Disclaimers: I don't own any of the characters in this story, except for the narrator. Although I wish I did. ;) Please R&R!! I have the rest of the story done, but I won't post unless you (the readers) tell me too!

A/N: I know this doesn't follow any timelines. It's my own little corner of DCU. You no like, me no care. You go bye-bye. ( Have nice day!

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My father leads a double life. Depending on how you look at it, it can be a good thing and/or a bad thing. For the past fourteen years, he's kept it a secret from me. Now that I know about it, I look back and wonder. Seriously, how the hell did he manage to keep it hidden from me? I'm pretty bright and observant of things, but not as well as I thought. It must have been so stressful for him, trying to balance two lives and to keep one of them a secret from me.

I live in a city that is about as bad as New York City was in the 1930s. Actually, take the conditions of NYC circa 1930, add today's modern technology, and multiply it by ten. That's how bad this city is. Filth in the streets, corruption in the police department (with the exception of a few good officers), buildings on their last leg before they collapse, literally. It's real, real bad. My father has lived here since he was about twenty years old, so he's seen the city at its best and worst. He's almost forty, so I guess he knows what he's talking about. He used to tell me stories about how bad this city was when he first moved here. That's about the only truth that he told me for a long time.

I guess I began to suspect something wasn't right when I was helping him get dressed one night. He's a police officer with the city's police department and often works the late shift. One night, and many more nights after that, he had to go in early and work late because they were going to be short that night. I loved helping my dad get dressed, and especially going through the little compartments on his belt, but I couldn't and still can't touch his gun. He asked me to lay out most of his uniform while he shaved, brushed his teeth, and changed in the bathroom, so I did. When he came out, shirtless, I looked at him with curiosity. I knew that he was a cop, and cops often got hurt, but he had weird scars on his upper arms and his chest that didn't look like he got them from just being a cop. He caught me looking and asked what was wrong.

"When did you get hurt?" I asked him, pointing to a scar that looked recent on his upper left arm. He looked down, and then looked back at me.

"A long time ago," he said, reaching for his shirt. "I was a rookie, and I was careless. A bad guy shot at me and my partner, and I didn't move in time." As he buttoned up his shirt, it hit me: he was lying to me. His tone of voice sounded a little off, and he wasn't looking directly at me like he always did when we talked. I cocked my head to one side, thinking. He caught me, and asked, "What?"

"Why are you lying to me, Daddy?" I asked in all of my innocence. He looked at me as if I had just slapped him. I never forgot that look of surprise when I caught him lying to me for the first time. He just looked at me for the longest time. I wanted to drop my gaze and look at my feet, but a little voice in my head told me not to. He was the one who eventually broke our gaze. He looked over at the clock and realized that he was going to be late.

"I got to get going, hon," he said, reaching past me and grabbing his belt. "We'll finish this conversation later." The doorbell rang and I went to answer it. It was my baby-sitter Megan, who lived a floor below us. Dad gave me a kiss on the top of my head and then he was gone. After I had my dinner, I went to my room and tried to go to sleep. I kept tossing and turning, trying to think of a reasonable excuse why Dad had lied about his scar. While thinking about it, I fell asleep. The next morning, Dad acted like nothing had happened between us the previous night and I forgot all about it. I was ten years old at the time. We didn't finish our "conversation" for another four years.