DISCLAIMER: I do not own Batman. Only Athena and characters such as Sage, or whoever I add to this narrative.

Nine:

The Awakening

It was ironic that, for once, she dreamed. As she drifted through the unwaking world, she encountered not one nightmare—no, the light of her mind had chased those away—she saw lands of milk and honey, cotton candy pink clouds that rained sugar water, a Gotham brought about by the more benevolent Gods who wished of prosperity.

With the reign of terror now over, Arkham held no place and The Batman was no longer needed, instead, Bruce Wayne came home to his wife and children after work.

Everyone would be here, together. But, where was Richard? Arriving late from Bludhaven, maybe. He would get here soon.

They would play games and eat together in the dining room, the chandelier dangling over them, encircled with candles, who's fire would dance as they laughed at stories told by a man, just a man, who never realized how much he hated the workplace.

When dinner was over, they would thank Alfred once again for being the butler they never deserved, the family would retire and go their separate ways.

Mother and Father would head off, Tim and Steph would stay the night, Jason would have come home, and he would just as quickly go off to the porch to smoke a brooding cigarette. Damian would pester father about staying up an extra hour to finish his match of League of Legends, while Barbara would sit in front of the homely fireplace, the apple red hues of her hair challenging the element it resembled most, all the while bonding with Cassandra, with the crackling of the embers being their only form of communication.

Athena, she would be wrapped in the lean arms of her love, as they gazed at the clear night sky, full of twinkling stars made of diamonds, while he alone-was hers.

Subconsciously, she would rest her head on his chest. A sweet gesture, after all of this, one that filled her with warmth and unconditional love, everlasting. Fluttering her eyes closed, in pure bliss as he softly kissed her on the forehead, just at the edge of her scalp.

Athena could not see his features—it all came in a blurr—although she was guided to security with his calming words, yet he didn't speak them. It was more of an empathetic connection that they had, similar what she had with her felines.

"It's over now, Owlie. Malice is gone, you don't have to worry anymore," he chuckled, a glee sound, "What'd I tell ya?"

The words, to which she nodded, humming to the rhythm of his heart. They were happy, all of them, and it was everything Athena had wished for, the stars had painted her a sweet life, one they could all enjoy.

And, like the paint being washed from a canvas, it all disappeared.

. . .

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Darkness enveloped her, lids remained closed as the signals her brain sent to her limbs failed to reach them. Quicksand sucked her body into its soft contents, soft like that of a cloud. Mumbles came from her lips, as she rolled her head to the side, making her brain rattle inside of its foggy cave.

With a low groan and eyelids half open now, a blinding white light made her close them rather quickly. Death? No. Not yet.

A distance away, voices floated toward her. Hushed. One baritone, while the other was a calming tenor. Fading in and out, depending on when the sharp ringing began.

"Thank you for being here when I couldn't, Tim."

"You know you don't have to thank me. I'm glad I got here when i did, too. She was in pretty bad shape."

For a minute, her hearing was cut off, the beeping stopped and the whir from the fan was put to rest.

"Damian said when he got to her, she was lying on the floor unconscious. Barely breathing."

"What was she doing in the Batcave?"

"Damian wouldn't tell me, but, the computer was broken when I got here."

"It's-"

Then, they stopped talking. The more serious man cut himself off.

Slowly, but surely, Athena blinked her eyes open, welcomed by a machine with a long, silver pole, at the tip of it, a bag filled with clear liquid swung back and forth. Her head rolled to the other side, a dead-like movement, finding an open doorway. Another groan, this time louder.

As she nodded off, her eyes opened again, this time to see a man walk in, titted with suit and tie, another followed him, his clone. Both having slick black hair and blue eyes the color of ice.

"Athena, how are you?" The man with the suit asked, getting closest to her, while the other disappeared to her other side.

A wide smile pulled the corners of her mouth, the man looked awfully familiar, an image came to mind, a bat-like a vampire! "Bleh, bleh, bleh," she muttered, as her eyes began to drop halfway.

The man furrowed a brow seconds before nodding, looking down with a huff, his own lips started to grow into a smile. He looked so happy, yet he tried to hide it! Pulling his arm to his mouth, it muffled his speech. "That is right, it is I, Lord Dracula," his voice becoming thick with some sort of accent, "your father who has come to save you!"

Her mouth dropped wide as the vampire spoke, he must have been masking his voice this entire time. "Save me?" she rasped.

Nodding, he continued, "with the blood of a vampire, you shall be healed of all your wounds."

"Blood?" she whispered, before many, many things began to spin. A hacking cough rattled her bones and shook the soft pillow of quicksand, her stomach twisted with every cough and the last sight she saw was something that looked like cherry juice on the floor below.

When Athena came to, she wanted nothing more than to brush away the blood and pain with the scent of mint. The heaviness of her own head on her shoulders made it tilt forward until she forced it back against what seemed to be a hospital bed. But, she was in no hospital. The stalagmites and cold air drifting in through the glass doors, told her otherwise.

"You're awake," a voice sounded within the makeshift hospital, as he walked from the far end of the room with a needle, which he injected into the bag of fluids.

Awake was an overstatement, when she felt as though her body was only floating through space, all the while her soul was bound to the bed. The medications fought with the blood in her veins, willing her to sleep. She sat straight up, with her eyes wide open.

"Mind telling me what happened?" He pulled up a chair, taking a hard seat.

The question prodded at her, itself. The doLunasage hit her like a passing train, halting any stomach pains beginning to brew. It clouded her mind, a fog in a bayou of dark waters untouched and preventing her from thinking straight, but it did not erase her feelings.

Inside her, as dad spoke, everything remained still, like a storm had brewed and then simply passed, leaving destruction and misery in its wake. Or, like a child had been silenced as they screamed bloody murder, or maybe it was just, no one had decided to listen. Ah, she was rambling.

On the tip of her tongue, was-something. Not the answer her father wanted, but a personal truth that she had yet to discover, or one that she already had discovered, it just got snatched away from her. Within the stillness, the medicine flowed deeper into her internal core, only to be boiled to evaporation. Within her, a beast told her to clench her fists and scream until her lungs gave out, it told her to fight. Be it her father or Malice.

"I don't know, dad." Athena said, staring at the crumbled whites of the blankets, her own voice fell flat.

The chair squeaked and then he spoke. "You must've hit your head when you fainted," he said, "you've been under for six hours, but we have you stabilized." Dad let out a sigh, putting a hand on her shoulder and giving it a gentle squeeze. "You're going to be alright, Thena."

She turned to look at him, the salt and pepper stubble against his face made him appear old, dare she say worn and worried. The suit looked just as, with the maroon tie pulled down and the coat unbuttoned. If she had fainted, Alfred more than likely told him and she felt bad for the poor driver who was unlucky enough to have to bring him back here. Still, eyes made of ice from the atlantic observed her more like a specimen than anything else. An intense gaze, that would surely send anyone overboard.

"I… fainted? Why am I not in a hospital? A real hospital?" A throbbing at her temples nearly cut her off, but she simply placed a finger in its place.

"That would raise too many questions. Not only did you have internal bleeding, but the levels of radiation emitting from your body were beyond the normal levels you should be capable of," he stopped, gaze moving elsewhere, before he looked back to her, features all but still the same. "I'm not taking the chance of them doing something to you."

There was a second when he didn't look at her, comparable to when someone writes a letter and you can see the blot of ink where they've stopped to think, stopped to lie. Sizzling within her veins, pushing back against the medication which further tried to enter, the fog lifted and with much trepidation… she dove into those dark, unknown waters. Her pores closed at the sudden drop of temperature. The water rushed into any and every crevice it could reach, burning her nostrils, sloshing inside of her ears and drowning her lungs. Through the torment Athena was put through, she remembered. And, that beast, did as well.

"What was that?" A certain tone, grounded instead of rasping, as if she had gotten her fill of fluids from the drink.

Dad, he only raised a brow, keeping silent.

Athena repeated herself.

"The expression you made. The one that looked like you weren't telling me something." She bit back on her anger, it was such a sudden emotion, one that didn't plague her that often and she now understood why she hated it. Not only did she remember what happened as she fainted, she remembered the things she learned prior to that. The hidden file. Those entries, the fact that he kept something from her that could have helped, oh! How she wanted to tell him off, still, underneath all the anger, there was something missing. Of course- there was always something.

"Dad," Athena made direct eye contact with him, tilting her head down, as one would if they were a librarian with glasses, "don't lie to me." And, just as her edge grew to to the tip, it all collapsed into hurt. "Please."

Shifting his position, he looked away, resting his fingers across his mouth, as his hand supported his head. Noticeably, his body tensed, he allowed it to do that, or maybe he simply couldn't hold up the guise any longer. "You're healing. I don't want anything getting in the way of that." The words came out low, but clear.

"And what about what I want? Ever thought of that?"

Athena's words made him meet her gaze, as he leaned forward. "I always think about what you want."

"So then stop making decisions for me and tell me what the hell's going on." She stopped herself from clenching her jaw, "everything."

Clearing his throat, blue matched blue, while she was the sky and he was an iceberg out at sea, still, his gaze melted before her and she was thrown down memory lane once again, regardless to how she pushed it away. Were they even memories though? Thirteen years of her life had been condensed to measly thirteen months, and what could actually happen in thirteen months? Were they even real? Would they all crash down around her eventually, once the curtain lifted and he revealed the truth?

The lines forming on his face showed a great decision had been made. "If doctors saw that you miraculously recovered from internal rupture, not only would word get out about you being a meta, but that information might get into the wrong hands."

Searching his face, she could always tell when he lied. It was something that came natural for her father, something that one might not notice. She could take one look into the frigid things and know, like an innate connection only a dynamic duo could have. But, today, there was sincerity, down to the tone of his voice.

Athena let go of a breath she hadn't known she was holding in. "Miraculously?"

Dad seldom blinked, as he spoke it appeared as if he was removing a heavy weight off his chest. "I'm almost certain it has to do with your metagene."

Although he spoke freely, Dad didn't really go on to explain anything else, anything she was hoping for. Athena turned away, eyes testing on the cluster of pills, closed needles and IV bags, the scramble to get her back to safety. For a second, she wished she had gotten amnesia from her fall, as she closed her eyes, attempting to halt the watery sensation developing behind her lids.

Sometimes the brain was a mysterious thing, at one hint of trauma, it would erase everything, if only that was her case. If she had gotten amnesia she could have forgotten, forgotten about what she found, with only small proddings whenever she snuck onto the Batcomputer again.

Athena was either too stubborn to bring up the topic again or was silently giving him another chance.

Everything led to another, like a butterfly effect, the choices people make affect those around them, whether small or large, positive or negative. Dad was the largest butterfly in her garden and she couldn't bring herself to not place the blame on him. Athena just couldn't.

Things like that- that made her feel like that, were better off forgotten.

An aching in the pit of her stomach brought her eyes open, like a build up of gas in the chest, causing heartburn. "Is that all?" she looked to him again, her face must have contorted into discomfort.

"Are you all right?"

She nodded, "my stomach hurts, but I'm fine." Dad seemed to relax in the seat, at that and then he nodded, oh, how she wished he hadn't done that.

"That's all," he answered, finally, "now is there something you want to tell me?"

Sharp words threatened to come out at the question, but she held them back. Dripping of the liquid from the IV bag sounded in her right ear, the chirping beep of the heart monitor in her left. For a second, she didn't meet his eyes in fear that she would betray all the emotion she felt.

The silence was filled with the daily commotion of a hospital room and she couldn't bring herself to speak, pain once lashed at her stomach, now it turned another cheek. Bursting into a blaze unable to be extinguished by man, a trail of gasoline from her throat to the pit of her stomach, catching fire and soon to erupt. It was magnificent. Courage personified, inside of her, who had always been so afraid of this world she chose not to familiarize herself with. Against her will, this is where Life had drug her, kicking and screaming, this is where she would stay.

"I want in." The words fell from her mouth, like regurgitated food, but she meant them, wrangled them to be her own.

Deep lines appeared on Dad's forehead, his eyes darkened a twinge, with nothing but understanding. And, deep within him, he prayed for this day to not come. "You want in," he repeated, his voice low enough to snap her out of it, but she wouldn't.

"I want in." This time, it came naturally and left her lips with ease, or as much ease as she could muster.

Dad stayed silent, quietly studying her and her state of mind. This was when he should have asked why and in many ways he did.

And, she answered. Taking a deep breath, grasping a bit of that courage that was now passing, a ghost of the emotion remaining. Athena told him, without even her eyes beginning to water. Hours must have passed with the long winded nature she spoke, trying to get every single detail down to the moles Malice had copied from Athena's own facial makeup. Still, she couldn't fight the feeling that something had been missing, a very important piece of the puzzle blocking all progress and preventing all the players from continuing to build without it.

Athena sunk into the pillow. "Before I left, Mom told me something important. It really got to me, it made sense. So, the one thing I want from you now is your teaching. Teach me how you do all this, how to be like you-where nothing hurts and no one can ever touch me again."

R&R, at your leisure!