hi! I just finished binge reading borderline and I'm going a bit insane,, your writing is incredible and so visceral I crashed out so many times from the sheer angst of it all holy shit. I'm not super familiar with the court of owls & talons lore so I was wondering if you had any more information about how the talonization changed dick? besides the main aspect of becoming nebulously immortal. I tried my own research but wiki fandom and reddit were not very enlightening lol
Thank you so much! For that fic, I used a blend of canon comics stuff and my own interpretation of talonization since I wanted very specific things to happen in the fic. His blood turned to electrum, his entire body is very sensitive to hot/cold now, specifically the latter. He can be put in "cold storage" hiberation mode if he's not careful. His veins are very, very blue against the very pale skin he now has. He's enhanced beyond human levels in instincts/reflexes/senses, but is prone to losing control of his thoughts/human emotions more because of that enhancement. He's very, very cold with poor circulation in most situations. He's close to immortal, and very few things would kill him or injure him for more than a few hours. He doesn't really feel pain, and has a healing factor.
To Dick himself, he feels like a freak, which is why we see him crash out at the end of the fic. Jason slams their heads together just to get Dick to feel something vaguely human and hot (his own blood dripping down Dick's face, lol). Dick was never anticipating living as a Talon. Normally, Talons can die, but Bruce's deal with Gotham has him stuck in this form for as long as she desires. A "long, long time."
I think the important part is that he doesn't really feel that different in the bond, beyond the obvious trauma, but his body is so different. He doesn't necessarily look weird, but his appearance is unsettling to those who know him well. Barbara, for example, would need a moment. He'd never be warm again to her touch. It's not clear if they could ever be intimate again, for example. He will die or almost die and regenerate thousands of times, if people find out he can be targered that way. He will lack a lot of Nightwing's typical humor and hope when they're starting back out.
I think Jason will be a really important ballast for him in the sequel, like he and Dick were for Bruce. Dick will spend a lot of time hanging out in Jason's body at first, trying to feel human again for a few short minutes, but they'll slowly put a stop to that (or Bruce will) when they realize it's hurting Dick's recovery, not helping him.
