Prompt Post - Part Ten
I am REALLY, REALLY SORRY about taking so long, guys, and about not being around much recently. I've been busier than I have in a while, and it just kept slipping my mind between uni applications and volunteering and all sorts- for some reason I thought we were much further off a new post.
If there is anything I haven't responded to, as of now, I'm ( Read more... )
So it was that the Little Yew Boy died and, with him, so too did the prince’s kindness. He grew crueler and crueler still, punishing all those that wronged him or dared to harm his remaining son with increasing horrors. And again, the boy grew sad.
One day, the prince and his son came to a town. None would open their hearths to them, for all knew the prince as the Great Dark One, bringer of vengeance, and so he cursed them.
At once, the boy wept.
“What ails you so?” the prince asked. “They refused us hospitality. Was that not unjust?”
“Have you let what you have become consume you so utterly? Their only crime was to fear you and they have paid for it most terribly,” the boy said. "Truly, that is unjust.”
The prince did not understand, for he had so long brought justice to the land that he had become blind to the very nature of the darkness and, in so doing, lost sight of the cruelty he wrought. And, try as he might to assure the boy he had merely been acting to protect him, the boy remained unconvinced.
“You were not always thus. Swear to stop or I shall leave to-morrow,” the boy said.
The prince did not want his son to leave, so he promised to stop his vengeful ways. Alas, he could not do so, for the darkness in his heart was too strong and the world was full of wicked men to punish.
The boy, greatly saddened, disappeared.
Only when the prince was at last alone, did he realize what he had lost.
He was too late to save Jason. There was nothing anyone could have done to change that fact. Even if he had been faster or if there had been no bomb, Jason would still have died of his injuries.
Bruce knows that.
But, he still blames himself.
He keeps thinking in what-ifs and if-onlys, in a way he hasn’t done since his parents were killed. What if he had not left that night? Would Jason still have gone off on his own? If only he had left better instructions for Dick, if only he had set stricter limitations for Jason, if only Dick had gone with him… It’s a never-ending litany of could-have-been scenarios that doesn’t make the pain any less real.
So, he does what he has always done: Bruce goes out, lets the black fury in his soul seize him and he fights, exacting his pound of flesh from the underbelly of Gotham while the man he wishes to kill, the Joker, laughs in Arkham. More and more criminals end up the hospitals, their bodies a map of pain he has inflicted upon them, and more and more, Dick begins to grow distant and combative again.
Jason is like a wound, open and oozing, between them, never mentioned but ever present.
One night, Bruce calls for backup. It’s a low-level bagman, one hardly even registering on the radar of bigger fishes, but the guy’s supposedly overheard some things about Two-Face’s operation and he’s got just enough training and height to be an issue even for Batman. It’s supposed to be simple: rough him up a little, scare him into talking, and suggest he find employment on the straight and narrow. No one else is supposed to be there.
The man’s wife and kid are there when he smashes through the window and pummels the man into the wall.
“Stop it! STOP!” Nightwing says, grabbing his wrist and pulling it back. “Goddamn it, look at yourself!”
In the corner, there is a boy, screaming and crying as his mother shields him with the whole of her body. Glass shards litter the ground, pearlescent in the light and marred only by slashes of cast-off blood. His reflection glares at him from the shards, a horrible shadow of death perched upon the chest of a man with a bloodied face.
“He’s a criminal,” Bruce says.
“If you can’t see what’s wrong here, then there’s no point in me explaining it,” Dick says harshly and leaps back into the window frame. “I’m out of here. I’m done.”
It’s the last time he sees Dick. He is not at home when Bruce gets back.
Nightwing disappears.
And Bruce feels his heart break all over again.
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And I'm so loving this, haha, its hard to breathe because I'm so congested and trying to keep myself under control. Your writing is so intricate and its voice is so beautiful and soothing. You're making my lungs work too hard in trying to keep my breathing. <3
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You flatter me <3
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