Gavin "Orpheus" King, DC Comics, fic
Title: Balarre
Summary: Always with me, moving, driving, killing time, keeping time.
Fandom: DC Comics
Warnings: None
Characters: Gavin King, aka Orpheus
Author's note: References canon detailed during the BATMAN: ORPHEUS RISING miniseries, from which the summary is derived. Title: balarre, Latin, to dance.
He's not a Jet.
Gavin reminds himself of that a lot, usually while he's dabbing blood off a split lip and stretching out his quads. His calves are sore from practicing the cabriole for an hour today, and he practices it again now. His mother watches him, corrects the shift of his weight that had been getting his placement wrong, and he hits his target dead-on twenty times, brings his second foot down in a cabriole fermee, and she grins and tells him he'll do it right next time.
She's right.
***
It's his teacher's idea for him to start taking Kung Fu. Gavin's not sure what he thinks about it, not at first. It seems too much like what he's trying to avoid with dance instead. But he turns out to be good at it - he already has the discipline to practice and the control not to push himself too far, and his body knows how to do almost exactly what he wants it to - and the first time he sends one of the bullies messing with him home with a split lip of his own Gavin stands there after, blood on his sneaker, not breathing hard at all, until he can cope with having hurt somebody. Having liked being able to.
His sensei spends a while talking to him about that, later, and by the end of it Gavin walks out convinced that being able to defend himself and somebody else is exactly what he wants to do, is what he should do. Convinced, too, that he shouldn't have to do it, and that it's wrong that he does, and one day Gavin's going to fix it.
***
He hadn't forgotten that talk when he left after college to see the world with his troupe. He just hadn't expected what he'd found. Hadn't expected to remember everyone he'd ever lost to this White man's world and know that the world wasn't good enough as it was. Know he had to fix it.
He hadn't expected to get allies. Choon-he, Nadira, Haida (his name, Gavin knows, is Bill, but Gavin also knows how important it is to pick your own name, represent your own face, and paper might say Bill but Haida's name is his people)... they'd picked up more allies as they traveled, and he still isn't sure which of the three of them had started their organization. Nadira had been the one to approach him, and it had taken him all of three days to decide to tell them yes.
They aren't a mob. Gavin knows exactly where the money they use comes from, the clean legal dollars and the dancing on the grey dollars, just where it goes, who goes where and to whom and with whom - all of them know how easily power can be perverted, and there's nothing one of them does with the organization that all of them don't know and discuss. Transparency, Nadira always says, the scar on her face twisting her mouth into a smirk with every word, isn't power, and that's just why she likes it.
***
It takes him years to be ready, but Gavin's been building himself to this for a long, long time, and he can wait for his body and his mind to catch up with his soul, his callused feet.
He's Orpheus. Trips to hell are what he does. And he'll bring his Eurydice, his people, back with him.
-- Fin
Summary: Always with me, moving, driving, killing time, keeping time.
Fandom: DC Comics
Warnings: None
Characters: Gavin King, aka Orpheus
Author's note: References canon detailed during the BATMAN: ORPHEUS RISING miniseries, from which the summary is derived. Title: balarre, Latin, to dance.
He's not a Jet.
Gavin reminds himself of that a lot, usually while he's dabbing blood off a split lip and stretching out his quads. His calves are sore from practicing the cabriole for an hour today, and he practices it again now. His mother watches him, corrects the shift of his weight that had been getting his placement wrong, and he hits his target dead-on twenty times, brings his second foot down in a cabriole fermee, and she grins and tells him he'll do it right next time.
She's right.
***
It's his teacher's idea for him to start taking Kung Fu. Gavin's not sure what he thinks about it, not at first. It seems too much like what he's trying to avoid with dance instead. But he turns out to be good at it - he already has the discipline to practice and the control not to push himself too far, and his body knows how to do almost exactly what he wants it to - and the first time he sends one of the bullies messing with him home with a split lip of his own Gavin stands there after, blood on his sneaker, not breathing hard at all, until he can cope with having hurt somebody. Having liked being able to.
His sensei spends a while talking to him about that, later, and by the end of it Gavin walks out convinced that being able to defend himself and somebody else is exactly what he wants to do, is what he should do. Convinced, too, that he shouldn't have to do it, and that it's wrong that he does, and one day Gavin's going to fix it.
***
He hadn't forgotten that talk when he left after college to see the world with his troupe. He just hadn't expected what he'd found. Hadn't expected to remember everyone he'd ever lost to this White man's world and know that the world wasn't good enough as it was. Know he had to fix it.
He hadn't expected to get allies. Choon-he, Nadira, Haida (his name, Gavin knows, is Bill, but Gavin also knows how important it is to pick your own name, represent your own face, and paper might say Bill but Haida's name is his people)... they'd picked up more allies as they traveled, and he still isn't sure which of the three of them had started their organization. Nadira had been the one to approach him, and it had taken him all of three days to decide to tell them yes.
They aren't a mob. Gavin knows exactly where the money they use comes from, the clean legal dollars and the dancing on the grey dollars, just where it goes, who goes where and to whom and with whom - all of them know how easily power can be perverted, and there's nothing one of them does with the organization that all of them don't know and discuss. Transparency, Nadira always says, the scar on her face twisting her mouth into a smirk with every word, isn't power, and that's just why she likes it.
***
It takes him years to be ready, but Gavin's been building himself to this for a long, long time, and he can wait for his body and his mind to catch up with his soul, his callused feet.
He's Orpheus. Trips to hell are what he does. And he'll bring his Eurydice, his people, back with him.
-- Fin