Elemental, a batman fanfic | FanFiction www.fanfiction.net
This stunning cover art was the inspiration for this piece, and is linked and shared again here with the permission of the amazingly talented artist, Lily of Snackage (thank you, Lily!). I've always thought it too simplistic to just say all the BatBoys share merely "blue eyes", and their subtle shades and dynamic personalities are so vividly captured in this artwork. My muse was stirred the moment I first saw it on my Tumblr dashboard, but it took a while to string into any coherent form.
They say "a picture paints a thousand words": this is just my little attempt at writing them down.
The world through the eyes of bats and birds.
Dick's eyes are cerulean. Expansive and oceanic, they effervesce with zest, and shine like sunsparks on ripples of the sea. Just as a bubbling brook, he is always moving, and every motion is danced. In his early years, he was effusive and mischievous, as spirited and spritely as a spring; as the years have passed, he has matured and grown. His intelligence is sharp and clear as a crystal lake, and his ease and fluidity showcase his natural strength and grace.
His are pools that could drown even the Sirens. When those still spheres fix upon any hapless soul, healing waters swell and it's as if it's just them and him, standing at the utmost edge… then one rolling sweep, and they're lost, submerged in the comfort of warming waves and the fathomless depths of his spirit.
He is a peacemaker, trying to dilute the acidity that sometimes flows between his band of brothers. Yet the oceans are known, too, for their mutable nature - and Dick's rare but tempestuous storms are capable of unleashing untold destruction. Still waters run deep: orbs that whisper sweet, swirling susurrations also deafen with their roars. He can be ferocious in his fighting; a storm that beats down unrelentingly and is seemingly everywhere at once, so as a result, his attacks are powerful, calamitous, and devastating. Passion flows deep in his veins.
His friends always joke that he's a world of his own, and he is, quite literally - his heart is so dense, and his soul brims so full, that he engenders whole ecosystems of groups and social circles that thrive on his very life-force. He laughs at that, the social butterfly, and says if that were true, he'd love to take his friends everywhere he goes; little does he know the extent of their thirst, that if he were to rally them up, they would surge to his call like a rising tide, and follow his lead to the ends of the earth.
Jason's eyes are steel-blue. Sharp, now, and cold - they were once a more puerile, yielding zinc (Bruce certainly banked on his malleability, back in the day), but lids closed to that old hue long ago and they've taken on a rough, jagged edge since light returned to them.
It's always a fine balance on the tip of Jason's knife; no-one is ever quite sure which way he is going to pitch. But one thing is certain: he is dangerous. His eyes - and mouth - are incisive and penetrating. Depending on the circumstances, his opponent might suffer either the smart sting of his sardonic bite, or the unleashing of hell's fury with full guns blazing. His unreliability is notorious.
He'd never let anyone close enough to see it, but you can watch his whole story unfold within his steely spheres. He's been pounded and ground down; forged in the furnace of the Joker's explosion and quenched in the liquids of the Lazarus Pit. It's hardened him, and given him a raw, serrated edge. That's why he keeps his eyelids at half-mast with a swagger and a sneer, signalling clearly that he's abrasive, derisive and dispassionate; perhaps he's protecting himself - or is he protecting others? - from the nightmares refracted within.
So he withdraws into himself, collecting his grudges close to his chest, nicking himself with perceived 'betrayal'. These cuts fester into scabs that he grimly picks before they can heal, so that they build up, scar upon scar upon skin, into a seamless full armour that he can't remember putting on, much less figure how to take off. Sometimes, it's oppressive and he finds it hard to breathe. But then he remembers that, between his golden predecessor and resented replacement, he'll only rust - and that demon-child makes him searingly incandescent - so he holsters his thoughts, and soldiers on, with the safety off.
Tim's eyes are azure. Unclouded and sky-blue, they twinkle with a pure, bright focus, and see with a clarity and coolness that belie his teenage years. His curious, analytical mind barely contains a whirlwind of calculating theories and cunning ideas that bear him aloft from the shady dealings of Gotham's underworld.
Unlike the others, Tim has worked to achieve his position - and how! With every breath, he has ached and climbed and beat his own way to respect, knowledge and mastery; as a result, trained muscle-memory keeps him airborne, and keeps his flight path high and true.
He can't remember a time when he wasn't looking upwards. Once upon a time, it was the highlight of his day: eyes peeled to the horizon, yearning to glimpse those two familiar silhouettes swinging amid the urban jungle of Gotham City. Years afterwards, he was still gazing higher - at his best friend, who could soar amongst the clouds; at his girlfriend, who leapt with him and shone like his sun; at his oldest brother, to whom he still aspires; at his own lofty ambitions to better himself and follow in the footsteps of his great mentor.
Sometimes, his irises cloud over, and he sighs to think how some of those memories have flown, forever lost to him now. He feels buffeted by gales of change and circumstance. But then, at night, when he's forty stories up and ready to meet the winds head-on with just a leap and a line - he knows there are no limits to what he can achieve, and he's at peace. He's ready to join with the skies, and in that moment, there's nowhere he'd rather be.
Damian's eyes are electric blue. Sparky, hot-tempered, and burning with the intensity of a bunsen burner, they roar with a heat that combusts noisily, but always hit their marks with deadly precision. He was, after all, powered and honed by his mother for all his formative years.
Fierce and fiery, he will suffer no fools. He prides himself on the assassin's efficiency with which he wields his katana, and the matching irascible sharpness of his tongue, its scorching levels matched only by Red Hood.
Admittedly, he's most heated in the company of 'the airhead Drake', and within his small circle of acquaintances and even fewer friends, Tim is certainly made to feel the hottest part of his flame. But everyone knows it's all gas, mere thunderclaps and rumbles: at the heart of his ire sits an unburnt core of fierce loyalty and a palpitating need of acceptance.
When he first arrived in Gotham, he would glower and simmer with youthful resentment and rage. He was the rightful son and heir, always at the brink of ignition. But over time, he learns discipline, and with Grayson to conduct him in both thoughts and actions, Damian finds his abilities and energies channeled into something altogether… better. He's beginning to earn the esteem he craves, and now he's determined, more than ever, to make his mark - naïvely unaware that in many respects, and in all the ways that matter most, he already has.
Bruce's eyes are sapphire. Highly polished, intense and glistening, they present the perfect front for his persona: a very desirable prospect to the societal ranks. The precious gem, the Prince of Gotham. Yet gaze further, and you'll almost flinch from the hardness in those spheres; still further, and you can see the fractures in his stony facade, like cracks in bloodstained pavement slabs.
One balmy June night, his destiny was set in stone. Inexorable in his quest, he gathers no moss; he is earthy and driven, a creature formed artificially, painstakingly, in the deep recesses of wells and caves and underground prisons. He has a mind that's clear as crystal and as sharp and lethal as stalagmites, sitting atop a soul that's pitted, unforgiving, unrelenting… but not unfeeling. Not any more.
True, he wields silence as a weapon. Dick says he's as obstinate as a rock: sometimes, it's in jest to Alfred, perhaps in mutiny over the choice of family movie. Other times, it's spouted in a torrent of exasperation, within the dark bowels of the Batcave. Crushed by a continued sense of loss, Bruce puts up walls even against his former partners. Jason tries to cut him down; Tim says he's over it, above it all. (Damian used to bear down hard on those walls, but has since grown unfazed: he imagined them taller).
Yet even a man so obdurate and steadfast as Bruce is known to change. His eyes reflect a spectrum of once-buried emotions. His first Robin softened and reshaped him, and - even now, he knows - carries him. He was almost cloven in two by the loss of his second Robin; his third lifted him airborne from that dark place, and now his fourth boy has lit within him a new sense of purpose. It is because of them that his deep, dulled eyes took on a new lustre of resolution. They are his world, and he needs them to live; he, in turn, grounds each of them, and is ever their home.
P.S. I know Stephanie was technically Robin IV, but like I said, the art-piece was my launchpad. So sorry, staunch Steph supporters! I still made sure she's at least in Tim's part ;) Maybe someday I'll do a Batgirl version; she would definitely be in that.
jacobvanloon
