Note: this was kind of sloppily written so i apologize lol.

not gonna lie, i'm trying not to rush through these next few chapters but there's just so much future stuff i'm trying to get to xD it's at these moments i'm kicking myself for deciding this was going to be a slow-burn story LOL.

anyway. all i'll say is we're almost done with summer in this story's timeline, which signals a transition into more... ah, interesting things o.O

thank you all for the reviews, follows, and faves! xx

cw: death

"All my skeletons out for the takin'

I don't even know if I'ma make it

I'm afraid of myself, and I hate it

All my skeletons out for the takin'

Somebody take them"

~ keshi, "skeletons"

Chapter 19: Confessions

When he saw that both his father and Dick were in the large study, it felt even more than ever like he needed to confess his feelings... because not only did Damian need to tell Bruce, but he also knew his older brother had to know. It wouldn't have seemed right otherwise.

He'd been the first one to fill the role anyway, and to announce his desire to leave it meant Dick had to hear the decision.

After his unfortunate outburst last night, the teen had spent nearly every waking moment from then on reciting how he would approach the situation. It had been several weeks since he'd paid much attention to this part of his life that had bothered him for so long, but the pressure was becoming too high for him to keep his feelings bottled. Losing Titus had certainly made things significantly worse, pushing these thoughts and needs up to the surface. Though he wasn't fond of admitting it, Damian was losing his grip on himself and who he thought he was.

So who was he going to be after hanging up the suit?

They were discussing Tim's upcoming graduation when he arrived, Bruce saying something about having already scheduled time off for December as he sat behind his large desk. Dick was standing at one side of the room, arms crossed as he peered out the window at the bright though cloudy sky.

"Speaking of school, you ever decide if you're going to try out Gotham U, Damian?" Dick asked when he saw the teen enter the room, tossing him a curious look.

"I decided," Damian responded as he lingered at the door, splitting a glance between both men, "and my answer is no."

"Told you."

Bruce almost rolled his eyes at Dick's words before meeting his youngest son's gaze. "That's fine, Damian. I wasn't expecting you to."

He could've made some kind of remark but his mind was elsewhere. Out of all the approaches he'd come up with the previous night, was the best way to bring up the subject that would yield desirable results? Both his father and brother seemed to be in relatively good moods despite today being Dick's last day in the city before he went back home.

That had been another obstacle. Damian was reluctant to unload such heavy news on the man with such poor timing, but he also knew that waiting any longer would only make things worse.

Tell them.

"Well, I guess I can't really blame you let alone say anything," Dick was saying as he moved towards one of the chairs in front of Bruce's desk and sat down. "You know, considering I have less than a year of uni under my belt."

Bruce was chuckling then responding, but his words didn't make it to Damian's ears, not when his heart was beating hard within his chest and that voice in his head wouldn't stop urging him to speak up.

Just say it.

'I don't want to be Robin anymore.'

A short burst of static interrupted them, followed by Alfred announcing via the intercom system that Selina had arrived.

'I don't want to be Robin anymore.'

The words were sitting in his mouth, forcing their way to the tip of his tongue. Damian looked first at Dick then his father, suddenly the most nervous and anxious he'd ever been in a very long time.

"Let's meet Selina downstairs," Bruce said, gesturing towards the door, and Damian felt his jaw clamp shut on the words that had been so close to leaving his mouth.

The next few minutes were a forgetful blur, Damian's mind clouded with his demanding conscience, hands growing slightly clammy with apprehension. He was barely present even as he distractedly greeted the short-haired woman and stood in the kitchen, off to the side, while his family chatted with Selina and Alfred continued on making dinner. He hardly spoke and joined in the conversation, which wasn't unusual for him in the first place, so no one batted an eye in his direction or noticed that he was lost in his own head.

Of course, that also meant not a single person mentioned his injury despite how visible his bandaged hand was at the dinner table, holding a fork, not when combat wounds were frequent for nearly everyone in the room. But Damian knew the significance of the cuts in his fingers and the bruises on his knuckles, and they only reminded him that he needed to be honest about his intentions. His hand seemed to burn with that reminder as the young man sat quietly at the table, not listening to the laughs and chatter around him.

'I don't want to be Robin anymore.'

"Damian?"

The call of his name pierced his heavy thoughts, making him look up from his plate to see four pairs of curious eyes on him. Had someone finally noticed his absent-minded behavior? A quick scan of their faces told him that they were waiting for something… An answer?

Now was his chance while he had their attention.

"I need to—"

"Did you hear Bruce?" Dick asked, and that was when Damian noticed the delight in his brother's eyes, excitement that lit his blue irises more than they usually were.

Damian's gaze flickered towards his father, whose face almost mirrored his oldest son's in joy. "We're getting married."

Beside him, Selina was smiling, and so was Alfred. Somehow, he'd missed the enthusiasm that was spread across his family's faces when he'd first looked up, but he could see it clearly now, an emotion that, for some reason, twisted his gut.

In spite of the last several years, and last few months, struggling to see eye to eye with his father, Damian wanted him to be happy. Furthermore, he'd learned to get along with Selina and set aside his initial judgment about her, all for the sake of trying to understand why she was good for Bruce and how she made him better. They still weren't close by any means, but Damian had accepted her and what she meant to his father.

And at that moment, with his confession on the tip of his tongue and this good news stirring much-needed happiness in the manor, Damian made a selfless decision, one that felt right… and wrong.

With a practiced smirk, he responded, "It's about time. You had me thinking I would get married before you did."

And from that moment on, he was back at square one, withholding a secret that, until now, he hadn't had the courage to confess. Damian tucked it away again as he joined in on the impromptu celebration with his family at the table, watching as they toasted to the good news.

He couldn't reveal his feelings now. As much as it ached him and he wanted to tell them the truth, he had no desire to be the reason his father and brother stopped smiling at the recent announcement. His knuckles were throbbing, making him realize he'd been clenching his fist under the table. Flexing it open and closed a few times, Damian then glanced up at Dick, who was grinning at something Selina had said. Alfred was chuckling in that discreet way of his, and Bruce wore a look of admiration as he watched his now fiancee continue telling her story at his side.

No. Damian definitely couldn't do it now.

As if the reveal hadn't already been emotionally taxing, his father had stopped him on his way back upstairs to his room. The others were elsewhere in the manor, and Damian had felt his heart sink into his gut when he'd heard his name.

Yet he kept a controlled expression as Bruce approached him, an amiable look on his aging features. "I just wanted to say thank you for tonight."

"What did I do?" Damian inquired genuinely, brows raising slightly at the older man's words.

"I know it wasn't easy accepting our relationship," Bruce explained, looking away briefly before meeting his son's gaze again. "But you did. And your support tonight… it means a lot to me, Damian."

His chest tightened, and for a split second, he found it was hard to breathe. But despite how weak he felt now, Damian knew he was much stronger than that—he would not break the way he did when Titus had passed. He didn't want to.

"I want you to be happy, Father."

Perhaps the older Wayne could sense the tension in him, the exhaustion from not getting along with him for months. Could he also see that his son had been struggling with his identity for too long? Or was he going to succeed in hiding that for an even longer period of time? Damian saw how the patient, blue eyes were examining him, like his father somehow understood and realized that he was waving a white flag right then and there.

Damian was tired.

"And I'm sorry."

Bruce's gaze softened. "I know... I am, too."

His arms were around Damian then, catching the teen off-guard. The last time his father had embraced him was… he didn't know. It didn't quite feel like hugging Jess nor was it similar to Dick's casual hugs. No, it felt like Christmas mornings with all of his siblings present, like a rainy day in Gotham after a run-in with his mother. After months of tense dinners, thinly-veiled hostility, and nights spent patrolling alone, it felt like a truce he hadn't realized they'd needed, like he was getting back something he'd unknowingly lost.

It felt like having a father.

On this day, for two years in a row, Jess had been alone.

The first time was within the confines of white walls, the lingering stench of disinfectant, distant phone rings, bustling strangers in colored uniforms. A steady beeping, warm fingers brushing her skin here and there as they passed over tubes and needles, occasionally interrupted by a tentative voice asking about pain on a scale of 1 to 10.

She'd never known how to answer, so she always picked a random number, whatever would come out of her mouth. But even deep down under the weight of antibiotics, painkillers, and blankets, she had known a number assignment was meaningless, a definitive, narrow attempt to sum up the last 12 hours into a single digit... because the real answer was 10, multiplied over and over again until the universe ran out of space and time, unable to accurately reflect the true level of pain and suffering Jess had felt that night. It was more than a number, more than what her mind could process in the weeks, even months following, more than what any human being should have had to endure.

The second time, grief had accompanied her with a partner, one that called itself a reminder. Through the resurfacing of memories, lost voices and touches, Jess had relived the worst night of her life in the back of a public transportation bus, unseeing eyes turned out the window to pass over the city that had never looked the same since. The pain had returned, a ghost that made itself present after hanging behind her for 365 days, always there, always waiting for another time to step out from the shadows. The punch to the gut had been a harsh strike of reality, a remembrance that this hole in her chest was in fact real and present and would probably never go away.

Maybe she had shed the same amount of tears, more or less, and maybe the pain had changed because the hole was just a half-healed wound reopening, pulsing with reminder... but when it all boiled down to it, the reality was still the same, the loss was still there.

This year was hardly an exception.

If there was anything about the city of Gotham that had begun to grow on her, it was the twisted beauty and personality that came to life, a sight that could only be seen from a high enough perch in the air. On the roof of some random building she'd chosen, blocks from the facility where Misty had been dead asleep before she'd snuck out, Jess sat with her feet propped up against the concrete edge that raised a few inches from the actual roof, arms resting across her knees. The sleeves of her hoodie were pulled over her hands, and the hood managed to shield the cool, light breeze blowing from behind her. Perhaps if it'd been blowing from another direction, it would dry the dampness on her cheeks that had been there for who knows how long as she stared into Gotham's bright skyline, wondering if she could count the lit windows of surrounding skyscrapers and towers. The city bustled with nightly noise below, sounding like a whole world away from the one she drowned in on that rooftop, reliving scenes that grew opaque beyond the living, breathing sight of Gotham before her.

Her father's dark brown eyes had narrowed with annoyance in the rearview mirror at her, his irritated voice fighting for dominance with her mother's exasperated tone. A stubborn retort on Jess's end as she crossed her arms in defiance and slumped down further in the backseat, anger biting at her nerves and tightening her fists.

She couldn't even really remember why they'd been having that argument. Had it actually been over the out-of-state competition she wanted so badly to attend? They said that people tended to mis-remember certain memories, particularly when recalling them over and over again, and Jess had already done that too many times.

Dad's head snapped over to look at Mom in response to something she said; Jess could see his knuckles at the wheel, white and gripping with tension in contrast to the redness tinging his neck and ears. Few things made him this upset—

And whatever it'd been, it was just enough.

Enough to compel him to glare at her, his mouth moving in a rapid, frustrated manner, then give Jess the same look in the rearview mirror one more time. They said all it could take was two seconds.

Two seconds, enough to make a difference.

"I'm beginning to think you have a thing for rooftops."

She should have been surprised to see the young hero standing yards away to her right, his expression unreadable in the city lights as he appraised what was probably the pathetic-looking position she was in. But this marked just another time she was coming across Robin, for whatever reason the universe and whatever beings whose hands controlled chance and fate decided.

Wiping at the half-dried tears on her cheeks, Jess cast her gaze back out at the city before her. "I'm beginning to think it's more than just a coincidence we keep meeting like this."

Soft, slow, perhaps hesitant, footsteps alerted her to his approach as he neared her. A quick side glance told her he was only mere feet away, facing the same direction as she did, taking in the view.

"I'd say I spend more time on rooftops than you do," Robin mused, gaze trained on the flickering lights of the city he spent night after night protecting. "But you certainly spend more time on them than most civilians I've seen."

Her throat was still tight from the few tears she'd let spill previously, and the gaping hole in her chest ached away; Jess brought her knees closer and tightened her arms around them as if curling up more would temporarily seal it... as if she could keep herself from falling apart at the weak seams keeping her together.

Neither of them said a word for what felt like long minutes, the two of them absorbing Gotham's enormous canvas of glittering lights and dark, looming skies. His presence didn't startle her nor did it really bother her... she could have asked why he was there, but at the moment, Jess didn't care. They were just ants, small beings on a rooftop, gazing into a city that was laced with crime, pain, and longing under the facade of dancing colors and false pretenses.

Kind of like her.

Jess was nothing like the young, masked hero beside her—they were from lives and worlds set so far apart—yet something about his uninvited company felt okay. She didn't know who he was or what he was like, and perhaps that was what kept her from finding a way to continue being alone… So what? The company of a stranger felt less invasive than it was almost welcoming. Despite her lack of good judgment of character, there was little to no chance Robin had ill intent being there. Besides, she'd already spent so much time wallowing in painful remembrance while secluding herself from other people. Something about this change was, well, not quite good, but it was... different.

She would sit with this stranger whom she'd only met a few times and knew nothing about and who knew nothing of her.

Or did he?

The teen had no idea what it was like to be a vigilante, a hero, a caped crusader in a world that needed them. All things considered, Jess could safely assume the one standing next to her knew of her past, the events that had shaken her life upside down, the abilities she couldn't control, and the unfortunate path she'd treaded thereafter. Maybe he and Batman had a file on her, information that laid out everything about her in the click of a mouse or the tap of a keyboard…

But did they really know?

"Ian!" her mother cried out, just a mere second after Jess met her father's hot glare in the rearview mirror.

He was a hero, which meant he'd seen things. He had to know.

"Have you ever watched someone die?"

Robin didn't move for a long moment, face still turned beyond the edge of the rooftop. His cape fluttered in the light wind, and from her position, Jess could see the complicated material of the gear he wore, the distinctive dark red and green that marked his identity.

"I have," he then said before looking down at her, eyes hidden by the grey-white pupils of his mask. He took a seat, still feet away, propping his arms across his knees the same way she did.

Something about the movement compelled her to go on, like he'd opened up the floor for her to speak her mind. Maybe it wasn't what he'd meant, but the urge in her chest was rising, spilling out of the hole she was doing a poor job of keeping together, almost begging to be let out after years of captivity.

"Two seconds." Her voice was quiet, nearly a whisper—it was probably too low for him to hear. "Two seconds is all it takes for distracted driving to mean the difference between life and death."

Her father's gaze broke from hers at his wife's outburst, turning back to the road ahead of him, but it was too late. There was a sharp turn of the wheel, a deafening screech of tires then crunching metal and broken glass as the world lurched and spun out of control.

"They said it was a moose..."

Pain. Pain in her head... no, everywhere. It was everywhere, in her chest, her arms, her legs. Something warm and wet stuck to her forehead, where there was an odd pressure and sensation.

Slowly opening her eyes, Jess first saw shattered glass and then that everything was upside down. Her hair was falling to the ceiling of the car, her seatbelt practically cutting into her hips as she hung the wrong way inside the vehicle. Ahead of her, brunette hair hung the same way, accompanied by bare arms that were limp and covered in red.

Heart and head pounding, the teen looked around before unbuckling herself, falling painfully to the broken ceiling with a crunch of glass. Smoke was billowing from one side of the car as she carefully crawled out of the window, sucking in a breath at the uncomfortable sensations flooding her body. They had apparently ended up in the trees that lined the highway, having swung severely from the road. She was still disoriented while making her way on the scratchy grass to the passenger door, opening it with a metallic creak. Her mother's figure was limp as she hung upside down, the airbag half-deflated in her face. Jess attempted to call for her, reaching out.

But she wasn't responding no matter how loudly her daughter cried or how hard she shook her arm. Even while she sat there on her knees, trembling fingers on Portia's bloody wrist to check not once but twice, hot tears running down her face, Jess kept trying.

But her body was empty. Hastily making a connection to her mother, she couldn't feel a single part of her that was alive, not her heart, not her lungs, nothing. Everything about her essence, her being, felt like it'd faded from existence.

Her father was the same way... almost. Unresponsive, limp, his favorite t-shirt covered in glittering glass and red, too much red.

But he had a pulse. Barely.

Jess's hands had never trembled so much before. She held them close to his body, trying, just trying so hard to mend something... anything. But everything was broken and weak. She could hardly feel his heartbeat, which was drowning in her own panicked heart and agonizing pain. Or was she feeling both their pain combined? The aura around her bloody hands was barely visible through blurry tears as she continued to push, looking desperately for a part of him that could be fixed.

She didn't know how long she sat there, sitting on the grass, trying to save him, but the anguish and distress were far too strong. Jess couldn't compete with the overwhelming emotions and physical pain she was going through as she begged him not to leave her. It was worse than looking for a needle in a haystack, far worse than searching for a particular star in an entire solar system.

Because the difference was that those minuscule things existed and could be found.

And she couldn't find it. She couldn't find something to heal, not when it wasn't even there.

So she lost her father, too.

The two of them sat quietly, side by side, as the warm tears spilled over her cheeks at the retelling of the worst night of her life. Jess stared out into the city, her fists balled within her sleeves. She had to force herself to take a deep breath, knowing she needed to get a grip.

"The thing is..." she continued, voice shaking, "it's not that I watched him die. It's that—"

Her throat closed tightly, cutting off her words as the memories went on replaying. But she had to say it. She had to say it out loud.

"It's that I felt it. I-I felt it," Jess practically choked, her vision blurring so hard she couldn't make out a single thing.

I felt him die.

All because of her powers.

He died.

All because of her.

She was trying to breathe through the sobs that had surfaced, but her body was betraying her. Leaning her forehead on her knees, Jess wrapped her arms under her thighs and let it out.

However much long later, she then heard "Do you believe it was your fault?"

Lifting her head and wiping away at her face with her sleeves, Jess turned his question over in her head while she stared at her shoes. Did she think it was her fault? The cause of the crash had never really been on her mind as much as the fact that her father had died in front of her… no matter how hard she had tried to keep him alive.

"Which part?" she asked, voice trembling slightly.

"You tell me," was all the young hero said as he looked at her, expression unreadable behind the mask that covered half his face.

Jess gave a half-hearted shrug and took a moment to let the sobs subside so she could speak. "All I know is… I s-should've been able to help him," she explained quietly. "Maybe it's 'cause I'm not strong enough or I was panicking too much, but…"

Rubbing at her eyes once more, she added, "I guess all these powers are good for is hurting people, not healing them."

Memories flitted through her mind at that moment, ones of all the times she'd hurt someone, whether it was at the command of Jax and the gang or even in self-defense such as the day she'd woken in Jason's apartment. That was all she'd ever done, wasn't it? Inflict pain upon others. Losing her parents had defined her from that moment on, and look at where she was now, crying her eyes out in front of one of Gotham's saviors, a figure who was good and fought crime and kept people safe.

"Even after that night you healed me," Robin suddenly said, "I thought you were only capable of hurting people in your path. But… it looks like you've been trying to atone for that."

She said nothing, feeling her chest tighten at his words. Somehow, him saying aloud that he'd also thought she was just a threat made her feel worse, like she deserved every horrible thing that'd happened to her over the years. It was like he'd just confirmed that she was a bad person who was unworthy of redemption.

"I don't know. Probation and community service feel pretty lenient for someone like me."

"And Patrick Dobra?"

Hazel eyes snapped onto him, widening a little at the name he'd spoken.

"How did you…?" Jess lifted a brow. "Never mind. I guess I shouldn't be surprised." With a deep breath, she crossed her legs and looked out over the city again, running her gaze over the twinkling lights. "So you've been keeping tabs on me ever since I turned myself in."

"Not particularly," he replied. "We check in on you sometimes." He then added, "I do think you're being hard on yourself. You've certainly changed my mind about you."

She remembered the night he'd visited her after the library mishap, how he'd said he didn't trust her but Batman had. Despite how little she knew anything of the hero, something about knowing he saw her differently now lifted weight off her shoulders.

Not that she should have cared what he thought… right?

"I… appreciate that." Considering her words carefully, Jess sniffled before looking over at him. "I just wish I could change my own mind." Geez, how did she manage to make herself sound more pathetic the more she talked like this?

A thought crossed her mind then, making her laugh a little, and she could see Robin glancing over at her in response.

"What?"

Shaking her head, she gave a humorless smile and explained, "I just… It's kind of funny, the fact that I'm sitting here talking to you about all this, bawling my eyes out in front of a stranger—no offense… But then again, you already pretty much know everything about me."

He knows everything about you… but he doesn't know you.

"There must be a reason then why you would tell me and not someone else."

"Well, I'm sure you can imagine there's a couple reasons why I wouldn't just tell anyone… even if I trust them."

She tilted her head in thought, eyes running over his gear and imagining what he possibly looked like without the heroic persona. What was he like as a regular person? Could she have crossed paths with him at one point in her few months living here? Had she once passed him on the street or been even within a few hundred feet?

"How do you know when you're ready to tell someone you're, you know, Robin? Assuming that you have."

He didn't respond for a long moment, facing out towards the city. Jess wondered if he would avoid the question, if it was too personal for him to answer.

"The last time I revealed my identity to someone close I cared about, she…" He paused, and she swore she saw his figure tense up from where she sat. "I haven't seen or heard from her since."

The way the tone in his voice changed told Jess she'd approached a sensitive subject, and a small part of her felt bad for asking him.

It also made her that much more apprehensive about her developing friendships with certain people.

Misty… well, Misty had made it easy for Jess to tell her the watered down truth about why she was in Gotham—everything except the fact that she was a meta-human who'd used her powers to hurt others as a runaway. The other teen had been open about her own issues, how her parents were in the middle of a divorce and while her older sister was trying to gain custody, she refused to be under the same roof as either her mother or father. And that was really the only reason she was Jess's roommate, not because she'd done anything to land herself there.

But Jess was hesitant to tell Damian for a reason she couldn't actually name. It wasn't because he was judgmental—sure, maybe he was a little bit, but not in a way that was harsh and unnecessary—but she… didn't want him to think any less of her. Yeah, that was it, wasn't it? Despite how haughty and complicated he'd seemed at first, in just the short time they'd known each other, she'd found that she cared about what he thought. Damian seemed like the kind of person who held high standards when it came to most things, and the fact that he'd kept her around said more to her than she'd ever thought it would.

Especially for a girl who struggled to accept herself and what she'd been through, it somehow meant a lot to Jess that someone like Damian wanted to be her friend. And all she wanted was to be a good person, a good friend.

Whether or not she told him, whether she did it now or revealed the truth him later, would pretty much determine that.

"I guess I have this idea in my head that… maybe it's better to tell the truth even if it'll cost you," Jess confessed.

Easier said than done, though.

She'd only ever had one friend back in Central City growing up that knew about her powers. The girl had been her best friend for years, but that friendship was long gone now that Jess had refused to go back to any part of the life she'd left behind. Even now, the teen wondered if she would ever out her secret despite having felt like her friend really had her back… because people changed and did 180s like that.

People like Beth and the others didn't have to tell her that.

"It depends," Robin answered simply, turning to face her. Though she couldn't see his eyes behind his mask—and probably never would—she could feel them on her. "What do you think it would cost you?"

There was a pause, and then: "A friend."

The air was quiet between them, interrupted only by faint sounds of traffic and Gotham's night life on the streets below. He didn't say anything and neither did Jess, something unnameable forming between the two while they sat there, holding on to secrets they wanted to share but couldn't.

Because neither of them believed they could afford the pain and loss it would bring.