Work Text:
There was a long and continuous beep hanging in the air—it was loud, ominous, damning.
It was a sound Damian has heard many times before. Perhaps more times then he can't count—it featured in the years of his interternship, played back in recordings shown in lectures during Med school, and it was no stranger during his volunteer work before everything.
He knew the sound like he knew his own heartbeat. And never has he enjoyed it, never liked its implications—maybe when he was younger, he might have, maybe that 10 year old would have felt pride at having been the reason for the noise.
Damian, at 23, four months into his Residency, felt no such pride.
He stared, wide eyes, down at the sight before him—at the gaping wound below him, at his hands still lodged deep within the flesh and entrails, still tightly clutching the clamps with a sort of desperation unknown to him. He stared at the blood caked on his scrubs, from his forearms to his chest, and though he could know see them, he knew stark red drops were decorating his mask and visor.
Briefly, he considered CPR, or any form of resuscitation. Briefly, he dared to hope he could fix what had happened.
But the blood stray had stopped, and that horrible beeeeeepppp was still shrieking.
"Time of death," He felt himself saying, but he couldn't hear the words. His eyes flickered over to a clock high above his head, "9:43pm."
He watched the second hand tick along, umbothered by the deafening alarm in the air, and Damian thinks he felt his hands begin to shake.
He doesn't feel proud at all.
Damian spent an unreasonable amount of time cleaning himself after the operating room was emptied, after changing out of his soiled scrubs and into a fresh pair.
He stood over a sink, his hands until the scorching downpour of water, and he held them there until they were shaking for a reason other then his failure. His breaths were strained, forced—they were hardly steady, but he had discipline. He would not unravel. He would not.
Later, when he left the small sanctuary he had made in the washroom, when he came face to face with the man he didn't want to see the most, second only to, perhaps, himself—the man he knew he had to face. He could not delay this. He had no right to do that.
"Dr Wayne," The man, Jeremy Colts, greeted, his knees straining as he stood from his seat. He was a construction worker, and though he was only 36, the constant physical demand his trade demanded had him dealing with arthritis far earlier then he should have. "How did it go? Is she OK?"
Damian allowed himself a single breath, a single moment to compose himself. One of his co-workers, Madison Bennett, who srubbed in to the surgery and who he did his intership alongside, offered to be the one to break the news. He refused her offer, refused the pity she directed to him. He had to do this.
"Mr Colts," He began, and something in his tone must have betrayed him. He saw how the man's faces crumpled.
Jeremy shook his head, entire body beginning to tremble. "No," he said, voice hardly a whisper, and yet Damian heard it over all the ambient sounds in the hospital, over the ringing still in his ear. "No—please, don't tell me. Please, please."
"...I'm sorry," He forced the words out, almost flinched at the wail the man let out. "The blockage was more serve then we were expecting—by the time we dealt with the blockage in the upper intestines, her lower intestines..." Burst, for a lack of a better phrase—but he could not bring himself to say that. It happened so quickly. None of their testing indicated there was an issue anywhere else—it was supposed to be isolated to the upper intestines.
Jeremy had collapsed to his knees, which could not have been pleasant, not with his arthritis, but he didn't seem to care. Damian kneeled down to his level, tried to offer a supporting hand to the man's shoulder.
"You said she would be ok, you said-" He sobbed, and Damian was at a lose for what to do. "My little girl- my Emily, no-"
He was no stranger to telling the family that a patient had passed. He had been intrusted with the task before, and had seen the attending he did his intership under do so many times.
But this time, it was different.
This time, the death was his fault.
"I am so sorry." Was all he could say, though he knew he would never be enough—no closure he could give would be closure enough.
Shamefully, Damian found himself wishing he took Madison up on her offer.
He arrived at his apartment late at night—or early, depending on how you saw it. A stray glance at his watch told him it was 4:18 in the morning.
He locked the door behind him, barely remembering to take off his shoes, and wandering into the kitchen with a detached sense of being.
He went through the motions of pouring himself a glass of water, but he did nothing with it. He simply held the cup in his hand, the cold glass biting, and stared down at it.
The water within rippled.
His hands were shaking.
Damian's eyes wandered, from the water to his fingers—he observed how each individual one held the glass, curling around it, trembling in a manner that was only barely restrained.
Like his eyes, his mind wandered. He had discipline. He knew he did.
But it had been so long since that discipline was enforced.
A suitable punishment would be to break your fingers, a voice that sounded like his Mother echoed in his ears, overpowering the ringing for a moment, or even your whole hand—both of them, in fact. Mistakes like this cannot be overlooked. What if your hands shook when you were aiming for your opponents throat? Your blade could slip from your grasp, and it would be you dying instead. This is for your own good, Damian. You know this. To improve, you must hurt. How else will you learn?
Logically, Damian knew the idea was idiotic. He had grown beyond the conditioning of his youth—he knew better ways now, what his Mother did was wrong, that the scars he bore were not justly earned. Logically, he knew this.
But deep down, that 10 year old he had never truly be able to abandon took his Mother's words as law, her teachings as scripture, and her punishments as love. And in that moment, he craved it.
He craved the familiar ways of the League, of his Mother's discipline—he felt the strokes of her whip along his back, her dagger against his ankles, and her nails as they pinched into the nape of his neck in fury, and he wanted it.
He had to learn.
He needed to learn.
And pain is the most effective motivator, his Mother whispered.
He blinked, and then glass was shattered across the kitchen floor, his hands wrenched apart from each other, the point finger on his left already snapped, and he was staring into the familiar cobalt blue eyes.
Jon. He wasn't supposed to be home. He was supposed to be in Metropolis for the weekend.
And yet here he was, his face twisted in confusion and sorrow and a strange kind of fear, holding Damians hands apart and, oh.
Jon was trembling.
Neither of them said anything for a few long, agonising seconds.
"You said you'd call me." Jon eventually broke the silence. "You said you'd call me if you ever had those thoughts again." His voice sounded wet, like he was seconds away from crying. And he might have been.
The weight of what he had just been about to do—and, at the numb pain he felt from his pointer, what he had been doing—hit Damian like bullet to the chest, and suddenly his breath hitched.
With a strangled sound, one that Mother would have sneered at, one that Grandfather would have backhanded him for, he felt forward, into Jon's gentle hold, and cried.
He cried, but no tears fell. His body couldn't bring itself to do that, even after all these years.
The next few minutes passed by in a blur—one second, they were standing in the kitchen, the next they were sitting on the couch in the next room over, his finger somehow wrapped in a stint. He hardlt noticed it. A perk of Kryptonian super speed, he supposed.
Regardless, he held onto Jon with as much strength as he could muster, crying without crying, and Jon simply held him.
It was comforting.
It was shameful.
You're weak, Mother hissed.
Just let it all out, a new voice that sounded like Richard soothed, and Damian had grown beyond only hearing Talia's words, so he listened.
"...what happened, Dami?" Jon asked in a whisper, some time later, when his sobs had faded away into nothing and his breath was less strained. "I heard your heartbeat go all funny, and then the snap of- what happened?"
He was silent, for a moment. He leaned his head against his Beloveds shoulder, cradles in a half hold, and let out a small breath.
"A lost a patient today." It was just a small sentence—a short admittance that could never hope the convey the pure gravity of the implications.
But somehow, Jon understood anyways, if his hand tightening around Damian meant anything. He knew it did.
"Emily Colts. She'd been complaining about abdominal pain for some weeks, apparently. Her father brought her in after it caused her to collapse during school.
"I conducted some tests, basis examinations—and after an ultrasound to confirm, I concluded she had a blockage in her upper intestines. It was serious enough that surgery was necessary. Since she was my patient, I lead the operation.
"I was able to handle the initial blockage. But shortly after I did so, a secondary blockage made itself known, one that didn't show up on any of the scans." He paused, his voice trailing off.
"And?" Jon gently prompted, after a few minutes of silence.
"And," He continued after he took another breath. "The operation aggravated it. Before I was able to do anything to minagate the pressure... the intestinal walls ruptured completely. She bled out within minutes."
"Damian..."
"She was 8. Her birthday was next Wednesday."
"Dami..." Jon wrapped both arms around him again, and they stayed like that. Neither moved. Breathing seemed like too much of a task.
"She shouldn't have died." He confessed, eyes finding his wrapped finger. "It was my fault."
"No, Damian, no." Jon moved a hand to his cheek and directed his gaze to his own. Tears shined brightly in them—tears for him. "It wasn't your fault."
"But-"
"No. Don't do that to yourself. Please don't." Jon was referring to more then just his guilt, and they both knew it.
Damian didn't want to promise anything. He thought he was getting better—thought he was better. Now, he wasn't so sure.
"I should have been able to do more, Jon. A father is now without his daughter because of me—another life is gone because of me." He stressed his words. He needed Jon to understand. He needed himself to understand.
Jon looked seconds way from sobbing himself. "Did you want her to die?" He asked, and Damian froze.
"What?"
"Did you want her to die?" He repeated himself, and Damian sat up straight and shook his head desperately.
"Of course I didn't-"
"Then it wasn't your fault." Jon mirrored his position, now cradling Damians hands in his own, held alof between them. "What happened was horrible, a-and you have every right to be upset. But it wasn't your fault, so don't do this—" He gave his hands the briefest of squeezes, a gentle pressure. "—to yourself."
Damian stared at Jon. He searched his eyes for something—he didnt know what, exactly. Just something.
"...these hands couldn't save Emily, Jon."
And Jon smiled. It was a sad, horrible thing, distraught and upset. "No, but they tried. You tried. And that's enough. So please," He leaned down, pressed a kiss to Damian knuckles, resting his forehead against them after the fact, "call me next time. Or Richard or Jason or Tim or Bruce or Cass, or- or anyone, just someone.
"Please, Damian. Please."
Damian didn't want to make the promise. Didn't know if he'd be able to keep it.
But his trembling hands stilled at Jon's words—the deafening, persistent ringing in his ears faded, and Mother was silent.
And that didn't erase his guilt, didn't wash the blood from his hands or give a Father his daughter back. But in that moment, it was enough.
"...I will." He leaned forward, pulled a hand out of Jon's grasp and used it to tiled his head up—he pressure their foreheads together, a simple, gentle, calming guesture. Jon relaxed, and so did Damian.
It was enough.