Your god comes and he is ordinary and terrible.
Leila Chatti, PORTRAIT OF THE ILLNESS AS NIGHTMARE

✟

Our father who art in Heaven. Our father who art buried in the yard. Someone is digging your grave right now.
Richard Siken, SNOW AND DIRTY RAIN

SUFFERING FEELS RELIGIOUS
IF YOU DO IT RIGHT.

RED HOOD & NEMESIS: 𝕮𝖗𝖚𝖘𝖍
by BAYPORTS

          SIERRA REVA is no saint. Better known as the vigilante Nemesis, East End's violent protector, Sierra Reva is barely a saviour. Preaching "justice" through violence, she spends her days bloodied, bruised, brutalised—and bloodying, bruising, brutalising others. Made for killing, she's got a body in the perfect shape for death and hands built for breaking things, whether it's someone's bones or someone's heart. There's nothing Sierra is better at, for combat and its consequences have been the one constant she's been able to count on for all nineteen years of her sorry, bloodstained existence.

          Not her friends. Not whatever the fuck constitutes her family. Not even herself.

          But that's the type of harsh, uncomfortable truth you keep behind closed doors—or, in Sierra's case, behind a mask. Especially now. Especially in Gotham. It's concerning, sure, a bit unsettling, but for Sierra, it's just life, and it's been this way for the past six years—ever since she fled the League of Assassins, ever since she met Bruce Wayne, ever since she befriended his protégé, Jason Todd.

         Jason Todd... no, let's save that for later.

         Sierra is all about redemption, and she will find it wherever she can: self-destructively, in the streets of Gotham, in a stranger's bed, or selfishly, in the confessional of the church on Coventry and Sixth. Ask the Lord our God and he will answer, they say, and so, Sierra asks.

         How many throats must she slit to save her city? How many prayers must she pray to save herself?

          This is the question that Sierra is always asking, whenever she feels another life ebb away at the ends of her fingertips, whenever she feels the weight of the cross around her neck. Whenever she remembers all the hours she's spent on her knees begging for forgiveness, even though she knows for a fact that this "faith" of hers can never be more than a falsehood, a facade. How could it, when she knows firsthand how those resurrected are not always prophets? How could it, when it's the son of Gotham that's come back from the dead, and not the son of God?

          How could it, when she herself has lived a hundred lives—and died just as many deaths?

          Sierra knows death. And she knows undying. Guided by Catwoman, Sierra protects the women and children of East End, the vulnerable and the weak, the ones who live their lives on the streets at the mercy of men. Little girls like Selina, like her sister, like Sierra; or, who they were before the world swallowed them whole and spat them right back out. When someone appears to have intimate knowledge of Sierra's alter ego, the girl—justifiably—panics. Not just because her secret admirer is some pretentious asshole calling himself the Heretic, not just because he seeks to unleash a biblical reckoning on those he believes deserve it, not just because this psycho's favourite channel of communication is a corpse.

          It's because the Heretic—the righteous cunt—is not some small-time criminal. No, he's not even a costumed, clown-shoed megalomaniac calling himself a supervillain.

          What he is, is just like Sierra. Dead. Undying.

          Unkillable. (Alarmingly.)

          Fuck that guy, though, right? As far as Sierra's concerned, the only person who's allowed to fuck up her life, to upset that not-so-delicate balance she's spent so many years trying to maintain, is herself. Besides, with Jason Todd returning to her life and life in general, she's got more than some religious zealot to bury.

          Like her past, for example. Her regret.

          Sierra Reva is no saint. But with graves filling up while the second Robin's sits decidedly empty, she might finally have a reason to be.

𝕺𝖚𝖗  𝕷𝖆𝖉𝖞  𝖔𝖋  𝕰𝖆𝖘𝖙  𝕰𝖓𝖉 . . .

Sierra Rev'a, Işık, Al Ghul, Head,
🐈‍⬛ 𝕹EMESIS / NINE LIVES / عذراء

was it the love of God that struck you down /
or the more compelling love of men?

Levi Finch,

if i love you / is that a fact or a weapon?

Eli Bendix,
𝕿HE 𝕻ROPHET / ???

there is a hollowing-out hunger
inside me / i could eat God.

Jason Todd,
𝕽ED 𝕳OOD

the word "father" rotted in my mouth.

✟

Roman Sionis  /  BLACK MASK
Selina Kyle  /  CATWOMAN
Bruce Wayne  /  BATMAN
Barbara Gordon  /  ORACLE
Tim Drake  /  ROBIN
Ash Thornton  /  DIEBACK
Talia Al Ghul, Head
Dick Grayson / NIGHTWING
Slade Wilson / DEATHSTROKE

CONTENT / TRIGGER WARNINGS

heavy violence, gore, death, body horror, child abuse, smoking, torture, sex, portrayals of sex work, PTSD, negative stigmas towards mental illness, negative stigmas towards christianity, violent religious imagery, SA (no written descriptions), mentions of child SA, suicidal ideation, references to suicide, thoughts of / references to self-harm.

‼️ please prioritise yourself and your mental wellbeing.

          𝖎. welcome back to CRUSH for the umpteenth time, guys. this version will stick ✍️ i promise. fundamentally the story is still the same, still relatively self-contained; it follows sierra and eventually jason as they track the serial killer known as the heretic, and along the way super awkwardly reconnect and rekindle their friendship from childhood.

          𝖎𝖎. CRUSH is still not an explicitly-romantic story. i mean, it is in the way that close friendships can be romantic and intimate, which is very much the case here, but like... it's still going to be very drawn out. sierra's primary love interest, for part one at least, is the lovely levi finch. so a lot of the first part of this book will focus on her relationship with him, and how that relationship defines the way she interacts with others (particularly other men.) as before, sierra's attitudes towards men and male validation are pretty questionable and at times very depressing. we'll explore it as we go.

          𝖎𝖎𝖎. this version of CRUSH also expands the world a little bit. previously it was written with a pretty narrow lens, following only sierra's investigation into the heretic's murders. i'm choosing now to place a bigger emphasis on her relationship with selina kyle / catwoman. together, selina and sierra protect east end, which is home to many vulnerable gothamites. it is also home to many sex workers and as a result is the target of a disproportionate amount of violent crime. a lot of this crime is perpetrated by roman sionis / black mask, who will serve as a secondary antagonist (or "looming villain") to sierra through the story. for the most part, sierra is too consumed by the heretic to properly acknowledge black mask as a threat.

          𝖎𝖛. sierra's past plays heavily into her hatred of black mask. this hatred is furthered by selina's, whose sister he abused, SA'd and drove insane. though sierra's anger is more than founded, in the years between jason's death (when she fought crime as nine lives) and now (under the moniker nemesis) she has become more and more violent, to the point that her priority is punishing the guilty as opposed to saving the innocent.

          𝖛. by the end of CRUSH, she will begin moving away from her violent crimefighting endeavours and towards facilitating rehabilitation and shelter for the people she seeks to protect.

          𝖛𝖎. babygirl does a lot of fucked up shit in this story. i'm pardoning her ahead of time 🙏🙏 i would like to think sierra is a likeable character, and the person she grows into (nemesis, sanctus sierra, our lady of east end et cetera...) is admirable. but in this story she will do some pretty fucked up shit. not even violence-wise, as i feel from a fictional lens a lot of it is pretty justifiable since she's mostly out here killing sex offenders and serial killers. no, she's just going to be an awful, selfish person. regardless, i need her.

          𝖛𝖎𝖎. her backstory has been altered slightly, too; instead of simply witnessing her mother figure (well, one of them) talia al ghul be healed / resurrected by the lazarus pit, and understanding that jason was also resurrected by the pit, sierra has had multiple deaths and resurrections via the pit, too. present day, she still retains some of the regenerative abilities because of the sheer amount of times she was put in the pit, and can resurrect herself after dying. we will have to suspend our disbelief for this one.

          𝖛𝖎𝖎𝖎. i made this change partly to align her more strongly with the heretic, and also to help justify her later, post-CRUSH role as a suicide squad / taskforce x team leader. her violent tendencies and willingness to fight makes more sense when she knows she can take a beating. she'd take it anyway, but still. this also really drives home her hypocrisy wherein she presents herself as devoutly religious even though her lived experience directly contradicts with her beliefs.

          𝖎𝖝. jason will still be doing fuck-all for the first part of the story. as far as his timeline goes, at the beginning of CRUSH he has been operating in gotham as red hood for some time, but not much longer than a year. he spent most of his lost days time with talia in the league of assassins. rhato has not happened yet.

          𝖝. !!!!! once more with feeling!!!!! this is, more than anything else, an origin story for my favourite oc! not really a batfamily fic! please keep this in mind as you read!

I AM SOMEWHERE IN THIS DAMNED
WORLD KILLING PEOPLE FOR YOU.

© 2020 — 2024 BAYPORTS