Post by lizity on Aug 21, 2012 22:41:18 GMT -5
LILY
It had been a few days since her mother and Damien had walked through the door of Blake’s little apartment and she’d gotten a few answers to the questions that stirred around in her head. With all the answers that she had gotten though, they’d left her with more questions that she didn’t know how to answer. She’d called her mother just the day after she’d met her again and they’d talked on the phone for three hours. She’d learned a lot about herself, or at least her past, her childhood, growing up and moving all around Europe and why they’d always been on the move. She knew to watch out for the man that was her grandfather and that if she saw him to call Rose right away. She knew about her father now too, a man that she’d grown up thinking he was dead but he wasn’t and he’d been kept away by powers not his own but he was back now and eager to meet her when she was ready. She’d wanted to know too about the Batman figure she’d been dressing as and running around the city apparently fighting crime but her mother said that wasn’t for cell phone conversations so that would have to wait till she saw her again… when she felt ready for that again too.
Blake had been silent since that night too, quiet, talking only about things around the house and in the news, not pushing her to find out what she was thinking. In a way she was thankful for it and in another way she wasn’t. She wanted to talk to him about… well, them but she was afraid of what his answers might be. Damien had been right, she was happy here in this little apartment, being… what to Blake? She took care of the place, kept it clean, the laundry done, tried to have dinner on the table every night when he got home from work. It felt good to take care of him, she liked the rush of pleasure she got when he came home from work and kissed her at the stove then leaned over to smell whatever she was cooking. She felt wanted, needed… and loved. But did he love her? Did she love him? She thought so, she felt like she’d been falling in love with him for weeks. How did he feel? Did he even want her to stay anymore now that her family had stepped up to claim her? Would he want her to leave so he could have his life back that she’d just crashed into. He’d saved her off the street where she most likely would have died but he didn’t know then that he would have ended up stuck with her. But he’d taken care of her, and good care of her. He’d taken her shopping for clothes and let her pick out what she wanted and she knew full well that he didn’t make that much on his salary. He’d cared enough to try to make her comfortable. But what now?
Of course there was Damien too, the young man that had come with her mother. She hadn’t realized who he was right away, but later she’d realized that he was Damien Wayne, the multi billionaire and most eligible bachelor in Gotham. Why would he have come with her mother? Why had she felt that heavy rush of emotions when she’d locked eyes with him? She’d felt... love and anger all twisted up together and she didn’t know why. And then he’d said that she’d been a special part of her life and he’d touched her cheek, kissed her and she’d felt that small brush of lips down to her very toes. Had they dated? Had they been dating when she disappeared? Did he expect her to come back to him if that was the case?
With so many things going through her head she felt overwhelmed and confused. She was more scared now than she had been when she’d woken up and been unable to remember anything and she didn’t like the feeling. She knew that fear wasn’t something she was accustomed too. Deep down she knew that she’d been a person of control and logic and she felt anything but that now.
Blake had gone to work that morning as usual and she’d made the bed and put away the dishes from dinner the night before. She needed to get out and think, away from this place and the scent of them together.
Moving into the bedroom she pulled out a pair of sweat pants, a sports bra and one of Blake’s hoodies with the GCPD logo on the left breast. She dressed and zipped up the oversized hoodie and left the apartment building at a jog. There was a gym not far from his place that she’d started going to the last month. She’d talked to the owner and he let her do odd jobs around the place, mostly cleaning up (the women’s locker room), and he let her work out for free and gave her some extra cash at the end of every week that she’d been using to buy groceries for them.
She spent all day at the gym, alternating between working out and helping out when the owner needed it. She was hot, sweaty and could feel a familiar burn in her muscles. It felt good to work that hard, it felt good to push her body and let her mind relax and not have to think about everything that was going on in her life. She’d needed even those few hours of peace before reality settled back heavy on her shoulders.
With her hood up she started back for home, jogging again, the hoodie half unzipped. Her eyes were focused on the sidewalk in front of her but she still knew what people were on the streets, both in front of and behind her. Like always her awareness was sharp. The flashed images of a man reaching out of an alley and grabbing her arm distracted her for a moment before she saw the alley in question. When the man reached out for real she was ready and she stepped out of his reach and grabbed his arm, thrusting the but of her palm of her other hand against his elbow, hearing and feeling the crack of breaking bones as he screamed. She felt her mind go blank to everything but what was going on around her as she moved without though through the motions of dodging the next guy that stepped out of the alley to come after her and help his fallen friend. He came at her with a knife and she had him disarmed and laying on the ground in four moves, trying to grasp all the places that she’d hit him at once.
It all happened so fast that as she stood over them and the rest of the world filtered back in she let out a deep breath. She could do so much, so fast. It felt good looking down at those men and not because she’d beaten them, but because they would think twice about doing it again she hoped.
“Go find some real work.” She growled at the two men trying to scramble at their feet. “Don’t let me see your again.” And they were limping away now.
She took another deep breath, trying to push away that harder side of herself that felt so much easier to be than the confused mess that she was. She ran the rest of the way home, heading up the stairs to the apartment almost a half hour past when Blake should have been home. She was sweaty and the elbow of the hoodie had blood on it from the bastards mouth she’d driven it into.
He was home, she knew it when she opened the door and closed it quietly behind her. She saw him waiting in the kitchen and couldn’t decide on how his face looked.
“Sorry, I lost track of time. Do you mind if we order takeout tonight?” She asked quietly as she fished for the 80 bucks that the owner of the gym had given her for her work and put it down on the table before starting for the bedroom. Her chest felt heavy all over again and she wanted him to say something or do something even if it was asking her to leave. She couldn’t stand the silence that had grown between them over the last few days. Anything was better than nothing.
~~
BLAKE
Blake was sorting through a pile of envelopes, his mail, bills mostly, by the look on his face. He looked up when the door creaked open and lily slid inside. Her skin was pale, like the silver moonlight, her raven black hair clinging to her with a slight dampness. She didn't look at him much, Lily simply shuffled to the table talking idly. There was an elephant in the room both of them seemed reticent to be the first to address. Blake wasn't sure what he should expect, if anything. Things had continued on, business as usual since Rose and Damien had stopped by. He hadn't brought it up, he didn't think it was his place. that Lily would tell him when she was ready. She placed the money on the table.
"Sure. Whatever's easiest." he said off handedly. blake wasn't exactly a hard man to please for the most part. "what were you thinking?" Blake asked after her as she walked into the bedroom. He put the envelopes down on the kitchen counter and walked to the bedroom door, leaning in its frame. She was sliding a shirt over her head.
"you alright, Lil?" Blake inquired softly from the door, it was a stupid question and he knew it, obviously she wasn't. How could she be? He used to think his life was complicated... that is, until he met Lily and saw what complicated really meant. His eyes tracked the movement of her arm as she tossed his hoody onto the bed, his eye catching the stain of blood. The gears in his investigative cop mind turned and it wasn't hard to piece together what had probably happened. Later. He would ask later, right now he just needed to be there.
~~
“The Thai place maybe? If you don’t want spicey then whatever. I’m not picky.” She answered as she tossed the hoodie on the bed and ran her fingers back through her dark hair. Her body ached that low perfect ache of being worked. She hadn’t over done it but the ache still felt good, another one of those familiar feelings that she couldn’t remember why though she was starting to understand why she’d enjoyed working out so much now.
She heard him come to the door and lean against the frame and her shoulders tightened with tension. His question though and soft voice made her shoulders go from tight to sagging in just a few seconds and she let out a held breath.
“Yes.” She answered softly then closed her eyes and shook her head. “No.”
~~
"yes and no, sounds complicated" he offered with a small smile. He couldn't imagine what she was going through. her head had already been a mess of disjointed memories, it couldn't be easy sorting them out. All Blake could do was be there if she needed him.
"What are you thinking?"
~~
“I’m pretty sure complicated doesn’t cover it.” She said quietly, sitting down on the side of the bed dropping her face into her hands. She stayed like that for a few long breaths, as if she was drawing courage from her breaths and the will power to keep everything together before she let her hands drop into her lap.
“Everything. Trying to piece things together. Trying to figure out where to go from here. What to do next.” Standing she warred with herself as she moved to the dresser and pulled out a clean pair of jeans from her drawer and tossed them over the bed before stripping out of her sweats. Changing into the jeans made her feel a little better, physically put together in real clothes instead of her work out clothes.
“I’ve been thinking about calling my mom and asking her to come get me.” Her heard sped up, beating a fast drum against the side of her throat as she looked at herself in the mirror. She distracted herself by picking up a brush and pulling it back through her hair, brushing out the long locks from the ponytail that she’d had her hair back in before pulling it up again.
What would he think? What would he say? Would he do anything? She just wanted an answer out of him but when it really came down to it she wanted him to say something. She didn’t want to have to ask him, it wasn’t her place, this wasn’t her life, it was his. He’d let her into his life because of what had happened to her but that wasn’t the case anymore, her family had stepped up to claim her.
“I don’t want to be an inconvenience to you anymore.” She whispered as she turned toward him, her eyes looking at his feet rather than his face.
~~
"Lily..." he started quietly, dark eyes watching her. It wasn't hard to see that she was fragile, vulnerable right now. He shook his head at her belief that she somehow inconvenienced him at all. "You're not an inconvenience. If you want to go, I won't stop you but I would love for you to stay here.."
Obviously there was more to them than him having saved her life and given her a place to stay. They had bonded and, well, more, but that was before Rose had come back into her life. Blake scratched at the scruff of beard on his neck, he hadn't wanted to bring it up. He felt it wasn't his place to question her, about her past, how she felt about it, until she was ready. But he could tell now that she had been waiting for him to broach the subject.
He moved to the bad and sat beside her. his hand rested on hers piled beneath one another in her lap.
"I sort of thought we were doing more than hanging out until you figured out your situation. I want you here, I want you to stay here. But.. They're your family, I looked into, there's no doubt in mind they are who they say they are. And you weren't running around in that Batman suit for nothing, Lil. It would have been selfish for me to ask you to stay, Id din't want you to think I was getting in the way."
~~
“I want to stay here.” She said quietly as he sat down beside her. “This is all I know but it’s not my home, it’s yours. You didn’t ask for this. I doubt this was what you’d expected when you picked me up that night.”
She lifted her hands, wrapping them around his as he touched them. A held breath came out in a rush as her fingers grasped his tightly and she held back the rush of emotion that rode up her spine and threatened to spill out her eyes. Relief was obvious in her body language. This apartment, with this man, this was the one place that no one expected anything of her. Blake only expected her to be whatever she wanted to be.
“I don’t know what to do, Blake.” She leaned over against him, taking a deep breath and with it the scent of him. It was like a drug, helping her calm her nerves. “I don’t know what my family wants from me or if they expect me to be who I was before. I know I’m different, I can feel it. When I talk to my mom on the phone it sounds like she’s on egg shells. I want to know who I was, I want answers to all my questions but I don’t know what’s going to happen or how I’m going to change for finding them. I hate this halflife, I hate not knowing why I am the way I am or why I can do the things I can or the way I feel.”
She closed her eyes as her head rested against his shoulders and she made herself let out a breath again, shivering at the next words that were about to tumble past her lips. “I keep seeing his darker side of myself and I don’t know if I should embrace it or push it away. I feel it when I’m out running or down at the gym. It’s this like… white noise in my head. I stop thinking, I stop feeling and I’m nothing but action and reaction.”
~~
"Because you're a fighter, you're strong. It's the fight or flight response, and I know what your answer would be every time" he said with a gentle chuckle, his arm slipping around her when she leaned into him. "And I don't know what to tell you, Lil, this isn't exactly something i have a lot of experience with. If I could take all your confusion and hurt away, I would. I wish I could. It's just something you'll have to piece together, one piece at a time. But I'll be here the whole time."
His other hand picked up hers and lifted it to his lips. He pecked it and then looked at her, with her eyes cast down, head leaning against his shoulder.
"I really am happy you've chosen to stay here. You'll figure out what needs to be figured out in time, it's not a race, you don't have to rush. Just take it a day at a time, y'know?"
~~
“I’m not sure if I have a flight response,” She barked a little laugh. “I’m pretty sure the only one I have is fight. Some of the things I can remember from my childhood is being taught never to run unless it was my choice, never to run if someone else was forcing me too. I was taught not to fear, that fear made a person weak and impaired judgment. That I should be in control at all times. Even in situations that were out of my control to control myself and in doing that I could control the events around me.”
She curled into his arm as he wrapped it around her and she sank into the warmth of his body. Of all the things that were crazy and up in the air in her life this was her solid ground. It felt good knowing that he wanted her there, that he wanted her to stay. If nothing else in her life made since, at least she had the safety of his arms and this apartment.
“Sometimes I think I was trained to be a solider and not a person as a child. My mom’s been reluctant to talk too much about it on the phone. She wants to get together again when I’m ready. Maybe we could set up a lunch one day when you’re off? Would you come with me?”
~~
"of course I'd come with you. I wouldn't mind finding out myself, probably the detective in me." he did wonder how Damien tied into all of this, yes he was the son of a Gotham saint, Bruce Wayne, and yes he was Lily's (alleged) former lover. But what other part did he play? Blake couldn't place the gut feeling that there was more to the kid than met the eye. It was more intuition than an idea supported by some evidence he had gleaned from their meeting. One thing was certain: The kid had powerful connections to be able to track down Lily at his place. He was as off the grid as a person can get in a city. And it wasn't easy for cops to turn on their own, which is the only way he could think that Damien might get that information...That is, unless... He had other things to attend to and the thought was pushed to the side. As much as he wanted to delve into it, it would have to wait.
"I noticed they didn't say a whole lot about your father." Which he thought was strange, Rose hadn't even mentioned him once when her and Damien had come down to his apartment. "That struck me as... odd."
~~
“If you wanted a girl that would keep you interested, or at least your detective side interested you picked the right now.” She tilted her head up, giving him a little smile. Just hearing him talk to her again, them having a (was normal the right word) conversation again helped her to relax and fall back into the rhythm that they’d found together.
“Richard Grayson was- is his name. He was gone for my childhood. My mom thought he was dead. He couldn’t get back to us, he was being held somewhere I guess. My mom, again, didn’t say to much. I get the impression she doesn’t like talking on the phone about things to much and considering some of the things I’ve found out, I’m not surprised. I wouldn’t want anyone picking up on our calls.”
Reaching up she turned his face down to look at her and she pressed her lips gently against his. “And thank you, for everything.”
It had been a few days since her mother and Damien had walked through the door of Blake’s little apartment and she’d gotten a few answers to the questions that stirred around in her head. With all the answers that she had gotten though, they’d left her with more questions that she didn’t know how to answer. She’d called her mother just the day after she’d met her again and they’d talked on the phone for three hours. She’d learned a lot about herself, or at least her past, her childhood, growing up and moving all around Europe and why they’d always been on the move. She knew to watch out for the man that was her grandfather and that if she saw him to call Rose right away. She knew about her father now too, a man that she’d grown up thinking he was dead but he wasn’t and he’d been kept away by powers not his own but he was back now and eager to meet her when she was ready. She’d wanted to know too about the Batman figure she’d been dressing as and running around the city apparently fighting crime but her mother said that wasn’t for cell phone conversations so that would have to wait till she saw her again… when she felt ready for that again too.
Blake had been silent since that night too, quiet, talking only about things around the house and in the news, not pushing her to find out what she was thinking. In a way she was thankful for it and in another way she wasn’t. She wanted to talk to him about… well, them but she was afraid of what his answers might be. Damien had been right, she was happy here in this little apartment, being… what to Blake? She took care of the place, kept it clean, the laundry done, tried to have dinner on the table every night when he got home from work. It felt good to take care of him, she liked the rush of pleasure she got when he came home from work and kissed her at the stove then leaned over to smell whatever she was cooking. She felt wanted, needed… and loved. But did he love her? Did she love him? She thought so, she felt like she’d been falling in love with him for weeks. How did he feel? Did he even want her to stay anymore now that her family had stepped up to claim her? Would he want her to leave so he could have his life back that she’d just crashed into. He’d saved her off the street where she most likely would have died but he didn’t know then that he would have ended up stuck with her. But he’d taken care of her, and good care of her. He’d taken her shopping for clothes and let her pick out what she wanted and she knew full well that he didn’t make that much on his salary. He’d cared enough to try to make her comfortable. But what now?
Of course there was Damien too, the young man that had come with her mother. She hadn’t realized who he was right away, but later she’d realized that he was Damien Wayne, the multi billionaire and most eligible bachelor in Gotham. Why would he have come with her mother? Why had she felt that heavy rush of emotions when she’d locked eyes with him? She’d felt... love and anger all twisted up together and she didn’t know why. And then he’d said that she’d been a special part of her life and he’d touched her cheek, kissed her and she’d felt that small brush of lips down to her very toes. Had they dated? Had they been dating when she disappeared? Did he expect her to come back to him if that was the case?
With so many things going through her head she felt overwhelmed and confused. She was more scared now than she had been when she’d woken up and been unable to remember anything and she didn’t like the feeling. She knew that fear wasn’t something she was accustomed too. Deep down she knew that she’d been a person of control and logic and she felt anything but that now.
Blake had gone to work that morning as usual and she’d made the bed and put away the dishes from dinner the night before. She needed to get out and think, away from this place and the scent of them together.
Moving into the bedroom she pulled out a pair of sweat pants, a sports bra and one of Blake’s hoodies with the GCPD logo on the left breast. She dressed and zipped up the oversized hoodie and left the apartment building at a jog. There was a gym not far from his place that she’d started going to the last month. She’d talked to the owner and he let her do odd jobs around the place, mostly cleaning up (the women’s locker room), and he let her work out for free and gave her some extra cash at the end of every week that she’d been using to buy groceries for them.
She spent all day at the gym, alternating between working out and helping out when the owner needed it. She was hot, sweaty and could feel a familiar burn in her muscles. It felt good to work that hard, it felt good to push her body and let her mind relax and not have to think about everything that was going on in her life. She’d needed even those few hours of peace before reality settled back heavy on her shoulders.
With her hood up she started back for home, jogging again, the hoodie half unzipped. Her eyes were focused on the sidewalk in front of her but she still knew what people were on the streets, both in front of and behind her. Like always her awareness was sharp. The flashed images of a man reaching out of an alley and grabbing her arm distracted her for a moment before she saw the alley in question. When the man reached out for real she was ready and she stepped out of his reach and grabbed his arm, thrusting the but of her palm of her other hand against his elbow, hearing and feeling the crack of breaking bones as he screamed. She felt her mind go blank to everything but what was going on around her as she moved without though through the motions of dodging the next guy that stepped out of the alley to come after her and help his fallen friend. He came at her with a knife and she had him disarmed and laying on the ground in four moves, trying to grasp all the places that she’d hit him at once.
It all happened so fast that as she stood over them and the rest of the world filtered back in she let out a deep breath. She could do so much, so fast. It felt good looking down at those men and not because she’d beaten them, but because they would think twice about doing it again she hoped.
“Go find some real work.” She growled at the two men trying to scramble at their feet. “Don’t let me see your again.” And they were limping away now.
She took another deep breath, trying to push away that harder side of herself that felt so much easier to be than the confused mess that she was. She ran the rest of the way home, heading up the stairs to the apartment almost a half hour past when Blake should have been home. She was sweaty and the elbow of the hoodie had blood on it from the bastards mouth she’d driven it into.
He was home, she knew it when she opened the door and closed it quietly behind her. She saw him waiting in the kitchen and couldn’t decide on how his face looked.
“Sorry, I lost track of time. Do you mind if we order takeout tonight?” She asked quietly as she fished for the 80 bucks that the owner of the gym had given her for her work and put it down on the table before starting for the bedroom. Her chest felt heavy all over again and she wanted him to say something or do something even if it was asking her to leave. She couldn’t stand the silence that had grown between them over the last few days. Anything was better than nothing.
~~
BLAKE
Blake was sorting through a pile of envelopes, his mail, bills mostly, by the look on his face. He looked up when the door creaked open and lily slid inside. Her skin was pale, like the silver moonlight, her raven black hair clinging to her with a slight dampness. She didn't look at him much, Lily simply shuffled to the table talking idly. There was an elephant in the room both of them seemed reticent to be the first to address. Blake wasn't sure what he should expect, if anything. Things had continued on, business as usual since Rose and Damien had stopped by. He hadn't brought it up, he didn't think it was his place. that Lily would tell him when she was ready. She placed the money on the table.
"Sure. Whatever's easiest." he said off handedly. blake wasn't exactly a hard man to please for the most part. "what were you thinking?" Blake asked after her as she walked into the bedroom. He put the envelopes down on the kitchen counter and walked to the bedroom door, leaning in its frame. She was sliding a shirt over her head.
"you alright, Lil?" Blake inquired softly from the door, it was a stupid question and he knew it, obviously she wasn't. How could she be? He used to think his life was complicated... that is, until he met Lily and saw what complicated really meant. His eyes tracked the movement of her arm as she tossed his hoody onto the bed, his eye catching the stain of blood. The gears in his investigative cop mind turned and it wasn't hard to piece together what had probably happened. Later. He would ask later, right now he just needed to be there.
~~
“The Thai place maybe? If you don’t want spicey then whatever. I’m not picky.” She answered as she tossed the hoodie on the bed and ran her fingers back through her dark hair. Her body ached that low perfect ache of being worked. She hadn’t over done it but the ache still felt good, another one of those familiar feelings that she couldn’t remember why though she was starting to understand why she’d enjoyed working out so much now.
She heard him come to the door and lean against the frame and her shoulders tightened with tension. His question though and soft voice made her shoulders go from tight to sagging in just a few seconds and she let out a held breath.
“Yes.” She answered softly then closed her eyes and shook her head. “No.”
~~
"yes and no, sounds complicated" he offered with a small smile. He couldn't imagine what she was going through. her head had already been a mess of disjointed memories, it couldn't be easy sorting them out. All Blake could do was be there if she needed him.
"What are you thinking?"
~~
“I’m pretty sure complicated doesn’t cover it.” She said quietly, sitting down on the side of the bed dropping her face into her hands. She stayed like that for a few long breaths, as if she was drawing courage from her breaths and the will power to keep everything together before she let her hands drop into her lap.
“Everything. Trying to piece things together. Trying to figure out where to go from here. What to do next.” Standing she warred with herself as she moved to the dresser and pulled out a clean pair of jeans from her drawer and tossed them over the bed before stripping out of her sweats. Changing into the jeans made her feel a little better, physically put together in real clothes instead of her work out clothes.
“I’ve been thinking about calling my mom and asking her to come get me.” Her heard sped up, beating a fast drum against the side of her throat as she looked at herself in the mirror. She distracted herself by picking up a brush and pulling it back through her hair, brushing out the long locks from the ponytail that she’d had her hair back in before pulling it up again.
What would he think? What would he say? Would he do anything? She just wanted an answer out of him but when it really came down to it she wanted him to say something. She didn’t want to have to ask him, it wasn’t her place, this wasn’t her life, it was his. He’d let her into his life because of what had happened to her but that wasn’t the case anymore, her family had stepped up to claim her.
“I don’t want to be an inconvenience to you anymore.” She whispered as she turned toward him, her eyes looking at his feet rather than his face.
~~
"Lily..." he started quietly, dark eyes watching her. It wasn't hard to see that she was fragile, vulnerable right now. He shook his head at her belief that she somehow inconvenienced him at all. "You're not an inconvenience. If you want to go, I won't stop you but I would love for you to stay here.."
Obviously there was more to them than him having saved her life and given her a place to stay. They had bonded and, well, more, but that was before Rose had come back into her life. Blake scratched at the scruff of beard on his neck, he hadn't wanted to bring it up. He felt it wasn't his place to question her, about her past, how she felt about it, until she was ready. But he could tell now that she had been waiting for him to broach the subject.
He moved to the bad and sat beside her. his hand rested on hers piled beneath one another in her lap.
"I sort of thought we were doing more than hanging out until you figured out your situation. I want you here, I want you to stay here. But.. They're your family, I looked into, there's no doubt in mind they are who they say they are. And you weren't running around in that Batman suit for nothing, Lil. It would have been selfish for me to ask you to stay, Id din't want you to think I was getting in the way."
~~
“I want to stay here.” She said quietly as he sat down beside her. “This is all I know but it’s not my home, it’s yours. You didn’t ask for this. I doubt this was what you’d expected when you picked me up that night.”
She lifted her hands, wrapping them around his as he touched them. A held breath came out in a rush as her fingers grasped his tightly and she held back the rush of emotion that rode up her spine and threatened to spill out her eyes. Relief was obvious in her body language. This apartment, with this man, this was the one place that no one expected anything of her. Blake only expected her to be whatever she wanted to be.
“I don’t know what to do, Blake.” She leaned over against him, taking a deep breath and with it the scent of him. It was like a drug, helping her calm her nerves. “I don’t know what my family wants from me or if they expect me to be who I was before. I know I’m different, I can feel it. When I talk to my mom on the phone it sounds like she’s on egg shells. I want to know who I was, I want answers to all my questions but I don’t know what’s going to happen or how I’m going to change for finding them. I hate this halflife, I hate not knowing why I am the way I am or why I can do the things I can or the way I feel.”
She closed her eyes as her head rested against his shoulders and she made herself let out a breath again, shivering at the next words that were about to tumble past her lips. “I keep seeing his darker side of myself and I don’t know if I should embrace it or push it away. I feel it when I’m out running or down at the gym. It’s this like… white noise in my head. I stop thinking, I stop feeling and I’m nothing but action and reaction.”
~~
"Because you're a fighter, you're strong. It's the fight or flight response, and I know what your answer would be every time" he said with a gentle chuckle, his arm slipping around her when she leaned into him. "And I don't know what to tell you, Lil, this isn't exactly something i have a lot of experience with. If I could take all your confusion and hurt away, I would. I wish I could. It's just something you'll have to piece together, one piece at a time. But I'll be here the whole time."
His other hand picked up hers and lifted it to his lips. He pecked it and then looked at her, with her eyes cast down, head leaning against his shoulder.
"I really am happy you've chosen to stay here. You'll figure out what needs to be figured out in time, it's not a race, you don't have to rush. Just take it a day at a time, y'know?"
~~
“I’m not sure if I have a flight response,” She barked a little laugh. “I’m pretty sure the only one I have is fight. Some of the things I can remember from my childhood is being taught never to run unless it was my choice, never to run if someone else was forcing me too. I was taught not to fear, that fear made a person weak and impaired judgment. That I should be in control at all times. Even in situations that were out of my control to control myself and in doing that I could control the events around me.”
She curled into his arm as he wrapped it around her and she sank into the warmth of his body. Of all the things that were crazy and up in the air in her life this was her solid ground. It felt good knowing that he wanted her there, that he wanted her to stay. If nothing else in her life made since, at least she had the safety of his arms and this apartment.
“Sometimes I think I was trained to be a solider and not a person as a child. My mom’s been reluctant to talk too much about it on the phone. She wants to get together again when I’m ready. Maybe we could set up a lunch one day when you’re off? Would you come with me?”
~~
"of course I'd come with you. I wouldn't mind finding out myself, probably the detective in me." he did wonder how Damien tied into all of this, yes he was the son of a Gotham saint, Bruce Wayne, and yes he was Lily's (alleged) former lover. But what other part did he play? Blake couldn't place the gut feeling that there was more to the kid than met the eye. It was more intuition than an idea supported by some evidence he had gleaned from their meeting. One thing was certain: The kid had powerful connections to be able to track down Lily at his place. He was as off the grid as a person can get in a city. And it wasn't easy for cops to turn on their own, which is the only way he could think that Damien might get that information...That is, unless... He had other things to attend to and the thought was pushed to the side. As much as he wanted to delve into it, it would have to wait.
"I noticed they didn't say a whole lot about your father." Which he thought was strange, Rose hadn't even mentioned him once when her and Damien had come down to his apartment. "That struck me as... odd."
~~
“If you wanted a girl that would keep you interested, or at least your detective side interested you picked the right now.” She tilted her head up, giving him a little smile. Just hearing him talk to her again, them having a (was normal the right word) conversation again helped her to relax and fall back into the rhythm that they’d found together.
“Richard Grayson was- is his name. He was gone for my childhood. My mom thought he was dead. He couldn’t get back to us, he was being held somewhere I guess. My mom, again, didn’t say to much. I get the impression she doesn’t like talking on the phone about things to much and considering some of the things I’ve found out, I’m not surprised. I wouldn’t want anyone picking up on our calls.”
Reaching up she turned his face down to look at her and she pressed her lips gently against his. “And thank you, for everything.”