[ patch ] sender patches up a wound on receiver's body (also grant!!)
[𝐼]ris hallows the azure of New York, but 𝕲otham’s moon is falwe upon carmine stones. And still, he, ever the sacricolist, has carried one such stone with him across the water, lodged somewhere behind his breast-bone. He cannot deny it: 𝑐𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑒𝑠 𝑐𝑙𝑎𝑖𝑚 𝑡𝘩𝑒𝑖𝑟 𝑠𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑠 𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑙𝑦. He cannot sever her from his flesh. Her blood is his blood, though it is his skin that breaks, and Grant’s hands that tend it.
Peroxide is poured. The wound receives it like an affiance renewed under durance. The sting flares albicant, a brief annunciation of pain, and breath tears from him. The sound is quiescent, human. Grant stills, then continues. Pain is not new to him, he remembers well. Chēle moves freely across his ribs through torn cloth and torn resolve. It steadies him. The noscible chill is almost gracious. Their eyes meet at the sound of his inhale, and he speaks first, silence invites castigation. ❛ I’m okay. I’m not new to this. ❜ This sigilism is written on him. A somandric, perantique codex written in scars: the tristifical grammar of the ℛobin. Hamas. Beadu. Druerie. Old words for old violences. Cuts mapped where muscle learned its limits, pale seams where the night marked him. @cautionarys hands move with a douceur that feels learned, he notices. He always does. ❛ I’m fine. You’re a good nurse, y’know? You’ve got gentle hands for a big guy like 'ya ( … ) That’s a compliment, by the way. ❜
The smile costs him. It always does, 𝑡𝘩𝑒 𝑚𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑦𝑟’𝑠 𝑖𝑛𝑣𝑒𝑖𝑔𝑙𝑒. There is comfort in oration, in breath and sound. They have learned this together: that words tether the soul to the present. Company is its own small sacrament. Tonight, he had looked forward to it.
His examinations had only just concluded. Tamara’s voice still rang with clarity, reminding him that names are devoir before they are ipseity. Wayne Enterprises required his presence. ‘ It’s been a while since the public saw you. Bruce has been busy. You Waynes — need to keep up appearances. ’ A summons spoken without thural, yet binding all the same. He knows the sarcinarious weight of the name, he resarciates. The good: to heal without striking, to build without spilling blood. The bad: those who viliorate the hand that offers change. Some nights, he thinks there is no difference between being Tim and being Robin, an ossifragant thought. This inheritance was Bruce’s; his penance, his theology; not his. And yet the world does not distinguish between sons with its famelicose hatred. He asked Grant to meet him near a restaurant Tamara recommended. He had believed, naively, that only Gotham made a sacrament of fell. But brutality is catholic; it needs no single city to thrive. 𝑁𝑜 𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑑𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑘𝑛𝑖𝑓𝑒 𝑡𝘩𝑒 𝑅𝑜𝑏𝑖𝑛. But Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne? What do they see when they look at him? Teterrimous scaevity. ‘ You Waynes — get out of our city. Go back to your shithole. ’ The words, sevidical, still echo in the alley where he had stepped aside to smoke while waiting. Robin would have moved first, he did not. He let the blade enter him, adjusted his body just enough to keep the wound shallow. A calculation made in flesh. He returned to the hotel with blood soaking his shirt beneath the hoodie ( all black, of course ) If it were not, the concierge would not have smiled as he waited by the elevator. ❛ A friend of mine is coming, ❜ he had said evenly. ❛ Grant Emerson. Please let him up. ❜
Now, he bites his lower lip, a vultuous gaze turning skyward through the window, where the night pessundates him. His body aches with the old contradiction,
— ❛ Sorry, Grant, ❜ he says in tenellous apols. ❛ This isn’t how I imagined the night would go. ❜