Notes: Yikes. It has certainly been a while.

No warnings, other than some very minor description of injuries and canon divergence.

Had he been anyone else, Damian Wayne might have said he was hesitant.

But he isn't anyone else.

And Damian Wayne is not hesitant.

Ever.

Yet that doesn't explain why he stands here now, unmoving.

The door is before him.

Yes, it is shut, but that hardly counts as an obstacle.

He can open it at any point.

And yet he simply doesn't.

Damian has already caught the gist of what's happened. He knows Brown disappeared. He knows she had something to do with this… this war that has Gotham in a stalemate. He knows they found her.

He's not sure why he's found himself here- before the door behind which he knows are three people- his father, Leslie Thomkins and… and Brown.

They found her.

As to what condition she was in...

That… that is something he does not know.

Slowly, with rising trepidation that he refuses to acknowledge, Damian raises his hand, prepared finally to enter.

The door swings up and Damian jumps back.

His father is the one who stalks out. The lines on his face have become more prominent and Damian is aware that it's been at least three nights since his father got any amount of sleep. His expression is hard, but his eyes are where the true anguish lies.

Bruce's gaze sweeps over him and Damian finds himself truly unsettled by what he sees.

His father looks far older than his years. The lines drawn in his face stand out as though they'd been chiseled in stone.

"Damian…" It's said more to break the silence, he thinks, than for anything else.

"Father," Damian answers, for the same reason.

The moment of silence between them grows, before Bruce growls something low and unintelligible and turns away, running a hand through his hair.

Damian watches his receding back and thinks he can guess what his father is feeling right now.

He's blaming himself for what happened to Brown. The same way he blames himself for everything else that happens in Gotham.

It's an idiotic sentiment- this idea of his Father's that he and he alone can somehow prevent every bad thing from happening.

There's nothing to excuse his hesitation now.

If he had made conversation with Father… Only there's nothing to converse about and he doesn't have the time or the inclination to make small talk.

He pushes the door open and steps in.

Brown is motionless in the bed across from him. Both the sheets covering her and his distance across the room from her make it hard for him to see the extent of her injuries.

She's still enough to be dead.

The heart monitor tells him that she's still alive. It also tells him that she was hurt badly enough to need one.

He takes slow steps across the room. There's a chair at the bedside, likely where his father was sitting before Damian ran into him outside the door.

He settles into it carefully.

Her face is the only part of her that's visible, blonde hair surrounding her head like a cloud, and she looks… terrible.

Damian's lips tilt downward in a frown.

Both her eyes are blackened. Bandages swath her forehead. Her left cheek is swollen and Damian suspects that the butterfly bandages hide a nasty gash.

Damian has seen torture before.

Mother had never expected him to perform it- she considered that beneath him. He had witnessed it only rarely.

But he had seen the aftermath quite frequently, always with a sort of detachment.

He reaches for that detachment now and finds it frustratingly out of reach.

He's feeling things- things he's not quite sure how to deal with- and they all have to do with Brown.

He extends his hand out, brushing his finger against one of hers, before snatching it back.

"You better wake up, Brown," he says harshly. His nails dig into the palms of his hands.

As annoying as she can be- as irritatingly bubbly as she can be- she's always seemed to shake everything off.

It's an observation he will never tell her about.

"If you don't wake up from this…" There isn't a threat he can come up with for the situation. Unusual for him.

He settles for repeating, "You better wake up."

In those sappy movies Grayson sometimes has him watching, this would be the time the person in the bed opened their eyes. They'd blink and then they'd whisper the name of whoever was camped out in a bedside vigil and it would be happily ever after.

She doesn't wake up.

Damian doesn't leave.

Note: So I know that technically the Damian and Steph bonding stuff comes after this story, but... please allow me this break from canon. I love their relationship a lot.