#DLMITD

[lunanovakat]

A sneak peek of chapter 7

Underneath the 'Keep Reading' is a little sneak peek of chapter 7 for Don't Leave Me in the Dark.

It's not the full scene, nor is it the full chapter, but I wanted to share it so the fans of Don't Leave Me in the Dark can see that it's in the works — I just don't know when it'll be posted.

Chapter 8 also has a little work but I won't share anything about it until chapter 7 is out.

Also, I'm thankful that I can borrow the laptop I'm using right now. I won't have a lot of time to write, but I should have a little more now and that, hopefully, means I can actually get back into writing like I want to.

Talia's mind is whirling priorities around, feeling them spin and twist and writhe. Organs carved out of a target who got on the wrong side of the League. Every thought coming back to the two multidimensional spiritual beings— for what else could they be? Pit Demons? Please, she was no fool. And they themselves had admitted to being spirits, even if they looked like no ghosts she had ever seen.

But, connected to the pits?

Things had come out of the pit before, but not this. Not them. Were they new? Could they hide their existence from Ra's all this time? She had never seen beings such as these two girls come out of the Lazarus Pit.

Pit Demons were mangled, twisted creatures with no sense of reason or consciousness. Angry, self-decaying shapes that slowly lost their form as they attacked without thought or pattern, and had never once spoken. Never showed any signs they could think higher than a tantrum throwing toddler, and even then they lacked the intelligence.

The elder of the two felt like a house fire— Like control, and an inferno raging without any stop, a low thrumming hum of sound vibrations and electricity gone wrong softly under the crackling of flames. Uncontrollably consuming, powerful.

Dressed like a rebelling teenage girl, an over-the-top punk outfit both overly stylized and comfortable, but her skin the color of a corpse starting to gain rigor mortis. Perfectly alive, flushing with color and life despite the eerie nature of her unblemished and unmoving skin. A corpse without an actual body, with eyes a truer green than any Lazarus Pit Talia had the fortune to find before Ra's.

(How funny, she found it, that Pits started off a neon green that spoke of life in a way she'd never seen growing up. But they turned sickly yellow-green anytime Ra's gripped, and grabbed, and locked them under this thumb for use.)

Had they been wrong this entire time?

Flickering, shimmering blue flames flowing in the air like smoke. Moving due to its own will, growing and shrinking with any emotion. Every suffocating wisp of electric-hot fire acting as her hair.

She felt strong.

A powerhouse Talia didn't know anything about, and wouldn't be able to take down without much research done.

But the younger? Oh, the younger being made Talia feel intoxicated with the fresh feel of unmade afterlife a first used Lazarus Pit gave off.

The younger felt like death itself, Talia's skin prickling just in the vicinity of her power. So young, so much like the children of her beloved, yet far more powerful than anything she had ever seen. Cold, all-encompassing, all-knowing. There wasn't life, nothing but pure undeath — a reflection on the water, natural but uncanny. Just off from what Talia knew was right.

A toddler, almost, but fizzled against her skin like static that spoke of centuries she'd never know — Talia knew looks could be deceiving, had been raised by deceit and facades. And, yet, there was something painfully young about the being.

Death that came with the creation of time, but a child, undoubtedly.

White hair unbothered by gravity, flowing through air like water, but touched by wispy trails of fading light like an Aurora Borealis. Eyes sharper, brighter, more than the Lazarus Pit had ever offered — distant stars, far-off planets, eyes that spoke of a want to travel but stayed with earth. To explore. Death that reached from the depths of the sea, to the darkened forests, and the glittering sands.

But then the form — a glamour? A disguise? She could not yet tell — would flicker, like candlelight in a storm, to the corpse visage of a child. One who would undoubtedly be taken in by her beloved, eyes so icy blue they spoke of frozen tundra's and hypothermia. Hair darker than the night, absorbing all the light that dared to shine its way towards her, until the faintest of gleams of sparkling starlight reflects off the top of her head.

The child's skin as perfectly sculpted as a porcelain dolls, just right in color but still… Not fully right.

It made the unmade death tied to Talia's soul want to shiver. To bow down, offer piety, but steal it away when no one saw.

Intoxicating.

Ra's could not know.

The unspoken and silent war between Talia and Ra's' factions would burst. Forgotten entirely, in the face of what these two beings could possibly bring. Weapons or allies that Ra's would greedily grasp at with all his might.

Would control, monopolize, and destroy the essence of until all that was left was his own power.

Talia was not a good woman. She was not much of a good mother, though she tried her hardest at times and failed so obviously at others. Morality and compassion were merely tools she was used to wielding, not to offer children.

Her reasoning for keeping an eye on these two was for her own selfish gains, and a falsified momentary weakness she could use to claim her soul hadn't yet fully blackened.

Even if Talia did not use or manipulate them, Ra's could not be allowed to know of their existence. As long as she kept them away from the eyes and ears of the Demon Head, she could ensure that Ra's did not gain whatever power they could give him.

Could not gain the ability to turn the yellow-green toxic Lazarus Pit into something so lively, and pure, like the death in their eyes. Could not gain whatever power they'd offer, even if they themselves were not aware of what they had.

Could not let her beloved find them, question them, and offend them with his insistent need to know everything.

And then make plans to take them out.

To offend the beings she knew were far more powerful than anything Bruce had dealt with before. To harm the young of a new group she knew nothing about, besides how much death skittered off their skin like static.

The two spoke in whispers, the language strange and foreign. Scratching against Talia's mind like the shadow one sees in the corner of their eyes, or in the crack of a doorway. Sudden and startling, drawing attention but with nails as it scrapes across her thoughts like a chalkboard.

Overlapping, a cacophony of voices whispering her name in the wind, and it feels like a hazy static fogging up her sense of self until it finally straightens itself. Finally returns to the calm cold she's used to, their voices tapering off like a dying scream but never louder than the flutter of a butterfly's wing.

A language that Talia could not even recall when the silence fell between them. Like a spell, wiped from her mind and leaving only the sensations.

“Your… Danny, he does look like the… Baby-bop Junior, correct?” Talia finally wondered, leading the two girls away from the half-full pit and deeper into the winding tunnels far underground Gotham. Deeper than even her beloved knew, and traversed only by the League members who had discovered it.

All of them dead, their bloods on Talia's own hands. The Pit hidden from Ra's at all cost, but monopolized by someone else.

“Yep.” The house fire of Ember said, every word tickled by the crack of charcoal wood and followed by the choking scent of burning flesh, “He's got shorter hair, but they're identical.”

“Then, I may truly know where he resides currently.” But she'd squeeze every ounce of information she could out, first, then she'd ensure it could never be known by Ra's. Or, proving how valuable it might be, not even her beloved.

Bruce was a man with a heart of tarnished gold, strong and resilient who could enamor many with his sense of justice, but his need to know—  to prepare in advance, and to protect against even the safest of things — it would ruin bridges. Burn them down like the sharp, electric flames that flickered from the older being's shadow. Talia herself knew she had to tread carefully here, staying only half a step ahead by her quick wit and the fact they were so young.

“How did your… Baby-bop Senior get lost here?” Talia wanted so deeply to ask other questions, but her patience had yet to be tested, and she knew they'd answer enough to satiate her curiosity but nothing more. But it'd be enough for now, until she could portray herself as someone trustworthy.

Until she had the pieces on the board, and knew what needed to be guarded and what could be discarded.

“Time.” The younger one says, amused, her icy-blue eyes twinkling like a frozen lake dressed in starlight and just as bright— glowing, truly, in the darkness of the tunnel, “Grandfather Time.”

Ember snorted, the sound a sharp crackle of plywood falling apart, “He wouldn't even deny it.” But her expression shifted, darkly painted lips touched with pooling coagulated blood dipping into a frown, “I'm still not sure why here, though.”

What could that imply? Gotham? Earth? Talia could feel her curiosity in her teeth, but rubbed her tongue along the inside and wiped it away.

Calm, calculated, and ruthless. She was not allowed to be anything else, and so she did not let herself be anything unbecoming. Ra's might've demanded answers, so used to being the Demon's Head that he could no longer remember the man he was before, but Talia would not let thirst for knowledge undo her.

“Gotham is… Cursed, to put it nicely.” Talia offered, the air stuffy as they traveled deeper into depths not even her beloved had traversed. She noted that they ‘breathed’, but did not intake any air — or release any, “Enshrouded in death, most cities with heroes are, but it’s particularly worse here. Highest death count in the United States.”

“Perfect for a Ghost.” The younger nodded, and Talia spotted the grimace in her face as the two beings lit up the tunnel. Brighter than the darkness, but still absorbing any light that reflected off stone and metal.

Ore and stone embedded in the tunnel walls, a never-ending path carved into the earth by an outside, but human, force. One Talia would have to catch. Despite the fact, there were no hints yet.

An Al Ghul always did love the hunt.

“These Pits, is there a way for you to tell where the Lazarus Waters inside them have gone?” Talia trailed a hand over the dirt walls, tracing the wood and bright support beams that had been imbedded in place, and letting her sense of direction guide her instead of her eyes.

When she first heard of a new source of Lazarus Waters, it had been from a spy she had placed near her father. One so loyal they had gotten themselves killed for her, citing an outside loyalty and letting Ra’s cut them down in order to keep blame off of her. Almost convincing, if Ra’s hadn’t already believed Talia against him.

They had found an unknown group, in a uniform that pulled up nothing, hoarding the untapped Lazarus Pit like a treasure. But their movements had been so small, and nonsensical, telling the League nothing when they shadowed their movements.

Even now, killing off her father’s shadows and the few of her own she knew could defect, there was nothing to explain why they were using it.

Or where they were based.

Shadows could only do so much, when in amidst an internal war.

“What are we? Bloodhounds?’ The younger scoffed, as sharp as electricity and just as stinging against Talia’s skin, “Ember can’t, but I know someone who could be able to sense it.”

(Did this mean they saw the Lazarus Waters as blood? Had they been bathing in the blood of something they didn’t fully understand? Did they lose their humanity with each dip into the Pits they took?)

Ember shrugged easily, watching Talia with those Lazarus Pit eyes that remained unblinking and glowing like the remnants of a house fire, “There’s no reason for us to help you, though. You can ask questions, but everything else is on you… You reek like someone trying to escape death.”

“No one can escape death.” Ember said calmly, suffocating plumes of smoke filling Talia’s lungs as pressure built, and built. More volatile than the rage her own father could feel, but there wasn’t any rage or grief bearing down onto her shoulders.

“Are you sure about that?”

“Yes.” The younger said just as calm, watching Talia as she watched back — not needing to breathe, to blink, or move in a way that spoke of a human unable to sit still, “Every ‘escape’ from death is fated, no one can escape death in the end. No one is immortal unless Death, herself, gets involved.”

The younger being paused, smiling sweetly but with a hint of mischief, “Unless, of course, you’re already dead — only then can you be immortal. When you’re not alive, but still living.”

Blue flames crackled and spit off sparks, Ember’s amusement felt palpable, and Talia swallowed down the several questions that bubbled up. A struggling realization, answers that felt like puzzle pieces — despite being the full picture for the two before her.

They’ll answer her, Talia realized, but their answers wouldn’t make sense. They keep their end of the deal, and Talia wouldn’t get anything beneficial.

(How funny, it made her like them more.)

[monstersliveinthemirror]

It's just that hearing collin talk about his mother begging him not to leave her when she was in early days of recovery but he would have to go home to sleep after spending all day helping her stay sober and that she would beg him 'please don't leave" and that's where he was inspired to write dlmitd and I'm just so emo about it.