Over the next 24 hours, Roy makes a concentrated effort to have a normal day.

Lian wakes him up at an hour that feels ungodly but probably isn't all that bad; he's just exhausted in too many ways. He supposes he should be grateful that she's not crying all night like she used to, back when she missed Jade so badly that nothing he did could calm her – it's only seven thirty when she comes into his room with her familiar cry of "dada, dada," asking for "breakfrast" (where the extra r came from, he'll never know). Still, he can't help but look forward to those mythical years when he'll have to force her out of bed instead of into it.

He makes her an egg on toast and cuts up a peach to go with it as she chatters about what she and Mommy did the night before. Some of the syllables are nonsense, but she's remarkably verbal for her age, and her excitable up-and-down cadences bring a smile to his face, even when he can't understand what she's trying to say.

"You hurt your arm," she says suddenly, the statement seamlessly dovetailed onto the end of something unrelated. He looks down.

"Yeah," he admits, observing the stitches, as well as the various other bruises and burns mottling his arms at the moment. "Daddy had a rough day at work yesterday, that's why Mommy had to come by. But everything's gonna be fine, all right? It's nothing you should worry about."

"Okay," says Lian, poking at her egg (the peach is long-since devoured). "When does Mommy come again?"

Roy sighs.

"I don't know, babe," he says as he slides two eggs onto his own plate and sits down opposite her, toast in hand. "I don't even think Mommy knows, to be honest."

He hates the look on Lian's face whenever they have this conversation. It's some unstomachable combination of confusion and sadness, like she can't understand why all the other boys and girls at day care have mommies who see them every day and brush their hair in the morning and make them cute boxed lunches, but she doesn't. He never knows what to say.

"I'm sorry," he tells her quietly. "I'm sure she'll visit again soon."

It's a lie, and Lian doesn't dignify it with a response, just bites into her toast and stays silent for the rest of breakfast.

He takes her to day care, a leather jacket slung over his battered arms to keep the other kids' moms from asking questions, then heads in to work, where the reports from last night's cash delivery are waiting on his desk. Everything went smoothly. Secretly, Roy wishes it hadn't – he could use a crisis on this side of life to hold his attention there, which life almost procures, but not quite:

"What happened to your face, man?" asks one of his underlings, an easygoing security officer named Warren. He's been here since before Roy's time, and always takes his coffee break right at the beginning of the day.

"Bar fight," says Roy automatically, forgetting his intent not to use that excuse.

"Musta been one hell of a fight," says Warren. "Speaking of which, you see the news this morning? The bit with the Justice League and the big showdown over Iceland?"

"Don't usually watch it," says Roy, looking deliberately at the paperwork he's already completed. "TV news is a little gory for a three-year-old."

"Right, right," says Warren, sipping his coffee and nodding. "Well it's some crazy stuff, man. Apparently some nutjobs tried to start a space war or something, but our boys knew what they were up to and stopped them before they could beam the aliens here. All sounds like Star Trek mumbo jumbo to me but the footage is pretty intense. They say nearly every hero on earth was out there. Some people are even saying they saw Red Arrow last night and that guy hasn't been around for years now. Well, the two-armed version of him, anyway."

Roy doesn't even respond this time, just grunts and wishes Warren had the tact to take a hint and shut up. All the same, his coworker's story makes him realize that Ollie and Dinah were probably out there last night, and he hasn't called either one to check in. He's always kind of assumed that if anything happened to them, someone would tell him, but after yesterday he's lost all faith in anyone's intent to tell him anything, ever.

"I need to make a call," he tells Warren, setting his paperwork down on his desk.

"All right," says the guard, shrugging and topping off his coffee before he steps out of Roy's office and closes the door behind him. When he's gone, Roy picks up the phone.

Dinah's number is one of the few he knows by heart. As he waits for her to pick up, he walks to the window and peers out the blinds, looking out over the flat grey space of the parking lot. The life he leads now is unglamorous and predictable, but stable, which is a new thing for him. Even after two years he's not completely used to it. For Lian, he tells himself. She needs this.

"Hey," he says when he hears the line go active. "It's Roy."

"I've been waiting for this call," says Dinah's voice, sounding almost amused. "You're usually faster with these things. We're both fine. You can stop worrying."

"I wasn't worrying," says Roy defensively. "I just wanted to…check in."

"Sure you did, boyo," Dinah replies. "I hear you had your own little adventure yesterday. Not too rusty, I hope?"

"It was just a favor," says Roy, turning away from the window. "Don't get any ideas. I'm not going back to that life."

"I wasn't trying to imply that you were," says Dinah. "You know Ollie and I support the choices you've made, one hundred percent. So…how are you handling the news?"

"What news?"

"You know what I'm talking about, Roy," says Dinah seriously. "About your friends."

They're limited on the phone; he knows that. They can never know when someone might be standing near the door and overhear something condemning, so they're careful with specifics. While on some level Roy is glad that they can't have an actual conversation about this right now, he knows if he shuts her down outright she'll come track him down later, and that's the last thing he needs, so he aims for vague honesty.

"Ignoring it, for the most part," he says. "That stuff isn't my business anymore. My friends can handle it themselves."

"Roy, if you need to talk…"

"I don't," he snaps. "I did what they asked. I have a life now. A normal life. And I'm not going to mess it up on behalf of a bunch of people who lied to my face for years."

"Okay," says Dinah softly. "Okay. I understand. I'm still here, though. If you change your mind."

"Sorry," says Roy. "I didn't mean to get short with you. It's not your fault, you didn't know either. …Right?"

The last word is tacked on as he's struck by the sudden horror that even Dinah, practically his mother, could have known about everything and kept it from him, and he would never have known.

"Of course not," says Dinah (and Roy feels a perverse relief flood through him). "None of us knew. Those four played it close to the chest, from what I understand."

Those four. Statistically speaking, given a group of four random people somewhere in the world, Roy will probably not be one of them. But these aren't four random people. These are (were) his three best friends and his ex-sister-in-law, people who he's known for years, people who he's laughed with, cried with, fought beside, all for them to turn around and…

Before he can get angry about it all over again, he takes a deep breath and focuses back on the phone call.

"Listen, I'm at work, so I have to go," he says. "I'll bring Lian by sometime this week, she's been whining about not seeing you. Thursday okay?"

"Thursday's great," says Dinah. As usual, she manages to sound like she's listening to what's going on in Roy's head, not just what's coming out of his mouth.

"All right, we'll be there for dinner," says Roy, leaning over to mark it on his calendar. "I'll bring…something. I know you hate my cooking."

"It's fear, not hate," Dinah teases. "I'll see you then. Get back to work, slacker."

He smiles and hangs up the phone, grateful she hasn't tried to force anything more out of him. Better just to forget about it, he tells himself. He has plenty to worry about without adding in things he's gotten over years ago.

But as the day wears on, he finds it's not quite that easy. He checks the surveillance cameras, orders a replacement holster for a guard whose gun has been sticking, runs a closed-circuit test of the silent alarm to make sure it's in order, but all the while, his brain keeps trickling back to his fight with Artemis and everything that comes with it.

Perhaps it's because somewhere in the vast sea of anger he's ignoring, there's also a spark of doubt. For the last three and a half years, Roy has understood the situation to be thus: while he was away seeking Speedy (an endeavor the others had all abandoned in the face of more glamorous, straightforward missions), the team had experienced its first casualty with the death of Aquagirl, and in grief and rage and probably self-loathing, Aqualad had resigned as leader and disappeared, soon to resurface as Black Manta II. In Roy's mind, all these things happened in quick succession. He couldn't possibly have made it back from Nicaragua in time to see Kaldur, to change his mind about anything, to express what a bleak place the world would seem if he, of all people, fell from grace.

But then again, Roy didn't even try. He'd been keeping radio silence to hide his position from the cultists on whom he'd been snooping, and Tula's death hadn't seemed a good enough reason to break it, so he'd just assumed Kaldur would understand and carried on. On the one hand, Roy wants to be angry that Kaldur had so little faith as to assume his absence meant he didn't care – after all they'd been through, how could he think such a thing?

Because you never told him, his brain helpfully supplies. Honesty, especially kind honesty, has never been Roy's strong suit. And then of course on the other hand, there's the glaring truth that his swift (albeit outraged and stricken) acceptance of Kaldur's new identity probably says something less than flattering about his own faith in Kaldur. Truth be told, Roy's been so used to feeling like the victim in all of this, let down by the team, betrayed by his own best friend, that to think he might be even a little bit responsible for what's happened…it's beyond distracting.

And then there are Kaldur's words, the only ones he said through their entire ordeal yesterday: "You shouldn't have come."

What the hell is that supposed to mean?

When five o'clock arrives, Roy locks up his office and gets in his car and goes to pick up Lian at day care. She's traded in the lost cat book for a new one, some crap about a fish with shiny scales that she probably only picked out because the illustrations actually use shiny paper for the scales, but it seems to make her happy so he doesn't say anything. Buckling her into the carseat, he starts the drive home to the sound of her pleased humming.

Dinner is a quiet affair, macaroni and cheese with carrots on the side. Roy's never been a huge fan of the combination, but carrots are Lian's favorite vegetable (meaning the only one she'll eat without a fuss) and macaroni is one of the few things he can make without setting something on fire, so it's a winner in his book. Domestic life does not come naturally to him. But as with everything that came before it, he applies himself, works harder, and makes do.

"Can we movie?" asks Lian after dinner, looking up from her umpteenth "reading" of the fish-book.

"We don't have any new ones, but if you want to watch one of our old ones, sure," says Roy. He's arm-deep in suds as he washes the dishes – fake cheese is a bitch to clean. Frankly, a movie sounds great. Any kind of distraction sounds great.

Lian climbs down from her chair and walks clumsily to the bookcase, where her movies fill the bottom shelf, tales of adventure from several decades. Most of them are gifts from Ollie, though a few Roy purchased himself, and there's the odd birthday present from Wally or Nightwing. After a moment's hesitation, she pulls an old favorite off the shelf – Robin Hood. (Ollie, troll that he is, told her it was her Daddy's favorite, and it's been hers too ever since, though she has little idea of its significance to them.)

"Again?" Roy asks skeptically, but shrugs and accepts her decision.

They settle in to watch, Lian singing along tunelessly to the music as she cuddles up to Roy's side, his large arm around her little shoulders. Getting lost in this world of merry bears and feisty foxes isn't as easy as it was the first time they watched it, though, and Roy is getting to the point where he realizes that trying to ignore the hole his past has ripped in his present isn't going to work. So when it's over, he supervises Lian's teeth-brushing, helps her into her pajamas, tucks her into bed with a truncated bedtime story, and picks up the phone.

He isn't sure the number he has on file for Nightwing is still accurate but he tries it anyway, and after several rings someone picks up.

"Harper," says Roy to identify himself, not feeling like he's on first-name terms with any of them at the moment (not that he's ever been on first-name terms with Nightwing, who after all this time still hasn't told Roy who he really is).

"Hey, Roy," says Nightwing, sounding tired. "What's up?"

"I want to talk to you."

"All right," says Nightwing. "Talk."

"Face to face," says Roy. "Unless you're too busy saving the world for that."

"Did that yesterday," Nightwing replies. "Did you mean now? I'm in Gotham, it'll take me a little while to get to a zeta."

"No," says Roy. "Tomorrow's my day off. I'll drop by the Cave."

"Okay," Nightwing agrees. "Bring Lian, too. M'gann will be happy to see her."

Roy has a feeling Nightwing only suggested this because he knows Roy's short on cash and childcare is expensive, but he doesn't look a gift horse in the mouth, just grunts his assent. They work out the details and hang up, leaving Roy with an empty night that he spends making meaningless lists of things, groceries and shopping and things to ask Dinah about normal small girl behaviors because he sure as hell doesn't know what he's doing. He stays up long enough to ensure he won't spend any time lying awake in bed. Then he sleeps.

Their arrival at the Cave is heralded by the computer's now-familiar announcement. Recognized: Roy Harper, R-01; Lian Harper, F-04. Whether he's proud or ashamed that he's the first hero to have a "retiree" zeta ID is something Roy hasn't quite decided.

Lian, of course, is excited. She's been to the Cave only two times before but both visits involved good food and more importantly a lot of attention, so she remembers them pretty well. As they enter the central chamber, M'gann appears on the upper landing and calls out excitedly to Lian, who lets go of Roy's hand to wave. Soon the two are united on the training floor.

"She's getting so big!" M'gann exclaims delightedly to Roy, crouching beside his daughter and wrapping her up in a tight hug. Her next words she directs at Lian herself: "I missed you, you beautiful troublemaker."

"No troublemaking today though, right, babe?" says Roy. He gives her a stern look that's met with a giggle as M'gann ruffles her now-dark hair (the initial red lasted only a few months before it slowly changed to her mother's black). "Play nice with Megan and Garfield."

As if on cue, the younger boy appears in the opposite hallway and quickly morphs into a green kangaroo, bounding over to Lian, who shrieks elatedly and throws her arms around his legs – she loves this game.

"Nightwing around somewhere?" Roy asks M'gann as Lian claps for Gar's rapid shapeshifting, kangaroo to elephant to bunny to monkey and back to monkey-boy.

"He's upstairs, in the med lab," the Martian replies, lifting a finger to her temple. "I'll call him."

Her eyes glow briefly. By the time Garfield has turned tiger and begun to nuzzle Lian's shoulder, the acrobat has appeared on the landing up above, though Roy has a feeling Nightwing knew exactly when he got there. There isn't a lot that escapes Nightwing's notice.

"We were thinking of going out to the beach," says M'gann, laying a hand on Gar's green-furred back. "Just beep us when you need her back, okay?"

"Will do," Roy nods as he locks eyes with Nightwing from across the room. "Thanks for looking after her."

M'gann smiles.

"It's our pleasure."

With a nod, Roy heads up the stairs, towards the conversation he's not sure he wants to have anymore.

"How is he?" he forces himself to ask as he and Nightwing stand on the mountainside, perched on a little vantage point accessible from a door just off the medical wing. It's chilly outside, but if they stay in there's always a chance Conner will unintentionally overhear something. Superhearing is a curse as often as it's not.

"Better," says Nightwing, leaning against the railing. "Physically speaking, at least. He's eating again, and his body temperature is a lot more stable than it was yesterday. We think all the heat flux on the sub knocked his system out of whack."

"Right," says Roy, who can't bring himself to ask anything further.

There's a small silence, filled by the murmur of the waves on the distant beach, and the rush of the wind.

"I'm sorry about Artemis, the other day," says Nightwing quietly. Roy glances over at him but his face is unreadable, especially with the sunglasses. "She…they…have been through a lot together. She tends to get a little defensive where Kaldur is concerned."

"I noticed," says Roy, sliding his hands into his jacket pockets.

For a moment, Nightwing looks like he's considering saying something, then decides against it, looking out over the ocean instead.

"It wasn't a decision we made lightly," he says at last.

"Look, I'm not here to make you justify yourself, or to get into another argument," says Roy. "I just want to know what happened. I want the whole story, from you, not from some third party."

Nightwing nods, settling against the railing.

"I guess I owe you that, at the very least," he says. "For coming through when we needed you the other day. Where do you want me to start?"

"Aquagirl," says Roy. He almost thinks he sees Nightwing flinch, but the movement is so subtle and so quick he could easily have imagined it. "Start with the mission where she died."

"All right," Nightwing nods, taking a deep breath. Roy gets the feeling this isn't an easy topic for him, which is unusual for the typically unflappable acrobat. "Aquagirl – Tula – had only been on the team for about a month and a half when we got wind of a situation in the Aleutian Islands. Marine Corps sonar had picked up some kind of underwater structure that hadn't been there before, and we suspected the Light was up to something, so Batman sent us to investigate.

"I chose the team. We needed as many eyes underwater as possible, but the temperature and the pressure in those waters made that complicated. Miss Martian and Superboy were up for it, but Aqualad was away on business with Aquaman, and with Miss M and SB so fresh off their breakup I worried about their ability to work together effectively without a third party. Tula volunteered to join them. I accepted, and led the mission myself, from the Bioship."

"What about fish head?" Roy asks, forgetting Aquaman's new protégé's name.

"La'gaan wasn't part of the team yet," Nightwing replies. "With Kaldur gone, Tula was the only Atlantean we had."

"Right," Roy nods. "Go on."

"Shortly into the mission, we were found out," Nightwing continues. "The waters were mined, and when they detected our presence, they activated the minefield. After the first round of explosions, we lost contact with Aquagirl, and by the time we tracked her location a few miles out it was too late. She'd been caught in the blast, and bled to death before we could reach her. It's still not clear exactly what happened, but we recovered her body, brought her back to the Cave, and alerted the League."

"And Kaldur?"

"His mission had had its own complications," said Nightwing, frowning. "He and Aquaman had faced off against Black Manta, and the truth about his parentage had come out. He was already shaken enough when he came back to the Cave, but to come back to that news…a lot of us thought it was going to be too much for him. Batman took him off active duty and suggested he take some time for himself."

Roy is silent a moment, trying to determine exactly where he was at this point in time. He remembers learning about Tula's death in some seedy bar in Nicaragua, from a fifteen-second spot on news TV, sandwiched between riots in Jordan and some stupid personal interest story. She hadn't been a hero on land long enough to warrant anything more substantial, and Roy hadn't known her well enough to have any real personal reaction to her death. Mostly he'd wondered how Kaldur was taking it, then assumed that he'd be fine in the end. Kaldur was always fine in the end.

"Whose idea was it?" Roy asks, wondering for the umpteenth time why he didn't even turn on his comm to give Kaldur a chance to contact him, or at least to let him know where he was. "The undercover scheme."

"Mine, originally," says Nightwing. "We had discussed the need for better intelligence collection, and I'd suggested trying to get someone on the inside. But I'd never dreamed it would be him that went under."

"Until he suggested it himself," Roy guesses, and the other hero nods.

"It was about a week after Tula's death," Nightwing says. "He radioed me in the middle of the night and asked if we could talk in private. We met in Blüdhaven. I objected, initially, because I thought his departure might unravel the team, but…he convinced me it was our best chance at stopping the Light, and I couldn't deny he was right. The next night we brought Wally and Artemis in to witness the plan, and he was gone a day later."

"Why?" Roy asks. "Why did you need Wally and Artemis there?"

He tells himself it's an honest question and not a bitter one, but even he's not sure.

"In case something happened to me," Nightwing replies, his voice strangely even. "If I died, they would inform Batman of the situation. Every time I met with Kaldur I entered whatever information he'd gathered into a protected data stick that automatically synced with one I'd given Wally. That way we never risked losing the progress he'd made, and we ensured that when his job was finished he had credible witnesses to attest to his true allegiance. It also stopped them coming back into the field to confront him. I didn't want them to worry."

"Why not tell M'gann and Conner too, then?" asks Roy. "From what I hear, Superboy had a pretty hard time dealing with the whole thing."

"For the same reason we didn't tell you," says Nightwing. "They were unstable and unpredictable at the time. We didn't have full faith that they could keep the secret, and for Kaldur that was a matter of life and death. We couldn't take the chance."

"I wouldn't have spilled," Roy objects, hands slipping out of his pockets to form fists. It's like he's been waiting this whole conversation for something to be angry about, and the feeling is rising rapidly through him.

"Maybe not, but I wasn't about to bet Kaldur's life on it," says Nightwing flatly. "Not with the company you were keeping."

Roy's rage slips away faster than he can hold onto it.

"You knew, even then?" he asks, averting his eyes.

"I knew," Nightwing confirms. "Jade may have helped us out on occasion, but she's still a criminal. Still a member of the League of Shadows. That kind of information would have been far too valuable for her to resist peddling. I know you said you weren't here for me to justify myself, so I won't preach, but you didn't leave us a lot of options, Roy. Even Kaldur agreed."

Roy starts.

"You discussed it?"

"Of course we discussed it," says Nightwing, giving him a look. "You were his best friend. He spent half his spare time tracing your comm to make sure you weren't dead. But after a while it got pretty clear that you weren't intending to come back, and well…you know him. It wasn't an easy choice, but both of us knew what had to be done, and he was in a position to do it, so we went ahead with the plan. He didn't like leaving while you were involved with her or any of the other things you were doing. But he didn't see an alternative."

"Right," Roy says after a moment, processing that. "And…is it true, what Artemis said? About having nothing left to leave behind?'"

"He said something to that effect, yes," says Nightwing, looking away, out over the water. "Look, don't…don't take that on yourself, Roy. He was in a bad place when he said that. I don't think he really meant it."

"Kaldur doesn't say things he doesn't mean."

There's a silence, which Roy takes as acknowledgement that he's right.

"He…asked me to look after you," Nightwing says at last, still not meeting Roy's eyes. "I didn't do a very good job of that. I'm sorry."

Truth be told, Roy doesn't really know if he should be more offended at the subtle dig at his life choices, or at the fact that Nightwing really did do a shitty job of keeping tabs on him, if that was what was supposed to happen. He's not sure it's fair to be angry, though. After all, he did make it pretty damn hard for them to get through to him, especially after Kaldur left.

"It's fine," he says eventually, instead of any number of things he could. "All's well that ends well, I guess."

Nightwing laughs humorlessly.

"Yeah, that's not really how that works."

"No," Roy agrees. "No, it's not."

With a sigh, Nightwing straightens up off the railing and looks back to him, adjusting his sunglasses. He looks tired. He's looked tired for a while now, now that Roy thinks about it.

"Anything else you wanted to know?" he asks.

"Don't think so," says Roy, putting his hands back in his pockets. "Well…maybe one thing."

"Shoot."

"What's going to happen to him, now?" Roy asks, leaning against the railing. "Where's he going to go?"

Nightwing shrugs.

"We're still working on that," he says quietly. "It's…complicated."

Roy grunts.

"I bet."

"Do you want to see him?"

The question catches Roy off guard, and the "no" is almost out of his mouth before he realizes he actually does. Slowly, he nods.

"Want me to come with?" asks Nightwing.

"No," says Roy, and doesn't say why, in part because he's not really sure. It just feels like something he needs to do on his own. Nightwing doesn't seem to take offense, in any case, just nods and fiddles with his sunglasses once more. Brushing past him, Roy heads for the door inside, when suddenly the younger hero's hand closes on his arm, stopping him.

"Roy," Nightwing says, strangely fidgety. "This is way overdue, but...I know you've been through a lot, and maybe I haven't been the best friend to you, but I feel like you're entitled to know..."

And then to Roy's astonishment, he takes off his glasses.

It shouldn't make that much of a difference, but it does. Nightwing has a handsome face, almost boyish but not quite, with sharp blue eyes that reflect the sharp mind Roy knows lies beyond. But it's more than the sight of his face that takes Roy aback. It's the fact that after nine years, he's chosen this moment to reveal his true identity, a moment when Roy feels so exposed and vulnerable himself. On some level, it almost makes them feel like equals. Almost.

"My name's Dick," says Nightwing, fiddling with his glasses uncomfortably, as if it's a contradiction to his natural state to have them in his hands instead of covering his eyes. "Dick Grayson."

The name is vaguely familiar, though Roy can't place it.

"Uh…all right," says Roy. He's not sure what he's supposed to do with that information. Do you shake hands with someone whose name you just learned, even if you've known them for nearly a decade? That just seems awkward.

"He's in the gamma rest room," says Dick after a strained pause, sparing him the decision. "Fourth door on the left."

Nodding his thanks, Roy takes one last look at his friend's true face, then turns and heads inside, counting doors. The fourth is ajar, and he hesitates before pushing it further open, trying to convince himself this is a bad idea, since it would really be simpler just to forget any of this ever happened and go back to his normal life with Lian and the bank and the bills. But after everything Nightwing told him, he's not sure he can do that.

Kaldur is asleep. Propped up against a stack of pillows, he lies covered by a thin blanket, his right leg elevated by a pulley system. The left side of his face is a mess; Nightwing may have picked the visor shards out of his skin, but the incisions remain, marring his face from just above the eyebrow down to the sharp jut of his cheekbone. Various machines beep gently as they report his pulse, his temperature, his breath rate. All are stable.

For a moment, Roy is brought back to all the times he woke up in a bed like that, pieced back together and brought back from the brink of his own foolishness by the magic of medicine. More than once, his awakening was greeted by the sight of Kaldur's concerned face, or perhaps by the sound of the Atlantean's slow breathing as he slept upright in a nearby chair, still in his combat uniform, his own scrapes and bruises untreated.

And then he remembers the first time Kaldur wasn't there, the morning he woke up in a hospital bed after a bad patrol to find Dinah sitting beside him, her face reading bad news before she could even spoke. We don't want to believe it, she'd said. But it's looking like the truth. I'm sorry, Roy. We never thought he, of all people…

And all Roy had been able to think about was that the last time he and Kaldur had talked, they'd fought about Jade and her allegiances, an irony in which he'd taken vindictive comfort.

Now, with the whole picture in hand, that feeling seems unspeakably shallow.

Damn you, Roy thinks suddenly, a rush of bitterness coursing through him as he watches the steady rise and fall of Kaldur's chest from the doorway. He wants to believe he doesn't care. He wants to believe he can turn around and walk out the door and pretend he doesn't know this half-destroyed man, or at least convince himself that he doesn't owe him anything, but at the moment the best he can do is to tell himself that he owes Lian better than to dredge up his past just to placate his conscience. She needs him. Maybe Kaldur does, too, but she comes first. That's the end of it. It has to be.

Right?

He lingers in the doorway for a moment longer, unsure if he's hoping Kaldur will wake up, or praying he won't. Before he can make up his mind, he slips out the door, pulling it shut behind him, and descends the stairs back towards the main Cave, and his daughter. It's time to go home.