Of Heroes and Hellions
Chapter 5: People of Opposition
It's not until the next week that they find out—Monday, to be exact.
Classes run slow as they always seem to at the beginning of the week; though, the sky holds none of these first day grays. It's clear and blue and the sun casts away the grimy sludge left behind by the street cleaners. And Anne smiles. She smiles despite her late nights spent at a round table in a secret room leveled stories over the city streets. She smiles despite whispered words from her brother about what the Spiderman has seen.
"The calm before the storm…" he says "Something big is coming…"
She smiles despite it all because that's what she does.
When Anne's lunch period rolls around she spends it at a stone table by one of the thickly-trunked oak trees that stretch their crass roots deep beneath the weeded grass of Middleton's courtyard. They grip the soil tight, so tight indeed that one could personify that they feel it too, this impending shift.
Leah sits to Anne's left, head tossed back and eyes closed in content. Sunbeams breach the naked tree branches and tan the small blonde's face, bringing a pink tint to her cheeks. A chill still resides within the shade but today is unusually warm for the time of year, most all of the snow has washed away from the streets, blackened and dirty with soot. Snowdrifts seep to form streams that run rivulets down to the darker places of the city sewers.
Sitting upon the tabletop Mitch has his arm casually tossed around Hunter's shoulders, the former speaking loudly as the ladder laughs in a voice far more boisterous than usual; his glasses slip down the bridge of his nose and he brings a hand up to push them back into place. It's an action Anne has seen her brother Peter perform many times before. But that is all in the past now.
Diana props her foot up on the seat with her and hums a song Anne doesn't recognize; the toe of her shoe makes clicking noises against the stone bench as she taps her foot. Almost all of them are there… all but…
Kelley runs up to their table, her long legs bringing her in fast, her straight hair swings with her movements behind her back and her nose flares due to her wide grin. In one hand she clutches at a slightly crumpled piece of paper. She lets out an excited squeak—one that's meant to be heard—that makes the boys turn their heads; Diana ceases her humming and Leah's eyes snap open. Anne's smile widens, "What's that you've got there?" she asks.
"Have you guys heard of Miss Direction?" Kelley says the villain's name with a mix of reverence and fear.
Diana scoffs, "of course we have it's been all over the papers."
Mitch scans the group casually, "who still reads the papers?"
"Well it's been in the news too hasn't it, on the TV?" Leah asks; though, she means it as a statement. She knows it has been in the news; Miss Direction is the reason her mom hasn't let her leave the house on her own since the merging of Wayne Enterprises and Stark Industries.
Anne's stomach flutters and her smile falters when Kelley smoothes out the flyer and hands it to her. The heading is in large yellow letters. Below that is a woman in a white suit with green pinstripes, carnie style, she wears a tall-green top hat and holds a hook-handled cane. Her grin is cat-like and her brown eyes gleam.
"It's almost like Christmas isn't it?" Diana snorts, leaning over Anne's shoulder and noting the woman's green attire against deep red hair. Her lips are painted in the same hue as they had been at the gala. Anne supposes that it comes with her brand, green and red. Like Christmas; though, it feels like anything but.
The bottoms of Ellery's boots are still slick with liquid snow. She settles into a booth bench that faces the expanse of the diner window; she knows Peter is entering the café before the bell above the door plays chorus to his presence. His eyes scan the seats and though she knows that it is herself whom he is looking for she does not make a motion to wave him over. Instead, she lets him search.
When their gazes catch across the length of the tiled floor and over the heads of the few patrons placed sporadically about the eatery Ellery grants him a dim smile, the tight lipped one that she had learned from her father. When Peter smiles you can see his teeth and the dimples in each of his cheeks. His grin is an invitation she wishes to accept. They share such looks over long sips of hot chocolate.
"How do you like New York?"
The question is innocent but the words bring forth traitorous thoughts. It makes Ellery think more of Gotham and less of the place she was questioned about.
"The people are…"
She thinks of Dick. It's hot. Too hot for the costumes they wear. Winter turned to summer without the caveat of spring. The flowers will not grow now. Even when darkness falls across the sky the sun radiates like a past memory, its heat prickling. And Ellery sweats. Perhaps it is simply the warmth, or maybe the moisture building beneath the dark Kevlar of her suit comes from something more. Her nerves vibrate against her insides and build against their kinetic energy, such energy she is itching to release.
It is her first patrol with only Dick. The Batman is nowhere in sight but that does not mean he is not here; she doesn't think about that now, though.
She was so naive.
Dick's Robin costume is sewn against all the tears and no dust dulls the bright fabric as she now knows it will in due time. She never understood the appeal of being Robin. She never understood...
They work well through the night but—Ellery remembers—she had not grown tired then. She was far too enchanted with her work. This is all at a time before she had grown weary. And she likes being with Dick too, likes the way he laughs. Likes the way he makes her laugh.
She doesn't laugh much anymore
And when the blackness washes out to gray they fall against the wall of the cave as such laughter scatters the bats. Bruce is still gone. But that's okay. Right now everything is light and nothing weighs heavy on their minds. But that was before…
The People are tormented.
She thinks of Jason. She's covered in blood again. Why is it that she's always covered in blood?
Ellery falls to her knees, shoulder knocking against the gray headstone. Her fingers tremble as she reaches out and traces his name JASON TODD; bloody smears stain the marker where they touch. Her tears catch in her lashes where she won't let them fall, they are salty things that mix with her reddish gore.
She curses the Joker, whose blood mixes with her own. The white of his makeup is smeared with sweat and when he laughs his disfigured lips split wide. When all is over, he will have many more scars to outnumber the ones he has left on Ellery.
And she recites an oath bathed in the venom of her hate against her father whom had pulled her away. Firm hands grip her arms, pulling at the spandex of her top and digging into naked skin were it tears; she doesn't notice until her next blow is halted. She struggles against her physical bonds with the same fierceness that she does against those that enclose her mind.
She chokes before Dick's name may pass her lips. She slides uselessly against the broken structure her body is thrown against, pathetic anger sapping her shell of a being of its current strength. She stumbles before she runs and she can't even feel the movement of her legs beneath her body. She thinks maybe she's flying.
Ellery doesn't hear Dick call after her but she hears The Batman's response, a rumble of thunder perceived above the raging storm. It curdles her insides and when she reaches the cast iron gates of the graveyard she kneels down, she closes her eyes, and she vomits.
When she wakes up the next morning she can feel the hard stone beneath her, bare skin itching where it lay in the grass. The sun hits her eyes in a reflection of red light but when she blinks her eyes it is gone, the morning basking in its dreary glow.
It must be her blood. She's always covered in blood.
The people are alive.
She thinks of Tim. He always wanted to be Robin. She never empathized. The bright colors of the suit don't match with the dark wanderings of her mind.
But when her original suit had caught to flames, hungry red fingers tearing away at the black fabric gripped mercilessly in her father's hands, she felt she had no other choice.
But you always have a choice. She knows that now.
She took to the night, the stretch of green leggings pulling her feet to the ground like heavy lead weights, and the rustle of red cape against wind whispering words of discontent in her ears.
She still hears them sometimes… those words.
She doesn't remember much in between. She knows only when it started and that it still has not ended. The terror, that is. White mist is what such horror is carried upon; expelled from an arsenal cane, a fragile tin device that holds within it her repentance. Such sorrow she refuses to yield. The fear courses through her veins, stiffens her bones, and chases her heart away.
She hears screaming but does not remember parting her lips, coated in saliva that leaches with the adrenaline of her shattered core, so perhaps it is not she.
Ellery can feel the blackening of her soul and the seeping of red blood across the streets. Her blood, the blood she owns because she shed it, created it at the end of a sharpened broadsword. And she fights against her insanity as she has done for years.
Her savoir, even, fears her, the writhing mass of her body upon the ground. The terror they have for the other is shared equal. Her protector is clothed only in blood, batwings sprouting from the sides of his head. His lips curl, the blood of his costume drips, and the wings flap.
Later, she will not speak of such a hallucination.
"Tim…" Ellery has never found herself drawn to fragmentary quandaries but she feels like a child still as the lunacy wracks her body with after shocks, her carcass trembling in the arms of the boy. And he reminds her so firmly of her father still. In front of that man she will always remain unfinished.
"Yeah?" It takes the sound of his voice to remind her of their differences. She is not sure the Batman would have answered her.
Her throat is dry, but this is not the only factor that makes it hurt to speak. "I never wanted—" Her words echo, and in their disintegration may form the beginning and ending of many a phrase.
Ellery is glad Tim does not look at her, for his eyes always tell her all of the impossibilities she may accomplish and all of the reasons why she shouldn't.
He hugs her seemingly fragile body closer to his chest. But that is not what she is. She has not been fragile for a long time now. Instead she is hard muscle, a body that makes the universe quake with her own existence. "—I know."
"But you did." This statement is applicable to more than the past.
"I know."
And he always does.
The people are imbecilic.
She thinks of Damian. Both of the Wayne blood children are tempered in fire and when they meet the flames expand, leaching the room of all oxygen in their greedy blaze.
One day they will burn this world down.
Their relationship was built on taunting words—"I'm the true blood child. To him you're just a bit of stolen DNA, a mistake, nothing more than a lapse in his vigilance"— and mistrust, a certain amount of jealousy that surpasses that of normal sibling rivalries. But, then, neither of them has ever truly been normal.
Each child's back stiffens when they pass the other, shoulders taught, eyes against the veins that pump the blood each believes does not belong to the other. They think of such blood being shed and then they pledge they will not eradicate themselves of their own watchful eyes, piercing, and cleaving away at their opposition's insides like the pages of a novel.
And they didn't.
As things tend to happen over long amounts of time neither of the pair did notice when their observant eyes came less from suspect and more from a silent agreement of—not quite care—but something near it. And it seemed to happen all at once; though, their training taught them that everything happens in a series of steps, unseen if you are quick enough about it.
They usually are.
They stand in the yard, a long stretch of grass hidden by a gully of trees, when it swells upon them. Damien watches as Ellery throws a ball for Titus and the dog brings it back, lopping in long happy strides, and drops it in her hand.
"Why is it that," Damian speaks slow and deliberate, "Father always looks at you in that way?"
The sun allows for a certain heaviness as it falls below the trees and Ellery turns to see the boy cast in the shadows of the descending night. She runs a hand through the length of her blonde hair, taking time to breath before speaking. "In what way, Damian?"
The boy frowns, far too deep and familiar on his young face. "Like he cares." Or more he wonders why Bruce does not look at him in that same way too.
He does not know and she does not tell him. The Batman only shows such concern to dying people.
The silence stretches between them, neither uncomfortable nor relaxed, but simply there. And in the near twilight, a heavy blue sliding slickly to black, the first stars make their shine. Brave, brave stars to be the very first, to risk dirtying their light.
"Brother," Ellery says, turning towards the manor. It does not welcome her as it used to but the obligation of patrol tugs her forward.
"Sister," he acknowledges without press and without further speech. Perhaps he feels this need for silence too, after such a weighty assent.
The people are remiss.
But she does not say any of this aloud.