bossymarmalade: ria leaves in monsoon wedding (didn't anybody tell her)
miss maggie ([personal profile] bossymarmalade) wrote in [community profile] thejusticelounge2013-06-26 07:48 am

twenty-three

Every March 26th, Duk-Ga would re-emerge from Dick Grayson’s shell.

In truth, the traditional Korean acrobat was always lurking right under the American surface; a puckered-lip hissing click when he was annoyed, a harsh Korean pejorative under his breath when someone insulted him, a tendency to spout out English words in the Korean rhythm when really pissed off. But for nearly 35 years, Duk-Ga had carefully crafted himself in the image of the man who saved him—a man who was completely American. He learned to enjoy all manner of fried foods and bland breads. He perfected the Gotham accent, throwing a slight slang on the end of his ‘r’s’ and always pronouncing his ‘f’s’ with distinct clarity from his ‘p’s’. He wore his football letterman jacket (the American kind, he clarified to anyone that would listen) everywhere he went late into his twenties, long after the alien on his arm became his wife and he started carrying a daughter on those leather sleeves.

It was not about assimilation, it was about imitation.

During Mar’i’s childhood, he had been much more focused on keeping her close to her Korean heritage. Her mother’s ability to absorb language was the only thing beyond glowing green eyes and skin that could only be described as the color of a too-ripe peach that she seemed to inherit from her alien side. She couldn’t fly; she couldn’t lift buses; she couldn’t send burglars flying with an ultraviolet blast. So, Duk-Ga decided, she was Korean. That meant no English in the house after 5pm and lots of Korean food at every meal. He was just as methodical in the creation of his daughter as a Korean as he was in the creation of himself as an American.

Later, as Mar’i grew older and more rebellious, he realized that he had forgotten the most important component of the equation: his daughter was an American, too.

Duk-Ga could not make his daughter fully Korean any more than she could make herself fully Tamaranean. But by fifteen she knew she was more than human and she had finally developed the skill set to prove it. He never told her how he cried when she twisted her gymnastics beams into little pretzel knots “just to see if she could.” So he left her alone, and watched as his daughter grew into a precocious mix of American, Korean, and Tamaranean. Of human and alien. Just like one of the strange plants that she kept in their kitchen, she started off twisted and stunted, branches too heavy and stem too weak. But over time she sprouted new leaves and started going up, up, up, and by the end he was glad he had given her the reigns. He himself returned to his strongly American identity, talking individualism and football at charity events and rarely speaking Korean if it wasn’t to Mar’i.



Still, every March 26th, the traditional Korean father emerged bright and early and headed downstairs to the kitchen. By the time Mar’i had woken up, he would have a spread of Korean birthday food ready on the table. When she was too young to do it herself, he would feed her spoonfuls of miyeok guk and wipe her face when it spilled. When she was older, he would scold her for eating her rice too fast, watching in silent gloating as she pounded her chest to move the sticky lumps down.

The other foods with the soup and rice changed each year—sometimes ssambap, sometimes galbi, usually kimchi. But the soup and rice were always there. They were there for her very first birthday, they were there for the first birthday after the divorce, and they were there even after she moved out on her own. There was never cake—Duk-Ga was fair too strict about this tradition for that—but she always got that later from her friends in large portions. It was the two bowls of soup and rice to which she looked the most forward.

So on her 22nd birthday, when Ibn had filled their bedroom with flowers and had brought in an elaborately-decorated cake as soon as she woke up, Mar’i had cried like a baby. Of course, she had waited until they had eaten thin slices of sweet chocolate cake and Ibn was off to talk the chef into making something that would constitute an actual breakfast before they began the day. But the moment he was out of the room the taste of salty seaweed came into her mind and she sobbed in the shower to cover up her embarrassment.

She would’ve gotten away with it if only Olivia hadn’t asked Ibn if he went with her in the morning to eat at her father’s. She attempted to bury her face in the menu at the restaurant they were celebrating in (Ibn had already muttered the words ‘plebian’ and ‘uncultured swine’ while examining this very same menu, but he cut a striking figure against the open-ocean windows that she couldn’t help but adore). Suddenly, all her friends were telling Ibn about her annual birthday tradition.

“He only makes enough for her,” Iris confirmed.

“Really important,” Avia explained.

“Puos deewaes stae neve ohw?” John asked, and Mar’i wondered why dating Avia meant she was obligated to invite him in the first place.

Ibn had listened very carefully, making extreme eye contact with each friend as they spoke (Olivia had taken to calling it the “League of Assassins” stare and she wasn’t half-wrong). When they were done, he slowly turned to look at her. Mar’i tried to pretend that the seafood page was particularly fascinating. She didn’t even like seafood. But soon enough the conversation had changed to something else and it was like it had never happened.

When Mar’i awoke the next morning to a room full of flowers, new ones in different varieties, with Ibn smiling over her and muttering ‘Happy Birthday,’ she knew she had underestimated her boyfriend’s memory. She sat up, pushing a large chunk of dark purple hair out of her face.

“Ibn, my birthday was yesterday,” she murmured, rubbing her eyes.

His lips met her hairline and he kissed his way down to her mouth. “Happy birthday,” he repeated with a strange amount of force when he finally pulled his lips away.

She raised an eyebrow. “It’s March 27th,” she stated flatly, reaching for the small digital clock they kept on a bedside table. She held it up for his inspection. “See? You can’t just pretend like…”

The face read March 26th, 6:00AM.

She squinted at the screen, then at her lover. He took the clock from her hands and laid it back where it sat. “I am Ibn al Xu’ffasch, leader of the League of Assassins and all the wealth and power it commands. If it pleases me to be March 26th, so it will be.”

Mar’i stared at him a long time without blinking, not sure if she was incredibly annoyed or extremely turned on.

The doorman had wished her a happy birthday, for the second time. The chauffeur had sang happy birthday for a second time as he drove them through Gotham. All the LED signs and newspapers in sight read March 26th. Mar’i was keenly aware it was all a highly staged act—Ibn was careful to keep the car on a very specific path that only took them past places that the League had stock in—but that didn’t stop her from wondering how offended Ibn would be if she ripped off that Armani suit. She was creeping her hand up the buttons when the car stopped in front of her father’s house. Ibn placed his hand on hers, pausing the tugging motions she was making at the small tortoiseshell buttons. She looked out the tinted window and flushed.

She was still flushed when Duk-Ga, not Dick Grayson, opened the front door after a single knock, greeting her loudly in Korean and ushering the couple inside. He didn’t say anything to Ibn, but he motioned for them both to come with him to the kitchen.

The two perfect white bowls of miyeok guk and rice were waiting. Just as she had done 22 times before, Mar’i sat in front of them and took a bite. The soup was just barely saltier than the tears that came flowing down her cheeks. She put her spoon back down on the table and sobbed into one of her palms. Neither of the two men said anything for a moment, and she quickly grabbed the spoon back up, taking another bite. Her father’s hand settled over her own and she looked up into his dark eyes and aged face. He was smiling, tears in his own eyes.

«You can come eat miyeok guk every birthday, no matter where you are or who you’re with,» he told her softly in Korean. «You can bring Ibn and when you have children you can bring them. I’ll teach them the tradition just like I taught it to you.»

A year later, sitting on a cold apartment floor watching the sun rise over the San Francisco bay, that salty taste came rushing back. She laid back, stretching long overripe peach legs out against the old hardwood, allowing the tears that had slipped onto her lips to instead slide down the sides of her temples. Her chest heaved rapidly and the empty studio echoed her choked sobs.

Somewhere, far away, a lover turned back the clock to undo his mistake.

Somewhere, far away, an old Korean man prepared two bowls of food for a daughter that would never come back.