#please be nice to him it's my traumatized son from 1910

[figsandphiltatos]

wip whenever

i was tagged by the incredible @johaerys-writes

tagging all the folks i usually do, no pressure! @dearestaeneas @deadchannelradio @sarcasticbeanie

listen y'all if we're lucky emily wilson will knock some sense into me and i'll start writing actual shit again soon, but for now have new dc comics oc lmao

"What you're doing is dangerous. You understand the risks, right?" 

Silas gave the strange man-beast in front of him a withering glare. He was a living dead abomination—he wasn't worried about a little danger. The threat Elijah posed to him should he be found out was not nearly as abstract as this creature might have thought. Silas had fought Elijah on several occasions. The outcome had never been better than a quick-to-heal black eye and tepid congratulations on his progress. He knew that if he was found out, he would not win.

"I do." He spoke through bared teeth. Working with these children did not feel right. One of them, positioned near the back and wearing a mostly blue suit, was a Bat. Silas had seen them swinging through Gotham. He had caught them snooping through the Court's old headquarters. They were the enemy. 

And yet, Elijah was growing more erratic by the day. Silas didn't want to put his brother at risk, but he needed help. Silas had read about transformations like these in old logs and journals of Grandmasters and Judges; Worsening Electrum dependency, mercurial moods, a lack of obedience even to the Court, all these things had been observed in Talons before. Electrum slowly ate away at their humanity while the grueling cycle of hibernation and rebirth wore on their sanity until they were nothing but a violent shell. Perhaps an alliance with the Bats—With the Wayne Family—would save Elijah from the same fate. He would understand, when it came time to tell him. And if he didn't, it wasn't as if he could do worse than he'd already threatened. But Silas was doing this for him. 

"Good," The strange beast with whom he was brokering a deal nodded its head. Despite its immense size, its odd proportions and scratchy voice gave the distinct impression that Silas was speaking with another adolescent. The rest of the team were children, too. Bluejay, who Silas had been first to meet, was only a few years older than him.

The beast held out something for Silas to take. His hands—much to Silas' relief—were not hoof-like in shape or texture, though they were rough and ashen gray. The object was only the size of the creature's relatively large palm, and Silas squinted down at it. What exactly it was was hard to say. It appeared, at first glance, to be an impossibly smooth, rectangular black stone. It seemed to him to be a strange offering, but perhaps this was custom in the future to which he still felt so ill-adjusted. Or perhaps it was a common tradition of horsemen—of whom Silas had only ever met this one. Either way, it felt rude not to accept. 

It was cool to the touch, and no thicker than a quarter inch. Its surface was a sleek black on both sides, but was clearly constructed from metal on one side and not the other. So, not a stone. Still Silas couldn't piece together what it might have been. The metallic half was the only stretch of black interrupted, with a square piece of glass covering some small piece of metal, or something too alike it to be told apart when it was so small. 

"If you find something, or need our help, contact us." The horseman spoke with an earnestness that washed over Silas. He looked up from his examination, awkwardly holding the gift—just slightly too large for him to comfortably wrap his fist around—by his side. "I'm Taurinus, by the way, but you can call me Polk." 

A nervous ripple passed over his teammates. Some shifted from foot to foot, one clad in black and red with intersecting lightning bolts on his chest made a motion with his hands so quickly they blurred in Silas' vision. A girl with long black hair stepped forward, as if to interrupt, but seemed to think better of it.

"I am Talon." Silas said, words slow and deliberate. 

"You’ve gotta have an actual, real name." Bluejay blurted out from where they were standing next to a redheaded girl whose suit was also ornamented with lightning bolts. 

"My name is Talon." Silas would not be called by another name. He had not quite earned the title yet, but he would soon. He would accept no other form of address from these strangers. "How am I meant to contact you? Any correspondence would almost certainly be intercepted." And he had been given no place where he could send information, besides. 

"With the phone," Polk's explanation felt more like a question than an answer, and it did not serve to clear anything up for Silas, either. 

"I don't have a telephone." He insisted, feeling the heavy weight of eyes on him and the distinct sensation that he was making a fool of himself. It was his turn now to shift uncomfortably from foot to foot. He had vague memories of the telephone that used to hang in the first floor of his childhood tenement building, the pleasant voice of the operator and the eternally-long line of others waiting their turn. He now had access to no such thing. 

Silence stretched on for a beat too long. Silas watched as eyes slid from him to the smooth object in his hand. 

"That’s a–well, uh, it’s a cell phone.” Polk pointed with his large hand towards the odd gift Silas was still holding by his side. 

A cell phone. Silas was already well aware that the world he now lived in was nothing like the one in which he’d grown up, but he couldn’t begin to anticipate the technology he’d encounter. Gotham itself had changed with the years, all glass and steel now. He had taken comfort in finding places he could recognize–the clocktower, Gotham Cathedral, even Wayne Manor which he remembered lording over the city from its perch in Bristol an entire century ago. Looking at Gotham for the first time again felt much like staring down at the reflective surface of this small black rectangle. There was the strange sensation that he was an alien on an altogether unfamiliar world. How was this meant to be a telephone? There was no receiver, no dial, no cords. 

“Oh shit, right.” Bluejay spoke now, taking a step forward. “I think the Talons are from the past, sometimes.” 

“Weren’t you supposed to be doing research on these guys?” The girl who had almost interrupted Polk spoke up, voice dry and unimpressed. 

“I did! They hibernate or something!”

“For how long? This poor kid doesn’t even know what he’s looking at!” 

Their squabbling faded into background noise as Polk stepped forward. “Here, let me show you how to use it.”