( open ) it started with a spark

[brat]

WHO: Bats, birds, and friends.
WHEN: Late April into May
WHERE: Wayne Tower
WHAT: A Bat-Mingle.
NOTES\WARNINGS:

In the Northern section of Nova City, Wayne Tower stands tall above the multiple empty buildings that make up the cityscape. The top two floors consist of the Wayne Penthouse in gothic architecture while the lower floor and main entrance are largely abandoned and home to a number of fruit bats. A basement serves as a work in progress Batcave, complete with hidden elevator to the penthouse.

And within the Tower itself? Who knows how many bats and birds may be found wandering about. After all, it has WAYNE written in big bold letters right across the front of it. That means it's free real estate, right?

Comments

[her_own_rules]

[ Oh, Damian.

Thanks for proving her point far more than disproving it.

She's well aware of all the facts he just tossed up in front of his pain as if they could be walls. As if they weren't phantom glass panes, she was staring through. The multiple times any number of things have happened to Bruce and Dick, both. Where he comes from, and what the strength of both—of all three of the people who raised him, like parents—means to him. Who he is. Who he wants to be. (Who he wants to make sure no one can take from him being able to be.)

The inherently dangerous helplessness evoked by a wound that doesn't show, bleed, or wrap.
That can't be pointed to, or specifically kept in small boxes. ]

Letting yourself be sad, about losing someone you love—
[ Yeah, those words are far too close to being far too encompassing. ]
—even briefly, isn't a weakness.

It doesn't stop you from being you—being capable and ready for whatever this place decides to throw at us all next.

[brat]

( gordon opens her mouth once again, and damian does as all waynes do when they don't want to have to have a subject repeat itself after the fact: he listens without listening. damian does nothing to try and hide it - he makes the same annoyed expression he always wears when someone's babbling on about something idiotic. and when she finishes? he scoffs. wrinkles his nose.

bends down enough to scritch behind haley's ears once more. clearly she deserves his attention more. )

I don't need you to tell me I am allowed to have feelings. ( on an ordinary day, he might have caught himself before he let his irritation bleed into this conversation. knows how it can be interrupted, which is. unideal. )

I may be an al Ghul and a Wayne by blood, but I chose to be Grayson's Robin. ( it's not a call out on his father's lack of emotional availability if everyone in the room already knows it. ) Remember that.

[her_own_rules]

[ Oh, Damian.

She doesn't flinch, and she doesn't look surprised. If anything, her expression remains an unrippled sympathetic. (Maybe there is something else there; but it's more at the walls he uses—tissue paper and timeless steel in one.) It's not like anyone in this room, or building, or family, doesn't know those facts.

The ones that are precisely the reason she came to tell him first,
and that this could have gone so much worse if he hadn't been.

He's more alike than not to his father in that,
and yet, again: he chose Dick. ]

I know.

Why do you think I decided to tell you first?

[ Rhetorical.

And not, as would have been easiest,
across the comms to all of the family at once.
From a place she could have distanced herself.]