AN: Beginning on a new venture is never a good idea for me. Flames are welcome.
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The air was thick with the heavy coat of smoke and soot. No one could tell if it was day or night, but in time, it didn't matter anymore. Day looked like night and the night became the day. No place was safe and there was no one to trust. The dawn of hell on earth was approaching too quickly for most to comprehend, but some knew what was about to become of the Earth they loved. No one existed. Nothing lived. Everything that wasn't dead yet, was about to meet that same fate.
- - -
Two Weeks Earlier
"Richard, can you please turn down that t.v. and come over here to help with these towels?"
Richard Grayson, age seventeen, turned around slightly to look at his old friend, Donna Troy stuffing numerous dirty towels into a woven wastebasket. He watched her for a moment or two. He burned into his memory the way her lips moved and how her muscles flexed when she bent to retrieve a towel. Richard became completely entranced by his friend of thirteen years and in a dark corner of his mind, he knew that he only had so little time left to spend with her.
He did not notice he was still staring until he focused on her gray blue eyes. It took a minute for his mind to register that she was still speaking to him so when he did tune into what she was saying, he only caught the second half.
"…I mean it's not like it's getting any better so you might as well turn it off and come help me clean up."
Richard rose on black eyebrow up at her, questioning her comment.
"Dick. The t.v. Turn it off please, you'll scare the children."
Realization finally dawned on him. She was speaking of the current events that were the focal point of the daily news for the past two months. As he realized this, he wondered why she wanted him to turn it off. Didn't she care? Wasn't she worried for herself? What about the others?
"Don…don't you care about…" He tried to continue, but he couldn't, he became angry, almost infuriate. The fact that someone thought cleaning up an orphanage was as important as the end of the world was incomprehensive to him.
Donna stopped what she was doing abruptly. She tucked the wastebasket under right arm and huffed. When she brought up her eyes to meet his, Dick could see the tiredness and weariness in them.
"Care about what, Dick? The fact that the world is ending? In case you haven't noticed, the world's been ending for almost a century now! All you ever hear about on the news is that someone semi-important and maybe rich has died of a freak accident or a horrible death! Because you know as well as I do God forbid the mass media even mention a thing or two about any of us common folk dying! If our faces aren't plastered all over Jump City then no one cares except for family and friends and that's only for the lucky common folk! So no Dick I don't care!"
Throughout her speech, Dick could hear the undercurrent of sadness in her voice. He understood her reasons for feeling nonchalant about the current happenings. Ever since her parents were killed in a robbery at their store, she stopped caring about any and everything. The famed detectives of Jump City had never caught her parents' killer and after two years she lost doubt that they ever would. However, the murderer of Jeica Worthington, famous singer and actress, was caught in only a little over a month with evidence to spare. Whoever said the world was fair?
"I'm sorry. Let me help you."
Dick took one last glance at the t.v. He saw a young girl maybe his age with corn blonde hair and deep blue eyes crying into the reporter's camera before he cut of the device. So much for hope.
- - -
P.S.: Where I am going with this, I do not now just yet. I wrote this last year and just magically found it while cleaning out my documents.
P.S.S: If I get enough positive reviews to continue, I most likely will add more on to this chapter, making it longer instead of leaving it like this.