NO CELESTIAL / dick grayson

one, fate

  "DID MOTHER SAY anything else to you?" Damian asked as they walked through the corridors of Wayne Manor. She'd been allocated a room here, given permission to stay. They walked by her old room, the one she'd lived in six years ago. Damian told her that the room was Tim's now. A room had been left for both Dick and Jason Todd, though the latter never lived here if he could avoid it and the former only spent a fraction of his time in the manor these days.

  Instead she was given another room, a few doors down from Damian's. She wondered if that had been arranged on purpose. Bruce had asked her to keep an eye on Damian, after all. Hardly surprising that they'd find Damian difficult to handle. She'd experienced that first hand in the past, though she'd managed to break through that purgatory.

  "Just that I should come and watch over you."

  "And Aunt Seraphina?"

  "She told me to make sure the two of us stayed alive."

  Damian's expression crumbled. "I want to help them. I don't want to just sit here and do nothing. They don't even let me out of the Manor."

  "And that stops you?"

  "No. But I don't even know where Mother and Aunt Seraphina are."

  "Neither do I," Remiel said with a sigh. "But have some faith in them, Damian. I'm sure they both know what they're doing. If they think we should stay put, we should stay put."

  Damian huffed. "You're always like this. You never go against instructions, do you?"

  He was angry now. Remiel let him stay that way. He stood in the doorway, this little boy with the soul of an adult, who was raised for killing and taught to use a sword before he could talk. He observed her as she unzipped her backpack, taking out the things she had inside. She hadn't packed much. Had left most of her things in her tiny apartment in Hong Kong, where she'd been living for the past year. What were material possessions when your life was in danger? Besides, she was coming to Bruce. He had more than enough money to buy her everything she needed, and if he refused, she had her own money. Seraphina had helped her set up a comfortable life in Hong Kong, and she'd picked up an odd job here and there just to add some excitement to life.

  He wasn't wrong, though. Remiel wasn't someone who went against authority. She didn't disobey orders, not usually. It was why Talia liked her, even though she was sometimes so frustrated with Seraphina. The only time she'd clearly disobeyed Talia's orders was when she'd decided to leave the League behind.

  Talia had been furious. But after a week of refusing to talk to her, she'd suddenly relented.

  Seraphina had spoken to her. Remiel knew that. She didn't ask about the content of the conversation, but she could make a few guesses.

  "Why does Grayson hate you?"

  Now, how to explain that?

  "Did you ever wonder where I was before you were six?"

  "I always assumed you were in the League base in Guilin."

  "No. No. Well, you're not precisely wrong. I was there for a few years. But when I was sixteen, they sent me here. They changed my identity, had me tell them that I was the orphaned daughter of the Chens. Marcus Chen had been a friend of the late Waynes. I told them that I had been taken care of by some of the League of Assassins but I didn't want to stay with them anymore. They didn't trust me at first, but by the end of it..." her hands slowed as she swallowed. "It all turned rather bloody. The League wanted me back. Part of me didn't want to go. Dick felt, well, he felt pretty horrible. Bruce was furious, I could tell. Talia sent people to extract me and the information I'd gathered, and in the chaos of it, I ended up fighting Dick."