A/N: I am very sorry for not updating sooner, but since my flash drive [where all past chapters had been saved] went dead and Lunaescence was shut down for a time [which is where past chapters have been posted], I couldn't update.
So, to make up for it, I'm going to post two chapters and can announce that the story on both here and Lunaescence will be up to date!
Thank you all so much for sticking in with me on this!
Resurrection
The Fears
Anastasia stumbled across something huge on her patrol of the Narrows, just by the docks bordering Gotham Bay. Getting as close as she could on a rooftop without actually touching the ground, she could see a large group of men preparing containers and hanging them over the water.
Something to contaminate the water? She assumed while biting on a nail. But why even bother–wait. Of course. Water from the bay is used for drinking water in Gotham. Doesn't the plant purify it, though? Maybe the chemical's hard to get rid of or something. Damn, this isn't some small fry operation. This is a shark operation.
Her emerald gaze roamed over the men, attempting to point out the mastermind of the operation–a villain she might have seen on the television after Batman thwarted them. After a few moments, she heard a loud cackling and someone screaming in delight, but she couldn't understand them from her distance. She saw the signature farmer's hat and the name Scarecrow passed through her mind.
Definitely a job for Batman but I can't leave now, she thought to herself. If I stay up here where they can't pinpoint my position, that should give Batman time to get here and I don't have to worry about any of that poison stuff he uses. She nodded her head in affirmation to herself. It sounds like a plan.
Anastasia stood to her full height, taking a deep breath. Spreading her feet apart on the ground and rooting herself, she stretched out her arms and slowly curled her fingers, fighting against an invisible force that was essentially the ground not wanting to bend to her mental will. Eventually, when closing her fingers got easier, she heard the ground near the Scarecrow and his crew give way to her will and start to crack. When she was able to close her fingers into a fist against the invisible force, the ground split open underneath them.
Cries echoed through the area and she grunted against the force, stretching her arms out in front of her before slowly pulling them back toward her body. The asphalt lifted back from the earth underneath it, sending the containers rolling back and knocking over various henchmen in their way.
When Anastasia saw Batman coming onto the scene, she backed away from the edge of the building, feeling satisfied with her work. But as she turned around, a hand launched out and wrapped around her throat. She wheezed as the masked man with the farmer's hat lifted her off the ground.
"What an interesting power you have there." His head tilted to the side, voice eerie. "Are you the Shadow? A little girl has been spreading so much fear throughout the underbelly of this city?" He chuckled darkly. "If only you had fought with me. Not against me. We could spread fear through Gotham together."
"I'll have to pass on that," she grunted. Kind of already working under a bad person, she added as an afterthought. "Put me down and I promise not to beat that…pretty face of yours into the ground."
The Scarecrow laughed and it sent chills down her spine. "You talk tough but why don't we peel back the layers of that mind? Why don't we see what the tough little girl is really scared of?" On his other hand was a glove with syringes as the fingertips and as hard as she tried to get avoid the needles, he had the advantage and sunk them into her skin, making her cringe in pain.
Anastasia was dropped and landed on the ground with a thud, feeling the toxin course through her veins from where it had entered her body, her skin itching at the places she felt it move through. Her head swam for a moment and she clawed at her arm, her skin suddenly burning. When she closed her eyes and opened them again, Karina was standing in front of her.
Except that this little girl was a corpse, her hair and skin peeling away, empty eye sockets boring into her older sister. A bullet hole in the middle of her forehead tore at Anastasia's heart and when the little girl shuffled toward her, she backed up as far as she could without falling over the edge of the building.
"No. No, this isn't real. You aren't–"
The skeletal child opened its decaying mouth and let out an inhuman screech and a gasp of pain escaped Anastasia. Her vision went foggy for a moment before bile rose up in her throat and she doubled over, emptying the contents of her stomach. When she leaned back up, the girl was standing in front of her and Anastasia screamed in terror, throwing out her hands in attempt to fend off the creature, but something held her arms back.
Whatever invisible force was holding her back pulled her down against the ground and she looked up at the rotting corpses of her mother and father. The both of them raised up their other arm, showing her their track marks, and when she blinked, they were holding needles and lowered them down to her arms.
"No!" Anastasia screamed in horror. "No! Not the needles! No!" She screeched and ripped her arms away from them, throwing them toward the figures, a gust of wind knocking the corpses over.
She managed to rise to her feet but the nausea hit her again and she was on her knees, dry heaving because there was nothing left to get rid of. She looked over her shoulder and saw those creatures coming toward her again and she ran, despite her dizziness. But her skeletal sister then blocked her way, nearing the terrified teenager.
"Ana," it gurgled and then it was her normal baby sister but that damned bullet hole still stared down Anastasia, dripping crimson. "How come you don't miss me anymore, Ana? Did I do something wrong? Why don't you cry for me anymore?"
"No! This is all for you! Of course I miss you! Ka–"
"Then come be with me in death!"
The face of Karina morphed into that of the Scarecrow and Anastasia gasped, backing up, but nothing was there and she fell back. The rotting hand of her father reached out for her, but its fingers caught nothing and the sound of a gunshot rang through the air. Blood spurted from the wound in her arm and she screamed but someone had caught her. Her heart was pumping so fast in her chest that she couldn't hear anything else and her vision went black. There was a prick in her arm.
Then there was nothing.
Something had cast a fog over her mind and when she was conscious for a moment, she could have sworn she saw someone familiar, some older man that might have been Alfred or her grandfather, but whatever cast that haziness knocked her out before she could think on it longer.
That same routine of drifting in and out of consciousness happened to her so much that it seemed like a month had passed but when she woke up in some kind of a makeshift infirmary, a mere few hours had gone by. Still feeling groggy, she managed to turn her head, noting outside the infirmary was a cave and a huge bat was walking toward her.
Ugh. No, Anastasia. That's Batman. And you don't have your mask on and you are so fucked right now. You get an E for effort on the ninja thing, she ranted inside her head, giggling somewhat at that last quip at herself.
"The morphine is still working itself out of your system. You're going to be like that for some time." Batman grabbed a chair sitting in the corner of the makeshift infirmary and sat in it, his uniform making him seem too large for the chair. "You're the Shadow," there was no sort of questioning in his tone, just stating fact.
"I like E better. The Shadow," she stuck her tongue out at the name, "is too cliché. Yeah, I like E. I need an E for effort because I suck at this. Or it could stand for element since, you know, I can manipulate them and stuff. But you," she wagged a finger at him, "already knew that."
Though she couldn't see his actual face, she could sense he was raising an eyebrow at her. "I'm going to assume that the reason you're being so uncharacteristically chatty is because of the morphine which will also explain how you can be in such good spirits after your…ordeal."
"And what is your excuse?" She retorted. "How come you brought me to your cave? Or rather how come you haven't taken me back to the Narrows after curing me? Something tells me you wouldn't be so nice to other people trying to do the vigilante thing."
"I needed to keep you for observation. The Scarecrow gave you a huge dose of his toxin. Now that you're awake, we need to talk about what you're doing."
"Bingo," she drawled out the word sarcastically. "I knew it was coming." The masked vigilante sent her a scowl and she retorted with one of her own. "Nice try, but I've seen scarier than that."
"Ra's al Ghul no doubt," he commented.
Anastasia jolted up from the gurney but a wave of dizziness rushed over her and he had to reach out and grab her arm to keep her from falling back and hitting her head. "How do you–" she shook her head. "I guess nothing can get past you no matter how hard they try to hide it from you." She grumbled under her breath.
"I've been keeping track of Ra's al Ghul and Talia since they arrived in Gotham. They're training you to become a member of the League of Assassins, aren't they?" Though he knew no doubt knew the answer, she nodded in affirmation.
"You're angry because of what happened to your sister but seeking out Ra's al Ghul was not the right thing to do. He's a dangerous man and nothing good is waiting for you on this path." He placed a hand on her shoulder but the gesture seemed awkward to her. "You need to step away from this before the price gets too high. You need to let go of your anger."
The attempt he made to be comforting to her seemed too out of character for him and she couldn't be sure if the anger she had been battling for months snaked its way up because of that or because she was just so exhausted by life, but the rage made her snap. She shoved his hand on her shoulder away and glowered up at him.
"All you adults keep acting like you know what's best for me, you keep telling me that I just need to get over what happened, to forgive and forget. Well, you know what? That's a lot to ask of someone. What the hell am I supposed to do? Remember all the good stuff about her? I tried that but all I remember is the way I kept screaming at her to wake up, all the blood, that hole in the middle of her forehead. I'm angry and nothing is going to make that go away except beat down a whole lot of people who deserve it.
"And you're one to talk to me about letting anger go." She pointed an accusing finger at him. "I don't know what caused it but there was something traumatic that happened to you that made you become the Batman and since you're still wearing the cape I'm willing to bet that you haven't let go of whatever it is either."
A moment of silence passed between the two of them. "I'm telling you to let go because of that very reason, because you're on the path to become like me."
"That's a good thing, isn't it?"
"Ask the people who know the man behind the mask."
After the Batman had dropped her off–blindfolded, of course–she made her way to her apartment, feeling exhausted and in desperate need of sleep.
In the middle of her trek, she had to stop in an alleyway and lean her forehead against a brick wall as memories of the encounter with Scarecrow slipped to the forefront of her mind. It made her shudder as she remembered that skeletal little girl that was supposed to be her sister, the way it screamed at her that she had forgotten, didn't care anymore, and the way those things that were supposed to be her mother and father almost shoved needles into her…
The fear toxin, as the media had named it, was reported to bring those deep-down hidden fears out to an individual and once they were preoccupied, either the Scarecrow or his henchmen killed the infected or said person's heart just gave out on them from the fear.
Anastasia could understand the reason Karina showed up because, deep down, she was terrified that she would forget her sister and she felt like she wasn't ready for letting go no matter what everyone else kept telling her. And when she thought about the thing with her parents, she assumed that she was terrified of ending up like them, succumbing to the needle, and spending the rest of her life numbed to the outside world.
"Whoa! You're that person everyone's been talking about!" A high-pitched voice called out from behind her. "The, um, the Shadow!"
When she turned around and got a good look at the little dark-haired boy, his expression went sour. "You're a girl? Everyone is scared of a girl?"
As she looked over the crowbar in his hands and the car that was propped up on block, her expression turned to match his own. A tense silence passed between the two of them and she opened her mouth to speak but saw someone stumbling down the alley, swaying back and forth.
"What the fuck?" The drunk snarled while grabbing the boy's wrist. "You little shit! This is my car!" He pulled his arm back and knocked the child against the wall and raised his arm back, going to smash the bottle of beer over the child's head, but Anastasia had approached the scene and grabbed his arm.
"I suggest you leave now." She threatened.
"And what are you going to do, little girl?" He grabbed at her shirt but she slapped his hand away from her. "Oh, you think you're tough, huh? Who do you think you are? Batman?" He laughed mockingly.
"My name," she whispered dangerously, "is E." And slammed her fist against the side of his head, sending him crashing against the brick into unconsciousness.
Anastasia thought about just leaving after that, letting the brat learn from his lesson the hard way, but when she heard his quiet sniffling, her heart melted. She turned around and bent down next to him, looked over from his emerald gaze to the trembling lip back up to a small gash on his forehead.
"Here," she murmured while pulling off her mask and touching the cloth to his forehead in attempt to stop the bleeding.
"You…you took off your mask." He pointed out.
"I trust you to not go around and tell people about who I am especially since I just saved you from a lot worse than a little bleeding." She retorted with an amused smile. "Keep this on the bleeding then clean it up. I don't think it should need stitches. Keep the mask as something to remember me by."
The little boy looked up at her with shining eyes and she touched his face. "Hey, don't cry. It'll be alright. I promise." She stood up to her full height and flicked his forehead. "That's punishment for doing something so stupid."
He frowned and she responded with her own frown of disapproval. "I'm being serious here. That's going to get you into trouble someday, kid, so you better stop doing it now before someone bigger than me comes along and catches you." She warned while glanced toward the car briefly.
"My name is Jason," he snarled while struggling to his feet, clutching her mask to his forehead, "not kid." And then he was dashing into the darkness, probably never to be seen by her again.
"Not even a thank you," Anastasia mumbled in exhaustion, "some people…"
