Chapter Text
It all started with his arrival at Wayne manor, and the room to which he had been assigned. It was large. The way most all of the rooms in Wayne manor were large. But oddly shaped owing to its placement within the manor. Damian's room was in the main residential wing along with his siblings and father. But unlike the rest of the family, he was isolated three floors above everyone else. It was an obvious hint that he wasn't… Well. It was an obvious hint from his father that he really should have picked up on much more immediately than he had. But it was best not to dwell.
His room was on the top most floor, set just below the awkward meeting of two different eaves in the manor's roof. It led to a strange layout with quickly varying ceiling heights and a narrow, arching hallway that connected the exit door and on suite bathroom to the main body of the room. Too many places to hide in the roof and the main exit a total blind spot from the bed. That combined with an uncomfortable lack of easily accessible windows (or any quickly usable secondary exits for that matter) and two more doors in the main body of the room, both tucked into dark, not easily observable corners (one leading to a large and under lit walk in closet, the other a small coat closet near the blind hallway) turned what was supposed to be his inner sanctum into an anxiety inducing nightmare.
His first four weeks in his father's house had been spent locked in this room. Neither allowed to leave nor interact with any other member of the household. No communication. No human contact. No means of distraction. If it hadn't been for the three meals a day silently delivered by the butler Pennyworth while father loomed threatening just outside of the doorway, Damian would have thought himself completely forgotten.
A punishment for what he had tried to do to Drake. Although at the time, he hadn't known that. Father's house was strange that way. Rules were never established beforehand and punishments came swiftly and without explanation. It was up to Damian to learn every unspoken rule and divine on his own the meaning behind each punishment. It was challenging. But Damian couldn't dent that ultimately his constant missteps and repeated offenses were no one's fault but his. His siblings, afterall, understood what was expected of them.
A Full month of complete isolation, especially a month of isolation set in such a poorly defensible location, was severe. Even by his mother's standards. Damian would have preferred his grandfather's whip. But of course, he wasn't offered a choice. It wouldn't have been a proper punishment then. And, although he hadn't understood at the time, Damian had… deserved what he had been given.
It was near the end of his first month that Damian had discovered his secret tunnels.
It had started with a place to sleep. The bed was obviously impossible. It was too exposed with too many blind spots. The first night Damian had crawled under the heavy wooden frame to rest between the bottom of the mattress and the hard wooden floor. But it had felt nearly as insecure as laying atop it would have. It was still so exposed. So glaringly obvious. The entire night was filled with phantom, grasping arms, tickling his limbs each time he closed his eyes. Imagined enemies waiting to cut him to ribbons the second his guard was down. And the cold, angry eyes of his father peeking out from behind every shadow.
After that first hellish night Damian had reasoned that, if there wasn't anywhere in his new life safe enough to rest, the only logical response was to forego sleep entirely. That decision had lasted three days. Sleep deprivation wasn't something he was used to. The league didn't start that phase of training until the body was more developed. And the lack of sleep combined with the isolation had quickly left him… emotionally unstable. Within a day and a half he'd begun to scream and rage at the locked door. At father and Pennyworth when they'd come to deliver his meals. completely unable to calm himself. And to his eternal shame, Damian spent the majority of the second night curled into a dark corner crying like a pathetic child. Overwhelmed by an oppressive blanket of stupid, illogical fear and pointless loneliness.
The whole thing had come to a head one the evening of the third day when Damian had begun to mildly hallucinate. Nothing debilitating exactly. Just shadows shifting in the corners of his vision. Still, it did nothing to ease his persistent paranoia. Then, during the delivery of his evening meal he'd been startled by one of the shadows. Damian moved too suddenly and in the direction of Pennyworth while the man's back had been turned to him. It looked like a clear threat. And father had reacted accordingly. Crossing the room in an instant, yanking Damian away from the butler, and slamming him into the opposite wall with a forearm wrapped securely around his throat. The room froze. And then, in a frigid voice his father spoke the first words Damian had heard in nearly a week. "I won't allow you to keep hurting and threatening my family. If you can't learn to control yourself, I won't hesitate to strap you to the bed from now on." Not a threat. A chilling statement of fact.
"I understand." Damian had choked out from around his father's grip. And he had. After another few seconds in the hold father released him and both men left without another word. Damian had deserved worse. In the league he wouldn't have been allowed a warning. At the time he'd even seen it as a kindness. Thought perhaps he was gaining his father's favor. It was a silly thing to think.
Clearly the no sleeping thing wasn't going to work. He'd have to find someplace in this room safe enough for at least a light rest. So Damian got creative. He started with the rafters. Curling himself around the narrow, decorative exposed beams in his ceiling for short, light dozes throughout the night. He could see much more of the room from this perspective, the location was unexpected, and the deep shadows kept him comfortably hidden away. It was better. But the risk of falling kept his sleep light. And maintaining position clinging to a 4 inch wide suspended beam of wood wasn't exactly comfortable. He was finally able to sleep, but it wasn't exactly restful. So he hesitantly moved on.
After a brief stint on the top shelf of the coat closet that ended when he'd rolled over one night and the thin wood below him had wheezed threateningly, and an even shorter attempt at the bathtub (thanks to an incessantly dripping leak), Damian eventually settled for the cabinet under the bathroom sink. It was perfect. Small enough that he could curl up in just the right way to touch every wall in his sleep. And beautifully hidden. The doors could even be tied closed from the inside making them difficult to open. And with a few stolen blankets it was even adequately warm and soft. It wasn't safe, not really. And it wasn't exactly what he needed. But after weeks of struggling it felt like nirvana.
It was a few days into those gloriously restful nights that Damian noticed the access panel. And the rest, as they say, was history.
It was a tiny metal door, sealed closed and camouflaged by several thick layers of paint. Tucked just behind the metal drain pipe. Barely there and hardly worth a second's notice. In any normal situation it would have gone completely ignored. Except, there really wasn't much to do in his room besides training. And Damian has always been more curious than was strictly healthy. So he investigated. Carefully picking layer after layer of thick, plastic paint away from the edges. And when it opened, instead of the dull electrical panel he'd been expecting, Damian found a deep, black hole and a chilling draft.
Climbing inside was a tight fit. Even for him. But eventually he managed. And once he was in, he'd found them, his tunnels. Damian's aware that it's a… childish thing to call them. But he's also aware that the tunnels are his secret, and no one can judge him for being fanciful when no one willr ever know. What they are in actuality is a series of interconnected crawl spaces inside the walls of the manor. Gaps between the inner and outer facades, small accesses areas, awkward and unusable spaces the architect chose to wall off. They were cold, dark, musty, cramped, and filled to bursting with all manner of vermin. And if the bathroom cabinet had been nirvana, then this was home. Damian felt like he could breathe for the first time since he'd come to America.
"Finally," Damian nearly cried, "finally." A place all his own. Somewhere small and protected, somewhere quiet, somewhere secret. Finally, finally, a place in this new life where none of the grown ups could ever get him. Finally a place to feel safe.