Damian Wayne revealed!

The Meaning Of Helplessness

Damian could be considered an unusual child (to put it mildly), even within the Batfamily.
The members had to routinely remind themselves or be reminded just how much of an enigma their youngest was...

Outside of their masks, the boy would appear every bit the haughty heir with a broad vocabulary that would boast about his heritage that the media perceived him to be.

—but as Robin?

As the one who should be the light to Batman's darkness?

Rather, the kid was varying shades of grey, sometimes (more like very rarely) a lighter gray and otherwise a deep dark color.
He was only a slight contrast to his mentor and would sometimes be even more brutal than the dark knight himself, which had raised some concerns about his violence.

The GCPD only knew that Batman, or more specifically his closer associate/ caregiver Nightwing who was by now perceived as the family therapist, were working on it as the boy was socially and emotionally stunted.

Still, when they took his stabby attitude aside and all the titles he surrounded himself with as if to shroud his own existence, they remembered he was only 11 years old and a child. A kid who had grown up way too fast and in a fucking murder cult.
Who didn't have any friends and was almost allergic to affection and emotions, who instead had bloodlust and skills to kill someone four times taller and 10 times heavier than him with relative ease.

Something they wanted to avoid.

Something no one, no child deserved. And yet here he was: the result of all the world's wrongs it seemed. A misguided and misjudged boy who believed affections made people weak and vulnerable, who had severe trust issues and believed they were only deserved when paid with honor and blood.

A child raised to be a soldier and rule the world as it was 'his sole destiny and birthright'.

And the conviction and pride he'd held in that when he announced it to them, when he didn't even have a hallucinating 9th grade syndrome some kids his age should have. This kid who was way too young to have such kind of aspirations, too many things yet to experience to make well thought-out decisions and career paths for his future to be set as if it were a universal law.

Too little experience (at least social) to understand those he'd aspired to rule one day.
He lacked compassion and understanding, directed any kind of emotion to anger or apathy and wiggled his way out with either smart remarks or twisted foresight and more often than anything went for direct confrontation with the confidence to take on the world alone.

And sometimes they got a taste of what that lack of experience entailed and his thoughts about his difference from 'the norm' as well as where exactly he draws his confidence from.

Even if it was brought upon by a topic no one wanted to be associated with, by such a mere concept: helplessness.

The term itself left a plethora of images and emotions associated with in relation to. But for Damian, the terminology only brought up memories of Intolerance, disappointment, disgust, anger, irritation...

Something to be ashamed of.

It was at the forefront of his mind and what he saw the innocent civilians as, be they adult, child, man, woman or elderly.

To him they were all the same. And they did nothing about it, carelessly relying on others as if it were a given when it shouldn't be.
Why were they doing it? Did they deserve it? Where did that confidence come from?

He'd brought it up, once, during patrol: "Why don't they just fight?"

He could hear Tim's eyeroll through the com: "Well we can't all be tiny gremlins capable of mutilating a body in 20 different ways."