Traveling through the means of shadow was not usually so disorientating. This was not his first time melting into someone else's shadow and using it to get somewhere fast. His mother used such methods to escort him to places when he was younger and had little control over his power. This time, however? He was no child. He needn't be escorted like a mother holding her child's hand to make sure they crossed the street safely. What's more is that he had even less need for the same mother that holds her child's hand to pick up her child, throw it into the middle of the road, and rejoice in his ultimate demise. That is what his mother plans to do. She no longer has his welfare in mind.
Damian can only see darkness but he can feel the wind. They're both outside now. Damian has no idea on how Grayson or Jason are feeling about this, but Damian knows how he feels about this. He feels a deep, aching, pain. An empty hole drills into his chest and fills up with a void matter in an attempt to cover the missing pact. It had stayed with him so long that it had, at one point, become a part of him. Now that it was gone, his body was trying to compensate. Damian doesn't know if his mother truly understood the implications of tearing away a bond so forcefully and drastically. It was an invasive move that left Damian feeling like he was left stripped of his strength.
Damian feels an abrupt stop.
He feared that when he was to be released to the chills of Gotham air, he would face his grandfather.
He was wrong.
Damian is thrown out of the shadow like a stomach full of food. He gasps for air, clutching at where his heart laid, and he slightly curls on the cold concrete of wherever this place was. It takes a moment for the static in his hearing to disappear and then he hears his mother growling like a rabid animal. She's upset and Damian thinks, ' good.' He was upset too. She might as well suffer with him.
Damian thinks of moving but his muscles were aching as if he'd just gone through a nonstop thirty-minute exercise without stretching. Everything was stiff and cramped up. It was amazing what a stupid, broken pact could do to a person. Damian wasn't sure he'd ever want to make a pact with anyone after this, not that he'd ever considered it (but still…). It was jarring that his mother had broken something that was apart of him so quickly, effortlessly, with no hesitation. Now Damian couldn't feel what Grayson was feeling, which was something that had come so naturally to him that he hadn't even thought about not understanding how his brother was feeling. He was also used to having his emotions laid bare to his older brother, but now the pact that they had built up was gone. Gone in a second.
"You vile being!" His mother's shout snaps him out of his painful thinking. He tries to move his head but his stiff neck makes it nearly impossible. He feels like a wooden puppet with limited movement and joints that needed improving. "You interrupt the good future for all! Including lowly beings such as you!"
One thing brings him hope. He's not with his grandfather. If he was, his mother would be speaking very differently. He is thankful to whoever had managed to stop his mother from traveling straight to his grandfather. Otherwise, he'd have no doubt that he'd end up a wandering spirit with no body to possess. He'd have to watch vengefully from beyond the grave as his grandfather paraded around in his body as if it were his own. Just like how it was in the realm of his ancestors with that scene he had witnessed of his grandfather peering down a Gotham building to see all those that littered the streets. That might just actually become reality now, with how Damian could barely defend himself, and with how his mother was eager to hand him over.
"What kind of mother offers their son freely to die?"
Cheshire. What was she doing here…? How did she…?
"What do you know of motherhood, filthy succubus?!"
"More than you," Cheshire taunts.
"How about we don't provoke the scary shadow-lady?" Another voice appears, teasing.
"Another germ to be wiped," Talia's voice is dipped in distaste as she verbally notes whoever the extra voice belonged to.
Damian doesn't know what happens next. His mother must have attacked them because he hears grunts and his mother's shriek. He also hears the sound of shoes on concrete, fists meeting skin, and bodies hitting the ground only to get back up to continue whatever it is they were doing. Damian would just give about anything (except for his body!) to see what was going on, but for now, he was victim to the after-effects of a ruined pact.
Damian settles for squeezing his eyes shut.
"You aren't the only one who can use the shadows!" The extra voice cries out.
"Your control over the shadows is pathetic. All you can do is use them to phase from one place to another!" Talia seethes.
Someone grabs him.
Damian's eyes shoot open as someone turns him over.
Cheshire hovers over him. She checks him for any visible injuries before settling on his face. She smiles, and says reassuringly, "I knew something might go wrong. Guess it's a good thing I listen to my instincts. Don't you agree, little prince?"
Damian moves his lips, struggling to muster any words. Once Cheshire gets the gist of Damian's inability to speak, she nods briefly and looks over to her companion's battle with his mother.
Damian wanted to ask, ' Why are you helping me?' because she owes him nothing. What was she to lose if an eternal night were to cover the world? She was a creature of the night too.
"Okay. Well, I'm going to carry you now."
Damian feels himself being lifted up off of the ground by Cheshire. It was not an ideal position for him to be in, but he couldn't exactly complain. He'd have time to complain when he could move and act for himself. Right now? Right now he was quite vulnerable and dependent. He was relying on Cheshire.
"You really think you can fight me?" Damian hears the other voice ring out in mockery. "You're not exactly in optimal form. Where's the real Talia? That's a real fight."
Damian's mind goes blank. Real Talia? He had the nudge earlier that this person wasn't his mother, but now that Damian thought about it… His mother had never been able to become a shadow. Why hadn't that been the first thing that popped up in his head? The Al Ghuls couldn't become shadows. Yes, they could command them as servants, and yes they could travel through them. (In Damian's special case, create objects out of them) Either this shadow was merely imitating his mother or… or something else entirely. It acted too much like his mother even if it wasn't her.
Oh.
Oh.
Revelation dawns upon him.
It was when he first met Jason. It was that day that Damian had learned that his shadow had not been his own. Later, from his mother, he would learn that the shadow that had been acting as his was merely a fragment his mother fused with him upon birth. Could that mean that the shadow that was fighting their mysterious companion was the same shadow that had left him that day that Jason cast it out of him? Even so, shouldn't it have gone straight back to his mother?
Ah. But Damian recalls his mother never mentioned the return of her shadow. All she did was explain its purpose to him.
His mother's shadow screeches angrily like a harpy. Damian feels the shadows around him tremble in anticipation before something bursts inside of him. Damian is so shocked that a little gasp escapes his mouth because he had no idea why the hell he'd feel like a connection had been snapped.
"Finished her off," the voice says proudly.
"Good work," Cheshire praises.
Had his mother's shadow not been cast out of him that day? He was certain it had been! Why did he feel as if though a lingering wisp of his mother had still been within him, only snapping once the shadow was gone?
That would explain how his mother's shadow was able to slip through the wards though. If it still was connected to him, if he still owned it in some way, that would have given the shadow the perfect opportunity to track him down just as his mother claimed she could do when he still had her shadow.
"So this is the little guy, huh?"
A face appears in view. Damian sees a round face with blonde hair bundled up in a purple hood. When she notices him staring at her features, she gives him the smallest of grins. Damian's eyes narrow on her fangs and then he begins to have a good guess of the person who had defeated his mother's shadow.
Wait a second… How? How did she defeat his mother's shadow?
Damian didn't know much about vampires. He knew that they lurked in the shadows, that they were creatures of the night, and that they were blood-suckers. He had never learned anything beyond that. Vampires were secretive creatures because of how shunned they were by modern society. It also didn't help that they couldn't exactly wander around in the sun without wearing hooded, dark, clothes.
"The name is Stephenie. Maybe you've heard of me?" She asks, hopefully.
Yes. He had.
Stephanie waits for an answer but she does not receive one. She looks up to Cheshire for her input in the manner and the former assassin shrugs. "He can't exactly move. I don't think he can talk."
"Why's that?"
"I don't know," Cheshire tells her honestly.
Stephanie tries a different approach. "Well, what next?"
Cheshire falls silent in her sudden mulling. Once it seems that she has gathered her thoughts, she says carefully, "I think I can help Damian get some of his strength back, so that we can hear what's happened to him. That, though, would require a transfer of energy."
"How can you even transfer energy?" Stephanie asks, perplexed.
"I'm a half-succubus," Cheshire answers as if that is all that Stephanie needs to hear. She tops her point by continuing, "We excel at exchanging energy, or uh… well… mostly taking it… but still. It's possible."
Stephanie gives Cheshire a skeptical look.
"It'll be temporary. I think it'll only last for an hour or two at most."
"I'm not sure about this…" Stephanie expresses her doubts.
"It'll be fine, " Cheshire assures with a giant grin. She then looks down at Damian, concentrating. Damian knows that he's in for it once a deep red starts escaping the prison of her skin. The energy shoots at him in straight lines and then tie around him like a rope. He can feel their constricting pressure like a snake wrapped around its prey until the energy squeeze through the protection of his skin. Damian can feel the hole in his body, that had been formed from the cutting of his shared pact with Grayson, being filled up with Cheshire's borrowed energy.
His first words are, as expected, "Put me down!"
Cheshire smiles in her humor and gives in to his demand. She lowers him to the ground where he jumps out of her arms eagerly. He hoped that he would not have to repeat such an experience in the near future. Regardless, Damian starts explaining the situation to the two staring at him immediately, saying, "I was kidnapped from the manor. I was to be taken to my grandfather to be sacrificed."
"Hmm," Cheshire hums thoughtfully, "I thought as much."
"It's a good thing we were here then," Stephanie says in her relief. "We spotted Ra's not too long ago on the roof of the nearby hospital. It's not too far from here."
Damian turns his eyes to Cheshire. His eyes alone seem to communicate the silent words that flow between them. Cheshire only returns his stare ten-fold, not blinking once until she heaves out a sigh. "You're not exactly in the ideal form for fighting right now. Besides, if Ra's gets his hands on you, it's all over."
"I must put an end to this once and for all," Damian tells her.
He wants to do this.
He didn't want his family to worry about him anymore. He also didn't want to worry about Ra's either. He didn't want Ra's to involve any of his siblings in his evil doings, and Damian knew that the only way to do that was to end his grandfather once and for all. Damian didn't know how he was going to do it. All he knew that he was going to get rid of his grandfather and ultimately stop this nefarious plot.
"Wait a second," Stephanie says, catching on quickly, "you need to go back to the manor. Let The Patrol handle Ra's."
Damian furrows his brows. "You think any of them can have any kind of success when they can't even touch what they fight?" His mind lingers on how his brother's bullets went right through his mother's shadow and how Grayson could no longer harm the shadows once his pact with Damian had been broken. The only ones who ever seemed to be able to harm the shadows were Tim and Cheshire. Cheshire's energy had only temporarily dispersed the shadows she fought, and Tim's magical energy (whatever that was) had caused the shadows around him to quiver in fear. Damian only knows this because he had seen them both fight when they had rescued him from his grandfather's league headquarters.
There was one thing he knew even after considering the two others that had the potential to do any damage.
He was the only one who could do this.
"That still doesn't mean you should throw yourself in harm's way , " Stephanie stresses.
"He will not have me," Damian says with certainty.
Cheshire is silent in her contemplation. Those around her wait patiently for her input until she says, "Well, little prince, if you really think you can take him on…"
"What!? Don't encourage him!" Stephanie disagrees with Cheshire's assessment entirely. It was clear that the vampire thought that this was some cruel version of a joke. "Ra's is highly skilled! Even Bruce has had trouble fighting him!"
Cheshire regards Stephanie cooly. "Bruce could fight Ra's because of the abilities of his people. Damian shares those same abilities."
"But he does not share the experience," Stephanie points out.
Cheshire blinks. "But yet he knows Ra's fighting style better than any of those who stand here among us. He's grown up with him."
"He's a child!"
"You were one too," Cheshire teases.
"Yes! And I was a rather foolish one at that!"
"And you would falsely assume the same in Damian's case? He is not you. "
Stephanie's shoulders slump once she realizes that she won't be able to get through Cheshire. She then reluctantly turns to where she believes Damian to be standing only to stumble back in surprise. He wasn't there.
"Looks like he got a head start," Cheshire laughs.
Stephanie can hardly breathe. This was no laughing matter.
"I'd suggest you go ahead and warn the others in the manor. I'll follow the little prince."
