Who: Nightwing and Lynx (Dick Grayson and Kimber Benton) From:undertherainbow By: The Illustrious Jack Prompt: Courage
"I am so not in favor of this, you have no idea." Kimber--Lynx--stood on the edge of a building that seemed tall enough that she was surprised not to be looking down at the pointy end of the Empire State Building. It was, in reality, about eight stories tall.
"Fear is your body's way of telling you to keep going." Nightwing smirked. It was strange, standing next to Nightwing. Partially because "patrolling" usually meant "hitting people alongside Carrie" instead of "enduring superhero tutoring from her boss/boyfriend," but also because she imagined him as taller than he actually was. He was bigger than her, but not by enough that he should seem towering in her mind. It was just his presence.
"Mind running that by me again?"
"Think about it. If you step away from this, the feeling of fear never goes away. When you jump, you'll be fine, and you won't be afraid of it anymore."
"Easy for you to say," she muttered, swallowing hard. It probably was easy for him to say, she reflected. He'd been swinging on the trapeze when most kids were swinging in the playground. The last time he was scared, he was probably too young to hold onto the memory.
Nightwing put the line gun in her hand. "You did it down there. Swinging from rooftops is just like swinging from lampposts."
"If I fell down there, I would have bruised my butt. If I fall up here--"
"You won't. Look." To Lynx's complete lack of surprise, Nightwing pulled a spare line gun out of nowhere. "Just do as I do." He jumped off of the edge without any hesitation. She could just make out his silhouette against the busy street. He was only freefalling for a second before he fired the gun, but it seemed like ages. She doubted she would have the same luxury when she was falling. Then the line caught on--something. That was the problem she had: Nightwing and Carrie seemed to operate under the assumption that there was always something to hook onto. She didn't have that. What she did have was a good imagination.
Nightwing swung through the air, appropriately enough, with the greatest of ease, then landed with a dancer's grace on a building on the far end of the street. "If it makes you feel any better," he suggested via the comm link in her ear, "you can fire it now and then jump. Training wheels."
The training wheels comment should have bothered her, but Lynx was still staring down at the street. "See, you had me up until the 'jumping' part. I could fire this thing all day."
There was a moment of radio silence, and then a voice behind her said, "Then you should quit."
Lynx almost lost her balance from the shock and turned around to find Nightwing suddenly behind her. "How did you get there and why didn't I hear you?" she exclaimed breathlessly, holding her hand to her chest. "Omigod," she added for good measure. Then what he had actually said caught up with her. "What do you mean, quit?"
"If you can't jump, if you really can't bring yourself to go over this ledge, you don't need to be out here. Go home, hang up your suit, and find a different way to spend your nights." He wasn't mean, which was somehow more jarring than the alternative. He spoke as if it was simply accepted as true that people with the common sense to respect the laws of gravity were unsuited to superhero work.
"Why the heck should I?" Aside from the fact that I just used the word 'heck,' she added to herself. "When am I going to need to hurl myself headfirst to the ground to save someone's life?"
"Probably never," Nightwing admitted. "It's never happened to me; there's always been at least one other option whenever I've jumped down."
"See?"
"This isn't the problem. Not really. The problem isn't that you won't. It's that you can't. And the instant that there's anything that you can't do, you don't belong in the mask."
"That's not fair!" she exclaimed. "I mean... you know what I mean. I fight. People shoot at me, try to stab me, hit me, whatever. Just because I'm afraid of being on the business end of concrete..."
"Then eventually you'll be too afraid again. You can't let yourself have weaknesses. You can be afraid. You'll never not be afraid of something. I'm afraid of a lot of things. But I deal. If you can't, then stop now before your fear costs someone their life. Or you, yours."
Lynx wasn't going to let Nightwing win this argument. "Hey, no matter what I do up here, there are still people alive because I was there."
"Good for you. Become a cop. Good pension and all the donuts you can eat." Nightwing wasn't looking at her while he was talking, but rather at the masonry of the building. It made her want to kick him a few times, but she ignored the urge as best she could. "But not everyone you fight is going to be street trash. There are bad people out there. Not desperate people, not drug addicts, not people who never got hugged as a child and hit people with baseball bats to make up for it. Real bad people." Nightwing stood up and looked at her, and suddenly she found herself wishing he was looking at the stonework again. "Are you going to let fear control you against The Joker? Two-Face? Deathstroke?" The names had only the faintest ring to Lynx, but they didn't need much against his tone. "And what if Wrath pops up again and hunts you down?"
She tried to slap him, but he caught her wrist. "Screw you!" she spat, tempted to punch him with her free hand. It would probably only result in a miss, but it would make her feel better.
"And these bad people are going to do more than pick at old wounds and make you cry. They'll kill you and everyone you've ever loved given half the chance." Nightwing walked to the edge of the building and fired his line gun; the phrase "training wheels" ran through Lynx's head again. "I can hold your hand through a dozen different kinds of training, but at the end of the day, you can't hope you're ready. You have to know it. And right now, Kimber, you don't."
He swung away, not quite as impressively as before, but Lynx wasn't watching anyway. He hadn't even bothered to use her code name. She walked to the edge and watched the blurry city lights. The comment about Eddie had been mean, but a nagging part of her thought he was right. And what was worse, he had gotten to her. He hadn't even sounded angry. Intense, maybe, but even Carrie was meaner when she was making a point. And there were tears in her eyes, she noticed with surprise. She was a superhero--or something--and she was crying because of some remark. Ha.
"Why can they do it? It's... insane." There were so many things to have way too much faith in. The quality of building materials, the fact that the gun would work properly, the strength of the wire, her own judgment of the distance...
"Of course, judging that someone thinks I'm too pretty to shoot is kind of a longshot too, I guess," she said softly, trying to keep from sniffing. She wiped away the tears, and then she got very, very angry at them. Lynx was... Kimber was... she was tired of being weak. She was tired of Misfits and monsters and Nightwing making her feel like a... damsel. She was the darn--she was the damn Lynx, and someone was going to know it!
With a deep breath, Lynx willed away any more tears that were tempted to come and pointed the line gun as Nightwing had. She felt slightly shaky, but did her best to ignore that feeling. There was a bit of recoil when she fired, but not as much as she would have thought. When she felt it connect, she gave a cautious tug. It was secure. "Now or never." With a deep breath, she leaped.
It took quite a bit of determination to keep from screaming. The wind rushed around her and her eyes watered from the effort of keeping them open. But despite her heart threatening to leap out of her chest; despite the fact that, if she had been more hydrated, she would have wet herself; despite the fact that she was all too aware of the possibility of losing her recording contract if she hit the ground and her lungs came out of her nose, she almost enjoyed it. Fear gave way to exhilaration, and exhilaration gave way to joy. For a brief, glorious moment, she was flying.
Lynx was a dancer, but she wasn't a circus freak, so she stumbled when she landed. But she did land, on her feet, slightly breathless but very much intact. From behind her, she heard a slow clapping. Lynx turned to find Nightwing giving her applause.
"So what's this next training exercise you're going to hold my hand through?" Lynx smirked. Or she tried to, anyway; the effect was ruined by the fact that she was grinning from ear to ear. She had a hand on her hip and the other dangled loosely, the spent line gun hanging from it.
Nightwing checked his watch. "You came to your epiphany earlier than I thought. I owe Carrie twenty bucks." Before he could suggest anything else, both of them snapped their heads towards the sound of a scream. "Superhero time, Lynx. Lead the way."
The thrill of the swing hadn't quite let up, so she giggled a bit. "Follow me, Boy Wonder."