Chapter Text
"Ma'am, are you well?" A boy, maybe nine with ruffled curls peered down at Lucia. His fluency was impressive, not a syllable out of place. But the perfection could not deny the tawny, sun kissed skin that was layered with scars and secrets.
The armour and weapon of choice were a distinct indicator if anything.
There was not a hint of kindness in the dimpled smile. Intense green eyes were warped with indifferent shadow. Not a lick of blood from the massacre remained on him. Lucia herself was unburdened with the fillings of scattered men left sullying the carpet. Hastily, Lucia got on shaking feet, pulling her daughter, Ombretta behind her.
"Demon boy." She hissed clutching at her cross in defiance. She'd heard tales echoing from the lower echelons of the demon playing a boy. She'd watched associates from upper society laugh at the rumours, cigar in hand, money in the other. What she had never seen was their brutal deaths that echoed along the grapevine.
People were nervous, teetering over suspicious children. Ombretta, mere fifteen years of age had been accused of witchcraft. Dante, her husband of seventeen years, an upper-class tradesman had diverted those with haste.
"Ombretta, go to your room and seal the locks." Lucia ordered. They were immense, layered, only the best for her daughter. The demon boy watched in passive boredom. He spun an unidentifiable throwing star on his knuckle. He was cataloguing.
"Madre, per favoure!" Ombretta begged. Her knuckles whitened, desperate to cling to the familiar presence.
"Go. Now." That was not the mother who had held her in warmth and joy who answered, it was the personal handmaiden of Lady Talia. Ombretta, gorgeous to all who looked upon her, with a gentleness that could tame a raging sea, hesitated. Pale, but ground in steel, Lucia had brought that curse upon herself.
Casting a glance at the demon boy who was busying himself with stripping the mercenaries off their weapons Lucia slightly turned. Her eyes welling with tears. "Go. Don't come out for anything." Ombretta swayed, her hands held in prayer around the cross at her throat.
The demon would not wait much longer. He was a plague, and he knew it. Lucia knew of three people who were granted access to the pits. All of them were royalty. The demon parading as human in front of them was not one to disrespect. The desperation was bleeding into the tightness of Lucia's pastel blue lips, wildly turning her unshakeable confidence to anxiety.
"Si, madre." Ombretta conceded. Lucia never fell over. She remained upright by the strength of fear alone as she watched the back of her daughter escape the living room.
The demon had the kindness to wait until the girl had completely and irrefutably disappeared before striking conversation. Any materials he had collected were hidden in pockets not meant to be discovered.
"Locks are useless." The demon stated bluntly. "Your delusion will keep your cardinal interest though." He wasn't really talking to her. Like Talia. Lucia cocked her gun, hidden previously from her daughter, and trained it on the demon.
"Your defection from the League of Assassins was impressive. Lady Talia, daughter of the demon, does not usually favour her maids." The Demon boy cleaned off his sword casually on Lucia's grandmother's curtains as if they were merely discussing the weather.
"Talia did nothing. I alone escaped." Lucia rebutted. His lips twisted in a sneer. The lurking Lazarus – berserker serum whispered some – flared in his cold eyes. The demon sheathed his sword, pocketed the star and waited for the punch line.
Lucia said nothing. The demon, who was not averse to hunting the mafia, frowned.
The demon clearly had two moods: indifferent distaste and defiant irritation.
"Oh. You're serious." He acknowledged pinching his lips together. "You are stupid."
"There's a but in that statement, isn't there, Demon pet of Al Ghul." Lucia hissed.
"I have an army. You have social grounds with many a folk. You will be my general, or you will be removed."
"You can't keep me as your pet."
"I would never treat an animal so cruelly. You will be my puppet." Damian insisted. He ghosted a finger over an old painting. It was an heirloom, thousands of years old from Dante's side. A single flower blooming in the dark, white petals unfolding through the canvas.
Lucia hesitated. Her aim, so true shook under the weight of his single ultimatum. She could fight him. She had killed many in her time at the league, lieutenants, governments, families. If only she had her scimitar, but it had been left with Lady Talia as a warning.
"Why now? Why not you?" This little demon clearly had the skills to command. He had colossal intelligence and some type of network if he'd found her. Age was just a number in the bleaker side of the world, especially with immortals running around.
Damian didn't move his gaze from the painting. He softly traced over the scratched off signature, pensive and thoughtful.
"Answers. You always need answers." He shook off the pensive look, taking on the indifferentiable warrior façade that had felled the mercenaries in Lucia's living room. The difference was subtle, from disciplined weapon to hell spawn on a trigger. The pit was influencing him. God and Satan joined in unity to fight him off, she prayed.
"You are in poverty, no? I offer you riches."
Poor? Poor? They lived in a villa sprawling most of the port!
"You're hunting something." Lucia guessed. "You don't have the time for it."
A crude imitation of a smile twisted the corners of Damian's mouth. It reached even in the slitted pupils of his glowing eye. She was competent. She was perfect.
"You have till the sunset to decide. I will not wait longer." Damian made for the windows. The stained glass was shattered. It was more a doorway. Lucia tucked her gun in her waistband, sighing deeply. The weight of her decision pulling at the crows' feet on the corner of her eyes. She was young, she was ancient. And the demon boy did not care.
"Yes." Silence. Damian hopped on the window ledge high up observing the coast. Warm tropical sun danced over his skin. The beauty he had was exaggerated in the most perfect of ways. He was a perfect weapon.
"You have until five to pack up and leave." Damian instructed. "Your sister sends her love -" A beat. Lucia hated her older sister. The biggest deceiving bitch. They hadn't spoken in years. " - from the grave." Damian finished.
An hour. A singular hour to pack away a house holding decades of memory.
A tightening appears in Lucia's chest. Yes, this is the Demon. The pet of the Al Ghuls who have been quiet for far too many years. She supposed, he was their reckoning.
***
"You fucking idiot! How could you do this?" Lucia slapped the butt of the weapon against Krey's forehead. The meta flinched, slamming to his knees and offered weak apologies. Lucia continued to pace, pent with exploding fury.
Damian. Damian. The deceiver child. The killer. He had promised no mercy for failure. He had assured riches. He had delivered.
"Please miss, we did not!" Krey begged. The meta's head was lowered, truthful, pathetic.
Red hot anger blinded her sight as she fought the urge to scream. Pathetic had been Damian's favourite, or at least, his most used word.
"Get out." She demanded tightly. Lucia focused on the disarray of her platform. Her auction was a mess.
Krey did not argue. Her true essence a warping shadow of rage in his sight. The twins hadn't learnt stealth. Every footstep echoed in her head. Disappointment rotted the last of her kindness.
Lucia kicked her chair across the room. Her pacing left a trail through the animal skin rug. She'd made it special from his pet tiger. Lucia flexed her fingers, the intensity unmatched by the steel in her spine. Plans that had been in the makings for years laid to waste.
It had taken hundreds of man hours to find the fucking head itself. It hadn't been for sale in Slade's personal collection. She had gotten it anyway.
Lucia turned from the smashed window to her liquor cabin. It had been Damian's as well. A guileless child that had sought the contents for boredom, perhaps to seem more adult as his counterparts had been. He had one favourite she'd seen him drink from twice. That was it. It was wasteful. Something Damian despised. But he'd done it. Because he could.
Lucia downed a swig of Amarone, gripping the bottle of the neck hard enough to pressure the glass. The harsh cherry overtook the lingering vile taste of failure.
He'd been right there! Right where she could've shot him. Right where she did shoot him. He had even protected that... girl. A daughter of Trigon Zeph had informed. Flinging her through the glass as vigilantes crashed her joint before the explosion could warp around her body that had been standing so close to his.
It couldn't have been a conscious effort. No one liked standing next to Damian.
He was riddled with death and promise. He was eerie, unearthly. There was nothing humanity could claim that belonged in his body.
There was nothing and everything superior about him. Simply put, he did not care to acknowledge others. But he had for the trigon baby girl. The slight head tilt toward the Trigon spawn, the watchfulness that straddled the line of interest and hate.
Neither of them could map that. Neither of them could explain the bond layered between them. Zeph and Krey had seen it; pulsing, beautiful, snared.
The vigilantes that had scooped her up? They had no clue what anger they'd sparked.
One thing was certain; they were not Damian's doing. It was his one flaw. The self-imposed isolation was his saviour from his crushing guilt and the anchor sinking him down. Lucia briefly glanced at the severed head nestled on her desk. Krey had saved it from the several people who had bid for it. Millions of dollars all gone to waste.
At least Damian had seen it. That alone had made the agony over it worth it.
Lucia studied it mournfully. Her grip on the cold bottle tightened.
Even in the trenches of death and decay Talia remained beautiful. There was a peaceful quality to the lax features around the bloating. The products preserved the haunting authority she still commanded. Typical. Death wasn't meant to be pretty. Ombretta's hadn't.
Lucia kicked the head of her desk where it splattered on her carpet. The sound was wet, squishy. Lucia snapped the head of her bottle in her hands.
She closed her eyes as the edges seared into her palms.
A thousand products couldn't hide the imperfections that had decorated her hands from the League.
No matter if the thousands of operatives were dead, and had been for years. The pull was there. The purpose. You couldn't recruit someone who didn't already believe in that path. That was what had made Ra's so deadly.
He was right. His methods? Questionable. His results? Conclusive.
Talia: his right hand, she was perfection in the form of his discipline. She believed in the right way. She knew of the faults with the league and she could've made them better. Her morals weren't a question, her loyalty was without question.
And Lucia had been the fly that had fallen for the Venus trap.
And they were gone.
And yet, the tug was there. Damian was their higher form. But he had been pulled from that life. Eternal punishment was his task.
Al Ghul's never did anything halfway.
Lucia knew that all too well.
***
Somewhere in a sphere of influence not viable to the minds of mortals
Itzpapalotl floated on a cloud, a cucumber mask over her serene face. Her corporeal form spanned over her domain in peace. The Cihuateteo, mothers who had passed in childbirth, the Tzitzimimeh, her personal female star demons, and the precious little immortal birds and butterflies co-existed with love and peace, just as her will decreed.
Itzpapalotl could feel the interest they all harboured secretly, yet few would approach to question, they loved her. Her ruling was fickle. That accounted for her mood as well.
Unfortunately, that meant she could also feel her daughter Tzitzimimeh's interest. Her daughters, skeletal as she, jaguar claws and flint edged wings did not like her choice as of late.
Tamoanchan was a beautiful paradise for the association of creation and the sacred birthplace of the Aztecs. Fitting for the deceased birth mothers. Damian was, in an in-depth study, not a woman who had felled of childbirth.
"You saved him." Citlali stated unhappily. The star demon, who's wings were etched with celestial obsidian, replenished the drink floating in suspension.
"No, I didn't." Itzpapalotl disagreed kindly taking a sip of her drink. It was light, fruity with deadly flowers of the ruins. She downed it, waiting for another refill before continuing.
"It was his time to begone. The Al Ghul boy is a body of destruction, unlike you mistress." Citlali likened. A deep snarl pasted her skull. Misty darkness warped in an out of her skull. The star deity was anxious then.
She was pretty, Itzpapalotl smiled. "The Wayne boy and the Trigon girl are not yet aligned as fate would have it. Nor is the Wayne coterie associated with him properly. The Wayne boy's time has not come yet." She sighed.
"But it will."
Citlali frowned. A bead of suspicion arose in her bottomless eyes. "He is destruction of everything you hold dear."
Yes, Damian's actions with Raven hadn't been desired, but the small pain had been all he knew to protect her.
A trade for life. Damian hadn't hesitated.
"He would like to think that." Itzpapalotl commented. "But believe, when it's his time his dues will come forth."
"I do not like him. He has a determined heart." Citlali hesitated. It wasn't often she went against her mother's word.
Itzpapalotl sighed contentedly, rolling over her cloud lounge to rest on her stomach. "Raven's counting on it."
"But-"
"All celestials are depending on it." Itzpapalotl cut off. There was not a hint of leeway with the statement. Citlali backed off immediately. "Talia Al Ghul did not know what she was planning. She never liked losing. And now she's left all planes. Just like his mother, Damian is. Alfred will have a handful to deal with." She said almost amusedly.