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The place is loud and packed with an impressive public - family and friends and maybe more. Mara doesn’t know them - she isn’t sure there aren’t many for her tonight outside of Kate and Bette. It’s alright, thought. The idea of more people she knows seeing her tonight - her stomach can’t handle it.
There’s so many voices and people brushing past her and talking and gesturing; they’re so much and Mara feels so, so alone and small in the middle of the backstage.
Her whole inside is twisted up and there’s knots over knots and it doesn’t end. It’s just too much, and Mara wants nothing else but to fly away from it all.
(She’s used to perform in the middle of a crowd. But these performances were one that could end in death, and the crowd so ready to point any of her mistakes, and her grandfather’s gaze burn, burn, burn in her memories and inside her heart.)
There’s so much. She can do it. She can’t do it. Mara isn’t sure of anything anymore.
She has a lump in her throat and fear in her eyes and her hands are shaking and her whole body trembles, but she holds her head high and refuses to look down. She won’t.
She is an al Ghul - she is a Kane. She has a family name to hold onto and people to make proud.
(She can. She can’t.)
Over, on the stage, she hears the soft melody of the lyre. It’s pretty; not professionally played, but nice enough for a student competition.
It’s silly. It’s supposed to be fun, and here Mara feels like she’s playing her whole life over the three minutes of a song. She hadn’t even wanted to participate, at first; but then Kate got excited, and Bette as well, and she made the mistake to talk about it to Sin who then berated her until she signed up on the challenge.
She isn’t sure anymore that she can stay friends with her after this betrayal, but alas, it is life.
Sin had told her she wanted to come; but the event fell right on her annual family camping trip (or something like that), and she hadn’t been able to. Instead, Mara had repeated in front of her again and again, until the other girl could sing in tandem with her.
At least, no matter what is about to happen today, Mara has these nice memories to fall back onto.
Choosing an act hadn’t been hard; Mara had always liked to sing. It had been a silent habit, before, humming to herself in the quiet of the night while tending alone for her injuries. Everyone here had looked at her - differently. Not the way her cousin had been looked at - her, she was the daughter of the traitor, and her father had died for that.
(And how much she has been mad at him, for dying and leaving her alone, without reporting her anger on the real culprit. It had been so much easier, to blame a dead man she could barely remember than her alive grandfather, who struck cold terror into her every time his gaze brushed her.)
Singing had been a reprieve and a relief, not something she had been used to sharing. But—
Kate heard her sing and told her she had a nice voice. This time, on a sleepover with Sin, she had slowly petted her friend’s hair while humming a lullaby, and Sin had gushed over it come morning. Her whole… cousins had brought her to a karaoke, and they all complimented her voice.
Mara has never thought before if her voice was pretty or not. It had never been about that. It had always been about not being alone, hearing another voice in her life desert of friendly faces.
(She remembers, from a memory of a lost time, her Aunt Talia watching her and Damian playing. They were kids, toddlers, almost babies, and Talia on the memory seemed content to see them so innocent. And then - it had never happened again, and somewhere in the back of her mind Mara knows her Aunt has tried, but her heart constantly yells that it wasn’t enough.)
The stage clears out of the student with his lyre; another one, balls against his chest, enters, wide smile and waving hand at the crowd.
Her turn is soon. Not yet; she still has enough time to stress a little more over something so trivial.
Like Mara has never fought for her life before.
“You are here.” It’s a statement, not a question, coming from a voice Mara knows too well, for too long.
She turns on herself. She must be an interesting sigh - all prettied up like she has never been before, her red hair braided into a crown and a nice, flowing dress covering her body. Bette even insisted on making a quick and discreet makeup on her, and Mara let her.
She has felt like a doll, but not in a bad way - in a way where the other person cared and was doing their best to bring out everything that was pretty in her.
(Mara has never thought she could be associated with the word pretty . She still isn’t sure it’s true.)
Damian, on the contrary, is his usual self - posture straight, eyes piercing, clothes simple but of a good quality.
She frowns.
“What are you doing here?”
This is a question, not a statement, and she can see Damian hesitating - not embarrassed, but more wrong-footed, like he isn’t sure where to start.
“I came to see you,” he finally settles on.
Mara is still frowning, and she crosses her arms on her chest. She never knows what to do with Damian; they had spent so much time forced to fight each other for the first place at their grandfather’s eyes that they always end up falling back into these old habits. They know they don't need to, not anymore; but they can’t help it.
“Years of conditioning can’t be erased so quickly," Dinah had patiently told her when she opened up on the subject.
“Maybe, but it’s still frustrating,” she had answered.
It’s still true today, and Mara isn’t sure how to feel about it either.
“Well,” she starts, eyes narrowing, focusing on her cousin. “You’re seeing me.”
Damian narrows his eyes back. For an instant, the beat of their heart, Mara thinks that they are about to jump at each other's throat like all these training sessions before; but then, Damian takes a step back and sighs.
“I’m not here to fight. I’m here to support you.”
“Why?” immediately shots off of her mouth without her being able to hold it back.
It still describes her confusion, though. They have never… Well, even if they want to, they only started to try to be a family. It’s still recent, still fragile, like a thin thread they have to craft carefully.
In other words, it’s a work in progress. Mara doesn’t know how much they’re succeeding at it.
Damian watches her a few seconds without answering. Then, he takes a step toward her, carefully, like one would approach a frightened animal.
Mara doesn’t like the sentiment. Doesn’t like the rush in her blood going to her ears and the distinct, usual feeling of not being good enough.
Despite everything, she has always come second after Damian. Nothing has changed on this front.
“Because you are my family,” quietly answers Damian, and he seems sincere, too. “And you deserve support. You deserve to see that people love you and are here for you.”
Mara feels like folding into herself and hissing at him, denying on the spot everything. Because she’s just her, nothing amazing, nothing good. Just the daughter of a traitor killed by his own father and a cousin never good enough to defeat the youngest one, no matter how much she would try.
Since the beginning, Ra’s has looked at her like she was a failure; Mara is far enough into her therapy to understand that, and to know she still believes it.
“Healing always took time,” had said Dinah again, her patient and calm gaze on her as she was once again falling apart. “Everyone goes at his own rhythm, and everyone does it differently. There’s no doing wrong in healing.”
“Did you come alone?” Mara asks instead of every word bubbling on her tongue. Who is here, who came, why why why, it’s not important—
It’s just her, and a performance, and it’s silly and supposed to be fun, and Mara feels like panicking again.
“Not really.” Damian wrinkles his nose, and he looks suddenly all the part of the fourteen-year-old he’s supposed to be. “Apparently, I’m too young to drive alone, even if I know how to.” He mumbles the last part, and it sounds like an argument he had a lot of time already; distantly, Mara wonders if she’ll be ever that comfortable with Kate.
Damian seems to be at ease with his father, and his numerous siblings. Mara tries to not feel jealous over the fact he still has his two parents alive, and he has so many people by his side, and—
“You weren’t forced to come,” she says, almost like a murmur, because Mara doesn’t understand love and people being nice to her and people thinking she’s worth it.
She’s working on it, too. Mara has a lot of works in progress.
(She can’t she can’t she can’t—
If Mara is honest, she resents Damian. Always have. Because he was the favorite, because their grandfather loved him more in his twisted way of his, because his mother wanted him safe, because he wasn’t an afterthought.
Because he’s standing where she’s crumbling, thriving where she’s falling, doing fine where she’s constantly broken.
Nothing seems to touch him. Mara knows it’s probably not true, but—
But their childhood and trauma come from the same place, and yet Damian smiles and laughs and fights and everything roll over him without really touching him, and yet Mara is the one never able to handle the pressure and awkwardly trying to understand the world and to wake up every night in sweat and tears and—
Damian is perfect. Mara is nothing.)
Damian is watching her. He stares, and his eyes are intense, and Mara wants once again to disappear to escape it.
“I know how it is,” he finally says. He stops looking at her, and she feels relieved, and then bad for being relieved. She shouldn’t shy away from him - she shouldn’t be scared of him.
(She’s not in the arena anymore, forced to fight him, to hurt him, to be hurt, under the heavy gaze of their teachers and their grandfather; they aren’t pitted against each other, and they should cohabit in the same space without hard feelings and fidgeting and being wrong-footed and not knowing what to say-
But it’s the case, their life is like that now, and Mara doesn’t know how to pick up the piece of it. She’s not sure Damian knows either.
But they try. They try so hard.
So why is she always the only one struggling with it?)
“When I first came to Gotham, Richard insisted on signing me up for school. I didn’t see the benefit, at first. Our tutors had always been way better than the school teacher, and I’m far behind my classmates, so I didn’t understand why I was obligated to participate in such a farce.” He stops an instant; Mara looks at him, and she’s surprised to see him focusing on his shoes instead of looking at her. Whatever is coming in his story - he seems embarrassed by it. “Often, I still wonder if it wouldn’t be better if I stopped attending school, but… But I made friends and I’m more comfortable here than before.” He stops again, and his gaze is back on her. “Don’t tell anyone about this. Especially not Maps or Richard.”
Mara can’t help being amused.
This Damian in front of her - he seems more relaxed, more open than she ever saw him before.
She likes him better like that, too.
“Fine, I won’t tell anything.”
He nods, extremely serious, before continuing. “So, I still learned some new things from school, despite everything. And, there was an art show I participated at. I was still… I was still ten at the time, fresh out of my time with Grandfather. I worked days and nights on my painting for this event. I wanted it to be absolutely perfect, because all of Gotham would see it. I… I feared the repercussion of a failure.”
Mara understands that. Mara has her stomach turning up and biles on her throat at the thought of failure.
Mara has scars because of failure.
(It took her so much time to understand Kate wouldn’t hurt her even if she failed, and even now- Even now, Mara isn’t sure she fully believes it.
Somehow, it’s reassuring to know she hasn’t been the only one feeling it.)
“I still do, sometimes,” Damian pursues, like he’s hearing her thoughts. “At that point, I didn’t know what would happen, so I did everything to make the most beautiful painting I could. On the day of the event, I was… terrified would be an adequate word, I suppose. My hands couldn’t stop trembling, and I couldn’t eat anything. I… kept sweating as well. It was annoying, but I didn’t seem able to push past this feeling at the time. Every time I looked at my painting, I could only see the worst of it, and all the ways I failed and my technique was coming short.”
And Mara gets this feeling: it’s the one she’s nursing in her heart at the moment, after all.
“But when they came to see it - Richard, Stephanie, Alfred, Cassandra who came from Hong Kong specifically for it, even Timothy and Leslie - none of them pointed my failures. They all felicitated my accomplishments, instead. They saw the beauty everywhere in my painting, and congratulated me, and afterward we bought ice-cream instead of eating a normal dinner.” Damian narrows his eyes at her, like he’s trying to intimidate her into staying silent on the matter. It’s funny. It’s… normal. “What I want to say, Mara, is that none of them will judge you badly or hurt you.”
Mara immediately wants to protest that she didn’t think they would hurt her - but the trust is, it’s exactly what she’s scared of. It doesn’t make sense, because Kate has always been nice to her, and the rest of the family as well.
Still - the fear is here, and do not want to quit.
“I know you’re scared right now, and I understand why. I also know that no matter what I say, that will not change.”
She can’t help the snort, this time. “You should work on your pep talks, Damian.”
He sends her a dry look before continuing like she has never spoken at all. “But I still want you to hear it, if only to help smoother your anxiety a little.”
Damian stops, then, and she realizes he’s done with what he wanted to say. She’s not sure she has ever heard him speak so much before, but… But she appreciates the thought. It comes from a good place, and she can see all the parts of the good kid Damian is at heart.
She feels a burst of affection, and it surprises her. Their grandfather has never been one to encourage feelings; and, in the end, they had only been two broken kids coming from the same family.
But this sudden burst - it lifts a weight off of her shoulders, too. Because she spends so much time wondering what she should feel for Damian, if they were really working toward a mutual respect and really being a family—
And that - it’s the proof that it’s working. That they’re getting somewhere, even if it’s slow, even if it’s a lot of energy to put toward a single relationship—
It’s worth it.
Mara smiles, and before she can think better of it, she reaches out to take Damian’s hand in hers.
“Thank you,” she says, in this familiar language coming from what should have been their home but has been their prison. “Thank you,” she whispers in this same language, who is the one of their family and the blood running into their veins.
There’s much more than that linking them, now, and Mara feels glad for it. Happy, even.
It will become better. They just need time.
“Mara Kane!” calls someone - one of the teachers, supervising the whole event.
She hasn’t realized it’s already her turn.
“You’re going to be wonderful,” says Damian as a last reassurance, squeezing her hand. He smiles, too, and Mara can remember this smile on a little boy’s face.
It’s still the same, even after all these years. (All these traumas.)
“I’ll do my best,” she answers back, before taking a long breath and preparing herself. She needs to go, now.
She let go of Damian’s hand and starts walking toward the end of the backstage, the beginning of the stage. Behind her, Damian talks one last time.
“Mara?” He waits for her to turn her gaze on him to continue. “You are very brave. You can be proud of yourself.” Then, like a last thought, “I am proud of you.”
She smiles again. And then she takes one step, and then another one, and it becomes easier and easier as she slowly makes her way on stage.
Mara raises her head. On the front row of the stage, Kate smiles at her, Bette beside her sending her thumbs up. Her Aunt Talia is present as well, on the chair next to Kate's. She nods discreetly at her. And, at the far end of the room - all the rest of the family. Uncle Bruce, Selina, Alfred, Leslie, Julia, and all of the kids. Tim is taking pictures. Stephanie and Duke wave at her. Suren makes big signs with his hands. The babies are even here - Mar’i is in Dick’s arms, and Jason has Noah in his. Charlie is talking excitedly at Cassandra. They’re all smiling, and waiting, and—
They’re cheering. They’re happy.
They came for her.
Mara closes her eyes. Sinks into the feeling - here, alone on the stage, under so many regards so different to the ones she has grown up used to, with a family who came just for her.
She breathes on the feeling of being enough.
Then, Mara opens her eyes; and her heart falls out of her lips in the rises and waves of a song.