2020-01-09 - Free Yourself Pt. 1

Summary:

Damian Wayne discovers Koriand'r having a really bad day. He tries to comfort her.

Log Info:

Storyteller: None
Date: Thu Jan 9 12:02:06 2020
Location: Baxter Building - Young Avengers HQ

Related Logs

None

Theme Song

None

damian-waynekoriandr

Koriand'r's room remains as empty as it ever was. It reflects the woman who lives in it. It might be hard to recognize her today; her skin and eyes are no longer luminous, just orange flesh and green balls in her face. Her hair is no longer red nor flaming, having darkened to a muddy brown that becomes ash-gray the longer it gets. She no longer wears the clothing she was famous for, dressed now in a dumpy, cable-knit sweater of of blue with gold flecks that brings to mind images of seventies carpet, and gray sweatpants whose right hip has the cracked and faded black letters of the local university. Koriand'r threatens to vanish into the shapeless clothes, a fact which helps to conceal the sinking in her cheeks and eyes. Her window, once curtainless, still technically is, but she's covered it with a comforter from her bed nailed into the wall. She sits on the edge of her bed, looking at nothing, face expressing nothing. Silkie slowly and sluggishly climbs her, its plump body seemingly still well-fed. She occasionally lifts a hand to stroke its soft carapace in passing before the effort of the gesture overwhelms her and she lets her hand drop again.

Robin had been away from the Young Avengers for a short time, doing the whole Dynamic Duo thing with Batman. Nonetheless, Robin returns to Avengers HQ. He wears his usual attire, that being the Robin uniform. armored vest, pants, armored boots, bat-styled green gauntlets, with a hooded cloak about his person. He moves over to the door to Starfire's room, having grown concerned of her startling amount of inactivity.

He may or may not have asked around about her.

But he knocks on her door. "Starfire. Are you here?" If she says nothing, he will attempt to open the door anyway.

It is so hard to answer, but she drags up the will to force her mouth to work. "Yes," she says. The question may imply that more answers are called for, but she's so incurious it doesn't occur to her to wonder. It was a yes or no question; she answered.

When Koriandr finally answers, Damian does indeed open the door (assuming its not locked) and he sees Starfire in her sullen state. He seems to frown for a moment before he approaches her. "Whats wrong?" He asks a question that might as well be the same as cooking a grenade. There are many responses, the chances of him getting an honest answer is slim to none.

Koriand'r doesn't look at Damian. She doesn't really look at anything. "Nothing is wrong. I am fitting in with your people. I dress and behave as you wish. What could be wrong?" The last three words are sighed out, as if she ran out of breath to speak them.

Tilting his head a bit at Koriand'r, Damian does not seem amused. "And this is how you see my 'people'? Depressed, sluggish, lazy, and morose?" He asks her in a very serious manner. "You shouldn't look or dress how anyone 'wishes'. Are you not your own individual?"

Koriand'r's face crumples. Silkie pauses on its quest up her back, its weight pulling her sweater in odd directions (if she were less Tamaranean tough, Silkie's weight would probably be causing the collar of her sweater to strangle her), exposing deep, jagged, fresh puncture scars lining the back of her neck. She less regains her composure than releases the pain of the moment, and says dully, "I apologize. Please tell me how I should look and dress as not to insult you."

Damian narrows his eyes when he notices the puncture scars on her neck. Poison? A neurotoxin? He looks at Starfire before he speaks. "Stop apologizing, for starters. If you don't want to insult me, then be a damn individual instead of worrying too much what others say or think of you."

Koriand'r tries to think about whether she wants to insult Robin or not, but the effort is beyond her, like trying to swim in quicksand. Tears begin trickling down her cheeks, unheeded, while Silkie works its way up to her shoulder and pauses to rest, its squishy face pressing to Koriand'r's neck.

Noticing the tears that trickle down her cheeks, Robin simply turns and sits down beside her, if she allows. "I don't know who decided to get you like this, but you should be more concerned about being yourself. You survived this long, walked this far, didn't you?"

"I already know everything I think and feel are wrong," Koriand'r whispers, palming the moisture from one side of her face. "It is not necessary to tell me."

Robin hmms a moment, more like a grunt than anything else. He doesn't seem to move from where he is. "Then what troubles you so much that you seek seclusion and malnourishment?" He can tell from the way her eyes are sunken in, how her skin seems to be a very dark shade of the original orange. How her hair has lost its fire and she now looks more like a brunette than a red head. He briefly wonders if she is sick, but he knows little of Tamaranean physiology. For all he knows, this could be entirely psychological.

It's so hard to think of answers, but it's also the first genuine question Robin has asked, so Koriand'r tries. She really does. Her mouth tightens and falls, tightens and falls, as she mentally keeps trying to climb out of the pit and slipping back in. After some time, she is able to say, "Everything about me offends you. My people's ways…" She trails off, mentally exhausted from saying even that much. Silkie nibbles her hair without breaking it, and begins burrowing under her neckline with a faint, wet squishing noise. She absently pets the growing bulge in her sweater's top. Eventually, she can continue, "Your people despise me for being different from you." Her voice cracks almost childishly at this, but she carries on, well past the point where she cares about things like dignity. "I have no appetite left."

Robin seems to be mostly unimpressed. Or at least its just because of the deadpanned expression on his face. "Why do you believe everything you do offends someone else? You realize not everyone is going to like you. That is the fatal flaw of humanity though. They fear what they don't understand. Do you know that african americans and caucasian humans used to discriminate against each other because one looked different than the other? Even the mutants are despised because they are different from 'normal'."

Koriand'r is probably going to burst into tears in about three seconds, so she hugs the Silkie-ball in her sweater and asks thickly, "What are the names of the humans who like me?" while she still can speak.

Damian looked at Koriand'r as she holds Silkie tightly to her as she asks the names of people who like her. "Sarah Rainmaker. Kamala Khan." He lowers his hood then and removes his mask. "Damian al Ghul."

"None of them know me, just what they want from me."

"And what do I want from you?"

Koriand'r shrugs limply without releasing Silkie. "My availability. My submission."

"Wrong." Damian tells her. "What I want from you is freedom from the cage you put yourself in. Everyone wants time, itsu p to you to decide who's worthy of it."

And there it is, the final straw. Koriand'r explodes into miserable sobs, turning away from Damian and curling up into the fetal position (as much as she can with a giant larva in her shirt, anyway) as if to shield her vitals from more incoming blows.

Damian watches as Kory bursts into literal tears and rolls onto her side in the fetal position. He listens to her cry for a brief moment before he stretches out his hand to rest on Kory's shoulder if she allows. "I'm here for you."

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License