2014-01-08 - Cutscene: Still Whole

Damian sits awake in his own bed. It’s sometime past two on the day after the day after his birthday. Did the Americans have names for that sort of thing? They tended not to let a good celebration die, so he could see them turning a one day celebration of one’s successful entry into the world into a three day yearly celebration. He’d have to ask Carrie.

He sits alone in his bed, though, staring at the bright rectangle of his cellphone screen. It’s open to an entry in his contacts, one he didn’t put there, the word Mother spelled out in simple black text and a number.

He sighs and looks away from the screen a moment reaching for the glass of whatever it is on his bedside table. It’s green, thick, and apparently has the proteins and other nutrients needed for healing, or so Alfred claimed. Damian drinks it back with a scowl, it tasted vile. He reaches over and helps himself to the cookie Alfred had left with it. A single cookie, which in the subtle language of the Wayne family butler, expressed elegantly both his disapproval at going after Mother alone and his continued love.

He was not out of the family.

When he’d woken the second time in Carrie’s bed it was the day after his birthday, and he’d woken, exited Carrie’s room and ran directly into Alfred. There had been an awkward silence, then the butler had simply said ‘Come with me, Master Damian’ and led the way down to the Bat Cave where he’d re-dressed his wounds, wordlessly and with skill. Then when it was done he applied a dose of pain-killer, one that was wearing off by now, and sent him up to his room to rest.

The tone suggested escape would not be tolerated, nor would it be advised. Damian had acquiesced because in truth he was tired, and the wounds he’d suffered had been great. He had, by his count, fourteen contusions of varying depths, seven requiring sutures, a through and through gunshot wound, and electrocution. Though even with the pain-killer wearing off the sting of failure hurt worse. As best as he could reason out he never even made it to Mother’s test, he’d bumbled into one of the insane villains that prowled Gotham’s street and fallen easily to his ridiculous weasel trap.

Fallen so badly, Mother had had to rescue him.

Now that hurt. If he’d been a simple member of the League and not its promised princeling, he’d feel obligated to take his own life.

That thought brought him back to looking at the phone, glaring up at him with insolent brightness in the dark room. Was he still Damian al Ghul Wayne? Or had his failure excised the first part of his double-barrelled surname? And if he wasn’t that what was he? His mother lied to him, his grandfather was surely using him as he used everyone in his schemes but he was family, the heir, that was who he was. The answers to all his questions are on the other side of that phone. He just had to have the courage to press the buttons.

So, he finishes the cookie, and picks up the phone. Text is selected, and he types his message < Next time I will not fail >.

Then he waits, and waits, while the dread grows, until his phone beeps once. The sudden noise in the silence of his room startles him and he drops the phone. An annoyed “tt” escapes his lips as he scoops up the thrice-damned device and checks the screen, with a little swallow of trepidation.

The text is simple. < I know you will not >

The relief he feels defies description as he reaches over and blindly puts the phone down by the glass and wiggles back under the covers again to rest despite the pain blossoming across his battered body in the wake of the pain-killers. He was wounded, but whole. He would survive.