So there was this old RP on Tumblr called Poetic Justice. It was basically an evil!YJ team, which was a helluva lot of fun to RP. I was Zatanna, and I had a really cool RP buddy. The thing sorta died, and I left and deleted my account. But I missed the very horrible relationship we created, so I wrote a thing. It was on my email drafts, so it might not be up to par with my usual work, but I think it's decent.
Ownership disclaimed. Dedicated to 13luckywishes on Tumblr (IDK if she's on Fanfiction).
Zatanna idly twirled the gold chain attached to the thick leather collar. The heavy metal refused to break with her charms, no matter which one she attempted. It was frustrating, those first few hours, but by now she had cried her tears dry and tried every spell she could conjure. Nothing could break the chains though; she wasn't in control of that. She tugged at her jacket, shivering slightly. Man, it was cold.
Despite the circumstance of captivity, she still found comfort and beauty in the room around her. The carpet was a lush crimson, soft to the touch like the down of a swan. Four walls rose high, sloping into a spaciously arched ceiling, leaving much room for the draping bolts of silk cloth that dropped and hung in suspension. She herself was tethered to an ornately decorated post, encrusted with precious stones of Earth and other worlds, gilded with gold. The chain was lax enough for her to move about the soft cushions that comprised of her holding pen. She dropped the chain, stretching across the pillows, letting out a pitched sound of comfort. She may be a prisoner, but it was damn comfortable. Under different circumstances, she might actually have preferred it to freedom.
And yet… she hadn't spoken to anyone in a torturously long time. How long had it been, a day? Maybe more? The ornate decor, while pleasing to the eye, was slowly starting to bore her. The spacious ceiling was starting to close in. She was lonely, and though she had pushed back those feelings into the recesses of her conscious mind, she was scared. Terrified, even. But she refused to acknowledge her fear; it wouldn't do her any good to show fear. Besides, Zatanna was sure that was exactly what she wanted her to feel. It was working.
A loud click echoed through the room, signaling the opening of the door. Instinctively, she rushed toward the sound of company, the sound of another beating heart. The gold chain held strong though, choking the beaten magician. She edged closer to her post, tugging at the collar more, breathing in the cool air that filled the capacity of the room. Slowly, the heavy door pushed open, revealing her captor, her master.
The first thing that caught anyone's eye was the skin. Smooth, flawless but for a smattering of carefully placed freckles, a creamy shade of peach, so normal yet so captivating. So delicate, so fragile, much like the mask that restrained the monster within, the monster Zatanna had spent so long trying to ignore, the monster now threatening to consume her whole.
Zatanna ignored the regal garb, the glittery jewels that bedecked her monster—master's neck and arms, choosing instead to focus on those honey-colored eyes. The solid amber eyes were as cold as the stone similar in color, equally unfeeling and unwavering. Those eyes glanced the room with a hard glare, finally resting on Zatanna. She sat rigidly on the cushions, waiting as Megan—no, that monster M'gann—glided toward her.
"Comfortable, my pet?" Her voice cut into Zatanna's inner mind, echoing with a hard reverb. The words bounced around in her head, as if uttered in a spacious cavern.
"Hardly," Zatanna spat back. Broken as she was, lonely as she was, desperate as she was, she would not submit to this hideous facade of her friend—nay, her lover even. This wasn't the Megan she had fallen in love with, trusted on a different level than the rest of the world. This was… this was… an aberration. A freak of nature.
The real Megan: M'gann. But she'd never admit that, not even to herself, that she fell for another lie, that she was so easily deluded.
"Don't be such a downer," M'gann insisted. "Chin up, and give a good show. Maybe good behavior will earn you some company." Her voice was so upbeat, her smile so sincere, so very much like the Megan of memories past. But Zatanna knew better than to embrace the monster in a princess's skin.
"Let me go," Zatanna pleaded. "This isn't fair."
"Oh, Zatanna, who ever said life was fair?" The smile accompanied with the bitter truth was sickeningly saccharine, a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. Zatanna wanted to throw up.
"You have no right to keep me prisoner. Let me go, Martian." And for a moment, the facade broke. The sugary condescension was replaced by cold fury. For a moment, Zatanna thought that M'gann would actually kill her. She clenched her jaw, steeling herself to the prospect of mortality. At that point, it would have been worth it. But M'gann's face reverted to the forced sweetness.
"Why would you ever want to leave? Here, you're safe. Loved. Wanted." Zatanna was ready to protest, but she continued. "Out there, you're just a spare part, an extra wheel on a well-functioning machine. In here, I can protect you. I can keep you safe."
"This isn't love," Zatanna insisted. Her body was trembling from both anger and fear. She didn't want to admit that M'gann's words held any inkling of truth, but the rational part of her brain said otherwise. No matter how many welcoming words they have, no matter how much platitude they laid on her, Zatanna still felt like an outsider. The group was so close knit in an incredibly dysfunctional way: Robin and Kid Flash were practically married, and Artemis had a strange… something with Superboy and Aqualad. The only one who even remotely connected to her was M'gann—Megan. That's probably why she fell so hard for the initially bouncy redhead. She had a shitty life before stumbling across the Team; her skewed view of love condemned her to this misery. "M'gann, please."
Her face changed into a look of cold fury. She clenched Zatanna's face in her hand, forcing her cyan eyes to meet her own amber eyes. To the usually independent girl, it felt like total captivity. "I've had it with your protests, insolent girl." Her voice was forced through clenched teeth, a threatening his. "You need to learn your place. I can break you, and you don't want to see that happen, now do you?"
She roughly released the girl's face. Zatanna gingerly felt her jaw, flinching at the bruises welling on her cheeks. M'gann surveyed the magician, eyes resting on the dark bruises in the creamy white skin. "See what happens when you disobey me?" Zatanna raised her eyes, blue for burning with unabashed hatred despite the softness of her tone.
"You're a monster," she whispered contemptuously. M'gann grinned in response.
"But isn't this better? Why do you want your freedom out there? There is nothing left for you beyond these walls. Or do you not remember?"
Suddenly, she was falling. The room spun around her, shifting from the ornate decor. She felt her stomach fall to the soles of her feet, and a wave of nausea rides over. Suddenly, she hit the ground hard. She heaved, but nothing came up, for this was Reality, and in Reality she hadn't eaten in nearly three days. Slowly, the vertigo faded, and her surroundings became clearer. The floor was grimy under her even grimier hands. Her clothes were tattered, giving her little protection to the frigid air. Her skin felt sticky, her hair matted, and she felt empty.
"Where am I?"
"Shut up, bitch."
"Rude."
"You're in prison, Zatanna."
"Yeah, I sorta got that. Why?"
"Don't you remember? We got caught." And she did, but she didn't want to remember. The night was coming back vividly, invading every sense as she relived the memories. "They stormed the base. The damned Justice League found us. They got Robin first—"
"Yeah, I remember."
"—snapped his neck like a splinter. Then they got Aqualad and torched him. It was awful, smelled like barbecue."
"I remember. You can stop."
"Then Artemis," she continued almost gleefully. "Oh man, her blood went everywhere when they—"
"I said stop!"
"Bitch, I said keep your mouth shut!"
Zatanna turned furiously to the guard. "EKOHC dna eid!" Her eyes flashed gold, and suddenly the guard dropped, pawing at this throat. He started coughing, as if trying to dislodge a large bit of food in the wrong pipe, but Zatanna knew better. He would be dead, and she would be in a shit ton of trouble.
"Megan! Take me back. I don't want to exist here anymore; I can't." Zatanna pounded against the walls, clawing at the grimy walls with ragged fingernails.
"Hmmm, I don't know, pet. Maybe I don't want a rebellious little magician anymore." And suddenly, Zatanna was back in her own head, changed to the emptiness with nothing at all, but the weight pressed heavily against her skin. M'gann stood over her, tilting Zatanna's chin up at her face, her mouth comforted in a sadistic grin at the magician's humiliation.
Zatanna felt a sharp pain in her lower back. She flashed back into Reality as the illusion dissolved. The other guards were now in her cell, beating her for killing their partner. She let out a cry and closed her eyes, giving herself back to the black nothingness, where M'gann stood waiting.
"Please," she begged. M'gann tilted her head as if deliberating the matter, even though her face showed that she had made her decision.
Suddenly, she was back in the ornate room, chained down with the golden chain. She was sunk to get knees, her clothes whole and clean. Megan was sitting behind her, smoothing a silk pillowcase.
"Now there's a good girl," she condescended. She got up, running her hands through Zatanna's hair. "I don't like having to hurt you." Lie, filthy liar. "Megan will be back soon." And with that, she left, disappearing from behind her. With her captor—savior?—gone, she collapsed into the pillows, bring her face and blacking out her vision. She didn't feel contempt or hatred out oppression anymore; on the contrary, she felt nothing. It was better that way, facing the world with apathy. Maybe for once, she could deny her weaknesses, her self-hatred. She had been wrong: there was no good or bad, only power. And she had none of that.
Welp, back to all my dark glory of writing. Does this have a ship name? It needs one, because I want to write more.