Night Rider

2: Damian

"I don't see why I should answer you of all people, but considering father has elected for you to stay here, of all places, it reasons that he would want me to answer. I am Damian Wayne, son of Bruce Wayne. And you are Lyn Walker." The boy, Damian, drawled out.

For a moment I didn't know what to say. No one had informed me Bruce Wayne had a son, nonetheless one who looked so much like him, if far younger. But that wasn't so much why I found myself at a loss for words.

It was the thing he had said to me not five seconds earlier.

"Are you going to say anything or are you just going to sit there?" He prompted, clearly not expecting me to respond.

I narrowed my eyes at him.

"You think I don't know that? My best friend left me a suicide note when I was sixteen, of course I know death is the easy way out! That doesn't make life hurt any less. It doesn't take away how hard it is to wake up everyday and miss the people you love. It just assures you that grief is misery," my glare felt foreign on my face after crying so long, but I was pissed and I didn't care if I pissed off the son of this billionaire. He was being insensitive and someone needed to let him know.

Damian blinked at the steel in my eyes, and I could have sworn he was recalculating something in his pause. But I didn't know him well enough to be sure if that was the case. Nothing like reading the body language of someone you don't know...

"Good to know," he whisked out of the room without another word.
...
I barely existed for the next several months. Wandering the halls became my favorite pastime, but for the most part I didn't join anyone in the house for much beyond small conversation here and there. It was like I had always imagined disappearing would be.

Bruce was rarely in the house, almost always out on business, and Damian and I avoided each other if we could help it. Alfred was the only person I found myself talking to on a more frequent basis, but on the whole my affinity for interaction dried up almost completely. Sometimes I would come across other people in the house- an athletic dark haired man about my age and another who was just younger than I was. They never stayed for long, though Damian seemed pleased when the one around my age showed up.

Despite Alfred's cooking I started to lose weight. It wasn't intentional, merely the result of a lost appetite in the absence of everything I had ever valued and protected. Call me a moping downer if you want, but it's hard to get up in the morning when you're all alone in the world. And don't even get me started on the roiling confusion of being under the invite of a billionaire.

Why? Why was I valued enough for this? Or was it just that this was the last place anyone would search for me, the safest place for my family to never be able to find me at? I didn't know, and probably wouldn't ever figure it out.

Just me and my thoughts.
...
The beginning of November found me curled up in the library with a sketch book, blankly staring at the paper. I was wrapped in a fuzzy sweatshirt and contemplating why I couldn't seem to get any ideas to flow (perhaps a back log of loneliness?) when a finger tapped my page. I looked up to find Damian standing before me.

"Father has brought it to my attention that you enjoy the company of animals," he seemed uncomfortable. Considering we had spent the past few months avoiding each other, it was unusual for him talk to me.

Let alone be the one to start the conversation.

"Yes, very much so. I used to work with horses," I paused in the shot of pain that came with remembering my old life, "I was planning on becoming an equine vet..."

"Would you like to, perhaps, join me at... Our barn?" He asked softly and I couldn't tell if he was doing this of his own free will or if Bruce (or Alfred) had put him up to it.
But honestly? I didn't really care. Barn still meant peace and joy and life- even if it wasn't my own barn and it was with the strangest ten year old I had ever met. I closed the empty sketch book and tossed it over my shoulder.

"For starters, how did I not know you guys had a barn? And secondly, of course!" I stretched out of my seat with a grin.

Damian smiled back and turned around. I followed him through the maze of hallways into the open air.
...
The barn lay a quarter mile or so from the house. But even before we came into sight of it I couldn't help asking about the animals. Damian informed me brusquely that there was a cow he had rescued, several barn cats, a couple of ducks, and a pair of horses his father had recently acquired from unfortunate circumstances.

"What are the horses like?" A bubble of lightness exploded in my chest. Horses. I was going to be with horses! Maybe life didn't suck completely if I could have the one thing I'd ever felt completely at peace with.
The barn came into view as he replied.

"They won't let me get anywhere near them. For some reason I can't get them to trust me," Damian seemed genuinely frustrated by this, scrunching up his face in irritation as he pulled open the big barn doors.

I digested this information as I took in the lovely barn ahead of me. One side housed a sectioned off tack stall and several spacious pens that opened up to outdoor runs. An orange and white cow mooed out to us contently from one of them. Along the other side of the barn was a large, untouched arena, as if God himself had tilled the massive swath of dirt to perfection.

It would be glorious to run a horse over that...

"So are the horses in here?" I asked, scanning the remaining pens but coming up blank.

"They're probably outside. The two of them are in the second pen. They won't come to you, I've tried." I could hear the smirk in his voice.
I chose to ignore it. He could be childish if he wanted to, but I wasn't going to stoop to his level.

"Says the one without twelve years of horses under his belt."
Okay, maybe a little stooping.

I didn't wait for him to give his no doubt snarky reply before I was across the sandy path and up and over the second pen's gate. It was so natural, so wonderfully familiar to my aching soul, that I found myself grinning as I peeked my head out the door leading to the outside.

"Walker, get back here!" I ignored Damian's protest as I spotted the pair of horses he had spoken of.