#!itg

                                                                         alphamxther

> All of the final, necessary adjustments had been made. The shield you'd cast was holding up perfectly despite the rain pouring in from the large missing chunks of glass and metal that once domed the Botanical Gardens your date was set inside. 

The gardens themselves had been ravaged by years of disuse and the plants had grown quite large, though that may just be remnants of the previous upset that had happened here some years prior. The place was abandoned, which was all you needed; abandoned and donned with larger-than-life flowers and flora that only the twisted green thumb of a certain Gotham villain could conjure. Hopefully, you thought, it would be a fine enough setting for a first impression.

The area you'd set up in had once been an observation floor but much of the area was covered in dense overgrowth, blocking off hallways and exits for the most part. The stillness and serenity of the entire building was something you weren't used to. The minimal empathic back-chatter you got from the lower lifeforms flying and skittering about were nothing compared to the onslaught of human spikes of empathy you were used to sifting through. It was a nice change. It let you relax some as you prepared for what was, essentially, your first 'date'. Not that you hadn't had any prior, they'd just never been so formally called such. Nothing acknowledged as being something purely in the vein of 'romantic'.

Your nervous hands straightened out your plate for the fifth or sixth time in the past several minutes. The table was much nicer than the surrounding bits of dilapidated and weather-worn furniture that was half-consumed by the surrounding plant life. You'd brought it from Azarath, not having a spare table in your own home. It was a thick, naturally ebony wood inscribed with intricate overlapping patterns. You'd laid a dark-red tablecloth over the top and had set up both of your dining arrangements on either side, with the bottle of red wine and the pasta resting in the center along with an arrangement of candles you'd tried very hard to get to levitate on their own. 

Not being able to use your own empathic umbrakinesis to assist was frustrating, but the runes suspending the wax in the air were a fine enough substitute.

Raising from the table, your digits find themselves raking through the tightness of your pulled-back hair, trailing back to the knot of your ponytail and fidgeting the elastic tighter against your scalp. The sharpness of your teeth bit at the inside of your lower lip, hands moving from hair to dress and smoothing out the jet-black material against your stomach. It was a simple cut, squared off with exposed shoulders, just something you'd had in your wardrobe. It was fancier than your undersuit, at least; though you still featured the focusing gemstones. Those weren't aesthetic, they were necessary. Now, more than ever. Especially with your nerves eating you up inside.