"Some men just want to watch the world burn."

[bratwonder]

Who| Damian Wayne and anyone!
What| Burning a body turns out to be a less-than-awesome idea. Fire and sickness ensue, w h o o p s.
Where| Candy arena.
When| Middle of week two.
Warnings/Notes| Nothing in particular! I'll edit as necessary.

Nightfall was welcome. Damian reveled in it. It was about damn time that the bright, obnoxious colors of this world dimmed and the song of those stupid creatures faded away. As much as he enjoyed it, though, it was time to disrupt the night. He had a duty to at least one of those fallen tributes, regardless of how whiny and annoying said tribute happened to be.

Early on, Damian had made it a point to get that body somewhere a little less public. There were no battoys to be stolen or secret identities to be found out, but the fact that the bodies had been left strewn about, like old dolls that the gamemakers had grown tired of, disgusted Damian beyond belief. These people didn't deserve that. If he could do something about all of them, he would, but he couldn't. He could barely stand to be around them at this point, with how badly they'd deteriorated.

He held his breath as he struck the match and dropped it onto the rotting, sugar-covered body of some whiny guy named Tim Drake. He wasn't doing this for him, he told himself. It was for them. It was for the symbol that united them. He intended to honor it even if they weren't wearing it. It was also a "fuck you" to the gamemakers or whoever the hell thought it was acceptable to leave the bodies of (mostly) innocent people lying around like they were nothing.

Damian couldn't hold his breath forever, though. Eventually, he has to take in the awful smell of smoke and rot and something vaguely toxic, and if he wasn't feeling sick before, he's definitely feeling it now. So, you know, don't mind Damian. While the fire spreads (whoops...), he'll just be over here. Throwing up. No big deal.

He told Dick once that he wouldn't let the dead get to him anymore, but you know what? This really sucks.

Comments

[acro_bat_ic]

Barbara was staring.

She couldn't help it. There was a burning body and a boy she barely knew burning it.

She barely knew either of them, actually, but that didn't make it any better.

"What are you doing?" the words slipped out without her quite meaning them to.

[bratwonder]

Damian recognized her voice immediately. He was feeling better now even though the smell was still pretty awful, but he still couldn't help feeling a little annoyed that she was there. He had no idea how much she had seen, but he wasn't exactly at his best right now. Being caught vulnerable, even if only slightly, was extremely troublesome.

"What does it look like?" he said, the irritation clear in his voice, totally ignoring the fact that... no, it might not actually be very obvious what he was doing. In fact, it might even look kind of incriminating. Oops?

[acro_bat_ic]

"It looks like you're burning Tim's body." Which was. You know. Really suspicious? She barely knows either of them, but of the two Damian is definitely the most likely murderer.

[bratwonder]

"I didn't kill him," he responded almost indignantly. Whether she had been thinking that or not, he couldn't know for sure, but he was used to people making assumptions like that, so he couldn't help but feel defensive. "He died when the arena opened. If you were paying attention, you would have known they'd been poisoned."

That still didn't explain why he was doing it, though. That was going to feel a lot more awkward to explain even if she didn't know them as well as Oracle did.

[acro_bat_ic]

"I never said you were." But with all the people who'd been poisoned, how easy would it be to just... kill one more, and burn the bodies before anything came out of it.

She studies the body as best she can out of the corner of her eye. Now that he'd mentioned it and all. "Were you two close?" Emotionally? ...Physically?

[bratwonder]

Just the thought of being close to Drake in any way, shape, or form made Damian want to throw up. Again.

Ugh.

But luckily, that sick feeling had mostly already passed, so instead, he simply scowled. "We hate each other," he answered bluntly. He would leave it at that, but he could already guess what the next question would be, so he chose to answer it preemptively. "For some reason, my father and the others insist on keeping him around. I respect them, despite their poor choice in allies."

[acro_bat_ic]

....Riiiiiiiiiiight.

"And those others areee....?" Her? From everything she's heard, she should be on the list, right? But somehow she doesn't get the impression that Damian respects her opinion at all.

[bratwonder]

Damian rolled his eyes at that. It wasn't that it was a bad question—it made sense that she might not know who exactly that referred to—but rather, he didn't realize he would have to clarify. Part of him was also a bit hesitant, too, because he didn't trust this place, but would it really make a difference? They were already here, so probably not.

"Our 'family', for lack of a better word," he shrugged. He didn't like using that word to refer to all of them, but thanks to Tim, it seemed like he was stuck with it. "Pennyworth, Grayson, and the girls, too, I suppose."

Sure, he valued some of those opinions more than others, but even for the ones he respected less, he knew he was stuck dealing with them, too.

[acro_bat_ic]

"And by 'those' girls you mean... me?" she prompted, her lip tugging up faintly at the corner. It wasn't so much that she didn't get it, as that she she was determined to make him say it out loud.

She had been learning about their makeshift family for quite some time since getting here. So she only had two questions - where Damian fit into it, and where that left hr.