Chapter Text
“Stop that,” Nyssa directs.
Sara—no, not Sara, Taer al-Asfar—blinks. She’d been intently watching Nyssa’s demonstration. “What?”
Nyssa stops practicing the move and steps away from her training partner. In English, she says, “Stop what you’re doing.”
Taer frowns. “I understood you, but I’m not doing anything. I’m watching you.”
Nyssa steps down off the raised stone circle that marks the edge of the practice floor. She points to Taer’s knee. “That.”
Glancing down, Taer realizes that her leg had been bouncing. “Oh. It’s not… I do it when I’m thinking.”
“It is a liability,” Nyssa says. “A sign of weakness. Or my father will think it is, at least. You would do well to break the habit.”
Taer grits her teeth. Her back still aches from the last time Nyssa’s father thought she was displaying weakness. Planting her feet firmly flat on the floor, she leans forward on the stone bench, resting her forearms on her thighs to stop her legs from bouncing automatically. She can’t quite keep the sarcastic note out of her voice as she says: “I serve Ra’s al-Ghul.”
Nyssa hesitates, like she wants to say something else. Instead, she nods, stepping back up to the sparring platform. Her mock opponent stands to face her. “Again,” she says.
He lunges. Nearly faster than Taer can track, Nyssa ducks, hooks her foot around the back of his knee, and sends him crashing to the ground.
-
Maybe, if it were only her bouncing leg, Nyssa’s warning might have been enough. Since she pointed it out, Taer’s made an effort to keep her feet solidly planted at all times. If she ever catches herself bouncing without thinking, she bites the inside of her cheek, hard.
She took Intro Psych at Starling U. She knows who Pavlov is, thanks.
But it’s never been just her leg. In her Before life, she used to twirl her hair around her finger, play with the cord of her headphones, doodle in class. She kept a pack of gum in her back pocket to chew on at all times, celebrated it as a double win for showing attitude and helping her get through social studies. She was never as good a student as Laurel—if the teacher got boring, she stood up, played footsie with a neighbor, or snuck her fliphone under the table.
On the Amazo, she’d pressed her eyes to the microscope and fiddled with the focus. Sharp, blur, sharp, blur. She’d bounced her knee. She’d clicked and unclicked pipettes. Only when Ivo came in would she force herself to still, force herself to tense every muscle in her body in an attempt to ward off the moments when she’d have to wipe her mind blank and lay limp.
And now—well. She conditions herself out of bouncing her leg, but it’s not enough.
“Yellow Bird,” Ra’s al-Ghul says. His tone, while deceptively mild, can’t mask his displeasure.
She stands at attention, chin tucking in submission.
“What were you doing, just then?”
“Listening,” she says, in her improving Arabic. She stares at a point near his shoulder, eyes flat.
“My daughter says you can become one of us. That you have what it takes to be useful.”
She says nothing.
He comes to a stop in front of her, hands clasped behind his back. “You passed my first trial. I believe you can become an asset to this League. Do you agree?”
“I do.”
He strikes out with the flat of his sword. She drops, dodging the blow, only to be caught in the chest by a vicious kick. She falls back. Inhale. She stands up. Exhale. She regains her posture.
“You may no longer be the starving, insolent girl you were,” he allows. “But to become one of us requires discipline.”
She keeps her face impassive.
“We are not training you to use weapons. We are not teaching you to fiddle with daggers, covet the roll of the metal in your hand. They should be extensions of yourself. To be a member of this League, you must become the weapon.”
Finally, she realizes her error. As Sahabat al Ramad had been giving the instructions of the drill, she’d pulled a blade from her waist. Unthinkingly, she’d been twisting it between her fingers.
“Not only that, but a worthy assassin must become an excellent weapon. A yew branch that tries to be both springy and stiff will crack long before it becomes a bow. Internal division—of faith, temperament, or attention—” and there he pauses, drawing out the last word, “betrays the integrity of the tool. A tool without integrity is a poor one. There is no place for poor weapons in the League.”
She dips her chin.
“I ask you again, Yellow Bird—what were you doing, just then?”
“Dividing my attention.”
“Yes.” He considers for a moment. “Your training for the next weeks has changed. This work relies on stillness; you must teach your mind and your body to act as one. Starting today, you will sit in this room. Cloud of Ash will watch you. For every three hours you cannot go without moving, he will make you pay for it, and then he will make you stay six more.”
Once he leaves, al Ramad steps forward. He tilts his head, expectant.
Taer al-Asfar sinks to the ground. She folds her legs crisscross, one over the other, and sets her palms flat on her knees.
Five minutes in, it’s all she can do not to scream.
-
“Beloved,” Nyssa murmurs. She brushes Taer’s hair back from her face. “You can stand now.”
Taer refuses.
“My father said you have finished for the day. You will return tomorrow, after our usual session.”
Taer blinks hard. Instead of pointing out the tear that trails down her cheek, Nyssa gently rubs it away.
“Come now,” she says. “Stand for me.”
Finally, wrenching muscles that feel tight as corded metal, Taer does. She lets Nyssa take her by the hand and lead her back to their room.
“Do you want to sleep?”
The idea of lying down, still, for another six hours flattens Taer’s chest like an eighteen-wheeler. Before she can control it, her breaths come quicker, louder, an ah, ah, ah crescendo, and she finds herself slamming her hand into the wall. The motion feels good—she pulls back her fist, about to do it again, and again, and again, until the buzzy static in her head will finally cut out, until her brain doesn’t feel like a TV loading screen, logo bouncing off her skull over and over but never hitting the corner.
Nyssa catches her arm. “Stop.”
Taer tries to wrench her arm away, tries to lash out at her instead, but for all she’s improved over the last few months, Nyssa has been an al Ghul all her life.
“Push-ups,” Nyssa says.
Caught off guard, Taer stops resisting.
“Do push-ups with me, beloved.” And Nyssa lowers them both to the floor. “First to a hundred wins.”
Taer extends into plank position. Push-ups. She can do push-ups. Down. Up. Down. Up. Downupdownupdownupdownup. She forces herself up over and over and over again, letting the burning of her abs and the ache of her arms winnow down the thoughts in her head enough that she doesn’t feel like flotsam battered around in her own mind.
She wins the race.
“Sit-ups,” Nyssa says after that. “Fifty.”
“Mountain Climbers. Thirty each leg.”
“Burpees.” The word sounds odd on her lips. “Twenty.”
By the time they leap up on the last repetition, Taer no longer feels like she’s breaking apart at the seams. “Fuck,” she says, leaning back against the wall. “Fuck.”
Nyssa smiles sadly. “Better?”
“Yeah, I—Fuck.”
“You are…you’re not built for stillness, I don’t think.”
Taer shakes her head. “I didn’t realize how much I move until I couldn’t.”
“To be honest, I’m surprised my father did not do this before now. You—what’s the word? Fidget?”
Taer nods.
“You fidget often.”
Biting her lip, Taer looks down.
“I say it not to shame you.” And now Nyssa reaches out, takes Taer into her hands. Taer relaxes, pulls her to her and wraps her arms around her, tight. “I never mean to shame you.”
“I know.”
They stand there for a moment, hugging.
Nyssa steps back first. “To survive, you must hide it, though. At least in his presence.”
“How?”
Nyssa pauses. “Perhaps you could do what you do with your legs—anchor them, hold them in a single place.”
Taer holds out her hands. “I can’t exactly press my arms down with my own arms.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah?”
Nyssa crosses her arms. “You do have two of them.”
Taer blinks. She copies her, pulling her arms tight to her chest. If she pulls her shoulders back, the pressure is almost kind of nice. “Oh. I get why they call you a master tactician.”
Nyssa smiles. “I’m sure there are other ways, too.”
“Maybe, but this…this works.” She smiles back, small and lopsided. “Thank you.”
“Of course. I’m sorry I cannot keep you from training that way again tomorrow.”
“It’s okay,” Taer says, pushing thoughts of the future away. She steps closer to Nyssa instead, looking up into her dark eyes. “You’ve done more than enough.”
Nyssa swallows back a smile, and lets Taer kiss her.