A/N: Hey guys! Posting an A/N at the beginning for once, eh? I just wanted to say that the reason I haven't been posting lately is because I was working on this.

It's probably the thing I'm most proud of on my profile right now. I am insanely happy with how this turned out. Everything is already written, and I'm going to be posting chapters every three days until it finishes (three chapters total; 40 pages, 15.3K+ words). Please please drop me your thoughts! The amount of work I put into this to crank it out in a few days is awfully strange, considering I haven't done it for anything else before. Reviews would be insanely appreciated!

I love you all and I sincerely hope you enjoy!

Please just let me

Walk alone

My minds outgrown

All the foolish ways of making grays turn black

I'm still drowning

Let me leave

My breath is all I know

And even that won't last

-Drowning, Singularity

There were plenty of things that Dick had learned throughout the years. How to escape from a sewage system infested with crocodiles while wearing only a leotard, for example (and escaping naked, but that was an expected side effect). How to figure out if a person's neighbour is a super hero. Where to kick on a window while flipping through the air in order to break it. How to hack the government database from the local library. None of his lessons, however, taught Dick how to trust.

So, simply put, Dick didn't know how.

Which was probably why he didn't at all.

He cackled excitedly, adrenaline coursing like a drug through his veins as the flexible acrobat leaped from the roof, landed, and rolled onto a small stair platform in the alleyway beside it. He quickly crawled through the window. Moments later, up above and silhouetted by the moon, a thief with pointy ears screeched in frustration.

Really, Catwoman should have known better. Slade's apprentice would never join a shady partnership. Particularly not one with a sly criminal such as herself. Dick clutched the green glittering necklace in his fist, one of its unclipped ends poking out from his clasped fingers. For a well known lawbreaker of Gotham City, she was awfully silly. Sill-fully? Sillfully. Catwoman was plain sillful.

"Renegade, report," a voice crackled and rasped into Dick's ear. The mic was much too loud, and with a scowl resulted in having a low man's voice blasted into his ear, Dick promptly turned down the volume of his comm. link.

"All clear. Coming back now," he replied quietly. Dick squinted at the room he was in. The window he had slipped through, thankfully having been open, was positioned right behind a long couch. Inching around the couch, Dick could see a small living space accompanied also by a coffee table, a loveseat, a television, and a proudly glowing Christmas tree. Dick instinctively crouched behind the couch, resenting the light of the Christmas tree that easily cast his shadow.

Though, it really was a beautiful Noble. Dick's mask obscured his ability to see the lights in their full variety of colours and sharpness, but the range of ornaments on it made it feel almost infinitely loved. He could smell the tree, too. It was natural. It caused Dick's mood to rise, even - and then dramatically plummet as the feeling it gave was unwelcomed.

"Mama?" a soft girl called, and the small patter of feet on wooden flooring sprang to Dick's attention. "Mama? I can't sleep. Can I open the presents now?"

Dick took all of a second to remark that the girl was English. If her family was English and such a young child still had an accent as clear as that, they must have moved to Gotham fairly recently. What a strange thought. Who would ever want to move to Gotham?

"Julie?" a woman groggily questioned from within the hallway still behind the girl's shadow, which Dick could see from where he crouched. The girl spun around, bewildered.

"Mama?" she asked uncertainly.

"I'm here," the woman answered, her voice clearer than before. She must have stepped out into the hallway. "What's wrong?"

"I heard something."

"There's no one there," the mother insisted. The floorboards creaked as she walked forward, though Dick couldn't see her. According to the shadows, she picked up the little girl and was swaying as she stood to adjust her grip. "How about you sleep with me for tonight?"

"Can I open the presents?"

"No, you have to wait a few more days."

Was it really almost Christmas? Dick frowned as he tried to think about the day. Dick knew that Christmas was significant to him, though he was left feeling lost and confused every year when all the commercials announced the 25th and it didn't feel like anything but another day. Another, slightly busier day. Dick couldn't pinpoint what he expected, really.

He decided to be normal and walked out through the front door when the woman closed the bedroom door behind her. He was sure that the family wouldn't appreciate an assassin in their living room for the holidays.

A few days later, Dick found himself in front of a Christmas tree again. There was a German Advent calendar on the table beside the fireplace's empty stockings, and the chocolate in day 20 was popped out. With a glance at the grandfather clock on the wall, Dick noted that it was peeking into the morning hours, marking the date as December 21th. Soon, Dick's busier days would start as criminal masterminds with a yearning for dramatic theatrics would assign Slade and his apprentice targets for the holiday season.

Really, Dick wanted to just sit and be calm instead. He didn't care about the targets - they were easy. He would simply crouch, as always, in a roof or in an alley or in their kitchen while grabbing a few snacks. Then, he would lift his gun - and he would shoot.

Dick had learned that his hands and his eyes never missed. It was the push of a trigger or the snap of a neck and Dick would be done. Sometimes, he couldn't be bothered enough to even look at the victim's faces. They probably deserved to die, anyway. Why else would they be targeted? In the worst case scenario, they were horribly unfortunate and at least their unfortunate traits wouldn't be added to the gene pool.

None of Slade's haunts had Christmas trees, and Dick had only been passing by on his way back to the mercenary's haunt in Central when the gleaming of one tree caught his eye through the window. The tree was different, easily recognisable to Dick as a Nordmann. Nordmanns were native to the area surrounding Armenia, last Dick checked, and his last international mission had him marking the environment to hold himself on higher ground than his political opponent. Dick found that he liked the interesting change, not having seen that type of Christmas tree in a while, as he sat on the beige carpet with what could only be the family cat curled up beneath its branches.

Oh, and there was someone sleeping on the couch.

Dick wasn't all that concerned. He felt too monotone, too melancholy to care. He also knew that if the kid awoke to find the stranger sitting there, he could either knock him out, jump out the window, or kill him. Whichever was faster. Killing the kid might have been a benefit, too, because it would stump the police off of Dick's trail with the random, unpatterned hit-and-run. Actually, as Dick stared at the golden lettering of a large ornament, he was starting to seriously consider the idea.

The boy was curled up underneath a soft, blood red blanket, and there was an empty cup of hot chocolate on the coffee table. The TV was playing, but the volume was so low that it didn't disturb him. However, it was definitely disturbing Dick, and so the acrobat promptly turned the entire thing off.

The lump of blanket shifted at the loss of sound. Dick didn't even flinch. The boy was probably going to settle back down any second.

Except, he didn't.

"Uuugh," the groan emerged from the couch, and Dick turned with an amused expression to face the furniture. He was in no rush to leave. The scene, at least before the boy stirred, was comforting. The warm colours cast by the Christmas lights made the winter rain of Central feel far away. The figure rolled restlessly. "Gah," the boy said in a huff as he momentarily stilled, drawing out a long sigh. Dick watched from the foot of the couch, at the end where the boy's feet were, as his eyelashes fluttered to the ceiling. Sadly, he was at too odd of an angle to spot the boy's eye colour.

The blanket, which must have been suffocating, was tossed off the boy's face and kicked onto Dick as the kid swung his legs to touch the ground.

"Coold, coldcoldcold," the boy started muttering to himself as Dick sat absolutely still, a relatively natural position for him, and stayed camouflaged by the unexpected blanket. There was the patter of footsteps and Dick recognised the sound of the boy's feet tapping on tile. He had probably reached the kitchen.

Dick decided that he should have left. Except that he didn't want to.

Then again, Dick did a lot of things that he didn't want to.

But Slade wasn't there.

Only, Slade was still waiting for him to return.

Dick threw the blanket off of himself with a scowl.

"Holy shit!" was the startled exclamation as Dick turned in surprise to see the barefooted boy gaping at him from the head of the kitchen. Without the blanket restricting his appearance, Dick immediately took note of his loose gym shorts, green Nike t-shirt, and gravity-defying ginger hair above horrified green eyes. His freckles were scarlet red underneath the multi-coloured light of the tree.

Dick rose his eyebrows at the boy, smirking, only waiting for his next action. He was probably going to call the police. Dick had already noted where all the phones of the house were, and there was one within the boy's reach, just at the corner of the counter behind him. No rush. Dick would be long gone before they got there, anyway.

"What the hell are youuu doing in- my-y…," the boy accused nervously, a finger pointed at Dick's face. Dick smirked, but his eyes narrowed in confusion behind his mask. Didn't the kid ever learn to call the police if an infamous assassin watched him sleep? Apparently not.

Maybe Dick should have stopped mentally calling him a kid. If anything, Dick was the kid - the 'kid' had to be at least half a foot taller and a year older. But he really couldn't help it when, mentally, Dick was the older one. He had to be. He had seen more death than many people did in their lifetimes.

He had been victimised by death. He had been trained by death. He had caused death.

And everything that went in between.

Dick barely bit back a snarky comment. The atmosphere was tense, and like with all tense atmospheres, Dick couldn't help but want to make it into a faux light-hearted one. A smirk, an expression, a witty comment, a sadistic pun. Thick tension was certainly fun to weave. But he held back because he had decided not to needlessly kill the boy as he normally did as a punctuation mark for his comments.

Dick really didn't like blood, if he was honest. He liked dead bodies even less. But it was his job, and jobs required practice.

The boy squinted. "Are you… you're Renegade…?" he trailed off, then paused. "No, you're not. Duh, if you were Renegade, I'd be dead." And just like that, the kid relaxed, walked straight up to Dick, and plopped back onto the couch with a water bottle.

It took everything Dick had not to gape. Even if Dick wasn't Renegade, he was a stranger in the kid's house.

If 'stranger danger' no longer existed, Dick decided that he was definitely behind times. "So, what's your name?" the kid asked casually, waving his water bottle as if it were a glass of wine before he took a large gulp. "I'm Wally, but you probably already knew that. Who are you? Person from school? One of my parents' friends' kid sleeping over without me knowing? Nice get-up, btw."

Renegade almost struggled to remain in his straight-backed posture, his head barely turned to regard Wally. "Renegade," he deadpanned.

"Riiight," Wally snorted, taking another large gulp. Dick didn't doubt that the gulps were only to try and calm him down, though. Wally really couldn't be stupid enough to believe in any of the excuses that he was spouting. "Nah, news said that Renny-Benny was somewhere in Gotham. Scary lil' city, that thing. Crazy clowns running around, weird plant ladies, politicians with faces half burned off, the likes. It's fitting."

Dick would have choked if he had anything in his mouth. The hell was Renny-Benny supposed to mean? Not even five minutes. Not even five minutes and Dick had received a pet name.

"I mean, sure, he's got all his super high-tech and stuff that can hack into the CSI. It's probably illegal in some countries. It's probably not even released yet. Wow, Renegade must have some super wicked tech, actually. Imagine Deathstroke. Hahahaha, bet it's enough tech to get from Gotham to Central in under an hour. Half an hour. Undetected, too. Ninjas are pretty popular for that trait. You know, Renegade could probably be in Central right now and nobody would know. Oh my god, Renegade could be in - you're probably - I don't - you - yup, I'm rambling to a famous assassin right now. What a story to tell after Christmas break. 'Hey, Wall-man, what'd you get for Christmas?' 'Oh, hello fellow classmate! I only got a really freaking scary assassin sitting in my living room watching me sleep. Just what I wanted, y'know? Right there on my bucket list.'"

Then, before Renegade could open his mouth: "OhmygooodI'mgoingtodiearen'tI? I swear to Virgin Mary that Macy's ripped me off, I didn't steal! I'm just that nerd that sits in class and gets swirlies during lunch! Promise! Pleasedon'tkillmeI'msoyoungsoyoungsoyoungIdidn'tevengettogobungiejumping-"

"Why aren't you running?" Dick asked, successfully interrupting Wally's year long babble. Not expecting to be cut off short, Wally momentarily faltered, attempting to grip back onto his train of thought.

"WellIbeteveryoneelseyou'vekilledrantoobutyougotthemanyway," Wally rambled. It took Dick a second to decipher the language, but he eventually got it.

"That's true," he agreed, but said nothing more.

Wally stared. "I-uh," he stammered awkwardly. "I'm not dead."

"I see that," Dick smirked.

"Why am I not dead?"

"Do you want to be dead?"

"No!" Wally exclaimed in horror, throwing up his hands and successfully drenching his shoulder with the open bottle. He didn't seem to care about his wet clothes, though, and only stared at Dick. "I-I just, why…? Don't you… k-kill everyone?"

That hit Dick harder than he had anticipated. Hard enough that it felt the breath had decided to up and flee from his lungs and the blood pounded in his skull.

"I have no reason to kill you," Dick scowled. "But now you're just asking for it."

At least it shut the kid up.

They sat in silence and Dick could practically hear Wally about to burst with questions, but he couldn't care less about relieving the kid's curiousity. He only stared at the way the lights blinked off a shiny ornament framed in cheap gold sparkles. He could only take in the sight of the Christmas tree as it was, holding his breath ever so often only to breathe the scent of the tree in again so that he wouldn't get too used to it. The room was warm, and it became even warmer when, for some reason or another, Wally got up and flicked on the switch for the gas fireplace. The golden glow flushed against Dick's face, contrasting against the darkness still hiding the rest of his frame. His legs were bundled unintentionally by the fluffy red blanket from earlier.

Dick should have been more concerned about Wally's presence. The boy was a threat. Everyone was a threat. But wow, Dick couldn't just bring himself tocare. Besides, by the absent sound of steps, Wally was still swaying uncertainly beside the fireplace switch. It must have been a good half hour before the silence was broken.

"Uh, you...like it…?" Wally croaked nervously, and Dick's eyes flickered to look at him behind the domino mask. He offered no response. Wally took in a shaky breath and, with more pseudo confidence blossoming in his voice, continued. "I can't really decide if Halloween or Christmas is my favourite holiday. I mean, Christmas is all about family and love and joy, and Halloween is where no one knows who you are and you can eat whatever you want. Hahaha," he chuckled nervously.

"Hiding behind a mask isn't as fun as you think it is," Dick spoke lowly, his mask fixated on the fire.

What was he doing? Why was the atmosphere, the decorations, the silly lights putting him in such a weird mood? He needed to get out. He had already done his night's job, assigned just that morning. Deathstroke, no doubt, had done his long ago as well. Why was he staying, only to speak so personally to a strange boy?

Wally said nothing for a moment. "So, I take it that you prefer Christmas?"

"I don't celebrate Christmas," Dick deadpanned.

"Ahh, Jewish, then? Muslim? Er, Pagan?"

Dick didn't answer. He didn't celebrate holidays because Slade didn't celebrate holidays. He didn't really know what he was, anyway. Probably Atheist. If there was a God, why would Dick be killing all of his creations? What purpose did that serve? Wasn't there a 'you can't kill your friendly neighbourhood humans' passage somewhere in the Bible?

"Classified information? Right," Wally coughed.

There was silence again for a while. If he hadn't been wearing a mask, Dick imagined that his eyes would have dried out long ago from the rising heat of the fire.

"Why do you kill?" Dick was alarmed to discover that Wally was on the other end of the couch. He hadn't taken note of the redhead's movement from the fireplace to the couch. He took in a sharp breath and stood straighter. Maybe it was exhaustion. He was getting off his game. In fact, he was so concerned about having been caught off guard that he failed to register the question until a good minute had passed.

And Dick didn't know.

"Is that...classified, too? Or do you just not want to answer?" Wally continued. Dick already expected him to begin babbling to fill the silence before Wally opened his mouth again. "I-I mean I see on the news all the time - yo-you don't really hide it, you know? Ahhahaha… Politician this, politician that, sad-guy-who-hit-on-the-boss's-daughter here, mafia target there. People are saying you work with some guy with the same symbol. Famous assassin? I forgot his name, though. Really only pay attention to you. Since, you know, you're the one close by. Uhhh….really close by. Just...why?"

The air drooped heavily in sadness. Dick's spine prickled at such an openly displayed feeling. Wally's shoulders slumped. "Why?" the redhead whispered. "They don't deserve to die. No one does. Not evenyou. Why won't you just...stop killing? Stop killing everyone." When Dick finally decided to physically acknowledge Wally, turning his head to look him mask-to-eye, the kid bit his lip. "Please?"

"You're bold," Dick responded. "Bold and too comfortable asking me for things."

"You haven't hurt me yet," Wally croaked. "Do you only kill people that you get ordered to kill? A mercenary? Who are you ordered by - that mystery partner of yours?"

Dick didn't respond, but it wasn't because he didn't want to. Wally understood when the silence was so silent that the crackling of the communicator in his ear, with its volume once again too high (Dick had the feeling that Slade did that on purpose, probably to make sure to snap his apprentice out of whatever trance he was usually in), drifted into the air.

"Renegade, report," the husky voice demanded. "Where are you?"

Dick slowly, painstakingly slowly, reached a finger up to press into the small microphone. "In the immediate area. Returning shortly."

"ETA: five minutes. Later and a search will be sent."

"Understood."

Wally stared at Dick, and when Dick stared blankly back, it seemed that realisation dawned on Wally's face. He began to shake, his wrist causing the coffee table to vibrate ever so slightly. "Now you're going to kill me," Wally whispered. "Because I heard something I shouldn't have. You have people that you work-"

"What did you hear?" Dick interrupted, and he couldn't believe himself. "I still have no reason to kill you- unless you heard something."

Wally continued to stare for another good minute. "Uh- nothing. I didn't hear… anything?"

Dick nodded. Then, he stood, watching as Wally pathetically flopped himself onto the back cushions of the couch to get as far away from Dick as possible. No, Renegade. Wally was trying to get away from Renegade, not Dick. Because Renegade was the murderer, not Dick. Dick was the weak one.

He was Renegade.

Without another word, he slid the window open and slipped out. When Wally ran to watch him off, the redhead found that there was no one outside.