#;;ask.

[babydxhl]

“i’ve got a darkness wrapped inside me.”

the family tree sentence starters | still accepting.

"Were we just born wrong?"

Mary tips her head to watch him, a smile lurking at the corners of her mouth, and for a moment the half-formed reflection of him on the window pane against the night feels more real than the actual man at her back on the other side of the room. Her own face, too, marred by a purpling bruise along the curve of one cheek, feels somehow corporeal, and not of herself.

It's this thought that makes her finally turn her back on street below, and on those shadow selves.

Thirty-six hours and counting. That's how long Mary Dahl has found herself shut up in this bolt-hole apartment with Jonathan Crane, a static-laden TV broadcast and an armada of yellowing paperbacks. She has never longed for one of their colleagues — a word always used sarcastically, eyes rolling skyward — to commit some heinous act of violence like this before. Something to knock the latest escape firmly out of the news cycle.

"Born on a blighted star," she offers, resting her back against the windowsill, knowing she should close the curtains again. A claustrophobic feeling prickles at the nape of her neck; all day she's been picking at him, sniping, pushing buttons, and a part of her now wonders if this is some kind of comeuppance. A lecture.

"Do you think there's something more to it than that, doctor?"

[babydxhl]

"Are you happy here?"

the secret history sentence starters | still accepting.

"Would it make you feel better if I said yes?"

Mary doesn't look at him; the sky is that grey pre-dawn blur that signals the arrival of another overcast day, and as she exhales cigarette smoke upwards, the stream lost in it, she has the sense of being only the last in a laundry list of tasks.

Not Arkham, not this time, but some halfway point meant to stop the revolving door from spitting its unfortunates directly out into the cold. An antechamber, if you will. The building — with all its fancy appliances, its Wayne Enterprises plaque by the front door — still smells like fresh paint.

Leaning over the back stairs with the cigarette burning too close to her knuckles, Mary sighs, scrapes her hair back up off her forehead with the heel of her palm.

"They feed me, they drug me, they let me see the sunlight and they don't kick the shit outta me. It's better than being in there." She nods to the city's horizon, where the harsh metal lines of the bridge leading to the asylum slice through the sky between gaps in the skyscraper towers. "Is that enough for you?"

[babydxhl]

[👫xo ]

send a 👫 and I’ll write four headcanons I have about our muse’s relationship.

mary still views miriel as a real world person, as opposed to an in arkham person, so the asylum is usually an off-limits topic — but occasionally, after a very long night when the stitches are done and the painkillers have set in, she will share little details of what it's like in there

little traces of each other. the paperback plays left in the nicest chair in the clinic, where mary likes to (I'm gonna be real, mostly accidentally) sleep for a while. the handwritten notes on treatment plans tacked to a little bulletin board in mary's kitchen

miriel every so often catching mary watching her, studying her, sitting quiet and looking at her like she's some kind of elaborate puzzle to solve

mary likes to make up elaborate stories to explain the most minor bruises and injuries to amuse herself and annoy miriel, but sometimes the truth of it — that she is just a small person and just being alive seems to hurt her — gets to be too much and she goes quiet. on those times, miriel will offer up her own far fetched explanation

[babydxhl]

🖼️ hear me out tho: vamp!mary

send 🖼️ and I’ll make a moodboard of our muses’ relationship.

[babydxhl]

❝ it doesn't do us any good to be comparing, does it? we aren't the same people. ❞

any other family sentence starters | still accepting.

"Aren't we?"

Shoulders hunched, coat collar turned up, and it's still not enough to keep out the cold, the wind biting at her fingertips where the exposed skin meets the end of a glowing cigarette. They'd come out into the side alley for some air and a smoke, but somewhere along the line the steady chatter of pedestrians around the corner, the hum of cars and music and life had died off, leaving only the breeze ricocheting off the brickwork and the far-off thrum of the subway out of sight.

Mary watches him; the street light and half-hid neon overhead catches the hollows of their faces and turns her gaze pinpricked blue, the white gone to oil slick in contrast.

"You left, last time. We weren't done." The diner. The manila folders stamped with their names. The words that had not quite wanted to be read, the kind of things they had not wanted to understand. Mary Dahl has a foul habit of chasing out kindred spirits, of searching for equals, and she knows it.

I know you, some part of her had thought as the door had swung shut behind him last time.

"It's easier, right?" She can feel the tip of the cigarette burning down towards her skin, but the warmth of it isn't so bad. Familiar. "All at the same time, you want to think—" She presses her lips together hard as she chooses her words.

Something about saying it feels like a betrayal to a woman she hates more than anyone else in the world.

"You want to think that it didn't happen, that it happened to everybody, and that it didn't happen to anyone else. Because if it happened to everybody, it's no big deal. And if it didn't happen to anybody else, then it means—" She stops, and realises suddenly that her voice — tense, a little strangled — has been speeding up, the words coming too quick out of her mouth.

It means that the way we feel is something unique. That it is something special, and not something monstrous.

Her jaw tenses. A long pause. For a moment she feels the lingering anger fizzing in the air like static between them, some pent up energy just waiting on a spark. "They wrote a lotta things in my file, too."

[babydxhl]

👫

send a 👫 and I’ll write four headcanons I have about our muse’s relationship.

every once in a while a video of waylon scaring tf out of some trespassing teen at the wastewater plant goes locally viral on social media and mary laughs every single time w.o fail

mary's tailor is very good at making very small clothes and she decided quite a while ago that this must mean he is also very good at making very LARGE clothes. ergo she has given him waylon's measurements and put them in touch

she is. ready to fight for/about him at all times. if there's someone running their mouth about 'the lizard man of gotham' or w.e they need to be careful bc there is a maelstrom of short blonde nails spit and teeth coming their way VERY willingly

I think while there is and always be a part of her that does have this love for him that was there initially, she has also become very comfortable with that being unrequited and settling into this friendship they have. yes she is a little obsessed and yes she does have to fight back a strain of jealousy at times but she also just kind of adores him in general?? he'll never love her back. that's fine. she's gotten used to that. but she's going to stick around as long as he'll let her

[babydxhl]

🖼️ / think we already did this but I love your graphics

send 🖼️ and I’ll make a moodboard of our muses’ relationship.