#mistressofmagic

Life is a mystery, after all -- frustratingly, wonderfully unfathomable -- and the House has always embodied that idea. Maybe that's why I've felt so at home with her. 

Zatanna wasn’t exactly Robbie’s favorite person to spend time with, but... when you had something to get to the bottom of, you didn’t often get to choose your partner. His relationship with Coulson’s team had begun under similar circumstances, and had been far more irritating than this. That was what he continued to tell himself, even as irritation burned through his chest. Zee was annoying, but at least she hadn’t tried to lock him in a damn containment pod or trapped him on a plane six hundred feet off the ground and refused to let him off. Silver linings, he guessed.

Still, any break in the case was a relief. Not just because Robbie wanted to get to the bottom of this bullshit, but because every step closer to answers meant another step closer to spending far, far less time with Zatanna Zatara. It gave him something to look forward to. And this step...

“Fuck off,” he growled in response to her comment. “Just... it makes sense when you think about it. Right? The Darkhold isn’t on Earth. I would know if it was, because I can feel it. I know what it feels like, and I don’t feel that. But I do feel something. Like... it’s muted. Smaller. The book’s not here... but maybe parts of it are.” He paused, exhaling a deep breath. “I mean... Books have pages, right?”

It wasn’t rare for Danny to show up at Shadowcrest at any given time, walking in when the door was open for him. It took him a long time to feel comfortable in New York again, to feel comfortable in his own skin, but now that he was? He wasn’t one to tiptoe. He walked into Zee’s house with confidence, certain that she wouldn’t see it as an intrusion even when it became clear that she wasn’t yet home. He’d been content to sit on the couch and wait, but...

He wasn’t very good at waiting. He got antsy, felt the need to get up and move around, to look at the things on the walls and the shelves. He wasn’t sure what kind of vase was sitting on the bookshelf, but his interest had been so solely focused on the brightly colored spine of the novel behind it that he’d hardly paid it any mind at all. At least, not until it fell off the shelf and shattered with a suspicious looking gust of purple smoke just in time for Zee to step into the room.

Danny froze where he stood, as if standing still enough might distract from the broken ceramic on the floor. When Zee spoke, he panicked. His eyes darted around the room for a moment before landing on the mummy standing nearby. “Hassan broke your vase,” he blurted instantly.

Things had been off for a while now. Dick had felt it, like TV static between them, like the pins and needles that made your foot go numb when you’d been sitting in one position for too long. He hadn’t wanted to admit it, hadn’t been willing to say it aloud, because that meant making it real. And he really, really hadn’t wanted it to be real. He and Bruce were arguing more than they used to, and Dick knew it was only a matter of time before things blew up. What he had with Zatanna was pins and needles and TV static, but it was better than white hot rage and angry frustration. So, he ignored the fact that something hadn’t been clicking for a while.

But there were two people here, and Zee seemed a lot less willing to shut things out.

He didn’t even know what the argument had been about in the beginning. It was a small thing, something tiny that spiraled out of control until they were both on their feet and his chest hurt from yelling and Zee was ---

Zee was telling him to leave. 

Panic replaced anger in his chest, and he quickly shook his head. “No, come on, I don’t --- Look, we should talk about this, we can, we can work it out. Right?” His heart was pounding and his palms were sweating and he thought he might have said anything if it meant she’d let him stay.

According to... pretty much everybody, Lantern jobs on Earth were supposed to be pretty easy. That was why the big wigs spent so much of their time in other parts of the galaxy and left the little blue planet to people like Simon, who wasn’t nearly as good at pretending to know what he was doing as he tried to be. He was a fumbling mess on his best days, and he was pretty sure it showed. 

This job? It was something a more experienced Lantern would’ve handled in, like, thirty seconds. But for Simon? It took him two hours and he was covered in feathers and goo when it was all over. There were plenty of places he could go in the city to get cleaned up, of course, and a few places he couldn’t. He wasn’t going home like this, not with Sira doubtlessly waiting up in the living room because, I need to make sure you’re not bleeding out when you walk through the door, you idiot. And he wasn’t going to Jess, either, both because seeing him like this probably wouldn’t help her performance anxiety and because she’d hold it over his head for, like, ever. The Corps really ought to have safehouses around the big cities. Simon made a note to bring it up at the next meeting as he steeled himself outside Zatanna’s door, sighing. She’d probably laugh at him, but she’d probably also know some kind of a spell to get this shit off, and he’d have to settle for that.

Zee looked pretty done the second she opened the door, and Simon quickly stuck his foot between the door and the frame to avoid being locked out in case she was feeling less than generous. (Would the whole foot in the door thing do anything about magic? Or would she just magic his foot off? He hoped it would just work as a preventative measure to keep her from trying to shut him out, but it sure seemed like a gamble.) “I haven’t even said anything yet,” he complained. “Look, can you just --- Can you give me a hand? I don’t know what this stuff is, but it’s starting to burn, and I’m way to pretty to have any kind of scarring.”