Curate, connect, and discover
Ghost helpline part 20
friend or foe
The man hadn’t been kidding about not wanting to play babysitter. At Damian’s assistance that he didn’t need anything Ziyad took his own piece of cake and waved him off. Not really caring where Damian went.
He debated going after the man and demand answers but didn’t. He needed to know how he had that strip of white in his hair. How? Why? Was this the demons fault? Zatanna had said she reeked of the pits, whatever that meant.
He needed to know. He need to know if there was anyway to help Todd. His brother didn’t deserve the side effects the pit had given him. He’d never known the Todd from before… but well if Todd’s anger could be fixed and Damian had a chance to do it and he didn’t take it.….
He continued walking. The assassin supposed being overlooked as just a child was at time’s advantageous. Even if it made him angry.
The location of her room was practically spoon fed to him, pink taped arrows leading the way to an entire wing of the mansion that was presumably hers.
It was overtly colorful.
Her room was cozy. Damian wasn’t sure what a teenage girls room is supposed to look like. After all Browns and Cassandra’s rooms were probably not the best examples.
Her closet was overflowing with clothes, shoes and accessories. He checked the pockets and found a few switch blades and - guns. Typical self defense items for a woman in Gotham really. Damian opened jewelry boxes and riffled threw accessories. Some he assumed to be enchanted.
He left the closet to check the desk and bookshelf’s for anything incriminating. Ugh. Even the paper was colorful. Thankfully the type writer was black. There were little notes about her brothers things they liked, days they were going to be busy and stuff like that. There was also reference to someone named Jack and someone named Pink. Most likely aliases- he would have to research them later.
Dishes crowded every serface. Honestly how did this huge family not have any servants. The boy grimaced. Pennyworth would never allow a patients room to get this bad.
Well this at least told him one thing. The masters family definitely had something to hide. If they didn’t someone would have been hired to up keep this place!
There were spell books, okay maybe it was just poetry. There was paper slips with symbols loose in her drawer.
Damian pocketed a couple.
There were notebooks filled with languages he didn’t recognize. A lot of it was repeating. It was as if she was practicing how to write. Damian stilled and looked back at the book shelf. The English books were the level of a first grader. And the tomes were filled with grammatical notes. It made him bite his lips together, did she not know how to read?
Whatever. A good portion of the world is illiterate. She could still be a mastermind, this proved nothing.
He moved on to the cream yellow mini fridge. It was covered in glitter stickers and magnets. Notes stuck to the top.
“Hey Vi! Ask Bella if he can contact me about the SBS. We’ve run into an issue with the current shipment - love Red”
Damian took a picture of the note. Good god how many people were involved in all this? Were the masters involved? Did they know their “precious” daughter was a monster?
The little assassin felt his insides squirm at the wording. Weird he hadn’t had a qualms about calling her that before. Why did it suddenly fill him with trepidation?
The fridge was surrounded by pill bottles and glass jars filled with dried herbs. The labels were written in a different persons handwriting . A sigh escaped him.
All right time to check the fridge.
Damian has no idea what demons eat but he doubted it was anything good. Human remains? Blood? Something horrible he supposed. Hopefully something he could use as evidence.
The door opened to reveal…. Liquid vitamins and supplements ??? Well she had been sick recently. Maybe it was a common occurrence? Or maybe she was able to eat what she’s supposed to? And if so why? Was she actually being ethical and kind?
There were glowing green juice pouches. Damian berated himself for not bringing a satchel. The size of the things he could swipe was limited to his pockets. No matter he could get it next time.
He paused. Next time? Since when did he start thinking about coming back here?
—- —- —-
The bathroom in Vlad’s room had steam spill out in waves. Violet had never gotten around to moving her things into her own bathroom. Dad didn’t seem to mind and… it was just easier. It was easier to exist in someone else’s space.
To use dads bathroom and sleep in Billy’s bed and eat Klarion’s food. To exist in a space so lovingly lived in she knew she wouldn’t disappear.
She looked at her natural state in the mirror. Her nose twitched. That boy knew she was a demon, he had yelled it at her when they’d “meet”. And now he was suddenly over to apologize? An Al Ghul apologizing ? And to someone “beneath” them ? How laughable.
She couldn’t find her brush. She ran her claws threw her hair with a frown. The cracks on her body … looked different? Smaller and faded around the edges of her arms. Her fingers were still drenched in black but had taken on a more purple sheen.
There was still a black cracked piece on her chest.
She would have thought the teleportation flu would have made her condition worse but… she looked better? Maybe her medicine really was helping?
She’d have to show her Aunties, maybe Frostbite? There weren’t exactly a lot of people comfortable working on her. Ethier she was a demon, or the wrong kind of demon, or an amputee or a woman of something!
Not that it mattered very few people knew how to treat her condition. And so far it was considered incurable.
The black cracks pulsed painfully. She shifted into her human disguise.
Well time to get this over with. Chances were instead of an apology she was going to receive an offer. And maybe… maybe if Damian wasn’t technically an Al Ghul….. maybe she could….
Violet, Konstelacio, hopeful and sad followed the pink arrows to her room to find a hair brush before having to see the boys face again.
Except she opened the door and his face was already there.
“What are you doing in my room?!”
Note:
Not burying the lead here Bella (Bellatric) is Brett
Can anyone guess what SBS is?