"You with the sad eyes

Don't be discouraged

Oh I realize it's hard to take courage

In a world full of people you can lose sight of it all

And the darkness inside you can make you feel so small."

-Cyndi Lauper, True Colors

Disclaimer: I'm still an ignorant girl who didn't discover Young Justice till four years after it supposedly ended, so... do I need more proof?

Chapter One: Unhealthy Habits

Zatanna, typically, liked being the center of attention; today, though, seemed to be an exception, as the stares digging into her from all sides did nothing for her discomfort. Actually, she was sure that she might've been just fine if they all hadn't pinned her with such concerned looks, as if she was still the child she was five years ago - after all, she'd learned how to fall asleep without waking up with salt on her eyelashes, or how to work up the nerve to turn out the lamp on her bedside table at midnight. Then again, ignorance was bliss, and she'd had plenty of it.

She didn't cross paths with Dr. Fate unless she needed to, sure. And yes, she stayed at the Cave with her teammates far more often than she went home, and avoided talking about sullen topics, and - fine, maybe she was a little unprepared. But only a little.

Still, she didn't expect it to hurt that much.

Everything had been fine, at first - she and Rocket were joining the League, and all the media was blowing up at the mention of the news. She'd smiled and waved, even offering a wink to the cameras every once in a while, and that was the easy part; when she stepped inside the doors, though, and nobody could catch sight of her anymore, the charming smile faded from her face, replaced with a far more determined one. A hardened one, one that only someone who'd been broken could truly master. Well, she'd had a lot of practice.

Her nails dug painfully into the skin of her arms as she cast her gaze down to the floor instead, mouth set in a thin, almost annoyed line. Everything was quiet, for the most part, with the exception of a few disapproving whispers passed among the crowd - the crowd being the group of heroes that she'd looked up to for so long, now acting undeniably similar to children. Black Canary had informed her that it was all out of care and worry, which she could bring herself to believe; but she was nineteen years old now, a legal adult who could most definitely handle some daddy issues. She hoped.

The thing about it was, Dr. Fate didn't act completely different from her father; and that was the thing that might've upset her most. It was as if Giovanni Zatara was only a ghost, still there yet not at the same time, meant to taunt her to a level where she almost wanted to scream. He still knew her tells, could guess when she was upset and when she was using her trickery for no good, and it frustrated her more than anything else. On a childish basis, he shouldn't have gotten to tell her what to do anymore, shouldn't have had the power to tell her when to stop. Because he wasn't her father, not anymore. He was the puppetmaster working the strings.

"Zatanna, I sense your discomfort."

The teen froze in place, arms still folded over her chest, though she managed to drag up her gaze in a somewhat defiant glare, reminiscent of the more rebellious (and admittedly childlike) side of her. "Discomfort? I would wonder why, Da - "

She managed to break off before the word rolled off her tongue, surprising both herself and the other heroes in the room. Inwardly cursing, she wondered how five years hadn't cured her of reckless mistakes like that, though kept her eyes narrowed and showed no sign of nervousness.

He could probably feel the fear radiating off her, though.

"I - I am not your father, Zatanna."

She wanted to retort that so much was already obvious, but the rare hesitation in his magnified voice managed to stop her, even if only for a moment. Dr. Fate was not one to be easily thrown off, and she could feel a familiar sensation blooming in her stomach - hope, but she forced it down before it grew too out of hand. She'd learned one too many times that it was immensely dangerous to harbor for too long.

Zatanna opened her mouth to speak, only to find that words failed to form on her tongue. Her mind raced, and in the corners of her vision she could see the expectant looks of those around her and she wished that she could just take a moment to think, in silence; then again, there wasn't a sound in the room. Her own breath had caught in a mixture of surprise (though she wasn't altogether sure why) and anger, skillfully masked anger that threatened to emerge for the world to see at any moment.

"Er'uoy thgir," she murmured in perfect backwards. "Ym rehtaf deid evif sraey oga, dna on lleps nac gnirb mih kcab."

Leaving Dr. Fate stunned and the rest of the room completely confused, she turned on her heel, hoping that nobody would notice that her voice had broken halfway through and it was all she could do, at the moment, not to cry.

She was not looking forward to sleep.

It was hard to imagine a time when he didn't stay awake during the early hours of the morning, perched on the roof of a building in Blüdhaven. Hard to imagine staring out into the night sky without the familiar, slightly itchy feeling of his mask balanced over the bridge of his nose, or hard to imagine himself in the Robin costume, as he had the first few weeks that Jason had put it on. Nightwing had managed to grow into a routine.

Cracking his neck, he leaped down from his crouched position on the railing, shooting out a line with perfect timing so that he could roll when he hit the ground, a move he'd easily perfected over the years. It was nothing more than second nature, now.

He kept to the walls, providing him with a convenient amount of shadows to stay hidden. It was two in the morning, maybe, and he was already late; unable to resist stopping to investigate a heist on the way, he'd gotten... sidetracked. The fact that he felt incredibly guilty for it, though, managed to substitute for that - or, so he hoped.

If his suspicions were right, though, it wouldn't matter altogether that much. Hence why he made no move to go to the zeta tubes to head to Mount Justice, and instead reached for his phone, fingers hovering and hesitating over the numbers. The screen was far too bright for comfort against the blackness he was accustomed to, and he cursed himself for stopping over such a small, insignificant detail. Mouth thinning into a line, he held it up to his ear.

"How're you holding up?"

The voice that greeted him on the other side of the line was surprisingly calm, cool, and collected - at least, he assumed so, but for all he knew at the moment, the magician could be crying her eyes out and he wouldn't have a clue. "Holding up? Against what?"

Oh, so they were going to play the clueless game, now. He sighed to himself, half-hoping that it would be audible to her, and ran a hand through his jet black hair. "How did today go?"

There was a moment's too long of silence before she replied, which was all the answer Nightwing needed to know. Nonetheless, he kept his mouth shut for the moment, because Zatanna deserved that much.

"Might've been better if the Boy Wonder had bothered to show up." Her tone was more joking than anything else, but still Nightwing winced at the words, a sheepish smile taking over his lips before he remembered that she couldn't see him.

"Yeah, sorry about that."

"Got held up stopping the crime of a century?"

"Something like that."

A beat, where all he could hear was the quiet sound of her breathing on the other end. Even and slow for now, but the fact that she was still up at this hour should've been enough to tell him that it might not last that way for long. The rekindling of memories was never a nice thing to go through, and he himself knew that much from experience alone. So, with regret that he hadn't managed out his priorities set fresh into his mind, he tried again. "How was it?"

He could only imagine the mental debate she'd be having with herself before she could bring herself to answer. She knew, he guessed, that he'd long predicted that she was not okay - so, really, it was only a matter of how long she'd hold it off, now. Maybe she was tired, tonight, because she caved in earlier than he expected.

"I dunno," she breathed. "Awkward, I guess? Everyone just seemed so - so pitying of me, and it was horrible. And - and seeing him again - "

It was never a good sign when she spoke in broken phrases, he knew that much. Because, even though they never seemed to understand how to get past the stage of mindless flirting, maybe even a kiss every once in a while, he was still the one she came to when she needed help. He was still the one she'd grown to depend on, the one she went to when her voice was raw and hoarse in the morning because she how no control over the volume in which she screamed during the night, the one there to tell her stories of what his life used to be like when she couldn't fall asleep. Even after all these years, he was still that one.

Well, he hoped he was, anyway.

Admittedly, their relationship had managed to weaken just a bit over the years; and it was obvious to the both of them since the kiss on New Year's that it was doubtful that they'd ever become more than that - someone to flirt with, someone to relax with. They'd tried the dating thing, and broken up. All they needed was an occasional getaway, and besides, Nightwing doubted that he deserved her - the ward of Bruce Wayne, the playboy who never spent more than a night? Even he could be susceptible to influence.

"Dick?"

The quiet voice snapped him out of his reverie, and he fumbled uncharacteristically with the phone in his hands before he managed to catch it and bring it to his ear once more, mind still racing and mask still creased above the bride of his nose - an obvious sign of thoughtfulness. "Yeah?"

For another moment, there was only silence, and Nightwing wondered if the line had somehow gone dead. Then, the confidence and control in her voice surprised him enough that he almost dropped the phone again, wondering how he was so clumsy tonight.

"Is the sky supposed to be this red?"

His blue eyes widened behind the domino mask as he struggled to find an answer, casting his gaze up to the sky - the black, black sky, dotted with stars. And he knew exactly what was happening at the moment, but everything was moving so sluggishly that by the time he'd even blinked, she'd hung up, and Nightwing - Batman's former sidekick, and the second greatest detective still to this day - was left dumbfounded.

And with a choice.

He could always go to her, comfort her, just like old times. Just like five years ago when he'd first noticed how truly broken she seemed by her father being snatched out of her grasp, and understood that he might've been the only one on the Team to even remotely understand what she was going through. However, he also remembered when she'd pushed him away, with only a sentence whispered as an explanation.

"I'm - I'm cracked, Robin. Cracked, but still living on, because I don't want to break to a point where I can't be fixed again."

That was only a day after they'd sat together under the patchwork blanket of the stars, curling into themselves because they had nowhere else to go. That was also the day when Robin realized that if Zatanna was too scared to even talk to him, for fear that he'd be taken from her also, then she might've already been shattered.

Nightwing set off at a run, shaking his head as he exhaled softly. Not tonight. Tonight, Zatanna would have to be left to face her own demons, because seeing as he might just be one of them - the guilt was enough for him to handle on his own.

The difference, this time, was that it was nowhere near as silent as Zatanna remembered. The entire world had been mute, looking as if it should've been deafening when it was simply completely the opposite, she knew, be it her screams or her harsh breaths or the arguments of her teammates around her - and, now, when she was too blind to see it before, she took a moment to curse the fact that she'd been so willing to prove herself to her teammates when they had already accepted her without a moment's hesitation. She'd wanted to establish herself as an almost recklessly bold teenager willing to do anything for the mission by deciding to slip on the helmet of Dr. Fate; Kent could only argue against him for so long, anyway. The stupidest thing, to her, about the entire thing was that she hadn't even done it because of the heat of the moment or something like that, no. She'd done it after careful consideration, because she wanted to impress.

Children.

Now, though? She could hear every horrible detail, even when she covered her ears as tight as she could or mumbled incomprehensible nonsense to try and block out the noise, from the gasping hiccups that escaped her every few seconds to the incessant chirping on the crickets simply just wanting to live their lives. Vaguely, she thought that something like that shouldn't even be scientifically possible - but she was really one to speak, wasn't she?

And she hadn't even slept. Yes, that was because she'd been too cowardly to, but for a perfectly good reason; one that hadn't worked in the least, evident by the way she hugged herself, or the way she burrowed into the corner like all those years ago. Evident by the text she'd written up on her phone, the screen intensely and almost annoying bright against the stark darkness of the room.

To: Robin the Birdie

It was a nickname she'd given him so many years ago, and hadn't bothered to change, because it was nice and childish and she could bring herself to appreciate that. Even if he was no longer a Robin.

I believe in the supernatural.

A single sentence, first, that she'd typed out with trembling fingers - the number of times she'd had to go back and correct herself, even within those five words, was another sign.

I believe in demons. In things that haunt you. Maybe even ghosts.

Ghosts of the living, too.

My mother -

Here, she'd paused for a few minutes, giving herself time to let the phone slide out of her hands and stare up at the ceiling that she could barely even make out, trying her best to just breathe. She remembered when she was little, and practically everything frightened her, when Zatara would offer her an encouraging, practically dazzling, smile before telling her that all she had to do was breathe. In, and out. In, and out. Easy. No need to think.

It wasn't as if the death of the mother had been traumatizing, as much as she hated to admit it. It came down to a few things; the fact that she had little to no memories of the woman, the fact that she'd died in the line of hero work because that was simply just their purpose in life, the fact that Zatara himself was so ready to just move on. The words weren't nearly as scary ten years ago as they were now.

- is someone who rests in a shattered picture frame on my mantel. Bad luck, in my opinion, but I suppose love and ties overrides that any day, sure. When she died, I realized that it wasn't a world of black and white; because I myself was stuck in that gray area, trying to figure out what she meant to me. Trying to figure out what the hell I was doing wrong, because clearly, there was something, right? Because I felt almost nothing, except for something of a self-hatred for exactly that reason. I should've cried, should've wailed, should've torn myself apart, but I couldn't. And I have yet to figure out why.

Now, in this gray-ish world where everyone, including me, struggles to see everything clearly, I'm conflicted again. I find that fate, the world, whoever, likes to do that quite often. To confuse us, to hurt us, all for some cruel sort of game that nobody else but them understands. I'm -

I'm -

She struggled to find the right word, here. In her opinion, there was none in the English language that could describe her even remotely at the moment, in her bleary-eyed, mascara-dripping and pale mess, but for the sake of the text, she wanted to grasp for one. At the same time, though, it seemed impossible that a single word would be able to sum up all her emotions within only a few letters, when she felt like screaming her heart out just because there was nothing else to do.

Overwhelmed.

Yes, that would work.

Because - because -

And here she was, at a crossroads, again. There, technically, was no reason why she should be acting so dramatically, other than the fact that it felt like the time was right. It had been five years. Everyone expected her to have moved on by now, and she could truly say that she really did want to; that she felt so, so weak because she couldn't; but there was nothing she could do about it. She, and her father, had always been ones to easily give into emotion, believing that living without it was both dull and dangerous for the mind. So, again, she wondered how the English language could be so vast and so restricting all at the same time.

Because life is cruel and unwelcoming and hurtful and painful and stupid and unappreciative and greedy and selfish and taunting and seems to have a passion for torturing us around until she break, and shatter, and break again, and no matter how much we try to persist - how much we try to keep going, because we're heroes and that's what we've been taught to do since forever - it throws us again and again until we realize that it's perfectly useless to keep getting up when it's already waiting for you at the front door. And it doesn't care, because it doesn't feel, which is certainly a skill that I can only dream of mastering.

Sruoy ylurt, Zatanna

A slim finger hovered over the Send button for only a moment before she brought herself to laugh - loud and boisterous and somehow filled with all the humor she could muster at the moment - and delete the message, dropping the phone screen-down on the floor, but not before she noticed the (1) Draft Saved flit across the screen. She couldn't really bring herself to care as her eyes fluttered closed, though, because by the time Nightwing finally slipped through the window to check on her that night, she'd long given into the nightmares, screaming and sobbing in her sleep.

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