[Summer has probably never seen Damian's face make the motions they make. Honestly, not many people here have probably seen his face look this way.
Shocked.
Not comedically so, but enough for it to be visible. The otherwise ghastly horses draw the biggest excitable awe out of him. He LOVES them. They're beautiful. These aren't like Garfield's shapeshifting animals at all, green and wholesome. These are the kinds of animals that warms his black soul.
The only thing ruining the entire aesthetic (to him) is DMX being blasted all around. The wowed look on his face crumples gently as he comes close and glances up.]
Your entrance selection for such regally terrifying creatures could use some work.
Yeah, sorry, I figured "In The Hall of the Mountain King" was kind of overdone.
[Suffice to say, she's definitely not expecting that reaction out of him. It's not that she thought that he'd actually be startled or apprehensive about the phantom horses the way that, y'know, a normal person might. But she was definitely anticipating something more guarded or feigned-indifferent, not the soft awe of a kid at the world's most freakshow zoo in history.
She swings her leg over and slides down off of the back of her steed, cloak billowing behind her like a cape as she makes a sweeping motion toward the horses with her hand.]
You can play with 'em if you want. They're pretty fast and can run on water, but they'll only stay corporeal for about an hour before I'll have to make them again.
[And she's just surreptitiously going to go sit down on the lip of the well, a little pale and wobbly now that she's back on her feet, but disguising it as well as she can.]
[Hmm. For a moment or two, he inspects them with a clinical, hawkish gaze as is typical of the Bats. When he's satisfied, he reaches out to pet one along the neck with experience and no hesitation.
They're quite majestic to him. And familiar, though not in the way of him having seen many spectral equine, more they are intimidating and probably normally feared, and he relates a lot to that life.
The smile that touches his lips when one of the horses lowers its head is faint, but visible. Simple gremlin boy pleasures.] They're beautiful. [He glances back at Summer, the smile gone. His eyes search her before returning again to the horses.]
Maybe, but then we'd have to share. As opposed to, y'know. One for me and one for you.
[For all that they're phantoms, they behave reasonably similarly to normal horses, albeit less skittish than a real horse. The responses to attention are the same, the mannerisms are nearly identical, but perhaps fittingly, they don't seem at all inclined or likely to spook.
The one Summer wasn't riding gets bold after a second, lowering its head just enough to whuffle against Damian's head, nibbling at his hair.]
And then we'd have to fight about who gets to drive, and who picks the music, and all that bullshit too.
We wouldn’t. I would be the one driving and picking the music.
[The whuft blows his hair, and he reaches up to both give the horse some attention while also fixing his hair back with the other hand. What good horses... He quite likes them even if they are simply magic (and he hates magic), but he isn’t a fool. He turns enough to peer at Summer like before, noticing the bit of strain creation has put on her.
He frowns as if he knows.]
Do you expend energy to keep them in existence or just to summon them?
These ones, just to make them. Some spells are constant maintenance, some are just one cast on the front end. I don't have to maintain this one constantly because it wears off on its own after about an hour. Then I have to re-cast it if I want my pony back again.
[It's not a pony, and she's almost a hundred percent certain he's going to tell her it's not a pony, and that's probably why she calls it one.]
Something like flight? That's constant maintenance. Back when the werewolves were out I was flying getting away from some of them and I ran out of magic in mid-air. I got lucky, though, this guy named Kal swooped in and picked me out of freefall before I hit the ground.
[She was right--wait a fucking a minute. He starts, though it's mostly a twitching change to his face. This shock isn't like the awe-struck one with the horses. This is tight brows and thinning lips.]
Uh. Big guy, black hair, blue suit with a red cape? Decent guy. He dropped me off at my house. Well, my roommate's house. I guess it's more his than it is mine.
[Kind of a weird clarification to make, maybe, but it makes sense to her, at least.]
He said before he bailed that his name was Kal.
[And his other name is Clark, and he is in fact her roommate, but she's not technically lying by not confessing that. She's just not volunteering everything she knows about him, and technically Damian had only asked her to answer what he looked like.]
[DAMMIT, KENT. Stop running around saying you're Superman and Kal-El and Clark Kent!!!! "Why hello, yes, I'm an average farmer and also a superhero and an alien."]
Tt. I've seen him. [Both of them are casually keeping Superman information as if they think the other one doesn't know it. Perfect.] It was foolish to try to fly so long knowing you wouldn't have the energy for it.
You could have landed in a tree until morning. [He's just being a wise-ass mostly. There's a bunch of circumstances, but he's also a know-it-all little boy.
His shoulder wavers when one of the horses bumps it firmly with the flat of the head. Absent-mindedly, he reaches up to pet it almost reassuringly. Being corporal is such a drag, isn't it? Same.]
Didn't you have an easier spell at your disposal? [He thumbs at the horses.] What about them? Were the werewolves faster?
Horse-riding only operates on two axes — forward-back, and left-right. Flying, I get the benefit of a Z-axis. Plus the maneuverability is better, it's easier to get facing a target so I can aim, I can turn on a dime instead of having to steer the horse...
[Plus she's not great at riding horses at full speed...]
Look, it was a fluke of bad resource management. It's not like I let that happen ninety-nine percent of the time.
People were scared. Some didn’t know what to do because it was a surprise. [He actually doesn’t sound comdescending while telling her this, one hand stroking the side of the horse’s face. Maybe it’s his way of trying to console her about the misshap. He remembers what it had been like.] The first few nights especially.
You could do something at least is what matters. Flying requires a great deal of concentration.
[Well, huh. That's interesting, isn't it. Somehow the matter-of-fact know-it-all persona that this kid likes to put forward has given way into something quieter, more thoughtful. It's worthy of note, the way he's treating the horses, like he likes animals better than he likes people.
After a minute, she recalls that he'd been one of the ones changed into a werewolf, himself. That was when they'd first met, after all.]
You want to try it? Flying. I've got enough juice left for it if you want to see what it's like.
[He’s quiet for a long moment before he turns to peer at Summer, thoughtful. He looks like he wants to say something, but changes his mind... then decides to go ahead again.]
You shouldn’t push yourself. [There’s some teasing to his voice. A little.] I don’t want to end up impaled on a tree because of your mismanagement.
Besides, I’ve done my time with flying. It was sufficient while it lasted. I prefer not to have the liability of special abilities, no matter how convnenient.
Are you momming me? ...You are! Well, okay, then, Mom.
[There's another interesting tidbit, then. Family members who die and come back, guys who know how to fly but would rather not, no matter how convenient. A little kid who thinks she'd make a half-decent assassin. Hmmm.]
I'm serious about letting you play with the horses, though. I mean, they're already cast, they're just here for the duration. I always kind of thought if we ever started actually farming or something around here I could volunteer them to pull a plow or like...I dunno. Things you need horsepower for.
[She pauses a minute, glancing away and staring off into the distance for a bit. She doesn't look back when she finally decides to throw on an addendum.]
It'd be nice to be useful. Like the guy I live with. He's constantly, like...making soap, baking food, improving the garden. Helping people. I figured out how to repair leather with my magic but that hasn't really been relevant or anything yet.
[...]
Now I just sound like I'm whining. I just, y'know. I hope I get the chance to do something good. Be a part of this thing everybody's got going on here. Instead of just...existing on the periphery.
I'm not-- [His face is quick to screw up, but he doesn't attempt to say anything more on the topic so he doesn't give her any extra ammunition for teasing him. Damian Wayne does not "mom"!! He is a badass, unmatched vigilante and ex-assassin. Scary!! Intimidating!! Merciless!!
Cut to Damian standing not even five foot between two horses which he is currently petting.
The scathing flame only dies away when she keeps talking. He starts to encourage the idea of using the horses for farming if needed, but he closes his mouth and frowns. It'd be nice to be useful.]
Just because Kent can have every finger in every pie doesn't mean you aren't helpful. [He won't look at her at all when he says this, but the look on his face is... intense, full of conviction.] You're not a tool. It's not about being "useful," it's about... doing what you can.
Even if it's sweeping, watering plants, scavenging. It makes a difference.
[The thing that gets her, really, is the fact that he has absolutely no way of knowing what an impact those four words could possibly have on her, unsolicited and unexpected. You're not a tool. Like that's just it, so matter-of-fact that it's unquestionable, that it's absurd to even think that it could be doubted in the first place.
It's one of those phrases that people don't say because they figure it's just a given, something to be taken for granted. Ones like you're safe. It's the kind of phrase that some people need to hear more than anything, and nobody ever realizes it because it's so obvious, it doesn't even need to be said, except when it does.
You're not a tool. It makes her think of the wizard, and how long she's been missing, and how unsettling it is that he hasn't come looking for her yet.
He's never been one to take kindly to the notion of misplaced tools.]
I can do a lot.
[It's a rare moment of very genuine, very raw honesty — unusual for her, particularly when Damian has previously expressed his reasons for wanting to know the ins and outs of her magic in the first place.]
"If you could just" what? Have more power? Get stronger? Be more focused?
[He looks at her now with the same kind of strangely intense face, one that most thirteen year old boys shouldn't even know how to make. Less determined and more--understanding and exasperated about the state of things.]
It isn't about how much you can do. [This sounds genuine, like he believes it, but also as if he's getting this from somewhere else. As if he's been told this by someone else; the depth is very Damian, but the empathy of it isn't something he's seen sharing so freely.] It's about what you do with what you have.
So what have you done so far? You've shown me your horse spell, for one.
...Have someone teach me. Everything I know how to do, I had to figure out for myself.
[And this is a sign of how far she's come, maybe, even in just the short time since she's been here in Chroma; once upon a time she never would've shown her hand to the degree she's willing to now, not when her magic for so long had been her one and only trump card.
But it's amazing what little things like interpersonal support and the proximity of heroic people can do for a girl's nerves, and really, in the grand scheme of things, the strategic advantages of keeping quiet seem to get less and less with every day.]
I can make illusions, ones that stick. My hair isn't really this red, it just looks that way because of how I do it every morning.
[She reaches up, making a sort of pulling motion with her hand up by her head, and as she does the bright red of her hair fades almost immediately into a duller, unremarkable brown.]
I can make light and throw sound. Throw fire, generate lightning. The horses. I can evaporate water. I can fly.
[Hmm.]
And I can learn new ones. Because my magic is...different, I guess? Sort of rare. I only have so much of it at a time, but in practice I can shape it into pretty much anything. That's why back home there's a guy holding me hostage over it. Too valuable to lose control of, I guess.
[Immediately, his face softens. This he can understand. He has his father, but what if he didn't? There had been a time when he didn't, but even then, Grayson had stepped in, and he had someone.
What's worse is he doesn't know anyone to offer for contact. None of his people work with magic. He hasn't seen anyone else yet with this kind of magic. Everyone else's is thematic, different, or it doesn't come from them but an item instead.]
That's not what I meant. [He feels embarrassed about the change in hair, though it's only because being shown is very personal, vulnerable. Changing oneself, very telling.] Your powers don't matter. Stop thinking about your powers like they're the only thing that makes you viable.
What have you done for other people? Who have you made laugh? Who has thanked you for helping them?
[It's really a lucky thing that she's as entrenched in the flow of this conversation as she is, or it might start to catch up with her, the absurdity of the fact that this Yoda-esque wisdom is coming at her from a weird little kid just a few years over half her age.
Except that for reasons she can't seem to explain, Damian gets it. He's managing to get things that she's not used to people getting. And more importantly, he's getting them in a way that keeps emotions carefully at bay without eliminating them altogether — the right level of calm rationality without tipping too far into superiority, lecturing, or condescension.
Not for the first time, she really wonders about this kid. What made him like this. None of this seems like an act, or like he's parroting something he heard somewhere else. Right now he reads as almost unsettlingly genuine, and that's the kind of thing that makes a smart person stop and wonder how so much worldly wisdom might've gotten packed into such a relatively young person.
That's semi-rhetorical. She's got a pretty good idea; there are only so many things that can change a person that quickly, after all.]
[It takes a moment. A few seconds of his brilliant green eyes flickering back and forth across her face to make sure she's being honest, not just with him, but with herself.
And then he cracks very faintly; the corners of his lips rise enough for it to be visible though not obnoxious.
That's enough, he thinks, more than anything else she could have offered about contributing. To make someone happy, someone who maybe still would've been happy, but not know that particular kind of happiness.] Me too. [And it's as much as he could ask for, being who he is, coming from where he had been.]
Show me your stupid radio and your horrendous taste in music.
[What he does there, right there, that's the sort of graceful transition that you see a lot in fairy tales and feel-good stories. There's a Moment™, and it's acknowledged, and everyone knows that it happened, and then right on the cusp of it ceasing to be a Moment™ and starting to be a Thing™, he changes the subject to something safe. Something funny. Things are serious and then they're not, and it's like it's permission to just leave it alone and draw back a little and recover from the psychological stress of putting yourself out there like that.
She's said before that she always gets let down by fairy tales, because fairy tales don't exist in real life. That's two moments, now, that have appeared out of nowhere to prove her wrong in rapid succession lately, and knowing fairy tales, it's not going to surprise her in the least if and when a third inevitably comes along.
For now, though. For now, that much is enough.]
Yeah, all right.
[She makes three moves, then, in rapid succession. The first is a light sort of flinging motion that rolls off her fingertips, like she's tossing a spell back onto her hair and making it blossom bright red again. The second is a dismissive gesture, and with it the musical stylings of DMX fade away into silence.]
Let's get you caught up on pop culture, hipster boy.
[There's only so much of Moments someone like Damian can handle. For now, this is enough!! He doesn't want Summer to know he's all mushy on the inside, and he's pretty sure Summer doesn't want him to know she's all mushy on the inside either. It's a mutual respect between them.
"You're soft, and I'm soft, but let's pretend we're tough."]
I'm thrilled to be serenaded by the 80s. [He gives the closest horse a final pat along the neck, then wanders back to the well with Summer.] And this is what you want to put on the board?
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Shocked.
Not comedically so, but enough for it to be visible. The otherwise ghastly horses draw the biggest excitable awe out of him. He LOVES them. They're beautiful. These aren't like Garfield's shapeshifting animals at all, green and wholesome. These are the kinds of animals that warms his black soul.
The only thing ruining the entire aesthetic (to him) is DMX being blasted all around. The wowed look on his face crumples gently as he comes close and glances up.]
Your entrance selection for such regally terrifying creatures could use some work.
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[Suffice to say, she's definitely not expecting that reaction out of him. It's not that she thought that he'd actually be startled or apprehensive about the phantom horses the way that, y'know, a normal person might. But she was definitely anticipating something more guarded or feigned-indifferent, not the soft awe of a kid at the world's most freakshow zoo in history.
She swings her leg over and slides down off of the back of her steed, cloak billowing behind her like a cape as she makes a sweeping motion toward the horses with her hand.]
You can play with 'em if you want. They're pretty fast and can run on water, but they'll only stay corporeal for about an hour before I'll have to make them again.
[And she's just surreptitiously going to go sit down on the lip of the well, a little pale and wobbly now that she's back on her feet, but disguising it as well as she can.]
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They're quite majestic to him. And familiar, though not in the way of him having seen many spectral equine, more they are intimidating and probably normally feared, and he relates a lot to that life.
The smile that touches his lips when one of the horses lowers its head is faint, but visible. Simple gremlin boy pleasures.] They're beautiful. [He glances back at Summer, the smile gone. His eyes search her before returning again to the horses.]
I should've only made one instead of two.
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[For all that they're phantoms, they behave reasonably similarly to normal horses, albeit less skittish than a real horse. The responses to attention are the same, the mannerisms are nearly identical, but perhaps fittingly, they don't seem at all inclined or likely to spook.
The one Summer wasn't riding gets bold after a second, lowering its head just enough to whuffle against Damian's head, nibbling at his hair.]
And then we'd have to fight about who gets to drive, and who picks the music, and all that bullshit too.
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[The whuft blows his hair, and he reaches up to both give the horse some attention while also fixing his hair back with the other hand. What good horses... He quite likes them even if they are simply magic (and he hates magic), but he isn’t a fool. He turns enough to peer at Summer like before, noticing the bit of strain creation has put on her.
He frowns as if he knows.]
Do you expend energy to keep them in existence or just to summon them?
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[It's not a pony, and she's almost a hundred percent certain he's going to tell her it's not a pony, and that's probably why she calls it one.]
Something like flight? That's constant maintenance. Back when the werewolves were out I was flying getting away from some of them and I ran out of magic in mid-air. I got lucky, though, this guy named Kal swooped in and picked me out of freefall before I hit the ground.
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[She was right--wait a fucking a minute. He starts, though it's mostly a twitching change to his face. This shock isn't like the awe-struck one with the horses. This is tight brows and thinning lips.]
"Kal"? What did he look like?
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[Kind of a weird clarification to make, maybe, but it makes sense to her, at least.]
He said before he bailed that his name was Kal.
[And his other name is Clark, and he is in fact her roommate, but she's not technically lying by not confessing that. She's just not volunteering everything she knows about him, and technically Damian had only asked her to answer what he looked like.]
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Tt. I've seen him. [Both of them are casually keeping Superman information as if they think the other one doesn't know it. Perfect.] It was foolish to try to fly so long knowing you wouldn't have the energy for it.
You would have died if he hadn't been there.
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[She shrugs a little.]
And in the end I'm still here, so. One more thing to add to the list of things that've tried and failed to kill me. It's a long list.
[As opposed to the list of things that have tried and succeeded to kill her, which is a list with exactly one item on it and a footnote attached.]
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His shoulder wavers when one of the horses bumps it firmly with the flat of the head. Absent-mindedly, he reaches up to pet it almost reassuringly. Being corporal is such a drag, isn't it? Same.]
Didn't you have an easier spell at your disposal? [He thumbs at the horses.] What about them? Were the werewolves faster?
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[Plus she's not great at riding horses at full speed...]
Look, it was a fluke of bad resource management. It's not like I let that happen ninety-nine percent of the time.
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You could do something at least is what matters. Flying requires a great deal of concentration.
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After a minute, she recalls that he'd been one of the ones changed into a werewolf, himself. That was when they'd first met, after all.]
You want to try it? Flying. I've got enough juice left for it if you want to see what it's like.
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You shouldn’t push yourself. [There’s some teasing to his voice. A little.] I don’t want to end up impaled on a tree because of your mismanagement.
Besides, I’ve done my time with flying. It was sufficient while it lasted. I prefer not to have the liability of special abilities, no matter how convnenient.
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[There's another interesting tidbit, then. Family members who die and come back, guys who know how to fly but would rather not, no matter how convenient. A little kid who thinks she'd make a half-decent assassin. Hmmm.]
I'm serious about letting you play with the horses, though. I mean, they're already cast, they're just here for the duration. I always kind of thought if we ever started actually farming or something around here I could volunteer them to pull a plow or like...I dunno. Things you need horsepower for.
[She pauses a minute, glancing away and staring off into the distance for a bit. She doesn't look back when she finally decides to throw on an addendum.]
It'd be nice to be useful. Like the guy I live with. He's constantly, like...making soap, baking food, improving the garden. Helping people. I figured out how to repair leather with my magic but that hasn't really been relevant or anything yet.
[...]
Now I just sound like I'm whining. I just, y'know. I hope I get the chance to do something good. Be a part of this thing everybody's got going on here. Instead of just...existing on the periphery.
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Cut to Damian standing not even five foot between two horses which he is currently petting.
The scathing flame only dies away when she keeps talking. He starts to encourage the idea of using the horses for farming if needed, but he closes his mouth and frowns. It'd be nice to be useful.]
Just because Kent can have every finger in every pie doesn't mean you aren't helpful. [He won't look at her at all when he says this, but the look on his face is... intense, full of conviction.] You're not a tool. It's not about being "useful," it's about... doing what you can.
Even if it's sweeping, watering plants, scavenging. It makes a difference.
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It's one of those phrases that people don't say because they figure it's just a given, something to be taken for granted. Ones like you're safe. It's the kind of phrase that some people need to hear more than anything, and nobody ever realizes it because it's so obvious, it doesn't even need to be said, except when it does.
You're not a tool. It makes her think of the wizard, and how long she's been missing, and how unsettling it is that he hasn't come looking for her yet.
He's never been one to take kindly to the notion of misplaced tools.]
I can do a lot.
[It's a rare moment of very genuine, very raw honesty — unusual for her, particularly when Damian has previously expressed his reasons for wanting to know the ins and outs of her magic in the first place.]
I could do a lot more if I could just —
[But no, then she goes quiet.]
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[He looks at her now with the same kind of strangely intense face, one that most thirteen year old boys shouldn't even know how to make. Less determined and more--understanding and exasperated about the state of things.]
It isn't about how much you can do. [This sounds genuine, like he believes it, but also as if he's getting this from somewhere else. As if he's been told this by someone else; the depth is very Damian, but the empathy of it isn't something he's seen sharing so freely.] It's about what you do with what you have.
So what have you done so far? You've shown me your horse spell, for one.
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[And this is a sign of how far she's come, maybe, even in just the short time since she's been here in Chroma; once upon a time she never would've shown her hand to the degree she's willing to now, not when her magic for so long had been her one and only trump card.
But it's amazing what little things like interpersonal support and the proximity of heroic people can do for a girl's nerves, and really, in the grand scheme of things, the strategic advantages of keeping quiet seem to get less and less with every day.]
I can make illusions, ones that stick. My hair isn't really this red, it just looks that way because of how I do it every morning.
[She reaches up, making a sort of pulling motion with her hand up by her head, and as she does the bright red of her hair fades almost immediately into a duller, unremarkable brown.]
I can make light and throw sound. Throw fire, generate lightning. The horses. I can evaporate water. I can fly.
[Hmm.]
And I can learn new ones. Because my magic is...different, I guess? Sort of rare. I only have so much of it at a time, but in practice I can shape it into pretty much anything. That's why back home there's a guy holding me hostage over it. Too valuable to lose control of, I guess.
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What's worse is he doesn't know anyone to offer for contact. None of his people work with magic. He hasn't seen anyone else yet with this kind of magic. Everyone else's is thematic, different, or it doesn't come from them but an item instead.]
That's not what I meant. [He feels embarrassed about the change in hair, though it's only because being shown is very personal, vulnerable. Changing oneself, very telling.] Your powers don't matter. Stop thinking about your powers like they're the only thing that makes you viable.
What have you done for other people? Who have you made laugh? Who has thanked you for helping them?
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Except that for reasons she can't seem to explain, Damian gets it. He's managing to get things that she's not used to people getting. And more importantly, he's getting them in a way that keeps emotions carefully at bay without eliminating them altogether — the right level of calm rationality without tipping too far into superiority, lecturing, or condescension.
Not for the first time, she really wonders about this kid. What made him like this. None of this seems like an act, or like he's parroting something he heard somewhere else. Right now he reads as almost unsettlingly genuine, and that's the kind of thing that makes a smart person stop and wonder how so much worldly wisdom might've gotten packed into such a relatively young person.
That's semi-rhetorical. She's got a pretty good idea; there are only so many things that can change a person that quickly, after all.]
I make someone happy.
[Another fractured silence.]
Just by existing, I mean. Without even trying.
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And then he cracks very faintly; the corners of his lips rise enough for it to be visible though not obnoxious.
That's enough, he thinks, more than anything else she could have offered about contributing. To make someone happy, someone who maybe still would've been happy, but not know that particular kind of happiness.] Me too. [And it's as much as he could ask for, being who he is, coming from where he had been.]
Show me your stupid radio and your horrendous taste in music.
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She's said before that she always gets let down by fairy tales, because fairy tales don't exist in real life. That's two moments, now, that have appeared out of nowhere to prove her wrong in rapid succession lately, and knowing fairy tales, it's not going to surprise her in the least if and when a third inevitably comes along.
For now, though. For now, that much is enough.]
Yeah, all right.
[She makes three moves, then, in rapid succession. The first is a light sort of flinging motion that rolls off her fingertips, like she's tossing a spell back onto her hair and making it blossom bright red again. The second is a dismissive gesture, and with it the musical stylings of DMX fade away into silence.]
Let's get you caught up on pop culture, hipster boy.
[The third is a snap of her fingers that results in an almost fingergunning motion, and with it erupts the musical stylings of Tommy Tutone.]
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"You're soft, and I'm soft, but let's pretend we're tough."]
I'm thrilled to be serenaded by the 80s. [He gives the closest horse a final pat along the neck, then wanders back to the well with Summer.] And this is what you want to put on the board?
Because it's a joke?
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