Gwen would be characterised by anyone but herself as a prodigy with a sword. That would be, if she let anyone see what she can do.
She started beating Elyan when she was six. It took her far longer to beat her father for the first time but whenever she lost he would tell her that she just needed some time to get a little stronger. Some time to grow up.
Gwen beats her father for the first time when she’s fourteen. He smiles from where he’s lying on the floor with a knowing look.
“I told you so.” he manages, despite how winded he is.
She rolls her eyes and let’s the glow of pride set a fire in her chest.
~
Gwen is twenty-two years old and has been the Lady Morgana’s maid servant for a little under a year. She’s a prodigy at it and this time she does let people see. She spends all the time she has with Morgana and all the rest of it practicing with a sword in the forge’s yard.
It takes longer for anyone to notice than she thought it would.
She’s practising behind her father’s forge. Moving through the same jabs and cuts she’s repeated a thousand times before. It feels good, like it always does. It feels powerful.
“Well aren’t you full of surprises?” Lady Morgana calls wryly from the forge and Gwen almost drops her sword.
“You’re not supposed to be here.” she hisses, forgetting just about everything she’s ever learned about how to treat those of higher stations than hers. “Sorry.” she tags on the end, like that would stop a regular noble from having her beheaded for such words.
“Don’t be.” Morgana smiles slyly. “You could probably put Arthur on his arse with moves like those.”
Gwen is immensely lucky that Morgana isn’t a regular noble. “I’m sure that he would be a formidable opponent.” she says diplomatically.
Morgana grins, because she loves Arthur just like Gwen loves Elyan, but she isn’t meeting Gwen’s eyes and seems hesitant in a way that’s unlike her.
“Yes, milady?” Gwen prompts.
“I don’t suppose-“ Morgana’s eyes dart to the sword rack in the corner of the yard. “I don’t suppose you could teach me?”
Gwen smiles, relief flooding her. “Of course”
After all, it would hardly be proper for her to refuse a request from the Lady Morgana.
ok but when a police officer says bruce wayne’s name and waves and instead of responding bruce just looks away like a frightened child facing the reality of stranger danger for the first time
Batman unburied is fucking sensational let no one tell you otherwise
You scream. Obviously. Then you run into the bathroom because you’re an idiot and that was the closest door to your bed.
You stop screaming. The coarse-rough voice of that horrible thing lets out a quiet “Shit.” through the wood of the door. Then heavy breathing and the drip, drip, drip of the tap maintenance never fixed is all you can hear.
Why is it here? What did you do? Some part of you had always thought that monster to be some demon. An agent of the devil that came after you for breaking your little brothers nose just because you could. Or for not calling an ambulance that time your grandma fell down the stairs. Or for tearing out Becky Pritchard’s earrings through her flesh for saying that yours looked ugly.
You may have been a slightly sadistic child.
That monster, that demon, had been the only thing that left you scared. The moment it shifted beneath your bed you would feel all the bubbling anger that flowed through your veins turn to ice. The moment it started whispering, promising you all the awful things it was going to do to you, that constant hunger to make others hurt would be drowned out by the tidal wave of fear that gripped you.
Well, old habits die hard, you think as you try to get your breathing under control. But now you’re twenty-five with six years in private security under your belt, so maybe they can be killed a little faster.
You remove the head from the toilet brush to turn it into a baton. The shape of it, the weight, is familiar to you. You’d always been good baseball. At least until you’d used the bat to take out a player's knee caps. You don’t think the coach would have minded so much if the kid had been on the opposing team.
You’ve never actually seen the monster and so find yourself hoping it has knee caps. It would be satisfying, you think, to feel the solid thunk of the strike and the sickly crack that would follow it.
Already lining up the shot in your head, you open the door.
Coming back to your apartment you prepare for a good night’s sleep. Upon laying on your bed you suddenly hear noises coming from underneath it. Carefully looking under you’re surprised to see the monster that lurked under your bed as a kid staring back at you. “Look man, I need a favor.”
#i said i’m a bisexual having a panic attack
selina kyle digatti and kate kane in bombshells united #13
Cassandra Cain
guess who finally finished the first draft of an original story!!!!
Blue Beetle | Gabriel Picolo
Paige leaves behind Carpenter and Faulkner in search of a new god.
She doesn’t really know how to go about such a thing. She’s more than well versed in strengthening a god, years of practice have made her far better at cultivating worship than any preacher, but the search for a god is something she lacks background in.
At a loss for what else to do, Paige drives.
She keeps the silence for a while. Hoping that being alone with her thoughts might lend her mind to some form of holy revelation. She manages to keep that up for almost twenty minutes before she sighs in anxious boredom and starts fiddling with the radio dial.
Static gives way to whispering voices gives way to a prophet of some new religion. Paige turns the sound up in sudden interest.
“-dream is to create. Dear listeners, we have reached a new stage. An apotheosis, if you will. I have metamorphasised from a decaying, droning worker, asleep to all the things that matter, to a new man with new purpose in my heart. I have gone from a sacrifice to something sacred. Something new. My god saw me about to devote myself to a deity of unholiness and was so gracious as to call me to something deserving of my worship. And, in answer to that calling, let us sing our next hosanna-“
Paige keeps listening to the radio, fighting against the tiredness nipping at the edges of her consciousness as she does so. There’s banging in the background, the soundproofing of the room the host is in quieting it enough that you don’t hear it at first, but it’s certainly there. Sometimes it drops away, presumably when whoever’s trying to get into the recording booth succumbs to the sleep that Paige is fighting so valiantly against. It keeps coming back and Paige thinks that a lot of people must be very desperate to get this man to stop worshiping his god.
Coming to a decision, Paige pulls over and gets a map out to try and find the radio station this prophet must be broadcasting from. She wants a new god after all, a gentler one than any she’s been provided with so far. And even if this man's god is not her god, and Paige suspects that it is not, then maybe he’ll still be able to tell her how to birth something she can worship. Just like he did.