This is incredibly late. This is like my procrastination at its worst. I can't even imagine how pissed you guys at me. Just go and read.I don't own Young Justice. Also a warning: there is a brief mention of attempted rape. Nothing explicit though.
Dick woke up, head feeling slightly hazy. He didn't have much focus or coherence, and could barely open his eyes. When he did though, he realized he wasn't in the same room that he had been waking up in for who knows how long. He was in a room that reminded him of a tool shed, but larger. It was dimly lit, with some things like a dirty shovel and an old wooden shelf. What caught his attention though, was what, or rather who, was in the middle of the room. A man had his hands cuffed to the chair, along with his feet. There was a bag over the man's head, and from the way he was looking, Dick concluded that the man was unconscious. "Nice to see you awake Mr . Grayson. It's about time." Malvarma's voice was heard from the corner of the room. He turned around to see him looking straight at him.
"What are you gonna do? Take another innocent life?" Koro chuckled, the sound causing shivers to go up his spine.
"First off, I'm not going to be the one taking his life, and second, he's hardly innocent." He walked towards the man, stopping behind the chair. He viciously yanked the bag off the man's head, and Dick's eyes widened.
Sitting in the chair, was a mob boss and murderer, the one responsible for his parents' death.
Tony Zucco.
Marilyn sat in a room, a large mirror covering one side and a table right in front of her. She was alone, waiting for someone to walk through the door. After the blue-eyed boy and the dark-haired girl had to leave, the man had came in and a white gas filled the room, and she went to sleep. Next thing she knew she was in an a dark place between buildings, and when she walked out, a big car almost gave her the biggest owee of her life until a nice lady with red hair wearing all black looking like a giant bat saved her. The lady asked what she was doing there and all she said was 'I don't remember'. Bat-lady brought her to the room and told her to wait, and now she just sat in the room alone. A nice woman with blonde hair came through the door, holding a brown paper bag. She sat down, giving the girl a comforting smile.
"I thought you might be hungry, so I got you some food." She pulled out a sandwich, juice box, and a tiny bowl with apple slices. She pushed it across the table, toward her. Mary took an apple and ate it.
"You're pretty." She said shyly, chewing.
"Thank you. I like the bow in your hair." The adult leaned forward in her seat, putting her forearms on the table. "So what's your name, sweetie?"
"Marilyn Galena, but everyone calls me Mary."
"Nice, name. Mine is Black Canary." Mary's eyes lit up at the mention of it.
"That's my favorite bird! Well next to Robin. I like Robins because of the boy with Batman who swings around. It always looks like he's flying. It's so cool!" She suddenly frowned. "It reminds me of the boy I saw, he looked so sad. Especially the girl with him. I hope they're okay." Canary tensed, becoming more alert.
"Who were the boy and girl?" She questioned.
"Richard Grayson, and I'm not sure about the girl, but I think he called her Alex. There was another man, Randy Johnson, but he fell asleep." The hero nodded.
"I have a friend that's also a hero in the League. Thing is, he has a really cool power to read minds. Do you want to meet him?" The girl nodded enthusiastically. "Okay, let me go get him while you finish your food." Canary walked out the room, finding the Dark Knight looking through the glass. "Can you-"
"I already sent J'onn down here. He should be arriving soon." His tone came out more solemn then usual.
"Bruce, she could be are closest lead to finding him, and we will find him. We just have to wait."
"I don't know about you, but I'm tired of waiting." He said. She put a hand on his shoulder.
"We all are, Bruce. We all are."
He felt an inexplicable rush of anger flow through his veins at the sight of the criminal. It was his fault for all of this happening! If he hadn't killed his parents in the first place, then there would be no Robin, and no reason for the maniac to capture him, no reason for him and others he care about to go through pain! "What the-" Tony said as he woke up. He scanned his surroundings, pulling on the restraints. He stopped when he saw Dick, narrowing his eyes. "Do I know you?"
"You should." The younger gritted out. "I'm the reason you got put in prison."
He raised an eyebrow, a bored look on his face. "I remember you. The kid from the circus right?" He smirked. "Such a shame to lose your whole family. Now, mind telling me why I'm here?"
"Are you going to let him speak to you like that, Richard?" Koro sounded like a coach.
"I'll talk to him whatever way I want to talk to him. Right, trapeze boy?" He gave a dry laugh. "Or more like broken trapeze."
"Here." Koro handed Dick a clean shovel, a wide silver head glinting sharply. He grabbed the handle and weighed the weapon in his hands. "Use it."
"Go ahead, but realize this; I'm the reason your life turned around. You were just some boy in a circus, but after what I did, you became an orphaned kid who got adopted by a billionaire. If anything, you should owe-"
CRACK!
The shovel connected with the man's left temple, and Dick felt a rush of excitement and satisfaction at the sound, at the violent contact. He swung the shovel and hit the man again.
BANG!
"Kid-" Tony pleaded. He got a hit in the mouth. Dick doesn't think he has ever felt this good in his life.
CRACK!
He heard a couple of bones break when he striked his chest, and absentmindedly wondered if it was a rib.
"Stop!" Dick paused and looked at the man. His face was unrecognizable, either bruised or covered in blood. He wheezed, chest shaking with painful breath, and a crimson liquid made it past his lips, showing how hard it was for him to breathe. "You wouldn't seriously beat me to death, right? You're a kid, you still have some kind of innocence in you."
"No." The younger panted and stood straight, a sort of numbness coming over him as he dropped the shovel. "I wouldn't beat you to death." Faster than even he himself could comprehend, he was on Zucco, straddling his waist. The man cried out in pain before erupting into a series of coughs. "I'll strangle you." Dick's hands wrapped around his neck and squeezed. It was invigorating to feel the sweaty skin, the rapid pulse beneath his finger tips, every ragged breath, and to know that he controlled it. Soon the breathing came to a stop, and the man's movements ceased.
"It feels amazing, doesn't it?" His head turned to Koro, who seemed to be...impressed. "To get vengeance on someone. To take away from them what they took away from you. That's what Batman never understood." He shook his head disappointedly and put his hands on Dick's shoulders. "True justice is becoming the personification of karma, and ending those who do bad so it can never happen again. After all..." He bent down to the younger's ear. "In order to clean up a place, you have to get your hands dirty."
Alex was worried.
Okay, beyond worried, she was terrified. Dick had been gone for a while and there is so much that could be happening to him right now. Mental torture, electrocution, or just plain hurting him. She took a deep breath, and slowed her pacing. He can handle himself. Whatever's happening, he'll get through it and-
She would probably make a Flash proud with how quick she made across the room the minute the door opened. First thing she noticed was that Dick walked through the door. He wasn't shoved or thrown, and once again she wondered what Koro had been up to.
"What happened?" To her surprise, he just walked right passed her and sat on the bed staring at the wall.
"Have you ever killed someone?" He turned his gaze to her. "After your mother, I mean."
"Excuse me?" She wasn't sure if he heard him right. Did he seriously just ask her that?
"Have you ever killed someone? You did euthanize Randy, and I suspect that there would have to be experience in order to do that." He sounded so neutral when he said that, it unnerved her.
"Why are you asking me that?"
"Can you please just answer the question!" She railed back, his aggravated tone feeling like a slap to the face. Alex straightened herself up and crossed her arms.
"Yes. Quite a few actually. There were bills to pay, and my dad sure as hell wasn't gonna do it. Someone took me in and trained me. He showed me how to kill, and that's how I made money."
"If someone did something horrible, would you kill them for it?"
She leaned back on the wall and laughed bitterly.
"Let me tell you a story. My first kill wasn't a job, it was how my mentor found me. I was 8 years old and missed my bus so I ended up alone at night in the streets of Gotham, which you know means I wasn't gonna be the same the next sunrise, if I was lucky enough to see it the next day. A guy grabbed me and pulled me into an alley. Turns out, he had a thing for little girls." Her eyes burned angrily and she snarled at the memory. "Next thing I knew I was shoved on a wall and my clothes were coming off. I panicked, and suddenly no one was touching me, just a burnt corpse. His friend saw it and tried to shoot me but ended up with a bullet between the eyes courtesy of the man who became my first mentor."
"Well those guys deserved it." She looked at him, shocked. This couldn't be her best friend, the guy who would laugh while dragging psycho's asses Arkham.
"What the hell's gotten into you? What's with all these questions?"
"I've been thinking. Maybe it is alright for some people to die. Some people probably deserve to die. Imagine how much safer it would be without criminals breaking out all the time. If we take them down and they stay down."
"It isn't our place to decide who lives and who doesn't, Dick."
"And murderers do?! They kill people all the time, why can't we give them a taste of their own medicine!?" He was standing up and yelling now, and she was feeling more wary of him by the second.
"You fight fire with fire and all you get are ashes. I know that from experience."
"The best always rise from the ashes."
"I don't play god! I don't choose who gets to live and die!" She couldn't believe it. No way was this the boy she lov-cares about. This isn't the boy who would treat crime fighting like a game to enjoy. This is someone else. A true vigilante.
"You sure as hell don't! Or else you would have chosen for your mother to be alive!"
The room fell into a tense silence, with Dick breathing heavily and Alex staring at him. He slowly let go of his fists that neither realized were clenched. That's when she noticed the red stain on his hand. She felt herself slowly turn from angry and shocked to mortified.
"Dick, what did you do?" She asked quietly, almost sounding afraid.
He looked down at his hands, as if noticing the blood for the first time. He gazed intentlt at it before looking back up at her with unfamiliar eyes and the smirk of a stranger. It wasn't the face of Dick Grayson, but of something inhumane. A monster.
"I fought fire with fire."