He put as much distance as he could between him and the Superhero HQ in what little daylight he had, but he couldn't help the nagging feeling at the back of his head that it was still too near. He completely ignored the nagging the more it persisted. He was above letting paranoia guide his hands.
The sky was already pitch black and he had covered half of the return journey. If he pushed it, they would arrive at Gotham by the break of dawn, which was a much shorter journey than their initial one which took so long — mainly because he avoided most of the highways and main roads, and that he also had to shake off a few tails with every thirty minutes they rode.
The car was definitely tagged but that was not an issue to him. All he cared about was getting the both of them home as fast as possible, and opening up his shop to fish in some sales that would hopefully put his head above the sea of red that he could feel his ledger sinking in.
Unfortunately, as much as he would prefer to glue his leg to the throttle and make for Gotham in the shortest time possible, he didn't forget Raven and the condition she was in.
He could see that she was in a deep sleep and what she needed most was a good night's sleep in a hopefully soft bed.
He drove for another half hour before he saw an adequate motel for a good night sleep and booked a single room.
"The road got to her." He said to the elderly couple that were watching him as he carried Raven to their room.
They accepted it easily enough and started throwing out their own experiences with trips they took their children on. He would have broken his extra pair of glasses if he couldn't wave off the attention of a normal old couple.
He checked her pulse and temperature, and also her respiration, and confirmed once again to himself that she was just asleep.
While it would have been infinitely better for her wellbeing and safety if he'd kept her in the custody of the heroes — it was the best choice with Raven's protection being paramount — he couldn't bring himself to make that choice.
They had made this whole journey to get to the heroes for Raven's sake and now suddenly neither of them wanted to remain with the heroes.
He cared for the utterly lost girl, he knew that much, but his talk with Talia— in fact the whole thing with Talia made him realize that maybe there was more to caring for someone than just caring for them.
But the nuances of whatever it was could wait because he knew he needed to be there for her when she woke up. He had to tell her that her choice was the right one and he supported it. He had to tell her that her choice did not hurt him— but that was the problem, wasn't it?
It wasn't about whether it hurt him or not, neither was it about if it was morally correct or any other similarly unimportant worry. It was about how much her own decisions would hurt her and Taro was shamed that he was the tool Trigon had used to masterfully hurt her in the one place where he knew it would hurt the most.
When he met her, she had been drowning in guilt for the destruction of a world she once called home due to an unfortunate mistake, with consequences she couldn't have comprehended. In the weeks that followed, she slowly showed her vulnerability to Taro and Taro wasn't blind to the growing dependence she had on him, only for her to sign off what was basically his death sentence.
Survivors' guilt would kill her before Trigon did and said demon was content with making her a walking bubble of trauma. He was not a magician but he could see how catastrophic that would be for the entire planet.
Convincing her to forgive herself would be one of, if not, the hardest thing both of them had ever done in their lives.
His musings were cut short the moment he noticed the change in Raven's breath. It hitched, and then a deep inhale, followed by a sharp breath out — she was going to wake up any moment and no sooner had the thought come that her eyelids fluttered.
He cocked open a bottle of water and raised it to her the moment her eyes fully opened.
"Drink first." She wordlessly took the bottle, her eyes still unfocused and her brain still lagging from whatever her magic did to her.
The water did its thing as she started blinking while drinking and her breathing became more audible.
"Slow down." She slowed down her fast gulps when half the water was gone and started drinking again slowly after Taro gave her a nod.
"Hungry?"
She shook her head slowly. She was still a bit out of it but she was cognizant of her surroundings. That was a good thing.
".. Where…. How.." She stuttered out, making Taro sigh as he sat at her bedside and used his hands to check her vitals. Her blood flow was a bit slow and her eyes were still sensitive and blurry. Nothing a meal and good sleep won't fix.
She kept her eyes on him and when he met hers almost frowned as he saw the guilt starting to creep in.
"A motel. Halfway to Gotham." He replied. "He's gone— sealed rather. The specifics are unclear."
She almost let out a sigh of relief but the last moments of her memory made her flinch backwards in reflex as she looked at Taro with her blank stare.
"It's alright," Taro consoled softly. He reached for the bottle, but she flinched — an unconscious reaction — and hung her head when she realized what she'd just done. Taro saw the bleak light in her eyes dim even further.
He took the can from her hands and then held her hands in his, and then waited until she raised her head to look at him.
"Taro…" even her sorrow was a bleak thing. She couldn't even trust herself to express her pain, not after just barely surviving Trigon.
"Raven, listen to me," he said slowly to make sure she hung on his every word. "You did the right thing. I do not think any less of you, nor do I care any lesser. You did not betray me, and you did not betray yourself."
Whatever smidgen of light that had been in her eyes was all but gone at this moment, a clear sign of her relapsing into her guilt. It would take more than just his words to convince her. She would need to accept the choices she'd made and try to move on from them. Only if it were that easy to do, especially for a teenage child.
He didn't need to be psychic to know what kind of dark thoughts were swirling up in Raven's head. How she could never escape the curse of killing the people she came to care about. Such deep-rooted guilt and shame would kill her way sooner than Trigon would.
"He forced you between two harsh choices, it's—"
"I knew the choice I would make. So did he. So did you." She said in a low hollow voice.
She looked at him. He wondered what she was searching for but whatever it was she quickly gave up on it.
"And it was the correct one." That was the wrong thing to say at this moment, but it was the truth and she needed to hear it and accept it for what it was.
Her hands had gone cold and the air around her blew a bleary wind, but still he held her hand and kept his eyes on hers.
"… Taro," she couldn't hold it in any longer as her voice cracked and her breathing fell heavy.
This was not a situation he had much experience in, but despite that the words came easily to his mouth.
"You're not at fault, Raven. None of this was your fault. This torment is not something you should have had to bear." He squeezed her hands as he spoke to her. "You didn't hurt me… you could never hurt me," he said softly.
"He was the one who hurt you, and not the other way around. I should be the one apologizing to you for putting you in that position. You were the one hurt, Raven, not me."
He knew she wouldn't outright accept his words but he knew that they needed to be said. She needed to hear them and be reminded of them until she learned how to accept them.
He cursed himself because while he knew a lot about causing emotional pain and unraveling someone with it, he couldn't say he was confident of doing the opposite.
"I am sorry, Raven. For leaving in the first place and leaving you in their hands." He traced circles over her hands and he caught the way her eyes widened a fraction. Ah, so she was reading his intent as he spoke. He hadn't paid much attention to that as he was more focused on her overall health.
And why make her only read it when she could hear it directly from him.
"What kind of father leaves his daughter in the hands of strangers?" Did he just adopt the daughter of an eldritch dimensional demon as his own?
He didn't know the slightest thing about being a father or having a daughter and he couldn't bring himself to care too much for it.
He cared so much for this strange girl that suddenly came into his life in the middle of the night that he would gladly call her his daughter.
If his competition for fatherhood was Trigon then it was automatically his win.
"Taro," the tremble in her voice threatened to spill but she managed to hold herself. Barely. "…. Why?"
Taro, in his usual fashion, just shrugged. "I felt like it." It wasn't as simple as he claimed it, and they both knew it, but it was an easy enough answer that they could understand and accept.
"Get some sleep, Raven. We'll hit the road at first light." He stood up from the bed and ruffled her hair while she stared at him intently.
He found himself on the chair by the window and got himself comfortable under the spare blanket, meanwhile Raven continued watching him.
"It's not Raven," she finally said after some time of watching him.
"Hmm?"
"My name," she said softly, "it's not Raven. Rachel. Rachel Roth."
"Hmm." He gave a nod. "Just try and get some sleep. We'll hash out the details in the morning."
"Hmm." Finally satisfied, she crawled under the quilt and wrapped herself tight in a cocoon. She knew she would have nightmares from now on till whenever, as did Taro, but that did not stop her from falling asleep in moments.
Approximately 15 minutes after Raven knocked herself out, Taro opened his eyes and stared at the window.
"Use the door."
He closed his eyes for three minutes and when he opened them, it was to stare up at the figure of Batman who was standing over him.
Taro idly reached for something in his pockets under the blanket, ignoring how the man in front of him became taut for action, and brought out the three trackers he had taken from Raven's clothes and handed them over to Batman, all without saying a single word or showing any expression.
Batman looked at him in continued silence and the two of them stared at each other for a second before he broke it and took back the trackers.
"Ra's." He simply said.
"Ask him yourself." The brief second he saw Batman in combat back at their HQ made him think that Wu-San must've instructed him at some point. And the familiarity with which he spoke Ra's name? Taro surmised that he might have been part of the League at some point. While it was good to know, it largely meant nothing to him.
"You went with them and returned hours later. Ra's is not so lenient as to release his 'guests' so quickly." Batman said. The fact that Lady Shiva, David Cain, Slade and Talia hunted this man together was sufficient indicator of his threat assessment.
He was an assassin, that much was clear from the little Batman had seen of him fighting, but he knew that wasn't the whole picture. He looked at the trackers in his hands and looked at the girl that was peacefully sleeping on the bed.
"Dr. Fate would like to speak with her sometime soon to prevent the likelihood of a repeat event."
Taro looked at Raven and shrugged, having never moved from his spot on the chair. She would do that when she was ready, which he guessed would be any day into the coming week.
Batman might be trying to get a read on him but Taro wasn't in the mood to entertain him. If not for Raven, he would gladly not have anything to do with any of the heroes.
"I'll be in touch." The man's modulated gruff voice came as he left the room.
"Use the door next time." Taro offhandedly commented as the hero exited the room. He silently noted the position of both the silent stealth plane above the motel and the younger bird-themed hero hanging outside the window.
He didn't find it funny that the first time he left Gotham after years of lying low was also the moment he met every member of the Justice League.
His eyes trailed towards the sleeping Raven and just like that it stopped bothering him.
She now had an array of choices she could make and the least he could do was make sure she didn't bite off more than she could chew. If she wanted to follow the heroes then it was alright, approved even, but that did not mean he would be mingling with them in any way.
Before he lulled himself to sleep, he briefly thought of Talia and her son and wondered if this was what she felt when she had her son.
Maybe he would reach out to her when he got back to Gotham… or he probably won't, given that Ra's al Ghul would be expecting something like this and would be looking forward to exploiting it in all the ways he could.
.
....
.
They had left the motel as soon as the first ray of sunlight hit their window, but this time they didn't take the car as Raven had apparently recovered enough to confidently teleport them back to their house in Gotham.
Taro's joy at the unexpected fortune took a deep dive as he immediately noticed that every corner of his house had been searched and modelled.
"Wu-San and Talia." He said confidently. Deathstroke probably cased the house, especially the rooms. But they weren't the only people in his house. "Bats."
Raven stood beside him and watched as he began unearthing surveillance devices that were basically hidden in every single part of the house.
She was still far from mentally okay but she no longer flinched at him and was not shying away from conversation. That was welcomed progress in Taro's books.
"Did we have visitors last night?" She asked softly, dead eyes scanning the familiar corners of her home.
You noticed. Taro's mental nudge told her.
"I don't think I completely fell asleep last night." She said under her breath. The nightmares she had expected, but it felt as if she was dreaming without fully being asleep. She didn't really know what happened while she slept, but she got the feeling that she and Taro were not the only ones in the room last night.
Taro had stopped what he was doing to look at her, making her remind herself that he had acutely enhanced senses.
She still didn't know what to think about him becoming her dad, so she did not think about it and tried to focus on anything else.
"Should we really be staying here after some many people broke in? Isn't it compromised?" She asked curiously. He had been covering his tracks for years so she expected him to change location after such blatant intrusions.
"Normally, yes. Circumstances are different." He replied in his usual barebones linguistics but his intent painted a clearer picture why he didn't bother with moving.
He was mainly hiding from the League of Assassins but he'd somehow gotten them off his back, at least for now. As for the heroes, there was no need to run from them when Raven was staying under his roof.
He cleaned out all the bugs in the house and Raven couldn't dent that feeling of warm familiarity when Taro simply rushed to open his minimart and save his dying business.
Everything so far had a sense of normalcy but unfortunately she couldn't be too sure and relax herself. She shook the image of ripping out Taro's heart and incinerating his body out of her head.
It would take some time, maybe a little more than some time, to get back into a comfortable rhythm with everything.
With everything that had happened; the curses and nightmares — she was glad that she had got out with something good and concrete. A home. It was at least the start of one.
.
...…
.
[The League of Assassins, The Demon's Lair]
Talia stood ramrod straight with a strict look on her face as she watched Damian once again flawlessly complete his training, which was very impressive for someone of his age.
"Mother." He stood before her with his head raised and wore the confidence of someone who knew exactly who they were.
"You completed it even faster than your previous time." She said. It was a compliment but she knew it wasn't what he was looking for.
Looking at her son who looked so eager to have his words listened to, she decided to humor him despite knowing exactly what he wanted to ask.
"Do you have something to say?" She asked as she stared at him with the same strict eyes she used to whip him in shape.
"With due sincerity, mother, these exercises have become redundant to my training. I have grown past their use and efficiency. I believe I am ready to start learning more advanced techniques, if you would teach me."
Her face remained impassive but her mind raced. He wasn't exactly wrong with him having grown past his current exercises but that alone wasn't what made him ready for more advanced training.
She couldn't teach him the same way her… old teacher taught her, so she had to find a way for him to learn what she wanted him to learn without teaching him herself.
"You believe you're ready to move on to your next training."
"Yes, mother."
"You're not wrong," she started, immediately sensing his budding expectations, and continued just as easily, "but you're not completely right. I'll give you an assignment: show me why I kept you in the same training exercise for years. If you can do that, I will teach you something new."
Her words were cryptic enough but she knew he would understand what she meant in no time, he was that smart. The real test would start after he understood the assignment. She was looking forward to seeing how he would lay the first structure of his foundation as an assassin.
––––––
.
Patreon.com/1stDepth
.
––––––