(no subject)
It was all over. Completely and utterly over, and none of it had gone the right way.
None of it.
The day had started bad, that much had been clear from the beginning. And as it went on, it had gotten much... much worse. Dick couldn't even remember most of it. Quick and violent images in rapid succession, that's all his memory called up. He remembers Superboy trying to kill them all ( as if that was a difference from what he'd done before ). He remembers Luthor and Brainiac. He remembers telling Kory to blow Brainiac to smithereens.
He remembers her.
So beautiful, and now so twisted. And she... it hadn't been her fault. It wasn't Superboy's fault, it wasn't Indigo's fault, and maybe that was almost the worst part of it all. That they could both be driven to such horrible acts... without even meaning to lift a finger.
And Kon had lived, and Indy...
They'd all loved her, in their own way. Even Dick, who'd tried not to get attached, tried so damn hard to not make this personal. And maybe what she was to them... was some kind of curse. The loved one on a team would always die. First Donna. And now Indy, at the hands of the man who had loved her the most.
She'd asked him to. She'd asked Shift to, to make her human so she wouldn't have to endure any of it anymore. To give her what she'd always wanted the most.
And that? That what was worst of all.
Out of all the things from that day that he'd forgotten or repressed, the one thing he'd never forget was Shift's face as he cried and said the words 'I killed her.'
And it would haunt him for the rest of his life.
---
There was the rest of it, of course. There was Tim, who had been damaged by the one he trusted the most. There were the Titans, who'd had to learn the hard way that not even family could protect you from the world. There were the Outsiders, who he still cared so damn much about, despite his worst intentions otherwise.
Dick wanted to put it right. And of it, all of it. But he couldn't. All he could do is chase one foolhardy dream of taking down a mob boss, and hope that with that, at least, he could make up for all he had and hadn't done.
And maybe someday he'd learn how to do the rest.
---
In the meantime, life was... almost normal. There was the shadow of it all, of course. Roy was annoyed about his quitting the Outsiders, but Dick had never expected anything different. Nightmares were a common thing during the night now, just as it had been after Donna's death. He couldn't go sometimes even a a few minutes at a time without worrying about Tim.
Sometimes, he'd find himself following an irrepressable urge to stalk the streets of Star City in a hoodie and dirty jeans, and beat up a few muggers and burglars. And every day, Dick got an itch to be higher up in the air than he could be, to try to be higher than he ever had been before.
And, almost worst of all, no matter how hard he tried, the bar door would never open.
For one whole month...