Work Text:
Art is like fighting, like movement. Art is composed of rhythm and expression, passion and purpose. As such, Damian’s art has always had a certain share of violence inherent to it. It is a release, to express himself freely on paper as he cannot in words, and is no longer permitted to with cold steel.
Yet, as time goes on, Damian finds himself drawing less and less. Art is like movement, like fighting, but more and more, Damian finds that the breadth of things he wishes to express have expanded beyond those which come naturally to his hand.
Damian attempts to paint Alfred the cat. Insofar as he creates the cat’s likeness, he succeeds. His brushstrokes are bold and sharp. There is an intensity to the painting, Alfred sits at rest but there is a sense that he is on alert, ready to spring at any moment, coiled with tension. There is a ferocity in his eyes, and strength in his limbs. All of these characteristics are true to Alfred the Cat, but they are not what Damian had meant to capture. Damian had meant to paint his cat at rest. He had wanted to capture his languid calmness, his softness, his effortless grace and gentleness.
Cass finds him in his dissatisfaction. She looks from the painting to Damian and back again, thoughtfully.
”Draw me, little brother,” She says, “I’ll dance. Show you.”
Cass dances and Damian sketches her in pencil, several studies of different parts of the dance. Cass guides him with the expressiveness of her movements. The first drawing Damian creates is much like his previous ones, it showcases Cass’s power, her motions decisive and purposeful. But gradually, in accordance with his sister’s expressive body language, Damian’s lines become more fluid. He learns to display his sister’s grace, her deliberate and precise gentleness. Cass’s dance flows, lithely, thoughtlessly to any eye that doesn't understand what it is looking at. This is violence carefully, intentionally, defeated and reconstructed into beauty.
Damian shows Cass the sketches he made of her, beginning in hardness, and softening until in the last she seems almost ethereal, no hint of viciousness remaining.
She smiles, proud and satisfied.
”Very good, little brother,” she says, and Damian glows.