30 Days of Demonfire

Fear

This... This is not good. Cars are dropping from the Trigate Bridge into the Gotham River. It's December and that water is freezing cold and my dad and Red Robin and Batwoman and Batgirl and Robin and Huntress and Batman all need to protect themselves from the freezing water. None of them are in their wetsuits because we didn't know the damn bridge would get blown up.

I can do it, though. I'd be a better candidate than any of them, anyway, because I'd be faster in the water and I'd be stronger if anyone's stuck. But I'm afraid of water. I'm looking over the edge of one of the support beams that are still standing and the water is swirling around me. Red Robin, Robin, and Batwoman are helping people on the bridge, and my dad and Batgirl and Huntress are stripping down to their undersuits so they can get their wetsuits on over them. But people in the water are scrambling out of their cars and shouting and I get the surreal sensation that I'm in somebody's crappy action movie and I can't be the one who screws up. The girl that was too scared to save the day.

So I jump.

Let me back up. It's a December morning and I have a modeling job. I'm not a minor anymore, so my dad doesn't have to come to my jobs, but he likes to be there anyway. It's sweet and I like having him there.

After I finish the shoot with the nice photographer from Donna Troy's photo company, my dad and I go get some lunch. He asks me how classes are and I make sure I tell him about the essay I got a ninety-six on and not the trig test I got a seventy-four on. I ask about Aunt Babs. I tell him I got a cat (he hadn't known about Alfred until then).

It was a normal night.

Dad might mention at some point that I should watch out, maybe patrol with Robin for a few nights instead of going out on my own (yeah right) because of some gang Bruce is in the middle of trying to track down.

We go shopping for a little while since I'm pretty much out of winter clothes since they burned with my dorm building (does it make me spoiled if dad paid?) and then we go back to the apartment. We run into Damian and we pretend that we're best friends. I don't think that my dad is fooled.

He puts my bag on my couch and turns on the news. Bomb warning. We get our suits. Dad texts Robin to meet us but he already knows.

Batman calls us to the Trigate Bridge to sweep it for bombs but we're too slow. It explodes right in front of us.

There's screaming, but I think a lot of it is car alarms. The bridge buckles and I move to catch one side of it but dad stops me. He's right; I could never hold up an entire bridge with all those cars. Supergirl, maybe, but not me.

We're all working, even Huntress who just started high school this past year. I'm scared of water. Bruce knows. He's tried to cure me of it before but most of his attempts ended with my dad yelling at him and nightmares about drowning. It's a natural Tamaranean fear. We don't do water. It's biologically desirable, my dad explained to me once or twice when I was younger.
Screw that.

I jump, and I hear my dad shout, "Mar'i, wait!" He's too late, though.

The water is really fucking cold, and Proxy warns me that my body temperature dropped through my earpiece. My body will warm, but it takes a minute and as I hit the water my skin screams out in protest. Helicopters above me light round patches of water, and the beam cuts through the murky water enough for me to see when I'm submerged.

The doors take more effort to tear off than I'm used to because of the water pressure fighting against me. Regular people wouldn't be able to do it, but I'm not regular people. The door floats away in one direction and the people inside are scare because water's coming in, but I gesture for them to come out anyway.