Gotham.

What a shithole.

Oh Damian could ascribe a great, morbid poetry to that place: a cesspit of human filth; pure metropolitan sin; a place still figuring out whether it were purgatory or hell.

But today wasn't that sort of day.

Today, Robin peered over the grey and the gloom (a few gunshots resounding somewhere westwards, the rabid honking of traffic in the glow below) and raised an unimpressed eyebrow.

"Hmph."

He might have tutted a few years ago; he sighed now, and looked up to the murky space occupied by zeppelins.

As expected, overcast. But with clouds or smog?

Giving the extended absence of the local ecoterrorist (one Poison Ivy), Damian wagered it was smog and sniffed. The heavens were clogged.

The heavens are clogged.

Robin tutted at himself: perhaps today was a day for poetry after all.

BEEP BEEP BEEEEE-

"Oh for-"

"Robin, Batcomputer sensors have picked up a major energy spike near the harbour. I'm heading there now. Sending coordinates." Batman said.

"Copy that father." Robin returned over the comms link, perfectly amicably sounding, but through scarcely un-gritted teeth.

Damian pinched the bridge of his nose and looked back up at the lightless sky. For once, he'd actually wanted a break from the action. Today was one of those  days.

But he was closer to the docks and Batman knew it. So Robin dutifully marked his path across the broken and dim and extravagant and dazzling appendages of Gotham City, until the skyscrapers were a distant image and he'd reached the harbour. It was late; Robin saw colourful crates before he saw people.

The distant, wet thwacking of water lapping against wooden boards was still audible over the quiet hustle of the harbour. Damian closed his eyes and embraced warm black over the rows of containers and warehouses. He grounded himself in seeking the noise and turned his head against the wind. He favoured the gushing water over the salt and oil on the breeze.

The vigilante's earpiece beeped and Alfred was feeding him the tracking information.

Robin worked his way surely through the maze of containers and down an old asphalt road between warehouses. He noted to himself how much un-cooler it was being a flightless, teleport-less hero. Having to walk (in the absence of a car or motorbike) to a situation was a tedious and humbling experience.

He rounded a corner, following the map shown by his mask, walking behind a building teeming with rust. Robin held his katana firmly with loose shoulders and narrowed his eyes. The sounds from ahead were unintelligible, scuffling noises. Robin frowned; his view was blocked by a dull heap of industrial waste.

"Robin, I'm close. No security cameras available in the vicinity. What can you see?" Batman asked.

Damian's ears sought the swooshing of colliding water and found it accompanied by a mechanic rumbling that drew nearer and nearer. The Batmobile was close.

At one with the shadows, Robin crouched and peered from his shelter of scrap. His eyes widened and the sword teetered on slipping from his grip. The ghost of a clanging rang in his head and Damian quickly tightened his hand around the katana, too addled to sheath it, too addled to duck back.

"Robin? Are you on scene?"

His heart made up the pace that it had missed and Damian snapped back out of view. The panic provoking him had been too strong and, in moving back, the dreaded clatter of metal sounded.

Robin winced but conceded the movement with gritted teeth. The sound had been jarring; his pride was stronger than the sight of demons.

Red skinned and the reek of sin. White hair and hellstone daggers. The three of them were as individual in shape as any collection of humans, but oh he could recognise a demon a mile away. They radiated that something awful that seemed to penetrate Damian's skin in waves.

And then black eyes snapped to him and a serpentine hiss struck the air.

Damian leapt back and bared his katana in a menacing crouch.

The demon snarled and withdrew his black dagger in a triumphant, menacing motion. His muscles rippled and Damian saw that the demon had, by a long shot, the size advantage. That was good. Damian was swift.

"Ooh now...see here what we've found brothers..." the demon stalked forwards.

His voice rattled through Damian and with it, the vigilante felt a rising wave of anger.

A demon.

Brothers...he'd said.

But Robin had no one to ponder before he'd found the stench of sin assault him from behind. A second demon, leaner and with a sharper meanness in the his black eyes, had slithered behind Damian.

Both demons stalled, seeming to take in the vigilante with a queer air. That gave Damian time to think. Time to remember all he knew of demons. Time for Batman to arrive.

"Who are you and what are you doing here?" Robin demanded. His katana was on hand, but the vigilante held a guarded air.

The one behind snaked closer, observing Damian intently.

"We?" He flashed his teeth hungrily. "No no, child, who are you?" And as if Damian were not there, looked to the other demon and said, "Surely you feel it too brother?"

An avalanche of metal clattered before the three of them; the last of these demon brother perched, king of the scrapheap.

The one behind Damian looked up at him, "Jacob?" As if asking for confirmation of an unspoken understanding.

This Jacob lowered his head and considered Robin with an all too conflicting look; woefully, the only word he could ascribe to it was coquettish. Jacob bit thoughtfully on a lithe, red finger. Damian looked over the demon and couldn't dispel the single thought that he was horribly pretty.

At once, the demon came to a resound conclusion, declaring, "Al Ghul! Oh we've caught ourselves the heir!"

'Caught' didn't bode well for Damian. But 'the heir'..? How'd they known him to be an Al Ghul?

Regardless of what this Jacob had done to addle his senses, Damian's self-preservation took precedence. A smoke bomb fizzled and clouded the air sooty-like. Robin's reappearance was only in the flash of a blade. Then the demon behind Damian cried out and the smoke cleared.

Robin was in the clearing out of the way of the scrap heap. Now, he wondered if they would pursue. The bulky demon had been kicked to his knees, as he'd blocked Damian's path. He waves off the smoke walking around the mound of rubbish.

Jacob leapt from atop it and landed soundly, gracefully, on the floor.

The largest of the three seethed but was quieted, "Now now Jared..."

The one who'd spoken, Jacob, twirled his dagger with deadly grace before bearing it dangerously.

"You've a dept on your head Al-Ghul...an awfully old one at that."

To his right, the last unnamed creature said, "Granted, not what we'd come for. But a gratifying prize all the same."

Several things happened at once, so fast that Damian could only crouch helplessly.

Swerving sharply around a harsh corner, the Batmobile rumbled its presence and out leapt Batman. His foot landed squarely across the face of one of the demons- Jared. He flew over Damian's head and the other two raged at Batman.

They never met the Dark Knight in combat, however, as they were stopped still in their tracks by a low, commanding voice.

It was restrained enough to tell Robin immediately that the person who spoke was unaccustomed to loudness. It carried the barest hint of a rolling accent- but none that Damian could definitively place. And it was undoubtably feminine.

"That's enough...brothers. Leave these mortals. I know you're searching for me."

Robin turned and raised from his crouched position. The katana slackened in his hand.

The demon who'd been kicked rose, seething, "Raven sssisster... so good of you to join us."

She wore a cloak of deepest purple, her face shielded by a billowy hood. A circular yellow stone, slitted like a serpentine eye, clasped it at her sternum. This 'sister' of theirs... Raven..was bedecked in the shadows even as she stood plainly before them. Damian saw only purple cloak and dark boots and the faintest glow of red eyes from within the hood.

Then a gloved hand parted the folks of cloak and raised proudly to throw it back from her face.

And by all the heavens and their corresponding hells, Raven was the most beautiful thing that he'd ever seen.

A.N:

Hello hello and welcome to 'The Things That Bind Us'!

This will be my third Damirae book (gosh I've been here a while haha ). So if you'd like, please hop over to my account and check out the other two: Demons and A Pain Most Wonderful. I hold that you folks enjoy what I've got in store for you. I think that this story is going to be a real treat. It's not set in the DCAMU like my other two works but I think you guys will enjoy it just as much (I hope!)

My updating schedule is every Saturday night (UK time)

So yeah! Stay tuned for more :)

Thank you

-Bats