big barda (ex_bigbarda714) wrote in newalliance, @ 2013-10-15 23:54:00 |
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Entry tags: | big barda |
Who: Big Barda
Where: New Jersey
When: October 15th, 2013
What: Reflections
The laundry still needed to be folded and there were dishes in the sink from the night before. She would have prodded Scott to do some of it (as she was fairly certain it was his turn to do it) but he was still lost in his newest stage product and she knew that it would only end in something broken due to his own distraction. It was better to let Scott Free focus on his work when he was distracted that way because she'd just end up picking up after him and then something would get broken. She was tucking in the bottom sheet on the extra long bed in their shared room when it struck her. The thought came with her hands smoothing over the comfortable silk and the calloused palms brushing against the material - like she'd done a million times before - and she exhaled sharply, pausing in her task at the the thoughts came unbidden back to her. Her fingers were still coarse from a lifetime of battle and the skin would never heal to be smooth like those of earth women. Normal ones, at least. The Barda from a year ago would have been slaughtering her way across a battlefield, nothing but the knowledge that the deaths she brought - perhaps even her own - would bring glory to her liege. There was nothing but death in her future and in her past. That was her life and her place in the universe. Die. Die. Die for Darkseid. She knew the words by heart and the cadence of her heartbeat had been nothing but in synch with that simple mantra. The laughter of the furies as they charged across a battlefield and nothing stood in her way. She was unstoppable. She was an agent of death and the anti-life and the universe didn't stand a chance to the forces that came behind her and the forces that were waiting for her when they caught up to her. No, they weren't interested in her, not like they were to the only person who ever escaped the Pits and the Orphanage. Sometimes the chants caught her unawares, the pounding of the march in the back of her skull that urged her to do something about it. To rise up and return to her rightful place and finish the task that had been assigned to her. Barda felt the bedpost creak ominously beneath her fingertips as her grip tightened around it and it was the sound of that almost-breaking that brought her back before she shattered it in her fist. She hadn't even been aware of the fact that she'd grabbed hold of it and forcing her fingers to pull away was harder than it should have been. It wasn't her place any longer. Barda flexed her fingers, willing the pounding of her pulse beneath her skin to recede. She was nothing if not a force of nature and she wouldn't change that now. There would always be blood on her hands. It wouldn't be washed away as easily as anyone wanted to believe it would be. There was always more to that. She'd never been a squeamish person and that hadn't changed just because she'd left that behind. But that life wasn't hers and she had something more now. Something better. She couldn't have said when it happened exactly. There had been no single moment when she'd looked at Scott Free and stopped seeing exasperation and frustration she couldn't describe to understanding what it was that she wanted. Death didn't factor into that equation any longer and she had the most confounding individual she'd ever met for that. She also had him to thank for an introduction to sunrises and laughter (real laughter, not the kind that came from madness or cruelty). She'd learned to appreciate human idiosyncrasies and - her favorite - long lazy weekend mornings spent doing little more than listening to the sound of his breathing while he dozed and wondering how her life had ended and begun without her being quite aware of it. She still sometimes couldn't believe it was real. That Scott was real. He didn't seem to be real. Too clever. Too much for her and sometimes that still bewildered her even as she realized she wouldn't have wanted it any other way. She'd never make the mistake of thinking they weren't anything but who they were. They were safe here on Earth, even as broken as they both were. There wasn't a whole lot she wouldn't do to keep it - and him - that way. |