While facing a team of Ra's al-Ghul's assassins, Damian gets an unpleasant reminder about his past.
These episodes include examples of the following tropes:
- Affectionate Gesture to the Head: The comic ends with Dick playfully tousling Damian's hair.
- Arrow Catch: A variant; when Bruce disturbs Damian while he's throwing blades at a training mannequin, Damian accidentally throws the blade at him. Bruce catches it midair.
- Big Brother Mentor: Damian can't bring himself to talk to his father about what the assassin said. However, on encouragement from Bruce, he calls his adoptive older brother, Dick.
- Big "SHUT UP!": In Damian's usual Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness way, he yells at the assassin to stop talking.
- Breaking Speech: The assassin Robin catches taunts him about how he's still one of them, even if he now wears the Bat-insignia rather than that of the assassins. It gets to him more than he wants to admit.
- Call-Back: The arc is about Damian grappling with his past being raised as an assassin. Dick helps him get over it at least partially by reminding him of their time as Batman and Robin.
- Children Forced to Kill: Damian remembers his past, being trained to hurt people remorselessly, and wonders if it's possible to do enough good to make up for the pain and fear he's caused. Dick asserts that his young age when this happened means it wasn't his fault, but Damian insists he still did those things.
- Humans Are Flawed: Dick argues that all humans, even good ones, do bad things and make mistakes. The part that matters isn't what Damian did with the League of Assassins, but that he chose to follow a different path once he realized that he had done the wrong thing rather than choosing to double down.
- I Am a Monster: Even though he doesn't admit it to the man, Damian feels very upset by the assassin's taunts that he's really no different than the Tyke Bomb raised in their company. When Bruce asks what the man said, Damian answered that he didn't say anything that was a lie while looking unhappily at his reflection in the blades.
- Percussive Therapy: Damian's initial method for getting over the evening's events is throwing blades at a dummy. He's so focused on what he's doing that he doesn't hear Bruce come in.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
- When Bruce comes upon Damian throwing blades at a training dummy, he mentions that it's unusual for anyone to manage to sneak up on Damian. He immediately asks if he's all right.
- After Dick manages to talk him through his Heroic BSoD, Damian calls him "Richard" rather than the usual "Grayson". Dick explicitly calls out the unusual First-Name Basis as a sign he's being sentimental.
- Unsound Effect: When Bruce snags the blade in midair, the panel has a "catch!" sound effect.
- You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious: Damian, who applies a Last-Name Basis to everyone except his parents, calls Dick "Richard" after he succeeds in talking him through the slump caused by the assassin's words. Dick lampshades that this must be a sentimental moment.
