Post by lizity on Sept 12, 2012 22:07:53 GMT -5
Sleep was elusive, it had been for the last few days… well months really. She’d always had a hard time sleeping more than a few hours at a time, especially at night. Usually she lay in bed with Blake with her eyes closed, her breathing slow and rested just to be near him. She loved the cold nights that he curled up around her and she could sink into the smell of him and lose herself in her own head for a few hours. Tonight wasn’t one of those nights though.
Carefully she slid herself out of bed and paused to pick out some clothes before padding into the living room. She changed into a pair of black pants, shirt and had a hoodie hung on the back of a kitchen chair. Jotting down a quick note that read <i>’Couldn’t sleep, going for a run. I’ll be home soon. Love you, Lily.’</i>, she left it on her pillow next to him after padding back into the bedroom silently. Her fingers brushed a thick curl of hair off his forehead and she smiled softly.
She still wondered if he’d still want to be with her after he found out all her dark secrets. She didn’t even know what all of them were yet but she knew she had them. It was in the way she looked at people. They weren’t just a man or a woman when she passed by them on the street. They were classified in the back of her head as ‘threat’ or ‘non-threat’. Her fighting skills were too sharp for someone that just did it with a passing casual enjoyment of it. She saw a fighter in her mother and in Damien. It was in the way their bodies moved and their eyes scanned a room. She knew it had to do with all the newspaper articles and reports she was reading and watching about the Batman. She was also starting to put things together from the memories that were slowly coming back to her.
Shaking her head she grabbed a hair tie off the dresser and left the apartment silently. She pulled her hair back as she hit the street and flicked up the hood of her jacket before starting down the side walk. Was she afraid of getting mugged? No, not in the slightest. Just in the last month she’d run most of the drug dealers off the corners after beating their asses and the asses of the men they’d brought back from them. But that didn’t include the streets further down, the streets she was running along now.
It felt good to run at night, it strangely felt natural though there was something not so natural about running on the streets. She found a fire escape and jumped a dumpster to grab the bottom rungs, pulling herself up. Climbing the building she paused a moment to get her bearings before running across the roof tops. She loved the feel of the ground dropping out under her as she jumped between roofs. Now this felt right, this felt normal for her.
She stopped to catch her breath when she realized how far she’d gone from home and what part of town she was standing in, deep in the gang territories that the cops tried to stay out of. She knew that this part of town belonged to the Ace’s now even without seeing the tagging on the sides of buildings. She also knew that once upon a time it had belonged too Two-Face.
A stab of pain shot through her head enough to double her over, her hands grasping the back of her head. She breathed deep through her nose, trying to focus on it through the pain and through the images that flashed behind her closed eyes.
She saw herself, dressed like a hooker, walking with some other women into a club with armed guards at the doors. She flirted and teased her way through the men that filled the club, made herself stand out without giving up to much of herself, enough to get the attention of someone bigger. Her and another girl were taken through a back door to a plush office were he was sitting. She remembered Two-Face’s aging face as if he were standing in front of her. Remember how he looked at her as he’d grinned and walked over to her and the blonde. She remembered the sounds of an explosion going off and gun fire. She remembered grabbing the guard that had been standing behind her and taking his gun from him as she knocked him out. She remembered turning and pointing the gun at Two-Face as he stared at her in shock and lust. She remembered how he’d talked to her, asking her to join him, to work for him.She remembered the sound of the gun going off in the enclosed office and the red dot on his forehead as the back of his head exploded across his desk. She remembered feeling nothing as she pulled the trigger.
Gasping she pushed her hands off her knees to make herself stand up and look down at the street below her. Her eyes stared at the burned out husk of an old club, the street still charred black in places from were explosives had gone off.
She remembered.
Like tumblers clicking into place on a lock the wall that had been holding so much back came down. She still remembered her months of not having the memories, everything she done and everything she felt but now all the missing pieces fit together. She had a choice to make now, a choice to remain ignorant or she could go back to the way things were. But Damien was back now and he was taking back the cowl and that sat heavy and hard in her stomach. It made her frown hard as she turned and started to walk back across the roof slowly. Her father was also back, a man that she’d wanted to meet all her life that she now had the opportunity to come face to face with. His memory had started her on her path to try to clean up the city that he’d dedicated so much of his life too though deep down she knew he wouldn’t approve of her methods.
This wasn’t her father’s city anymore though. This wasn’t Batman’s city either. Gothom was and always would be its own city. It belonged to no one, lease of all any of them, but they could sure as hell fight for it. But would she fight for it again was the big question on her mind.
~~
Once she got into safer territory she’d made up her mind. She couldn’t walk away, just like Damien hadn’t walked away back then. He wouldn’t stop her though, she still doubted he could but she hadn’t seen him fight since he’d gotten back from his trip around the world. She still knew his head and knew how wrapped up in every detail he got to the point that he couldn’t see out of his confined little box. That she knew well.
Hailing a cab even though it was well past midnight she gave him the address of Wayne manor. She wasn’t worried about anyone not being up. Even if they were asleep she knew other ways into the cave. She wanted her things, she wanted to pick back up and keep working. She’d made a mistake that had gotten her hurt but she’d learn from it, get up, and do it again.
She was silent through the cab ride and tossed the bills over the seat to the driver as she got out and watched him head back down the drive. Daniel was up, he’d let the cab through the gate and now he stood with the door open, perplexed and tiredness around the edges of his eyes.
“I’m sorry to wake you, I just needed some things out of the basement.” She gave him the half smile that came to easy to her face. The smile that didn’t touch her eyes, that she did just to make people feel more comfortable around her.
Daniel let her go and as she disappeared around a corner he moved to a phone and called Damien to tell him that Lily was there and in the cave.
Lily remembered every step down to the cave and the coolness that always hung heavy in the air. This felt like home too and it felt good to be back in that place again. She didn’t waste any time either as she moved over to the drawers of uniforms, pulling one out with one that had been made and fit to her body from Jason’s designs and started getting dressed.
~~
Damien received the call from Daniel at some odd hour in the morning, mentioning that Lily was back. He knew what she was there for. On one hand, he liked the idea. But, then her actions would probably be in conflict once again. Why was it hard for them to understand that killing is NOT the answer. It makes you worse than the people you fight. They were not judge, jury and executioner. His father used tactics to control the Gotham Underworld. Not once did he willingly kill a man.
This was a fight that he battled many times. Sure, he could easily snap a mans neck. Or stab him in the heart. But, that was not the way. There was more ways to strike fear other than killing them. If you kill them, it proves you can kill them. That person no longer can talk, you no longer become a myth, a legend. By using the shadows, and his skills. His father made the criminals fear him. Jason had gotten to Lily, using her father and mother as an example as to why killing is okay.
It was also the last thing they fought. The same day Jason beat him unconscious, calling him unworthy to bear the cowl. That he wasn't willing to kill. Getting into the underground base, he'd prep one of his new modified bikes and would then take off into a series of tunnels that would eventually lead him top side and towards the cave.
~~
Jason’s modifications on both their suits had been amazing. She remembered that as she started pulling everything into place. The weight of the uniform on her body, the way she moved in it, it felt right again. It felt <b>good</b> being back in the suit that she’d spent countless hours every night going out in the city over.
Her gloves and helm were sitting on the table near the bikes when she heard the rumble of another bike. She didn’t need to turn around and look to know who it was. Jason’s uniform was sitting on the rack gathering dust. He hadn’t been here in weeks if not months. Why wasn’t he here either? Had he really run when she’d disappeared? She didn’t put it past him. They’d been close and he ran from thinks like that, he ran from pain.
She made and irritated sound in her throat when Damien’s bike turned off and she finished typing in the command in the computer. She was turning her com unit in her helmet off from the main computer. She didn’t want to be bothered by him right now though apparently he’d be bothering her anyway. She didn’t want to face him, didn’t want the fight that was about to happen.
Taking a deep breath she turned around, dressed in her Bat suit as she came down the stairs from the computer and paused by the table to pull her gloves on one at a time, silent.
~~
The way she stood, the way she turned her comlink off, it was like nothing changed. This is what he had been fearing, but he didn't come here to fight. But he will defend himself. When he got off the bike, he'd pull the helmet off and place it on the bike. Eyes watching her, he was neutral. Damien himself had just gotten to bed from a long shift of running the streets of Gotham. He was making his name known. People were starting to whisper about him, he had already broken up enough drug rings. But, they'd only stay as broken if people would stay behind bars.
"Lily."
He stated.
Damien wasn't a dummy, whoever thought he was, was in for a shock. Damien didn't run from this place, he didn't use it. Having moved operations to under the Wayne Tower, in the center of city, it allowed him to access the city faster.
"We should talk."
~~
The Lily that had sat and had lunch with him, laughing and talking wasn’t the one that was standing in front of him. The woman that stood in front of him was whole and completely self-aware. There was no question in her eyes, there was also the dark heaviness that had appeared the night that they’d fought and the night that he’d packed up and left to go tour the world. Or as Lily had seen it, the night he tucked tail and ran because he didn’t want to listen to the truths that were put in front of him.
She didn’t acknowledge him when he said her name, moving over to the racks of accessories that she started clipping to her belt. It wasn’t until he came closer, wanting to talk that she turned on him, a fist half raised in threat.
“There’s nothing to talk about Damien.”
~~
Frowning.
Jason. That's all he could think about. Shaking his head.
"Yes there is, Lily. I'm not here to fight you. Please, at least hear me out." Damien's fight with Jason gave him insight that he needed more tools in his belt to be able to help the city grow to what it should be. Watching her though, he take a deep breath as he glanced down. Then back to her.
"I wasn't sure if you were going to remember, but that doesn't seem to be the case." saying as he pressed his lips together thinking. "I'm not here to stop you. But, you're not Batman." telling her. "In the day that my father wore the cowl. There was a woman he allied himself with in Gotham." glancing to the computer terminal.
"Computer. Activate, DW6971." after a moment, the big monitor would come on as it finished it's boot sequence.
"Computer. Access Records. Batwoman, Aka, Katherine Kane." it'd pull up everything she had done in Gotham city.
"Become her, if you want. But, I only have one request." which puts him into a more defensive posture. "But, I'm sure you know what it is."
~~
“I’ll be whoever I please to be Damien.” She said in a cool even tone. He’s seen three sides of Lily in all the time that he’d known her. The quiet shy girl that he’d first met and fallen in love with, the more assured if not lost one with no memories of a past that haunted her, and the one that was standing in front of him now. This one was angry though it was hidden behind a mask, it still flickered in her eyes.
“You don’t get to ask anything of me. You ran away and left those of us here to fend for ourselves instead of facing up and realizing that we needed you in places other than the streets. You ran. You might call it leaving to train but that’s just an excuse. You just needed a reason not to have to face up to everything that was sitting in front of you.”
She shoved past him, none to lightly either and fully with the intent of knocking him on his ass.
~~
"No." he said simply.
Damien had reached his breaking point when she shoved past him. There was no knocking him down, he stood his ground. But it wasn't going to stop there. Grabbing her shoulder, he was fully expecting her to punch him, or somehow kick him. He was going to anticipate her move by simply blocking it. And not even phase from the force of the punch. "I did not run away." his voice even, neutral still.
"I came back to restore this city, I left so I can restore this city. But, it seems all you want to do is just take the easy way out. To follow in Jason's footsteps, to be the next John Paul Valley.
If you remember your history correctly. Things didn't turn out so well for him when Bruce came back."
~~
She swung for him when he pulled her back around. He blocked, good for him, maybe he had learned a thing or two while he was gone. He’d need it, and she knew that. But it didn’t stop her from aiming a short hard jab into his side from her other arm if he didn’t block that too. Her eyes gave nothing away, a new trick she’d learned.
“You. Ran. Away. Like a coward. You just didn’t like it because you couldn’t step up and be what you wanted to be. It’s not a bad thing you’re not like your father, you shouldn’t be like him. Be different, make a difference in a better way. Using your head and your company. There’s enough fists out on the streets.”
He hit a nerve and she came at him again, a knee up as she grabbed for his head with the intention of cracking his face off the armor knee protector on her leg.
“Jason <b>begged</b> me to take the cowl when you left. I took it because someone needed to be the Bat, someone needed to show the city that the legend was still alive and it became a part of me and I’m not going to let it go. And I’m good at it. Yes, I made a mistake and I got hurt but I learn from it, and I get back up and I wont make the same mistake twice. You on the other hand keep ramming your head into a wall expecting to get a different out come every time.
“And don’t you dare threat-“ Her words cut off as she looked past him at the rows of uniforms, seeing one that was missing, giving him the perfect opportunity to swing back.
~~
When she brought his head down to crack over her knee, he'd rebound with a vicious uppercut. Hardly even phased. "No." telling her with a growl. "What you did, you corrupted the symbol. Jason helped you corrupt the symbol." Spitting out blood, he'd make sure to take a step away from her. "I'm not some little boy who's head is lost in the clouds. It was my decision to bring Batman back into this world. It was my decision to put the cowl on. It was my decision to leave to become stronger.
What you did, you didn't make a legend. You took the easy way out, Lily. You let yourself get cocky. Being Batman isn't just fighting people on the streets." it was more than that, much, much more than that.
~~
His voice cracked like a whip slicing through their heated argument.
"That's enough!" he shouted, hands gripping the chrome railing of the staircase landing that lead back up to the mansion. He looked down on them all from his higher position, a displeased look on his face. all three lapsed into silence, Dick's hands left the bannister and curled together at the small of his back. Both would recognize instantly that uniform he wore, the slick black and the blue chevron that arched across his chest. Dark eyes regarded them from behind a pointed mask.
"Damien's right." he said in more even tones, turning to descend the staircase. Thick shadows fell across his face hiding it from both of them. "There was...IS... only one Batman." he continued when he reached the foot of the staircase.
Dick, the original Robin, the man who had turned the mantle down. He wasn't Bruce Wayne, this he had known even back then. Life had seemed complicated at the time, but now...He looked between the son of his surrogate father and the daughter Dick had never met. Guilt and pain clashed and he was thankful for the shadows that hid his expression from them. This wasn't how he had wanted their meeting to go.
"That legacy died with Bruce Wayne. That I promise you."
Since awakening from his icebound sleep it seemed like the ghosts of his past were choosing now to come back and haunt him. Regrets? He had more than a few. Dick had seen these rifts between people before, their argument, their words hit far too close to home. This was very much like one of many fights he had had with Damien's mother some fifteen years earlier. Although, to him, it was less than several years. Time, its linear meaning had been broken. At times he still didn't feel like he had totally caught up with everything that had happened. Half the people he had known were dead or missing.
A quiet stillness fell between them and suddenly Dick was glad to have those shadows that hid his face from him. Looking into her face, her eyes that reminded him so much of Rose's, his heart nearly lept out of his chest. every neuron seemed to be on fire and he wasn't sure what to feel, what to say...
"Lily.." He finally managed, feeling like a rock was firmly entrenched in his throat. "I..." he didn't know what to say, what to do so he looked away, ashamed.
~~
He spit and she spit too, her jaw holding a dull ache from his upper cut. The urge to unload on him completely was getting hard to resist but it felt good to scream and yell after being trapped inside her own head for so long.
“Jason didn’t do anything to me other than understand me. Short of begging me to take the cowl, he stopped making decisions. Everything we did was my idea, my plan.” Her body was poised and ready to get back into another brawl. Besides practice they’d never truly fought each other and she was itching for it bad tonight, just to get it out.
“And you’re the king of easy ways out of thing-“ She cut off as Dick’s voice cut through the cave, echoing off the high stone walls, mentally slapping her every time they came back at her. She stood staring at him, mouth half open, taking a step back from Damien.
She took a deep shuttering breath, the back of her hand moving up to her mouth, wiping away the blood from the corner of her mouth. Her lungs felt like lead in her chest as she stared at the ghost standing on the stairs, at eyes that had only ever looked back at her through pictures. And then he hung his head and she couldn’t hold back the tears that had been welling up in her eyes. A pain much worse than physical shot through her chest at seeing what she thought was his shame and disappointment at her.
“Dad…” She choked out the word before taking another step back and turning to moving toward her old bike, grabbing her helm on the way, shoulders curled in on herself.
~~
When Dick's voice cut across the room, his stance went from defensive to passive as he watched her. A frown playing on his lips as he looked over his shoulder a moment at Dick. Damien didn't know what to really do at this point. What was he going to say? He could override her bike so it wouldn't work, or override the comm. When she was gone, he made plenty of fail safes so that if something were to happen to the motorcycles while they would be left unattended, that they wouldn't fall into someone else's hands.
There were a lot of issues that obviously needed to be discussed. Moving over to the terminal, he'd punch in a few commands and what looked like locks would brace both his bike, and hers. A door opening up to each side as they would then slowly rotate out of view. The doors then closing once again. She had nowhere to run.
Tonight, they were going to be facing their pasts, and demons.
~~
This was not how he expected things to go, though in truth he hadn't known what to expect. This wasn't how he wanted to introduce himself to his daughter this way. he watched her turn and let his eyes fall tot he floor as she strode away. Damien had other plans, though, he made a move for the automatic door and shut it before Lily could make her get away. Dick gave Damien a side long glanced and wondered if he had a death wish. If Lily was anything like her mother she wouldn't like having the decision taken out of her hands.
"Maybe it's best that we clear the air." He said finally, lily forced to confront the two men. "This wasn't how I wanted this to go" he added, hand scratching at the stubble on his chin. He hadn't expected rainbows and unicorns but he hoped, at least, she wouldn't run away.
~~
She saw the doors closing and ran to try to catch them, even if it was just to slide between them and get away from the look on her father’s face. She’d just been yelling at Damien for running and now she was trying to do the same thing but it wasn’t the same right?
Leaning her head against the concrete wall she stayed there for a ten count, breathing slowly in and out before she turned and hurled her helmet at Damien’s head. He’d catch it or knock it out of the way and she knew it but it still felt good to throw something at him. She didn’t want to be here anymore, didn’t want to listen to Damien and his holier than though attitude. She really didn’t want to hear how disappointed in her that her father was.
“Open the damn doors, Damien.” She growled at him, holding in the tension that vibrated through her body with contained violence. Her eyes cut over to Dick and that violence ebbed for the moment, replaced by the longing of a child before she looked away again.
~~
"No." telling her. Easily catching the helmet.
"You can try and tell me I am a coward, to tell me I ran away." shaking his head. "You are right, to a point. I did run away. But, I did with purpose, I was unfit before. And with continued training… this city will be great again." taking a deep breath.
"We all have issues. Things we need to clear the air." saying as he glanced over at Dick. "I believe a daughter should talk to her father." taking a deep breath as he then turned to Lily. Stepping forward, away from the console he takes a deep breath.
"I realize that I am not perfect… and… I can be naïve." glancing down. "I'm afraid that I'll never live up to my father's dreams"
~~
Dick didn't know what to say though his eyes were on his daughter. Her slumped shoulders, her expression the bordered somewhere between despair and anger. This was the legacy that he and his generation had left behind. They had gone off and selfishly died selfless deaths in the defense of thousands... While the one's he wanted to protect most of all suffered. Perhaps things could have been different, Dick knew he would have been dead if he had stayed, if J'onn hadn't found him and taken him to the capsule in the watchtower. It hadn't been his choice and he had tried to protest but he'd been half dead and nearly hallucinating. He didn't remember all that he had said though he did vaguely recall repeating the phrase tell her I'm sorry.
And now here he was face to face and very much a live to tell her in person. He glanced at Demien who seemed to take the lead. Dick didn't stop him, Damien knew Lily her father was just legend and story, never flesh and blood. Until now.
"Bruce couldn't live up to his dream, Damien. Nobody could."
There was a time he thought differently and then? Then Slade happened, Luthor happened and their world fell apart. He hadn't realized how easily they would fall apart, like a rock thrown through a thin glass window. All the pieces glittering prettily in the sun still cut the skin when picked up.
"Lily, I-" he didn't know what to say, he opened his mouth and then it closed. he was afraid clumsy words would escape but he knew that nothing would be worse than anything else. "I'm sorry" he finished quietly, how did one apologize for a life time of absence? For missing every birthday, Christmas, for not being there when she and Rose had lived their life running from shadows of Slade and the enemies he and Bruce had collected over the years. At that moment, Dick was having a hard time living with what his death had meant. He could see the tears that threatened the leak unbidden from heavy eyes that had seen too much so young. Beneath the tough exterior beat the heart of a girl whom had only wanted her father.
"I know... It's not much." he smiled wanly, having forgotten Damien for now. "i want you to know, I don't.. expect you should.. Forgive me, but I am sorry.... For not being there.... For everything."
this wasn't the life he had wanted his children to live.
~~
Anger surged back into her eyes as they flicked back to Damien, so much like her mother but she restrained herself (at the moment) from acting on the impulses that made her way to hit him. She’d had almost a year to stew in the things that he’d said to her, at the one thing he said that crossed the line and had stung more than anything. It was the thing that made her hate him because it put the seed of doubt in the back of her mind that made her question just exactly how much like her grandfather she was.
Cruel things to say snapped to her tongue but she bit them back, swallowed the bitterness and instead remained silent and cold as she glared at Damien. It was perhaps worse in ways than if she’d started screaming at him again.
It was the quiet ‘I’m sorry’ that made her eyes turn back to Dick and she frowned and turned to the side, walking slowly toward the racks of uniforms and line of those cased in glass. Damien kept her from the computers but she couldn’t stand still under both their eyes anymore. She needed to move, needed to feel like she could escape in some small way.
She stopped in front of the one that had held Dick’s old uniform, her gloved hand resting against the cold glass. She could see her reflection in it, see the same dark eyes staring back at her that were watching her from his face. Her mother had always told her how much she reminded her of him.
“There’s nothing to forgive you for.” She finally said, quiet though the space of the cave echoed the words louder. “You didn’t do anything wrong, right? You would have been here if you could have? Right?”
~~
"I was dying" he explained, even though he didn't have to. Perhaps he felt like it would lessen the sting of his return but he knew it wouldn't. She had built into an almost mythological creature in her mind, he wondered if he was anything that she imagined him and if she was disappointed in what she had found. Dick knew he was being hard on himself, Lily understood or at least she said she did. "I thought I was, I-... It's complicated. Your mother needed time to get you away from... Well, Gotham. I thought if I confronted Slade... That I would buy you enough time to escape. I didn't realize at the time how much.." How much I would regret it... in the event he happened to live. Perhaps that's where the grain of guilt stemmed from. Perhaps his presence in her life even temporarily as a child would have been better than to show up twenty years later.
"And you have every right to resent me, Lily" Dick said, he would have reached for her, to hug her. There was something instinctual here, primal, something ingrained in the DNA to protect and love your child though you hardly knew her. "I wouldn't blame you if you did. For every birthday I missed, your first steps, your first words, but... For all of that... I'm mostly sorry that this Gotham, this world... is what we left you with. If we hadn't been so arrogant, so sure...." he shook his head, Dick knew there was no sense in dwelling in the past - He couldn't change it, what was done was done and yet... And yet... Life was never that simple and neither was letting go.
"When I awoke from being frozen it was as though i had seen you minutes before, held you in my arms. If I had known then what I was giving up..." He couldn't go on, it was too difficult to bring it all back, to confess to everything he had been feeling since his return. "And then I saw a picture of you.I knew as soon as I saw that picture, your dark hair, your eyes, that you're a Grayson and that I had missed so damn much."
~~
<i>It’s complicated.</i> Her mother’s favorite phrase when she didn’t know how to explain something. If she could count the number of times that she’d heard that. It made her laugh a little, a laugh that wasn’t all together sane sounding at the moment. She felt anything but sane to go along with it.
“You don’t get away from him. He’s always there somewhere.” She said quietly, a echo of words her mother had spoken time and time again to him. She’d instilled the same fear in Lily that she had for Slade. The fact that he was blood, her grandfather, make it hard to understand when she was little, sometimes she still didn’t think she understood but she’d always done what her mother wanted. She’d never tried to confront him to ask him why. One of the few times she’d seen him had been over a year before when Damien when they were telling him to leave the city… that felt like a life time ago.
He’d come closer, he reached out to touch her shoulders and draw her in and she looked at him, lost. He hugged her and she stood still for a few breaths before her hands slowly lifted to wrap around him, clinging to him tightly, and then desperately. If she could touch him he was real right?
She buried her face in his shoulder and squeezed her eyes closed, fighting back tears. The child he’d held in his arms before wasn’t the same woman he held now and he knew it. She could hear his guilt in his voice at the fact that he’d missed seeing her grow up and she wondered who she would have been with his influence. Not the monster that Damien saw. Not the unfeeling killer that she was so comfortable with. Of that she had no doubt. Her mother and father were so different.
“You don’t want me.” She whispered as she hugged him tighter. “You won’t. Not when you get to know me.”
~~
Lily clung to him tighter and her words tumbled out. This hasn't been what he had expected but he supposed it was better than her out right rejecting him for all the years he had missed. A part of what she was right, he didn't necessarily approve, he's said as much to Lily's mother not two days previous. She had to remind him that he wasn't there, to know what it was like,to see what had happened. To that, Dick could only concede.
her tears were wet and hot against his shoulder as she pressed her face into it to stifle a sob. His hand went to her head and patted it gently, falling strangely naturally into the role of the father, murmuring soft words. they hugged until it subsided and he pulled far enough away to speak.
"Whether I approve or not, Lily" he said seriously, his hands holding her at the shoulders. "That doesn't matter. you're your own woman, not a child. Old enough to make these decisions and know the cost. Whatever you did or will do, that doesn't change the fact that I am your father and nothing would ever make me not want you"
"You did what you had to do to survive, you still do. I can't presume to judge you on your actions when I haven't had to go through what you and your mother did. Until I live in this world myself, how could I possibly think less of you?"
It had been a hard conclusion to come to, but he had come to it nonetheless.It went against everything he had been taught, everything Dick had believed... But that was then and this is now and these days were desperate ones. They called for desperate measures, so they all claimed.
~~
Rose had never been overly affectionate through the years. She still loved her daughter and Lily had never felt unloved by the woman but hugs had been far between sometimes. She never questioned how her mother felt toward her, even though neither of them had been big talkers. They had a silent language all their own but it didn’t make up for actually hearing things sometimes. Sometimes the need to hear someone confirm what was already know eased pains that hid below the surface and ate away at everything.
Dick’s words, the honesty behind them soothed some long felt ache inside her. He accepted her with no questions asked though she had no doubt her mother had told him about her. She knew Rose wouldn’t sugar coat anything. Her mother knew exactly how well she’d been trained, knew how she thought and reacted. Even knowing that he accepted her and the choices she’d made.
Her eyes flicked over Dick’s shoulder to Damien’s retreating back as he walked silently up the stairs back into the mansion proper. Taking a deep breath her shoulders sagged in his hands and she looked down, trying to gather up all the pieces of herself that still felt like they were falling to the floor and shattering. When it came down to it, acceptance was the one thing that she’d always wanted from Damien when she’d truly opened up and shown him what was behind her masks of smiles and dark eyes. It was why she’d fallen in with Jason so easily, nothing she did bothered him because she had no doubt that he’d done worse at some point in his life.
And of course Blake, who had picked her up and held her till she was strong enough to stand on her own and let her be whoever she discovered she was. He never pushed or pried, he just let her grow. Would that all change now? Would he still love her when he looked her next and realize that so much of the woman that had been living with him for the last few months was gone and wouldn’t be coming back.
“I wanted to be you.” She said quietly, staring at his feet rather than his eyes that looked so much like her own. “Somewhere in there though things got… complicated.” God she hated that word.
Her hand lifted and touched the thick line of blue on his shoulder. The first uniform she’d made had been his colors. “I just wanted to make this place safer, even if nothing else in the world is. I’ve seen the world. I let myself become like them because that’s what it takes to fight this city now. Someone has to and Damien won’t do it, but I can.”
~~
"No" he said quietly and not unknindly, his eyes were steady and Lily sagged beneath his hands. beneath the weight of a burden so large she could barely stand in its shadow. Her father had dark, searching eyes, his hair just as dark, he cut a brooding figure, though the one fact belied that. though his lips at that moment were turned into a frown, the laugh lines told of a mouth used to smiling. "If there was one thing I learned from Damien's father, from Helena, and from.. Most of all.. Your mother."
He took a breath, long enough to hear Damien's retreating footsteps.
"its that its never too late for redemption. Not for the world. Not for Gotham, and not for you, Lily. There is another way, a better way, a way Bruce and I died for. Maybe the problem... Maybe it's not a problem that can be solved by hiding beneath a mask, the system is corrupt, degraded by dishonest men and women. So maybe this isn't a job for Nightwing or Batman, perhaps it is a job for Lily and Damien, you can fight for what you believe in, with integrity, outside the mask as well as you can inside of it. For every criminal we took down Bruce and I helped elect an honest official, change legislation, use the law to our advantage. You can't defeat the system outside, of it Lily, and that is what we failed to pass on. We let our guard down and we let this cancer infect and spread. But it can be saved, and so can you, Lily."
he sighed and gave a sardonic grin before adding
"But this is your time, Lily, your world, though it's our mess you're cleaning up. I can't make you change, I won't ask you to. Just know that it's not too late and never will be. In the shadows of darkness, Lily, you and I, and all of our kind, must stand in the light. If you never get there, I won't stop loving you. It's not conditional on you fulfilling what i want and I expect. I just want my daughter to be in my life"
~~
The first things that came to her mind were hard and hurtful. They were the snap reaction of wanting to protect herself from something she didn’t think she could do. She wasn’t sure that redemption was in her reach or if it was something she felt like she needed. She didn’t regret the things she’d done, only the way that the people in her left had reacted to it. She’d don’t what she felt was necessary and she knew that it made her the villain. She’d thought she’d accepted that but she still remembered the sting of Damien’s words when he’d told her she was no better than her grandfather.
“I tried that way. We all did. The gangs, the bosses, no one was afraid of us. It didn’t matter how many gangs we took apart, now many of them we put in the hospital with broken limbs or tried to get thrown in jail. As a whole they saw themselves untouchable. They’re afraid now, after what I did to Two-Face’s gang.” She tried to explain her justification to him. She wanted him to understand.
“I don’t have any influence outside of the mask. I tried to get Damien to focus on that before he left but he wants to do everything himself. He never saw me as good enough to fight beside him. He always tried to make me stay home. Besides he has a partner. There’s no room in his little Bat fa- unit for me, there never was.” She pulled away from Dick with a shrug of her shoulder and an impassive mask settling on her face that was so painfully like her mother.
She walked over to the metal examining table and leaned her hands on it. Her Bat suit flexed around her frame, the cap still folded up on the table near were Damien had set her helmet down after she’d thrown it at him. With lightning speed she lifted her fist and punched the table, hard enough to live the intention of her knuckles in the shining metal. Her shoulders shook as she kept her fists in tight balls.
Maybe Damien was right, maybe she was to much like her Grandfather. Maybe with all the training that Rose had given her to protect herself she’d trained her just the way that her father had trained her. Dick wanted her to be like him, she could hear it in his words but she wasn’t sure even if she knew how if she had it in her. He said it didn’t matter, that he still wanted her but doubt hung heavy in her mind.
“I don’t do well in the light. I was taught to use the shadows to my advantage. I’m not like the rest of them. I’m not like Damien or Jen. I’m not a hero but I’m not the villain either.” <i>I don’t know who I am.</i> was left unspoken.
~~
"You will never be a villain or a hero in my eyes." None of that mattered. if he could do it again? he would have stayed retired and died as he should have with a child that had at least known her father, rather than the stranger that stood before her trying to console her with empty words and gestures. But it was honest, it was sincere. Lily punched the table and Dick winced for her. "You need time. This wasn't how I intended to meet you." he stood motionless, not wanting to touch her for fear it might end this moment, bad as it was, he didn't want to let go again.
"You don't need a batfamily" he said without the shame or caution she had exhibited in using the word "And neither do I. We have a family, a real one, that's what I care about. You do belong, just as Jason did. He might tell you we pushed him away, didn't accept him, but that isn't true, Lily. Jason couldn't accept us he pushed himself away and he used our desire to see him to do more, to do better, to do what was right as an excuse to absolve himself of the obligations he felt to us. He felt like we shouldn't want him to change, he didn't like the pressure. but if that's not what a family, is, lily, then you are better off without one. If you don't think Damien loves you as much as he could love anyone else then why don't you go up there and ask him. Part of loving someone is wanting what is best for them."
he took a deep breath, the had opened his mouth and the words just kind of tumbled out in a stream of conscious sincerity. Was he saying the right thing? was this what she needed to hear? Or did she need him to shut up and tell her it was okay, that she would be okay, that he had loved from the second she was born until the second he would one day take his last breath. Dick didn't know to express it, it just welled up and became something implacable.
"we have time, though, Lily, to sort this out. To see where we all stand. I want you to be apart of my life and I hope you can... forgive me, accept me into yours. But it doesn't have to be now or tomorrow or the next day, I just want... All I want is for you and I to talk, to get to know eachother. not all at once... Butover time, I won't push you into anything"
~~
Her head ached from everything that had happened tonight and the resettling of old memories filling the voids that had been there instead. Some part of her wished that she’d stopped pushing so much to try to get back what she’d lost, that she’d just been happy with what she’d had but hind sight is always 20/20.
She knew that Dick, her father, wanted to help her, wanted what was best for her like all parents did. She tried to push aside the sting of his words as he pushed on, as he read her mind about Jason. She and Jason had talked for hours some nights, he’d opened up to her about himself. He’d felt safe with her because she was just like him, because they felt the same way. He’d seen his past in her future.
“Damien doesn’t love me.” She said quietly. “And I don’t need him to tell me so either. All he’s ever seen in me once I stopped hiding was my grandfather. Even before I pulled the trigger on Harvey Dent. He didn’t try to stop me, he just packed up and ran off.”
Pushing off the table she stood up fully and pulled off one of her leather gloves, her knuckles red and swelled from hitting the table but whatever pain she might have felt didn’t register to her. She’d felt worse and pain just reminded her she was alive. She flexed her fingers before looking up at him and slowly held her hand out toward him.
“Promise you won’t leave again?” She tried to hold it back but her jaw trembled her words. “Please?” It was a child’s silent begging to be lied to and promises to be made even when they couldn’t be kept. It was her silent begging not to lose him again. Maybe if he promised, maybe then the long line of people that had walked away from her over the years would stop. Maybe he’d stop the curse.
~~
"I won't, I promise. I'll be here at the mansion whenever you need me." In theory. He hoped. Though now that Rose had all but moved in, it seemed like the old Wayne mannor was where they were likely to stay. Dick liked it, most of the time. it brought back fond memories, mostly... some bad. The struggles, the fights, life had always been complicated for them. A fact they had passed on to their children, lamentably. He knew she was about to leave, she was much like her mother and would never want anyone to see her lose her grip, to fold tot eh ground and sob. Dick didn't try he merely stood there, a sad expression on his face.
"call me, okay?" he asked as she turned her face away "I'll be here, waiting, I promise"
~~
She took a shaky breath as she tried to steady herself and nodded. “I will. Maybe we can work out together sometime.” A common ground that they both did that they could at least meet equally on. Maybe he could help her figure things out that way. For some reason she’d always found clarity on the mats or lifting weights. Pushing her body to the limit had always helped clear her head from all the shit that piled up and she couldn’t get rid of.
Turning she walked over to pick up her helmet and cape, holding it to her chest. It was still her’s no matter what Damien though. She believed that she’d earned that for everything she’d done over the last year.
“Thank you… Dad.” It felt strange and right at the same time to say that, to call someone that. It felt good though to see his face, even if his words were heavy to hear and some of them she didn’t want to hear. She was going to hold him to his word though, that he wouldn’t leave no matter what, that it didn’t mater who or what she was. He came to her with unconditional love for a child he’d never seen.
She was a fury of movement then, pulling on her glove and helmet and unlocking her bike from the storage were Damien had put it. Shoving her cape in the compartment on the side of it she got on, giving the engine a heavy dose of gas before she took off, heading back into the city.
Carefully she slid herself out of bed and paused to pick out some clothes before padding into the living room. She changed into a pair of black pants, shirt and had a hoodie hung on the back of a kitchen chair. Jotting down a quick note that read <i>’Couldn’t sleep, going for a run. I’ll be home soon. Love you, Lily.’</i>, she left it on her pillow next to him after padding back into the bedroom silently. Her fingers brushed a thick curl of hair off his forehead and she smiled softly.
She still wondered if he’d still want to be with her after he found out all her dark secrets. She didn’t even know what all of them were yet but she knew she had them. It was in the way she looked at people. They weren’t just a man or a woman when she passed by them on the street. They were classified in the back of her head as ‘threat’ or ‘non-threat’. Her fighting skills were too sharp for someone that just did it with a passing casual enjoyment of it. She saw a fighter in her mother and in Damien. It was in the way their bodies moved and their eyes scanned a room. She knew it had to do with all the newspaper articles and reports she was reading and watching about the Batman. She was also starting to put things together from the memories that were slowly coming back to her.
Shaking her head she grabbed a hair tie off the dresser and left the apartment silently. She pulled her hair back as she hit the street and flicked up the hood of her jacket before starting down the side walk. Was she afraid of getting mugged? No, not in the slightest. Just in the last month she’d run most of the drug dealers off the corners after beating their asses and the asses of the men they’d brought back from them. But that didn’t include the streets further down, the streets she was running along now.
It felt good to run at night, it strangely felt natural though there was something not so natural about running on the streets. She found a fire escape and jumped a dumpster to grab the bottom rungs, pulling herself up. Climbing the building she paused a moment to get her bearings before running across the roof tops. She loved the feel of the ground dropping out under her as she jumped between roofs. Now this felt right, this felt normal for her.
She stopped to catch her breath when she realized how far she’d gone from home and what part of town she was standing in, deep in the gang territories that the cops tried to stay out of. She knew that this part of town belonged to the Ace’s now even without seeing the tagging on the sides of buildings. She also knew that once upon a time it had belonged too Two-Face.
A stab of pain shot through her head enough to double her over, her hands grasping the back of her head. She breathed deep through her nose, trying to focus on it through the pain and through the images that flashed behind her closed eyes.
She saw herself, dressed like a hooker, walking with some other women into a club with armed guards at the doors. She flirted and teased her way through the men that filled the club, made herself stand out without giving up to much of herself, enough to get the attention of someone bigger. Her and another girl were taken through a back door to a plush office were he was sitting. She remembered Two-Face’s aging face as if he were standing in front of her. Remember how he looked at her as he’d grinned and walked over to her and the blonde. She remembered the sounds of an explosion going off and gun fire. She remembered grabbing the guard that had been standing behind her and taking his gun from him as she knocked him out. She remembered turning and pointing the gun at Two-Face as he stared at her in shock and lust. She remembered how he’d talked to her, asking her to join him, to work for him.She remembered the sound of the gun going off in the enclosed office and the red dot on his forehead as the back of his head exploded across his desk. She remembered feeling nothing as she pulled the trigger.
Gasping she pushed her hands off her knees to make herself stand up and look down at the street below her. Her eyes stared at the burned out husk of an old club, the street still charred black in places from were explosives had gone off.
She remembered.
Like tumblers clicking into place on a lock the wall that had been holding so much back came down. She still remembered her months of not having the memories, everything she done and everything she felt but now all the missing pieces fit together. She had a choice to make now, a choice to remain ignorant or she could go back to the way things were. But Damien was back now and he was taking back the cowl and that sat heavy and hard in her stomach. It made her frown hard as she turned and started to walk back across the roof slowly. Her father was also back, a man that she’d wanted to meet all her life that she now had the opportunity to come face to face with. His memory had started her on her path to try to clean up the city that he’d dedicated so much of his life too though deep down she knew he wouldn’t approve of her methods.
This wasn’t her father’s city anymore though. This wasn’t Batman’s city either. Gothom was and always would be its own city. It belonged to no one, lease of all any of them, but they could sure as hell fight for it. But would she fight for it again was the big question on her mind.
~~
Once she got into safer territory she’d made up her mind. She couldn’t walk away, just like Damien hadn’t walked away back then. He wouldn’t stop her though, she still doubted he could but she hadn’t seen him fight since he’d gotten back from his trip around the world. She still knew his head and knew how wrapped up in every detail he got to the point that he couldn’t see out of his confined little box. That she knew well.
Hailing a cab even though it was well past midnight she gave him the address of Wayne manor. She wasn’t worried about anyone not being up. Even if they were asleep she knew other ways into the cave. She wanted her things, she wanted to pick back up and keep working. She’d made a mistake that had gotten her hurt but she’d learn from it, get up, and do it again.
She was silent through the cab ride and tossed the bills over the seat to the driver as she got out and watched him head back down the drive. Daniel was up, he’d let the cab through the gate and now he stood with the door open, perplexed and tiredness around the edges of his eyes.
“I’m sorry to wake you, I just needed some things out of the basement.” She gave him the half smile that came to easy to her face. The smile that didn’t touch her eyes, that she did just to make people feel more comfortable around her.
Daniel let her go and as she disappeared around a corner he moved to a phone and called Damien to tell him that Lily was there and in the cave.
Lily remembered every step down to the cave and the coolness that always hung heavy in the air. This felt like home too and it felt good to be back in that place again. She didn’t waste any time either as she moved over to the drawers of uniforms, pulling one out with one that had been made and fit to her body from Jason’s designs and started getting dressed.
~~
Damien received the call from Daniel at some odd hour in the morning, mentioning that Lily was back. He knew what she was there for. On one hand, he liked the idea. But, then her actions would probably be in conflict once again. Why was it hard for them to understand that killing is NOT the answer. It makes you worse than the people you fight. They were not judge, jury and executioner. His father used tactics to control the Gotham Underworld. Not once did he willingly kill a man.
This was a fight that he battled many times. Sure, he could easily snap a mans neck. Or stab him in the heart. But, that was not the way. There was more ways to strike fear other than killing them. If you kill them, it proves you can kill them. That person no longer can talk, you no longer become a myth, a legend. By using the shadows, and his skills. His father made the criminals fear him. Jason had gotten to Lily, using her father and mother as an example as to why killing is okay.
It was also the last thing they fought. The same day Jason beat him unconscious, calling him unworthy to bear the cowl. That he wasn't willing to kill. Getting into the underground base, he'd prep one of his new modified bikes and would then take off into a series of tunnels that would eventually lead him top side and towards the cave.
~~
Jason’s modifications on both their suits had been amazing. She remembered that as she started pulling everything into place. The weight of the uniform on her body, the way she moved in it, it felt right again. It felt <b>good</b> being back in the suit that she’d spent countless hours every night going out in the city over.
Her gloves and helm were sitting on the table near the bikes when she heard the rumble of another bike. She didn’t need to turn around and look to know who it was. Jason’s uniform was sitting on the rack gathering dust. He hadn’t been here in weeks if not months. Why wasn’t he here either? Had he really run when she’d disappeared? She didn’t put it past him. They’d been close and he ran from thinks like that, he ran from pain.
She made and irritated sound in her throat when Damien’s bike turned off and she finished typing in the command in the computer. She was turning her com unit in her helmet off from the main computer. She didn’t want to be bothered by him right now though apparently he’d be bothering her anyway. She didn’t want to face him, didn’t want the fight that was about to happen.
Taking a deep breath she turned around, dressed in her Bat suit as she came down the stairs from the computer and paused by the table to pull her gloves on one at a time, silent.
~~
The way she stood, the way she turned her comlink off, it was like nothing changed. This is what he had been fearing, but he didn't come here to fight. But he will defend himself. When he got off the bike, he'd pull the helmet off and place it on the bike. Eyes watching her, he was neutral. Damien himself had just gotten to bed from a long shift of running the streets of Gotham. He was making his name known. People were starting to whisper about him, he had already broken up enough drug rings. But, they'd only stay as broken if people would stay behind bars.
"Lily."
He stated.
Damien wasn't a dummy, whoever thought he was, was in for a shock. Damien didn't run from this place, he didn't use it. Having moved operations to under the Wayne Tower, in the center of city, it allowed him to access the city faster.
"We should talk."
~~
The Lily that had sat and had lunch with him, laughing and talking wasn’t the one that was standing in front of him. The woman that stood in front of him was whole and completely self-aware. There was no question in her eyes, there was also the dark heaviness that had appeared the night that they’d fought and the night that he’d packed up and left to go tour the world. Or as Lily had seen it, the night he tucked tail and ran because he didn’t want to listen to the truths that were put in front of him.
She didn’t acknowledge him when he said her name, moving over to the racks of accessories that she started clipping to her belt. It wasn’t until he came closer, wanting to talk that she turned on him, a fist half raised in threat.
“There’s nothing to talk about Damien.”
~~
Frowning.
Jason. That's all he could think about. Shaking his head.
"Yes there is, Lily. I'm not here to fight you. Please, at least hear me out." Damien's fight with Jason gave him insight that he needed more tools in his belt to be able to help the city grow to what it should be. Watching her though, he take a deep breath as he glanced down. Then back to her.
"I wasn't sure if you were going to remember, but that doesn't seem to be the case." saying as he pressed his lips together thinking. "I'm not here to stop you. But, you're not Batman." telling her. "In the day that my father wore the cowl. There was a woman he allied himself with in Gotham." glancing to the computer terminal.
"Computer. Activate, DW6971." after a moment, the big monitor would come on as it finished it's boot sequence.
"Computer. Access Records. Batwoman, Aka, Katherine Kane." it'd pull up everything she had done in Gotham city.
"Become her, if you want. But, I only have one request." which puts him into a more defensive posture. "But, I'm sure you know what it is."
~~
“I’ll be whoever I please to be Damien.” She said in a cool even tone. He’s seen three sides of Lily in all the time that he’d known her. The quiet shy girl that he’d first met and fallen in love with, the more assured if not lost one with no memories of a past that haunted her, and the one that was standing in front of him now. This one was angry though it was hidden behind a mask, it still flickered in her eyes.
“You don’t get to ask anything of me. You ran away and left those of us here to fend for ourselves instead of facing up and realizing that we needed you in places other than the streets. You ran. You might call it leaving to train but that’s just an excuse. You just needed a reason not to have to face up to everything that was sitting in front of you.”
She shoved past him, none to lightly either and fully with the intent of knocking him on his ass.
~~
"No." he said simply.
Damien had reached his breaking point when she shoved past him. There was no knocking him down, he stood his ground. But it wasn't going to stop there. Grabbing her shoulder, he was fully expecting her to punch him, or somehow kick him. He was going to anticipate her move by simply blocking it. And not even phase from the force of the punch. "I did not run away." his voice even, neutral still.
"I came back to restore this city, I left so I can restore this city. But, it seems all you want to do is just take the easy way out. To follow in Jason's footsteps, to be the next John Paul Valley.
If you remember your history correctly. Things didn't turn out so well for him when Bruce came back."
~~
She swung for him when he pulled her back around. He blocked, good for him, maybe he had learned a thing or two while he was gone. He’d need it, and she knew that. But it didn’t stop her from aiming a short hard jab into his side from her other arm if he didn’t block that too. Her eyes gave nothing away, a new trick she’d learned.
“You. Ran. Away. Like a coward. You just didn’t like it because you couldn’t step up and be what you wanted to be. It’s not a bad thing you’re not like your father, you shouldn’t be like him. Be different, make a difference in a better way. Using your head and your company. There’s enough fists out on the streets.”
He hit a nerve and she came at him again, a knee up as she grabbed for his head with the intention of cracking his face off the armor knee protector on her leg.
“Jason <b>begged</b> me to take the cowl when you left. I took it because someone needed to be the Bat, someone needed to show the city that the legend was still alive and it became a part of me and I’m not going to let it go. And I’m good at it. Yes, I made a mistake and I got hurt but I learn from it, and I get back up and I wont make the same mistake twice. You on the other hand keep ramming your head into a wall expecting to get a different out come every time.
“And don’t you dare threat-“ Her words cut off as she looked past him at the rows of uniforms, seeing one that was missing, giving him the perfect opportunity to swing back.
~~
When she brought his head down to crack over her knee, he'd rebound with a vicious uppercut. Hardly even phased. "No." telling her with a growl. "What you did, you corrupted the symbol. Jason helped you corrupt the symbol." Spitting out blood, he'd make sure to take a step away from her. "I'm not some little boy who's head is lost in the clouds. It was my decision to bring Batman back into this world. It was my decision to put the cowl on. It was my decision to leave to become stronger.
What you did, you didn't make a legend. You took the easy way out, Lily. You let yourself get cocky. Being Batman isn't just fighting people on the streets." it was more than that, much, much more than that.
~~
His voice cracked like a whip slicing through their heated argument.
"That's enough!" he shouted, hands gripping the chrome railing of the staircase landing that lead back up to the mansion. He looked down on them all from his higher position, a displeased look on his face. all three lapsed into silence, Dick's hands left the bannister and curled together at the small of his back. Both would recognize instantly that uniform he wore, the slick black and the blue chevron that arched across his chest. Dark eyes regarded them from behind a pointed mask.
"Damien's right." he said in more even tones, turning to descend the staircase. Thick shadows fell across his face hiding it from both of them. "There was...IS... only one Batman." he continued when he reached the foot of the staircase.
Dick, the original Robin, the man who had turned the mantle down. He wasn't Bruce Wayne, this he had known even back then. Life had seemed complicated at the time, but now...He looked between the son of his surrogate father and the daughter Dick had never met. Guilt and pain clashed and he was thankful for the shadows that hid his expression from them. This wasn't how he had wanted their meeting to go.
"That legacy died with Bruce Wayne. That I promise you."
Since awakening from his icebound sleep it seemed like the ghosts of his past were choosing now to come back and haunt him. Regrets? He had more than a few. Dick had seen these rifts between people before, their argument, their words hit far too close to home. This was very much like one of many fights he had had with Damien's mother some fifteen years earlier. Although, to him, it was less than several years. Time, its linear meaning had been broken. At times he still didn't feel like he had totally caught up with everything that had happened. Half the people he had known were dead or missing.
A quiet stillness fell between them and suddenly Dick was glad to have those shadows that hid his face from him. Looking into her face, her eyes that reminded him so much of Rose's, his heart nearly lept out of his chest. every neuron seemed to be on fire and he wasn't sure what to feel, what to say...
"Lily.." He finally managed, feeling like a rock was firmly entrenched in his throat. "I..." he didn't know what to say, what to do so he looked away, ashamed.
~~
He spit and she spit too, her jaw holding a dull ache from his upper cut. The urge to unload on him completely was getting hard to resist but it felt good to scream and yell after being trapped inside her own head for so long.
“Jason didn’t do anything to me other than understand me. Short of begging me to take the cowl, he stopped making decisions. Everything we did was my idea, my plan.” Her body was poised and ready to get back into another brawl. Besides practice they’d never truly fought each other and she was itching for it bad tonight, just to get it out.
“And you’re the king of easy ways out of thing-“ She cut off as Dick’s voice cut through the cave, echoing off the high stone walls, mentally slapping her every time they came back at her. She stood staring at him, mouth half open, taking a step back from Damien.
She took a deep shuttering breath, the back of her hand moving up to her mouth, wiping away the blood from the corner of her mouth. Her lungs felt like lead in her chest as she stared at the ghost standing on the stairs, at eyes that had only ever looked back at her through pictures. And then he hung his head and she couldn’t hold back the tears that had been welling up in her eyes. A pain much worse than physical shot through her chest at seeing what she thought was his shame and disappointment at her.
“Dad…” She choked out the word before taking another step back and turning to moving toward her old bike, grabbing her helm on the way, shoulders curled in on herself.
~~
When Dick's voice cut across the room, his stance went from defensive to passive as he watched her. A frown playing on his lips as he looked over his shoulder a moment at Dick. Damien didn't know what to really do at this point. What was he going to say? He could override her bike so it wouldn't work, or override the comm. When she was gone, he made plenty of fail safes so that if something were to happen to the motorcycles while they would be left unattended, that they wouldn't fall into someone else's hands.
There were a lot of issues that obviously needed to be discussed. Moving over to the terminal, he'd punch in a few commands and what looked like locks would brace both his bike, and hers. A door opening up to each side as they would then slowly rotate out of view. The doors then closing once again. She had nowhere to run.
Tonight, they were going to be facing their pasts, and demons.
~~
This was not how he expected things to go, though in truth he hadn't known what to expect. This wasn't how he wanted to introduce himself to his daughter this way. he watched her turn and let his eyes fall tot he floor as she strode away. Damien had other plans, though, he made a move for the automatic door and shut it before Lily could make her get away. Dick gave Damien a side long glanced and wondered if he had a death wish. If Lily was anything like her mother she wouldn't like having the decision taken out of her hands.
"Maybe it's best that we clear the air." He said finally, lily forced to confront the two men. "This wasn't how I wanted this to go" he added, hand scratching at the stubble on his chin. He hadn't expected rainbows and unicorns but he hoped, at least, she wouldn't run away.
~~
She saw the doors closing and ran to try to catch them, even if it was just to slide between them and get away from the look on her father’s face. She’d just been yelling at Damien for running and now she was trying to do the same thing but it wasn’t the same right?
Leaning her head against the concrete wall she stayed there for a ten count, breathing slowly in and out before she turned and hurled her helmet at Damien’s head. He’d catch it or knock it out of the way and she knew it but it still felt good to throw something at him. She didn’t want to be here anymore, didn’t want to listen to Damien and his holier than though attitude. She really didn’t want to hear how disappointed in her that her father was.
“Open the damn doors, Damien.” She growled at him, holding in the tension that vibrated through her body with contained violence. Her eyes cut over to Dick and that violence ebbed for the moment, replaced by the longing of a child before she looked away again.
~~
"No." telling her. Easily catching the helmet.
"You can try and tell me I am a coward, to tell me I ran away." shaking his head. "You are right, to a point. I did run away. But, I did with purpose, I was unfit before. And with continued training… this city will be great again." taking a deep breath.
"We all have issues. Things we need to clear the air." saying as he glanced over at Dick. "I believe a daughter should talk to her father." taking a deep breath as he then turned to Lily. Stepping forward, away from the console he takes a deep breath.
"I realize that I am not perfect… and… I can be naïve." glancing down. "I'm afraid that I'll never live up to my father's dreams"
~~
Dick didn't know what to say though his eyes were on his daughter. Her slumped shoulders, her expression the bordered somewhere between despair and anger. This was the legacy that he and his generation had left behind. They had gone off and selfishly died selfless deaths in the defense of thousands... While the one's he wanted to protect most of all suffered. Perhaps things could have been different, Dick knew he would have been dead if he had stayed, if J'onn hadn't found him and taken him to the capsule in the watchtower. It hadn't been his choice and he had tried to protest but he'd been half dead and nearly hallucinating. He didn't remember all that he had said though he did vaguely recall repeating the phrase tell her I'm sorry.
And now here he was face to face and very much a live to tell her in person. He glanced at Demien who seemed to take the lead. Dick didn't stop him, Damien knew Lily her father was just legend and story, never flesh and blood. Until now.
"Bruce couldn't live up to his dream, Damien. Nobody could."
There was a time he thought differently and then? Then Slade happened, Luthor happened and their world fell apart. He hadn't realized how easily they would fall apart, like a rock thrown through a thin glass window. All the pieces glittering prettily in the sun still cut the skin when picked up.
"Lily, I-" he didn't know what to say, he opened his mouth and then it closed. he was afraid clumsy words would escape but he knew that nothing would be worse than anything else. "I'm sorry" he finished quietly, how did one apologize for a life time of absence? For missing every birthday, Christmas, for not being there when she and Rose had lived their life running from shadows of Slade and the enemies he and Bruce had collected over the years. At that moment, Dick was having a hard time living with what his death had meant. He could see the tears that threatened the leak unbidden from heavy eyes that had seen too much so young. Beneath the tough exterior beat the heart of a girl whom had only wanted her father.
"I know... It's not much." he smiled wanly, having forgotten Damien for now. "i want you to know, I don't.. expect you should.. Forgive me, but I am sorry.... For not being there.... For everything."
this wasn't the life he had wanted his children to live.
~~
Anger surged back into her eyes as they flicked back to Damien, so much like her mother but she restrained herself (at the moment) from acting on the impulses that made her way to hit him. She’d had almost a year to stew in the things that he’d said to her, at the one thing he said that crossed the line and had stung more than anything. It was the thing that made her hate him because it put the seed of doubt in the back of her mind that made her question just exactly how much like her grandfather she was.
Cruel things to say snapped to her tongue but she bit them back, swallowed the bitterness and instead remained silent and cold as she glared at Damien. It was perhaps worse in ways than if she’d started screaming at him again.
It was the quiet ‘I’m sorry’ that made her eyes turn back to Dick and she frowned and turned to the side, walking slowly toward the racks of uniforms and line of those cased in glass. Damien kept her from the computers but she couldn’t stand still under both their eyes anymore. She needed to move, needed to feel like she could escape in some small way.
She stopped in front of the one that had held Dick’s old uniform, her gloved hand resting against the cold glass. She could see her reflection in it, see the same dark eyes staring back at her that were watching her from his face. Her mother had always told her how much she reminded her of him.
“There’s nothing to forgive you for.” She finally said, quiet though the space of the cave echoed the words louder. “You didn’t do anything wrong, right? You would have been here if you could have? Right?”
~~
"I was dying" he explained, even though he didn't have to. Perhaps he felt like it would lessen the sting of his return but he knew it wouldn't. She had built into an almost mythological creature in her mind, he wondered if he was anything that she imagined him and if she was disappointed in what she had found. Dick knew he was being hard on himself, Lily understood or at least she said she did. "I thought I was, I-... It's complicated. Your mother needed time to get you away from... Well, Gotham. I thought if I confronted Slade... That I would buy you enough time to escape. I didn't realize at the time how much.." How much I would regret it... in the event he happened to live. Perhaps that's where the grain of guilt stemmed from. Perhaps his presence in her life even temporarily as a child would have been better than to show up twenty years later.
"And you have every right to resent me, Lily" Dick said, he would have reached for her, to hug her. There was something instinctual here, primal, something ingrained in the DNA to protect and love your child though you hardly knew her. "I wouldn't blame you if you did. For every birthday I missed, your first steps, your first words, but... For all of that... I'm mostly sorry that this Gotham, this world... is what we left you with. If we hadn't been so arrogant, so sure...." he shook his head, Dick knew there was no sense in dwelling in the past - He couldn't change it, what was done was done and yet... And yet... Life was never that simple and neither was letting go.
"When I awoke from being frozen it was as though i had seen you minutes before, held you in my arms. If I had known then what I was giving up..." He couldn't go on, it was too difficult to bring it all back, to confess to everything he had been feeling since his return. "And then I saw a picture of you.I knew as soon as I saw that picture, your dark hair, your eyes, that you're a Grayson and that I had missed so damn much."
~~
<i>It’s complicated.</i> Her mother’s favorite phrase when she didn’t know how to explain something. If she could count the number of times that she’d heard that. It made her laugh a little, a laugh that wasn’t all together sane sounding at the moment. She felt anything but sane to go along with it.
“You don’t get away from him. He’s always there somewhere.” She said quietly, a echo of words her mother had spoken time and time again to him. She’d instilled the same fear in Lily that she had for Slade. The fact that he was blood, her grandfather, make it hard to understand when she was little, sometimes she still didn’t think she understood but she’d always done what her mother wanted. She’d never tried to confront him to ask him why. One of the few times she’d seen him had been over a year before when Damien when they were telling him to leave the city… that felt like a life time ago.
He’d come closer, he reached out to touch her shoulders and draw her in and she looked at him, lost. He hugged her and she stood still for a few breaths before her hands slowly lifted to wrap around him, clinging to him tightly, and then desperately. If she could touch him he was real right?
She buried her face in his shoulder and squeezed her eyes closed, fighting back tears. The child he’d held in his arms before wasn’t the same woman he held now and he knew it. She could hear his guilt in his voice at the fact that he’d missed seeing her grow up and she wondered who she would have been with his influence. Not the monster that Damien saw. Not the unfeeling killer that she was so comfortable with. Of that she had no doubt. Her mother and father were so different.
“You don’t want me.” She whispered as she hugged him tighter. “You won’t. Not when you get to know me.”
~~
Lily clung to him tighter and her words tumbled out. This hasn't been what he had expected but he supposed it was better than her out right rejecting him for all the years he had missed. A part of what she was right, he didn't necessarily approve, he's said as much to Lily's mother not two days previous. She had to remind him that he wasn't there, to know what it was like,to see what had happened. To that, Dick could only concede.
her tears were wet and hot against his shoulder as she pressed her face into it to stifle a sob. His hand went to her head and patted it gently, falling strangely naturally into the role of the father, murmuring soft words. they hugged until it subsided and he pulled far enough away to speak.
"Whether I approve or not, Lily" he said seriously, his hands holding her at the shoulders. "That doesn't matter. you're your own woman, not a child. Old enough to make these decisions and know the cost. Whatever you did or will do, that doesn't change the fact that I am your father and nothing would ever make me not want you"
"You did what you had to do to survive, you still do. I can't presume to judge you on your actions when I haven't had to go through what you and your mother did. Until I live in this world myself, how could I possibly think less of you?"
It had been a hard conclusion to come to, but he had come to it nonetheless.It went against everything he had been taught, everything Dick had believed... But that was then and this is now and these days were desperate ones. They called for desperate measures, so they all claimed.
~~
Rose had never been overly affectionate through the years. She still loved her daughter and Lily had never felt unloved by the woman but hugs had been far between sometimes. She never questioned how her mother felt toward her, even though neither of them had been big talkers. They had a silent language all their own but it didn’t make up for actually hearing things sometimes. Sometimes the need to hear someone confirm what was already know eased pains that hid below the surface and ate away at everything.
Dick’s words, the honesty behind them soothed some long felt ache inside her. He accepted her with no questions asked though she had no doubt her mother had told him about her. She knew Rose wouldn’t sugar coat anything. Her mother knew exactly how well she’d been trained, knew how she thought and reacted. Even knowing that he accepted her and the choices she’d made.
Her eyes flicked over Dick’s shoulder to Damien’s retreating back as he walked silently up the stairs back into the mansion proper. Taking a deep breath her shoulders sagged in his hands and she looked down, trying to gather up all the pieces of herself that still felt like they were falling to the floor and shattering. When it came down to it, acceptance was the one thing that she’d always wanted from Damien when she’d truly opened up and shown him what was behind her masks of smiles and dark eyes. It was why she’d fallen in with Jason so easily, nothing she did bothered him because she had no doubt that he’d done worse at some point in his life.
And of course Blake, who had picked her up and held her till she was strong enough to stand on her own and let her be whoever she discovered she was. He never pushed or pried, he just let her grow. Would that all change now? Would he still love her when he looked her next and realize that so much of the woman that had been living with him for the last few months was gone and wouldn’t be coming back.
“I wanted to be you.” She said quietly, staring at his feet rather than his eyes that looked so much like her own. “Somewhere in there though things got… complicated.” God she hated that word.
Her hand lifted and touched the thick line of blue on his shoulder. The first uniform she’d made had been his colors. “I just wanted to make this place safer, even if nothing else in the world is. I’ve seen the world. I let myself become like them because that’s what it takes to fight this city now. Someone has to and Damien won’t do it, but I can.”
~~
"No" he said quietly and not unknindly, his eyes were steady and Lily sagged beneath his hands. beneath the weight of a burden so large she could barely stand in its shadow. Her father had dark, searching eyes, his hair just as dark, he cut a brooding figure, though the one fact belied that. though his lips at that moment were turned into a frown, the laugh lines told of a mouth used to smiling. "If there was one thing I learned from Damien's father, from Helena, and from.. Most of all.. Your mother."
He took a breath, long enough to hear Damien's retreating footsteps.
"its that its never too late for redemption. Not for the world. Not for Gotham, and not for you, Lily. There is another way, a better way, a way Bruce and I died for. Maybe the problem... Maybe it's not a problem that can be solved by hiding beneath a mask, the system is corrupt, degraded by dishonest men and women. So maybe this isn't a job for Nightwing or Batman, perhaps it is a job for Lily and Damien, you can fight for what you believe in, with integrity, outside the mask as well as you can inside of it. For every criminal we took down Bruce and I helped elect an honest official, change legislation, use the law to our advantage. You can't defeat the system outside, of it Lily, and that is what we failed to pass on. We let our guard down and we let this cancer infect and spread. But it can be saved, and so can you, Lily."
he sighed and gave a sardonic grin before adding
"But this is your time, Lily, your world, though it's our mess you're cleaning up. I can't make you change, I won't ask you to. Just know that it's not too late and never will be. In the shadows of darkness, Lily, you and I, and all of our kind, must stand in the light. If you never get there, I won't stop loving you. It's not conditional on you fulfilling what i want and I expect. I just want my daughter to be in my life"
~~
The first things that came to her mind were hard and hurtful. They were the snap reaction of wanting to protect herself from something she didn’t think she could do. She wasn’t sure that redemption was in her reach or if it was something she felt like she needed. She didn’t regret the things she’d done, only the way that the people in her left had reacted to it. She’d don’t what she felt was necessary and she knew that it made her the villain. She’d thought she’d accepted that but she still remembered the sting of Damien’s words when he’d told her she was no better than her grandfather.
“I tried that way. We all did. The gangs, the bosses, no one was afraid of us. It didn’t matter how many gangs we took apart, now many of them we put in the hospital with broken limbs or tried to get thrown in jail. As a whole they saw themselves untouchable. They’re afraid now, after what I did to Two-Face’s gang.” She tried to explain her justification to him. She wanted him to understand.
“I don’t have any influence outside of the mask. I tried to get Damien to focus on that before he left but he wants to do everything himself. He never saw me as good enough to fight beside him. He always tried to make me stay home. Besides he has a partner. There’s no room in his little Bat fa- unit for me, there never was.” She pulled away from Dick with a shrug of her shoulder and an impassive mask settling on her face that was so painfully like her mother.
She walked over to the metal examining table and leaned her hands on it. Her Bat suit flexed around her frame, the cap still folded up on the table near were Damien had set her helmet down after she’d thrown it at him. With lightning speed she lifted her fist and punched the table, hard enough to live the intention of her knuckles in the shining metal. Her shoulders shook as she kept her fists in tight balls.
Maybe Damien was right, maybe she was to much like her Grandfather. Maybe with all the training that Rose had given her to protect herself she’d trained her just the way that her father had trained her. Dick wanted her to be like him, she could hear it in his words but she wasn’t sure even if she knew how if she had it in her. He said it didn’t matter, that he still wanted her but doubt hung heavy in her mind.
“I don’t do well in the light. I was taught to use the shadows to my advantage. I’m not like the rest of them. I’m not like Damien or Jen. I’m not a hero but I’m not the villain either.” <i>I don’t know who I am.</i> was left unspoken.
~~
"You will never be a villain or a hero in my eyes." None of that mattered. if he could do it again? he would have stayed retired and died as he should have with a child that had at least known her father, rather than the stranger that stood before her trying to console her with empty words and gestures. But it was honest, it was sincere. Lily punched the table and Dick winced for her. "You need time. This wasn't how I intended to meet you." he stood motionless, not wanting to touch her for fear it might end this moment, bad as it was, he didn't want to let go again.
"You don't need a batfamily" he said without the shame or caution she had exhibited in using the word "And neither do I. We have a family, a real one, that's what I care about. You do belong, just as Jason did. He might tell you we pushed him away, didn't accept him, but that isn't true, Lily. Jason couldn't accept us he pushed himself away and he used our desire to see him to do more, to do better, to do what was right as an excuse to absolve himself of the obligations he felt to us. He felt like we shouldn't want him to change, he didn't like the pressure. but if that's not what a family, is, lily, then you are better off without one. If you don't think Damien loves you as much as he could love anyone else then why don't you go up there and ask him. Part of loving someone is wanting what is best for them."
he took a deep breath, the had opened his mouth and the words just kind of tumbled out in a stream of conscious sincerity. Was he saying the right thing? was this what she needed to hear? Or did she need him to shut up and tell her it was okay, that she would be okay, that he had loved from the second she was born until the second he would one day take his last breath. Dick didn't know to express it, it just welled up and became something implacable.
"we have time, though, Lily, to sort this out. To see where we all stand. I want you to be apart of my life and I hope you can... forgive me, accept me into yours. But it doesn't have to be now or tomorrow or the next day, I just want... All I want is for you and I to talk, to get to know eachother. not all at once... Butover time, I won't push you into anything"
~~
Her head ached from everything that had happened tonight and the resettling of old memories filling the voids that had been there instead. Some part of her wished that she’d stopped pushing so much to try to get back what she’d lost, that she’d just been happy with what she’d had but hind sight is always 20/20.
She knew that Dick, her father, wanted to help her, wanted what was best for her like all parents did. She tried to push aside the sting of his words as he pushed on, as he read her mind about Jason. She and Jason had talked for hours some nights, he’d opened up to her about himself. He’d felt safe with her because she was just like him, because they felt the same way. He’d seen his past in her future.
“Damien doesn’t love me.” She said quietly. “And I don’t need him to tell me so either. All he’s ever seen in me once I stopped hiding was my grandfather. Even before I pulled the trigger on Harvey Dent. He didn’t try to stop me, he just packed up and ran off.”
Pushing off the table she stood up fully and pulled off one of her leather gloves, her knuckles red and swelled from hitting the table but whatever pain she might have felt didn’t register to her. She’d felt worse and pain just reminded her she was alive. She flexed her fingers before looking up at him and slowly held her hand out toward him.
“Promise you won’t leave again?” She tried to hold it back but her jaw trembled her words. “Please?” It was a child’s silent begging to be lied to and promises to be made even when they couldn’t be kept. It was her silent begging not to lose him again. Maybe if he promised, maybe then the long line of people that had walked away from her over the years would stop. Maybe he’d stop the curse.
~~
"I won't, I promise. I'll be here at the mansion whenever you need me." In theory. He hoped. Though now that Rose had all but moved in, it seemed like the old Wayne mannor was where they were likely to stay. Dick liked it, most of the time. it brought back fond memories, mostly... some bad. The struggles, the fights, life had always been complicated for them. A fact they had passed on to their children, lamentably. He knew she was about to leave, she was much like her mother and would never want anyone to see her lose her grip, to fold tot eh ground and sob. Dick didn't try he merely stood there, a sad expression on his face.
"call me, okay?" he asked as she turned her face away "I'll be here, waiting, I promise"
~~
She took a shaky breath as she tried to steady herself and nodded. “I will. Maybe we can work out together sometime.” A common ground that they both did that they could at least meet equally on. Maybe he could help her figure things out that way. For some reason she’d always found clarity on the mats or lifting weights. Pushing her body to the limit had always helped clear her head from all the shit that piled up and she couldn’t get rid of.
Turning she walked over to pick up her helmet and cape, holding it to her chest. It was still her’s no matter what Damien though. She believed that she’d earned that for everything she’d done over the last year.
“Thank you… Dad.” It felt strange and right at the same time to say that, to call someone that. It felt good though to see his face, even if his words were heavy to hear and some of them she didn’t want to hear. She was going to hold him to his word though, that he wouldn’t leave no matter what, that it didn’t mater who or what she was. He came to her with unconditional love for a child he’d never seen.
She was a fury of movement then, pulling on her glove and helmet and unlocking her bike from the storage were Damien had put it. Shoving her cape in the compartment on the side of it she got on, giving the engine a heavy dose of gas before she took off, heading back into the city.