Prompt: ( 93MANIAC ) Okay what do you think about writing a story where Inque wants to get revenge on her back stabbing daughter Deanna Clay ?
A/N: This was an interesting prompt and it really got me to think about one of my favorite villains from Batman Beyond in new and exciting ways so I must thank you for the prompt! Hopefully it was worth the wait.
Batman and related properties © DC Comics
story © RenaRoo
A Mother's Scorn
It started simply enough. It started with a letter.
Deanna stared at it, surprised by the color of the envelope when all the others – bills, mortgage payments, so on – were white. The envelope was black with her name written in whiteout. There was no return address.
Physical mail was something of a rarity by that time, especially in a city as industrialized as Neo-Gotham. But it had its purposes. Manual delivery was a last resort for credit collectors and the government. There were still letters sent out for jury duty and anything of considerable importance.
Ultimately, though, physical mail was an extra effort that meant something of seriousness on the behalf of the sender.
It meant that their dedication to the task was, if nothing else, intimidating.
Somehow, Deanna managed to not rip open the black envelope immediately. She first dropped the other, regular mail into the street, littering the front of her apartment building to the disgust of the bellhop.
Chewing on her lip, Deanna turned the envelope over.
"Ma'am?" the bellhop said irritably.
"I want this sent back," Deanna announced, shoving the letter back into his hand. "Send it all back."
She hurried toward the entrance of the building, tightening her coat around her.
"It doesn't have a return address–" he began to say just before he let out a scream.
Turning, though instinctually she knew what was behind her, Deanna saw for herself that the black envelope had morphed into this formless being, the white of her name forming a single, angry eye upon its flat, mannequin like face.
Screaming, Deanna rushed inside and pulled the glass doors shut behind her, knowing that the cracks were more than enough to allow Inque through. To allow her mother through.
But as she fell backwards, facing the outside, Deanna locked eyes with her mother, if only for an instant. Then she watched as Inque took off in another direction entirely.
She had wanted inside. Wanted into Deanna's home.
Terror overtook Deanna and she curled into her knees, face buried against her high end leggings as the world rushed around her, as the management put a blanket around her shoulders and called for the police.
A sighting like Inque meant the Commissioner herself came to the scene. But as she walked toward Deanna, something snapped within the young woman and she looked up through her tears, allowing Gordon to see her full rage.
"You can get a hold of Batman, can't you?" she asked directly. "Tell him I need him."
"It doesn't work that way, Miss Clay," Commissioner Gordon said thinly, straightening her glasses.
"Then make it work that way," Deanna demanded. "Because if you don't, I'm dead, and everyone listening in this lobby is going to know it's because of you, Commissioner."
Gordon narrowed her eyes, but Deanna could tell. She knew that Deanna was right.
Standing alone on the top of the GCPD skyscraper was windy and chilling to the bone. Deanna wasn't really sure what she had expected – company? Definitely not the trust of the commissioner to leave her unabided.
Not with Inque hunting for her.
But then, she supposed, she wasn't supposed to be alone for long.
"Guess you didn't get as rid of your mother as you had hoped," Batman's growling voice called from behind her.
Deanna turned but she didn't see him, not until he uncloaked himself, and even then he was sticking to the shadows even as he clung unnaturally to the wall. The red of the symbol on his chest was only detracted from by the ferocity of those white eyes glaring at her.
"I warned you about this," he reminded her.
"I know," she said, stepping toward him. "But now she's back. She's back and she's going to want me dead for what I've done. And no one can help me."
"You're right," he said. "Making this a waste of my time."
To her shock and horror, he began to turn to leave. She just couldn't let him do that. She dove forward and grabbed onto his bicep, willing to hold onto him even if he took off into the air.
"I can make it worth your while!" she informed him. "I have money! I have things–"
He gave her an even more daunting glare than before. "You're not very familiar with the concept of superheroes are you?" he asked darkly.
"What? Someone's got to pay for all that fancy tech of yours," she accused.
"You're right," he said, pulling his arm from her grip before she could even react. "Not you."
Grabbing her hair, Deanna's eyes began to fill with tears. "You're going to let me die! You're going to let a wanted fugitive kill me. And all because you think it's some perverse justice!"
"As I recall, you killed your mother in cold blood," Batman spat back. "Despite my attempts to take her in alive. Remind me where the justice was in that situation? You cut quite the check after you got Inque out of the picture. Makes me want to mention it to the Commissioner. Might not be her jurisdiction, but she's married to a district attorney, and from my understanding has at least a few friends in white collar crimes. It'd be interesting to see just how clean those checks were. Especially if they came from your mother's accounts."
She could hardly believe her own ears as she watched the legendary Batman turn his back to her once again.
"That's it then? You'll turn me away because my past mistakes apparently negate any worth my life may have!?" she cried out, distress ringing in her every syllable. "I'm going to die! You know I'm going to die! And that blood will be on your hands! And everyone will know it's because the high and mighty Batman played judge, jury, and executioner by proxy!"
Seemingly having a nerve struck, Batman turned sharply to face down Deanna again. "Your guilt trips don't work on me, Miss Clay. Because I know that the blame you're spreading is just a symptom of a life lived blaming absolutely everyone but yourself for the things that happen to you."
Deanna did not back down, even with Batman himself in her face. "How dare you judge me," she seethed. "From the moment I was bon, I was shoved off as other people's problems. My so-called mother sent money to people to take care of me without ever doing so herself. Of course it's everyone else's problems if they don't like the way I turned out. They never stepped up to take responsibility before now."
If the Batman was moved by her claims, he didn't let it on, quickly turning away and taking off for the shadows again.
"Don't contact me again, Miss Clay. And don't abuse my connections with the GCPD to do so. It won't work again," he warned before taking off.
With her fists clenched, Deanna watched him leave her to face insurmountable danger. Just like everyone ultimately did in her life.
She wasn't sure why she had expected different.
She spent most of her time inside her condo after that. The lights were blaring twenty-four seven, not that she would have gotten any sleep even if they hadn't.
Deanna Clay knew she was a dead woman. And she knew to watch the shadows if she wanted to see that death coming.
So she sat, curled into her knees, on the couch in her living room for what felt like days, watching the time on the clock across the room change .
At very last, apparently her mother lost her patience.
"I've thought of this encounter, what would go into it, for many months," Inque's sultry voice said as she slipped out from under the door and began to take her more humanlike form. The one with a face that could look at Deanna with utter disappointment. "How could I rip out the heart in your chest the way you did me, when you chose a paltry sum over your own flesh and blood."
"You don't even have those anymore," Deanna said defiantly, even as she curled in tighter. "And you've had nothing to do with me for as long as I've been able to live and breathe. You act like I'm in debt to you. I don't even know you."
Inque's eyes narrowed. "Perhaps," she said, walking closer. "But to my displeasure, I have spent the last few months getting to know you. I needed to know what you cared about, Deanna. I needed to know what you loved and know how to rip it from you that way you could even nominally know what I suffered at your hands with your betrayal. No mother would plot and dream and scheme the things I had in store for you… before I got to know you."
"Just do it, just kill me," Deanna sobbed. "I can't live this way anymore."
"Oh, dear child," Inque said, slithering closer, sliding a malformed hand across Deanna's cheek. "Before, in my anger, I might have. Retaliation, revenge… they were all so strong before I watched and I saw… Deanna Clay, you are no one. You have no one. You have nothing. You have no love in your heart, and that is why you could turn on your own mother."
"And who did I learn that from?" Deanna asked viciously.
"We all made our mistakes. We all have our retribution," Inque said before walking back to the door and opening it.
Deanna nearly fell off her couch as she saw that it was Batman on the other side, standing there looking angry and uninvolved. "What is this? What's going on!?"
"Here," Inque said, holding up a drive. "This will have everything. Every account, every source of it. And a dossier of what she has spent them on since then. I'm sure that's more than enough for your friends in the police."
Batman took the drive and briefly looked toward Inque. "You realize that this will most likely put your daughter away, Inque. She'll go to jail if these prove that she knew, for certain, what bank accounts you gave her and how they were stealing from corporations."
"Perhaps or perhaps not," Inque answered. "She may just blame me. But the important thing is, I just made sure she can use none of that money ever again. And proved to her that at her worst times of crisis, she has no one else to turn to." She looked back and Deanna felt her blood run cold. "The only way to attack her heart, is to take the only thing she's ever been taught to love."
"How can you do this? How can you be such a monster!? How can you come into my life just to ruin it again and again!?" Deanna screamed at her, sitting on her knees.
"Because we made each other this way, daughter," Inque answered. "Because it's the only nature we have."
And like that, Deanna no longer feared death, but knew she had still lost her life.