ravenroth (ravenroth) wrote in newalliance, @ 2013-02-09 23:52:00 |
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Entry tags: | captain boomerang, pete wisdom, raven |
Who: Raven, Pete Wisdom, and open to all at T-bolt mansion (S'up Rogues).
When: Saturday night, Sunday morning, February 10, 2013
Where: Thunderbolt's Mansion
What: Raven can't find her books, and in confusion ends up in Pete's room like a creeper. She... is okay with this. Pete not-so-much.
Rating: Where there are Rogues, there is an R.
The whispers...
Every now and then they came. As a child, they had been a small nuance, something that could be ignored. The older she became, though, the more she tilt her inner ear to them, the more coherent they became. They were never clear, never abrupt in their meaning. That was never the nature of such premonitions. Symbols and discourses could often only be translated after a matter came to pass, if ever at all.
And now...
Raven had woken up attached to the ceiling once more.
Up is down. Down is up. She tried to capture the fleeting whispers that had coursed through her subconscious, on that border between sleeping and awake, between the dreams of vivid color, dancing shadows and always the whispers, whispers that were slowly fading the more awake she became.
Something became mirrored, some reflection came back through. Why? How?
But the edges of sleep slipped fully away. She curled her nails against the rough texture of the ceiling, causing small white flakes to crumble and drift down to the floor. Raven needed answers. She needed access to her library.
Which meant she needed to follow the whispers...
Finding her library proved to be an extensive endeavor. Patsy’s training was coming along well, and whenever she was not teaching Patsy how to maneuver the rooftops and easy ways to predict a criminal’s behavior, Raven was searching, trying to put the puzzle together. She stood on the rooftops, released her breath slowly and tried to touch the inner dreaming in her. Then started to follow the tangled path.
The Fool was reversed, but now it is righted again. The card was held in snowy stone hands that turned to black tar.
In and out of underground passages. Through warehouses. Down among the rivers and docks. Raven found a number of interesting magical items, but none that led to her books.
The faceless young scribe has burned his library. Only a small bit of paper remains. Ashes. Ashes.
She could hear during the night. The light of day was too noisy. Not the people who moved about--the actual light. Its energy was a buzz, often tuned out and ignored, but once the night descended, one realized how absent that buzz of energy was.
And other things came out, too. Less pleasant things winding her along.
The mansion of corpses is in the mire. The river runs from it, red and black.
Raven had been flying when the bit of newspaper flew by her on the wintry winds. She had snatched it out of instinct, staring at the small article. “Police Uncertain If New Vigilante.” She read it over and over, but could comprehend none of it. It wasn’t the Batman, she knew. This was someone else in Gotham.
So to Gotham she flew. She had not wanted to, she realized. Gotham was for nightly mammals, not sable birds.
The little puppet has red-stained hands. It doesn’t know it’s a puppet. It keeps screaming that it’s a real boy. It breaks its arms to splinters getting free of the strings.
All the towering buildings, the heavy, dark-stoned architecture reeled around her as she flew. Gargoyles stared down at her, angels and demons overlooked from every corner. It was a fitting place for a Dark Knight. The images were coming faster.
A black horse gnaws on the mistletoe. The cat dances around its cage fit to a man’s chest before starting to chew its way out. The owl is so angry it plucks its eye out with its own talon.
She looked up at the stormy sky, cloak wrapping tight as the freezing precipitation started to fall.
The black queen on the chessboard turns and slays its own king. The snow is ash, ash is snow. The floating island is starting to fall, turrets and banners tumbling.
And then suddenly there was the music.
Little tinkling sounds that played on the woman’s subconscious. She turned her head, seeing little else of the real world around her, the indigo eyes unfocused. A music box, slight and lingering, little patters of notes that had too many F’s and sharps to be considered cheery, more the macabre carnival, though slow. She disappeared into her shadow self, drifting along after the music.
And braced to a halt and fled when she came too close to Arkham Asylum. Little bits of old panic played in her middle, and she tried to soothe it away. A calm presence. Something soothing. Someone who was centered and focused. She sought after her connections, but many of them were too old and faded. Too uncertain and quavering in emotions.
So her will dragged her across the state, away from Gotham.
Raven was mildly confused as she came more fully to her senses. She was standing in a bedroom, and there was Pete Wisdom, sleeping with slow, even breaths. She watched him for several long moments, looked around, wondering where she was at.
It mattered little, she decided. Things were peaceful and calm for now, and she was weary. Exhausted, she realized. He was calm, and thus so was she. Whatever had disturbed her earlier had disappeared, fog in morning sun.
So Raven slipped to a chair in the corner of the room, quietly wrapped her cloak up around her, eyes closing dreamlessly.