The first act of consciousness that Damian had was to feel strange lips pushing a kiss against his forehead. Then he knew he was awakening. The fear of battle hadn't yet dawned upon him; Robin hadn't stirred long enough yet to remember all of that.

It was a while before he began to shutter in some light and his eyelids slowly fluttered open. Sound filtered through his ears, foggy and confused. Then, as if his head had been submerged underwater, Damian broke through some surface and all became crisp and clear. Voices he knew, panicked and strained; voices that confused him, full of knowledge and age. He couldn't attribute them to any faces, only feelings. There was love in a voice, and he knew that he loved whomever the voice belonged to. There was anger, but his heart held that voice all the same.

That confused Damian enough to open his eyes properly and take in the world as if he were newly born to it.

First to meet his vision was his father. The angry voice stopped as Bruce noticed the waking of his son and made no delay in enveloping him in a tender embrace. He had feared so much but now that was all gone. Damian's numb fingers slowly regained feeling and clung to his father. He buried his face in Batman's shoulder and wished for the life of him that he would not leave.

Bruce asked him questions, lots of them, but Damian's tongue hadn't yet remembered how to talk and he didn't understand much of what his father was saying. His memory betrayed him in his fatigue.

Another voice called back his father's onslaught and Damian looked to its origin. His heart fell to his stomach and ran around in circles. Raven. He called out to her, over his father's shoulder.

Oh but of course! There had been his beautiful, blood-soaked Raven, tearing through the battle one moment, at his side the next. Tears and tears pulling down the caked blood from her cheeks. Pressing her hands to his abdomen. His abdomen-

Damian pressed two hands to his stomach and searched. He ran his fingers over his chest. The uniform was ripped. His skin was untainted.

"They've been healed." Raven folded her arms and shrugged, a tentative smile trying on her lips. She stood over him and now crouched down to the ground, as his father did.

Bruce was pulled away by someone (whom Damian paid no notice to) understanding that the kids needed some time together.

Damian looked at her properly and thought that he should never in his life see a creature quite so ethereal. She wore a cloak of white and an air of such peace that it seemed to glow from her skin. Her hair was black and her hands reassuring as they grasped his.

Damian sat up and found that he didn't ache as he thought he would. He might have looked around and seen the remnants of a battlefield, but now he had Raven and so he needn't worry for anything else. He loosened a hand to lay it against her cheek and sighed, confused.

"Raven what happened?" He finally asked.

She shut her eyes and pursed her lips and leant her forehead in to his, "So much...too much."

Through a curtain of lashes he looked up at her and remembered more.

"The gem!" He said urgently. "Trigon! He-" And he found the little red stone in her forehead. "But..."

He'd seen it shatter; heard her wail.

She smiled something brimming with melancholy love, "It's all fixed now. Everything- mostly."

Damian frowned and his fingers traced where his life ought to have been bleeding out from, keeping his eyes steady to hers for fear that they might slip and Raven would disappear somehow. But his periphery called him and, after sitting for a minute just with his dear Raven, soaking in the sense of being alive, Damian stood up.

She moved without thought, the same second as he did. He felt something of her within him- just as he'd done all those years ago after she'd healed his scorched face. Understanding rang through the both of them: their irises shifted through the moods as one. He projected her newfound, shaky purity; she did so his bemused relief.

The moving outskirts of his vision finally called loud enough and Damian looked around.

They were still in the courtyard in front of the Hall of Justice. Red stains carpeted the gravel, but the bodies of the dead- parademon and otherwise- had been cleared away. The Amazons would pay rich tribute to their fallen sisters in flame and song on Themyscira. For the time being, several of the dozens of Amazons who had joined the fight in man's world now sat around the courtyard, tending to one another's wounds and being cared for in return.

So too we're there heroes sitting about the area.

Damian wondered if they'd lost any of their number. He would later learn that none had died, but many had sustained severe wounds and lost limbs: within the Hall of Justice, Hal Jordan rested unconscious as the hand usually holding his ring no longer rested at the end of his arm- the green power ring migrated to his other hand.

Nightwing and Batman stood closest to Damian. He looked at his older brother and wondered when Dick had started to look so old, so tired. In that moment, there was an uncanny resemblance between the two men and Damian was sad for it.

But one figure pressingly weighed on his mind. Something that melded to shadow in his peripheral view. Something imposing. Something ancient. Something like...

He turned properly his attention on it and gave such a welcome cry of recognition that the great, old thing felt a wave of choking tears threaten his being.

"Anubis!"

Damian had never before seen the god. The quick, clever jackal head was marred in its ferocious image by such a kind tilt to his features and mounted a human-shaped body of coppery brown skin. Egyptian cotton dressed the god and about his neck hung a regal played necklace. Anubis loomed taller even than the Martian Manhunter: who rested with Diana in the Hall of Justice. The Amazons kept their distance and regarded him with mingled degrees of respect and wariness.

Damian's voice had pulled at the god and he found himself at once before the boy. Some background instinct brought his size down to roughly Dick's height. The god stopped himself a few inches from the boy and titled his head.

"How are you fee-" he began. It wasn't the same as his voice being one with Damian's own thoughts but it was close enough.

Robin cut him short with a hug. Anubis cradled his arms around Damian and felt the boy's beating heart as if they were one again. He rested his jackal head on Damian's shoulder and closed his eyes. How could the gods rejoice in their distances immortality when they didn't feel the human pain of love?

In front of him, over Damian's shoulder, Anubis saw the boy's love. The eyes of the empath shone in the moonlight and she smiled beautifully. Anubis knew that she was being bathed in the dearness of the friendship he had with Damian; she met the god's gaze and he embraced her watery gratitude and affection in equal measure. For her kind aura, for her love for Damian, Anubis thought that he would hold her very previously in his heart.

He wondered if one day he might learn to feel with the same bond that tied Raven to her love. He hoped so: every tear seemed to be worth it.

Damian removed his arms from around Anubis and gratitude poured from him: the boy had finally remembered how it had all ended.

"Thank you Anubis." He said. Upon his life, Damian meant it.

A.N:

Welp folks, I think we'll cut off this chapter here!

I'm exhausted and I need to sleep. But all the same, how did you guys find this chapter? I know there are lots of blank spaces to fill in- all in good time ;).

I'll see you guys soon! Thank you all.

-Bats :)