A/N: And if
'You fly like an eagle
Yes you are the one
I see every sun set
And with all that I've learned
It's to you, I will always
Always return'
I will Always Return, Bryan Adams
Black Chapter 4: Motivations
Trey had long since considered the path he'd chosen to be the right one. The people of the world saw only with eyes to see the present, their own suffering and pain, and how they could fix that. They rarely saw the grand story their lives would lead. Some saw war as horrible, a truth that Trey knew all too well. But they rarely saw the world a war could bring. As much pain and destruction they brought, in the end, they could bring peace. Fear and power were powerful tools. With enough of them, one becomes invincible. There are few who fight a battle they know they cannot win, and even fewer who would fight when there's nothing to gain.
So if a war could come that would change the world, substitute the enemy of man for an enemy far greater, then perhaps, the world might finally find peace.
Or at least, that's what Trey had hoped. As he sat in his base, watching the news coming from London, he waited to hear more about Noah. He tried pacing, trying to figure out why that one name stood out to him so much. There were far important things to worry about, but humans were illogical creatures, those who focused so much on the insignificant even when it didn't make any sense.
This was war after all , Trey knew he probably should have just forgotten it. Knock Sydney out, be on his way, ensure everything went according to plan. But for as long as he lived, there was something about these young warriors who took it upon themselves to change the world that he couldn't forget. Maybe it was their naivety that he admired, or maybe it was because he knew that their foolishness would one day lead them to be broken, only emotionally if they were lucky.
But whatever the case, he found a Nightwing born into this world, a thousand questions of how this could have happened going through his mind. But after finding all those letters, Trey was more glad to just give that kid another chance at life. It had been thrown away so recklessly, an attempt to get over a life of pain, but even a painful life can be one worth living.
"It was you." Trey heard the voice coming from the other room, and saw Noah standing there.
"You're awake now?" Trey asked, knowing the answer was quite obvious.
"Yeah…but where, and what, and who are you?" Noah held his head in his hand, and Trey could see that he was quite dizzy. The Nightwing awakening process was a straining one, especially if you'd lived life as a human the whole time, and then dying as a human. But the soul of a Nightwing still slumbers, and can be used to revive the whole body, assuming it had been dormant so far, and the body hadn't been dead so long to cause it to be unable to be revived.
"You should lay back down," Trey said getting up from the table where he had been trying to review their strategic plans, though he found it impossible to concentrate on them with all those other thoughts going through his mind.
"You keep telling me that, but you never tell me what's going on," Noah said, and Trey knew he couldn't' put this off forever. He wanted Noah to at least recover physically before he was faced with the truth. Then again, it was hard to tell how much of his memory had been lost when he died. After all, there was a good portion of his brain that wasn't where it was supposed to be. Even with Trey's power, and the Nightwing soul restoring Noah's body, there was likely some damage that would never be undone.
"Okay, come here and have a seat," Trey said, pointing to the chair on the other side of the room, so Noah walked over to it. Trey took the chair he had been sitting on near the desk where he had been drawing up various avenues of attack, and brought it over to where Noah was sitting. Noah seemed to have trouble getting comfortable, though having wings like that are a challenge to get used to.
"How much do you remember?"
"About what?" Noah asked.
"Your life. The last day you remember, why you have wings on your back. You know, things like that."
Noah took a look up at the ceiling, obviously trying to piece together the broken pieces of his memory. There were things that Try was sure would be missing as Noah tried to probe at them. Because of the redundancy with memories, he guessed the basics would be there, who he was, his personality and such should still be stable, but the recent memories would be the ones most likely to be messed up.
"My dad…he was always talking about how I was going to be a Nightwing like him," Noah said looking down at the floor. From the research Trey had done, he knew it was more than that, that his dad had been banished from the Nightwing realm, and seemed to be trying to make Noah into someone who could be like him, a powerful Nightwing warrior.
"How do you feel about that. Afterall, from those wings I'm sure you can tell what you are now."
"They don't feel natural," Noah said.
"They won't for a while," Trey said. "But did you want to become a Nightwing."
"I guess, not really." Trey could see the look on Noah's face, as the pieces were starting to come back together for him. "Actually, not at all. That was all dad would go on about, that he was so proud of me when I'd complete the training he wanted, how great that I'd be and how much power I'd have."
"But what about when things weren't going so well?" Trey asked, thinking that he was close to Noah getting to the bottom of what had happened.
"It was…" Noah paused, probably not wanting to believe what he was remembering for himself. Something that Trey couldn't blame him for at all. "Awful," Noah said after a few seconds, trying to find the right words it seemed, and trying to come to terms with what he was saying. He seemed to shake a little bit, something that didn't surprise Trey much considering all he knew about Noah's past.
"Can you remember anything that you really enjoy doing?"
"There wasn't much really. Home was a mess whenever Dad was in a bad mood, which was pretty often, and I don't really have many friends. And school, well, I thought that could be good sometimes, but there were a lot of fights that I ended up getting involved in," Noah said. "It seemed like there were a few people in particular, anytime we met, there was a good chance one of us would end up at the other's throats."
"Do you remember any of their names?"
"Yeah, there was Cole, that idiot who was always trying to get with girls. And then Sydney who seemed to be always wanting to fight. That's what finally did it too."
"What happened with him?" Trey asked, already knowing the answer, but he wondered how much Noah had remembered.
"Oh, just a stupid fight like all of them. Sydney said that I had it coming or something, but really, he was never that strong. I ended up knocking him out. Didn't mean to really hurt him, well, not that badly at least, but they took him to the hospital. And then…" Noah paused, as if there was something missing, or more than likely, something that he wasn't ready to believe. "I was expelled?"
"That's what the records said, from what I've seen anyway," Trey explained. "Keep going though, tell me what happened next."
"I never thought it would be something that serious. Like, I'd always been good at school, gotten good grades, and that was something that I really felt that I had done myself. It wasn't about dad and his Nightwings or anything, it was just me, my hard work, and my gifts. By to find it gone like that, just tossed away because I got a lucky punch in on Sydney when he deserved it all along. It wasn't right."
"How did you handle it?" Trey asked.
"You really do sound like you're a shrink, you know that?" Noah asked, causing Trey to grin a bit. It was true, he had studied some of the great minds over the centuries, trying to figure out how they got to the heart of memories and emotions. He'd even visited a couple of them himself to learn about how they worked, and in a couple cases, he even learned something about himself.
"Sorry, I'm just trying to figure this stuff out," Trey said, not wanting to give too much away of what he knew. It was much easier in a case like this to make it seem like he needed to know for his own reasons, that way Noah wouldn't have to overcome suspicions of needing help from a strange person.
"Well, after that I went home, and…" Noah trailed off, getting to the point close to his death. "My bear, I went to get that." He was continuing to slow down, the fragmented memories coming together. "I went to the kitchen, grabbed a pen out of the cabinet, and was really messed up, I remember that much, almost crying. No, wait, I actually was crying, and it felt so pointless. I didn't want to have anything to do with any of it. Not school and the people there. Not dad and his crazy talk about the Nightwings and how I was going to be something great. No, I wasn't anything great, I was just someone who might have been a little bit different, had a couple small gifts, and just wanted to get rid of it all. Because what was the point."
By this point, Noah was talking faster, the emotions of that time flooding through him. That meant he was close, the memories were forging their way back into his mind. He was close to the truth, he just had to keep going.
"So, I decided to just not deal with it anymore. I went down to the basement, where Dad kept his gun. He said it was for protection, a way that he could possibly fight back if they ever came for him. I never used it though, told it was a weapon beneath someone like us, only to be used as a last resort. But well, I guess I wanted a last resort, because that's where I went as I went downstairs. And then I took it and I…" Noah then stopped. He then held his hand up to his head, where he could remember pointing the gun. He pressed on his skull, feeling where the bone had been shattered, where his blood poured out. "I killed myself. Or tried to, I guess."
"You didn't just try, you succeeded," Trey said. "Your memories are still blurry, but it is good to know they are still there."
"If I died though…how am I alive here?"
"The Nightwings are powerful beings," Trey said. "Sometimes not even death can stop them."
"That's impossible though. It should all be over now. I wanted it all to be over." Noah looked at his wings, which while a part of him, seemed to be so foreign. He wanted to rip them out, to tear himself from any of those wishes and dreams forced upon him by the man he called his father.
"Noah, there aren't many people in the world like you," Trey said. "Your life has been hard, but there are second chances, and I can show you what meaning your world could have." Trey wasn't sure why he was doing this. Why he cared so much about this young Nightwing. He hated the Nightwings, he wanted them all to die. They were nothing more than pawns in his game, pieces that only had value for what they could give him. And Noah was nothing special other than living as a human, and there were so many others out there that were just simple humans with a gift. But despite all of this, Trey wanted Noah to believe him, and wanted to help this young man. Maybe he was just far too sentimental, or maybe he saw this as an opportunity for himself.
"Maybe that doesn't sound too bad," Noah finally said. "I guess if I'm alive I might as well live."
And so, Trey began guiding this Nightwing in life after a death.
A/N: Okay, so you probably noticed that I updated all three stories in this series today, Red, Black, and Unclouded By Hate, showing the three parts of the story. And after 4 years, if you're reading this, you're probably hoping that I don't just disappear again. Well, I'm not someone who wants to do that either, so I have already a couple more chapters written.
And by couple, I mean all of them.
Well, other than the epilogue which will explain some things, but besides that I have finished writing Red, Black, and Unclouded By Hate. I ended up doing this for National Novel Writing Month in 2015, with the plan to start posting this at the start of the year, but got lazy with editing, and haven't had much motivation to edit, but I finally am doing this. The rest of the chapters still need some pretty heavy editing to at least be decent, and I realize that there are flaws with the plot of the story as a whole, but flaws or not, I am going to finish this. It may not be the greatest story ever, but I grew through writing this, and I'm really happy to be able to see this story to its end. And to my old fans that are still around, or the new ones I may pick up along the way, it's good to be back.