Chapter Text
Damian stretched his arms above his head, a long yawn escaping him as he listened to Mr Brunner's spiel about behaviour and minding one's manners on the trip they were about to take. Knowing the type of kids that attended Yancy Academy, Mr Brunner might as well have been talking to a brick wall, but Damian had to give his favourite teacher points for at least trying.
The other teacher chaperoning the trip, Mrs Dodds, was probably the better choice if they wanted the twenty eight kids on the trip to actually listen, considering she looked mean enough to ride her Harley into someone's locker and was mean enough that even the most troublesome of the delinquents and mental cases at Yancy behaved in her class. She was currently standing behind Mr Brunner - somehow managing to loom over him despite barely being taller than the man, and that was with Mr Brunner being wheelchair-bound - and while normally that would've been enough to get everyone to listen, her attention was seemingly elsewhere, her hands absently tugging at the sleeves of the black leather jacket she always wore.
Eventually, finally, Mr Brunner let them on the bus, Damian trailing after the rest as they all clambered on. A quiet giggle drew his attention behind him, though, and he followed the sound to where Nancy Bobofit and her cronies were lurking, unpleasant smiles hidden behind their hands as they eyed some of the physically disabled kids going on the trip.
Damian stared at them, his expression blank but with a slight touch of expectancy as he waited for the group to notice. When they did, their giggles immediately died in their throats, their faces paling and expressions twisting into vague fear. Damian just smiled pleasantly at them, giving them a quick wave before getting on the bus himself. One of the benefits of being known as the creepy goth kid who nearly killed one of his eighth grade teachers at Halloween was that he and, by extension, his best (and only) friend Grover Underwood (as well as anyone else Damian decided to protect on a whim) were untouchable to all but the most stupid of bullies for fear he'd actually kill them in revenge.
(The reality was, he hadn't nearly killed Mrs Sanchez. She'd just fainted after seeing the decorations he'd made for the Halloween event his eighth grade school was putting on for the neighbourhood. After that, he'd been expelled, but not before explaining to both the school and the police that no, he hadn't robbed a graveyard for his decorations. It was all just paper maché and air dry clay made to look like bones and dismembered body parts.
(That incident had been the latest in a long line of mishaps that happened whenever Damian was in school events that resulted in his inevitable expulsion. Before the Mrs Sanchez Halloween incident, the most memorable mishap had been his sixth grade class trip to the Saratoga battlefield, which Damian still attests wasn't his fault. The battlefield staff should have made sure that the cannons had been fully disarmed and unloaded before letting the touring students loose, so really, it was their fault the school bus got shot by a cannon, not Damian's!)
As he settled into the seat beside Grover, Damian flicked the fidget ring on his right pointer finger, nipping at his lip. This trip will be different, he vowed to himself, trying to find the most comfortable position in the hard seat. There will be no incidents that could be blamed on him, nor will there be anything remotely fun or embarrassing happening either. He already had a probation for getting caught sneaking out at night to simply sit and enjoy the dark and the silence and the solitude of the grounds at night, any more would give the headmaster exactly the excuse needed to expel him.
All the way into Manhattan, Damian and Grover quietly chatted about what they were most looking forward to seeing, both of them ignoring Nancy pushing her luck in the chair behind them as she loudly talked and emitted shrieking laughs best heard by bats, her legs 'accidentally' kicking their seats every so often. It was honestly a good thing that Damian was slow-tempered, his anger burning cold and quiet instead of white-hot and violent, otherwise Nancy's crooked teeth would've been scattered across the bus floor by now out of sheer annoyance, if nothing else.
(Looking back, Damian still isn't sure not decking her anyway was worth it. After the mess he's gotten himself into, in-school suspension would've been a cake walk.)
Mr Brunner led the museum tour.
He rode up front in his electric wheelchair, guiding the class through the big, echoing galleries and past displays of ancient Greek and Roman statues and art and black-and-orange pottery. It was honestly impressive how this stuff had managed to survive for millennia relatively intact, in Damian's not-so-expert opinion. Maybe experts had different opinions on the preservation quality of ancient Greek and Roman artefacts. He didn't know.
They gathered around a four metre tall stone column, a huge sphinx perched atop it gazing straight ahead like a sentry, and Mr Brunner began explaining how it was a stele, a grave marker, for a girl not much older than them. He even explained the carvings on the sides and what they meant, which was neat.
Or it would've been if everyone else would just shut up. Damian's evil eye didn't work too well in crowds, and every time he tried to hiss at someone to shut up, Mrs Dodds would retaliate with an evil eye of her own.
Mrs Dodds was an odd one, at least to Damian. She doted on Nancy, which should have automatically made her Damian's own personal nemesis even if he wasn't the type to reciprocate any dislike or even outright hatred teachers may or may not have towards him. And half of the time, she was his nemesis. Half the time, if he so much as breathed wrong in her class, she'd point a crooked finger his way, sweetly say "Now honey," in her thick Georgian drawl, and Damian would know he'd just been condemned to after-school detention for a month.
(After one of these incidents where she'd made him erase answers out of old maths textbooks until midnight, Damian had joked to Grover about Mrs Dodds not being human. Grover had stared at him, his expression deadly serious, and had said "You're absolutely right.")
The other half? She looked at him with what looked like some weird kind of awe or respect, treating him almost as nicely as she did Nancy. His test scores increased, any mistakes he made were forgiven or used as an in to give him a quick, personal tutorial on what he'd messed up, and he was never once condemned to after-school detention or, if he did have detention from her, it would be dropped faster than he could blink. It honestly gave Damian whiplash how much her attitude towards him seemed to change, even if no-one but him and Grover ever really seemed to notice it.
Judging by her attitude, Mrs Dodds was in full nemesis mode right now. Joy.
Up ahead, Mr Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art. That was right up Damian's alley (goth, remember?), so he tried his damndest to listen in.
Only for Nancy Bobofit to make a shitty joke about one of the naked guys on the stele.
"Oh my god, Nancy, just shut up for once in your life," Damian groaned, glaring at her over his shoulder.
Unfortunately for him, it had come out much louder than he'd intended, Mr Brunner stopping in his lecture to turn to them.
"Mr de Ruiter," he said, his tone politely interested, "did you have anything to say?"
"No, sir," Damian mumbled, his face flushed with embarrassment.
Mr Brunner raised an eyebrow, pointing to one of the pictures on the stele. "Then perhaps you'd be kind enough to tell us what this represents?"
Pushing himself up onto his toes, one hand gripping Grover's shoulder for stability, Damian peered over his much taller classmates to see which picture Mr Brunner was pointing to. Luckily, it was one he recognised.
Dropping back onto his feet, Damian said "That's Kronos eating his kids, sir."
"Yes," Mr Brunner said, obviously not satisfied. "And he did this because...?"
"Because Kronos was the king of the go-... sh- I mean, the Titans, and he didn't trust his kids. They were the gods. So Kronos ate them to ensure they'd never move against him, as one does, except his wife - Rhea I think - hid baby Zeus. Instead, she fed Kronos a rock that she claimed was Zeus, thus managing to protect one of her kids from her husband's paranoia. And later, after Zeus grew up, he tricked Kronos into either eating or drinking a mix of wine and mustard to make Kronos throw up Zeus' siblings-"
"Ew!" someone shrieked from somewhere in the group.
"-and there was a huge war between the gods and the Titans, one that the gods won. The end."
"Oh yeah, like we're gonna use this in real life," Nancy mumbled to one of her friends behind Damian. "What, is it gonna ask us on job applications 'Please explain why Kronos ate his kids?'."
"And why, Mr de Ruiter," Mr Brunner said, "to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent point, does this matter in real life?"
"Busted," Grover muttered, Nancy hissing at him to shut up as her face turned as red as her hair.
Ignoring them, Damian thought about it. "Uh, I mean, I guess if you're studying the ancient Greeks or whatever it might come in handy. Aside from that, though..." He shrugged. "No idea, sir."
"I see." Mr Brunner looked disappointed. "Well, half credit, Mr de Ruiter. Zeus did indeed feed his father a mixture of mustard and wine to make him throw up his siblings, who, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up entirely unharmed and undigested in the Titan king's stomach. The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the deepest, darkest part of the Underworld." He clapped his hands, more than a few kids jumping at the noise. "On that appetizing note, I do believe it's time for lunch. Mrs Dodds, would you lead us back outside?"
The class trailed after Mrs Dodds, Damian and Grover moving to follow when Mr Brunner called "Mr de Ruiter."
Damian sighed. He'd been expecting that. He waved Grover on, saying "I'll be fine, dude," at Grover's worried look, before turning and making his way over to the teacher. "Sir?"
Mr Brunner had this look in his eyes, intense and sad and like he'd seen everything the world had to offer over the course of untold thousands of years and hadn't enjoyed the view. "You must learn the answer to my question."
"About the Titans?"
"About real life and how your studies relate to it."
"Oh."
"What you learn from me is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such." The look in his eyes intensified, somehow, like he was trying to directly beam understanding into Damian's head. "I will only accept your very best, Damian de Ruiter."
Damian swallowed, his anxiety spiking. He liked Mr Brunner, he really did. The guy was the only teacher at Yancy - bar Mrs Dodds, even at her most nemesis-moded - to not treat him like he was a moron just because of his ADHD and dyslexia, or walk on eggshells around him because of his track record of getting expelled from every school he'd ever attended for exaggerated behavioural issues or incidents with teachers that had been started by the teachers themselves more often than not.
But he expected so much from Damian. Not that Damian didn't try - of course he did, he tried in all his classes - but executive dysfunction and his brain's occasional refusal to comply in classroom settings were bitches, and when combined with his dyslexia and anxiety, well. You were left with an anxious mess who wanted to learn, to absorb all the knowledge he was given, who could even go on multi day hyperfocused study sessions on anything that caught his eye if left unattended for too long, but who was left with a brain that most certainly did not want to cooperate with him any time he so much as set foot in an academic setting.
It wasn't as if Damian could say all that, though. Too many teachers saying his ADHDyslexia was an excuse for him to be lazy taught him that the only thing acceptable to say here was a half-hearted "I'll try, sir."
Mr Brunner didn't seem to hear him, instead staring up at the stele like he'd been there at the girl's funeral, had known her personally, even. Damian joined him for a moment, savouring the quiet and the chance to properly look at the thing, before quietly taking his leave.
The class gathered on the front steps of the museum, Fifth Avenue's foot traffic passing by in the near distance.
A massive storm brewed overhead, clouds blacker than any Damian had ever seen over the city. A part of him figured it was climate change, since the weather all across New York state had been decidedly off since Christmas: snow storms that swallowed everything in multiple feet of snow, floods, earthquakes, wildfires from lightning strikes. Honestly, Damian wouldn't have been surprised if that was a hurricane blowing in.
(Another part of him was telling him that something was wrong, that this bizarre weather wasn't climate change, but if it wasn't climate change, what was it?)
Nobody else seemed to notice. Some of the guys were pelting the poor pigeons with Lunchables crackers. Nancy Bobofit was trying to pickpocket something fron a lady's bag, and, of course, Mrs Dodds wasn't seeing a damn thing.
Damian drifted over to where Grover had claimed a secluded spot on the fountain, hidden from the afternoon sun in the shade of a bank of lights being set up for whatever thing was happening outside the museum. Grover shuffled over a bit as he flopped onto the stone, handing Damian his ham and cheese sandwich. "Detention?"
"Nah," Damian said, handing Grover his celery sticks in return. "Not from Mr Brunner. I just..." he sighed, taking a bite of sandwich "-I wish he'd lay off a bit, y'know? My academic anxiety's bad enough, the last thing I need is more pressure to perform."
Grover hummed, letting that be the last word as they ate in relatively peaceful silence.
Eventually, inevitably, Damian's thoughts drifted. His mother's apartment wasn't far from here. He could just hop in a taxi right now and go visit it was that close. But he knew that if he did, his mother would be disappointed. She'd be glad to see him, of course she would, and she'd give him a massive hug and nuzzle their noses together in a bunny kiss, but she'd be disappointed. She'd send him right back to Yancy, remind him to give it his all; even if this was his ninth school in nine years and it was all but inevitable the staff would find a reason, valid or otherwise, to kick him out here as well; and she'd say it all with the saddest, most heartbreaking look in her eyes that would gnaw at Damian until he did as she asked.
He knew that for all his looks were dangerous, his mother's were lethal, especially against her son.
Tearing his gaze away from the temptation of the taxis, Damian cast his gaze over the museum plaza, catching sight of both Mrs Dodds chewing a girl out for something on the other side of the area and Mr Brunner parked near the base of the handicapped ramp, celery in one hand, paperback novel in the other, and a red umbrella sticking up from the back of his wheelchair.
He was about to ask Grover if he'd turned his thoughts to their Latin homework yet when Nancy appeared, her cronies at her back. Evidently she'd gotten bored of lifting shit from tourists and had decided to get her thrills from them instead.
Her slate blue eyes darted between Damian and Grover, evidently deciding who to harass, before eventually settling on Damian. "Nice going back there, dyslexiac," she sneered, folding her arms across her chest. "Trying to get a pity vote for teacher's pet of the year?"
Damian raised a single eyebrow, unimpressed. "It's dyslexic. Maybe you should get tested yourself, considering how many spelling mistakes you make."
"Ooh, look at de Ruiter," Nancy snorted, a snide grin on her lips. "Thinks that just 'cause he's not fully retarded he's a genius who knows everything." Her gaze slid to Grover, who shrunk back a bit. "And of course, who could forget Not So Brainiac's loyal sidekick Cripple Boy? You fawn over de Ruiter enough yet, Underwood? Maybe he'll take pity on you and finally take you on that date you want."
Grover stuttered over his words, but Damian couldn't hear him. All he could hear as he stood, all he could hear as he turned his sharp gaze to Nancy, was an alien rush in his ears.
A rush that sounded eerily like the opening notes of a funeral dirge.
The next thing he knew, Nancy was on her ass in the fountain, her eyes wide, her skin pale, and her expression twisted into something that resembled raw terror. "Damian's scaring me!" she screamed, a note of hysteria entering her voice.
Mrs Dodds materialised next to them from where she'd been across the plaza.
Nearby, some of the other kids were whispering "Did you see-"
"-the shadows-"
"-like they grabbed her-"
Damian had no clue what they were talking about. Nor did he particularly care at that moment. He was too busy focusing on how he'd gotten in trouble on yet another school trip.
As soon as Mrs Dodds had made sure Nancy was okay and promised to get her a new shirt from the gift shop and so on and so forth, she turned to Damian. There was a triumphant, yet slightly awed fire in her eyes, like Damian had finally done something she'd been anticipating ever since her arrival. "Now honey..."
"Another month erasing textbooks, then?" Damian asked, attempting to make it sound like a joke.
Mrs Dodds scowled. Right, she was nemesis-moded right now, jokes wouldn't work on her like they would when she wasn't out for his blood.
"Come with me."
"Wait!" Grover yelped, stumbling to Damian's side. "It was me! I pushed Nancy into the fountain!"
Damian stared at Grover, stunned. Grover was terrified of Mrs Dodds, dreading her class even more than P.E. with the shitty coach who always made it a point to mock the kids who were sitting out of the lesson. And yet he was trying to cover for him?
Mrs Dodds glared at Grover, fiercely enough that his whiskery chin began to tremble. "I don't think so, Mr Underwood."
"But-"
"You. Will. Stay. Here."
Grover turned desperate eyes Damian's way.
"Thanks for trying, dude," Damian assured him, gently knocking their shoulders together. "I'll be okay, though."
"Honey," Mrs Dodds barked. "Now."
Nancy smirked, but quailed back when Damian turned a look her way. Maybe now it would stick in her head why most people avoided harassing Damian and Grover, even if the most likely explanation was that she'd simply tripped over a wire when stumbling back under Damian's glare.
Nancy dealt with, Damian turned to Mrs Dodds. ...Who wasn't there any more. Instead, she was standing at the top of the museum steps, near the entrance, impatiently gesturing for him to follow.
How'd she get there so fast?
Damian wasn't the spacy type. If anything, he was too tuned in to the world around him, his hyperactive brain catching pretty much everything that went on around him that his senses could pick up on. He should have noticed Mrs Dodds moving, especially at the speeds she must've been at to reach the museum from the fountain. His school councillor had said his hyperawareness was a result of anxiety mixing with ADHD, his deficit attention manifesting not in periods of lapsed awareness but in his attention constantly being dragged elsewhere thanks to anxiety-induced stress and nerves. And while that made sense, it still didn't answer his current question.
How didn't he notice Mrs Dodds moving?
He pushed that thought from his head by force, trailing after Mrs Dodds with a flick of his ring. He'd never had cause, even in his old schools, to meet with a teacher alone, so he had no idea what to expect. All he could do was hope that this went well.
Halfway up the stairs, Damian glanced back at Grover. He was still lingering by the fountain, his skin ashen and his gaze cutting between Damian and Mr Brunner like he was desperate for Mr Brunner to look up from his book and notice what was happening. Mr Brunner, on the other hand, obviously wasn't psychic, his attention fixed firmly on the pages in his hand.
Turning his attention away, Damian blinked. Mrs Dodds was gone again. When he summitted the stairs, he found her in the museum itself, waiting for him at the end of the entrance hall.
Okay, so she was making him buy Nancy her new shirt from the gift shop. Easy enough, even if it rankled that he had to spend his money on Nancy.
Except that wasn't the plan, apparently.
She led him deeper into the museum, Damian quickly recognising the path they were taking. He frowned. Why was she leading him back to the Greek and Roman gallery?
When they arrived, the gallery was empty save the two of them. Mrs Dodds came to a stop before a big marble frieze of the Greek gods, her arms folded tight across her chest and her attention fully fixed on the carved faces of the Olympians. She looked like she wanted to pulverize the thing, her gnarled, crooked fingers digging into the leather of her jacket and her dark, dark eyes narrowed to slits.
She was also, unless Damian was suddenly hallucinating sounds now, growling. And not in a way humans growled, either, no. Her growl was much, much less human sounding.
"You've been giving us problems, honey," she abruptly said, her focus switching fully towards Damian.
Suddenly, like this wasn't already a terrible situation, Damian's anxiety chimed in with a feeling that this was all about to go to hell.
Just like the question from earlier, he shoved that feeling aside, instead saying in an attempt to placate her "Yes, ma'am."
She tugged on her cuffs, the look in her eyes screaming horrid, brutal, slow, bloody murder. "Did you really think you'd get away with it?"
Damian took a half step back, one hand clutching the strap of his satchel for some semblance of comfort. She was a teacher, right? Teachers didn't use corporal punishment these days, did they? "I-If this is about the whole sneaking out at night thing, I already promised the headmaster I'd never do that again, so-"
Thunder shook the building, cutting Damian's nervous rambling off.
"We are not fools, Damian de Ruiter," Mrs Dodds said, her voice cold and deadly. "No-one can hide from us forever. Confess, and you will suffer less pain."
Damian had no clue what she was talking about if it wasn't the night expedition thing. Maybe that brief stint where he'd helped Grover sell off a stash of illegal candy out of their room for half the profits?
"Well? Where is it? It would be best if you handed it over right now."
'It'? She was looking for a missing item? ...Why not accuse Nancy, then? She was the kleptomaniac. Damian was just the weird, quiet, goth kid. "Ma'am, I really don't-"
"Your time is up," she snarled.
And that's when Damian's anxiety was proven horribly right.
Mrs Dodds' eyes turned a fiery red, glowing like coals in the hollows of her eye sockets. Her fingers stretched, the nails lengthening and sharpening into deadly talons. Her jacket melted into a giant pair of leathery wings extending out from her shoulders. Mrs Dodds wasn't a maths teacher. She wasn't even human. She was a wrinkled, ancient looking hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellowed fangs, and she surged towards Damian with an inhuman shriek, talons extended and glowing eyes wide.
Then things, somehow, got even weirder.
Mr Brunner, who Damian had been sure was parked outside a minute ago, wheeled his chair into the gallery doorway, a pen in his hand. "What ho, Damian!" he called, tossing the pen Damian's way.
Damian zeroed in on the pen, snatching it from the air the instant it was within his reach, dodging a strike from Mrs Dodds in the same movement. Before he could figure out what Mr Brunner expected him to do with it, though, he glanced down and froze.
He wasn't carrying a pen. He wasn't carrying a pen. He was, in fact, carrying a sword. Two and a half feet of polished, double edged, dark iron blade, with a crossguard reminiscent of, of all things, Mrs Dodds' wings, a grip wrapped in the softest, deepest black leather, and a pommel made of silver cast into the shape of a canine skull, seed sized pomegranate red rubies set into its eye sockets. Mr Brunner's sword, the one he always used on tournament days.
A hiss drew Damian's attention, and he looked up to see Mrs Dodds shooting an almost anxious look between his face and the sword in his hand. For quite possibly the first time since she'd arrived at Yancy, Mrs Dodds looked hesitant, like a part of her really didn't want to do this.
But whatever drove her to attack him in the first place won out in the end, and she lunged towards him once more, talons aimed directly at his throat.
Damian did the only thing he really could. He swung the sword.
The blade hit her in the side, passing cleanly through her like she was water.
Hiss!
Mrs Dodds was sawdust before a leafblower. She disintegrated into yellow powder, leaving nothing but the faint smell of sulphur, the fading echoes of her dying screech, and a lingering chill in the air, as if those burning eyes were still watching him.
And that's when Damian realised that he was alone, trying not to breathe the sulphur smell too deeply with a ballpoint pen death gripped in his left hand.
...had his lunch been spiked?
...
No. That had all felt far too real to be anything his mind could conjure even when drugged. So then what had happened?
...
Damian groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. He needed 5 to 10 business days to figure all this shit out, and knowing his luck, he wasn't going to get it.
Twirling the pen (sword?) in his fingers, he turned on his heel and headed back outside. Maybe he'd find some answers out there.
It had started to rain, the class all huddled under whatever cover they could find. Grover was still sitting on the fountain, a museum map tented over his head as a makeshift umbrella. Beside him, Nancy was grumbling to her cronies, still soaked from her fall into the fountain and only getting wetter in the rain.
When she spotted Damian, she huffed "I hope Mrs Kerr whipped your ass."
Damian paused, staring at Nancy in confusion. "...who?"
"Mrs Kerr, dumbass. Our maths teacher?"
"...what are you talking about? We've never had a teacher called Mrs Kerr."
Nancy scoffed, turning away with a roll of her eyes.
Damian turned to Grover, who was watching him closely. "Where's Mrs Dodds?"
Grover froze for a half-second, eyes widening, before returning to his normal expression. "Who?"
"Not funny. Where is she, Grover?"
Grover glanced away as thunder boomed overhead, refusing to meet Damian's eye.
Swallowing back the cold frustration climbing up his throat, Damian turned to look for Mr Brunner, the pen creaking in his clenched fist reminding him of the one other person who could possibly shed light on what the hell had happened to Mrs Dodds.
He eventually found him right where he'd seen him before the mess in the museum: parked at the base of the handicapped ramp, novel in hand and red umbrella sticking up from the back of his wheelchair. Heading over, Damian prayed to whoever would possibly listen for Mr Brunner to show him mercy.
Mr Brunner looked up as Damian got near, looking a tad distracted. "Ah, Mr de Ruiter. Thank you for returning my pen, and may I remind you to please bring your own writing utensils in the future?"
Damian handed the pen over, a stone of dread dropping into his gut. If he wasn't going to so much as hint at something happening in the museum, then... "Sir," Damian ventured, thumb spinning his ring in a nervous tic, "where's Mrs Dodds?"
Mr Brunner stared at him, his expression blankly questioning. "Who?"
Another stone dropped. "Mrs Dodds. Y'know, the other chaperone on the trip, the lady whose been our maths teacher for the past half a year, looks like she'd ride a Harley into your locker if she thought she could get away with it. That Mrs Dodds."
He frowned, leaning forward slightly and fixing Damian with a concerned look. "Damian, there is no Mrs Dodds on this trip. As far as I know, Yancy Academy has never employed a Mrs Dodds. Are you feeling alright, my boy?"