Title: Rain
Author: Charlene Edwards
Rating: PG
Synposis: Dick muses on his life.
Thanks to Robin for the quick beta read and to Patty for taking the time to read this and tell me she thought it was good. I have no clue what I was doing here. The first paragraph floated through my head and I just typed it out and let the rest just come until it ended. Hope you like my little ramblings. Char :-)
RAIN:
Rain. In Bludhaven ... in February ... it's cold as hell. But that's not a good description is it? Hell isn't exactly cold. But it's the type of rain that's so cold it burns when it touches your skin. If it's not hell, it's certainly one of the tortures used to torment the damned. That's me now. Damned. I'm not sure when it happened or exactly how, but that seems to be the state I've found myself in. My life has gone to hell in a hand basket, spiraling further and further out of control until I no longer know what to do or where to go.
I lost my anchor. Well, she's not exactly lost ... she cut herself loose from my sinking ship and walled herself up in that tower of her's. I still don't understand why. Life was good. Just a week ago, life was perfect. Then Tarantula attacked Barbara and me while we were on a date. Like the knight I trained to be, I protected my lady fair. I just forgot that she didn't need any protecting. Barbara Gordon can handle herself. I know that. My trying to protect her had nothing to do with me thinking that she wasn't capable of doing it herself. It was just ... what?
That's the question I keep coming back to. Beating myself over the head. Is it just my need to protect those I love? Shield them from harm? Funny thing, I seem to be the cause of the harm. I hurt Barbara by trying to protect her. In her mind, she thinks she's not good enough and that I view her as a cripple. She couldn't be more wrong. I just don't know how to prove it to her. I tell her how I feel and I'm "living in the past." Babs don't you see ... you are my past, my present and my future.
Well, you ... were.
I guess it's out of my hands now. You said no. No to now, maybe no to ever. You ripped my heart out Babs. Ripped it out and held it still beating in your hands before you tossed it in the garbage. The heart's not as vital of an organ as they say. I'm living proof. I've been living without mine since you tore it out. That is if you can call what I'm doing living.
What should've been the worst moment of my life turned into just the first of many. Three days of utter anguish, utter hell. When you banned me from our life, I went to what should have been my safe haven. My first home. Haly's circus. That ended in tragedy. I don't know why I thought it would be different; the tragedy of my life began there. Eight short years pretending to be happy. It was a lie. A prelude to disaster that was to permeate my very existence.
Bruce was drawn to me by that disaster. In me he saw a mirror image of himself. He wanted to help, to make it better. He did too. For a while. When I flew with Bruce I was the happiest I had been since I flew with my parents. I was carefree. The laughing squire to the Dark Knight. It was all just another prelude to disaster. It's the story of my life.
Instead of the circus being a shelter, it became an inferno. My childhood memories, my safe haven, all went up in smoke. All because of me. I tried as hard as I could, but all the training and years of experience couldn't save everyone. I couldn't save everyone. I failed. Twenty known dead, hundreds injured ... all because I wasn't good enough. I was so useless even Barbara didn't have the heart to turn me away last night.
She let me in and I was stupid enough to confuse pity with love. To confuse comfort with caring. I was still living in the past, in the time when she loved me and all was right with my world. Without Barbara, without her love. Nothing matters. It's not her though, I know that now. It's me. Like the song says 'Maybe it's me who's cold and empty and in this darkness I cannot see the light."
Staring at the ruins of what once was my home, I know there is no light. There never will be again. An entire building full of people gone. Men, women, children. Blown to bits simply because they knew me and had the misfortune of living in the same building with me. Again I failed. Bruce was right when he fired me from being Robin. I am a hazard. I cause people to get hurt. I cause people to die.
I still smell the scorch of burning flesh despite the rain that washes over the site and me. A singed stuffed rabbit, an unbroken coffee mug, but most of what I see is unrecognizable. This building represents my life. It wasn't the things that I lost, irreplaceable as some of them might've been. It was ... that spark, that last spark of innocence. That spark I had clung too despite my parents deaths, despite Bruce taking Robin away from me, despite the loss of the Titans that time I was kicked out. It's gone. Extinguished by the rain.
The End