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thejusticelounge2014-03-30 07:15 pm
bossymarmalade) wrote in thejusticelounge2014-03-30 07:15 pm
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His inquiries are refused by Father, which comes as little surprise. Discussions regarding Mother were infrequent and stilted already, and now that she’d been responsible for whatever havoc had ensued upon the League’s dealings with the Underworld, he could hardly expect Father to provide him with the information he requested.
No matter. It entails a few consecutive nights of digging through files on the central computer, perusing the portion of the database permitted for his level of clearance, but he finally locates what he thinks he’s seeking. Schematics for the safehouse in downtown Gotham where Jason Todd once lived were accessed eight days ago. He dresses himself in his full Robin regalia, the braided leather scabbard holding his scimitar strapped across his back, and leaves the cave on his bike.
When he’s in the same room as her again, having disabled the electric field surrounding the small home and used the oxygen filter in his belt to make it through the motion-sensored puffs of knockout gas, he makes no noise at first. He’s content to gaze upon her, lain there in a nest of cotton sheets, resting with what might be mistaken as tranquility by anyone who didn’t know her as well as her son did.
It smells stale and dusty in the safehouse, as if all the linens had just been pulled out of months left in a storage closet. Mother doesn’t belong here in such a place, not with the deep resplendence of her rich hair and skin against those colorless bedsheets. Damian moves to her side, fingers extended toward one brunette strand that flows like a ribbon across the pillow, but his touch never connects.
He’s not certain why he’s here: whether it’s concern or vengeance. But he does know he will allow no one else to kill Talia al Ghul, unborn child or otherwise— if she dies, it will be by his hand, a right he’s earned by growing from infancy to adolescence at her side. One day, he’ll slay her, the greatest enemy of his life. One day, when he thirsts for her blood more than he craves her kiss.
He draws the long blade from its housing, and the scrape of steel on leather is a noise both sensual and familiar, to his ears and to hers. “Mother,” he greets her when her eyes finally open, the scimitar held tall before his face, bisecting his visage with a line of gleaming gray. “I understand I have you to thank for my death.”
She does not turn to look at him.
Instead, her eyes remain focused ahead and at the wall ahead of her, where the have been for days. The moments since her collapse in the snowy woods outside the Arrowfamily cabin have been spent in a tightening spiral. Just after her collapse, her prince’s daring rescue and salvage of her mortal body, everything was a blur. She remembers Marie—no, Mar’i, the girl had said with her plum mouth, petals ripe from kissing—and the warmth of the cabin, suffocating in the way the desert sun could be.
She remembers the arrival of the Queen, the King, and then, in a tight fluctuation of foetid red and the rank expelling of fluid, and pain, the sight of his scarred hands trembling, delicately folding a sheet of linen over—
The sound of the blade skimming the edge of the sheath—Talia knew that the boy could pull his sword quieter than that, it was meant to rouse her—brought her back to reality.
”..and,” her voice crackled, dry as a late-autumn leaf, “..your resurrection.”
She does not turn to look at him.
Damian moves into her field of vision, refusing to be denied her coveted gaze: first, his sword, extended and emblazoned with his reflection, and then the boy himself. He doesn’t gleam quite as sharply as the mirror image upon his weapon.
The weakened quality of her voice, the strain rendering it aged beyond her years, calls to mind something of Ra’s al Ghul, and Damian touches her arm— swift and fleeting, nothing more than to ascertain that she’s there, no mirage, no demonic illusion set to bait him.
He rubs his fingertips together, the sensation of her skin tingling upon them. She’s cold. She’s frigid to the touch, and his cheeks flush with heat, as if something curled deep inside him rises, unbidden, to provide whatever she may lack.
“You are too quick to gamble with the lives of others. You might have at least granted me the honor of a certain death.” The sword swings down, lancing a burrow through linen and mattress beside her arm, embedded to the hilt. Close, but not close enough, and Damian braces on one knee beside it, hovering above her until she can see nothing else.
“Keep your distance from my father,” he warns, inches from her face. His eyes trail down over the curve of her nose, the lush swell of her mouth, before meeting her gaze once more. He adds, “Keep your distance from all of them,” and fails to extend any such boundaries to himself.
Talia exhales softly when the blade flashes, buries itself in the mattress besides her, but she does not stir until he settles himself besides her. His words crackle on his tongue like sap-sticky wood on a flame, clear indications that his path in the realm of childhood was soon coming to an end.
He speaks, like her father, with the surety of tongue provided by youth—promised, for him, guaranteed, for Ra’s—and then..
"Stay away from them?" She repeats, her words laced with a strength she did not physically possess. "From all of them?”
"I don’t know the entirety of the havoc you’ve reaped in my absence, but I’m certain it all reiterates what I already know: you cannot, under any circumstances, be trusted."
His words are hard, but his expression is not. Regret sweeps his young features now that he finally has her recognition, now that her voice reaches out to him, familiar and beloved against his better judgment. “I wish you could be,” he whispers, eyes averted. He unsheathes the sword from the mattress, metal clanging as it slips between the springs.
His resolves returns as he cloaks his scimitar in the scabbard once more. “Father is mine. They’re mine,” he declares, still perched on the bed beside her prone form. ”Don’t touch them again.”
It’s almost as if she wants to cause unrest in him, as if she knows the turmoil that roils inside his young mind. Talia reaches out and gently places her hand against his knee, her thumb sliding over the material. Expensive. At least there was that, when he was left in the care of his father.
"But they were mine before they were yours," she declares, looking up at the boy as she slowly, and with great difficulty, lifted herself up and against the headboard. Her belly ached, the stretch of her thighs stiff and painful, but it didn’t matter. Not with him here, besides her, in fully glory and making his declarations.
"Would you have me cede that as well, my dove-prince?" She reaches a hand up, fingers tangling in her hair and made a face. A brush. She needed a brush.
He doesn’t recoil from her touch, and he silently chides himself for it.
The warmth of her hand burns through his leggings, fortified though they are against any source of external damage. His knee may as well be bare for the extent to which her feathery graze lances through him, makes him close his eyes in a dark moment of surrender.
They’e bright when he opens them once more, the gray sharp and cutting like the blade he carries against his back. He watches her struggle to elevate herself, lips moving together around words he doesn’t voice. Whatever he may long to say, he tells her instead, “And I have stolen them, a claim I will enforce with blood if I must.”
Her fingers catch within her matted hair, and Damian plucks the wooden hairbrush from the bedside table, nudging her hand away before he draws the bristles through one long, dark strand. “Don’t force my hand, Mother,” he entreats her, untangling her hair with firm, gentle strokes. “You taught me yourself the brutality I will unleash against you if you leave me with no other choice.”
No matter. It entails a few consecutive nights of digging through files on the central computer, perusing the portion of the database permitted for his level of clearance, but he finally locates what he thinks he’s seeking. Schematics for the safehouse in downtown Gotham where Jason Todd once lived were accessed eight days ago. He dresses himself in his full Robin regalia, the braided leather scabbard holding his scimitar strapped across his back, and leaves the cave on his bike.
When he’s in the same room as her again, having disabled the electric field surrounding the small home and used the oxygen filter in his belt to make it through the motion-sensored puffs of knockout gas, he makes no noise at first. He’s content to gaze upon her, lain there in a nest of cotton sheets, resting with what might be mistaken as tranquility by anyone who didn’t know her as well as her son did.
It smells stale and dusty in the safehouse, as if all the linens had just been pulled out of months left in a storage closet. Mother doesn’t belong here in such a place, not with the deep resplendence of her rich hair and skin against those colorless bedsheets. Damian moves to her side, fingers extended toward one brunette strand that flows like a ribbon across the pillow, but his touch never connects.
He’s not certain why he’s here: whether it’s concern or vengeance. But he does know he will allow no one else to kill Talia al Ghul, unborn child or otherwise— if she dies, it will be by his hand, a right he’s earned by growing from infancy to adolescence at her side. One day, he’ll slay her, the greatest enemy of his life. One day, when he thirsts for her blood more than he craves her kiss.
He draws the long blade from its housing, and the scrape of steel on leather is a noise both sensual and familiar, to his ears and to hers. “Mother,” he greets her when her eyes finally open, the scimitar held tall before his face, bisecting his visage with a line of gleaming gray. “I understand I have you to thank for my death.”
She does not turn to look at him.
Instead, her eyes remain focused ahead and at the wall ahead of her, where the have been for days. The moments since her collapse in the snowy woods outside the Arrowfamily cabin have been spent in a tightening spiral. Just after her collapse, her prince’s daring rescue and salvage of her mortal body, everything was a blur. She remembers Marie—no, Mar’i, the girl had said with her plum mouth, petals ripe from kissing—and the warmth of the cabin, suffocating in the way the desert sun could be.
She remembers the arrival of the Queen, the King, and then, in a tight fluctuation of foetid red and the rank expelling of fluid, and pain, the sight of his scarred hands trembling, delicately folding a sheet of linen over—
The sound of the blade skimming the edge of the sheath—Talia knew that the boy could pull his sword quieter than that, it was meant to rouse her—brought her back to reality.
”..and,” her voice crackled, dry as a late-autumn leaf, “..your resurrection.”
She does not turn to look at him.
Damian moves into her field of vision, refusing to be denied her coveted gaze: first, his sword, extended and emblazoned with his reflection, and then the boy himself. He doesn’t gleam quite as sharply as the mirror image upon his weapon.
The weakened quality of her voice, the strain rendering it aged beyond her years, calls to mind something of Ra’s al Ghul, and Damian touches her arm— swift and fleeting, nothing more than to ascertain that she’s there, no mirage, no demonic illusion set to bait him.
He rubs his fingertips together, the sensation of her skin tingling upon them. She’s cold. She’s frigid to the touch, and his cheeks flush with heat, as if something curled deep inside him rises, unbidden, to provide whatever she may lack.
“You are too quick to gamble with the lives of others. You might have at least granted me the honor of a certain death.” The sword swings down, lancing a burrow through linen and mattress beside her arm, embedded to the hilt. Close, but not close enough, and Damian braces on one knee beside it, hovering above her until she can see nothing else.
“Keep your distance from my father,” he warns, inches from her face. His eyes trail down over the curve of her nose, the lush swell of her mouth, before meeting her gaze once more. He adds, “Keep your distance from all of them,” and fails to extend any such boundaries to himself.
Talia exhales softly when the blade flashes, buries itself in the mattress besides her, but she does not stir until he settles himself besides her. His words crackle on his tongue like sap-sticky wood on a flame, clear indications that his path in the realm of childhood was soon coming to an end.
He speaks, like her father, with the surety of tongue provided by youth—promised, for him, guaranteed, for Ra’s—and then..
"Stay away from them?" She repeats, her words laced with a strength she did not physically possess. "From all of them?”
"I don’t know the entirety of the havoc you’ve reaped in my absence, but I’m certain it all reiterates what I already know: you cannot, under any circumstances, be trusted."
His words are hard, but his expression is not. Regret sweeps his young features now that he finally has her recognition, now that her voice reaches out to him, familiar and beloved against his better judgment. “I wish you could be,” he whispers, eyes averted. He unsheathes the sword from the mattress, metal clanging as it slips between the springs.
His resolves returns as he cloaks his scimitar in the scabbard once more. “Father is mine. They’re mine,” he declares, still perched on the bed beside her prone form. ”Don’t touch them again.”
It’s almost as if she wants to cause unrest in him, as if she knows the turmoil that roils inside his young mind. Talia reaches out and gently places her hand against his knee, her thumb sliding over the material. Expensive. At least there was that, when he was left in the care of his father.
"But they were mine before they were yours," she declares, looking up at the boy as she slowly, and with great difficulty, lifted herself up and against the headboard. Her belly ached, the stretch of her thighs stiff and painful, but it didn’t matter. Not with him here, besides her, in fully glory and making his declarations.
"Would you have me cede that as well, my dove-prince?" She reaches a hand up, fingers tangling in her hair and made a face. A brush. She needed a brush.
He doesn’t recoil from her touch, and he silently chides himself for it.
The warmth of her hand burns through his leggings, fortified though they are against any source of external damage. His knee may as well be bare for the extent to which her feathery graze lances through him, makes him close his eyes in a dark moment of surrender.
They’e bright when he opens them once more, the gray sharp and cutting like the blade he carries against his back. He watches her struggle to elevate herself, lips moving together around words he doesn’t voice. Whatever he may long to say, he tells her instead, “And I have stolen them, a claim I will enforce with blood if I must.”
Her fingers catch within her matted hair, and Damian plucks the wooden hairbrush from the bedside table, nudging her hand away before he draws the bristles through one long, dark strand. “Don’t force my hand, Mother,” he entreats her, untangling her hair with firm, gentle strokes. “You taught me yourself the brutality I will unleash against you if you leave me with no other choice.”