The Path To Being Known By Elowen_p

long time nuclear waste warnings + angels

Batman by Sanford Greene

happy pride from your local queer robin :]

Selina & Talia

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Selina quite likes this thing she’s had going on with Talia, it’s far better than whatever was happening with Bruce at least.

‘Stop stealing things’, ‘Move in with me’, ‘Don’t team up against me with the Sirens’ nag, nag, nag. That’s all it had been with Bruce. Talia actually understands the things Selina does and she couldn’t give less of a shit about them. Well, she sort of does. Selina imagines that if Talia saw her pull something as boring as your standard bank robbery she’d break up with her. That’s understandable though, Selina would break up with someone who would pull a job that unfashionable.

“Why do you keep leaving?” Selina asks, stretching as she looks over to Talia packing her bag. It’s an honest question.

“Some of us have jobs.” Talia replies, no heat behind it. She leans over and kisses Selina before shouldering the bag. She walks to the door but hesitates before turning the handle.

Selina freezes from where she was still stretching. Talia never hesitates.

“What if I work was not the reason I was leaving?”

“Then I’d be ashamed of myself for not having you caught you in a lie sooner.” Selina replies, keeping her tone casual despite the fact that this is probably the most serious conversation they’ve had to date. “I don’t suppose you’re cheating on me? Because I thought you had better taste than to do something so class-less.”

“I would never.” she declares. The severity of the statement doesn’t match the conversation’s previous tone and Selina realises quite suddenly that they aren’t trying to be light-hearted about this any more. “I’m going to bring someone next time we see each other.”

“Oh?”

Talia opens the door and for a moment Selina thinks she isn’t getting a reply. Then Talia turns back, looking at Selina with an expression that could mean absolutely anything. “I hope that the two of you will mean something to each other.” she says, before walking out and closing the door softly behind her.

Selina doesn’t move for a while after that, thinking about what might be coming. She hopes it won’t change things too much, her and Talia really do have something special.

~

A couple of weeks later Selina gets back to her apartment to find Talia inspecting the blueprint she had set out on the table and a boy, perhaps eight years old, playing quietly with a couple of Selina’s cats.

Talia looks up from the blueprints. She doesn’t smile like she usually does when Selina enters a room. “This is my son. Damian.” she declares.

The boy looks up and cocks his head to one side. A part of Selina’s brain that she isn’t paying much attention to right now decides that how similar the boy looks to Bruce probably isn’t a coincidence.

In an instant Selina’s hopes that her and Talia’s relationship could continue unchanged are dashed. But as she looks at the boy being oh so careful with her kittens, she thinks she might not mind such a change after all.

picture this, i give you a glass bottle and tell you to open it, but bottle openers are forbidden, how do you do it?

DID YOU HEAR ABOUT TIM

Asdhovhoigdittekbbknc

You scream. Obviously. Then you run into the bathroom because you’re an idiot and that was the closest door to your bed.

You stop screaming. The coarse-rough voice of that horrible thing lets out a quiet “Shit.” through the wood of the door. Then heavy breathing and the drip, drip, drip of the tap maintenance never fixed is all you can hear.

Why is it here? What did you do? Some part of you had always thought that monster to be some demon. An agent of the devil that came after you for breaking your little brothers nose just because you could. Or for not calling an ambulance that time your grandma fell down the stairs. Or for tearing out Becky Pritchard’s earrings through her flesh for saying that yours looked ugly.

You may have been a slightly sadistic child.

That monster, that demon, had been the only thing that left you scared. The moment it shifted beneath your bed you would feel all the bubbling anger that flowed through your veins turn to ice. The moment it started whispering, promising you all the awful things it was going to do to you, that constant hunger to make others hurt would be drowned out by the tidal wave of fear that gripped you.

Well, old habits die hard, you think as you try to get your breathing under control. But now you’re twenty-five with six years in private security under your belt, so maybe they can be killed a little faster.

You remove the head from the toilet brush to turn it into a baton. The shape of it, the weight, is familiar to you. You’d always been good baseball. At least until you’d used the bat to take out a player's knee caps. You don’t think the coach would have minded so much if the kid had been on the opposing team.

You’ve never actually seen the monster and so find yourself hoping it has knee caps. It would be satisfying, you think, to feel the solid thunk of the strike and the sickly crack that would follow it.

Already lining up the shot in your head, you open the door.

Coming back to your apartment you prepare for a good night’s sleep. Upon laying on your bed you suddenly hear noises coming from underneath it. Carefully looking under you’re surprised to see the monster that lurked under your bed as a kid staring back at you. “Look man, I need a favor.”

Caitlin hates the inaction inherent in being an enforcer. She hates the red tape, the way her every move feels sluggish and predictable and entirely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. The feelings are made all the worse by the way she watches Jayce, a man she’s know near her whole life, turn Piltover upside down with only his mind.

The whole thing leads to her hanging around Zaun perhaps a little too much.

Everytime she goes she tries to justify herself by saying it’s for work. Tells herself that she’s only hanging around the dodgiest areas she can find to make herself a better and more knowledgeable enforcer.

It’s at least partly true. She’s been beginning to put together a picture of the lanes, artwork drenched in greens and purples with the name Silco at its centre.

She uses that knowledge to bury the fact that she’s been going to Zaun just because at least when you have to spend every other moment looking over your shoulder you can’t be as utterly bored as Caitlin is in Piltover.

On one of her trips she finds a hideout. It seems abandoned but neon paint still makes the walls glow odd colours and there are still power lines connected to the place. She follows one of the cables and finds it disconnected from whatever machine it used to be used to run. Purely out of curiosity she picks up the cable and screws it back into the connector.

Targets painted the same neon as the designs on the walls spring to life and start moving around.

Oh.

Oh Caitlin likes this.

A smile playing at her lips, she vaults over the counter to take a stance a reasonable distance from the targets before cocking her gun. She readies herself, taking a breath before she begins.

Bang.

Bang.

Bang.

Bang.

Her every shot hits exactly where it’s meant to. Once she runs out of ammo Caitlin lets herself bask in the satisfaction for a moment and allows the smile to fully take hold of her face.

“Not bad. For a topsider I guess.”

Caitlin whips around, aiming her gun before processing the fact that it’s out of ammo. She adjusts her grip slightly so that even if she can’t shoot it she can still swing it into someone’s face with enough force to knock them out. From the shadows slides a girl. Younger than Caitlin, probably still a child. Blue hair in plaits that drag along the floor as she bends her head to look at Caitlin enquiringly.

“Thank you,” Caitlin says, her tone not hiding the fact that she doesn’t particularly want to be thanking this random girl who’s been spying on her.

The girl seems to catch it.

“You don’t sound very thankful” she huffs.

“I’m not.”

“Then why say it?”

“So you go away faster.”

The girl pauses. Looks at Caitlin a little like she thinks Caitlin is stupid and she bristles with irritation. “That didn’t work very well for you, did it?”

“I suppose not.” Caitlin manages through gritted teeth.

The girl jerks slightly, as if some revalation has just come to her. It makes her look at Caitlin with significantly more interest.

“You should try and shoot me.”

What the fuck?

“No one’s ever shot me before, and some people have tried really hard, but I bet that you could take a decent stab at it.”

“I-“, Caitlin is sure the confusion must be showing on her face but she’s too caught off guard to bother hiding it. “No?”

The girl looks like a kicked puppy. “Please?”

“No,” Caitlin repeats, more firmly.

“Darn, guess I’ll have to find some way to persuade you.”

As soon as the girl finishes speaking she disappears back into the shadows as quickly as she emerged.

Caitlin huffs. She isn’t looking forwards to being persuaded.

Ren has been in love with Nora for as long as he can remember.

He’s aware that there must be a point when he wasn’t in love with her. Some point before the streets and the orphanages and their first school. A point when he was small with two living parents and not at all sure of himself like he is now.

It’s just that that time seems hazy. More like a dream than something that he lived through. Then he thinks back to being in love with Nora and suddenly his memories are in sharp focus, always with her at their center.

Ren has been in love with Nora for as long as he can remember and he’s been trying to figure out how to tell her for just as long. Nothing’s come to mind yet but, hey, it’s not like either of them are going anywhere.

Tell me I’m wrong