Hi guys, I'm back from vacation and I have brought a new story with me! :D I had watched 'Misplaced' shortly before vacation and then had the urge to write something about. I am aware that many others have already written about that episode and did an excellent job with it, but I couldn't help myself but share my story with you. I hope you will enjoy it. :)
There could be a couple of grammatical mistakes in here; I am no native speaker of the English language and during vacation I had no access to the Internet to look up stuff I wasn't certain about. I tried my best to do the checking afterwards but I may have overlooked one or two things. If you spot any errors, please tell me. :)
By the way, I don't own anything...
Pain
Chapter 1
"My room is right next door if you need anything..." M'gann offered, when she, Robin and Artemis put down the last of Zatanna's boxes in the new room of the magician.
"I... could... use a little alone time..., okay?" Zatanna asked, her voice already cracking in pain she could no longer hide.
"Of course," Artemis agreed readily. Readily because the blonde archer had no idea how to act around the young magician since... Doctor Fate's, well... re-appearance.If that had happened to her mother, Artemis wouldn't know what to do. And she was sure that Zatanna felt that way. But, having been taught by her father to never show her emotions, Artemis had trouble expressing her feelings.
She'd rather try taking down the whole Injustice League on her own.
M'gann was also kind of relieved to be able to leave the room – so many hurtful emotions were flowing off Zatanna (and strangely Robin, too) that the Martian was threatened to become overwhelmed by them.
Therefore, the two girls were rather grateful to leave, with Robin on their tails.
But, before leaving the room, the Boy Wonder took one short moment to turn around and shot Zatanna one last meaningful glance. If the desperate teenage girl had seen his look, she would have observed that it wasn't a glance of pity (which she had witnessed so many people giving her), but of sympathy and actual understanding.
But instead Zatanna stared straight ahead, fighting against the upcoming tears at least until she was alone.
When she heard the door closing, she sat down on the bed in her new, unfamiliar room that had no windows and felt so cold, so unwelcoming, and let her tears flow.
On the other side of the door, Robin could hear the magician crying.
He was the only one to notice; Artemis and M'gann were already out of hearing range: The team's archer had marched directly to the training room, determined to let out her frustration by punching the hell out of a training dummy and the sad Martian girl had headed to the kitchen in order to seek comfort from Conner.
The youngest crime-fighter of the team wished he could somehow help the crying girl on the other side of the door, but nothing came to his mind.
Still the sound of Zatanna's sobbing in his head, the young acrobat went to his room, throwing himself on the bed he barely used. Staring at the ceiling for a while, he tried to gain control of his emotions. He knew it was to no avail when a single tear (he hadn't even noticed forming) slid down his cheek – there were just so many feelings stirring inside him; most of all sympathy because of the pain he knew Zatanna had to feel, a pain that none of his friend should ever have to experience.
But also a pain that he knew all too well.
He knew what she was going through: the pain because of the loss of her Dad, but also the despair that came with having nobody in the whole wide world (at least that was what it felt like). The anger, the sadness, hopelessness and - the most damaging of all that feelings -
the guilt.
The guilt because you didn't do something that could have saved them, or - in Zatanna's case – the guilt because she had done something that had made her father act like he had.
That guilt was the emotion that really could destroy you. It could make you stop living at all; not like in killing your body in a physical way - but in a way that it forbade you to live, or rather to enjoy living: because you were not worth having one single hour of happiness.
Dick shuddered; he remembered what it had felt like – life had simply been empty.
It was nothing he wanted Zatanna to experience, but what could be done against it?
Dick knew how powerful it was, he had gone through it himself at the age of eight:
After his parents' death, he had been forced to leave the circus - the only place he'd ever, really known by then – and had been shoved into this completely different world in which he didn't know anyone. Then, he had been taken in by this tall, intimidating man with the huge, scary house, in which just he and an elderly man lived. It had been frightening for an eight-year-old and he hadn't wanted anyone near him at first. Dick didn't know how many attempts it took for Alfred and Bruce to finally get him open up, but he knew that it'd been many.
But after sharing his view, his emotions, he had felt better already. Certainly, the pain hadn't vanished at once (it had never really left) but now he could enjoy living again - and he made sure he lived every day to its fullest.
It was just what his parents had wanted him to do.
A small smile formed on the raven-haired teen's lips.
Now he knew what he had to do: the same thing Bruce and Alfred had done for him.
