Work Text:
Sara stands in a museum. Dimly, she can recognize how weird that is—she’s never liked museums, not even as a kid. She’s always been too restless, too easily bored. But here she is, in a museum. She can see old planes dangling from the ceiling on wires, war cannons set on pedestals, and big exhibit signs she can’t seem to read. Faceless people shuffle around her.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees something small and furry skitter across the floor. On instinct, she follows it. She doesn’t quite run—she more…drifts. Nothing feels totally solid. But she keeps up with the small creature, phasing in and out of exhibits and hallways, tailing by a margin of barely a second.
The rat—because now she sees him, in all his beady-eyed, black-furred glory, and he’s definitely a rat—skids to a halt in a particularly cavernous room. Giant ships, navy vessels and cargo cruisers, loom around her, rankly metallic and streaked with rust.
The rat scampers up the gangway of one. Unthinkingly, she follows.
When she reaches the top, the deck is suddenly bustling with movement. Men bump into her, eyeing her with long, lascivious looks, as a freezing wind picks up.
“Eat,” a man snaps, shoving a plate into her face. She takes a bite. Weevils wriggle around on her tongue, but she doesn’t spit the bread out. She swallows, feeling the mealworms stick on their way down her throat.
Without warning, a door clangs shut, and Sara peers into the dark of a damp, corrugated hallway. Salt eats at her lungs, water dripping onto her head like she’s being subjected to Chinese water torture, and then there are jeering men—
-
“Beloved.” Nyssa brushes back Taer al-Asfar’s hair. “Wake up.”
Taer blinks. Above her, the stone ceiling spins lazily in her field of vision. Torches flicker on the walls. She inhales, expecting the tang of brine, but tastes only the cold, dry mountain air of Nanda Parbat.
“Huh?” she rasps, turning her head to face Nyssa.
“It is time to train.”
Taer nods. Pushing herself up, wiping at her mouth with the cuff of her sleeve, she sloughs off the covers and swings out of bed. Nyssa, already fully dressed, watches her with solemn eyes.
“I thought your nightmares had improved,” she says.
Taer reaches under the bed to pull out her trunk. Flipping open the lid, she replies, “They have.”
“You bit your lip in your sleep.”
She thumbs through her garments until she finds the right cotton harem pants and breast-band. “I was dreaming about a good lollipop.”
“Lollipop?”
“The sucking candy? You’ve seen them, a stick with a ball on top.”
“Of course.” Nyssa levels her a look. “A lollipop.”
Taer glances at her—her gentle expression, beautiful hair, soft eyes. She looks away again.
“What occupied your mind this time?”
Taer shrugs. She twists off her sleep top. “I won’t let it get in the way of my training.”
“Beloved.” Nyssa puts a hand on her bare shoulder. Taer holds in a flinch. “How many nights have we done this? You know I’m not asking to shame you.”
“Leave it,” Taer snaps, the Arabic command leaping from her lips before she can gentle its edges. She sees Nyssa’s eyes widen. She takes a breath. “We should train.”
Sorry, she wants to say. She can’t, because sorry is too soft a word for the smoky air and craggy rooms of the mountain fortress. Too weak a word for the League. Sorry would crack her open until she was the person who was dragged aboard the Amazo in the first place, that young Sara girl with the blonde bangs and terrified screams.
Instead, she pulls on her clothes and follows Nyssa out into the rugged rock corridor, walking in-step with her toward Ra’s al Ghul’s private training quarters.
“Was it bad?” Nyssa asks, right before they enter. “The dream?”
Taer al-Asfar, who has killed more people by this point than she could possibly count, stares at the woman she loves with tired eyes.
“I don’t remember.”