I | Darkside
Believe it, I see it
I know that you can feel it
No Secrets worth keeping
So fool me like I'm dreaming
Take me through the night
Fall into the dark side
We don't need the light
We'll live on the dark side
I see it, let's feel it
While we're still young and fearless
Let go of the light
Fall into the dark side
- Darkside by Alan Walker featuring Tomine Harket and Au/Ra
The bustling night life of Bludhaven rings through the walls of Richard Grayson's apartment as the woman in his bed stares at the ceiling, unable to sleep in the slightest without him present. Her hand raises to run through her icey-blue hair, and she throws the covers off of the mattress and steps to the kitchen to take a couple of shots to see if that would help her find her rest.
The silence in the apartment itself is nearly ear-shattering as the only noise made is coming from her light steps to the cabinets.
She grabs a bottle of whiskey, but decides against getting a glass, instead drinking straight from the bottle. Her smooth lips curl over her teeth bitterly at the burning sensation in her throat from the heavy amount of alcohol, but that doesn't stop her from taking another swig of the amber liquid.
"Am I gonna have to put another padlock on the liquor cabinet again?" Richard's voice carries from the doorway of his bedroom as he eyes her. He notices how her long, wavy hair falls down her back, giving stark contrast in comparison to her golden skin. She just ignores him, taking another swallow which causes him to walk to her, plucking the bottle from her hands so he can put it up.
He's still in his Nightwing suit, the form-fitting fabric not leaving much to imagine. Any other woman would be fawning over him, looking for any excuse to get him in to bed, but even though she appreciates his beauty she can't bring herself to imagine him that way.
"Sorry," She mumbles as he puts the lid back on the whiskey and puts it back under the cabinet.
"Why aren't you asleep? Don't you have work tomorrow?" He asks, looking down at her and she rolls her pale-blue eyes.
"I'll be up in time." She argues.
"That's what you said last time and you were late." He points out.
"Don't you have work in the morning, detective?" She questions, pushing past him to get back to the bed.
"The difference in you and I when it comes to work, I can stay up all night and still be at work on time. You, however, will probably be late to your own funeral." He smarts off, following her in to his room. She crawls to her side of the bed, getting herself under the covers as he grabs a t-shirt and flannel pajama pants from one of his drawers.
"I'm not dead." She argues.
"Yeah, well, keep staying up all night and being late for work and I'll kill you, eventually." He promises her. "Eyes."
She covers her eyes as he changes from his suit, and doesn't open them until she hears him putting his suit away in the lock box under his bed.
"You would never kill me." She states as he gets in to the full sized bed, getting comfortable. "You can barely hit me when we're sparring. I'm a soft spot of your's you just won't admit it."
He turns on his side to look at her, the light from the city and the full moon casting a small amount of light throughout the room. She's on her back with her eyes closed, but she can feel him looking at her. Her hand comes up to push his face away gently.
"Go to sleep." She tells him, not bothering to open her eyes. He smirks to himself, rolling on to his back, resting his arm behind his head and closing his eyes.
A long moment of silence settles between them, and he sighs.
"You are a soft spot." He admits. "But one of those gross ones. Like when someone drops an apple and it gets brown in one spot and turns to mush."
"I love you, too, Richard." She replies sleepily, curling up in the covers, drifting off to sleep.
X X X
Kali steps in to the Bludhaven Police Department, a cup of strong coffee in her hand as she acknowledges her co-workers before heading for her "office", which is really just a morgue.
"Hey, Kali," Miranda Nelson matches her stride step-for-step and follows her.
"Can I help you, Miss Nelson?" Kali stops walking and speaks monotone to the young intern, getting a nice kick out of how the anxious strawberry-blonde stumbles over herself to come to a screeching halt before she runs in to Kali.
"Detective Grayson said that you were going to be busy today with-with uh, plenty to do and I take it that he meant plenty of bodies and I was wondering if I-if you, would allow me to-"
"Okay, Miranda, you do realize it is malpractice for me to allow you to cut open and sort through a body to investigate and diagnose causes of death without me present in the room, right?" Kali cuts her short, already guessing what she was going to ask her because she'd been asking her entire intern year while shadowing Kali to work without needing the supervision of her teacher.
"Well, I just-"
"You will learn plenty today, Miss Nelson, I assure you." Kali smiles sweetly to her, motioning for her to go ahead in to the room. Before Kali follows her, she catches Dick giving her a toothy grin and she steps to him with a raised brow.
"You choose one of my busy days to try to get my intern to beg me to violate the vow I took to this precinct, and to the state, to follow and respect the rules and regulations placed over my practice by allowing her to do an examination by herself even though she's not even three-fourths of the way through her intern year?" She hisses, not amused in the slightest and he smirks.
"Since when do you care about rules?" He asks her, raising his brows.
"Since when do you not?" She gawks, confused as to why he would even suggest an idea like that to her student to begin with.
"Kali, how is she gonna learn anything when you do all the examinations and all she does is stand over the table and watch?"
"Are you questioning my ability to teach, Richard?"
"I know you're able to teach, Kali." He states, the grin fading quickly. "But you need to act like it."
"Letting her cut a body open and figure out what happened, by herself, Richard, is malpractice. Even if I'm standing beside her the whole time, it's still a risk."
"Sometimes we have to take risks, Kali, and that's coming from me: the poster-child of rule keeping. Just supervise her and see what she can do and if she needs help or messes up, then you step in and teach her."
"She is not ready-"
"You won't know unless you see what she's got." He tells her, crossing his arms.
"That is the exact thing I said to you and Bruce when Jason wanted to track down his birth mother." Her voice is stern and sharp, cutting at Dick like a razor blade. "And we know how that ended so no, Richard. I don't take risks, anymore, and I sure as hell don't need you telling me when I need to."
She doesn't say another word to him before turning on her heel and going in to the exam room, slamming the door shut behind her, causing Miranda to jump suddenly.
Dick breathes out, his jaw tight as he turns his back to the recently slammed door, shaking his head a little.
"Trouble in paradise?" His partner, Matt Stevens, teases him after seeing the exchange of a heated argument and Kali storming off.
"There can't be trouble in a place that doesn't exist, Matt. If you pay attention to this case as much as you pay attention to Dr. Anders you might just help me solve it." He snaps and Matt chuckles.
"I would be offended but you're in enough trouble with Kali so I'll give you a reprieve. Dick."
"She'll get over it." Dick states. "That's not the first time we've argued and it's not the last time, either."
"When will you two just admit you're helplessly in love with one another and have hot make-up sex. Preferably letting me watch."
"For the last time, we're platonic. Strictly platonic. I dated her sister, she dated my brother-"
"The sister ditched you and the brother died, yeah, yeah. You've told me before but you've had to at least thought about it, right?"
Dick gives him a "shut up" look, and Matt puts his hands up in surrender.
"Got it. You only think nice things about the sexy doctor. Good, clean, holy, nice thoughts. Even when she's half naked in the bed with you. Good, clean, holy, nice th-"
"Why the hell am I re-examining Charlotte Hastings?" Kali interrupts them, plopping the dead woman's medical record on to Matt's desk, eyeing the two men.
"The GCPD wasn't satisfied with the first exam." Matt tells her hesitantly and she raises her brows, trying to keep from laughing.
"She died of toxic shock syndrome, I concluded that."
"Well, they said-"
"I know what they said." She mumbles, grabbing the phone from Dick's desk and dialing the Gotham City Police Department.
"Kali, you don't have to call them." Matt starts and she holds her hand up, shushing him.
"GCPD," The police captain answers the phone and Kali licks her teeth, trying to calm herself.
"This is Dr. Kali Anders from the Bludhaven Police Department and your request that I re-examine the body of Charlotte Hastings is being denied. She was raped multiple times, suffering minor injuries that didn't include internal bleeding or trauma to the brain and/or the heart. Aside from the vaginal tearing and ruined mental health, Charlotte Hastings was healthy after being rescued. It wasn't until after her rape kit that she got sick and died quickly because the kit was contaminated with Staphylococci bacteria. If questioning my diagnosis is your way of trying to save the ass of whichever one of your's administered the kit, then game on, Sir, because I can run circles around the morons that make up your entire precinct with my eyes closed all day, every day, any day. If any of you are stupid enough to question my judgement again, I will be more than happy to make a trip to Gotham with a blindfold and my running shoes." She snaps, hanging the phone up, and Richard and Matt look up at her from their seats.
"Down kitty." Matt says under his breath, trying not to chuckle and Kali grabs the file off of his desk. "You wanna take that temper out on doing some dirty things to me?"
"I'll kick your ass, Stevens." She promises him, walking back to the morgue.
"You're unbelievable." Dick tells Matt.
"What's unbelievable is how Kali Anders, one of the nicest people I know, just threatened a police department." Matt scoffs.
"Yeah, she gets a little more tense around this time of year." Dick replies, taking a swig of coffee and focusing in on his current case.
X X X
"Your stitching needs to be wider," Kali tells Miranda as the intern sews up the y-incision of the body laying on the table. After arguing with herself for several hours, Kali finally decided to follow Dick's advice and let Miranda do her first postmortem by herself, with Kali only supervising and offering helpful techniques when she saw fit.
When Miranda's done, she smiles widely, waiting for Kali to be done making sure she did a decent job. She finally gets the "not bad" she'd been hoping for, and squeals.
"Thank y-"
"Don't thank me." Kali interrupts her.
"Dr. Anders," Matt peeks his head in the door, looking at the two women. "Commissioner Jim Gordon is here requesting to see you."
"Why?" Kali asks, her face twisting in confusion.
"Probably because you said you could run circles around every moron at the GCPD . . . blindfolded."
"Oh, dear, tender egos hurt the worst." She states, rolling her eyes and walking to the door. Before she goes she looks at Miranda. "Thank the know-it-all detective when you can and get yourself cleaned up after you put Mr. Suduc away." She orders, stepping out.
"Commissioner Gordon," Kali greets the man where he's standing, speaking with Dick.
"You've pissed off quite a few of my officers, Doctor." He tells her and she loses her fake smile.
"Well I don't call them to go re-visit a crime scene when I think they've done a half-assed job so they have no right sending back a body I've already given the cause of death to because they think I'm wrong. Ms. Hastings should have been buried by now and instead she's locked up in my morgue because she was sent back to me."
"I wasn't aware she was returned here, and I didn't know your ability to do your job correctly was being questioned. Which is why I came down here to apologize when I found out. However," His tone gets a little more stern. "Calling my officers morons and stating you can 'run circles around them blindfolded' was a bit of a stretch, wasn't it?"
"I respect you, Sir. You have done a lot of good for Gotham and I appreciate you for that because I did live there at one point. But I don't sugar-coat shit. And I don't give gold-stars to people just because they participate and the majority of your department just participates while you, the few good ones, and the vigilantes, do the hard stuff. So, no. It wasn't a stretch. But I accept your apology. Tell Barbara I said 'hello'." Kali replies calmly, going back to work and Jim looks at Dick.
"She sure as hell knows when she's right, doesn't she?" He asks the detective and Dick scoffs, watching as she slips back in to the morgue.
"Yeah, she does."
"I forgot how much I like her." He states. "I like her a lot. We need more people like her in Gotham."
"Why're you here, Jim?" Dick changes the subject, knowing he came for more than just to apologize to Kali.
"Currently working on an investigation and I thought I'd let you know what-who-it's about. I was going to tell you and Kali both but she probably needs to hear it from you."
"Alright," Dick says, leading them to a empty room used for questioning, closing the door.
Jim lays the manila folder he's been holding on the table and slides it to Dick.
Richard opens the folder and sees it contains multiple pictures of a grave that seems to have been dug-up at first glance, the wood coffin busted open and the ground around the hole is shredded.
"What the hell is this?" He asks Gordon and Jim sighs, rubbing his chin.
"Jason Todd's body is M.I.A."
Shock rolls through Richard and he balls his fists up, his jaw tightening.
"For how long?" He asks, glancing at the pictures again.
"We aren't entirely sure. The way the ground has settled around it, it could've happened months ago."
"Months ago? Who the hell reported it? Does Bruce not visit often enough to have seen it sooner?"
"Harleen Quinzel reported it, actually. She apparently leaves flowers on his grave once a month."
"The girlfriend of the man who murdered him, visits his grave more than his own father does?" Dick has a hard time understanding the circumstances entirely and Gordon shakes his head slightly.
"Everyone copes differently, Dick. She feels slightly at fault for his death-"
"Well who's to say she didn't do it? Better yet her boyfriend?"
"We know she didn't do it because she completed a recovery program during her time at Arkham and she and the Joker aren't in contact anymore. He's been locked away for almost a year now with no escape, so his alibi is solid."
"Well then who did it, Jim?" Dick asks, raising his brows.
"I . . . " Jim starts, knowing what he wants to say, but not wanting Dick to think he's crazy for saying it. "How willing are you to be completely open minded about this?"
"I grew up a good part of my life in Gotham. Nothing surprises me at this point." He assures him, eager to hear what he's got to say.
"Look," Jim takes the clearest picture of the grave sight, his finger on the ragged edge of the ground that lines the grave. "If someone were to have dug him up, the dirt would've been all over the place or in a pile. But it's not. There's barely any."
"But the grave's open, the coffins busted-"
"I'm not saying he's there, but the way this is set up, the way this looks . . . "
"It looks like someone dug him out, instead of digging him up." Dick says what Jim's thinking.
"And we found this on the inside of the coffin." Another picture shows finger nails and blood smeared wood with scratches in it.
"That's blood." Dick states, narrowing his eyes.
"We're still getting a work up from forensics from the blood and nails, but if it confirms what I think it will, this whole case will need a lot more than science and straight fact to grow on." Jim explains.
"You think he somehow crawled out of his own grave . . . alive?" Dick's mind can barely imagine it happening, especially since they all saw Jason's beaten, charred body after the Joker got done with him.
"I think he crawled out of his own grave alive."
A/N: I know this is a little confusing but there will be back story that unfolds throughout the story so if there's any questions, they'll probably be covered in the story eventually. Thank you for reading.
