, cataloging the scene in his mind. Every mark, every placement, every gruesome detail. He would revisit this, replay it, dissect it. There was intelligence here—something dangerous.

He stared at the blood beneath his boots. Dull brown. Hours had passed since the suspect had been here. As he looked down, a distant memory surfaced—a pit so deep he wished he could forget. The familiar rusty scent of blood in the air, a reminder of carnage and the unforgiving question of mortality.

With a soft exhale, he followed the others toward the yellow tape. Before leaving, he went over his findings with the lead detective. Already filing the report in his head.

As they left, Damian cast one last glance at the scene—Control Freak. Gizmo. The scrawled message on the wall. There was a rhythm here, a design waiting for someone perceptive enough to decipher it. 

He would…  Eventually.

Exiting the condemned building,  the night air bit at his skin, the city heavy with smoke and rain. Even in the darkness, the echo of the killer’s “Art” lingered in his mind.

“Well,” Gar exhaled, staring at the floor like it might move, “that was a real mood ruiner.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Jaime muttered.

Tara’s voice cut through sharper. “That was fucked.”

Raven didn’t correct her. “It was… cruel.”

“They must have really pissed someone off,” Tara added, flippant.

“They didn’t deserve to die like that,” Raven reasoned.

“Maybe not,” Tara shrugged, “but y’know, they weren’t innocent.”

“Innocent or not, that was still inhuman,” Jaime muttered from beneath the safety of his armor. The scarab at his back chirping in a foreign, mechanical rebuttal Jaime only rolled his eyes at. 

Damian paused. Something about that word hit a chord. “It takes a certain kind of depravity to achieve something like that,” he said quietly, eyes lingering on the receding crime scene. “And the one who did it… understands it fully. Understands fear, control, and the limits of life in ways most never will.”

The group fell silent. Even Gar, usually quick with a quip, felt the weight of Damian’s words.

“How do you do that?” Gar finally asked, voice low.

“Do what?” Damian replied, his voice calm beneath the mask.

“See evil… and be totally unaffected by it?”

Damian didn’t flinch at the accusation, though it left him slightly stunned. The truth was, he had been deeply affected by the inhumanity he’d just witnessed. The difference was he’d been trained not to show it—not to let the world see he’d been moved. To see it for what it was, an evil that needed to be stopped. And he could only do that by understanding it.

“Sometimes the only way to stop a great evil is to rationalize it,” he said, though he knew it offered his teammates no comfort.

No one answered. Damian wasn't sure if he'd been explaining evil… or himself.

Gar shook his head. “No, seriously. How do you—?”

Damian’s gaze returned to the darkened street, already cataloging the scene in his mind. “I observe. That’s it. It’s not a superpower.”

“Maybe not to you,” Jaime noted. He turned as Gar and Tara headed toward the tower, already eager to put the night behind them. Jaime followed a moment later, leaving Damian and Raven behind.

They started moving again, the space between them filled with uneasy silence.

Raven slowed her pace until she was walking beside Damian. Not quite looking at him, she murmured, “Ignore them.”

His gaze flicked toward her, sharp. “I wasn’t—”

“I know,” she said softly. “They don’t see what you see.” A beat. “That doesn’t make you wrong.”

Damian said nothing, but something in his posture eased—just slightly.

“They still see me as an al Ghul.”

“They know you’re more than that,” Raven said as she turned to follow the others. “You’re the one who hasn’t quite let that go.”

Damian lingered, the words settling heavier than he expected.

She wasn’t wrong. The name was carved into him as surely as bone and sinew—inheritance written in blood, sharpened by training and expectation. Al Ghul. Wayne. Legacy wasn’t something he could discard. It was the framework that held him together.

Even here, beneath the towering spires of Jump City, he stood in shadow—Wayne Tower crowning the skyline behind him, granite and glass bearing down like a silent reminder. There was no escaping it. Not really.

Then the air changed.

It was subtle. A pressure at the base of his skull. The instinctive prickle that had kept him alive since childhood.

Damian stilled.

Slowly, his masked gaze swept the street, the rooftops, the darkened windows. Nothing out of place. No movement. No sound.

Yet the feeling remained. Not the presence of a watcher. The certainty of one.

Somewhere beyond the reach of light, something observed him with patient interest. Waiting. Measuring.

Damian’s hand curled at his side.

Recognition.

He turned.

His reflection stared back at him in the dark sheen of a plate-glass window of an abandoned storefront.

And behind it— something else.

A figure stood across the street. Black and white. Wrongly still. A grin stretched too wide across a pale face, dark eyes locked directly onto him.

The shape did not move like a person should. It simply was there.

The clown lifted a white-gloved hand. Red stained the palm. Slow and eerie.

It waved. Not greeting. Not mockery. An invitation.

Damian’s breath caught—a sense of inevitability he had yet to name creeping in.

His head snapped toward the street. Empty.

Only a flickering streetlamp remained.

“Hey,” Raven called behind him. “Everything okay?”

Damian glanced once more at the glass. Nothing.

Whatever it had been—if it had been anything at all—was gone. For now.

“It’s nothing.”