Who: Damian Wayne & Celaena Sardothien What: Prelude to training together Where: A Park When: Backdated: Sunday, February 1st. Afternoon Rating: Mostly Family Friendly. Brief mentions of dream violence and death Status: Complete
It had been a few weeks since New Years Eve and Damian was heading towards a park near his and Bran's apartment in order to meet up with Celaena. Damian went to the park often, on his own, usually finding a secluded place to meditate or practice various martial arts moves that he couldn't do in the apartment and that was part of the reason he and Celaena were meeting up today. The blond dancer had shown up at the party he and Bran had had on New Years Eve and before the night was over they had made plans to get together once Celaena had some free time in her busy schedule. With the spike in the crime rate over the last few weeks, they had decided that it would probably be a good idea for Damian to teach Celaena a few of the moves he had been taught in his dreams by the League.
Celaena hurried along to the place where she and Damian had said they’d meet. She was excited. After talking about everything at the New Year’s party they had decided to try training together. As Celaena Dreamed more and more of her other life, she felt like she knew more and more about fighting. It seemed like in her Dreams she was incredibly competent, but she figured that without the muscle memory in her normal life she wouldn’t be able to execute them with quite so much awesomeness. She enjoyed spending time with Damian and this was an excellent excuse to do it regularly. Coming into the clearing, she spotted him waiting and grinned, bounding over to him happily. “Morning!” she greeted him brightly, tucking her thumbs into the straps of the bag on her back.
Upon seeing Celaena, Damian smiled, blue eyes looking her up and down. It had been well over a year since he and Alyssa had broken up and almost a year since Stephanie had left and while it had taken him a long time to get over Alyssa, he was pretty sure that he was just about there and that feeling was solidified when he felt his pulse speed up a little upon seeing the blond dancer. It might not have been exactly the same feeling that he’d gotten with Alyssa or Steph, but Celaena wasn’t like either of them so this was a completely different situation.
“Hey. How’s it going? Been okay since New Years?” Damian felt a little bad that they hadn’t talked a whole lot since New Year’s, but with both of them being busy it wasn’t too much of a surprise.
Celaena grinned at him as he looked her over. “Oh, you know me, busy busy busy,” Celaena shrugged. “Rehearsing, stretching, performing, autographing, icing,” she listed casually. “You?” she asked, moving to stand a little closer.
“School mostly. And patrolling most nights.” How Damian had been getting his homework done, patrolling and fit sleep in there, he didn’t know, but it came naturally to him. He might have been younger in the dreams and not actually enrolled in actual school, but he was still tutored by Alfred so he still had to do the school thing between patrols and fighting off other baddies, “Are you working on a show currently?” Damian hadn’t actually seen Celaena dance yet, but he was planning on checking out her next show so he could finally see it.
“School and patrolling at night? You are confident aren’t you,” Celaena teased with a little smile, bumping shoulders with him. “Maybe if I’m good enough I could be your partner,” she grinned, taking her backpack off and swinging it the ground. She was wearing her workout gear, black cropped trousers which clung to her slim figure, a racer back top and trainers. She’d also come prepared with drinks and snacks in her bag because who knew what Damian had in store for her. Brushing her hair back with her fingers, she scooped her hair back in a ponytail, ready to work. “So, where do we start Patrol Boy?”
Damian nodded, “Yup. I feel like it’s my duty to go out and make sure the streets are safe right now,” He watched as she dropped the bag to the ground, “We’ll see. Depends on how good you are. I wouldn’t want you to get hurt.” Damian unzipped his hoodie and dropped it to the ground next to Celaena’s backpack, leaving him in a t-shirt and sweatpants. It was hard to believe that only a few weeks earlier he’d been wearing a winter jacket and boots when he’d been outside and now it was back to hoodies. “First, why don’t you tell me what you’ve dreamed lately.”
“What I’ve Dreamt about, let’s see…” Celaena considered as she walked around him slowly. “Mostly training, weapons, fighting…” she trailed off, remembering the year spent in the salt mines of Endovier. A year of hell. Of starvation, beatings, hard labour and whippings. She still woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat when she dreamed about that. Shaking her head, she carried on with enthusiasm to try and cover up her uneasiness. “And being able to have anything I wanted,” she shrugged as she came back round to stand in front of him. “It’s not bad being Adarlan’s greatest assassin,” she smiled proudly.
As Celaena began walking around him, Damian stayed where he was, but turned his head to look over his shoulder as she walked behind him while he listened to what she was saying about her dreams. Parts of it reminded him of his own dreams, being trained by The League. “So you were trained to be an assassin too, huh? How old were you?” He asked once she was standing in front of him again. “Were you trained from a young age?”
Celaena nodded. “Since I was about nine,” she told him simply. “My Master, Arobyyn Hamel found me and trained me at the Keep in Rifthold until I was the best assassin in all of Adarlan,” she smiled, raising her chin and folding her hands behind her back. “What about you?”
“Well, aren’t you teacher’s pet.” Damian teased, smirking as he crossed his arms over his chest, “In my case, my father is Batman. My grandfather was Ra’s al Ghul, otherwise known as The Head of the Demon. My mother raised me herself alongside The League of Assassins who trained me from the time I could walk, to be like them. My mother wanted me to be strong like my father. However, my grandfather’s followers had a different idea and tried to use me as his new body when they tried to resurrect him. My father found out about me about that time and then after the whole using me as a vessel thing failed, my mother left me with my dad.” There was so much more to Damian’s dreams, but he didn’t want to spend this entire time with Celaena talking about himself. “I wanted to be his sidekick, but he had one at the time, who I tried to kill more than once. After he died, I became my brother’s sidekick when he took up the mantle of Batman.” He didn’t like to refer to Dick as his adopted brother, because they were so much closer than that in the dreams and that was just one more thing he’d have to stop and explain if he went that route.
"What can I say? I had natural talent," Celaena shrugged proudly. As he continued talking about his family, she listened intently, her demeanour changing. "You...you know...knew your parents? Grandparents?" She asked quietly. That fact interested her more than any of the other information he had told her.
“Yeah, but my grandfather was more or less evil and my mom wasn’t the best either. I later found out that she’d cloned me in case I disappointed her, so she’d have a second chance.” Damian still had a hard time separating his mother in the dreams from his mother in real life and after finding out about the money she’d left him, it was even more difficult, because with her gone, he would never find out where that money had come from, “My father though, it was rocky for awhile until after he came back from the dead.” Yeah, cause that wasn’t a strange sentence that wouldn’t cause her to ask more questions. Not that he really minded to be honest. “I don’t know my dad here though.”
“Wow, your past is really complicated,” Celaena raised her eyebrows. “Remind me to never piss your family off,” she joked before stepping up closer to him with a little smile. “At least not until I’ve worked up to swords,” she winked at him before raising a hand to place her index finger on his chest. “Now, are we going to get to work or stand here talking all day?” she grinned at him.
Damian wasn’t about to tell her that his mother and grandfather, in real life, were both dead, because they hadn’t been the same people in real life as in the dreams, so there was no point in making her feel bad or for ruining the mood. Damian had been having the dreams long enough that he was able to separate real life from dreams and not think of people he knew in real life from them as that exact same person.
When she poked his chest, he quirked a brow at her, “Oh, we’re gonna get to work.” Smirking, he took a few steps back and dropped into a fighting stance then crooked his fingers at her, “Give me your best shot.”