Zatanna Zatara (zee_magician) wrote in wariscoming, @ 2013-10-15 20:32:00 |
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Entry tags: | dick grayson/nightwing, zatanna zatara |
Who: Zee and Dick
What: Meeting up after the day of the explosions.
When: Friday? Whenever the Complex went BOOM.
Where: The Complex.
Rating: PG
Status: Complete!
She was exhausted. She’d been one of the first on the scene of the Complex explosion, thanks to her ability to teleport. She and Jacen had worked together for the first time since she’d come to Lawrence (either time), and she was glad for the team effort. Her magic was overused and basically depleted, which meant that going to Stark Towers was out of the question. There was nothing she’d be able to do there.
Feeling ill and shaken by the sight in front of her, Zatanna turned away, letting out a shaky breath and covering her face with her hands for a moment. Was this real? Had this just happened? So many people were hurt. How many had died? She didn’t know. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. God. They weren’t going to catch a break. This was how it was going to be until Lucifer ended them once and for all.
It wasn’t like her to think so negatively about things. She was almost always able to focus on the positive, to keep her cool and not panic. But right now? Right now she was dangerously close to just that.
Dick had actually been asleep when the initial blast happened, but it didn’t take long for him to change into the all too familiar kevlar and get to work. He hadn’t felt much of anything emotions wise since the seal had taken Svetlana and Ruby from him all at once, but fire and debris seemed to have shaken that from him. He didn’t have time to mourn losses. Part of him almost..ALMOST wished Bruce were there to remind him of that, but he wasn’t. Dick hd to pic up and carry on by himself. That was always the difficult part.
It was a war zone, people were going to die and leave. No time to look back, only forward. The forward he saw was going to end in a win. Call it naive but after facing so many foes and coming so close to death himself there was little that could convince him otherwise. Good guys couldn’t lose.
Could they? ..
He’d been caught on the inside when the building exploded, he’d checked on people-any that he could get to, and finally emerged from the dust moments after it collapsed. After they got everyone out. Removing the breathing mask from his face, it closed itself back up and slipped into his gloves again. He was limping, his thigh had been injured, kevlar torn. But he hadn’t paid it much mind. He instead saw Zee through the dust and smoke. Standing by herself. Never a good sign. He approached her with a faint smirk. “We know how to party or what? Really brought the house down..” Trying for a joke, but it was half assed at best. So he didn’t push it, he just placed a gloved hand on her shoulder comfortingly and pulled her into a hug.
She hadn’t heard him coming, so the hand on her shoulder made her jump just a little. It tended to happen after major disasters. But as soon as she realized who it was, she relaxed and slid her arms around him in return, closing her eyes and resting her chin on his shoulder.
Things between them had been strained for awhile now, and she hadn’t known how to fix it and make things normal and okay again. But at the end of the day, she’d always known that they’d be there for each other. Especially after something like this. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” she murmured. Not that she could really do much of anything to help him if he was. Except offer him a place to stay, of course. And she would.
She pulled away to look at him with tired, worried eyes.
He really hadn’t known how to act when she came back through the seal and he was dating Ruby. It was not as though he’d ever stopped having feelings for her, the seal had gotten in the way. So he just stopped trying all together, feelings were a confusing thing. Especially now. They’d just lost everything in the blink of an eye. She was likely out of power and he knew what that meant for her energy levels wise. It was ironic, Bruce always told him to be wary of magic, and there he was with Zatanna. Probably one of the most powerful magicians he knew if not the most.
“Had worse. You?” Looking at her from behind the mask that covered his eyes. There was concern there, but it was difficult to see on his face anyway. His actions would have to do most of the talking for him. “We did what we could. This place may as well have had a target on it.” In the beginning actually Dick refused to stay at the complex because of that very reason. He felt him being there would just paint a bigger target than necessary.
“It doesn’t mean anything.” He said offhandedly.
Her own emotions had been a knot of tangled confusion since she’d returned and learned he was seeing Ruby. It wasn’t like she’d expected him to wait for her return because with the Seal, you never knew if and when someone would show up or be taken. Or both. She didn’t blame him for moving on. But her feelings for him had also remained as much as she’d tried to deny them. It had all been made more complicated by the fact that she and Ruby lived together, and were friends.
She didn’t know what Ruby’s fate back home was, but she sincerely hoped the other woman was okay. She’d been in a similar situation with Bruce and Selina of course, though she and Selina hadn’t exactly been friends. At best they were reluctant allies when they had to be. Somehow this had been much more difficult. It was hard to resent a woman she cared about and considered a friend.
“Me too,” she admitted tiredly. She looked around for a moment, and then back at him. He wasn’t wrong, of course. Naturally anyone who was possessed or anyone who worked for Lucifer would target the Complex. It’s where most of them lived. “You’re going to need a place to stay,” she told him, voice quiet. “You’re more than welcome at the mansion.” She hoped he knew that already, but she had to say it just in case.
Dick had only caved after being convinced by several that it really was the safest place in the city. He should have known with a baddie like Lucifer breathing down their necks that safe really was just an illusion. Internally he was kicking himself for not having helped more with the tech types to get some kind of early warning system in place, but he was also at war with rational thinking. Would that really have stopped this from happening? It was the Devil, an age old being bent on destroying them.
Even to him it was looking grim, and Dick didn’t do grim. Not for long anyway. “I’ve gotta make a stop at the cave first. Come?” Rarely did he invite anyone there. Rarely had he been there himself lately but it had a city wide monitoring system. He could take a look at the damage done. They could get a break from the chaos. As much of a break as either of them were going to get anyway. Zee had her magic thing, and he would want to take on some of the organizing if not all after they figured out who was still around.
They were going to need a new strategy on top of it. It was going to be a long night, at least they could take it on together.
Zee would have had no issue staying at the Complex, but her first tour in Lawrence had included Eddie Bloomberg, Kid Devil, showing up. People had been uncomfortable with the idea of a demon living there, so she’d magicked up a house for the two of them. It had worked out well, because when things went south for Emma because of Moriarty, people hadn’t wanted her around either, so she’d offered her place as a sanctuary for Emma and Henry and the baby that was coming. It all seemed like so long ago. A different lifetime.
Her nerves were wrecked, her magic depleted. The whole world seemed to have gone to hell in a matter of hours. Maybe after eating something and getting some rest, she’d be back to her old self. Positive, determined, and calm. She hoped so. She didn’t like feeling this defeated and out of control.
A tiny smile touched her mouth at the mention of the Bat Cave. She nodded. “Of course.” She’d been there before, had warded the place against evil with her magic. But it had been awhile since she’d visited. And honestly, who in their right mind was going to turn down a visit to the Bat Cave when given the opportunity? Especially when the person inviting her happened to be someone she cared for and admired as much as she did Dick Grayson.
He could practically see the disapproving look at what he was doing on Bruce’s face as he uttered those few words to the woman. Bruce had never been a big fan of the magic arts, and frankly neither had he until he met Zee. The way she used her magic to help so many was winning him over, he didn’t get nearly as twitchy as he once used to at speaking of it anymore. He didn’t feel like he had to put up a front around her either. And that was a rare thing for someone as paranoid as him.
He was raised by the worlds most paranoid detective, To expect him to come out of something like that without a few of those very same traits was just ridiculous. Dick had identities to cover his identity, the layers of security on the cave went at least five deep, his own bedroom had been warded and rarely did a soul enter.
But Zee was different. He felt a connection with her that he couldn’t explain. With Zee he felt like he didn’t have to explain everything to her, he didn’t have to tell her every little thought floating around his head she just got it. “No magic, we’ll take my bike...if it survived.” He’d parked it in the street most of the time behind the complex. The media was swarming though, this was going to make things problematic with how intense the Batman fans could get..
If he was seen that was basically the end of his career as a crime fighter. Fortunately he’d mostly kept up the ninja act anyway, but it still lurked in the back of his head. He was far too young to retire from hero work already. Creeping into the shadows with Zee, he took out a small alarm device and turned it off. It bleeped at him and Dick knew the motorcycle was safe. He gave a slight sigh of relief, at least something had made it. It flashed an eerie blue to notify the owner that the defenses were down and he got on the back of it, waiting for her to join him.
As much as Zee cared for Bruce, she also saw a lot of things that were wrong with his way of doing things. The isolation, taking everything on himself...she knew it ran in the entire Bat family, but she also knew that those things weren’t necessarily the norm for anyone but Bruce. She’d known him for most of his life, and even when he was young, isolating had been his way of handling things when things got hard. It had never been her way. She might seek isolation initially, but it was always brief and because she needed to collect her thoughts. Bruce, on the other hand, tended to use it as a form of self-punishment.
And that wasn’t something she was willing to stand by and watch when it came to Dick. She felt a connection to him, as well, and she couldn’t explain it either. She was glad that he hadn’t wanted to teleport. She wasn’t sure she could have pulled it off right then. She was pretty drained, magically and physically and teleporting took a lot of energy.
She climbed onto the back behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist. She closed her eyes as he started the bike and revved the engine, driving them away from the remains of the Complex. The building was still standing -- just barely, and she didn’t know if it would hold long-term. But she and Jacen had done what they could. They’d clashed in the past, on more than one occasion, but today, they had worked together toward a common goal. It was what heroes had to do, even if they didn’t necessarily see eye to eye on things normally.