𐔌 ⋮ “He gives you things, doesn’t he?”
– or, the language of devotion from a boy who was raised to conquer, not to love ✶—Masterlist
It starts with the ring.
An emerald, cut sharp like a blade, set into gold with ancient Arabic filigree etched so fine it’s barely visible unless the light catches it. She finds it on her nightstand one morning—wrapped in black silk, warm as if it had been held in a palm all night.
The note is in his handwriting. Neat. Small. Precise.
“For your hand, which should always be protected.
She wears it. Of course she wears it.
She doesn’t expect the next gift—two weeks later, an anklet. golden, thin and elegant, a tiny د (the Arabic letter dāl) dangling from the chain. Damian doesn’t say anything when she finds it.
He just kneels down during a quiet hour in the Manor and clasps it around her ankle himself. His hands are steady. His touch reverent.
“I want them to know,” he says simply, eyes flicking up to hers. “Wherever you walk, you’re mine.”
She forgets how to breathe.
“Okay, but like,” Steph says later, eyes wide, “that’s not just romantic. That’s spiritual warfare.”
Jason whistles low. “Man’s out here forging rings like it’s Lord of the Rings, but hot.”
Dick smirks. “I told you. He’s an intense little poet when it comes to her.”
There are other gifts. A hair comb, made of dark wood and inlaid with jade. A carved pendant with lines from a pre-Islamic Arabic love poem, words so old they taste like desert wind and firelight.
He gives her a dagger once.
Not large. Not flashy.
But beautiful.
Etched down the spine, in Arabic script so fine it’s almost hidden, it reads:
“Whoever touches what is mine will bleed.”
She isn’t scared. Not of him.
She understands what it means—what he’s never been able to say without wrapping it in old language and older steel:
That he was raised by people who saw love as weakness. That he is fighting to unlearn that. That when he gives, it isn’t casual. It’s sacred.
They sit alone on the rooftop again.
Gotham sprawls below. The stars are faint. She’s wearing the anklet. The ring. A new necklace now—another gift, this one with a pressed green stone the color of his eyes, suspended above her collarbone like a vow.
“You’re mine,” he says softly, fingers brushing the pendant.
“Mm,” she murmurs. “Yours, huh?”
“I don’t mean that lightly,” he says. “I mean it the way temples mean prayer. The way altars mean blood.”
She smiles. “I know.”
“I would kill for you.”
“You have,” she says.
“I would die for you.”
Her hand finds his. “You don’t have to.”
Damian looks at her for a long moment. The kind of look that feels like burning incense and ancient gods and poetry that doesn’t rhyme.
Then he says, voice barely above a whisper:
“You are not mine like a thing to be owned. You are mine like breath is to lungs. Like fire is to a blade.”
She closes her eyes, heart thudding. “You’re ridiculous.”
“I’m yours too,” he says.
Tim finds the dagger a week later.
Jason reads the inscription and whistles. “This boy’s out here writing Arabic death vows.”
“Poetic menace,” Steph mutters. “I love that for her.”
Dick just grins, arms folded. “Told you. He doesn’t love. He consecrates.”
And maybe that’s what it is.
Not love like hearts and flowers and Hallmark cards.
But love like carved emeralds and sacred steel. Love like an altar. Like devotion. Like the whole world could burn—and he’d still reach through the smoke to clasp her wrist and whisper:
“rūḥī…”
i don't really what how i feel about this one .Taglist🏷️: @simpingmyassoff , @shootingstargirl2001 (if you want to be added,comment down below!)
