[center][center][img]https://txt.1001fonts.net/img/txt/dHRmLjcyLmFiMGIwYi5WR0ZzYjI0LC4w/xerkerfw.regular.png[/img] [h3]AND[/h3] [img]https://txt.1001fonts.net/img/txt/b3RmLjg4LmIwZWM5MS5Ubmx0Y0dnLjA/nebulo.demo.png[/img][/center] [color=Lightgreen][b]Location:[/b][/color] The library [color=Lightgreen][b]Interactions:[/b][/color] Talon [/center][center][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th7HjAiM3Yo]Ambience[/url][/center] [hr] [i]Current day[/i] Daphne's form lingered at the entrance to the nest. She had climbed the ladder all the way to the top and was now standing still. There was a wistful look on her face. As she pulled back the curtains and stared at the abandoned space, she got lost in a memory. [i]May 7th 2021[/i] The library was mostly quiet around this time of day, not that it got much buzz at any other hour. Daphne’s footsteps produced one of the only sounds. The flats she was wearing made her footfalls soft and her pace was indecisive. She stopped and started multiple times, seeming to be searching for something. The brunette teen was listening to an ambient playlist through her pink air pods, off into her own world. A forlorn expression was on her features. She wasn’t in the library to read or return books. All throughout the cabinets of books Daphne had been compiling a herbarium. Unlike the regular collection of dried plants which was often used in scientific studies, Daphne’s copy was different. It detailed the name of the plant, along with its personality and manner of speech. She had a somewhat circuitous way of storing the plants. They were tucked into stories which aligned with the meaning of the plant or flower in the Victorian language of flowers. It resulted in a system only she could unravel and understand……or so she thought. Daphne was searching for a particular fairytale. It wasn’t in the place she left it. That was strange because she couldn’t think of anyone being interested in reading it, aside from herself. She passed by several shelves, holding her head sideways to study the titles of the books. Only a few sections over, with a handful of books himself, was Talon. Since joining the team, any time he wasn’t spending in some sort of training simulation, he was spending it here in the stacks. He normally had the space to himself, but when the others had made their way into search for something to read, he tended to make himself scarce. That had less to do with him being anti-social and more to do with him just…not being good at being social. Recently however he had stumbled upon something interesting. He had gone looking for a book that Green Arrow had recommended to him. An old collection of fairy tales Oliver had described to Talon as “the first REAL superhero.” Talon was dubious. But nevertheless he added it to his list to read. He’d had the title written down on a scrap paper: “The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood.” Sure enough he had found it. A beautiful leather bound copy, with green print. Talon noticed that there was a bookmark left in it previously. Curious, he opened the page and instead found a flower. A beautiful white petal. He kept both. In the present, he knew who was in the library with him. Daphne had a presence about her, and not solely because she had strangled him so effortlessly when they had first met, but something else. Kila had thought it was something to do with pheromones. Talon felt a familiar anxiety. He was still adjusting to her friendship. Of everyone on the team he had connected with her and Casper easiest, although Casper has since left the team for his own reasons. But Daphne was easier to be around. Or he just preferred to be around her. Nightwing would have told him he had a crush, but Talon was too naive to see it. [color=9e0b0f]“Are you…looking for book?”[/color] He asked Daphne, as she had nearly passed by the aisle he was in. [color=9e0b0f]“A book. Or books. That is…do you need help?”[/color] [color=9e0b0f][i]Nailing it.[/I][/color] Daphne smiled and removed her airpods, having only caught the last bit of Talon’s sentence. [color=Lightgreen]“Yes I do actually…”[/color] She looked at him first and then to the stack of books sitting on the table. [color=Lightgreen][i]Maybe he has it?[/I][/color] The fact that he wore shades at all times made her nervous at first, because she could never tell if he was looking straight at her, or someplace else. Eventually she got used to it and even felt like they had some sort of eye contact. She always liked to pretend his eyes were blue, clear and cool. [color=Lightgreen]“I’m looking for a fairytale book about the adventures of Robin Hood.”[/color] Talon should have guessed that the flowers had something to do with Daphne. Talon wasn’t 100% on the intricacies of Nymph’s abilities. In fact, save for maybe Vic, everyone on the team was reserved when it came to explaining the full breadth of what they could do. It actually caused friction between himself and Casper, Talon having gone so far as to call him a liability for not being more open about what he could do. Casper, who was the first member of the team to reach out to him in a moment of He regrets that now. But Casper is gone… Talon nodded at the end of the aisle, and beckoned to Daphne to follow. Passing the shelves of old books, Talon stopped at a rolling library ladder, sliding it down the shelving to the very end, where two corners of the library met. At the top of the shelf was another curtained window. He climbed up the ladder and passed the top shelf. Reaching for the curtain, Talon pulled it aside and stepped through. Behind the curtain was not another window at all - it was a makeshift nook. Talon had made a sort of nest. A stack of books that Talon was reading sat upon a small shelf, and the ground had a comfortable bed of blankets along the ground, and a beanbag in the corner (with “Property of Garf” stamped on it in big block letters.) [color=9e0b0f]“This was for storage, before.”[/color] He told her. A smile spread across Daphne’s face and eyes seeing Talon’s little hideout. Despite having never entered the space, something about it felt familiar. Like she was threading into the charging space of another introvert. [color=Lightgreen]“Wow, this is really nice.”[/color] Daphne took off her flats, placing them in a corner and proceeded to move onto the blanketed floor. It was much softer than she expected. She leaned back and stared at the ceiling, her hair fanning out behind her. [color=Lightgreen]“You must be in here all the time.”[/color] She glanced to her side, at a stack of books. The third book was titled “The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood.” [color=Lightgreen][i]Hah! So he did have it![/i][/color] [color=Lightgreen]“Ah, so you stole it.”[/color] She said jokingly. [color=Lightgreen]“A true robin hood I see.”[/color] Talon grimaced and rubbed the back of his head, either nervous about the fact that he had tried to keep something that didn’t belong to him, or that there was now a beautiful girl laying in his makeshift getaway. Talon’s time with the team was opening him up to new experiences, and his diving into various books helped familiarize him with more social situations. It was a stark difference between the interactions he grew up with, his will and sense of self crushed beneath the goals of the Court of Owls. The books in the library taught him a great deal about friendship, and his continued engagement with missions as part of a “team” was helping with communication. But he had found that his biggest hurdle socially was an obvious one for a boy his age. Romance. His team was a hotbed of hormones and tension - and it was clear Talon was out of his element. Mirage and Metamorph had made it seem so easy to be both teammates and partners, or whatever they may be. And people like Zach could turn on the flirtation with the flick of a switch. Talon wanted to be able to be more like them, but he struggled. He didn’t even know how to properly talk with Cybergirl outside of mission parameters - his only time he had attempted to compliment her on her abilities he had fumbled, as mid-sentence he realized his compliments for her cybernetic parts were basically just compliments for her body. His ability to express himself was stunted, short, and he had grown up angry. So he had turned to the written word to help him understand feelings he couldn’t express on his own. And it hadn’t been lost on him that as he flipped through stories of heroes and romances, he started to picture himself as that swashbuckling champion of justice, and sometimes he’d even see his teammates in the place of the great loves of the adventurers he read in his nest. Oftentimes he saw the very girl was now there with him. [color=9e0b0f]“Yeah I uh…I needed a bookmark. A nice one.”[/color] He sat down with crossed legs, watching the girl seemingly melt into the space. [color=9e0b0f]“I’d found a few others, but that’s the one I wanted. It took me a while to find out it was called a Galanthus - the Robin Hood Tulip.”[/color] Daphne’s head perked up when Talon mentioned finding several of the pressed flowers scattered around the library. Out of the hundred sof books he seemed to have been able to find them easily. She picked up the pressed tulip from between the pages of the green leatherbound book. The white petals were slightly faded to a more sepia hue and the shape was easily recognizable. [color=Lightgreen]“What do you like about it?”[/color] [i][color=9e0b0f]That it’s yours[/color][/i] [color=9e0b0f]“It’s the first one I found. It’s pretty. And it's Delicate. Growing up I wouldn’t have been able to keep something like this. And anything we did get to keep had to be shared amongst ourselves, or else we had to fight for it.”[/color] Talon watched her hands as held the flower between her fingers. If he had known how to say it, he’d have told her that he admires that her hands were able to create something beautiful, that her powers created life. Her hands were the antithesis of his own. [color=9e0b0f]“I’ve never had friends before. Even now sometimes I feel like I’m just a teammate. I couldn’t tell the difference at first, but now one has become more important than the other. Nightwing acts like this is something he knew would happen, like he expected it. But even still…”[/color] Talon caught himself. He had been able to speak more, communicate with the people he wanted to call friends, but talking openly about where he’d come from and what it was he was scared of felt wrong to him so far. He didn’t know it, but this was the conditioning of the Court Of Owls. No vulnerability. Physical or…otherwise. Daphne allowed Talon’s words to sink in. She was starting to realize more and more that he was scarred by everything that had happened prior to joining the initiative. Him saying he never had friends before was really a sad thing. Everyone deserved at least one friend. There was a silence between them with Daphne unsure of what to say next. He stopped speaking mid sentence as he often did. Sometimes she would push and prod gently for the remaining part of it. [color=Lightgreen]“It’s nice to have friends”[/color] She started to say, while moving to sit upright. [color=Lightgreen]“They’re people you can choose to include in your life, because you value something about them.”[/color] [color=Lightgreen]“My older brother for example. Aside from being family we’re also friends. He accepts me for who I am, flaws and all. Sometimes I’m told I can be too nice, like a push over. But my brother admires it, because it’s something he finds difficult.”[/color] Talon understood why Daphne’s brother would think that way. It was becoming more and more apparent that spending time with others gave you a form of envy, but a seemingly healthy one. Talon wondered if there was anyone in his orbit that wanted to be more like him. What trait would that even be? Was it his fighting ability? His utility as a member of the team? Talon surprised himself by consciously deciding that those weren’t the kinds of things he wanted people to admire about him. Anyone could throw a punch. [color=9e0b0f]“When I first came here, my goal was to become a hero. But lately, the things that I’ve been looking forward to aren’t the missions themselves, it’s the time between them. Like watching Zach recording for his youtube channel, or trying to understand Cybergirl while she explained how her operating systems worked. Coming here to read these, it helps sort out all of these things I don’t know how to parse.”[/color] Talon smiled at Daphne [color=9e0b0f]“The flowers are a nice surprise when I stumble on them. And for what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re a pushover at all. I think you just-”[/color] Talon looked upwards as he tried to search for the words. [color=9e0b0f]“When you’re about to do something, you think of the other person first. You do that more than anyone else on the team. Even in a fight.”[/color] [color=Lightgreen]“Thanks”[/color] Daphne smiled back at Talon. It was nice to know not everyone on the Team thought badly of her. A warm feeling slowly spread through her chest. Her smile lingered long after they broke eye contact.