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Jason’s no stranger to the paranormal. Living out on the streets, weird shit happens all the time - plus you got your villains with wacky powers or whatever terrorizing whoever they can. Hell, the Batman is still spoken of reverently by a lot of people, not that Jason’s one of them. Especially not now that he’s been recently adopted by Bruce Wayne as another charity case, and actually taken in by Batman after trying to steal his tires.
So his life’s a little crazier now, somehow more secure and less secure than he’s ever been, big deal. And he goes in the night in a traffic-colored uniform with a flying cape attached like he’s attached to the looming shadow that is Batman. Oh, and he also goes to a fancy ass private school with a different uniform, and beats up the aforementioned villains in his traffic uniform. This is all fine. Jason is fine. You know why he’s fine? Because this is real and Slenderman is not.
Jason’s not stupid. He knows Slenderman isn’t real, that it’s all fake and just stories people made up on the Internet. He’d have to be a moron to believe in Slenderman, an absolute moron, which is why he’s definitely just seeing things. Because really, Slenderman?! Everyone knows that’s false. No one is claiming their stupid videos and YouTube channels are real, they’ve all admitted it’s just a story. Only kids who don’t do their research right believe in Slenderman. Jason’s just...
Well he’s not seeing things, because if he was that’d be a problem . And Jason’s not a problem . He’s not hallucinating. But Slenderman isn’t real. It’s just- just a trick of the ol’ eye or something, he’s probably just tired, the nighttime patrols maybe aren’t that great for him. Maybe he’ll ask Bruce for once to head in early. He’s not going to give up patrolling, fuck no he’s not doing that, that’s- he’s just not. He’d never. But, maybe a bit more shut-eye would be good. Alfred’ll be delighted, that should make it worth it.
And you know, Jason stops seeing Slenderman. So it’s fine! He’s fine! That was just, stress or something. Temporary. It’s fixed now, he’s fixed. He’s fine, he’s great, actually. And so what if he catches a slender, hulking figure with too long limbs and a suit that blends into the night like Batman does, and a paper-white noface that somehow manages to always watch him without any eyes just in the corner of his vision, a fleeting sight, so what? Slenderman isn’t real.
But maybe he is. Maybe he is, because Jason should have known. It’d been showing up more frequently, recently. Just in the corner of his vision, just barely in sight, and then gone when he’d turned to look. But it was there. Fucking Slenderman, he was there , Jason knew he was. But what could he say? “Oh, hey B, I’ve been hallucinating the Slenderman, yeah that creepy no-faced guy from the Internet that is definitely fake and not at all real, but I’m thinking maybe he is real because I swear I can feel him there, you gotta believe me.” He’d be benched FOREVER. Or, at least indefinitely.
And after Garzonas, well...
It was everywhere. Jason swears it, he’s not lying, fuck . In the corner of his room, filling his brain with some static or something, on the rooftop across from him, in an alley below, at the edge of his sight theretherethere when Gordon’s taken hostage - a consequence of Jason’s actions, it must be, fuck fuck fuck , and not just in Gotham, everywhere everywhere he goes, all the way up to Ethiopia.
All the way up to Ethiopia.
He’s there when they fight Shiva, in the valley, he’s there when they make it to the camp, and he’s there. He’s there, in the warehouse. He’s there when Jason meets his mother, when she turns him over to the Joker, when- when- shit, when the pain- pain- he sees- well, he hears Joker- but he can’t- he can’t see, it’s red it’s red it’s red, no it’s black and white and blue and green and he still sees it, still right there he can see it, when he can’t see anything anymore can only lay there and take it and listen and hear all the horrible sounds, knowing he’s dying, suddenly the Slenderman is as clear as day.
Suddenly Jason doesn’t have to whip around to catch a glimpse only for it to disappear. Suddenly there’s no strange haze to his vision when he looks on. Suddenly the static in his bones, in his heart, in his liver, in his lungs, in his mind - it’s not so off-putting. Not when the alternative is pain, pain, pain, pain, pain, everywhere everywhere everywhere - at least the buzzing in his ears drowns out the laughing laughing laughing, maniacal laughing.
When Jason looks up, the last thing he sees is not the Joker. It is the Slenderman, come to take him away.
Look, Steph’s a street kid first and foremost. She’ll never lose her roots even with the luxury of Robin, if you could even call it much of that. She knows the kind of waves she’s making, being the Girl Wonder and not the Boy Wonder, she just didn’t expect to get so stressed that within a week of her run she’d started hallucinating.
She knows she is because she asked Batman about it once, and he couldn’t see it, and Mr. Pennyworth couldn’t either, and no one else saw the weird spindly guy who was really freaking her out. But she’s smart, so either this is a hallucination and she needs rest or some other fix for it, or it’s real and it’s some spooky magic shit that she has to deal with on her own. It’s freaky, but it’s fine. What’s she gonna do about it? The downtime she does have she spends training or searching or planning because that’s what Robin does, and when she’s busy she can’t just wave away the creepy faceless guy in the corner of the room or hanging out on a rooftop you can’t reach without some serious parkour or grappling skills.
So she leaves it alone, learns to just roll with it, and starts treating the guy like her imaginary friend instead. Hey, Mr. Guy, how are you today? Aw man, I’m real tired too, you wanna play I Spy? Hey, Creepy Dude, fancy seeing you on patrol, wanna follow me ’round Gotham? Woah, Business Man, stay away from the danger, you’ll distract me and then I’ll die and you won’t have anyone to haunt anymore! And she slips up sometimes and starts talking in front of other people, but she’s already a weird kid so she just lies and says she’s talking to herself and it’s fine.
It’s all completely fine.
And then Creepy BFF isn’t just some vague hallucination she can make out the details of one at a time if she really thinks hard about it, he’s so much more present. Steph doesn’t get into many life-or-death situations, you gotta understand. Robin is dangerous, but she swears she’s careful. As careful as a crimefighting vigilante on the streets can be, anyway. But she’s getting a little worried because her spooky friend in the corner of her eye is looking less and less like some weird faceless guy who can’t harm her and more and more like some weird faceless guy who is definitely a harbinger of death.
She didn’t really know why her head felt a little fuzzy looking over at him, but nowadays she really doesn’t chance it because the staticky feeling is just horrid. Hurts her head so much, and the one time she squinted at him trying to get a better feel, it started spreading . Static in her head is enough, no thank you static in her body. In fact, no thank you static! Sorry Slendy, Tim’s back to Steph’s #1 BFF. She doesn’t really like keeping friends that hurt her or make her feel bad. Well, Tim’s done that too, but he hasn’t hurt her like the harbinger is.
And she’s starting to worry that it’ll do a lot worse than make her head hurt and her bones feel kinda soupy.
It all reached a head when she’d been so distracted by Spindly-White that Zsasz managed to capture her and she was just so focused on getting free and not dying and stopping Zsasz and oh no Batman and fighting and fighting and then-
Then she’d broken Batman and Robin’s cardinal rule: no lethal force.
And it got worse from there when Batman fired her, because well, what was she suppsoed to do now?! Go back to being Spoiler? Let Tim be Robin again and have to see him run around on rooftops just like her, except she’d failed in replacing him and then he’d be back because Batman needed a Robin and what other kid in need will show up? The replacement replaced by the very person she replaced. Steph didn’t wanna get shelved again. Not again. Not when- not when she’s worth something, she is.
So maybe she’d stolen some of B’s plans, and maybe she’d gotten a little more involved than she should have, and maybe her colossal fuckup resulted in a citywide gang war, and maybe now she’s in the hands of Black Mask, so maybe all that happened. And maybe she’s in so much pain that she can hardly breathe enough to deny Black Mask what he wants, but at least she’s doing it, and then the pain increases tenfold and even through her blurry vision one thing remains clear and vivid: her good friend Stalker Suit. The harbinger.
Oh , she thinks, I’m dying now.
And she reaches for him. But he doesn’t reach back. And Steph, Steph realizes no, no she’s not dying, she’s not fucking dying today she can’t , so she finds Leslie, and she’s in so much pain and she can barely make it there but she does, and Leslie’s there now and she’s safe in Leslie’s hands, Leslie’s got her, and she can rest, and woah, wouldya look at that, there’s the harbinger, and ooh he’s finally here for her, for reals this time.
And Bruce is at her bedside, and Leslie’s watching her too, and Steph doesn’t look at either of them when she dies. When Stephanie Brown dies, she’s staring straight at her good friend Mr. Slender Man.
If you asked Damian if the Slenderman was real, he’d say no. He’d have said no up until quite recently, when the Slenderman really did start appearing, and it was all quite lore accurate too. That’s the worst part. At abandoned or empty parks, at night out on empty roads, in the treeline, just in the corner of Damian’s sight, those were the places he saw it. It haunted him. Taunted him. It wanted him dead.
It had to. That’s the only reason it could possibly have for stalking him - and it must be him, because not a single other soul breathed a word of it, except to call it fake. Either a silly Internet hoax or a cryptid more mythical than most. The Slenderman was out for Damian, and he did not know how to stop it.
There were no cures marked down anywhere. All the stories, fictional or not, pointed to inevitable death by its hands. Even those who outran it were only ever on the run, never truly safe. So Damian knew he would die, and he began preparing for his death much sooner than he had anticipated. It was... sickening. He could only describe the feeling as that. He felt sick as he made his plans and packed his things, trying to make it easier for his family bit by bit. He didn’t know when it would happen, but he’d rather not waste time.
He’s narrowly escaped death many times now, wondering if it was his time and he should just give up now, but each time the Slenderman wasn’t present, wasn’t watching the fight. Didn’t witness him bleeding out or coughing uncontrollably. So Damian knew it wasn’t his time, and he fought with all he could to remain alive. He was always a malicious, spiteful child, he knows that. He knows what harsh rules of life have been hammered into him and he knows he is vicious and ruthless. He’s turned these sharp weapons into dulled warnings at his new code’s insistence, and he drills them now fully sharpened and ready into the will to live.
He will not die yet. He leaves things unpacked, does not erase his existence from the walls entirely. There’s still time. The countdown ticks, but it is not critical just yet. Damian will make the most of his existence until then.
There’s something to be said about the life he leads now, versus the lives he’s led before. Damian has always been passionate, and his mother has always been proud of his drive. Previously, though, that drive was honed into a precise tool to be used on specific activities. He’d practiced fighting, quick wit, civilian interaction, drawing, animal care, all individual skills he’d needed in his life. Now, his passion is in life itself, in living. He’s quick to seize each day and relish them well into the night.
It’s not gone unnoticed.
He feels closer now, to family and friends. There’s a warmth that wasn’t there before, as he revels in his relationships, knowing they will end soon. He’s able to speak with them in a way he couldn’t before, bond with them without the unyielding walls he’d been trained to uphold blocking them out and sealing him in. Damian is happier, in his last days. And yet there’s an underlying current of dread he cannot shake, and he knows his family notices that too.
There’s hugs and gifts and friendly quips, but there is worry and doting and promises of loyalty and trust and confidentiality and Damian wishes he could alleviate this worry, and he is so sorry he cannot. But for now, he will live in happiness. He will not let the sorrow overtake the joy. Not when he has finally achieved connection so strong and bonds so tight he cannot help but smile in remembrance of them.
The Slenderman watches, in the corner always. It blurs in and out, but Damian feels it all the same. He welcomes it too, tries to share his joy and tell it that he will not go out of this world miserable. He will not leave empty and longing. No, when his time finally comes, he will leave this life content, full of love and laughter like he has never been before. He will leave with family that will remember him, will honor him, will love him even when he is gone. The Slenderman will not take this away from him.
Damian worries sometimes, about not experiencing the other side effects. The puking and the blood only happen when he’s hurt, the static only happens when he stares too long at the Slenderman, there is no unexplained memory loss, he is not any more paranoid than he was before. He’s not sick. But there is dread. There is always dread. And stories are often embellished, things added on for hyperbole and drama. Perhaps the symptoms were merely that. Perhaps Damian worries for nothing.
And then, all is clear. Damian can see the Slenderman without a blur in sight. No fuzzy vision, no static creeping in the edges except to block his ears and rattle his bones. His eyes are left untouched even as his heart stutters. Damian knows now that his time is truly drawing near, and he has entered his final days. The countdown is critical, there is no escape now. Truly, it could not come at a worse time.
His own mother has put a bounty on his head, having cloned a better version of him, he cannot work with his father anymore nor go out as Robin, instead relying on the new alias Redbird, and even after proving himself still quite capable, his father tells him he must quit crimefighting altogether, or else terrible things will happen. Horrible, no good, very bad things. And it is a dreadful day for Damian.
Damian tries to occupy himself, he does, but the Slenderman draws ever nearer and he refuses to die useless and trapped in a house too big for the scant few occupants. He is sent off with Pennyworth’s grace, a blessing he clings to in his last hours, and soars into one last battle. He knows he is nearing his end, but he will not go down without a fight. Damian spends his last hours fighting to take back his home, and it is when he hears that final challenge that he knows this is his end.
Still, he fights with all he can give - it would be disgraceful not to. He gives the Heretic his all, he does not back down for even a single second, every last waking moment, every last breath he draws, he is determined. Even when the Heretic’s sword pierces his chest and he sees triumph in those mirrored eyes, he is determined. He tears his gaze away from the clone, away from his family all shocked and horrified and grieving already even if there is a frantic frenzy to save him, and focuses on the one who led him here to this very moment.
There is peace to Damian’s last moments, just as much as there is passion. It is these two emotions intertwined together that the Slenderman opens its maw to devour, boy and all.