The Bat and The Bird

Celestielle

Gotham City

Sirens wailed in the distance, as they always did, as Celeste got ready for the night. She threw on her black sports shorts, a black sports bra, and a black hoodie, wrapping up her fists in ace bandages in preparation for another fight. She grabbed her bag, slung it over her shoulder, opened up her window and stuck one leg through it, but just as she was about to leave, Clara, her mother, stopped her.

"Where do you thing you're going young lady?" Clara asked, hand on her hips, her glare quite apparent.

"Training" Celeste replied simply. Clara groaned.

"God would you lay off the training Celestielle! You're going to get yourself seriously hurt!" Clara cried out, approaching the young girl.

"But I haven't yet!" Celeste pointed out as she straddled her windowsill, taking the argument time to throw her short black wavy hair into a small ponytail.

"You will!" Clara shot back.

"Mom, I promise I'll be careful. You don't have to worry about me, I'll be alright. I can hold my own out there. Promise" Celeste explained calmly to her mother.

'Most of the time', Celeste added to herself silently as she mentally identified all her bruises and cuts. She had quickly become in expert in reassuring her mother, which allowed her lots more freedom. All she had to do was take a few ballet classes a week and tell her she was safe, and Clara was usually satisfied.

Clara approached her daughter and put a hand on her cheek, "Oh my darling, when did you grow up so fast? It's like I just missed you completely" She sighed.

"I'm still right here Ma, and I won't be going anywhere anytime soon, I promise you" Celeste gave her mother a kiss on the cheek, "Love you"

"I love you too" Clara replied before Celeste jumped out the window and was off.

As Celeste left her house, she noticed a man walk up to her front steps. He did so every so often. He talked to Clara but he almost never showed when Celeste was there. She had caught a few glimpses of him, and had sworn she had seen the same face on the tiny TV they owned, but disregarded it more or less. He was just another one of Clara's many friends.

~~~

That night Celeste came home tired. She had been out fighting, or "training" as she told her mother, but not in the way one might think...

Celeste had started fighting at a young age. The other kids seemed to like to pick on her, so she had quickly learned to defend herself well. Pretty soon, as a third grader, she was taking out the sixth grade bullies. The school threatened not to allow her re-admittance the next year unless she enrolled in some sort of martial arts or anger management class. So Clara signed her up for Mixed Martial Arts classes, where she actively and attentively studied various forms of fighting and weaponry for years. She became a black belt in three short years.

However, trouble had a knack for finding Celeste, and she soon got absorbed into the world or street fighting. It started when she was in middle school, sixth grade: she would have to walk through the worst part of the Gotham slums alone in order to get home from school or martial arts or some other activity. One day, she had tried to loose them while walking home, but had unfortunately found herself in the middle of a circle, surrounded by a group of menacing teenage boys. However, she managed to take down all of them in a few minutes. A few boys had hung back to watch and were thoroughly impressed. She started her career street fighting halfway through that year.

That's also when she started fighting crime. She took it upon herself to right the wrongs that had been done to her neighborhood. She worked as best as she could, despite her young age, to fix up the gang-torn Gotham Slums, her home.

Celeste was a girl of many talents, one of her personal favorites was science. Since a young age, she had build and designed gadgets and toys and even weapons. But it wasn't until she discovered chemistry, then better yet, biochemistry, that she could fully develop all of her ideas and tools. Celeste was so enthralled by the topic, that she would even taking a few college courses on them at the young age of fifteen. Additionally, on the topic of school, Celeste was a linguist. She spoke fluent English, French, Spanish, and her favorite- Romanian. Clara always marveled at her linguistic ability.

Then came her last significant trait, or so she would say. Dance. Celeste picked up dancing at a very young age. She quickly found a level of passion and self expression in the art form that she had never experienced before, and clung to it desperately in the hardest times of her life, when even hours of fight-training couldn't ease her. She attended one of the most prestigious ballet schools of Gotham on a scholarship. Clara had been a dancer once, and absolutely loved and indulged in the fact that her daughter had taken after her in that aspect.

Celeste quickly remembered on her walk home that, in fact, she had a recital that night. She ran the rest of the way home.

~~~

It was easily the worst day of Celeste's life.

She got home, got her makeup and hair ready, grabbed her costume and her mother drove her to the venue. Celeste waved to her mother, mouthing the words 'I love you' before being ushered backstage. After all, she had a solo in the ballet as the younger version of the main role; everyone wanted to make sure she was ready and warmed up and perfect.

Celeste was always a little shaky before a performance, but once she got on stage, it's like the world melted around her. But the world made a crash entrance in the middle of her solo, when a cackle resonated through the theater. Celeste stopped briefly and looked up, just in time to see the ceiling start to cave in.

Someone else had followed her gaze and had screamed and pointed to the fault in the ceiling, but it was too late. The ceiling came crashing down on the front of the stage. A stage hand dove and got Celeste out of harms way, but the front row of audience had not been as lucky.

Clara. Her mother had been seated in the front row. She had been so excited that her daughter had a solo in their studio's ballet. Celeste felt her breathing become irregular and trippy and she couldn't breathe anymore.

"Mom!" She managed to scream out before running out into the audience, lifting pieces of the ceiling up with difficulty, trying desperately to find her mother.

"Darling, darling! Come away from there! Come away now" Celeste's ballet teacher ran out and took a hysteric Celeste backstage. Celeste simply collapsed and began to sob. Her ballet teacher wrapped her arms around her and tried to calm her.

The world became fuzzy around Celeste, and she didn't remember much after that. Someone offered her a place to stay for the night and she nodded vaguely. She simply let herself be dragged and lead around by everyone else. She didn't have a conception of time, everything was just mushed together. She didn't want to move or try or do anything. She was simply numb, and she wanted to keep it like that.

Numbness meant nothing hurt.

It meant she couldn't feel the pain.

So numbness it was.