Dick watches as Keith lowers himself to the ground with more grace than he would have assumed the old guy was capable of. Settling his joined hands on his paunch, Keith leans back against the tree and looks over to the driveway. A faint whiff of Aqua Velva drifts by on the breeze.

It doesn't seem possible to be so hyper-aware of a figment of one's imagination, and yet Dick can feel the presence of the boy fifty feet from him in the same way that he can feel the grass under his fingertips.

He's not really there. Wake up, man. He's not really there. The chant is on repeat in his mind and he stares firmly at Keith's face, refusing to confirm that the mirage is real.

Please let him be real.

"Uh, Mr. Mars, sir, what the fu-" Dick catches himself just as Keith puts his dad-face on and raises a stern eyebrow. "I mean, what the hell is going on? I'm pretty sure I'm not hung over, but I have no idea how I got here, dude. Man. Sir." How do I address the man who raised a hurricane?

"Dick, you've known my daughter since the third grade. You're her boyfriend's best friend. You're also, God help us all, an adult. For the purposes of this conversation, call me…Mr. Mars." Keith finishes dryly.

Dick bobs his head, acknowledging internally that this is probably the best he's going to get from the man his brother almost murdered, but at the same time, feeling lost and hoping for a little compassion. "Look, Mr. Mars, I'm either on a bad trip or I've lost my goddamn mind, so I'm sorry if this sounds crass, or not polite, or whatever, but what the fuck is a six-year-old Beav-" he takes a deep breath, "-Cassidy doing over there? And why the fuck am I sitting in front of a house I sold seven years ago?"

"Those are excellent questions, Dick." Keith responds without actually answering anything, using the same tone a teacher might use to encourage a particularly slow student. "I'd imagine you must be pretty confused."

Dick's attention is suddenly jerked away from Keith by a voice coming from around the side of the house. His face goes white in realization.

Jesus Christ! That's me.

Dick jumps to his feet and has to hold himself upright on the trunk of the palm tree when his own seven-year-old self comes into view. He whips his head around, silently demanding an explanation from his guide, but all he sees is a sympathetic smile in return.

"Wakeupwakeupwakeupwakeup!" Dick slaps himself on both cheeks as though trying to rouse a corpse, but he's shaking so hard that he doesn't have the power to make the blows effective.

He can feel a reassuring hand on his leg and hear the man's calm yet firm voice, full of authority. "Dick, stop. There's nothing you can do but watch. You're perfectly safe with me. Nothing's going to hurt you. Now, sit!"

Dick immediately drops back down to the ground and closes his eyes.

I don't want to watch this. I can't watch this.

But he can't turn off his ears.

"Cass, what are you playing with?" He can hear kid-Dick ask his brother. His living, breathing brother. God, why is this happening?

"I'm making the flowers nice for mommy. Before she went away, she yelled at the gardener about how he wasn't keeping the flowers nice in front. I wanted to make her come home again. To not be angry anymore."

"Are those pink gloves?" kid-Dick starts laughing uproariously and adult-Dick can't help but open his eyes to watch the beginning of the end. He remembers what's coming. He's about to put a label on his brother that will cause him no end of suffering and he deserves to see it happen—face it, relive it—after what he's done. He deserves much worse.

Why did I have to be such a little shit? All he wanted was for us to use his name, right up until he stepped off that goddamn roof. Isn't that what Logan said his last words were? Cassidy. It's not hard to say. His fucking name was Cassidy.

"Shut up, stupid! I couldn't find other ones," Cassidy whines. "Sto-op!"

"You're such a girl, wearing girl gloves. Cass is a gi-irl! Cass is a gi-irl!" Kid-Dick harasses his brother in a sing-song voice. "You are a beaver. Cass is a beaver! Cass is a beaver!"

"Shut up! I am not! My teeth are normal-looking, fart-head!"

Adult-Dick scrutinizes his little brother. Cassidy is standing chillingly still, fists clenched. The boy's face is blank, held neutral, but his eyes… They may be filled with unshed tears but those do nothing to hide the pure loathing. Dick can almost see all the options for torturing him that Cass is considering flicker through his eyes, even from this distance.

How come I never saw how much he hated me? Look at him, standing there. I thought he was just a pussy for taking it, but look at him. Jesus, he would kill me right there if he could. I'm sorry, Cassidy. I was the one with the name that fit. I was a dick. It wasn't you, dude. It wasn't you.

Kid-Dick just laughs harder. "That's not what I meant, booger brain." He can barely get the words out between the guffaws. "Casey's older brother told me what a beaver was at school yesterday. And you're a girl, so you're a beaver!" With that parting shot, kid-Dick runs back around the side of the house chanting "Beaver! Beaver!" until he can no longer be heard.

Six-year-old Cassidy stands staring at his brother's retreating back. The face that he had been holding so tightly controlled has now collapsed and the tears he hadn't allowed to escape are now running down his face. He wrenches off the gloves just as Mr. Casablancas comes out the front door, and then runs up to his father, all indignant rage, looking for justice.

"Daddy! Dick's calling me names!"

His father barely acknowledges Cassidy as he checks his watch and course corrects slightly, side-stepping around the boy to walk towards the car pulling out of the garage. "Cassidy, stop acting like a girl; boys don't cry. You have to stand up for yourself in this world or people will keep thinking you're soft! Man up!" He looks around the driveway. "Where is your brother, anyway? We have to get to the range."

Cassidy quickly wipes the tears off of his face and follows after his father. "Can I come too, Daddy? I wanna come."

"Dick! Let's go, son!" his father shouts. Kid-Dick races out the door and jumps into the back seat of the car. "Only big boys get to go the range, Cassidy. You need to earn it. Is this behaviour earning it?" He shakes his head, turns and gets in.

As the car pulls out of the driveway, Adult-Dick watches his brother stand there with tears dripping off of his chin onto his shoes. He clambers to his feet, wanting to go over there and do something, say something, but Keith checks him with "He can't see you."

Unable to take anymore, Dick explodes in frustration, pacing around the tree, arms flailing. "So why am I here then, if I can't do anything? Am I playing the role of karma's bitch again? Because I'm pretty sure that my performance is Oscar worthy at this point."

Keith's expression has been hard since they watched the scene with Cassidy and his dad, and Dick assumes that, as usual, he's disappointed the man in some way. So when he hears what Keith says next, and notices that his eyes go soft with pity, he's actually thrown for a loop.

"You really don't see it, do you?"

"See what? That I just sentenced my kid brother to his death when he was six years old? Yeah, I didn't really need to relive that memory, thanks. I'd managed to bury it pretty fucking deep." Dick looks down at his shoes, shamefaced.

"No, son, that the person to blame here is your father." Every word attempts to pierce through Dick's guilt, but it is a losing battle against the hardened shell around his heart.

I would love to believe that, man. If only it was true. "How do you figure that?"

He sees Keith sigh and shake his head. When he speaks, Dick can hear the restrained outrage in his voice. "Where do you think you learned that behavior from? Did you not just hear your father calling Cassidy a girl too? Could you possibly have picked it up from him, and used it to gain his approval?" Keith pulls himself to his feet, and puts his hands on Dick's shoulders, looking him straight in the eye. "Dick, what just happened there, that was everyday life in your house, right?" Dick barely nods.

A low growl escapes Keith's throat, and Dick can see him fight to maintain control of his emotions. Wonder and gratitude for the man suddenly fill Dick's chest, that there is maybe someone other than Logan who cares enough about him to react this way. And just a little bit of jealousy towards Veronica.

"I'm here to tell you that's not normal fatherly behavior. You calling your brother names, now that's normal seven-year-old behavior. Veronica may be an only child, but I grew up with two older brothers and a sister. I remember," Keith says with a knowing smile. "The difference is, my parents cuffed us when they caught us saying things like that and eventually, we learned that that kind of behavior is unacceptable, the same way most kids do. You learned it too, didn't you? Only much later and in the most horrible way possible." Keith's eyes get dangerous again. "It was his job to teach you, and he failed. So did your mother."

Dick considers the other man's words. True, his parents hadn't been particularly good role models. He chuckles internally. That's like admitting that Logan is a little into Ronnie! Keith is probably the only parent he knows who is any good at the parenting thing, so he might be right. At least a little bit. It dawns on him at this point that this is probably why Keith is here with him now. Who else would be able to tell that his dad was a loser? But Dick can't ignore the simple fact that he himself had made his brother's life a living hell.

"It still happened and it was still me who started it." Dick says with conviction, unable to accept the get out of jail free card he is being handed.

"It was," Keith agrees, "and you will never be fully absolved of that. But shift at least part of the blame to where it belongs; firmly on your parents' shoulders and focus on making amends and forgiving yourself. You've started with the first part. It's time to move on to forgiveness."

Dick's mind is spinning. He wants so badly to accept what Keith is telling him, but the guilt that he's been living with for well over a decade is too familiar, it feels too right, for him to let it go. He's tried so hard to do something good with his godforsaken fortune, and he thinks his foundation might be helping some kids after all, but none of that will bring his brother back. None of it changes anything.

My fault. It could have been us against the world, but instead I left him all alone.

Suddenly, Dick hears shouts and noises coming from somewhere behind him, but when he turns to look, nothing's there. He turns back to Keith, but the man has disappeared. Cassidy is also gone from where he was standing just moments before. A quick scan of the area shows Dick that his brother is now aiming his slingshot at the neighbour's cat, which is sitting in a tree. He misses by several inches, but whatever he shot makes a small explosion of flame and smoke, resulting in a smoldering black spot on the trunk.

Jesus, he's trying to blow up a cat. Didn't I learn in Psych that's, like, a sign or something? Whatever. Still my fault.

The shouts are starting to get louder, and his vision is whiting out again.


"Another 20 cc of methyl-" Dick can't make out the rest of the unidentified voice's medical mumbo jumbo and nor can he open his eyes to see who said it.

"DICK! DAMMIT DICK, WAKE UP!" Logan, I'm trying, man. Gimme a minute.

"Logan, come outside. Let the doctors do what they need to do. You aren't helping." Ronnie? What's she doing here?

"Listen to your girlfriend, sir. Get out of here and let us work. He's going to be fine, but not if you distract us with your shouting."

"Veronica, let me g-" He can hear Logan's voice drift farther away and a door close.

Blackness.