A/N: Here's chapter two. Rather different in tone than chapter one, but with a similar theme.

Thanks for the reviews and faves, it means a lot to get feedback, even if I would prefer to know just why you like my work...

Chapter 2

The first time they talk about his parents, she doesn't linger on the deaths. Dick can't articulate how much he needed that. Someone to just accept it, not dig into the pain and the frustration, not like the other therapists he'd been forced to see since the circus. And while Bruce understood, he hadn't talked much. Batman wasn't a talker and Bruce Wayne truly was more like the Bat than the playboy, so it wasn't surprising when he hadn't offered much in the way of consolation. At the time, Dick hadn't really wanted any.

Val, though, just nodded and gave him a "shit like that really just sucks, doesn't it?"

He'd laughed, because by now he was really appreciating the understatement that for the slayer across from him was just normal statement. The manic part of Dick's soul, the performer, was sorely tempted to curl up in a giddy puddle of cackling and Joker grins because any kind of lightness these days just makes the abyss of anxieties in him turn into a bottomless hysteria. So he laughs too long and too hard at jokes that aren't near funny enough and she knows enough to keep telling them, keep her snarky responses light but quick and abundant.

He doesn't ask how she knows. Doesn't ask why. The story isn't important, it's the familiar imprint of heavy loss and guilt that matters.

By now, he guesses that training simulation really fucked with his head.

He doesn't realize just how much until they get to Bruce. Because everything comes down to Bruce in the end. Especially when in therapy.

"You should talk to him."

"What? I am not telling him - no. Not happening."

"And you wonder why I worry about you. I didn't mean you had to tell him everything. Just talk. I'm sure he's worried sick by now."

"Yeah. I guess."

"So, other than that, how are things with tall, dark, and batty?"

"Really? Tall, dark, and batty?" He rolled his eyes, "Things are okay, I guess. I mean, he tries, and that's probably more than I can ask for, but-" He cuts himself off. Doesn't want to start complaining about the man who took him in when no one else would, the man he owed so much for everything Dick Grayson has become.

"Yes, really. Now, you were saying he hasn't been the most, how should I put this? Caring, shall we say?"

"I just see him slipping more and more each day."

"Then you really should have that talk, little bird."

"He used to laugh, you know? As Bruce, not as the Bat, but, he'd laugh sometimes at the puns. Now I've got to make up words just to get even the slightest hint of an eye-roll!"

"I had wondered about the butchering of the English language."

"Heh, it's a new one. I just can't handle the puns and the witty banter as much as I used to- Don't get me wrong, I'd love to just shout 'Holy time bomb Batman!' again, but, I think I'm slipping with him, and that's why..."

He let the uneasy silence between them grow until he saw her fling herself out of her chair and start stretching. He raised an eyebrow, she ignored him and slid to the floor, throwing her upper body over an outstretched leg, the other curled behind her. A dance stretch. He watched her perform a series of full body stretches before he decided to cut her off when she started working on just her toes.

"What are you doing?"

"Well, you aren't going to talk, so I figured we could try something else. Work out some of your emotions."

"You wanna spar?"

"If you'd like."

"What were you planning then?"

"No, don't worry about it, sparring works."

He realizes quickly that he shouldn't have volunteered to get his ass handed to him. Although, it did give him decent understanding of just why the JLA would have her on reserve. Terrifying as her gleaming fangs were, the other things she could do would have made Dick Grayson's skin crawl once. Not after his encounters with Two-Face and the Joker (and what the hell was with all the kidnapping from those two?), but he admitted readily that red summoning circles were well on their way to becoming his most hated magical tells.

She starts off slow, simple hand-to-hand sparring, until he's forced to flip up into the rafters and throw a batarang. She then pulls out throwing knives of her own, so he drops back down with the Eskrima sticks. It's a move he'll later make practically infamous as Nightwing, dropping down on his prey from above, descending with weapons ready, and spending half the fight in the air, flipping and cracking down with the two truncheons. For now, it's just a move he doesn't use often enough, and he wonders when he stopped flying so much.

His fighting style used to be full of flips and puns and extra acrobatic flourishes just because. Now he's as efficient and graceless as his mentor. No longer his parents little Robin, but the Bat's protégé, and that sickens him. With the darkening of his costume came the darkening of his spirit and Dick feels caged. By this team, by his mentor, by the scars that forced him to start wearing actual pants instead of a modified acrobat's leotard, by his own life.

He shakes off the thought process as he lands just behind her, having done far less damage than he'd set out to do.

At this point, he notices her eyes get a bit creepier, and she starts throwing blasts of dark magic at him. He dodges most of them, landing a few decent hits, but not doing much damage. She's too skilled to get tripped up by a simple leg sweep and she's acrobatic enough to avoid most of his jumping tactics. He still used them, sure, but he didn't fly anymore. He just jumped.

It's only when the summoning circle appears under her feet that he realizes things just might be steadily declining for him. Val has him pinned to the wall with glowing red shackles, an answering gleam in her eyes, when she suddenly shifts. Her hair straightens out of messy large curls into an almost-white gray waterfall and a black cloak rests on her shoulders, a gleaming scythe floating at her back.

He twists his had, taps thrice on the wall, and he's released, finding a very amused, very normal looking Val grinning at him, red trench held over one shoulder. He doesn't ask about the shift, just accepts that she's got more up her sleeves than she'd ever admit.

He can respect that.

They get back to talking now, since they've loosened up and he's full of questions.

"So, chaos magic?"

"Something like that. I'm more neutral than anything, but all my magic's chaos based until I get to that final form."

"Weird. Can all vampires do that? I don't Stoker ever wrote about summoning circles and energy blasts."

"He wouldn't. Most of my kind can't do any of that."

"So how can you?"

"So full of questions, Boy Wonder. Such an apt name, that is."

"Huh?"

"So full of questions, so full of wonder."

He wants to smack the damnable smirk off her face that very instance, but he refrains. Not good to hit a therapist who can permanently clip your wings.

"You didn't answer my question."

"I'm deflecting. Now you know how I feel whenever you do it."

"Heh, sorry." Now he feels a bit stupid. Not that he'll admit it.

"Will you answer anyway?"

"I don't drink human blood. My prey is a bit more powerful than that. So I eventually pick up some of their skills."

"Oh. Cool." Its not much of an answer, but its more than he expected.

"Indeed."

"I guess I should start talking now, huh?"

"That'd be nice."

"I- I didn't use to be like this, you know. So dark. It's a relatively new thing. Ever since two years ago, when I changed costumes, it's like the black on the Robin suit has sucked away part of my soul, but I'm pretty sure that's just because of the run in with Joker-" He cut himself off. He wasn't going to talk about this. He wasn't going to go there, damnit.

"The one that left you with a few too many scars on your legs?"

"Yeah."

She doesn't say anything else, just leans over and puts a hand on his knee - as far as she can reach from the scars. The marks on his thighs that will always remind him of too much time spent with the Joker and Harley. They're six marks in total. From a scalpel. While holding him hostage, they'd decided to have some fun and torture him, by peeling away the layers of his skin in six different sections. Taken from his inner thighs because they'd be visible, sensitive, and cause him a lot of mental pain at thinking just what else they could do to him. The Joker wasn't lying when he claimed he'd always wanted to carve the Boy Wonder. He always had. He just wished he'd managed to finish the job.

"He's really worried, isn't he?"

"For him. It's not easy to see, but it's there. He's less patient, more angry, spends just a bit too long looking at video feeds from the Mountain."

"I- I'm acting like I did then, I think. It's probably got him spooked."

"Why do you think I want you to talk to him?"

"Because he's my father figure and I should tell him things."

"Sure, that'd be nice, but you're a teenager. At your age, he should be lucky you even pay attention when he gives you orders. It's a developmental thing, systematic aversion to all kinds of parental curiosity about your life."

"Thanks. The next few years of my life are really looking up."

"Don't worry, it could be worse."

"How?"

"You could be the parent of a teenager."

He laughed again, this time doubled over in cackles that were more a release of tension than anything else.

When he gets back to Gotham that night for patrol, he sees the tense set of Bruce's shoulders (Bruce, definitely, because the cowl's down), and he decides that while talking isn't really the batfamily's strong suit, they need to settle this. So he decides to throw caution to the wind (Bruce knows he's here anyway, bat training keeping him aware at all times) and he takes a running leap at his guardian. He plants a hand on the back of Bruce's chair, flips over his head, and lands neatly in his lap with a devious cackle.

Bruce's shoulders dropped, a subtle lifting of the corners of his lips notified Dick of his happiness at seeing Dick flipping around the cave again. He hadn't done much of that in a while, hadn't noticed how much he missed it until that spar.

He also hadn't know that Bruce had noticed. But he should have. He was Batman. He knew just about everything.

So, perfect Robin grin on his face, he asked his mentor if they were all set for patrol.

Even though they ended up dealing with Ivy that night, Dick still had that wide grin on his face when they returned to the cave with the rising sun at their heels - Bruce walking sedately from the batmobile, Dick himself turning cartwheels and handsprings to the stairs. Just because Gotham seemed bound and determined to see him turn into the broody bat didn't mean he had to give in. No, he'd be Robin and laugh as he took down thugs, soaring through the air as he ran across rooftops and took near suicidal leaps off the many high-rises. He would keep flying.

With that perfect Robin grin.

As always, please let me know what you think. Need to know how this is going before I can write another chapter.

- Kirrae