A/N: Here's the next chapter! Enjoy and let me know what you think!

"Do you need any help?" Roy asked cautiously as he watched Connor unpack. Granted, the teen had only a small duffel bags of belongings, but it felt weird to simply stand there and watch him.

"No…" Connor replied as he put his clothes away in the dresser. "It's ok."

"Ok." Uneasiness caused Roy to shift from foot to foot. He didn't know what he was supposed to do with himself now that Connor was actually here. "Do you…need anything?"

"Not really."

"You sure? More clothes maybe?"

"…No."

Roy eyed the small duffel, which had contained exactly two pairs of pants and two shirts. His eyes traveled to Connor, who putting a picture frame on the top of the dresser, to survey him. The teen was wearing a third pair of pants and a third shirt. Then he saw the shoes Connor was wearing. They were dirty and beat up, clearly well worn, but the way he walked in them made Roy frown. Connor moved with caution and Roy saw a small grimace on his face with every step. Convinced that Connor needed at least enough clothes to have a different outfit for one week, and shoes that didn't clearly hurt him, he cleared his throat. "Why don't we go to the store? You need more clothes."

Connor quickly shook his head. "It's fine. I have enough."

"No, you don't."

"You don't need to give me anything."

"But I do have to provide you with your basic needs. Clothing is a basic need."

Connor turned away, biting his lip. "I don't need anything."

"You need clothes. Come on, we can grab lunch while we're out. It'll be…fun."

'He's not going to let go of this,' Connor thought with a hint of defeat. 'Why won't he just leave me alone? I'm already here on thin ice. He didn't really want me here, he's stuck with me because I forced him to let me become a vigilante. If I ask for too much and become a burden he might get rid of me. I don't want that to happen.' But Roy was the one insisting on buying him the clothes, so it wasn't really like Conor was asking. 'Just…get a few clothes. Not a lot, and you'll be fine.' He gave Roy a small nod and received a tense smile in return.

"Come on, if you're done."

"Ok." Connor looked around the room briefly, noting that it looked almost the same as it had before, except for the two books and the picture of him and his mother he'd placed on top of the dresser, as well as the backpack for school his social worker had given him. 'It's good though,' he thought. 'I didn't have a lot at the monastery either, and the less I have the less chance Roy will see me as a burden. Plus it'll be easier to leave if he decides to get rid of me.' The last thought made him wince as he followed Roy out of the apartment. Connor wasn't dumb. He knew Roy didn't like him or completely trust him. 'How could he when my father made him so miserable? How can he learn to love someone related to the man who traumatized him and ruined his life?' It was ok though because Connor wasn't for Roy to like him. 'I'm here so I can become a vigilante. I have to focus on that.'

As they walked down the street, Roy tried not to show any outward signs of anxiety. He resisted the urge to rub his hands together or let his hands shake. "You're in 7th grade, right?" he asked after a few blocks.

"Yeah…" Connor replied.

"There's a middle school that's only a 20-minute walk from the apartment. We can walk past it on our way home. I'll enroll you in a couple days, so you have a chance to settle in first."

"Ok."

"Do you have school supplies?"

"I have a backpack, a couple of notebooks and some pencils."

"I'll get you some more."

"You don't need to! I- I got by at my old school with what I had."

"I have to give you school supplies, Connor. You can't succeed in school if you don't have the right supplies."

"…Right."

"Do you like school?"

"I guess… It's ok. I miss school at the monastery."

"You had a school there?"

"Well…a schoolroom. It's where we had non-religious lessons mostly, although sometimes we'd learn about the history of Buddhism there as well. It was just a few boys and whatever monk was teaching us that day. Middle schools are big and loud. There are so many kids. It really makes me miss the one-room school."

"I understand. Sometimes the city feels so overwhelming with the people and the noise, it really makes me miss the town I grew up in on the reservation." The conversation dropped after that and it was silent as Roy led Connor into a small clothing shop. Of course, Star had big box stores, but Roy really loved the street lined with small stores in his neighborhood. "Ok, let's get you some clothes, then we'll go to the shoe store a couple of shops down."

"Ok." Connor glanced down at his sneakers, which had been given to him when he was removed from the monastery. They pinched his heels and toes when he walked, but they weren't completely falling apart, so he'd assumed they were just fine. "Do I really need shoes?"

"I can tell the ones you're wearing cause you pain to walk in, so yes. Come on, the sooner we finish the sooner we can get some food."

"Right."

Roy tried to let Connor lead the way to pick out the clothes that he wanted, but the teen was so quiet that it was like pulling teeth. 'What's with him?' Roy wondered. 'I'm just trying to buy the kids some clothes.' Finally, after getting Connor to admit that he liked several pairs of pants and a few shirts, they moved on to the shoe store. "Any particular types of shoes you like?"

"…Not really."

'This is going well,' Roy thought. 'I definitely made the right decision to take him in. I clearly know what I'm doing.'

The silences and quiet, half-answers continued at the shoe store. It took Roy a few minutes to figure out how to measure Connor's foot using the foot-measuring device. When he had it though, he spent twenty minutes trying to find shoes that Connor seemed at all excited about. Every color (blue, red, green, white) and every style got the same hesitant and uninterested response of 'it ok.' Eventually, Roy was walking back to Connor with another pair of shoes when he stopped. Connor was standing in the aisle staring at a pair of black shoes with three white stripes on the side. He held one in his hands for a few seconds, then slowly put it back. 'I think we found a winner.' Roy set down the box he'd been holding, then approached Connor, whose head turned toward him as he did. "Find something you like?"

"…They're ok."

"Uh-huh." Roy quickly found a pair in Connor's size and handed them to him. "Now that we've finished with that, we can get some lunch. Do you like pizza?"

"I haven't had it in a few years."

"Years?"

Connor nodded. "It's not exactly a staple of a monastic diet."

A smile quivered on Roy's lips. "I suppose you're right. Luckily, we're down the street from the best pizza parlor in Star. Come on." After he paid, Roy walked with Connor down the street. Again, the teen was silent. This was a different kind of silence, though. It wasn't the mindful kind that Roy remembered. It felt…tense. And if there was one thing he was familiar with, it was tense situations. "Are you ok, Connor?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean you're being really quiet, even for you. Is something wrong?"

"No, nothing. I'm…fine."

"You don't seem fine. You've been distant this whole trip." He glanced at Connor, who looked pointedly at the ground. "Connor, please."

Connor was silent for a few seconds. "I don't want you to get rid of me."

"What- Why would I get rid of you?"

"I don't know… I mean… You didn't really want me here in the first place, I kind of had to force you to let me stay. If I ask for too much or become too much of a burden you might decide I'm not worth it. Especially since I'm…you know…related to him."

'That's a lot to take in,' Roy thought. His own heart rate was increasing just trying to wrap his head around the teen's anxieties. 'No. I'm an adult, I have to stay calm. I have to.' He took a couple of deep breaths. "I'm not going to get rid of you, Connor. I made a commitment to take care of you, and that isn't contingent on…other activities. You do not have to stick to our mutual hobby to stay here. If you decide to drop it, I'll still let you stay. Do you understand?"

"I guess… But, why? Why would you help the son of the man who…did all that to you?"

"You are not your father, Connor. You look like him a little bit and my brain overreacts a little bit sometimes when I see you, but you shouldn't take that personally. My brain has a tendency to overreact to a lot of things. Thankfully, I'm getting pretty good at controlling that. Besides, I would never dream of holding you responsible for what your father did."

'I might not be responsible, but I still need to make up the difference. I need to do everything possible to not become him.' Connor glanced at Roy. "You really won't get rid of me?"

"Of course not. I may have no clue what I'm doing, but I won't just ship you back to San Fransisco. I promise."

"Ok…" Connor wasn't sure if he believed Roy, but the man had never been insincere with him or given Connor a reason to doubt his honesty.

"Good. Now that we've settled that, let's get some pizza. We've got a busy afternoon ahead of us. Veggie pizza, I'm guessing?"

"Yeah."

"I've never had it, but I'm happy to try new things." Roy smiled at Connor and the teen gave him a weak smile in return.

— —

Later that afternoon and into the early evening, Roy tested Connor. He tested the teen's hand to hand combat abilities, which were impressive given his age, and his archery abilities. Ironically, since Connor was Oliver's biological son, there was a lot of room for improvement in that respect. His technique was rigid and Roy found himself already mentally correcting the teens' stance, the way he held the arrows, even how he pulled back the bowstring.

'It'll definitely take work to get him up to anywhere near a skill level acceptable for vigilante work,' Roy thought as he watched Connor and the teen failed, again, to hit the center of his target. 'But he has a ton of potential. And he's patient and dedicated.'

"What exactly does vigilante training look like?" Connor asked as he lowered his bow, quiver now empty.

"I'm…not sure. The only frame of reference I have is how Batman trained me and given how…archery focused our work is, I'll need to modify that training regime a little bit."

"What about my d- Oliver?" Connor noticed how tense Roy's muscles got, but his curiosity got the better of him, so he pushed on. "You aren't going to train me the same way he trained you-"

"No!" Roy's shout made Connor jump a little and the man immediately tried to reign in his emotions. "I'm not going to do that. I would never do that to you."

"How did he train you?"

Roy closed his eyes for a moment as phantom pain shot through his fingers like they were still sore and bleeding from hours and hours of archery practice. He made a fist and dug his fingernails into his palm. "I don't want to talk about that right now."

"But-"

"Connor. Not right now. Please."

"Ok. Sorry." Connor decided to retrieve the arrows from the target. 'Whatever happened…it must be bad. Really bad.'

Meanwhile, Roy wandered over to his computer set and sat down in the chair. He put his head in his hands and took several, deep and slow breaths. 'Just try to relax,' he thought. 'Relax. Ollie isn't here. He's not. Ollie's in the Green Lantern prison on another planet. He can't hurt you anymore. Or ever again.' He looked over at Connor as the teen finished putting his arrows back in the quiver. 'Which I am grateful for on a whole new level. Ollie can never know about Connor. He can never find out he has a son. Because I know him, and I know the moment he finds out he'll do everything in his power to use Connor and make the kid one of his pawns. I won't let that happen. No one else gets hurt because of Oliver. No one.'

"Do you want me to keep shooting?" Connor asked.

"No. I have a pretty good idea of what your skills are."

"And?"

"Well…"

"That bad?"

"You have a good foundation. There's a lot of room for improvement, but that's to be expected."

"How do I get better?"

"…Practice. Lots of practice. After-school every day."

"Ok."

"But you have to keep up with your homework too. It's part of our deal, remember?"

"I remember."

"Good. Right now I want to focus on your archery and hand to hand combat skills. I use a special combat technique that Batman developed. It uses a bow and can be easily switched between fighting and shooting. On the weekends I also want you in this chair and tracking my patrols while on the comms with me."

"Why?"

"So you have a good idea of how I operate. You'll also be studying maps of Star City that you need to memorize."

"Memorizing maps?"

"Yes. Because having an intricate knowledge of the city and its streets will be useful more times than you can count. Trust me."

"Ok." Vigilante training was a lot more work than Connor had initially thought.

Surprise must've shown on his face because Roy gave him an almost amused smile. "Daunted?"

"…A little."

"Good. Ready to back down?"

"No."

"Even better." The computer beeped behind Roy and spun around in his chair. "Oh no…"

"What?" Connor walked closer to the computer, but couldn't understand that information in the message that had popped up on the screen.

"There was no match for the DNA sample I got."

"Is it for a case?"

"Yeah. Crazy robbers with laser weapons have been hitting banks all over the city. So far I don't have a single lead, and neither do the police. Last week I found this blood sample and ran it through multiple databases to see if I could get a match on the DNA…but nada."

"What're you going to do now?"

Roy sighed and shook his head. "I don't know. This case has me really worried." Not just protecting the banks, but making sure he got the laser weapons off the streets. The absolute last thing he needed was for any of these weapons to find their way into the hands of more criminals. 'I really need to get to the bottom of this. And fast.' He glanced back at Connor, then got to his feet. "Let's practice your archery until dinner. Then I need to get to patrol."

"Sounds good."

Roy got to his feet and grabbed a bow of his own, then joined Connor in front of the target. "Ok. Let's work on that stance first."

— —

A couple nights later, Roy almost sighed when his phone went off and he saw who it was.

Kaldur: Want to…spend some quality time together tonight?

Roy: As much as I love the sound of quality time right now…it's not the best time

Kaldur: is it the robberies? I saw there was another last night on the news. Are you ok?

Roy glanced down at his arm, which was sporting a first-degree burn, as was the left side of his chest. As much as it had hurt, it'd been a good way for Connor to learn first aid. (If Roy telling him what to do through gasps of pain while the teen did everything with shaking hands and a look of terror on his face counted as a good teaching moment.)

Roy: I'm fine. Just busy

Kaldur: Do you need help? The Team could use the exercise

Roy: No. I'm doing fine

Kaldur: Nightwing is worried about you.

Kaldur: He refused to participate in our training yesterday and spent the whole time re-reading the same articles about the bank robberies

That made something in Roy's gut drop down to his feet.

"Is everything ok?" Connor asked. He stopped with his bow at mid-draw to look back at Roy.

"Yeah…" Roy said eventually as he set his phone aside and went back to the trick arrow he was building. "It's fine."

Connor nodded, then went back to his shooting. "Who's Kaldur?"

Roy frowned and paused in his work again. "Were you snooping?"

"No! I didn't mean to look, I swear, I just… I might've taken a peek when your phone went off yesterday."

"He's my boyfriend. Aqualad."

"Oh. You date Aqualad." Connor nodded to himself as if this was the most normal thing he'd ever heard.

"Yeah. I was on a team with him, Robin, and several other young heroes."

"A team of young heroes?!"

Roy looked up again and was taken aback by the look of awe on Connor's face. "Yes…"

"What did you guys do on this team?"

"Saved the world. The same thing the Justice League did; only from the shadows." A sad smile crossed his face as a sense of longing overcome him. Memories of missions and training sessions and campouts in the living room of Mount Justice flooded his mind. Even though it had only been almost a year since he'd retired from the Team to focus on his solo career…part of him longed for the happier and simpler times he'd had with his friends. Before everything got all screwy.

"Do I get to join?"

"…You want to join the Team?"

"I mean…that sounds really cool. You know, saving the world with other young heroes."

"Why don't you focus on trying to get ten bullseyes in a row. I believe you've still only reached five."

"Right."

Part of Roy felt bad about immediately shooting Connor down like that. After all, he was living in a new environment and embarking on the dangerous mission of hero work. It was only natural he wanted to share it with people his own age. 'Except putting him on the Team would require telling the League he exists,' Roy thought as he went back to work. 'I can't do that.' While Roy was confident the League wouldn't hurt Connor, he didn't know how they'd react to finding out Oliver had a son. Especially Batman. 'Bruce can be…unpredictable when Ollie is concerned. I doubt he'd even given Connor a chance before dismissing him. And the kid doesn't deserve that. He deserves to be judged on his own merits and not Oliver's.' Which is why Roy knew he had to keep his new partner a secret from Bruce, the League, and the Team for as long as possible. 'Once I have him trained and he's spent a few months taking down criminals, I can introduce him to the rest of the community. That way he'll have something else going for him besides just being related to Ollie.' Roy looked up from his arrow again to see Connor land another bullseye. 'Keep shooting kid. You'll get there.'

— —

"How was your first day of school?" Roy didn't get an answer from Connor, merely silence and the sound of arrows hitting the target. In the one week Connor had been training with him, the teen could already reliably shoot ten bullseyes in a row. Which had only prompted Roy to bump it up to fifteen. The new target number was proving to a challenge, but one he was confident Connor could overcome. And soon judging by how focused he was on the target instead of Roy's question. "Connor?"

Connor sighed. "It was ok…" he mumbled as he shot another arrow.

"Ok?" Roy walked closer and did a quick survey of Connor's form. "Stop." Every muscle in Connor's body froze. "You're still gripping he bowstring too tight." Roy stepped up behind him and carefully rearranged The teen's fingers so he only held the string with the tips. "There. Now you're less likely to snap it and you'll be able to shoot faster."

"Thank you." Once Roy stepped back, Connor went back to shooting, mindfully trying to keep his fingertips on the bowstring in the way Roy had shown him.

Roy watched him for a few shots before wandering over to his workbench to do maintenance on his trick arrows. "So school was only ok?" he asked as he sat down.

"Yeah."

"Do you no like school?"

"School is ok." Connor focused on his shooting since his new grip on the string had messed up his tally of bullseyes. "It was loud. And crowded. Everyone kept looking at me."

"And you didn't like those things?"

Connor took a deep breath to try and resist gripping the bow tighter. "I have a…history of not liking it when people give me unwanted, bad attention."

Roy looked up, but Connor didn't explain further. "I'm sure it'll get better when you start to make friends. School is a part of the deal, remember?"

"Why?"

"Because when I lived with Oliver…I didn't go to school. He kept me isolated from anyone who might've tried to help me get away from his abuse. Then when I was in Gotham…I wasn't technically supposed to be there, so I couldn't go to school. You never realize how much you love something as mundane and normal as school until you can't have it anymore. Until someone takes it from you and you can't have it back."

Connor didn't say anything for a few seconds as he kept shooting. "When I was younger people used to always make fun of me. How I looked. They called me…horrible, racist things. I ever had any friends and I never fit in anywhere. School has never been a place where I felt normal. It's just a place where my…uniqueness is on display for the world to see and ridicule."

'…Poor kid,' Roy thought as he watched Connor shoot. 'I know how it feels to be different than the people around you, but it was never that bad. Most of the kids on the reservation never seemed to think twice about the fact I wasn't Navajo.' Given what he'd been through though, it made sense Connor didn't like being in school. 'But he needs to go. He has to have an education and socialization. I want him to have as normal a life as possible. I won't be like Oliver. I won't.' He went back to working on his arrow. "Maybe here it'll be different."

"Maybe." Connor landed another bullseye. 'But probably not. I've never been normal and he can try to give me a normal life, but he'll only fail. Being a vigilante will only add to how not normal I am.'

It was quiet for a while as the two archers worked. Eventually, Roy took a break and watched Connor shoot for a few minutes. 'I meant what I said,' he thought. 'I'll let him stay until he's 18, even if he doesn't keep up with vigilante work.' Somehow, despite the similarities to Oliver and Roy's own reservations about the subject, part of him was attached to Connor. 'So far I don't have a great track record with people I'm close to. They're all either dead, abusive, or abandoned me in my grief.' He sighed and went back to his work. 'But maybe this time will be different. God, I hope this time will be different.'