#flashbacks; sv

[bethestone]

@everythingheard​ (for bruce from rachel)

it had been so much easier to see things in absolutes before aliens rained from the sky and the man she had thought she loved turned upon everything he stood for and been consumed with villainy. locked in a jail cell among the very people he’d put inside. she had been so idealistic and young when bruce had returned, so sure of right and wrong and the need to live in the light. she couldn’t reconcile the boy she’d run around the manor with with the dark knight that had drug his sister into a life in the shadows. (though, even rachel at her core could admit there was no talking kara into anything, she’d made her own choice and that choice just so happened to line up with her brother’s path.) with the man who’d become hardened and brutal in his quest to strike fear into the city’s underbelly. fear. fear couldn’t solve the cities’ problems. but harvey’s quest, standing up to criminals in the light of day, had purpose, had potential. she had immersed herself within it and existed behind a vault of blindness. not that she still did not believe in the quest, but, her eyes had been awoken to a very many shades of grey since those days. 

zod had attacked their world and powered people escaped the shadows. jokers reigned terror and bruce had led gotham through floods. him and kara had become symbols not of fear but of hope and rachel had seen what she had not allowed herself to before. bruce had evolved, grown, but the bruce that tugged on her hair to get her attention when they were young was still a part of him. she could see it in his quest to repair his family’s name. in the way he took dick grayson in as his own. in his conviction to aid in reforms at arkham and help rehabilitate those who resided within it’s walls. yes a part of him could be brutal but he still held hope for those he fought. she could see it in the way that he worried about a sister who proved fully capable of protecting herself. she could see it in the way he had sat at alfred's side in the hospital after the explosion. and now, in the wake of harvey’s trial and superman’s death with forces beyond their comprehension just past the horizon rachel finally comes to him at the manor, sharing a look with alfred before she’s making her way to the room bruce is in. alfred had told her when bruce, dick, and kara had returned from superman’s funeral. 

this world was not the one they’d grown up in and it’s a wonder how anyone was coping in the wake of what had transpired in metropolis. footfalls echo throughout the room, rachel coming to a stop just inside the doorway before shutting the door. all their moments in recent history have been so fully charged with chaos and tension, with her in danger from an alien battle or flooding waters, with two friends sitting in a hospital with alfred’s life in the balance, with her kidnapped and strapped to a bomb that kara had very nearly failed to protect her from that they’ve never had time to truly sort out where they stood. maybe she hadn’t been ready yet. she was now. yet what that would look like she wasn’t sure. 

“i want you to teach me to fight. self-defense.” she begins, unsure why that’s the first item on the agenda she broches. “not that it’ll help me if we have another alien invasion. god, i still can’t believe i’m even saying that. aliens. metahumans. and now superman’s gone.” there’s a pause as she allows the weight of that statement to linger. she hadn’t known superman but rachel had always been close with kara and she knew the impact his death had on her, and, she knew bruce felt the loss too. 

“--but if i’m going to be the new district attorney and connected to bruce wayne i think i ought to be able to at least prevent my own kidnapping.” she never wants to feel as powerless as she felt when crane had drugged her or when she’d been in that warehouse with bombs around her again. another step is taken forward, followed by another until she’s nearly reached him-- standing just a mere foot away from him. they haven’t spent any significant time together in so long, haven’t been this close to each other even when he’d used his limo to save her from press after harvey’s sentencing because lex had been there with him too. 

a part of her wants to reach out though she doesn’t, not yet. maybe she’s waiting for him to meet her half-way. for them, in the wake of everything, to make this choice together. “of course, that’ll mean i’ll be spending a fair amount of my free time here, with you, when you’re not out there.” she motions outside the window. there’s a weight to what she says, words unspoken between the lines but implication clear. she’s taking the first step, making a choice to accept being in his life again and all that entailed.

[bethestone]

@myersbprd

the twelve year old remembers that night when buildings fell and fire rained down around everyone. she remembers the bus and the military. she remembers seeing ships and hearing a roar and seeing godzilla rise out of the water. she remembers the facility she'd been in before that too. too many children for too few people to take care and while she'd often found herself picked on, learning quickly to keep to herself and off the older children's radar, some of the adults there had tried to be there for her and the others. they'd all died when what the news had called mutos came crashing through the city. she'd been one of the few, a nine-year-old, pulled out of the rumble and taken to the hospital and then ushered onto a bus with strangers. dilara remembers seeing him and while everyone else seemed more afraid of him than the chaos happening around them, she remembers a strangely different feeling having washed over her as she stared at the titan. she'd feared many things that day and perhaps she'd feared falling into the ocean off the bridge too-- and that would have been inadvertently because of godzilla-- but she hadn't feared the massive titan and to this day she hadn't understood why. maybe it was because in the end he'd saved the day before going back into the ocean. maybe it was because he went into the ocean and that, the open water where she could dream up stories about mermaids and all manner of aquatic escapes, had always been the one thing to make her smile. but dilara hadn't known he would do that when she'd first seen him towering above the city.

that had been a lifetime ago now, the home she'd found herself in on the other side of the country in the nations capitol, had been a far cry from any gentleness she'd known before. if it was possible, the child had learned to close herself off more. she'd had bad dreams about the mutos when she'd first come and when she'd awake crying she'd been yelled at for it. when it'd happened again, they'd locked her door during the night. children learn and dilara had learned a lot of things in the three years she'd lived with the rasputin's. but something had changed a few months prior. a man with her eyes and her hair had come from monarch and even a child as she was she'd heard of them. they'd been all over the news. she just hadn't understood why he'd come to their house or why her foster parents had been angry when some other lady said they had to let him in to visit or why he'd seemed upset at the rasputin's after seeing her room, his eyes having lingered on the spot they'd removed the chain lock from that morning (that'd been a new development). dilara had always been observant and apparently so had the man. they'd just talked that day, him asking her random questions and her sinking herself into the hoodie she'd been engulfed in, her remaining curled up in a chair awkward. but he'd been kind and he hadn't shouted at her or gotten upset when she'd accidently admitted she had bad dreams about the mutos when he'd asked her why she was yawning so much. that had caused a reaction, her asking him not to tell her parents because then they'd lock the door again and her apologizing for yawning. she hadn't understood why that'd made him frown.

it was the second time they'd met, this time at a park her foster parents had reluctantly drove her to, that he'd told her who he was. the child wasn't sure at the time that she believed him and she'd been angry and reactive and un-understanding of him saying he hadn't known about her otherwise he would have come for her. didn't all mommies and daddies know they had children if they had children? and if what he was saying was true than why hadn't her mother... wanted her? dilara hadn't understood yet she also hadn't wanted to go back to that house so she had been stuck on the park bench in silence after she'd stopped crying. she wasn't sure how it had happened but that afternoon had ended in him hugging her and once he had she'd latched on as if her life depended on it because it'd been the first hug she could really remember in a long time. but then she'd had to go back to her house again and his promise about wanting to be her dad seemed hollow because she'd asked him, in those last few moments in a panic that if he was her dad, to take her away, and she'd gone back to that house all the same. she hadn't understood.

but then he kept coming there and she'd managed to figure out the email at school and they'd talked. he'd told her he thought about godzilla in the same way she did and that had sparked her to be more open and excited and smile, to begin to accept him as a figure in her life even if she couldn't quite believe him when he told her she'd be living with him soon. adults made a lot of promises. still, she'd told him when her dreams had shifted away from replayed memories and into something else. she'd tried to draw pictures of what she'd seen, flashes of images, strange ones and beings that didn't look like the mutos or godzilla but something else. a lot of them seemed scary except for the pretty one. dilara had liked that one. it was like a flying mermaid with so many colors. she'd shown him the drawings the last time he'd come, let him take them with him when he promised that next time he came she'd be going with him. that's when he'd made her memorize his phone number. just in case. the rasputin's had seemed especially angry that day and that'd confused her because didn't they hate her? why wouldn't they want her gone?

that'd been two weeks ago, dilara waking up two days ago with a start and news reports going wild switching from talk of some court thing about the man-- her father's-- workplace and the titans to destruction beginning. it seemed like it was spreading and it'd scared her, dilara starting to cry when the news people had begun to speak of likely courses for the titans wreaking havoc. she'd hidden behind the couch and covered her ears, closing her eyes and crying as images played across her mind. it was happening again. it was going to happen again. and worse, the tv had shown what she'd already seen in her dreams and the child didn't understand. the lock had gone back on her door that night but soon enough it had begun, sirens outside. people evacuating. the rasputin's did too, she'd seen them get in the car outside the window but they hadn't come for her though at least they'd unlocked the door she'd found out an hour later when she'd tried it. that's when dilara had gone outside and realized everyone was gone from the neighborhood and she'd dialed the number her father had given her, panic in her tone as she'd begun to cry.

he'd told her to stay where she was. that he was going to come for her and that he'd send people to the house to get her out of there. but those people hadn't come because fire had begun to reign from the sky and she could feel the shake of the ground. she'd barely made it to the bathtub (something she'd learned during a drill in school after what'd happened with godzilla and the mutos) before it felt as if the whole world was exploding around her. when she'd woken up, she'd somehow managed to crawl through debris, cuts having torn through parts of her clothes, though most of it thankfully missing where she'd been. for awhile, she hadn't been able to move but something in her forced her to. it seemed as if the whole world was on fire but even the child knew she had to move.

the park wasn't that far, it was the only other place she knew how to get to. and so she'd trekked, dodging fires and broken homes. the park seemed to be narrowly missed though she knew that monster that continued rampaging through the city, raising clouds of smoke everywhere could easily move back in her direction. but the park had a field house with an underground basement. she remembered that from that one time they'd done a community drill. when she gets there, the doors are locked, however, and no people were around, having already evacuated. but the air is hot and ashy and she hears roars and feels the shake of the ground and it's all too much for her because she's alone and she's a kid and no one is coming for her. he'd said he'd come but how could he? maybe he was like the rasputin's too. maybe she shouldn't have let herself hope. there's another shake and dilara moves, finally, follows the side of the building until she takes the few steps down to a small alcove in the side of the building that led to where they kept the sports supplies locked up and she hides herself in the corner on the ground, wrapping her arms around her legs that she brings up to her chest.