⭐️ Eternal Shadow 🌙 Damian wayne ~~~~complete

Chapter 11: Breaking Point

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The night was wrong.

A thick, suffocating kind of silence hung in the air — the kind that made your skin itch and your chest tighten.

The mission had gone sideways hours ago. Bad intel. Too many of them. And now the team was scattered, fighting to hold their ground in a crumbling, half-collapsed building on the edge of the city.

Smoke curled around Marceline like mist. Her pale skin almost glowed against the blood splattered across her temple and jaw. But the ache in her muscles wasn't what shook her.

It was the pull.

The creeping, twisting pull of the shadows inside her... the thing that had lived in her bones since the day she was born. The thing she'd learned to bury, to suppress, to cage behind cold stares and sharp control.

But tonight... it was slipping.

And she was losing control.

Gar's voice crackled through the comms.
"I need backup! Raven's down, and—I can't—"

The line fizzed into static.

Marceline didn't think. Didn't hesitate.
She felt the darkness rise inside her — a thick, heavy pulse — and this time, she didn't stop it.

The shadows answered her call.

They erupted from the cracked ground at her feet, coiling and snapping around her like living creatures. They moved like liquid midnight, wrapping around broken beams, dragging enemies into the dark. The world shrank into shapes and threats, the rush of blood in her ears louder than the comms, louder than the team's voices calling out to her.

She wasn't herself anymore.
The shadows had taken hold.
Her grief, her fear, her anger — it bled into them, feeding them, warping them.

She could feel them clawing at the edges of her control, desperate to consume more. And somewhere deep down, a part of her... let them.

A scream echoed. A body hit the floor.

Gar came into view, limping, face pale.
"Mars—Mars, it's okay! Stand down—"

The shadows shoved him back.
Too hard.
His back hit a wall with a sickening crack.

"Don't. Touch. Me."
Her voice was ragged, warped by the dark aura that clung to her like a second skin.

Raven materialized, panting, blood at her temple, eyes wide with horror.
"Marceline... you have to stop. You're not... you're not you right now."

Exactly.

She wasn't.
She was what the shadows made her. What they always threatened to turn her into. The thing she fought every day to hold back.

And tonight, they were winning.

The ground cracked beneath her feet, the air thick with warped energy.

Dick landed between them, face pale, his voice firm in a way she hadn't heard since the first time she lost control as a kid.
"Marceline, stand down. That's an order."

But it wasn't an order she could follow.
Not with the shadows snarling inside her. Not when she saw their faces — bloodied, hurt, broken — and the terror of losing them twisted inside her like a knife.

"I'm not your weapon!" she shouted.
The darkness surged again.

Then a hand closed around her wrist.

Cool. Steady.
Damian.

He didn't flinch at the shadows nipping at his skin. His gaze held hers — sharp, commanding, unshaken.

"Enough."

And for one second, the shadows faltered.

Because it wasn't the authority in his voice that cut through the madness — it was the recognition. The silent understanding in his eyes. The look of someone who knew what it was to lose control to something dark inside you.

He wasn't scared of her.
And it made the shadows hesitate.

The dark tendrils slipped back into the floor, the air settling into a fragile stillness.

Kory's voice came soft, heartbreakingly tender.
"Marceline, baby... come home."

And that did it.

The thing inside her cracked. The grief. The terror. The exhaustion. It all came flooding back as the shadows recoiled, leaving her hollow and trembling.

She fell to her knees, hands stained in blood she couldn't name.

Around her, the team stared — battered, wary, distant. Gar cradled his ribs. Raven's lip trembled. Dick's jaw clenched.

Kory looked like her heart had been split in two.

And Damian... he stayed beside her.
A shadow in the night.

Later at the Tower...

The silence lingered.

Infirmary lights buzzed softly. Marceline sat on the edge of the cot, stitches in her side, her skin ghostly pale beneath the harsh light. She barely felt the ache. Barely registered Kory's hand running gently through her damp hair.

"You know why it happened," Kory murmured.
"You didn't lose control because you wanted to. The shadows... they feed on your fear, your pain. And you love them too much to lose them."

It stung because it was true.

Marceline had spent years caging the shadows, taming them — pretending she wasn't afraid of what they could make her do. But tonight, they'd slipped the leash. And it had almost cost her everything.

Damian stood in the doorway, arms crossed, his expression unreadable.

He'd felt it.
The shift in the air. The moment when her aura had tipped into something cold and wrong. He hadn't left since.

"It happens," he said quietly, his voice a gruff thread in the quiet room.

She met his gaze.
And for the first time... she saw no judgement there.

Only someone who understood what it was like to live with something inside you... clawing to get out.

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