Chapter Text
A boy is brought in.
He looks her age.
He looks a lot like her, actually.
He is side by side with the Important Woman, her holding his arm and forcing him to walk forward with her. They stop walking, and someone pushes the boy from behind so he is kneeling, shoves him again so he is prostrate.
The boy is in a strange paper gown. It’s almost in that color that only the Important Family is allowed to wear. The color of all the growing things outside. The color of the sacred waters. The color of life.
The paper gown is open in the back. Usually people are covered there. The girl shows no reaction, of course, but she ponders.
Something is off about the boy. Something in his eyes, the way he holds himself. Like he isn’t totally there.
Maybe he’s up far away in his head. The girl goes far away a lot. In her head, at least. She tried to go far away with her body once.
They caught her. They killed everyone who spoke to her. The kind family who took her in. The raggedy man on the sidewalk. The angry man who yelled at her, and yelled louder when she didn’t respond.
They made her watch, and then they took her back to Master to be punished. It was a full year before she healed completely. The scars will be with her always.
She’s old enough, now, to know when a scar is for a few months or for a few years of for forever.
She never tried to run away again. It was one thing to punish her, but she could never be the reason other people became empty. Never again.
No matter what.
The Important Man speaks. He pauses, and this is when the ones brought before his throne are supposed to respond, but the boy doesn’t. The girl braces herself.
She has seen plenty of death before.
The Important Woman steps forward and speaks. She goes on, talking fast, gesturing to the boy. Pleading. Fearful. Desperate. She is not usually these things.
The Important Man raises a hand, and everything stops.
He beckons her forward, and the girl slips out from just a step right and behind the throne. She approaches the boy, bows, and strikes.
He is down in one, two, three breaths.
The Important Man speaks, and he sounds pleased. He and the Important Woman go back and forth. The girl returns to her spot at the throne.
Just another Shadow, tucked away.
A blur. A person. Armed. Sword. Towards the throne. Kick to the solar plexus. Nerve strike on the throat. Grab the sword.
The girl deftly hands it to the Important Man.
She returns to her spot again and doesn’t watch as he delivers the finishing blow.
The head rolls across polished marble.
The girl zones out. Keeps her gaze distant, spread throughout the throne room. Keeps her mind equally distant.
She does feel eyes fall on her, though. Her training is too good for anything else. The boy is staring at her.
For the first time since he got here, his gaze looks sharp.
“Damian. I have a real treat for you,” Mother said. “Today you shall fight one of your father’s proteges.”
Damian hadn’t known his father had proteges.
The child brought out was older than him. Gangly and thin. Not the thinness of a warrior, however—the thinness of sickness. He was lacking muscle tone and looked like a strong wind could blow him over.
His eyes were glassy and inattentive as well. He appeared thoroughly unaware of his surroundings. Or, if he was, he did not care. Assassins milled about the training arena, armed, and the teenager didn’t blink. Not even when they passed behind him.
Damian arched an eyebrow in inquisitive judgement. “Is my father training cannon fodder?”
Mother brushed a hand over the boy’s shoulder. “He was a great warrior, once. One of your father’s enemies apprehended him. Now he is insensate.”
“I will not make the same mistake.”
“I know.” She stepped out of the painted square in the field. “Begin!”
The boy was more formidable than Damian had initially assessed. He now sat on a bench in the arena with the One Who Is All holding a wrapped ice pack to his shoulder.
He was fortunate that Grandfather had not deigned to watch. He could not afford to be found lacking in comparison to his father’s foot soldiers. That was humiliating.
No, he must best the other boy, and soon. Damian al Ghul is second to no one.
From across the field, the boy looked over at them. It almost seemed as though he was truly looking at them. In any other circumstance, he would catalogue such an action as a threat and a slight. But Damian doubted he had the cognition necessary for that.
This boy was a threat only in how he was compared to Damian by others.
The One Who Is All handed him his juice glass.
The boy started coming over to them, and Damian stood up aggressively. But with dignity. He does everything with dignity.
The boy handed them his mezze. Handed the One Who Is All his mezze. She took the small plate carefully. Nodded at him, then dipped her head in a bow.
The boy frowned. He hovered over them indecisively, ignoring Damian entirely. Finally, he patted the One Who Is All on her shoulder and shambled away.
“How rude,” Damian huffed. To ignore the heir to the world like that? And only the Al Ghuls and Cain himself were permitted to interact with the One Who Is All.
The boy was lacking even the most basic of knowledge.
Nevermind how cruel it was to give the One Who Is All food but not permission to eat. Though Damian couldn’t say it was first time it had happened. There had been occasions where meals were interrupted by the arrival of couriers or enemy assassins. Grandfather would pass whatever was in his hands to the guard dog while he dealt with the matter, and then reach for it back afterwards.
Damian had asked, once, what made the One Who Is All so different from the other guards. Mother had smiled grimly. Stroked Damian’s hair while she explained.
“You and I are people,” she had said. “We speak, and think. We use our manners when it’s called for, and our swords at other times. We can sing and make beautiful art and play chess. One day, you will rule the world, Damian. You are to be superlative as a man. The One Who Is All was created to be a weapon. Weapons do not think. They do not speak. They can only “act” so far as they are wielded to. They do not create; they only destroy.”
“…Our other guards are people,” Damian had said, with a lilt of a question in his voice.
“Our other guards were raised like you and me before they came into our service. There is something called a self-fulfilling prophecy, Damian. The One Who Is All has been treated like an animal since her birth, and so an animal she will be. There was never a possibility for her to be anything else.”
From across the courtyard, Mother watched.
They were sparring with practice swords in the private training room the next day.
Damian loved the private training room. There was less pressure there. He didn’t feel the weight of the eyes of the entire League on him. It was… marginally more acceptable, or less humiliating anyway, if he made any mistakes.
Plus, it meant he got to spend time with just his Mother and no one else or any missions to distract her.
The private training room was more relaxed. Damian felt he could speak more freely there. There were no other listening ears, after all.
“What is wrong with Father’s soldier?” he asked. Wood knocked together dully as the practice swords met.
“I have told you this already, Habibi. He was captured by an enemy. His mind is lost now.” Mother spun in a swirl of skirts and hair and a fast-moving blade.
“But how? What happened?”
“He sustained a traumatic brain injury. Commonly abbreviated by medics as a TBI. I suspect he also suffered oxygen deprivation while crawling out of his grave.”
“His what?!”
Damian was suddenly flat on his back with a stick at his neck. Mother quirked an eyebrow up in silent judgment. He felt himself flush. He took her proffered hand and pulled himself up.
“Again. Begin!”
They danced.
“So he is risen from the dead? I thought only the magic of the Lazarus Pits could do such a thing,” Damian said.
“There are many beings once thought dead who have recently resurfaced. Jason was simply the most accessible to us. I am studying him,” Mother said. She wasn’t even out of breath. It wasn’t fair. It was amazing. Damian would be like her, one day. “And it is not so unusual a thing, within your father’s circles.”
“And what circles might those be?”
She smiled wryly. “You will learn your father’s identity when the time is right. You have not yet earned the privilege.”
“Of course, Mother.”
He swung his blade just a little bit harder.
The girl stood at the door while they sparred. The clack of sticks, the grip-peel sound of feet on mats, the relaxed cadence of voices. The Important Child was breathing heavily.
She worried about him, sometimes. She had been much stronger than he was, when she was his size. She had known how to take a bullet, how not to flinch when a sword bit her skin. The little one was so ill-prepared for the real world. His first mission must be coming up soon. How was he supposed to survive? He hardly trained. Most of his day was spent listening people making mouth sounds. He would write or type or paint sometimes during this, always listening raptly.
What a waste of time. Time the littlest one at this base did not have.
It was kill or be killed, and she did not think he knew how to avoid being killed.
The Important Child was soft. Not hard, like her. He had a small creature he snuck out to feed and pet every night. The girl was always a lookout for him. He was not supposed to have the small animal. He already had a very large animal, and that was supposed to be it.
The Important Child made cooing noises and other mouth sounds at his small animal. The girl stood with her back against one of the pillars and watched. The creature was getting bigger. It was the size of two of the Important Child’s hands now. No longer small enough to squish underfoot.
That was good. It was soft, too. The girl thought she liked soft things, despite how easily killable they were.
She shouldn’t be around them. She was danger, and cutting, and harshness. But the Important Man thought it was good when she was dangerous to other dangers. So she was allowed to protect this one soft thing, the Important Child.
Maybe she would go with him on his missions. So he would stay safe. She did that with the Important Woman, sometimes. She went with the Important Child to his classes. To feed the small animal. To meals and meeting with others. To the room where he slept at night, so she could stand guard in there and watch for dangers.
Soft things like the Important Child wouldn’t be able to handle dangers on their own. That was why dangerous things like the girl had to exist.
The Important Child was important. She was not.
Soon enough, the sun was setting, and the Important Child stood and left the stables. His large animal was there too, but he had already lavished attention on it when he first arrived. The girl followed two paces behind him.
The Important Child returned to his sleeping room, and the girl took up her post. Back straight, legs apart, hands down by her sides. By her weapons.
She never used her weapons. There was no point. She would never kill someone again. The Important Man did that. She simply… took out threats and delivered them to him.
She knew that…
She knew it was just as bad. But. She wasn’t sure what other options there were. She would end herself, so no one else would become empty because of her, but then who would watch out for the Important Child?
So she was alive. And others weren’t.
She knew that every time the Important Man killed someone, it was on her. He would be dead many times over by now if she hadn’t been protecting him. Protecting him, killing for him, allowing him to go on and kill even more.
All her fault.
She caught a glimpse of her own face on the shiny thing across the room. She usually looked away, but…
She looked like that boy. She looked a lot like that boy. In the eyes, the set of the jaw. Their same dark hair. The tilt of their eyebrows, the fullness of their lips.
There were plenty of other people who had similar traits to her. She knew this. But this was… more. She had never met someone who looked so much like her. Exactly like her. A copy, but as a boy.
She hadn’t known that was possible. For two strangers to look so much like each other.
But then, there was a lot she didn’t know.