It has been a month. A month since the Invasion was over and they had won. Won at a great cost. They now worked alongside the Justice League, but for him, it didn´t mattered. He was still hurt. He felt so responsable of his dead as much as Flash did. He was the leader, they where his soldiers. He was his friend. He was his brother in so many ways.
And he had failed him.
He should have been able to stop him, but deep inside him, he knew he couldn´t. They were heroes for a reason. They were trained to do that. But still.. the price was too much.
All of them knew the consecuences of the job, thats why Artemis and Wally had decided to have a normal life, a future together. And now it was over.
Because of him, because he reached for them in a desperate hour, he told them his plan and asked for help. Wally screamed bloody murderer at him for just thinking about it. They told each other words that where so true... and so impossible to erase. In the end, Wally was right. He was just like Batman. Eager to do whatever he had to in order to complete the mission.
The formers Boy Wonder walked to his closet and entered in to it. It was the entrace to his base, as cliché as it sounded. The far wall had a heavy metal door guarding the entrace to a secred room, where he keept his suits, his armor, his skrima sticks and all what he needed.
Richard reached for his bodysuit, the black spandex and kevlar armor felt cold to the touch. He put it on, wondering if Bruce would let him get back to the Manor for a few days when he had vacation from the BPD. He hoped that he would agreed. He missed Bruce, Tim and Alfred so much these last days. Somehow, the more time passed and he couldn´t find a clue about Wally´s death, it make it more real than at the beggining.
Wally´s words echoed still in his mind: "you are acting just like Batman, Dick !" and a stab of pain crossed his heart. He had dreamed so many times when he was young how it would be to be like Batman when he grew older. And then, with the failed psiquic training it all changed. He didn´t wanted to be like Bruce, to have the same desire to complete the mission, no matter what. He had promised himself that he would´t go that far.
But he had.
He didn´t wanted to think about it, not now, now when he was going in to the night. Reaching for his boots, he sit down on a metal bench. He grabbed his belt and skrima sticks and but it on place, his gloves moments later come to rest in his hands.
But still, he thought about it. He had lied to the whole team, to his friends, to his family. All started with Jason´s dead and then Tula´s. That´s what had set the plan in motion. And he still couldn´t believe that he had accepted and take it to action.
He looked at himself in the reflection of a medium sized mirror next to the case that guarded his suits. His blue eyes reflected the soul of a young man, not quite an adult, but with so much sorrow and pain that anyone else could have seen in such a short life. He sighed. In automatic motion he reached for his mask and put it on with a bit of spirit gum.
Nightwing looked at himself in the mirror, firm determination to find Wally if he could and at the same time, willing to throw himself once again in to the night of Bludheven and try to protect the people he still had not failed.
And, like the other nights for the past week, he went out of his base trough the skylight window in his hidden room and into the Night.