nightingale

chapter two

song- Ultimately by Khai Dreams

Luscinia could tell why this woman made Bruce nervous, she was gorgeous. Almost a perfectly sculpted statue of a woman. But by the way she interacted with Bruce, you could tell that behind the good looks she was tough on her own, and Luscinia respected that. After a hushed conversation with, whom she learned was Alfred, and Bruce, she strode over to where Luscinia was sitting on a leather couch in Bruce's office. 

"Hello Lucy, is it okay if I call you Lucy?" She asked, her accent unrecognizable. Lucy nodded only once and the woman smiled. "It's nice to meet you, I'm Diana. I'm going to ask you a few questions, is that alright?" Lucy nodded again, she was fine with being asked, but that didn't mean she was going to answer. "Do you remember anything from tonight?" Lucy said nothing, retreating back to her silent treatment from earlier. Diana continued to gently interrogate her, but to no avail. Diana sighed and made her way back to the two men who were standing at the back of the room. She said something that wasn't loud enough for Lucy to hear, but the men nodded and left the room as she made her way back to Lucy.

"I figured you might be more comfortable if those two," She gestured towards the door, "weren't around." Lucy remained silent as Diana continued on. "Did someone do something to you, or hurt you?" Lucy scoffed, leaving Diana confused at the sudden outburst from the girl. "Are you in some kind of trouble?" She asked.

"Aren't we all?" Lucy mumbled the first words she'd spoken to anyone since she woke up. Diana smiled, but hid it quickly and continued on, encouraged by the fact that she had managed to break Lucy's silence. 

"How do you mean?" She asked tentatively.

"Trouble is everywhere, the air, the earth, the water. You can't escape it. Everything can kill you at some point, it's just about what and when." She ranted, impassioned by the subject, but not in a necessarily good way. Diana looked at the young girl with a mix of pity and concern, and Lucy realized this, cursing herself for even speaking in the first place. Diana said nothing but walked to her and embraced her, Lucy staying frozen in place as she was held by a strange woman she didn't know. She was eventually released as Diana stepped back and proceeded to leave her in the office alone. 

When the door shut, Lucy let out a long breath she'd been holding since the hug. She stood up, using the arm of the couch to steady herself as the sudden dizziness faded. She walked over to the desk, running her hands over the smooth mahogany. She sat in the obviously overly expensive leather chair and began to rummage through the drawers, looking for anything that might explain the people standing just outside. It wasn't until she opened the bottom left drawer that she got her answer. In a metal box, there were five throwing stars, but they were stars at all. They were bats.

━━━━━━━━━▲━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━▼━━━━━━━━━

"I would assume you've figured it out." A voice rang out, originating from a figure cloaked in the shadows. When Lucy's eyes adjusted, she could see Bruce leaning against the door frame. When he started to walk towards her, she tensed, ready to jump into a combat position at a moments notice. Bruce realized this and stalled, holding his hands up in surrender. Giving her a moment to calm, which she didn't, he continued walking towards her. This was a mistake. In a split second, Lucy was standing and the batarang was thrown, only to be caught by Bruce, inches from his face. "If I am who you think I am, did you really think that would work?" He asked, incredulously. She didn't move, just watched to see what he would do next. When he took another step Lucy made the split decision to retreat to the far end of the room, knocking a lamp over in her hastiness. When she realized what she had done, she unsuccessfully tried to catch it before it hit the ground. 

Immediately after the crash the door swung open and the man-child fell into the room, trailed by Alfred and Diana. In a millisecond she was lifted off the floor and being steadied by the boy. When she looked at the boy she realized who he was as well, her eyes then darted to Diana, she wasn't sure how she'd missed it before, her striking beauty and unique look gave it away immediately. She then looked to Alfred. 

"Oh I'm just the babysitter." He said, laughing slightly. Lucy just stared. 

"Now that you know who we are, who are you?" Bruce inquired. 

"I already told you. Luscinia Ledger." Her tone cocky. All but Diana stared at her in shock, surprised by her strong and melodic voice. Barry couldn't even close his mouth. "What? I'm not mute. You can stop staring at me like I'm a zoo animal. Even though zoos are inhumane..." No one said anything. Diana just smiled at her. Lucy sighed and gave in to their stares. Turning around to face away from them, she spoke again. "What do you want to know?" 

━━━━━━━━━▲━━━━━━━━━

━━━━━━━━━▼━━━━━━━━━

Lucy spent the next half hour answering basic questions about her life.

"How old are you?"

"21."

"Where are you from?" 

"Star City."

"What happened tonight?"

"I don't remember."

The questions continued for what seemed like forever. Lucy answered them to the best of her ability, but she also tried to answer them as vaguely as possible. She answered each and every question until one caught her by surprise. It came from Bruce.

"How do you know how to fight?" She didn't answer. She just stared at him, trying to come up with an acceptable answer.

"I used to live in a bad part of town, you have to know." She answered confidently, hoping it would be satisfactory.

"Okay," He said, she let out a breath of relief knowing he'd bought it. "Now how about the truth?" Her breath caught in her throat. 

"Shit..." She mumbled.

"Lucy?" Barry questioned hesitantly. She sighed, unable to lie to the innocent face of the boy.

"I'm the Nightingale."

SOOOOOOOO I was inspired to write bc my lil baby cakes started updating again and it made me want to update this. Hope you like it! I wish it was longer, but I wanted it to end on her revealing her identity. 

xoxo - Del