So, Damian died and I have a lot of feelings regarding that fact.

I really hate that I predicted that outcome (see A/N: Chapter 4), but lucky for me I still had some unused lyrics left over.

I didn't edit this as hardcore as the other eight chapters. Forgive me, please. I hope you still enjoy it.

"You can't tempt me if I don't see the day."

He'd failed. Plain and simple.

He failed in obeying his father. He failed in stopping his mother. He'd failed in battling his clone.

But he wasn't the one paying for his failure.

His father. Grayson. Titus. Alfred. Even Drake and Todd?

They were…mourning him. And it was hard for Damian to watch, knowing he caused that pain. Knowing he couldn't do anything to fix it.

He couldn't explain what had happened. He remembered getting stabbed through. His last feeling was being lifted into his father's arms. And then, for a while…nothing. No big white light, no deep dark blackness. Just space and…nothingness.

The next thing he knew, he was standing under a tree on the Wayne Manor grounds. He couldn't feel anything, but he could move. Well, scratch that. He couldn't feel anything unless he tried to move into the sunlight. Because then it burned.

Huh. So all those ghost hunting reality shows had the right idea. The paranormal really are more comfortable in darkness.

He had planned on waiting until darkness. Then go find everyone. He knew what he was, he wasn't going to be in denial about it. A dead child. A spirit. A ghost. But he was curious. Would they be able to see him? Hear him? Feel him?

He hoped so. More than anything he hoped so.

But he didn't have to wait until the night. His family came to him. One by one, throughout that first afternoon, they all came outside, walking mindlessly to the nearby graveyard – right near Damian and his tree, as it were – and going to a newly dug plot.

"Hello again, Master Damian."

"Hey, kid."

"…son."

"Damian."

"…Sorry I haven't been around, Little D…"

None of them really did anything. They'd stand there, staring at the obelisk, or the few flowers left at its base. Sometimes they'd say a few words, but most of the time they would just stay quiet.

When darkness finally did fall, Damian found he could move freely. Immediately he went into the Manor. The place had always seemed kind of dismal, but now its silence was suffocating – even for him, who found he was only 'breathing' out of habit.

It went on like this for days. Everyone remained at the Manor after everything subsided – most likely for Alfred's sake, so he could patch them all up and watch them recover – but no one interacted. Alfred brought them all their meals separately. Titus would pick and choose which of them he followed for the day, though always seemed to be keeping an eye out for his master.

Due to the ridiculous lack of light in the giant house, Damian found he could move among its walls twenty-four hours a day. So he did. Being dead had its perks; after all, you didn't need to sleep.

He watched them as they continued their vigil. Daytime was tough. They'd all come and go – in doors here, out doors there. The secret passages to the roof. Damian couldn't follow them everywhere. He tried, but like everything else recently, he failed at that too.

Cons of being dead: Sunlight's a bitch.

Nighttime was both the easiest and hardest time. Everyone was inside, unmoving, so Damian could keep tabs. But that's when the nightmares hit. The crying, the screaming, the punching of things. He tried to gauge who would do it most, or when, but there was never a pattern. That's just how grief worked.

But Damian would do his best. If Jason drank too much, Damian would slowly move the bottles and guns away from him, just in case he thought to do something stupid. If Alfred was hit by a wave of tears while cleaning, he would try to wipe away some of the dirt himself. Sometimes, he'd find a bit of solace in sitting in a room with Tim. And maybe the older boy did too. It was rare, but Tim would sometimes look up from the floor tile he was glaring at and stare in Damian's general direction with a sad, pained, forced smile while tears welled in his eyes. "Are you there, Damian?" he'd whisper. "Can you hear me?"

He'd lie with Dick for hours as the man sobbed and screamed, curling up into a ball while violently clutching a pillow to his face. Damian would just hang onto his arm, hoping, like with Tim, that every so often his mentor would feel him nearby and be calmed by it.

His father…how do you comfort someone who has literally lost everything three times over? How do you comfort a man who is bent on not being comforted?

So Damian did the only thing he could think of. He stood by. He stood next to that large chair in the cave while his father typed angrily. He stood on the fire escape and watched as his father pummeled thieves and crooks. He stood on the windowsill as his father went into his room and flipped through his sketchbooks, or sat by his bed staring into a fire.

Damian quickly found that, regardless of the humans, Titus could see him. So could the cat. And the cow, it seemed, though she was mostly unfazed.

But Titus and Alfred could see, hear and feel him, like he was actually there. And they acted on that. Meowing loudly as he walked down the hallways, barking and running after him as they came in from outside. Rubbing their bodies against his legs or ramming their heads into his hand. At first, it was nothing. Damian didn't think it was a problem. In fact, he enjoyed it. But then he began to notice the glances and the sighs.

And then stupid Grayson just had to go and ruin everything. He would downright stare when Titus would run in from outside and then stop in the middle of the hall, near absolutely no one, and collapse onto his back, a blatant invitation for a belly rub. Or when Alfred would be walking through a room and begin nodding his head while doing inexplicable figure eights in the middle of the floor.

And his face would contort into such pain that Damian couldn't stand it. He'd have to leave the room, dissipate himself into the kitchen or his father's study, scolding himself for not hiding from his animals in the first place. Forcing himself to promise to do so next time.

But after those first few days, everyone left. Drake went back to wherever the hell he came from in the first place. Todd found Roy and Kori on the outskirts of town and flew off in his spaceship. His father seemed to shut down. Ignoring what was missing, ignoring his own feelings. He just kept fighting, kept becoming the Batman so he wouldn't have to be just Bruce.

Grayson became…angry. Angrier than Damian had ever seen him. He, too, shut down, but in an opposite way than Bruce. He refused to go on patrol, instead sitting on his crappy apartment sofa for weeks, not answering phone calls, and drinking more alcohol than was probably safe.

And Titus. Poor, poor Titus. He just never seemed to grasp why everyone left, and why his boy never came home anymore.

When Alfred left for his mandated vacation, Damian decided to stay in Gotham. Todd and Drake didn't need him. They would survive. They had people who would take care of them, should they need taken care of. But his father and Grayson didn't. They didn't have anyone. Now that they were barely even on speaking terms with each other, they were…alone.

And it was all Damian's fault.

Yet, they never blamed him. They praised him. Called him brave, heroic, special. And they never left him either. His father would come and stand by his gravesite throughout the day. Grayson, at least once every twenty-four hour period. Both of them saying things like, "You saved so many lives," and "I love you."

It was mind-boggling. They still cared. He had failed, he had died. And they still cared.

And if that wasn't enough of a revelation, one rainy day, Grayson suddenly stomped into the graveyard, pointing at Damian's name on the stone. "You get one thing straight, you little brat," he snapped. "This isn't over. You're not done. We got Jason back, we got Bruce back. You can bet your ass we're going to get you back. That I'm going to get you back."

Damian's eyes widened in shock. After all he had just put them through, they weren't wishing the pain away. They didn't want to forget that he was in their lives or that he ever existed.

"Jason said he could pull some strings, maybe get a lead on one of the al Ghuls' pits. Though, we are still looking at other options, too."

They wanted him back.

"So don't get comfortable, got it?"

Damian scoffed, but couldn't stop the grin that was slowly taking over his face as Grayson turned and returned to his bike without another word, determination evident in his struts.

"I didn't plan to."

~fin (for real this time)