A/N: -Important!- Hi. Remember me? I was an active writing here, some time ago. And I made a lot of promises, to myself, and to all of you, and I haven't been keeping up with them. I took a very long, unexpected break from my writing on this site, and instead let my schoolwork, my writers block, and my indecision take over my free time.
In that time, I decided something. I decided that taking a break from my writing made me sad, and the time reiterated the importance of this site to me. The contributions I am able to make to, and the stories I am able to create for an existing story that I love are so important to me, and I miss them when they aren't around.
So, I want to thank you all, for a number of things.
Firstly, thank you, if you are reading this, for sticking around. I cannot describe the feeling of knowing that someone is actually reading my work. It's terrifying and exciting at the same time. Thank you for all of your continued support. The favorites, the follows, and the reviews are so amazing to receive. It's a mind-blowing experience every time I check my email after a posting. I have shaky fingers and a glued on smile while I scroll, to give you a hilarious picture.
Thank you, lastly, for all of your contributions, your questions, and your presence! I very much hope that you stick with this story until the end, because I'm not going to give up. I have an organized map of plans, as hard as that is to believe! It's going on a year for this abstract little story, and I expected to be much farther than I am today, but that's okay. I can work with it, and I hope you can as well.
Phew. This is a big chapter, and I've had it finished for a while. (Cowers) I know I know! Hold on! My thought process was, write a chapter, then another. Post one with another on the back burners. Work on a new chapter before that one is posted. One step ahead of the game. Maybe it will work, keep me on track.
Thanks for your patience! I'm so excited to post this, because its progress and new character inclusions and ah! I hope you guys like it, I really wanted to get on with things and add another stepping stone to the story.
If you are new here, hi! Welcome to my chaotic system of writing and posting and confusion. I hope you find some mild entertainment here, at the least. :)
Thanks again, all.
xXx
The temperature in the room was glacial.
It was no secret; the precinct was a rather worn for the wear building, in understated terms.
The building is aged, but it has an abundance of history tacked to the peeling paint and curling tiles, so it has stayed where it has stayed, nestled into a tiny corner of some street to the east where foot traffic was low.
There was an issue with overcrowding on the parts of both the criminals and the officers; on any given night each and every tin holding room could be filled twice over without much effort on any part, and there were desks upon cluttered desks nearly stacked on top of each other, and if one had need to grab a blaring phone, there would be plentiful scuffles and trips and toe stubbing along the way. So, square space was lacking.
The light bulbs were horridly florescent but they did not flicker. No, there was not even a decency warning, the bulbs just decided to convince themselves to blowing when they pleased. There were three coffee machines in the building, each with a given fault. One required unplugging to stop the trickle of molten beverage to the stained flooring. Another, the newest addition after copious amounts of bitching and elderly woman gossip, possessed one very important, very faulty button mechanism, leaving the helpless machine to hiss and wheeze until someone became irritated enough with its noise to put it out of its misery with a fisted tap to its base. There was another maker, but the officers didn't talk much about it, for it was horrifying and no one wished to think of it. There was a running rumor that the coffee produced by said machine [Named Steve along the way. No one knows why, the origin left a mystery, but ask any given officer, and they will confirm the name as such] was as bitter and blackened as the pits of hell. The officers will that this is because of some curse or another, but ask Commissioner Gordon, and he will tell you that it is simply the fault of a built up coffee filter. Either way, no one dared to touch Steve, so he was left where he sat, alone and extraordinarily unappealing.
The precinct of Gotham City had its indefinite faults and flaws; there was absolutely no denying that. However, there was one feature of the building that was kept pristine, and favored as such in the unpredictable weather experienced in the city.
The heater.
Glorious heat, which radiated through the dusty ducts and poured down over each and every crack and crevice in a toasting manor. Not once had there ever been a problem with the system. Not once has it faltered or sputtered or lost even one degree of temperature, even when the crisp air had been let in time after time through the heavy squealing door at the buildings entrance.
Despite all of this, the room was freezing cold. It would have surprised no one to see ice encasing the banisters or frost crawling across the window panels.
Because no matter how reliable their heat source had been, no machine stood any shred of hope against the aura of one very enraged, very dangerous red head with a multitude of razor sharp arrows strapped across his broad shoulder.
They all had heard it; the piercing shriek of rusted hinges adorned to the chipping door. Next had been the footsteps, loud, heavy footfalls belonging to pair of very sturdy boots, likely men's.
Before the figure had turned the corner and revealed themselves, each police officer in proximity had begun their own unconscious deduction and character profiling. It was second nature, from years of extraneous detail picking and sorting, and most of the men and women were obvious pros.
Male, large boots, aggressive state of attitude judging by the forceful yank the door had taken, tall, likely muscular based on the sharp pounds of their feet, early 20's or younger, based on the character lack of self-restraint, possibly uncaring of portrayal to others, or, rather, sufficiently reliant on intimidation.
When Roy Harper stalked into the cluttered space, each officer glanced up from their papers or keyboards, smirking casually to themselves as they ranked their deductions near spot on.
" 'Scuse me, young man" Came the slightly shrill squabble of Megsie Malore, resident secretary packed with a personality as odd as her given name. "You've gotta come back ta' the foya' and sign yourself some papers, see? You aren't allowed back here without a badged escort, and the Commish is outta the office right now so you can't get an appointment at the moment."
The young, bouncy curled blonde leaned around from behind the man's bulging bicep, thrusting forth a stack of hastily gathered papers while her polished fingernails snatched through her hair for the pen she kept secured behind her ear.
The redhead, however, showed no intention or motion to following protocol. He pivoted on his heels, turning to face the young women face on, drenching the secretary in silence. The room began to ring with white noise as dozens of curious and bewildered stares fixed themselves to Roy's back. Megsie, outrageously outgoing and strong spoken in nature, often to the point of headache inducing obnoxiousness, snapped her mouth shut and stumbled a step back, her pale skin suddenly stricken a subtle grey. Gazes from all direction locked onto the girl as she shied away from the tall individual staring her down behind the lenses of a mask, and finally found her pitchy, wobbling voice. "I'll jus' um..I'll leave these here for ya, how's that? And if you wanna sign em', you go ahead…and if not, I'm sure we can make an exception, kay? No harm done..."
And with that, the blonde headed girl shoved the stack of skewed information into the hands of the closest officer and spun around to retreat, heels clicking furiously as she near sprinted back to the safety of her front room office.
Roy turned back to the room of officials silently, his darkened mood leeching into the walls and slipping across the floor to coat the room completely. The man rolled his fingers quietly, allowing each appendage to snap and crack deafeningly as he pulled them into white knuckled fists. A few rookies noticeably flinched at the abrasive, unexpected sound, and the air chilled.
His head turned to and fro slightly, scanning the room in quick, calculated sweeps, before his covered eyes latched onto one individual.
Said individual was none too subtly shaking in his shiny shoes, fingers twitching to rummage through drawers for a paper bag.
Harper stepped forward dominantly, crossing through desks and around obstacles with ease.
His prey broke out into a cold sweat, light eyes darting to and fro and across the faces of his co-workers, silently begging them to do something.
Each officer he made eye contact with, albeit briefly, looked away with obvious guilt. They knew it just as well as he did. His fate was sealed, and no one was stepping into the path of this murderous redhead if they didn't need to.
The officer shook and sweat, his mind heaving in circles as the brooding man finally met his destination, planting himself directly in front of his desk. 'So much for loyalty' He thought timidly after his final failed attempt for savior.
He was in for it.
"I'm sending my son."
The redhead fixed his invisible gaze upon the man's face, before darting a quick hand out to latch onto the corner of the man's shiny golden name plate, fastened to his pressed shirt pocket.
"Kenton." He growled out as the nervous officer jerked back from the muscular arm.
Kenton swallowed, shutting his eyes and allowing his spiking pulse a moment of composure before stuttering out a quick "Y-yes S-s-sir. Th-that's me."
Roy released the badge with a sneer, leaving his smudged fingerprint on the corner of the flattened metal.
'At least if he kills me, they'll be able to identify who did it.'
"I know." Harper ground out, obviously annoyed. "I scanned your profile on the way over."
Kenton, slightly bewildered and inconsolably flustered, attempted to put forth a professional front, busying his fluttering hands on manila folders stuffed and sharpied.
"O-kay. So, um, what c-can I do for you, Sir?"
Had the young law enforcer ever been fearful for his life, nothing could have compared to the sheer panic that shot through his gut when the man before him flexed every muscle he carried, shifting as if he were prepared to strike. Kenton quickly scrambled to save himself.
"I um-Sorry, was tha-that not righ-t? I didn't- ah, sorry…"
The redhead heaved a heavy sigh, releasing the air forcefully through his nose. If the situation hadn't been quite so terrifying, Kenton may have let loose a laugh when he heard the tall, looming man mutter a string of backwards numbers to himself under his breath. "10…9…8…"
Somewhat composed, Roy once more made to speak. Two forceful, demanding words plowed through his throat in a strangled growl, but that was all it took to send Kenton reeling towards the Commissioner's office, tripping over his wheeling chair on the way.
"Robin. Now."
Light slivers through cracked, dusty blinds drawn down over the Commissioner's wide office window. Across the floor tiles, the light is splayed in a series of perfect, horizontal lines, projected from the thin plastic window coverings at the base of the tiny room.
Robin lays, curled onto his side with an arm clutching protectively at his knees, which had been pulled up to chest after he had woken up from his short, panic induced nap.
The boy could vaguely remember his own constricted breathing as he sunk himself into a frenzy over…
He remembered, at the very edge of his tired mind, a familiar heavy hand resting against the back of his neck comfortingly before he was flung into blackness.
He remembered what a lovely feeling it had been, to let himself drown in that dark color. It seemed that the blackened surroundings of his sleeping state had sucked away all of his thoughts and unpleasant memories of the previous hours. And it was nice, to just be. To just lay there and be a void, empty shell with nothing inside to muddy his monotonous mood.
And then the nightmare had flashed to life.
Already.
Robin had shot awake, not twenty minutes after dozing off, to a squeaky sofa and a room that seemed to glow in rich sepia tones as the florescent hall lights crept in through crevasses to mingle with the dark.
Richard looked at those lines of light for a while, and he found himself becoming angry that they even existed.
What he wanted, above all else, was to drown in this room that could be completely dark, had it not been for these invasive smudges of yellow shine.
He wanted, so much, to pull his hidden eyes into a glare, and curse them until they disappeared, but he found himself simply staring with tired, heavy lids resting neutrally over his baby blues.
He couldn't even muster up a simple menacing gaze.
Maybe, he thought quietly to himself, Batman could hit them with a heat filled Batglare, and then they would quiver away like countless violent perpetrators had done over the years.
Batman
The boy's hand twitched toward the emergency button on his belt once more, hoping against hope that maybe his guardian would answer this time, as he was usually very diligent (and quite panicky) in answering when it came to Robin hitting that danger button, but his hand's journey halted in midair as a nauseating side filled Richard's vison.
His dark green glove, which he now held in front of his face to inspect with watering orbs, was coated in stains of burgundy. Blood.
Bab's blood.
Internally heaving, Robin tentatively rubbed the tips of his shielded fingers together, watching as flecks of dried cooper blood peeled off the material and floated to the floor.
He wanted to be sick.
After his hand had flopped limply to cover his knees once more, the boy feeling quite like his throat had begun to close up around the edges, Dick noticed the horizontal lines adorning the tiles flicker away suddenly.
He blinked languidly at this, far too mentally and physically tired to do anything more. Muffled voices, as well as footsteps, (two sets, his brain supplied naturally) began to drift towards his ears, and he was given a mere moment to bask in to darkness before the door was thrown open and all the world's light flooded in to assault him.
"Seriously. "Unexpected nap?" What in the hell made you think…well, I guess you didn't actually. Canary reamed me out because I was the only one around to take the brunt of it. You think I'm bad? You're lucky she didn't storm in here. You'd all be deaf right now."
Roy's voice filled the room faultlessly, his presence sending an emotion that Robin hadn't felt all night soaring through him like raging winds.
Calm.
Stepping past a stammering officer, Robin watched as Roy's broad shadow consumed half of the floor's light. The darkness would have scared most people, but it just worked for the redhead in Richard's mind. It was warm, in the most unexpected way, and Robin welcomed in with hypothetically open arms, because he couldn't find the strength to move his drained limbs.
When Harper crouched down in front of the small teenager quietly, his brows furrowed in concern, Richard finally found it in himself to do something. Straining against the thick emotion that coated his throat, he breathed out one quiet word that meant the world to him in that moment.
"Speedy."
Roy stared at the kid, heartbroken at the helpless state he was thrown into that night, and for once in a very long time, didn't bother to correct the name that fell from his voice.
Because Red Arrow was a brooding, egotistic, uncaring hero whose dominate trait was anger more times than not, and Red Arrow was not the person that Robin needed right now.
No, Robin needed Speedy. The brooding, egotistic, uncaring hero whose dominate trait was anger more times than not, but who would throw all of that away in a heartbeat if it meant protecting Robin or Kid Flash, the two teens who he had grown up with, fought with, pranked with, and laughed with. His best friends. His brothers.
Reaching out a gentle hand, the older teen gripped the smaller boy's shoulder, forcing himself to quirk one corner of his mouth into a halfhearted smile because he knew Robin hadn't seen him smile in months and that was what he needed right now.
"Yeah, kid. I'm here. I gotcha."
That was it. All of the tense stress lingering in the boy's muscles deflated like a popped balloon, his breath heaving out in a quiet sigh drenched with relief.
And Robin fell into the darkness, who wrapped his bulging biceps around him protectively, telling the slightly calmer officer that he was taking him back to Mount Justice now, and he slipped away into the comfort that the light had stolen from him when he was awake.
XxXx
Firstly, Barbara heard the pealed giggles of the strange girl she circumstantially met. It sounded happy, obviously, for it is hard to angrily giggle or anything of the sort, and also completely out of place in their colorless, washed blank surroundings.
Barbara was irritated, to say the least. She definitely hadn't woken up today with the premise of getting shot in the stomach and ending up in some weird limbo with a weird girl who spoke far too quickly and dressed far too familiarly and it was honestly driving the redhead's calculated mind nuts.
Additionally, she was furious with the criminals who had decided to muck up the first patrol she had had with Robin in months, and ripped it away from her, and hurt her little brother the way she had heard in his frantically slurred words.
But, above all, she was horrifically, inexplicably angered with herself. Tonight, she had been horribly selfish, and the thought of it made her stomach turn and roll. She could make a list the length of Gotham detailing every single action she had done horrifically wrong, all because she was jealous and upset and juvenile. She hadn't told her father that she was going on patrol that night, hadn't asked him if he had heard anything over the radios that she and Robin should have kept an eye out and been prepared for. She hadn't worn her Kevlar armored suit, instead dawning her lightest, flimsily stitched costume because she had known that Robin was forced to wear the durable material at all times, and she knew it would have bogged him down while they were using the lines and it would have allowed her an advantage in the race.
Most of all, she hadn't headed the words of her mentor, which had been drilled into her brain and crafted her fighting nature for years.
She had screwed up. Everything.
The girl's emerald eyes, which had previously been closed in frustration, grew watery behind her lids.
Now, because she had done things the wrong way, Robin was suffering.
And honestly, it was all her fault.
Barbara opened her sorrow filled orbs, trying to build up any resolve she had left to drill the hazel eyed girl on anything she could do to fix the mess she had thrown herself into, and received, what should not have ceased to surprise her at this point in time, yet another bewildering surprise.
Rather than the monotone meadow she had closed her vision to, the space around her was leeching color from the swirling sky, returning the foliage to its previous, color filled state.
The vanilla clad girl stood a little ways off, head thrown back as her arms spread to the sky, joyful laughter spilling from her smiling mouth as rainbow liquid rained down from the grey clouds and splattered against her, splotching her with pigmentation.
"Look Babs!" The girl yelled with a grin, missing the other's flinch at the nickname as she skipped over and grabbed the redhead's hand with her own bandaged appendage.
Barbara's eyebrows rose incredulously as she took in the sight of the girl, soaking wet and splashed with polka-dot swatches and patches of color.
"What…" She began, pulling her hand away and raising her palm up to the air, feeling completely dry air in return. The girl, rolling her glowing eyes, beat her to the punch.
"You, my lovely friend, are not an official part of this place. You haven't…chosen to stay, therefore you don't feel, and aren't affected, by the changes here. If you became like me, which hey, the offer is still on the table" The girl waggled her eyebrows convincingly "then you would. No big deal."
Barbara sputtered at that bit, before shaking her fiery head of hair incredulously. "No big deal." She muttered breathlessly.
The, once again, honey haired girl nodded, looking up once she felt the rain stop pouring down and reached behind her back the ring out her cape. The shimmering fabric dripped glitter and cream.
"Good news though!" She chirped knowingly, flashing her teeth when the older teen scrunched one eyebrow and stared at her sarcastically.
"Right…none of this has been particularly great…but Robin seems to be okay. So that's good, yeah?"
This caught the other's attention, who perked immediately, a glimmer of hope sparking her green irises alive.
"What do you mean?" she questioned excitedly "How do you know?"
The hazel eyed girl wiped her dripping hair from her forehead, swiping away streaks that nearly looked like dye, and looked around their space contently.
"Well. Before, when all the color ran off, and I've seen this before, it means that someone affected by your…incident…erm, was in, let's say, emotional distress."
Barbara's gaze shifted to the side, her lip worried between her teeth. Emotion distress. That meant that Robin was hurting. The poor kid has dealt with enough in his short lifetime. Why did this have to add to it?
"But…" Her attention was drawn back to the chattering teen in front of her. "Since everything here is right as rain again" she giggled at the pun quickly "that means that, for the moment, he's okay."
The redhead allowed a small smile to stretch across her lips, and a tiny bit of relief to slip through her anxious system.
The girl smiled herself, as she seemed to love doing, and nodded her head in the direction of the small tree line bordering the grassy field.
"Plus, his representation seems to be doing just fine."
Across the way, a tiny robin sat, impossible small and fragile, in the tangled weeds under a tall, leafy tree. Flickers of sunlight pushed through the fragile webbings of the leaves, but the robin was shielded particularly well by the darkened shade dwelling strongly under the branches.
xXxX
This will be finding you tonight, or Monday, rather.
The next chapter will be posted not this Wednesday, but the next. Come back and visit, yeah? :)
Reviews
Thwipthwipity- Yay! Another new one! Aren't you proud? No, I'm kidding. You should be very disappointed for the wait. I'll go to my room for this one. Haha! I feel so bad for it, but…no. He can't, and he won't. I'm so sorry. The emotional distress is necessary for the story, but all will be well…eventually. Thanks for the review!
Godgirl4ever- Hi! That's awesome! The wait for updates is ridiculous, I know, but thank you so much for sticking around! I appreciate it so much. Haha, no worries, there will be more of both where those came from. (Noted and fixed. Thank you!) That's fantastic! A lot of people aren't usually fans of OC's. They're risks, but so much fun to create. I'm so glad he has a fan! Clane is a good guy. A little course in nature, as are most in his profession, but he's a softy. Thanks! You're reviews make me happy.
Midnightmoon321- I am! Nice to see you too. Not rude at all my friend, I agree. This story is going to be a bit long, but not terribly so. I won't leave you without closure though, sound good? :) Thank you for your reviews!
Have a great week, guys.
Until next time.
-Arrow.