Chapter Text
“Bruce, there are so many books! Are you sure I can read them?” Medea turns to him, eyes wide in bated anticipation.
“Of course. I promised that you could read anything you’d like in here, and I mean it. It’s all yours.” Her eyes grow even wider if possible. Before he can do or say anything, she hugs him and disappears into one of the many aisles.
“Thanks, Dad!”
He can’t help but smile at that.
Dick is his eldest, which can’t be disputed. The first one he’d taken in. He holds a special place in his heart.
But Medea? She is his eldest daughter. The first child he could call his own. Words can’t describe how elated he was when she accepted his offer.
“Make me proud,” whispers Talia as she heads to Gotham. “Cross the line.”
Medea wonders what Talia would say at this. Perhaps she would be proud. After all, it is no easy feat to wrestle such a large chunk of Gotham’s underworld in the span of a few months.
Ever since her resurrection, she wonders if she is just another pawn in Talia’s bid for Bruce’s love. No matter how hard it’s treated like it’s for her benefit, Medea thinks she is only a present to Bruce. One dipped in the Lazarus pits, and prettily packaged in madness. She’s adorned in various skills too, of lethality.
Still, even if she is only a means to an end, Medea thinks it's nice to live in a fantasy sometimes. Even if it’s brief. She can pretend that somebody out in this bleak world is happy that she’s returned. That she’s not a mistake.
Shaking her head out of her thoughts, she glances at the time and realizes that there is only a little while until Bruce finds them. She glances at the bloodied clown distastefully. The crowbar thrown to the side as she waits for the final person to appear.
Iphigenia is tricked into coming to Aulis to meet her father, believing that her father is giving her hand in marriage to one of the greatest Greeks of all time, Achilles.
In this one, Medea isn’t tricked by anyone. If anything, she is the one laying the tricks in this second life of hers. She leaves clues, keeps Batman and his associates guessing who she really is. Is she the real Medea Todd, or just a very good pretender? She is so good at it that she even fools herself to think that he would kill for her.
They say that Iphigenia pleads with her father, on her knees, begging him to not let her be sacrificed. “Please father, you could not send me to my death, would you? I, who was the first to call you, father. Your eldest.”
Iphigenia was foolish, thinks Medea. Tears would do nothing. The correct thing is to force your father’s hand, to give him an ultimatum. Because this way, you can see your father’s true colours.
So she does so, using the very same man who took her away from her father.
“Catch,” she says coldly, tossing the firearm at Bruce.
He doesn’t. Instead, the gun clatters loudly onto the ground. “What are you trying to accomplish here, Hood? Whatever ploy this is, it’s not going to work.”
She unlatches her helmet and tosses it to the side. Tonight, she’s foregone the usual domino mask underneath the helmet. So her face is bare for him to see.
Bruce watches horrified. “Me-Medea? But your eyes––” he cuts himself off and he looks at her intently. “They put you in the pit?”
“Did you miss me, Father?” she spits out.
The clown cackles in delight. “Ooh-ho-ho, a family reunion. The prodigal daughter returns. Batsy, our child is really the best, is she not?”
Her eyes narrowed and she smacked the back of the clown’s head. “Shut it. And you’re not fit to be my parent. Much less gum on the bottom of my shoe.”
“Of course, dearest,” he quips in a sickly sweet voice.
Disgusting.
“Pick up the gun, B.” Medea pulls out another gun.
“No–” The protest dies and he complies when he sees the gun pointed at her own head. “Please, you don’t have to do this. It doesn’t–”
“It does,” she interrupts. Because he’s picked up the gun, she points it away from her head. He relaxes before instantly tensing when she points it at the clown’s head. “Pick a side, B. It’s me or him.”
“Please,” begs Bruce. “Medea. You can put it down, you don’t have to do this.”
“I do. Do you want to know why? Did you ever love me?”
“Please. More than ever, you were my daughter. I mourned your death, I blamed myself for it. I’m sorry, my darling. I really am, I should have been there earlier.”
A bitter laugh escapes her.
“Medea?”
"You don't understand, do you? I never blamed you for my death. I didn't blame you for being late."
"Then why? I don't understand."
A frown appears on her face. "Do you really not?" At his silence, she asks, "If I told you why, would you even care?"
"Yes."
Lies, hissed the pit in the back of her mind. Focusing back on the present, Medea gives him a mean smile. “Are you sure you don't know?"
"Explain."
"Why didn’t you kill him?” she asks, trembling in rage at how she needed to spell it out for Bruce. “Why on Earth is he still alive?”
A complicated look flickers on his face before it disappears into the caped crusader's normal expression. “I...I can’t. I tried, but I couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not that simple. If I...I kill one person, then I won’t be able to stop. It is a path that I would not be able to turn back from.”
“Even if he took me from you?”
“I–”
“He took me from you, Dad! I loved you, and he took me away from you. Because if our places had switched, I would have killed him with no hesitation! But you didn’t do anything, did you? You just threw him back into Arkham. While I was lying in a coffin, you were having weekly meet-ups with my murderer!”
“It doesn’t have to be like this, please. I promise you that I’ll make sure that he’ll never do anything to you again. Please, Medea. Please, my darling. I will do anything if you drop the gun.”
“Anything? Then kill him. I want him dead,” she snarls. I want to feel safe. I want to know that he will never hurt me again.
“I–I can’t, you know I can’t.” The moment that the words are out, he sees the flash of betrayal in her eyes before it disappears. If anything, Medea looks like her mythological namesake, a creature of wrath and vengeance.
“Well,” she says, voice with none of the emotion that she had displayed earlier. “I suppose that gun of yours can still come in handy. I give you to the count of three. You can stop me from killing him if you’d like.”
“One.”
He doesn’t move.
“Two.” She’s resigned herself to the fact. If he will not avenge her, then she will avenge herself. The safety is clicked off and her finger is on the trigger. “Thr–”
He reacts. The gun drops from his hand.
She turns to him at the sound.
Batarangs are thrown. Medea hisses in pain when she’s forced to drop the gun, then her eyes go wide when she feels something wet on her throat. Fingers to her throat, she finds them returning red when she removes them.
Laughter threatens to escape her.
Joker moves quickly, he picks up a detonator and sets off the timer for the explosives that she’d set up earlier. Then he tackles B. “Now, now, Batsy. You heard the girl. Let’s send her off with a bang, shall we? She deserves that for her wonderful–”
Medea glances at the timer. Seven seconds left. Parts of the building are coming down, bits of debris showering them in clouds of dust. A quick glance around shows that she's the only one left in the building.
She got his message loud and clear.
She wasn't worth his time.
Her name?
It doesn’t matter.
Why would it matter?
She could be Iphigenia or Medea, but it doesn’t change a thing.
The fates have decreed that she is to die because of her father.
And to die she shall.
Death is merely an old friend that she’s reacquainting with once more.
Why would she be scared?
Her last thought before she takes her final breath is acceptance. She is just another pawn in this.
For him to gain favourable winds to sail to start a war.
For him to further his twisted game with the clown.
I miss you, m–
Where is Clytemnestra, you might ask?
It doesn’t matter if it’s the myth or not, because Clytemnestra is always unable to prevent her from walking to her death. In this era, by the time she arrives, her Iphigenia is dead. Dead by his hand. Agamemnon hadn’t even bothered to return for their Iphigenia.
A blade to her throat.
A batarang to the neck.
Does the weapon truly matter?
Because the one behind everything is still the same. Her father.
Her agents were late; they worked quickly but not quick enough to save Medea. Talia takes a deep breath and approaches the table with the body. Her eyes closed at the sight of Medea; she could not stand it.
Medea was too quiet, too silent. Nothing like the girl in her memories.
If it weren’t for the ugly gash across her throat, Talia would have thought that she was sleeping. She looked so peaceful, so undisturbed from the nightmares of her first death.
I should have never let you go alone.
I...I wanted to tell you that you were more than a pawn to me. I have already known this in my heart for a long time, but did you?
She brushes the stray hairs away from Medea’s face. Rest, habibti.
This Clytemnestra is no less vicious, if not more. For her daughter’s death, she will paint the streets red. She will stop her youngest from ever meeting his father. Because if he could kill his beloved child, what would he do to one that he had never met till now?
Medea had always loved literature. From the classics to the more contemporary. But mythology was where she adored the knowledge. Always recounting to him stories that she read. Some of which he had read, others that he didn’t know but knew in passing.
During dinner, Bruce finds himself easily drawn into a debate of sorts about various characters in the Iliad. Especially their choices.
“Agamemnon is probably the worst,” she says matter-of-factly, “And that’s only the tip of the iceberg. He had his daughter sacrificed because someone said so. In Euripides’ play, he’s extremely problematic,” she tells him seriously.
“I don’t disagree that he wasn’t great, but I’m curious as to which parts made you hate him so much,” he jokes. “Of all the things, human sacrifice was where it crossed the line?”
She shakes her head. “But it was one of the worst things. A cheeky grin appears on her face, “You wouldn’t sacrifice me, right?”
“No, never,” says Bruce seriously. “You're my daughter; I wouldn’t hurt a hair on your head.”