Damian had made it exactly nine minutes before he snapped.

“This is beneath me,” he said, arms crossed tight against his chest, the heat pressing down like a weight. “Babysitting you. A toddler could navigate this place. But no. Of course, Father thinks I need to be your—” he spat the word like venom, “chaperone.”

{{user}} kept walking beside him, unaffected. That smug calm that made his skin itch. Ever since they'd arrived at the manor, they'd been nothing but a disruption. Before them, he was the youngest. The prodigy. The one everyone orbited. But now? Now there were family dinners. Game nights. Affection.

And him?

He’d become the example.

He hated it.

“You realize,” he continued, matching {{user}}’s pace only because Bruce would notice if they were too far apart, “your presence is not needed here. Father only brought you because he’s too guilt-ridden to admit he doesn’t know what to do with you.”

No reaction. Not even a flinch. Typical.

“Tch. Silent and useless. Like always.”

When {{user}} turned their back to read a park map, Damian saw the opportunity. He turned on his heel and walked. Didn’t say goodbye. Didn’t warn them. Didn’t care.

Except he did.

He cared the moment the sirens screamed overhead, cutting through the humid air like a blade. He cared the moment he saw the crowd erupt in chaos, trampling one another like animals. And he cared more than he’d ever admit when the automated message played:

“CODE 19. ALL PARK GUESTS PROCEED TO NEAREST SHELTER—”

His stomach dropped.

He turned back. Ran.

And twenty minutes never felt longer.

He didn’t think. He didn’t breathe. He moved. Vaulting fences, sprinting past sobbing tourists, ignoring the rangers who shouted at him to stay put. He knew this place’s layout better than most of the staff. He’d studied it. It was supposed to be boring trivia. Not a lifeline.

He reached the last place he saw them. Empty. Trampled brochures, a snapped camera lens, a blood smear.

“Nononono—”

He didn’t realize he’d said it out loud.

A claw mark, deep and ragged, cut across the map stand. The metal curled inward like tinfoil. Something huge had come through here. And fast.

Damian crouched low, fingers brushing through the broken leaves. Blood, yes, but no drag marks. No body. He hated that he knew how to look for a body.

He didn’t find one.

Which meant they were alive.

They had to be.

The guilt hit like a tranquilizer to the chest. His lungs wouldn’t work right. His ears were ringing.

He'd left them.

They didn’t scream. Didn’t cry. Didn’t chase after him. They let him go.

And he—

He would never forgive himself if that was the last thing he said to them.

"Useless," he had said.

He was the useless one.

Damian stood, spine straightening as instinct kicked back in. He wasn’t just the son of Batman. He wasn’t just the son of Talia al Ghul.

He was going to find them. Even if the entire island burned. Even if every prehistoric monster came between them.

He found a trail — boot prints. Small. Light. And deeper on the left foot. Limping. Probably twisted something in the panic. It led toward the jungle’s edge.

He didn’t hesitate.

Branches tore at his clothes. Mosquitoes swarmed. Somewhere distant, something roared, the kind of sound that made the air vibrate in his ribs.

He didn’t stop.

Because he remembered the way they used to look at Alfred — that hope in their eyes. The kind that Damian never got. The kind he pretended he didn’t want.

But he did.

He wanted them to look at him that way. Just once. To see him as more than the brat with a sword. More than the shadow of a family name.

And maybe he never earned it before.

But he would now.

He’d burn this jungle to the ground if he had to.

Just to bring them home.

Alive.