the black raven | 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐄𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐒

□ mara □

There are three days that I hate the most each and every year.

They bring back pain, discomfort, loss-- they bring me closer to the door inside I never want to open up. It's contents are too dark, too dangerous to ever be looked at, even thought of.

The days that I get close to unveiling the door I tend to forve myself to shut down, to remove myself from the picture.

Starting with January 12th.

That was the day that someone ripped my respect away from me. I'll never get it back, it's that simole. That day I lost my respect for multiple people, things, for the day as a whole.

My respect for how I felt about my mother. How I feel about myself. I knew it from the second I saw those papers, I wasn't just disturbed and terrified, I believe I was feverish.

How could that woman just disown someone like me so quickly, just like that? What mother does that to their child?

As my mother did, I grew to hate her for it. That hate led to the entrance of my door, as it became known as vengeance.

And I've kept it at bay for four years now, but not as well as I want to, now that I'm in high school. High school is easy itself, but the homework, lectures, projects, and essays are a lot to remember.

The little things can set me off, set me deep into a rabbit hole of anxiety and uncontrollable anger. But I have to figure it out, just as I always have.

This is comparable to the day I met Tim, the day I hate the second most.

It was five or six weeks after I initially got here here. I was home alone and everyone else was out. Albeit a halfday for me, I was decidedly upstairs working on an essay for my English class. Then I heard a subtle noise below me.

The only reason I stopped as it was just enough to snap me out of my headspace. I wasn't annoyed, no. I just didn't really think anything of it. It never occurred to me that it would happen again, until I heard the noise a second time.

And then a third.

And a fourth.

The same noise repeated, and I soon realized it was not coming from my headphones.

So I paused, and just listened to the Manor, wanting to hear what it had to bring to the table now.

My heart fluttered with curiosity at who or what the culprit might be, but a sense of caution wavered through me as well.

This was Gotham, I'm home alone. This is Gotham, I'm a Wayne. This is Gotham, I'm a female.

Being where I was, I had many things run through my head-- a criminal, a neighbor, a murderer-- who knows.

I gradually opened the door to my room and made my way down the long hallway, making sure I stayed out of the creaky spots in the floor. This was after I deemed it smart to venture into the unknown abyss of curiosity.

Walking on my toes instead of my hells, I peek over the railing to find nothing. My brows start to form a crease, I start to think I'm just procrastinating, when I hear something else.

It's not like anything I heard from my room-- its a sound only humans could make.

A groan, a yawn.

Oh, shit.

Someone was here, and it wasn't any of my brothers not Alfred.
They would've shouted my name or yelled 'I'm home', even if no one was here.

It was just how the Manor functioned.

And as I crept downstairs, Anyway, as I made my way down the staircase, I could hear the person start walking around.

I wasn't frightened to adventure further out into the increasingly dangerous situation, and I have no clue why to this day.

As I stopped in the living room, I glanced out the window to see if there were others, only to unveil a blanket of thin snow covering the Manor grounds.

I can't let out a sigh as I turn around, still aware someone may be in the building, when I come face to face with a person.

I gasped a little, letting out a small shout of nonsense. I didn't think before I acted-- I simply grabbed the lamp next to me, and hurled it at the person standing in front of me.

The vase on the table could've done more damage, but the lamp was the thing closest to me. The voice shouted back as it hit him, bringing about him stumble back a couple feet.

"Wait! I won't-- I'm Tim Wayne--"

And then, with something as simple as a name, I recognized the name Tim. It wasn't threatening or alarming anymore than a person being in my house, as I recalled Alfred telling me about a Tim Wayne away on a business trip with Bruce Wayne.

And now, here he was.

Barely sitting up, looking like hell. He was wrapped and bandaged up like he got into a fight with a fucking semi.

"Tim Wayne?"

He looked up at me, and all I saw was some haunted look in his eyes. I didn't realize it could've been a person.

"Do you know Alfred--"

"Pennyworth? Yeah-- could you tell me where he is?"

And then, as I stood watching him for a moment, I realized he was laying there and bleeding out on the carpet. But he was alone. Bruce wasn't with him, and he was bleeding, leading me to believe quickly that something terrible had happened.

I would've asked more question, but Tim abruptly dropped his head onto the floor again, and I didn't realize he'd passed out until I was kneeling next to him, checking his pulse.

Dick rushed in about five minutes later after I'd called him instead of the direct line for nine-one-one. I had hauled Tim onto the couch as my eldest sibling frantically scrambled into the room, quickly taking over the situation.

And within that day Tim was hospitalized, and wouldn't be released for another week or two. He was still banged up after being discharged, but still very functional according to him.

It clicked for me that if he said he was okay, then he was okay. What didn't click for me were the questions that floated around in the air after I would ask them.

No one answered me, as someone else always pulled the attention away from them. And they were the questions I suspected everyone knew the answer to accept me. 

Jason and I even got into a feud about it-- it was the first real argument we'd ever had. I wanted answers about the whereabouts of my father and how Tim came home looking like hell, he wanted me to leave, to shut up. The insults we hurled at one another seemed to bounce off and only fuel our raging energy. The grudges we held against one another stood between us for a while afterwards.

That is until April twenty-seventh.

I knew something was wrong, my gut knew it. It wasn't the insure theory I was beginning to put together about my brothers, nor was it about the whereabouts of my father, and the obvious lies my family was feeding me.

Yet I went along with my day, shaking it off and heading to school. I had my routine down to the exact minute, and I was leaving with Dick for the Academy. He drove me to school with the exceptions of when he had late nights or early mornings, that's when Alfred would take me.

And I still want to scream, still want to hit something, to hurt something whenever I think of it. I was in a terrible mood that morning, and I was distancing myself from anyone emotions wise.

I had ignored the hole my gut had made throughout the day up until I was having dinner that night. It was just me and Alfred, as Dick had to stay at GCPD and take care of something though I couldn't fathom what because there was barely any crime today, from what I'd heard.

Damian was staying after school from God knows what, Tim was out for something, and Jason was at a friends house.

Until Jason wasn't at his friends house; until his body was found crushed and cramped beneath his car, bodily limbs jerked and twisted this way and that.

The news was on the small radio in the kitchen, and we heard the news echo through the walls. And then it becomes a blur, as I only had been told afterwards that he'd had an argument with his friend, causing him to leave and drive away, drunk and reckless. And then he couldn't sober up enough to make it home, and just like that he was dead.

I barely remember what I felt in my heart, but I remember feeling a pricking sensation appear at my fingers, which turned into feeling heavy and numb.

My body had stopped working, my mind just visualizing my brothers mangled body somewhere in the streets of Gotham.

And now to this day, almost a year later, I still can't get his image out of my head. The only thing that follows is the extraction of the feelings from vengeance.

The grief, sorrow, terror, and sliver of wrath, as it builds inside me. And on April twenty-seventh is releases itself, crashing and burning into a home of just waking up and laying still in my bed.

I don't think about anything else at all, just Jason. Just his death, his body, the last words I ever said to him, and the last words he ever said to me.

And I stare blankly at the white ceiling in my room, and I let the loneliness consume me for the day because it's all I know.

I don't cry and I don't sob because I don't have the luxury to do so. Sure, my family wants to help me feel better, but everyone does the same thing. We all stay incredibly quiet for the majority of the day, only muttering an 'excuse me' or 'sorry' if we run into one another during the day.

Or that's my experiences of this day in the Manor.

Dick busies himself with work, Alfred visits Jason's grave, Damian catches himself in his room, and Tim takes off to the gym and works out in periods, while taking the rest of the time to drive around.

Ironic.

But Jason's dead and nothing can reverse it. I've accepted this. What I don't accept is not visiting his grave.

It's a responsibility on me as his sister to visit him and just stand there, simply in his oresence. And so I go to his grave alone. No note, nothing of mine to lay down-- just me.

I might've only known him for a year, but he was the best brother I ever had. The best Jason Todd I've ever met.

And yet here he is; six feet under. He shouldn't be-- he had something to live for, had people to live for.

He should be here right now, breathing, blinking, talking, smiling, laughing. 

I should've breathed, blinked, talked, smiled, and laughed more when he was here.

But I didn't, and the hate I feel just grows like a fucking parasite inside of me, and it just adds to the powerful urges of vengeance.

It gets harder and harder to breath. The weight in my shoulders deepens the damage and burden little by little everyday.

It's waiting for me.

Like a praying mantis. It looks like it's praying and truly performing something decent, when really it's waiting to strike. And when it strikes, it kills. And it doesn't show mercy. No angel will answer your prayers then. It's too late.

It's too late-- just like Jason, just like Bruce, just like me.