DISCLAIMER: I own nothing - why, because if I did I wouldn't be here!
FOR CampionSayn...who's just amazing in helping me get regular doses of Damain/Terry hilarity - who wouldn't love the Charming son and the homocidal one together? And her version of the Dee Twins...XD
Just incase it is not appart THIS IS AU - IN WHICH TERRY IS A GIRL - why, because child brith is 50/50 and I'm messing around with the other fifty... She soooooo Juliet, to Deidre's Romeo. Warning, this isn't CampionSayn's Deidre but she does take some lefts from her...I just can't write Dee Dee without a little manical spunk...
Tonight, I love you
The music moves around her, like waves at the beach, when she entered the room. The room was dark, very dark despite the flashing luminous coloured lights and there's no room to breathe. Thick, heavy, humid...not normally how she spends her weekdays nights, by far more Hellcat's scene. But then, lately, her night had become dominated by a certain someone and a certain something...
The people around her leered, like the starving being offered cake, hungry for her – and, brushing a long lock of hair out of her face, she certainly knows it. She doesn't strut like most girls, but it's not quite a march across the room – she sways with the beat, with the rhythm, like a sailor would on a boat, weaving untouched through the crowd. Completely at ease, completely in control. It steals her breath away, to watch, even in a booth across the room.
She's half plaited her hair anxiously by the time the girl finally pulls her limbs from the reluctant writhing crowd. Unusually, Terri had let her hair down; it caressed her neck on the way to her shoulders and stirred something in the back of Deidre's mind. She pushed it away when the beauty smiled at her.
It lights up the room, lifting the brooding shadow that normally clouds Terri's blue eyes and Deidre smiled back. "I didn't think you'd come." She whispers over the noise, knowing that Terri isn't so much as hearing her as lip reading.
She lifts an eyebrow and the smile twists into a telling smirk, "What Daddy doesn't know, wouldn't hurt me." – us, goes unsaid. Because Deidre knows that what Bruce Wayne would inflict on her, would be only a fraction of what Terri's slightly psychopathic brother would and wouldn't compare to what would happen to Terri.
She pushed that away too and moves, resting her elbows on the table, her heads in her hands and pouts. It was, from experience, a very good tool to mislead. Terri laughs, loud and unrestricted, and doesn't bother to cover her mouth. Deidre could look like an innocent little girl but she was a bad influence. A very very bad influence, if Terri cared to let her.
Time would only tell whose bad influence was going to win out – Deidre's or Terri's. Until then, they just have to keep fighting and loving. They both knew it was never going to last – how would it when their family would definitely torture them until they were bloodless and dying for even conceiving the possibility?
"Really?"
And yet, despite the pure suicide of the whole thing – or perhaps enhanced by it – Deidre knew it was just right...
Terri chucked.
They were so different, in looks and in personality – literally oil and water but they...they fit. Together. Perfectly. Deidre was a blond little girl, a china doll in looks but who screamed dangerous tease, every word was a challenge and every movement a risk. She could lose it at the drop of a hat but just as quickly recover, she was emotional and uncaringly expressive...away from Delia at least.
"He's getting old, and I'm...well I'm me. I like privacy." – and I get what I want in the end. The smirk grows on her lips and a quiet sadness in her eyes, Terri leans forwards, their breathe intermixing.
Terri...well, her black hair was like wisps of smoke curling around snow grey skin, her blue eyes were sharp, like glass cutting swiftly into the soul and dredging the darkest thoughts and memories to the surface, to read at her pleasure. Her smile...the way those pale rose slowly curled up into a knowing smirk, tittering on arrogance and malice were all too seducing. The Princess of Gotham, who seemed to be Gotham City embodied...she could play the wide eyed, naive girl as good as the next psychopath, always projected the image of innocent and purity even when the raw pain and rage was clear in her eyes. Even when she was lying and manipulating her way to where she wanted to be...even then there was a small frail part of her gleaming out, untainted yet and unbrokenly hopeful.
Yes, Terry was pure in a way Deidre didn't think she'd ever been but it hurt the blond girl to see the ghosts of bitter pain start to creep into her lover's eyes. She herself wasn't all she appears to be – teasing, fun loving, a touch reckless; traits both girl sharing in quantise were slowly being beaten (both literally and figuratively) out of them. They were both being moulded to fit their legacies, to play their parts...part neither wanted but would never turn away from.
Deidre was very skilled in masking the bruised and cut in her skin, but Terri was only starting to learn to hide how broken she was becoming inside.
"I'm sure Wayne won't find anything then. He must really respect you." She wants to take the words back before they'd finished crossing her lips. She sound reproachful, sneering and sarcastic – she meant it sincerely. Terri's eyes darken and she leans back again, playfulness fading to be replaced with a hardness Deidre knows all too well. She pushed that back as well – for later.
"I'm sorry."
"So am I." Terri's sulking, looking very spoiled but Deidre can see the hurt clearly. For all her light mockery, Deidre knows – knows – how hard lying to Bruce Wayne must be, the guilt she feels every time she leaves to meet her. Bruce does trust her. And Deidre is the worst sort of betrayal. Terri wouldn't get a sharp, teasing remark on the gullibility of having a criminal lover; she'd be lynched from the nearest ledge.
Deidre guessed the idea of losing Bruce's respect and trust would cut far deeper than any Batarang could. She wouldn't know. Her sister wouldn't hurt her like that - oh no, it was for Terri that Deidre worried for. Her sister would take great pleasure in destroying Terri – to get to Deidre, to get to Bruce, because she just could – and the idea of her sadistic sister touching Terri made her...made her...
The glass shattered in her hand.
Terri's had her hand and is examining it before Deidre can do more that blink. "Are you okay?" The worried affection makes up for any cuts and she smiles.
"I'm fine, stop fusing." She gets a glare. Terri's a Bat after all, and Bats never 'fuss'. Yeah right.
Deidre lets Terri fuss because it's nice to not be the one looking after everyone else for a change and Terri's using it to cover up her fears quite nicely. The hand's mostly undamaged – there is no cuts, no blood, no marks of any kind and all too soon Terri letting go of her hand and back in her seat. Deidre's reluctant to let her go.
"You look tired." She notes with concern, the black bags under Terri's eyes too prominent to be properly hidden and her skin is a little paler than usual.
"You look blue." Terri shots back. Fair turn abouts. Deidre's all too aware why Terri's tired and Terri can guess all where Deidre's marks are from. Neither wants to talk about...them, not now, not yet.
They talk about literature instead. Terri doesn't read a lot, never has, but Bruce and School have their own unique ways of forcing books down her throat. Deidre adores reading, especially since her Nana's addiction to paper books. That, ironically, was how they meet – Terri picking up books for her overbearing mentor and Deidre returning and picking up new books. Deidre had handed the mutually desired book over with little difficulty and things had moved from there. Neither could say when they had become friends, or when they become really into each other, or when they realise who the other was. It was simple something they'd always known.
They'd just always known.
Over the course of their conversation they'd moved closer, until their noses were practically touching. They trailed off and moved even closer, when the first scream happens. They were apart quickly enough, both looking rather murderous from being interrupted and if anyone had been looking their way, they would have flinched and left very quickly. But no one was looking at them. The whole crowd had turned to face the door and was backing away, fearful.
Both girls stilled as the glee filled laughter ripped across the room. Terri stood up and Deidre didn't need to ask to know where she was going, she was going to confront the Jokerz. Of course she was, it was part of her suicidal, reckless side that Deidre both relished in and loathed. Why risk your life of the thankless busy-bodies of Gotham? But she never got an answer to the question she was too scared to ask.
So knowing her..."Leave, please." Terri blinks and sends her a rather incredulously look. Deidre's impatient but firm as the cackling gets louder, "I'll make them leave, but please, don't get involved. Delia... don't give her more reasons to go after you." – Please, I can't see you hurt by them, not by my family. Deidre touches her arms careful. Neither girls are overly affectionate with touching. Not because they are hug-feely people but because their far too paranoid – Deidre had long come to associate touch with pain and Terri had be train to treat it as an attack, as a desire to hurt her. Mostly because it was.
Deidre knows just how much it costs Terri to not react when she holds her wrist gently, to not knock her off when the adrenalin's already pumping. What it costs to turn away from a fight, from what her family had drilled into her to stop. She nods slowly, because how many times had she threatened Damian to stay away from the Twins? To not hurt Deidre, at the cost of his trust? How many times had Terri warned Deidre to stay in at nights because she couldn't ensure that her family would beat her to within an inch of her life?
Because Terri knows Deidre will deal with this, like she says she will.
Within seconds she's gone, fading into the crowds and shadows like she'd never even been there. No one notices and if interrogated later, no one would be able to say much about either girls or what they had done or if they had even been near each other.
It hurts to know they couldn't be together, even in a foreign place for fear their families might stumble across them.
But as she stands and squares her shoulder, as she let a rather sadistic, malice filled smile of her own stretch across her face, as she draws all the frustration of a ruined date together, she knows that Terri's more than worth it.
Because even if Deidre would never say it (and she wouldn't hurt Terri like that), she knows, she just knows, she's more than a little infatuated with the Dark Knight herself and very in love with Teresa McGinnis Wayne.
She's just tragic like that. Starcrossed lovers of a far darker variety.
Like? I was considering a full length story...