Chapter Text
Damia Wayne noticed the silence before she noticed anything else. Not the flimsy hush of a typical exam period - the restless, shifting kind, punctured by coughs, whispered questions, pencils tapping like insects skittering across desks. No. This silence was heavier. Weighted. A silence that settled onto the shoulders of every student in the room and then kept pressing, as if daring them to break it.
She liked it.
She stepped into the classroom with the measured, fluid stride of someone who had been trained her entire life to control the space around her. She moved without sound, without hurry, without any wasted motion. A whisper of footsteps carried her to her desk. She sat. The chair did not scrape. The desk did not shudder. Even the air seemed to still around her.
Damia placed her materials on the table with ritual precision. Notebook aligned. Pencils parallel. Eraser spaced exactly two finger-widths from the top right corner. She checked the distances again, though she didn't need to. Her mind catalogued perfection automatically. At twelve years old, she was already fluent in discipline. Around her, students shifted nervously. One girl near the windows bit the inside of her cheek. A boy two rows back tapped his foot under the desk. Others pretended not to stare at Damia, but they always stared.
A Wayne child drew attention by name alone.
Damia Wayne drew attention by presence.
Sharp cheekbones. Controlled breathing. Posture that made even teachers straighten instinctively. A quiet that followed her like a shadow. There was something unmistakably other about her. There always had been.
The exam proctor moved up and down the aisles, distributing papers. Damia kept her eyes forward, her face still. She felt a faint vibration in her fingertips as the sheet slid onto her desk, too subtle for anyone else to notice. She noticed. She despised it. Weakness. Or worse: instability. Damia inhaled slowly, regulating her breath the way she had been taught in the League. In through the nose, count to four, hold for two, exhale through the mouth. Control the physical, and the mind would follow. She flipped the paper when instructed. Her eyes swept across the questions, then, disbelief washed over her. Not in shock, but in irritation.
This was easy.
Not moderately easy. Not challenging-but-manageable. This was insulting.
She scanned the math problems: elementary reasoning, formulae so basic she had memorised them at four. The logic questions were barely above puzzles meant for children. The short essay at the end asked her to "construct a persuasive argument with evidence."
Construct?
She'd debated with Talia al Ghul over dinner at age six.
Damia held back the urge to sigh. Academics were necessary, her father insisted, but she found the work tedious. Simplistic. Unworthy of the sharpness she worked so relentlessly to maintain. Still, she answered. And when Damia answered, she did so with the same precision she brought into combat. Her pencil moved with efficiency, every stroke exact. Words were chosen with surgical care. Numbers lined up perfectly, no smudges, no stray marks. Around her, students shifted. Someone coughed. The proctor checked her watch. Damia was already on the last page. Her hand twitched once. Not a full tremor, just a flicker. She froze. Examined her fingers. Nothing. The movement had been so small she doubted any human eye could have caught it.
But she had.
And that was enough.
She finished the test. Then she read over every answer twice. Then a third time. Most students stopped checking after one pass. Damia didn't stop until the page felt as still as she did. Once she was satisfied, she placed her pencil down exactly horizontal to the desk's edge. She waited for time to be called. When it was, she turned in her paper with steady hands, steady breath, steady mind.
Perfect.
Three days later, Damia waited until the hallway was empty before she opened the envelope.
She stood beside the row of lockers where the afternoon sun cut sharp angles across the tile, making the shadows long and thin. Students poured out of classrooms in loud clusters, drifting toward the exits in bursts of laughter and chatter. Their voices blurred into a distant hum the moment they rounded the corner.
The exam results had been distributed at the end of last period, sealed in plain manila envelopes with names typed across the front in sterile black font. Most students had torn theirs open immediately, surrounded by friends who would either celebrate or commiserate.
Damia had waited. She always waited. Privacy was control, and control was survival. Only when she was completely alone did she slide her thumb beneath the flap. She already knew the result. Or thought she did. The paper came free with a soft whisper. She unfolded it with careful fingers, eyes moving automatically to the top right corner where the grade would be printed.
48%.
Her breath stalled. Not a little intake of surprise. A freeze. A silent, complete stop. Her eyes traced the number again, as if it might shift into something else when she blinked.
It didn't.
48%.
That was… impossible.
The room felt warm and then too cold at the same time. A subtle ringing filled her ears. Her vision narrowed to that single number - red ink against white paper, stark and undeniable and wrong. She looked away, swallowing as her eyes burned. Not with tears, but with humiliation with a certainty that she had failed in the most public, stupid way imaginable.
No.
Not failed.
She couldn't have failed.
Her mind raced back through the exam - every question, every answer, every carefully constructed argument. She had been meticulous. Surgical. Perfect. Hadn't she?
The doubt crept in like smoke under a door, insidious and suffocating. Damia's fingers tightened on the paper, wrinkling the edges. She forced herself to scan the rest of the page. Red marks slashed across her work: corrections, notes, entire sections circled with harsh commentary written in cramped handwriting.
Incorrect application of formula.
Logic does not follow.
Argument lacks supporting evidence.
Her stomach twisted violently. This wasn't real. This couldn't be real. She had checked her work. Multiple times. She never made mistakes like this. Careless, fundamental errors that suggested she didn't understand basic concepts she had mastered years ago.
A memory stabbed its way to the surface, unbidden, unmerciful. A stone courtyard. A thin wooden switch. Her grandfather's voice.
"Perfection is the only measure of worth."
The snap of the switch against stone. A sting across her knuckles. Her own small voice repeating calculations through gritted teeth. Blood dripping onto the ground because she had written a single number incorrectly. The exam paper trembled in her hands.
Not her.
Not her hands.
The paper.
She refused to acknowledge the alternative. Damia folded the page sharply, creasing it with more force than necessary. The sound echoed in the empty hallway, a small, violent punctuation. She would fix it. Retake the test. Study harder. Do better. Robin couldn't fail like this. An Al Ghul wouldn’t get 48%. She couldn't–
"Damia?"
Her shoulders jumped. The paper crumpled slightly in her hand. Standing a few steps away, leaning against the wall as if he'd been there the whole time, was Mr. Colthart. Grant, to the students, though no one dared call him that unless he offered. He wasn't wearing his staff badge, but he didn't need it. Everyone knew who he was. Warm smile. Soft voice. The school counsellor. The man who always seemed to show up where he was needed.
Damia's pulse spiked, not with fear, but with irritation at being caught off-guard. She hadn't heard him approach. Hadn't sensed his presence. That alone was unacceptable. He looked at her with that practiced, gentle concern, the kind adults used when they sensed something fragile and wanted it to break in their hands.
"I didn't mean to startle you," he said, straightening. "I was just coming down the hallway. Are you alright?"
Damia swallowed. "I am fine." Her voice came out tighter than she meant.
His eyes flicked to the folded exam in her hand. The movement was subtle. Brief. But deliberate. He'd noticed. Of course he had.
"Rough news?" he asked softly.
Damia's fingers curled around the paper instinctively, hiding the red ink as if it were a wound. "It's nothing," she said. Her voice was flat. Controlled. The same tone she used in combat when masking pain.
He didn't step closer. He didn't reach. He simply waited, the space between them filled with his silence. It was warm, patient, unintimidating in a way that put pressure on her to fill it. It was a technique. She recognised it immediately. Create silence, make it comfortable, let the subject feel compelled to speak. She'd used it herself during interrogations.
"Damia," he said gently, "you don't have to pretend with me."
Her breath caught again, this time out of frustration. She didn't need this. Not now. Not from him. She opened her mouth - she intended to brush him off a second time - but he spoke first.
"I've seen that look before," he murmured. "A student expecting more of themselves. Someone who's used to being exceptional."
Her jaw tensed. The words felt too knowing. Too specific. As if he'd been watching her longer than this single moment. He stepped just one pace closer. It wasn’t enough to invade, but enough to make her aware of him in her peripheral vision.
"If you ever want to talk, or review the material together, I'm here," he offered. "You don't have to handle everything alone." Something in his tone wasn't pity. It was familiarity. Too familiar.
Damia's chest tightened. She forced her spine straight, shoulders back, chin level. The posture of someone who had never needed help and never would.
"Thank you," she said, polite, clipped, the kind of tone her father used in board meetings to close a conversation. "But I can handle it."
Mr Colthart's smile didn't falter. It should have. Most people retreated when she used that voice. But his expression remained steady, sympathetic, patient, entirely unbothered by her dismissal.
"If you change your mind, my door's open." Of course it was. He always said that to her and always with a softness that felt like it was brushing the air around her, not quite touching her, but trying to. Damia gave a stiff nod and walked past him. He didn't follow. He didn't need to. But as she turned down the next hallway, her stomach dropped when she heard him murmur so quietly she almost thought she imagined it.
"Everyone breaks somewhere, Damia."
She kept walking. She didn't look back. She didn't see the way his eyes followed her. Or how, when she disappeared around the corner, he pulled a small notepad from his pocket and wrote something down.
Wayne, D.
Exam: 48%.
Potential stress point.
Follow-up recommended.
The ride home was silent.
Damia sat in the back seat of the car, hands folded in her lap, the exam paper tucked carefully into her bag where it wouldn't be seen. The driver (one of Bruce's trusted security staff) didn't attempt conversation. He knew better. Gotham blurred past her window; sleek towers, grimy alleys, flickering neon signs. She catalogued every reflection, every passing shadow, but her mind kept circling back to that number.
48%.
And worse: the red slashes across her work. The corrections that made no sense. The comments that accused her of mistakes she knew she hadn't made. Something under her ribs felt tight. A tension she couldn't place.
She ignored it.
Wayne Manor rose ahead as dusk settled, tall and old and solemn against the skyline. She walked up the steps, back straight, chin high. The door opened before she reached it; Alfred greeted her with the soft, knowing look he reserved specifically for her.
"Welcome home, Miss Damia."
She nodded. "Good evening, Pennyworth." Her voice betrayed nothing. Alfred's concerned glance lingered a little too long on her hands, as if he noticed the faint red marks where her nails had pressed into her palm during the car ride. She moved past him before he could inquire.
Up the stairs. Down the long hallway. Portraits of her late family members, of stern men, elegant women, of eyes that followed her. She always felt judged walking past them. Even now.
Especially now.
She closed her bedroom door behind her with a gentle click, set her bookbag down, and removed the folded exam paper from its inner pocket. She took a breath. Unfolded it. Stared at the grade.
48%.
Her pulse didn't spike. Her breath didn't halt. But something inside her, deep, buried, forged in childhood, shifted. She read it again.
48%.
Not a misprint. Not a smudge. Not an ambiguous marking. An actual, undeniable, brutal failure. Her mind recoiled. Twisted. Raced in sharp, fast lines. Every question had been correct. Every answer precise. Every argument constructed with flawless logic. She knew it. Knew it the way she knew her own name. Knew it with the certainty of someone who had been punished for far lesser mistakes. She set the exam on her desk, smoothing the edges. Folded it. Unfolded it again. Held it up to the light. As if the grading might shift under scrutiny.
It didn't.
Her heart tightened, not with fear. Fear was for the weak. This was something sharper. A cold, slicing thing behind her ribs. A threat. Because if the world said she was wrong, if the world said she was flawed, then it contradicted everything she had been taught to believe about herself. Everything she depended on. Everything she needed to be.
A faint knock sounded at her door.
She stiffened. The door opened without her permission, but only one person in the manor ever dared do that gently. Her father stepped inside. He carried no anger in his posture. No disappointment. Just a kind of quiet, steady concern.
It infuriated her.
"Damia," he said, voice low. Controlled. "Alfred told me you received your exam results."
She didn't look at him at first. She kept her eyes fixed on the paper, on the red 48%, like a wound sliced across the page.
"It is incorrect," she said. Her tone was flat. Too flat. "The grade is wrong."
She refolded the paper, placed it precisely on the desk, then aligned it with the wood grain. She didn't realize she was doing it twice. Then a third time.
Bruce's gaze softened. "Let me see it," he said quietly.
She hesitated. For a fraction of a second. But hesitation itself was a betrayal of everything she was supposed to be. She handed it to him. He studied it. His jaw tightened just barely, a micro-expression she caught instantly. Not anger. Not frustration.
Concern.
She hated concern.
Bruce's eyes moved across the page, taking in not just the grade but the comments, the corrections, the harshness of the red marks that seemed to contradict the care he knew his daughter put into her work.
"Damia," he said slowly, "mistakes happen. Even to the best students."
She didn't move. She didn't blink. She didn't breathe. Because if she allowed even a single muscle in her face to shift, she wasn't entirely certain what would happen.
"Mistakes," she repeated, voice like a blade edge. "I did not make any."
Bruce exhaled softly, not dismissively nor impatiently, but in that quiet way he used when he was trying very hard to understand her.
"Even so," he murmured, "we can review it together. And if the grading was incorrect, we'll speak with the school–"
"No," she snapped before she could stop herself. The word cut through the air like a thrown dagger.
Bruce blinked, faintly startled. Damia's nails dug into her palms again. She clenched her hands behind her back so he wouldn't see.
"I reviewed it myself," she said. "Multiple times. My answers are correct."
"I believe you," Bruce said gently.
The room seemed to constrict around her. That tone. That softness. She hated it. Gentleness was a luxury she had never been allowed. Softness was a language she hadn't been taught and when spoken to her, it felt like being examined under a microscope. Bruce took a small step closer, but not too close. He'd learned she needed space.
"Damia," he said, "this may not be a question of ability. It might simply be-"
"A failure."
The word scorched her throat. The tremor returned to her fingers. This time, she felt it. The word hung between them, failure, as if uttering it aloud might summon something ancient and merciless from the shadows.
Bruce's brows lowered slightly. "That's not what I said."
"But that is what it means." Damia's voice was too calm. Too brittle. "48% is failure." She stood straighter, as if posture alone could hold her together.
Bruce studied her with the kind of quiet scrutiny only he could manage, half detective, half parent, wholly impossible to hide from. His eyes moved across her face, lingering on the faint tension in her jaw, the rigid stillness of her shoulders, the fingers she kept clenched behind her back. He was assessing her. Of course he was. Damia's skin prickled.
"You're not being punished," he said softly. "A grade doesn't define you."
But it did. It always had. Not in Gotham Academy. Not in this life. But in the life she had before, the one built on blood, expectation, and knives sharpened on mistakes. In that world, a wrong answer meant bruised knuckles. A forgotten term meant sleepless nights repeating mantras until her voice broke. A single miscalculation meant punishment, pain, failure.
Her grandfather once told her:
"A warrior who cannot master the mind cannot master anything."
Damia swallowed. The room felt too warm now, too bright, too exposed. Bruce moved closer again, slow, and cautious. He lowered himself to sit on the chair at her desk but left space between them, a buffer of air he knew she needed. He held the exam paper on his lap.
"Damia," he said, "can we talk about this?"
She didn't answer. Her breathing was shallow, controlled, forced. Bruce waited. He was patient in a way only someone who had learned to tame their own darkness could be. When she didn't speak, he continued quietly.
"I'm not upset with you."
Her fingers flexed.
"Grades don't determine your worth."
Her pulse kicked.
"You're more than a mark on paper."
Her vision blurred for half a second - rage or humiliation or something sharper, she couldn't tell.
He didn't understand.
Bruce Wayne, who had clawed himself up from trauma and built an empire on discipline, still didn't understand the kind of perfection she had been forced to embody since the moment she could walk. She wasn't supposed to be "more than a mark." She was supposed to be the mark. Sharp, precise, unerring. Mistakes were failure. Failure was danger. Failure was death. This was carved bone-deep into her, despite how hard his father and siblings were trying to prove otherwise.
"Damia." His voice dropped gentler still. "Talk to me."
Her chin lifted a fraction. The mask slid into place, as seamless as a blade being sheathed.
"There is nothing to discuss," she said with measured precision. "The result is incorrect. I will fix it."
Bruce exhaled through his nose, slow and weary. "Sometimes," he said, choosing every word with care, "fixing things means accepting help."
The strike landed somewhere deep inside her chest.
Help.
The word echoed with the same metallic resonance as "weakness." She stepped back from him, a subtle retreat, one she didn't fully register.
"I don't need assistance," she said.
Bruce didn't move from his seat. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't argue. He simply looked up at her with eyes that held something painfully soft. It made her want to scream. He wasn't supposed to look at her that way. He wasn't supposed to look at her like she was fragile. She wasn't fragile. She couldn't be.
The silence stretched until it became suffocating.
Bruce finally rose, folding the exam in half with deliberate gentleness. He placed it back on her desk, aligning it to the right angle, an echo of how she always arranged things. A peace offering made in the language she understood.
"We'll review it later," he said. "Together."
She didn't look at him.
"Damia…" He hesitated, a rarity for her father. "You matter more than your performance."
The words hit harder than any blow she'd taken in training. He walked to the door, paused, and glanced back.
"I love you," he said.
Then he left. The latch clicked softly into place. Silence. Damia stood in the center of her room, rigid, unmoving, breath shallow. The walls seemed to tilt around her. Inward, then outward, then inward again. The air felt too thin. Her skin felt too tight. She sank down onto the edge of her bed, hands clasped so tightly her knuckles went white. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears, loud enough to drown out rational thought. She stared hard at the exam paper across the room. Her chest constricted.
Perfect people didn't fail. Perfect people didn't make mistakes. Perfect people didn't disappoint. And she was perfect. She had to be.
Another memory stabbed its way to the surface. A room carved from stone. A single flickering candle. Her trainer standing over her, expression severe. A riddle scrawled across parchment. Damia, age six, exhausted and trembling. The answer slipping through her mind like sand. Her trainer's voice:
"Weakness is a luxury afforded only to the dead."
Damia pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes until stars burst behind her lids. The pressure grounded her. Anchored her. Gave her something to hold onto besides the spiraling heat of shame.
She inhaled a sharp breath. The tremor returned to her hand. She stared at it. Horrified. Her fingers twitched like a small, frantic creature trying to escape her control. She closed her fist, squeezed so tight her nails bit into skin.
Stop.
Stop.
Stop.
Her breathing picked up faster than she intended. Too fast. Panic, not fear, never fear, clawed its way up her throat.
Stop.
She rose abruptly and crossed the room in three strides. She grabbed the exam off the desk and unfolded it with shaking fingers. The 48% glared back at her. Her pulse spiked and her breath stuttered. She wanted so desperately to tear the page in half. To obliterate it. To shred the proof of her "failure" until it ceased to exist. But she didn't. Because that would be losing control. And losing control was exactly what her father trained her not to do. She placed the paper flat, smoothing it again with trembling palms. She forced herself to breathe.
In.
Hold.
Out.
Control.
Control.
Her vision slowly steadied but the pounding in her chest did not. Her room felt wrong. The furniture, aligned perfectly, looked skewed. The window cast a slanted beam of evening light that felt too bright, too intrusive. Her reflection in the glass looked distorted, wrong. She approached the window slowly. Her reflection stared back, green eyes wide, posture rigid, jaw clenched so hard the muscles in her face twitched. She didn't recognize herself. Her fingers lifted toward the glass, but she stopped halfway.
No. She would not touch. Touching meant reaching. Reaching meant wanting comfort. Comfort was weakness. She stepped back. Her breath shuddered. She turned and the sight of her neatly arranged desk made her stomach twist. Everything in its place. Everything precise. Everything perfect.
Except the paper.
The paper ruined the order. The paper contaminated the space. The paper told a lie, but the lie felt louder than truth. She backed away from it. One step. Another. Then something in her snapped. Not outwardly. There was no scream. No thrown objects. No tears. But inside, deep inside, the mask she relied on cracked down the middle. Her throat tightened painfully. She sat again on the bed, spine perfectly straight even as her control frayed. She folded her hands in her lap. They still trembled. Her mind whispered vicious things.
You failed.
You're losing control.
You're slipping.
Weak.
Weak.
Damia clenched her jaw until it hurt. This was not real. This was not right. Someone must have made a mistake. Someone must have misread her work. Someone must–
No.
Not someone else. Something else. Something was wrong. Very wrong. And the feeling growing sharper by the second, told her it wasn't a simple error. It wasn't a miscalculation. It wasn't a fluke. Something deeper was unraveling. She felt it like a bruise forming beneath the skin. A wrongness she couldn't yet define. A threat she couldn't yet see.
But she would. She always did.
And then there was Mr. Colthart. The way he'd appeared in that hallway, silent and unexpected, as if he'd been waiting. The way he'd looked at her. Studied her.
Everyone breaks somewhere, Damia.
The words circled in her mind like vultures. Why would he say that? Why would he be watching for her breaking point? Unless he expected it. Unless he was waiting for it.
Damia rose from the bed once more, this time slowly. She returned to the desk, lifted the exam, folded it neatly, and set it aside with the precise care she used handling weapons. Her breathing settled. Her hands steadied. Her posture returned. She rebuilt herself from the inside out, brick by careful brick.
No cracks. No fear. No weakness.
Only resolve. Only certainty. Only the truth she clung to like a lifeline:
Damia Wayne did not fail.
And whatever this was, whatever force had dared to suggest otherwise, would be corrected. She would make sure of it. Even if she had to burn through the foundations of Gotham Academy to do so. She looked at her reflection one last time, eyes narrowed, jaw set, shoulders squared.
"I do not fail," she whispered.
Her voice didn't shake. And even if the universe had begun to twist against her, even if this was the first ripple of a storm she couldn't yet see, she would stand unmoved. Because failure was death.
And she was very much alive.