A Retinue Of Moons

"I just want to thank you again for doing this," Robin says.

"No problem," I reply. He and I are about to leave for the Justice League's annual conference. It'll probably be weird, but he asked me to go, for some reason. Saying yes felt like the nice thing to do.

Wally is sitting on the couch of Robin's living room, pouting. "I'm gonna miss you," I smile and roll my eyes.

"It's only two days," I tell him.

"Which is forever when you have superspeed!" he exclaims. "And anyway it's the longest we've been apart since we got together."

"Ooh," I whimper. I didn't realize that. "Now I'm sad."

He stands up and wraps his arms around my waist. "I just wish the location didn't have to be top-secret."

I lean my forehead against his. "I'll buy you a souvenir."

He kisses me. "It better be good."

I kiss him. "It will be."

"Oh my god," Robin says, "you two are like a tween sitcom, do you know that?"

"Please," I say, "like you and Starfire are any better."

"Oh, they're worse," Wally chimes in. "Have you seen her room?"

"Not in a couple months. Why?"

"She's got one of those cardboard cutouts."
"That's kind of creepy."

"She drew hearts on it."

"You know what else she could have drawn?" I snicker.

"Seriously, guys, stop that! Geez, Donna wasn't kidding about you two!" Robin exclaims. "And we have to go."

"Okay, fine," I say, giving him an exaggerated eye roll.

Wally kisses me again. "You be nice."

"No promises."

He laughs and turns to Robin. "And you…" His eyes suddenly bug out. "What happened to your hair?"Robin grins fiendishly and turns slightly to show off his…

Shoulder-length ponytail.

I burst into laughter. "Omigod, that's a clip in right?" I say breathlessly.

Robin shakes his head, still smirking. "Grew it out," he says. "I enjoy messing with Bruce."

"Dick, you grew out your hair just to mess with your dad?" Wally asks, shocked.

"Well, its not exactly a turn-off for the ladies either."

"Seriously? Dude, you're not a player. Stop trying to sound like a player."

"Says the guy who got an earring to impress his girlfriend."

Wally snorts. "It's a… cartilage… piercing…" He says, trying to sound tough and failing miserably. "And I didn't do it to impress her, I just… felt like it."

"I do think it's really hot, though," I say.

Wally nods, satisfied. "Thank you."

"And so's Robin's ponytail."

"See?" Robin snickers. "It's a hit with girls."

Wally makes a face. "Well it doesn't go with your costume. Your costume's for a short guy with hair gel."

I raise a finger. "Toni could totally hook you up with a new one."

Robin smiles, but it seems wistful, somehow. "Yeah. Yeah, maybe." He glances at his watch. "We really have to leave now."

"'Kay," I give Wally one last kiss. "Bye. Love you."

"Love you too."


"You know I've never been in one of these before," I say, buckling my seatbelt on the airplane. We are flying first class, courtesy of Batman. Robin let me have the window seat.

"Really?" He asks, fishing around in his carry-on for something.

"Yeah," I say, staring out the window. I can see people outside, airport workers, I guess. I don't know what they're doing, but it's sort of interesting. "I'd never left California before Paris, and since then, well, you know, Wally's faster."

Robin laughs. "Yeah." He finds what his looking for in his bag- a pair of glasses. He takes off his sunglasses.

I've never seen his eyes before.

They're blue, but they don't look at all like Wally's. Wally's eyes are bright and vibrant, the color of the sky. Robin's are much darker, almost navy. They have a somber look to them, but then, that isn't a surprise.

"Didn't know you wore glasses," I say, as he puts them on. He chuckles.

"Blind as a bat without 'em" he says. I'm pretty sure he intended the irony of that sentence. "Lenses on my mask are prescription."

"Seriously?"

"Why do you think I never take it off?"

"To preserve your secret identity?"

"Well, that too"

I"I wear contacts," I say.

He smiles. "Small world."

I look back out the window. God, this is awkward. This is literally the first time I've had a one-on-one conversation with the guy. I feel like I should make an effort, it would mean a lot to Wally if I did, but… I don't even know if I'm supposed to call Robin or Dick or Richard or what. I'm pretty sure I still have some of the things I stole from his room that one time.

This is just so fucking weird.

Not to mention the fact that, as he explained to me earlier, two representatives from each non-JLA team are allowed to come to this conference. Apparently there's another one sometime in the winter that everyone's expected to go to. But for this one, the leader of the team comes and brings one guest. Robin could have picked anyone- Wally or Donna or Raven or Star.

He picked me.

The plane takes off, and I find myself staring out the window in awe. Everything seems so small. It's sort of gorgeous and amazing and terrifying, just to see the world from so far away.

Robin laughs when he sees my expression."You really haven't been on these."

I shake my head. "Is it weird that I'm kind of freaked out?" I ask. "Like, how does it not just fall and crush all of us? Especially with me on board."

"It's perfectly safe, Jinx," he reassures me. He's taken a notebook out of his bag, and is going over his notes for the conference. His hair falls in his eyes and he laughs nervously as he brushes it away, not used to the length.

Gosh, he's really different out of costume. He just seems so nice. So normal.

"Why, um," I begin. I pause, trying to stop myself from stumbling over the words. "Why did you ask me to come to this?"

He writes something in his notebook, doesn't look up. "I thought about bringing Rae, but I didn't want to take two people out of one team. Figured I should take a leader; Bee's already short a player, Wally's got that all that family stuff going on, and that left you and Hotspot." He chuckles at that. "You were the obvious choice."

"Yeah" I say. He's leaving something out, I can just feel it. But I don't want to push him. I hardly know him. I'm just glad we're not at each other's throats anymore. I reach into my bag for my iPod. Hopefully it'll help me stop freaking out about plane crashes.

"And…" Robin says, suddenly. I'm not sure if he can read me as well as I'm reading him, knows that I can tell he's leaving something out, or if he just needs whatever this is off his chest. I guess it doesn't matter. "And this is the first conference I'll be going to since I worked for Slade. Believe me when I say if there's anyone I want there for this it's you. "

"'Cause I've been through it," I realize. Of course.

"They can't pick on me when you're so much worse," he says. A joke. Even he doesn't think it's funny.

"So you're just using me, then?" I joke back. God, I'm not funny either, am I?

He laughs. "No, I... I have to give a full report about my time there," he explains. "I don't know how much I'll be able to get away with leaving out and it'll be the first time Bruce hears it and…" He's not writing anymore but his eyes are still fixated on his notebook.

"There, um…" His breathing seems heavy. "There are only two people who know what really happened. And one is him and the other is Raven and she read my mind, so, so I haven't… I've never actually told anyone. So…" I've lost track of what he's talking about, but I've noticed that his face is chalky and white and that he's digging his fingernails into the armrest.

"So..." I say.

"So there are some things in this report," he continues.

"Things," I say. I don't expect him to continue.

To my surprise, he does.

"Things like Slade raping me."

What?

Oh, my…

Oh, my God.

I don't what to say. I barely know him. How do I respond to that? "I…" I start to say I'm sorry, but it doesn't feel right. "I, um..."

He shakes his head. "Don't worry about it. Rae's given me the, the therapy stuff, and... We've talked through most of it, I just…" He exhales, like dropping a weight. "I've never said it aloud." He runs a hand through his hair. "I wasn't gonna say anything in my presentation but… Raven, she convinced me. He's done some pretty bad stuff to her to, and then there's Terra, and… Well, if I didn't say anything then, then he was going to get away with it, and... I'm sorry. I'm probabaly freaking you out..."

I shake my head. "It's pretty tough to freak me out."

"I figured," he says. "I'm still sorry, I just... Raven read my mind. I've never actually told anyone and..."

"And you didn't want the first time to be…"

"In clinical language while I'm standing at the front of a lecture hall giving a powerpoint to the fucking JLA," he finishes. "Yeah."

"But... You're okay?" I ask. "To go to this, I mean. Of course you're not gonna be..."

"I'm fine," he says, nodding. "Thank you."

I press the buttons on my iPod, just to do something with my hands. "Why me, though?" I ask. "Why not… Someone you know? Wally or Donna, or, well, um… Starfire?"

He smiles weakly. "Well, like you said. I knew you wouldn't freak."

"Starfire," he continues "is amazing. And I know that she would handle this…" He shakes his head, fumbling for the word. His eyes light up when he talks about her. "Beautifully. I know that, I really do. And Wally and Donna have been my best friends for years and I love them dearly. But... I'm not ready to tell them. You didn't know me before, not really. I was… I was different. You can't see that. You can't make that connection, can't realize that … That the nights I wake up screaming or, or the fact that I won't wear a bathing suit or go into a public bathroom without someone waiting outside the door… That none of it started until after and…"

"To you, it's just something that happened. Cold facts," he says quietly. He's crying. "To them it's a tragedy.

He wipes his eyes. "I guess I was raised to be comfortable with the facts."

I look at his notebook, and realize he wasn't writing at all. Instead the page is covered by a harshly-drawn "S", the corners sharp rather than round, the lines pressed deep into the paper.

He sees what I'm looking at and half laughs. "Oh, that. I draw that everywhere. I hardly even realize when I do it."

He undoes the top few buttons of his shirt band pulls back the collar. There is an S-shaped scar, right where his heart should be.

"He did that one to me," he says. He rolls up one of his sleeves, revealing similar scars up and down his arm. "But apparently I do the rest of them in my sleep."

I press my lips together. He's pouring his heart out to me, someone hardly more than a stranger. It's sad, but also… Well, he's never seemed more human.

"I'm a cutter," I tell him. It's the best I can offer, in exchange for what he has just told me. "I haven't in a while, but… You know."

"I know," he says. We both do.


"I'll sign us in," Robin tells me, as we arrive at the hotel the conference is being held at. When Robin said "conference" he wasn't kidding- we're hsomewhere in Florida and people are wearing business suits. Toni even loaned me a blazer, just in case. "Can you grab our packets? They should be over there somewhere?"

He gestures towards a table covered in folders. Each one has a schedule, a variety of documents and pamphlets and, clipped to the front, a nametag. I dig through them until I find "Richard Grayson, Robin, Teen Titans" and "Olivia Tudor, Jinx, Teen Titans".

According to Robin, the conference is unbelievably secure. No reporters, no outsiders. The location is top-secret to everyone- even family members and other heroes- except select members of hotel staff, who are given specific instructions to prevent anyone else from entering the area or even knowing what's going on. Because of this, the participants are more relaxed about their identities, and use real names and hero names almost interchangeably. He says it's the one time when nobody really cares.

Still, it's weird. I wonder how they sign-in Congorilla.

I hand Robin his packet and start reading my schedule. The lectures include things like "Ethics of Controversial Fighting Techniques" and "The JLA Database and You". "Well, shit," I mutter.

Robin shrugs. "Yeah, this conference can be pretty dry. Winter one's usually-"

"Okay," someone interrupts him, "you two are dressed like you're going to a funeral. Must be with the Titans."

"Peej, hey! Robin says, waving at the woman who just entered the room. She looks like she's in her twenties, and has a blond bob and… Really, really big boobs.

She walks up to him and gives him a hug. "'Sup, Dick?" "Nothing much," he says. "You here with JSA?"

"Nah, Carter and Kendra," she says. "I'm here as an independent."

"Oh, right, you're in Boston! How's school?" he says.

"I'm really enjoying it," she says. She smiles slyly. "So I hear you have a girlfriend these days?"

Robin laughs nervously. "So, uh, Peej. this is my coworker, Jinx. Jinx this is Power Girl."

"PJ," she tells me. "Or Peej. Cool boots."

"Thanks," I say."I like your outfit."

She's wearing a biker jacket and jeans rather than a suit or a hero costume. "Thanks," she says brightly. "They were all 'bring a business suit' and I was like 'Really?' So I'm trying to see how long I can put off having to wear it." She turns to Robin. "Now stop avoiding the question!"

He glares at her. "Yes, okay? Now can you tell me who's here?"

"Well you're no fun," she jokes. "Um, Hal's with JLA so Kyle and John came for Lantern Corps, there's some guys from Legion, I think, independents are, um, Babs, Dinah…"

"Is the League in?"

Her face softens. "He's upstairs. He didn't bring Jason."

Robin nods. "Do you want me to tell him you're here?" PJ asks gently.

He shakes his head. "I should do it. Thanks, though."

"Want me to bring your suitcase to our room for you?" I ask him.

"Actually, um, I was wondering if you'd mind coming with me?"

"Oh," I say. I don't know anyone would want me around for something like this, but if it helps him. "Sure."

"Anyway, gives you a chance to meet Barry."

"Shit," I say. "I forgot about that."

Robin smirks. "This might actually be a fun weekend."


I was expecting Batman to be imposing, but Bruce Wayne, as it turns out, is not an imposing man.

He's tall, but they're all tall. I'm starting to think it's a requirement for being in the League. And while he clearly works out, he doesn't look like a body-builder he way Superman does. He's slim in the face and a bit unkempt. Too normal-looking to be scary.

"So… Hi." Robin shakes his head, corrects himself. "Hello."

Batman just nods. "Robin."

Doesn't that confuse him? There's two of them now. What would he call them if they were both in the same room?

"So, uh, this is Batman," Robin says to me, with an unspecific gesture. "Bruce," he adds. "Bruce, this is…"

"Jinx," Batman interrupts, reading it off my nametag. "Wally's girl. Interesting choice." He's talking to Robin, not me. "I thought for sure you were going to bring the brunette."

Robin looks confused. "Donna?"

"No, the short one."

"Raven? She's not really a brunette, exactly…"

"I was sort of hoping to meet your girlfriend, though."

"You'll get to. How's Alfred?" I don't even know who Alfred is and I can tell he's just trying to change the subject.

"Fine."

"And Jason?"

"Fine. How…" He stops, abruptly. "What did you do with your hair?"

Robin shrugs, weakly. He seemed so confident about it this morning. "Grew it out."

"It's a ponytail."

"Yeah."

"So are you ready for lecture tomorrow?"

Robin shrugs again. "Never done one before."

"You'll be good," Batman tells him. "And anyway, it's just the League. Nothing to be nervous about."

"Right. Nothing at all."

Oh my god.

He's not going to say anything. He's just going to let him find out tomorrow.

He really is brave.

"So do you know what you're doing for dinner?" Batman asks.

"You offering?"

"I guess. Your friend can come, if she wants." Geez, it's like I'm not even the room.

I hear the click of a door opening and closing. "Actually, I was hoping to borrow her?"

Oh, fuck no.

"Barry," Batman says. "Didn't hear you in the hallway."

"Well, you know us speedsters." The Flash. The fucking Flash. I can't do this. I have to do this but I can't do this. Fuck.

"PJ told me you guys just got in," he says. "I'd like to take you for dinner, if you don't mind."

Well, at least someone's acknowledging my presence. "Yeah, sure." I guess.

"Sounds great!"

"I'll see you later?" I say to Robin. He nods.

"Have fun." He's mocking me.

"You too," I sneer. He chuckles faintly, and they leave. Father and son, I guess.

As soon as the door closes, The Flash engulfed me in a hug. Starfire-style.

"I've heard so much about you!" he exclaims. "This is so exciting, I…"

"Are kind of hurting me?"

"Oh, sorry!" he says, laughing. "I'm just really glad to meet you." He sticks his hand out. "I'm The Flash. Call me Barry."

I shake it. "I'm Olivia. Call me Jinx."

He grins at that. "Cute and funny. My boy sure knows how to pick'em."


Where Batman seemed shockingly un-threatening, Barry Allen kind of reminds me of a giant teddy bear. He's tall and thin, with blonde hair and a slight southern accent. He has dimples when he smiles and his eyes are the same distinctive shade of blue Wally's.

He takes me to dinner at an Italian place that makes me feel underdressed. I try to order cheap, because frankly I don't know if I can afford this place, and even though I'm sure he'll insist on footing the bill, I feel kind of stupid about it.

He asks me the typical stuff- the where I've beens and what I've done theres- and it's all kind of uncomforable. I try, though. I really do fucking try. For Wally.

It's over dessert- chocolate cake and a cup of tea, at his insistence, I'm guessing Wally said something- when Barry finally brings him up.

"So how's he doing?" Barry asks. "With Lizzie's wedding coming up, I'd expect him to be a bit… Out of sorts, I guess."

"He's alright," I say, shrugging. "He's… Trying not to be upset about it."

Barry smiles. The sad kind. "That sounds like him." He taps his fork against his plate, not looking me in the eye for a second that feels like longer. "Promise me something?"

"Yeah."

"Don't let him get away with that."


"So how was meeting the parents?" Robin asks, smirking, as I walk through the door of our hotel room.

He's sitting on one of the beds with his laptop. I flop down on the other. "I dunno, how was dinner with your dad?"

"He's not my dad."

"He's pretty much your dad," I say. "It was good. Kind of awkward, but Barry seems nice."

"Yeah, I've always liked him." He types something, the clicking of the keys echoing through the room, before he finally answers my question. "It could have been worse. Mostly we didn't talk."

"Would it have been worse if you'd talked more or less?"

He ponders this. "Less."

My hands are restless. I reach into my suitcase and grab a notebook and a pen.

"So are you ready for your lecture?" I ask, trying to make it sound offhand.

"Yeah, I guess," he says. He is clearly trying to do the same thing.

"You want to, like, do a test run or something?"

He shakes his head. "I did it for Raven last night. Thanks, though."

"No problem."

I talk to him without looking up from my notebook. "Hey, can I ask you something."

"Go ahead."

"Do you know a good lawyer?"

He raises an eyebrow. "Why?"

"For my… My sister. She wants to get to emancipated."

"She's eleven, right?"

And dying. I'm guessing Wally told him. "Yeah."

"Where's she going to stay?"
"We're working on that. That's why we need a lawyer."

He nods, and writes something on a scrap of paper. "Here's a few names," he says, handing it to me. "They're all based out of Gotham, but I'm sure they could help you find someone in…" He stops mid-sentence. "Are you drawing me?"

I feel kind of shifty-eyed. "Yes," I admit.

He doesn't say anything at first, just kind of stares at me blankly. Then he nods, like he's okay with this concept. "I knew the ponytail was a good choice."

I snicker. "Yeah. Star must love that her boyfriend spends longer on his hair then she does."

"I do not," he insists, smiling.

"I'm kidding," I reply. "I wouldn't draw you if I didn't think you looked good."

"Thanks."

I glance down at my page. It's not the only reason I'm drawing him. "That," I continue, slowly, "and… I think you're really brave."

He looks at me, his expression almost confused. Surprised, at least. I guess people don't think of me as sentimental. For good reason.

"Thank you," he says quietly. "Thank you."


It is, quite literally, a lecture hall. Huge screens at the front, rows of seats and humming fluorescent lights. I have not been in a room like this since the HIVE Acadamy sank underwater. Brings back bad memories, really.

Robin is setting up at the front of the room, with the help of PJ, who is laughing as she talks to him. She has no idea what's coming.

He looks up at me and I shoot him a thumbs-up. He raises his eyebrows and bobs his head. "Here goes", he mouths.

He boots up his presentation. "Apprentice:" reads the title, "a first-hand account of seventeen days as a supervillain's unwilling minion. By Richard Grayson, Robin I."

"You all know me, so I'll skip the introduction," Robin says. "And you all know what happened last year, so I guess I should just… Get to it. I, um, I just stuck with the facts for this, but… Well, even so, it's… I guess some of it might be a bit of a shock to most of you, so..." He straightens his tie and clears his throat. "I'm sorry. I meant to be more professional about this."

I know less of the story than probably anyone else here. I know Robin worked for Slade, at some point, but I don't know why or even one. It's funny how these things work out, I guess. Not only am I the second person he's telling the bloody details to, but the first time I'm hearing it is the bloody details.

"February 20, 2004. Jump City, California." he begins. "At approximately five in the morning, the supervillain known only as Slade hacked the Teen Titans West's mainframe computer, which allowed him to talk with us via live video. To this day, we do not know all of the mechanics that allowed him to do so. The message he relayed to us was that he had planted a chronoton detonator at undisclosed location in the city. By freeze-framing the video, we were able to discover that he was located at Pier 41 in the Shipping District. At the time, we believed he had mistakenly disclosed his whereabouts, thereby comprising his plans. In retrospect, we know this was not the case."

"While following this supposed lead, we were ambushed by a monster known as Cinderblock, whom Slade often uses as a pawn. At this point, I was separated from my teammates and approached by Slade himself. We fought, and I was unable to defeat him in combat."

The slide shows a diagram of red blood cells, labeled "Raven, healthy". "According to my team, I disappeared at approximately seven-forty-five that morning. At around eight-fifteen they found the detonator and discovered it was a fake. At about the same time, Slade revealed the same fact to me, as well as an additional piece of information: the detonator contained nanoscopic probes, released via a radioactive beam sent into the air when my teammates attempted to disarm the machine. The probes then attached themselves to their blood cells." He switches slides, to anothers diagram of more cells, with something metal attached to them. "Raven," it reads, "infected."

"At the push of a button," Robin continues, "he could kill them."

When he speaks, he seems cold and distant. It's like he flipped a switch- he is not the Robin I talked to yesterday, but the one that I know.

"He made me a deal. He wouldn't kill them if I would agree to work for him. I accepted, as it was the only way to protect my team. This began my fifteen day tenure as his apprentice. Apprentice was his term, and one that never fully explained to me. To this day, I do not know what his long-term plan was, though I assume that he had one."

"The first thing he did was give me a new costume, confiscating my old as well as my weapons, communicator, and any others items I had on me, with the exception of my glasses." he flips to a slide of it, which points out each component of the outfit. "I kept the costume, and have studied it thoroughly. It appears to be very simple, with no special features or materials. I was given no permanent weapons to go with it- he didn't want to offer me any means of escape."

"The following fifteen days consisted primarily of three components: Training, downtime, and torture. The training comprised the majority of the time, was not dissimilar to what I've done with Batman; combat, both armed and hand-to-hand, strategy building, stealth… He proved himself very skilled at his work, though I'm unable to list exactly what was taught, as it's difficult for me to quantify the lessons; they were more-or-less ongoing and often blurred together. Another aspect of the training involved him having me commit crimes; the list of crimes I committed under his instructions can be seen here. He started me small, theft, mostly, and occasionally he would have me fight his enemies. I believe he was trying to build my tolerance, and planned for me to commit more serious infractions in the future."

"Downtime was fairly infrequent. I was given at least one meal a day, and at least a few hours of sleep each night, though the exact amounts varied. Meals ranged from very minimal to extravagant- nothing but a single bowl of soup one day, a five course dinner the next. The complete meal schedule can be seen on the screen. When he was neither training nor actively torturing me, he would lock me in my bedroom. I'm unable to provide a photograph of the room, but I've included my rough approximation of it." He switches to a slide of a graph-paper drawing of a small rectangle- labeled "approximately 6 feet by 8"- with smaller shapes labeled things like "bed" and "end table." "The room," he continues "was very small, had no windows and could only be locked or unlocked from the outside- again, providing no easy method of escape. There are three times that I suspect I was alone in his headquarters- I believe he had left to do business- though I can't be certain."

"The torture was, I believe, intended to make me compliant, though I wonder if it was also simply because he enjoyed doing it. It included psychical, psychological, and sexual abuse. I was subject to regular and unpredictable beatings, rapes, and other forms of sadism. In addition, his attempts to manipulate my psychological state were near omnipresent in his interactions with me."

Robin says this near dead-pan. It's a clinical account, no gory details. Just the facts, none of the emotional impact. He's a very good actor.

"On March 8, 2004, at approximately…" As he talks about his rescue, I can't help but glance over and look at the rest of the audience. Most of them look a bit shaken up. PJ is crying.

Batman is serious, business-like, no emotion.

Well. Like father like son indeed.


"So did he say anything?" I ask, on the plane ride home. "I mean, when you said goodbye to him?"

Robin shakes his head. "PJ got all teary-eyed on me," he says. "And Clark told me I'm an exceptional young man." He chuckles grimly. "But no, Bruce didn't say anything."

"I'm sure he will eventually," I say. Robin shrugs.

"It's not even the whole story," he admits. "I mean, I didn't omit any events. But…"

"But you left out the emotion," I finish.

"Yeah."

"Supes is right, you know," I tell him. "You're a good man, Charlie Brown."

He genuinely smiles at that. "Yeah, well… Right back at ya."

I glance down at my shoes, embarrassed. "I guess you just have to tell your friends now, huh?" I ask, trying to turn the conversation off myself.

"Yeah," he says, with a nod. "Good thing I've already started."

Who knew that the sky is now found to contain benzene and methane and chalk
And bloody mud, muddy blood from the sky
From the sickly-sweet wings of Edith's checkerspot butterfly?


Author's notes

So I guess I've decided to finish this after all. I'm trying to get it down as quickly as I can so I can move on from it. It'll probably be slightly abridged from the original plan, because I might want to save some of the bits that I'm a little more interested in writing for a story I'm more invested in, but that just means more for the sequal, I guess. XD I was hoping to just post the whole rest of the story at once but after a while of writing it as fast as I could I sort of burned out and needed a breather, but I figured I should post what I have. Which is why you guys are getting three chapters at once hooray! XD After this is done I'll focus on Trainspotting for a while, and start on the sequel for this as soon as I figure out where I'm going with it.

This has actually been on my computer for over a week now, and there's another reason I've delayed posting it. And that's… Well, if you've read this far you probably know. I'm really worried about posting this. Which is weird, because I've had extremely similar subject matter in Trainspotting and it didn't worry me at all. But this one… I don't know. I went back and forth for days over whether I should post it or just omit this particular subplot (since really, it wouldn't affect the rest of the story if this chapter just wasn't here0

To explain why I did this, let me start by saying that I am one of those people for whom writing is essentially schizophrenia. The characters live in my head and they tell me what to do and sometimes it's not what I want to do but I do it anyway.

This is something I've known about Dick for a while now. I've been planning to tell his story, but haven't quite had the outlet to. Originally, I wasn't going to do it here, I was just going to hint at it, but for some reason, though, as I was writing this, Dick just decided he would no longer be ignored. He was going to tell his story now. He made me do this, guys. I can't explain it any better than that.

As noted in the chapter, this really isn't the full story. It's the bare facts, with most of the emotion and the consequences stripped away. What really makes Dick's presentation interesting to me is not what Dick says, but what he doesn't say. What he deliberately leaves out. He doesn't say that he still uses the techniques Slade taught him, or that even if he had been given a way out, he wouldn't have been able to try. He doesn't talk about the nightmares or the phobias or the toll this has taken on his ability to form any sort of relationship or the scars he has no way of explaining. He can't admit to Batman that he has any sort of weaknesses, and that in itself is difficult for him. Bruce, after all, is supposed to be his father.

I'd like to tell the rest of Dick's story at some point. It could be a while before I'm able to, but I have a few ideas of how I'd like to do so. He's one of my favorite characters, and oddly enough, probably the single easiest character for me to write. His voice comes extremely naturally to me and he's quite dear to my heart.

This is, essentially, a side story. It's Dick's story, Jinx is just bearing witness to it. They have, I think, an interesting friendship. They are actually very very similar. Most specifically, they both see the world in shades of grey rather than black and white. Because they have seen both sides. They live in the grey area and the both know it.

Also, I totally know that Power Girl usually goes by Karen in the comics. I changed it mostly because Bumblebee is already named Karen and I didn't really want two Karens floating around, and also because everybody just calls her Peej anyway (or at least in scans_daily they do). XD I included her in this chapter mostly because I like her, but also because, well... Does anyone know the Angel episode "Lullaby"? Accourding to the DVD commentary for it, the reason Joss Whedon had Fred present for Connor's birth was because it wouldn't have made sense for Angel or Darla to cry. Fred, though, she could cry. I needed Peej to be Fred.

Writing Dick's actual presentation was kind of hard too, but for a differant reason. It was one of those cases where I was relaying a story that Jinx doesn't know but the readers do, and I had to be careful not to make it seem tedious. Hopefully it came out interesting.

So yeah. I really hope I didn't disturb anyone, as I'm sure I've got a tendency to do. XD

On a completely different note: I really want to thank everyone who sent me a message after my last author's note. I know I said I'd respond to things individually, but then I didn't get around to and I'm really sorry about that. So I want to take this space to thanks to each and every one of you. I'm not normally a sentimental person, but… All of your kind words nearly made me cry. I don't have a lot of friends in real life so it really means a lot to me to know how much you all care about and support me. I love you guys!

Title and lyrics from "A Retinue of Moons" by Rasputina. This chapter was, incidentally, very, very difficult to title. I'm not sure I can explain the one I ended up with. It makes sense to me, I guess.