{the waiflike talon}
-A child destined to be a plaything for men—such a thing has existed; such a thing exists even now-
Gotham City was brimming with thieves and murders and monsters. It was festering from the inside out, bleeding itself dry and choking itself on smog and smoke. And it was dying. Its cracks were gleaming on its surface, and its underbelly was a rotting, stinking corpse that was only just invisible to the naked eye. But it was easy to sniff out the death in Gotham. It was everywhere, and it was watching.
In all honesty, he wished he could go blind. He hated watching. He saw too much, and too much gave him over to the demons lurking inside his mind. Those demons were feathery and black, lulling him, enticing him with sweet, lying memories, and once the demons caught hold of him, they sunk their talons deep into his chest, and refused to let his heart go.
He feared sleep, because he knew that the nightmares were uncontrollable. And they disapproved of the night terrors. What weakness was this? To be scared in slumber was to be a fragile child. He was neither fragile, nor a child. He had been once, though.
He hated to remember. It felt like a lie to recall the sweet crooning of a carnival tune, the wafting scent of popcorn and peanuts resurfacing in his crooked, crooked head. He remembered feeling alive, feeling light and so, so, so happy it hurt. He remembered feeling alive. Now, he wasn't so sure what living was. He remembered people, a man and a woman, and he remembered their touch, gentle and soft and comforting, squeezing and loving. He had long since wiped their faces from his mind. When he remembered them, they were nothing but hazy figures, running fuzzy fingers through his hair, loving him with muffled words and laughter. It all sounded like lies.
His sharpest memories were of when he had first arrived. They'd been relatively kind. At first. They gave him food, a room, some semblance of comfort. They got him to trust them. Love them. And he did. But only after they broke him. And now he could only keep loving them, because he didn't have anything left in him to give. He wanted life, but he'd been dead for a long, long time. And they'd done that to him.
They had pushed him far in his young life. At ten, he'd been forced to complete a labyrinth. Inside the labyrinth were creatures he still could not fathom, and they had gnawed at him, attacking him in the night when he'd been curled in corners, clutching a knife to his chest and praying, and they made off with bits of his flesh, sometimes even bits of bone they'd chewed off, and he could hear their teeth gnashing in the darkness as they fed off him little by little. He recalled slaughtering them eventually, gutting them and using them to feed himself when he'd all but withered from starvation. After that, he'd found himself different. Hardened. He wasn't the same boy who had been ripped away from a circus. He was a monster, a savage that was only concerned with survival. He'd placed himself in a state of mind that forbade him from being weak. And by the time a month had passed, he found another human. He'd been scared then, and when he was scared instinct took over. It had been easy to gut the man. He wasn't fast or strong or anything, but he'd attacked, and retaliation had only been the rational choice. Horror had graced him after looking upon the man's corpse, and he found that he couldn't stand himself anymore. He'd gotten out, but not without losing a bit of himself. After that, they'd made him drink from a fountain that fed black water into an underground stream, and he'd greedily drained the goblet.
He'd grown dizzy. He remembered the feeling. He remembered staring up at them with wide, terrified eyes, and the goblet had slipped from his grasp, bouncing off the hard marble ground. Dark cloud crept at the corners of his vision as his veins pumped poison, and his head was filled with blood and then drained of all weight. He struggled to stay standing, swaying and holding his head in his hands, gaping openly at them.
"What…?" he choked, falling to one knee before them. He genuflected before the Court, and they smiled. "What did I drink…?"
He felt hands on him as his vision went black, and everything in him had left him.
He'd awoken to the demons. He'd awoken to talons. In his ear, in his head, and when he looked in the mirror, he saw the demon staring back with dead blue eyes, inky black feathers falling limply, and talons growing long and lethal. He'd broken that mirror long ago.
To say he was immortal was a lie. True, he could withstand a lot. They'd beaten the willpower out of him when he was eleven, a green boy with dying dreams. They did things to him he still could not stand to think about. There were patches in his memory, and he often prayed that the holes inside his mind would never fill. Else he might truly lose any semblance of sanity he had left.
His training had been rigorous. Every day was a new horror, and every night was a dance with owls. He learned his courtesies. He learned that the Court was like a great mummer's show. He knew how to lie and please and jump when told to do so. It was just another show. Pleasing was second nature for the circus boy. And oh, how he pleased.
By the time he was thirteen, he was Talon. There was no circus boy left, only black feathers, black talons, and a black heart. But perhaps, if he searched himself, he could find fragments of a boy who had loved and loved and loved so much that the world had to rip away everything he loved in order to silence him.
When he was released into the night, that was when he felt the freest— and the least like himself. He ran across rooftops, or sank into alleys, invisible to the world around him. No one thought he existed. He was someone else's nightmare, and that was almost funny. He knew that he was just a legend that people told their kids at night to scare them. It was stupid, but also smart in the oddest of ways. Because they knew of him. They just could not possibly believe he existed. He existed in a nursery rhyme. It was fitting.
Often when he went out to do what he was bid, he saw the great Batman. He sometimes stopped to watch, a trickle of awe sliding down his chest like ice down his throat. He breathed out and in, feeling numb as he wondered and thought and despaired, and then left his mark upon the throat of some poor soul. The Batman didn't know he existed, and it was better that way. But it gave him the strangest pleasure to watch the Bat flit through the night.
We're alike, he thought dazedly, watching the man fight from above. Only… he fights to save people. I fight to kill them.
It made him so sad, he couldn't bear the truth. He didn't want to be this thing, this nursery tale that mothers told their children in the night to keep them from wandering out alone. He didn't want to be a killer, but it was all he was now, and that left him scared and raw and searching. Little things in life made him happy. The distant laughter of children, teenagers, smiles to no one, a dreamless sleep. And watching Batman fly. That was a treat.
He did as they bid him. He never asked questions. At first, it hurt, but only vaguely. He didn't feel much pain anymore. When he killed, there was a twinge, a pinprick of guilt. But he could not be bothered by it. Not when the Court had such high expectations of him.
If he was to say he loved the Court, than it was true. If he was to say the Court loved him, it was only half a lie. They enjoyed him. They thought him amusing, and talented, and they loved what potential he had. They were drunk on the thrill that they had him. He was such a beautiful specimen, wasn't he? They sometimes told him that, petting his hair as they played their intricate roles in manipulating Gotham to their liking. They spoke to him, but he rarely spoke back. He was scared to.
He was theirs. Body and soul, he was the Court's creature, and they did with him as they pleased, sent him out to reap the night, and held him close in their clutches, their eyes always on his back. They owned Dick Grayson. And sure, he loved them.
But love and hate were all the same in the Court of Owls.
Note: Chapter one of Maggie's present is a go. I honestly can't say when (or god forbid if) this story will be finished, but I spent two weeks slaving over this bullshit, so ha ha ha ha ha. Let's see.
I hope you enjoy an insight on how fucked over our first little Robin is. Cred to Victor Hugo for the quotes. The title of the fic comes from: "Why monsters? To laugh at."