Damian's shoulders are squared, chin high, eyes forward. His tunic (red and gold, of course, over black) is pressed neatly, the lines falling perfectly as he folds his hands at the small of his back like he's been taught. The torch light catches in the black-red of his hair, trimmed neatly but not too short.

It's hard for Sara to believe he's the same eight-year-old boy, who schooled her in Mortal Kombat three nights ago on an island called Paradise.

Then again, in her ceremonial League finery, so many eyes upon her, Sara is probably not the Habibti he remembers either, ratty Rockets sweatshirt and hair tied loosely on top of her head.

It's the nature of the dual lives they lead, and Damian plays his Nanda Parbat role eerily well. Here, he is old enough to call her Taer al-Asfer, or the reverent Iradat al Ghul. He is the Prince, the Heir's heir, the Grandson of the Demon.

But he catches her eye, in a brief moment, and his dark blue eyes twinkle with mischief, the bright light that marks him as her D. Nyssa, Heir to the Demon, she of twice or more experience as either of them, stands between and slightly in front of them. Imperceptibly to all but her victims, she elbows each of them in turn. Sara can almost hear Damian's squawk of protest before he stifles it.

Damian and Sara return their attention forward, where Ra's al Ghul speeches and new recruits cower.

In the quiet candle-lit comfort of Nyssa and Sara's rooms, Damian becomes himself again. He pulls the dress tunic up over his head and tousles his unruly hair. Against his bare, concave chest, a golden canary dangles from its chain. One sloppy grin and his transformation is complete.

He has his own quarters next door now, but he only sleeps in them, and even then, only when Sar'ab or another member of the Red and Gold is there to keep watch.

"What do you think of the latest batch of recruits, D?"

Damian shrugs into a soft cotton t-shirt, plain red rather than Rockets.

"They're alright. Where's Khala?"

"Still meeting with your grandfather."

Sara had been surprised Ra's hadn't insisted on Damian staying this time. He's been slowly increasing Damian's involvement, encouraging Nyssa and Sara to discuss their missions with him.

Damian accepts her answer and crouches to scoop Rocket into his arms.

"I guess I'll meditate," Damian says, heading to a softly-appointed, extra-heavily candled corner set up for Sara's least favorite League practice.

"Sure, little man."

He folds himself into position, Rocket in his lap.

Sara changes into her own, more casual clothes, folding her more ceremonial gear and grabbing Damian's to do the same. The extra discipline is natural in this setting. Nanda Parbat straightens all of their spines, heightens all of their senses. Still, with Nyssa in council and Damian meditating (probably to avoid his geometry work), Sara can steal herself a nap.

"This is unfair," Sara mock-complains in Japanese. (They're working on Damian's, and Sara's could use a little work, too.) "You stuck me with Sar'ab." She leaps over Damian's bo staff.

"Excuse you," Sar'ab objects, catching the dull blade of Nyssa's sword on his and pushing.

"You're not excused until you start pulling your weight." She nods to him and ducks under his sword blow at Damian as she almost takes out Nyssa's knees with her own bo.

They continue to spar, two on two, as they've done countless times, a familiar rhythm. Suddenly, Nyssa turns on Damian, knocking him on his back in an instant. Sara feels a familiar pang, brief as a flutter, of worry, but Damian easily recovers, standing at parade rest as Nyssa instructs:

"You never know when the numbers may turn in a battle. Further, even if I were loyal, you should have awareness of your compatriots at all times."

"Yes, Khala."

"Very well. A brief respite. You may change your weapon if you wish."

Damian carefully re-racks his bo in favor of a bow.

"Traitor," Sara teases in English as she slings an arm over his narrow shoulders and looks down on him fondly.

Damian chugs from the water bottle and then tosses it to Sara, who catches, drinks, and tosses it to Nyssa while Damian's still wiping his mouth on his shoulder. It's an old, easy habit.

"Very well," Nyssa continues in Japanese. "Let's-"

Sara feels the rumble before she hears it. Then there's the familiar snap and crash.

Earthquake.

Nanda Parbat is ancient and solid. Sara feels no fear at the tremor, just curiosity.

"Been awhile since I felt one of those," Sara notes.

"Reminds me of my childhood," Sar'ab grins.

They resume their sparring, until someone pushes into the training room, calling for the Heir. Umm Saleem is close at the messenger's heels, which immediately gets everyone's attention.

"The village," the messenger reports. "The tremor triggered a landslide. The village will require our aid."

There are several villages within a few days' walk of Nanda Parbat, but there's only one that's "the village", a two hour hike into the valley, and the birthplace of many of Nanda Parbat's non-assassin staff, including Umm Saleem.

The village accordingly enjoys a greater protection than the rest, a symbiosis with the great fortress above them.

They of course jump into action immediately, racking their training weapons and preparing for the trek down the mountain.

"I want to come," Damian is insisting, following close at their heels.

"No," Nyssa insists, dressed in full battle gear, as Sara is beside her. Damian is likewise dressed for battle, though if Nyssa gets her way (and she usually does), he won't be going anywhere.

"Please, Khala."

"No. Do not question me again."

"Jeddy!"

Ra's has met them in the hallway, dressed for the excursion.

"May I please come?" Damian asks, as formally as possible, head bowed deferentially. Nyssa cuts her eyes to him, displeased.

Ra's nods. "Keep up. Stay close to Khala and Taer al-Asfer. Do not get in the way. Be helpful, or invisible."

"Yes, Jeddy. Thank you, Jeddy."

Damian slides next to Sara, keeping her between himself and Nyssa.

"You're in so much trouble," she warns him in a low voice. The maternal part of her is annoyed and nervous. But there's another part of her (the part Laurel calls the "little shit" part) that is a little proud and pretty amused.

"Shh, Taer al-Asfer. I'm being invisible," Damian murmurs back, eyes dancing.

Sara motions with her chin for him to fall back behind them.

He nods obediently, lowers his eyes again, and takes his place two steps behind. Sar'ab has fallen back, too, to bring up the rear of their quartet and keep an extra eye on Damian.

A shelf of the mountain fell, tumbled down, and slid through six houses that held, between them, twenty members of one family, and seven of another. Rogue boulders knocked down fences, let livestock run amok, cracked open a basin holding one home's entire water supply.

Chickens can be tracked down, though. Water replenished, crops supplemented, fences rebuilt.

Twenty-seven lives, however, are irreplaceable, and likely wiped out forever. The villagers are still picking through the rubble, and there could be survivors. The League medics set up triage and see to the more minor, incidental damage while the rest of the great Ra's al Ghul's soldiers spell the exhausted residents who have been picking through the broken remains of six homes for over two hours in the maybe vain hope that there is even a single survivor among them.

Sara pulls up her veil, not to conceal her identity but to shield her lungs from the dust still thick in the air. She turns back to Damian, her little shadow since they left the fortress, because Nyssa is too angry to look at him. She motions for him to do the same with his veil and he obeys.

Ra's does not even need to give orders. The assassins leap into the task of possibly saving lives as readily as they snuff lives out.

Sara and Damian come upon an older man caked with dust and blood. She takes his shoulder and manages some embarrassingly poor phrases of greeting and assistance in the village's Pashto dialect. She motions to his bleeding leg, and he tries to wave her off.

She's at a loss in the dialect and says, in Arabic instead:

"We'll take it from here."

"Um," Damian speaks up, clearing his throat and pausing. Then he says something in Pashto that the man understands. Of course Damian, who spends a significant portion of his days in Marwa's kitchens on Paradise Island and was raised at Umm Saleem's knee, is better at this than Sara is, which Sara has to admit is a pretty embarrassing failing on her part.

Sara removes her hand from the man's shoulder and turns to Damian, grabbing both of his shoulders.

"Take him to triage," she orders firmly. "Stay with him until a medic sees to him, and then come straight back here."

"Yes, Taer al-Asfer," he says obediently. Over his veil, his dark blue eyes are wide with the horror around them, and her heart aches a little, but he's put on his serious face, his training face. She pulls him into a brief, terribly informal hug.

"Be safe," she says more softly.

"Yes, Habibti," he answers into her middle. He nuzzles her ribs the tiniest bit and then pulls away, shoulders straight and speaking a faltering Pashto to the man, offering his arm to help him to the medics just thirty or forty paces off.

She turns her attention to what's left of the house in front of her. There's not much, at all. There's a reason only the one, injured man was working on this one. The rest have something resembling structure to them, but this one is just a pile of stone and wood. Still, there's always the slim hope of survivors.

She takes a few steps towards the rubble and freezes. She just heard…

There it is again.

You could debate (and Sara has debated) whether she is technically a mom, but there is no arguing that she has mom instincts. You don't raise a kid from a few weeks old without being particularly attuned to-

Yep, that's a baby's cry.

From the dead center of the debris.

Sara rushes towards it, stupidly, and within a few yards, the unstable remnants of the house have given away. She slides and falls, painfully, until she abruptly meets the ground, pain radiating from her tailbone. She doesn't seem to be seriously injured, though, and her inadvertent cave-in has opened up the lower level of the wreckage, bringing in a little more light, once the dust begins to settle. Sara picks herself up, brushing herself off and taking a few tentative steps forward.

When the air clears a little more, she finds herself face to face, a handful of paces away, with a dirty but, at least from here unharmed, toddler.

The little girl, probably, shrinks away when they make eye contact. It's hard to tell, but judging by the most recent pictures she received of little Miss Dinah Estela Ramon-Lance, Sara would put the girl just a little older than her niece, who is two and a half.

Sara pulls down her hood and veil, trying to look less intimidating. She holds out her hands.

"Hello," Sara says in the girl's Pashto. She knows that at least.

The girl nods to acknowledge the greeting. Dark hair and grey-green eyes, she's wedged under what's left of a bookcase, back against half of a wall. Sara sees a pair of legs then, in her periphery vision, and she realizes with a jolt that they're probably no longer attached to the woman's torso partially buried by broken beams. She stifles a sob. From the way the body lies, this young woman was reaching towards the toddler. Her mother?
Sara sets that aside for now, because she can't, and takes another step towards the toddler. She hadn't been expecting a toddler, the cry had sounded…

The wail, an infant's wail, goes up again. The toddler starts singing softly and shifts enough to reveal a bundle of blankets with tiny feet kicking out the end of it. The little girl is patting the baby and murmuring something that makes the baby quiet again.

Sara's heart catches in her throat. She wants nothing more than to rush to them and gather them up. But it might spook the toddler, and the lean-to created by the wall and the bookcase may have spared these two's lives, but Sara does not trust it to stay in its precarious situation. She must go slowly.

"It's going to be okay," Sara says, mixing Arabic in when she is at a loss for the Pashto words. "Just stay right there. I'm going to take care of you."

The little one's stares at her intently, no longer shrinking away. The baby stays quiet.

"Habibti!"

Damian's voice cracks over the eery silence, as does the sound of his feet running on uneven ground. Above her, the rubble creaks and rumbles.

"Damian, stop!" she yells.

He does.

"Back up."

He does.

"I'm okay. Go get Khala, now. Tell her we have survivors. Kids. Babies."

tbc