Chapter Twenty Seven
Mourning
Morgan didn't even notice that Lagoon Boy was missing until they were already halfway home.
She'd been staring out the window, much like on their way to the launching site, only this time she wasn't excited and nervous. She was scared and angry and sad.
Morgan had done her uttermost best to avoid looking at the limp, green-clad figure lying on a raised dais in the middle of the ship. Leaving the body on the floor had seemed too harsh, so M'gann had made the ship form a simple dais for her dead friend.
"Where's La'gaan?" Morgan hoarsely whispered into the empty silence of the ship. The only continuous sound in the ship since they'd taken flight was M'gann's sobbing.
At the mention of her vanished boyfriend, the Martian only sobbed harder. Morgan's face drew into an apologetic and miserable look as she realized she'd probably rubbed salt in an open flesh wound.
In front of her, she could see Superboy tense and Morgan knew she wasn't likely to get an answer from him either.
She looked back at her mentor, who sat silently at the helm. M'gann had been too distraught to fly the Bio ship. The ship, apparently able to feel its master's distress, had simply refused to move from its spot and Nightwing had had to take over.
He met her eyes briefly before looking down at the floor, perhaps in mourning, perhaps in shame. Out of the three of her companions, he was the one who seemed to be holding up best. She realized that, as their leader, he probably had to.
"He was taken by Black Manta's men." He eventually answered.
Morgan felt a fresh wave of tears well up in her eyes at their absolutely disastrous mission and she leaned her elbows onto the table in front of her, her head resting in her palms. Her hair fell around her features, hiding her tears and gritted teeth from view.
Morgan was almost certain that she'd never felt this miserable before. She'd been devastated when she'd run away from home. She'd been deeply affected when her father had told her that he was the reason for her wings.
But those two scenarios seemed to pale in comparison to the overwhelming sorrow she felt right now.
Brief acquaintance or not, Artemis had been a team mate. And maybe even a friend.
And Lagoon Boy, for all his anger management issues and weird ways, was her friend. And he was gone too. Maybe already dead as well.
Morgan forced herself to not think like that. If not for herself, then at least for M'gann. M'gann hadn't just lost one of her best friends tonight, she'd also lost her boyfriend.
Morgan had to believe that Lagoon Boy would come back to them somehow.
Once they arrived back at Mount Justice, everybody from the Team was already there. Morgan figured Nightwing had sent a message out to all of them before leaving.
Everyone gathered in the combined living room and kitchen and mourned together. Mourned as a team.
Morgan didn't want to. She didn't like to deal with sadness in front of others. It was the same reason she couldn't go back to the Cave after her talk with her dad.
She didn't do 'social' mourning, or whatever this was. She dealt with those kinds of things on her own.
Out of respect, she stayed with the others for half an hour before she quietly slipped away. It wasn't like anyone was paying attention to her. Her absence wouldn't be noticed.
After hearing Mal, in an angry and slightly accusing voice, ask Superboy where Nightwing was, and Connor explaining that their missing leader had gone to tell Wally that his girlfriend was dead, Morgan had left her anonymous place next to the door and slipped unnoticed from the room.
She got outside quietly through the small private hatch Nightwing had showed her those months ago. Standing for a long moment to watch the peaceful waves gently wash over the wet sand beneath her boot-clad feet, she started to feel like her emotions were manifesting into a physical ball in her chest. The ball grew in size with every passing moment until Morgan thought she was going to literally choke or possibly explode from it.
Clenching her fists, she left the water and marched towards the wood-covered mountain side.
Another reason Morgan had needed to leave the others as soon as possible was because she knew her own mourning circle by now. She channeled mourning through violence. She always had. After her father had left them back when she was ten, she'd been so sad, which had channeled into anger, that she'd beaten up one of her classmates with barely any provocation. She'd almost gotten expelled after that.
And now she had left the Cave because she had had to physically restrain herself from punching Mal at his accusing tone when asking about Nightwing.
She'd known that, if she didn't leave now, she could quite possibly break the kitchen on accident.
Releasing a bone-chilling scream of fury, she swiped her hands out and leveled the three closest trees to the ground.
Morgan wished she had the same level of restrain as many of the others did. Superboy was usually an angry person, but even he had just standing against the wall with a tense expression on his face.
Apparently, Morgan was the only one who had problems with dealing with her emotions.
When using her mental powers on the three trees hadn't been enough, Morgan ran forward and punched the closest one, splintering the wood when she naturally tapped into her telekinetic powers to aid her hit.
It didn't last for long though. She'd already used her mental powers far too much tonight and her reserves were all but spent.
She still kept hitting the rough bark of the tree even when her telekinesis no longer aided her and her knuckles were bloody and torn.
Her anger now properly channeled, she flew away, locating a specific tree on the slope in no time.
It was taller than most of the other trees there, old and strong.
It was the same tree she'd sat in when she and Nightwing had eaten pizza. She still wasn't sure what that had even been about, but she didn't think on it now. Now, she just needed a familiar spot that held good memories. Somewhere peaceful and private.
Finding the very same branch that she'd sat on the first time, she landed on it and stayed there.
Her clenched right hand throbbed painfully in protest but she ignored it, refusing to tend to her self-inflicted injuries.
After half an hour, the pain had not subsided and Morgan relented and looked at her bloody hand, inspecting the knuckles.
Pulling small pieces of bark and dirt out of the tender wounds, she sighed and dug into one of the compartments of her belt, pulling out a roll of white gauze. Attempting to sloppily bandage the wound herself, she nearly fell off the branch when another voice suddenly made itself present.
"Let me." The male said and Morgan looked down to find Superboy hoisting himself onto Nightwing branch – not that it was Nightwing's branch, it was just the branch he'd sat on when they had hung out in the tree and Morgan had taken to calling it that – and grabbing hold of the white fabric, undoing the sloppy work Morgan had done.
She was confused to find him here, wanted to ask him why he'd found her, but she didn't say anything as he focused on binding her small wounds.
"How did that happen?" He asked, fixing his serious blue eyes on her.
Morgan shrugged and leaned back against the trunk of the tree, staring out over the ocean. "I punched a tree.. Twenty times."
Connor nodded and trained his own eyes towards the horizon. "This was your second mission, right?"
Morgan wasn't sure why it mattered, but she confirmed it anyway. "Yeah. First was the one with the Kroloteans' underground lair."
"I'm sorry it went the way it did." He told her. "You shouldn't have had to experience this kind of thing so early on."
Morgan wondered why he was worrying about her when many of the others were faring so much worse than she did. She hadn't even known Artemis that well. Surely his sympathy was needed more somewhere else.
Maybe he'd left the Cave to deal with his sorrow on his own too and had just happened to stumble upon her.
"I never should've been allowed on this mission." She admitted, anger seeping into her tone even as she tried to keep it out. "I know I've been eager to go on missions for a long time, but I'm starting to think I'm not actually ready yet. At all."
"I disagree." Superboy surprised her by saying. "You're ready to go on missions, in my opinion. Don't let today's mission convince you otherwise. Nobody will ever be ready for a mission where they lose a team mate."
"Nobody should have to experience that." Morgan agreed.
There was silence for a small moment before Morgan felt the need to fill it.
"I'm sorry for your loss." She mumbled, drawing her legs up towards her upper body. "I didn't know Artemis as well as you did, but she seemed like a good person."
"One of the best." Connor quietly agreed.
At that point, the touchy-feely crap was apparently become a bit too much for her usually stoic team mate – Morgan could understand him, she was starting to get uncomfortable too – and he excused himself.
Connor was halfway down the tree again when Morgan forced herself to speak up. "Connor?" She called out.
There was a pause in which she could hear his movements still.
"Thanks." Was all she said, not waiting for him to answer first.
There was a long silence before she heard the boy resume his downwards climb.
"You're welcome." He answered once he'd started climbing again.
The dark haired boy was gone a moment later and Morgan sat immobile on her perch, all alone again.
When the moon was starting to wane and the eastern sky slowly turned pink and orange, Morgan, entire body cold and stiff, got down from the tree and flew into the Cave. She collapsed on her bed and allowed sweet, blissful sleep to take over, grateful for a few hours of numbness.
March 21st
She'd been dreaming about it.
Dreaming about that dark face with the glowing blue knife, stabbing into all of her team mates. First it was Artemis. Then Robin. Then M'gann. She'd even been on the receiving end of the knife herself a few times.
And she'd been absolutely powerless to stop it every single time. There were different versions, all with the same outcome. Sometimes she'd be too far away to reach them. Or she'd be injured and unable to move herself.
But the two most disturbing ones were the ones that made her wake up, gasping with tears leaking down her eyes.
In those dreams, Morgan would run towards the other person, about to pull them out of the way.
And then suddenly Nightwing would grab her from behind and stop her in her tracks. He would tell her to stay back and that it was 'part of the plan'.
And then her team mate would die. Because Nightwing had wanted them to.
And then, even worse, sometimes Nightwing himself had been the one to die. During those times, instead of holding her back, he'd look at her and tell her to stay away. That it was supposed to happen.
She wasn't sure which one of the two dreams made her feel worse. Nightwing dying was probably one of her worst nightmare, but Nightwing letting somebody else die when he could've stopped it? That also made her feel extremely terrible.
Morgan woke several times during the night, drenched in sweat, and finally, before the sun had even risen, she got up and took a long, cold shower.
After only having gotten three hours of sleep the night before, she'd hoped to catch up to some of it tonight, but her luck seemed against her.
At least she didn't have any classes today. She looked like death and she didn't need Rachel and Esmeralda to bug her about it.
Slowly dragging her tired body out of her room, clad in a loose t-shirt and a pair of shorts, she left the Cave entirely and went for a long jog along the beach next to it.
Her muscles protested as she ran, but she ignored them.
She'd spared with Nightwing yesterday. And it had been weird.
Neither had said a word to each other during the entire session. Nightwing usually wasn't the most talkative type when they trained, but he at least found the time to shout out helpful advice while they fought and then explained to her what she'd done wrong when she failed.
But this time..
Nothing.
Not a word.
And Morgan hadn't attempted at conversation either because – and she was ashamed to admit it – part of her blamed him for Artemis' death. She knew how incredibly unfair it was. Knew that Artemis had chosen to go on that mission herself. Artemis had known the risks.
And yet..
And yet, Artemis wouldn't have been there if Nightwing hadn't asked her to join the mission.
So Nightwing was quieter than usual, but other than that, he was already seemingly back to normal. Arrived early at the Cave, dealt out missions and orders, trained Morgan..
She wondered if that was his way of dealing with sorrow. Pretend it wasn't there. Push it under the rug until the ache dulled so much he forgot about it.
She mused about how often he would've been sad about something these past few months and she hadn't even noticed it because he was that good at hiding his emotions.
By the time Morgan arrived back at the Cave, sweaty, out of breath and utterly exhausted, some of the others were up and about.
Even though she didn't have much of an appetite, Morgan forced herself to eat a bowl of cereal and drink an entire bottle of water.
When she was done, she walked back to her room and collapsed in her bed, hoping that the run had, by some miracle, tired her out enough for her to sleep without the nightmares.
She slept for another two hours. But it was an uneasy, restless sleep that didn't make her feel much better, but rather like her brain had been swapped with cotton and her limbs were heavy yet numb at the same time.
Perhaps she felt this way because she'd been averaging on three hours of sleep a night since the mission.
Morgan forced herself to get up and she dragged herself into her shower for the second time that day, the cold water the only way to wake her up, short of injecting caffeine straight into her blood stream.
She'd never gone with so little sleep for an extended period of time before. She found the mirror in her bathroom and studied her face. The pounding headache she'd sported all of yesterday had returned today, bringing with it charming purple bruises under her eyes which stood out all the more because her skin had turned into a sickly pale color. The veins in her eyes were larger and redder than normal because of her lack of sleep too.
Overall, Morgan was quite possibly the least attractive person she'd ever seen right now and no amount of makeup would salvage the damage.
Standing under the showerhead, she focused all of her attention on the cold water streaming into her hair and down her body, finding that the task somehow managed to distract her from the otherwise constant picture of Artemis getting stabbed that seemed to play on a loop in her mind.
She wasn't even sure why the death of the other girl hit her this hard. Many of the people that knew her far better than Morgan were already getting back on track. As far as she could see, she was the only person in the Cave that was still having problems holding herself together.
Maybe it was because they'd experienced death before and had learned that the best way to deal with it was to plow on and move forward.
Maybe Morgan was just extra sensitive about those kinds of things.
Maybe it was because, as Morgan had told Nightwing months ago, the heroes of this world were made of a different cloth than the rest of humanity. A stronger, more adaptable cloth. A better cloth.
And maybe Morgan, as she'd also told Nightwing months ago, just wasn't made of that same cloth. Maybe she wasn't hero material. Maybe she'd never be.
She forced herself to stop thinking about it as she got out of the shower and dried herself off before slipping into a pair of jeans and a large hoodie.
It wasn't until she'd finished dressing that she realized it was the exact same articles of clothing she'd worn when she had first arrived at the Cave. Morgan could appreciate the bitter irony in this.
It was like her subconscious wanted her to leave.
Two hours later, knowing that hiding away in her room wouldn't make her feel any better, Morgan slipped out and walked aimlessly around the Cave, partly hoping to find some of the others, partly hoping she wouldn't.
The part that hoped she wouldn't was severely disappointed when she happened upon Bumblebee and Batgirl.
"Hey Morgan." Karen greeted the blonde.
"Hi guys." Morgan responded, inwardly winching at how utterly exhausted she sounded. "Where are you going?" She asked when she could see the two girls had been heading out in civilian clothing before she chanced upon them.
"Rocket's bridal shower." Barbara explained, slinging her sports bag over her shoulder. "We've been planning it for some time, since before.. " She trailed off.
"Anyway, we didn't want to cancel it in spite of resent events." Bumblebee took over when Batgirl stopped.
"Oh." Morgan simply responded, her tone slightly dead. She could understand their need to go out and celebrate, especially after the last few days.
The two women exchanged a look.
"Do you want to come?" Barbara suddenly offered after a short pause. "I'm sure Raquel wouldn't mind. We all need a day off."
Morgan froze for a moment, her mind reeling as she frantically searched for an excuse to get out of the invitation. The very last thing she wanted was to have them haul her melancholy ass to the party and then totally ruin the mood by sitting like a silent, sad mood-ruiner in a dark corner.
"I would," She slowly began, burying her hands in the pockets of her hoodie as she stared at the floor. "But I've only ever met Rocket, like, once, so.." She shrugged, keeping her eyes trained on their shoe-clad feet instead of their faces. "Sorry." She finished, swallowing thickly as she forced herself to look up.
She couldn't help but think that the only reason they invited her was because there was an extra seat at their table now, one that had been meant for another blonde.
"Hey, it's okay." Batgirl said gently, placing a soft hand on her shoulder. "We'll do something tomorrow, okay? Go into town and get an ice cream or something."
Morgan absolutely hated feeling like a burden. She hated that Barbara apparently felt like it was her responsibility to cheer her up. "You don't have to. I'm fine."
Karen rolled her eyes. "We know we don't have to girl, we're offering because we want to."
Morgan found herself absolutely stumped, like the thought of the other girls actually wanting to spend time with her wasn't even possible.
"Oh." Was all she could think to answer.
Barbara smiled softly at her. "We'll see you later, Morgan."
She nodded, wetting her bottom lip in thought. "I'll see you."
Watching at the two girls left, Morgan found herself wondering just how messed up she really was. She'd been at the Cave for months now and still sometimes found herself feeling like a total stranger to the others.
She was acting like the others considering her an actual friend was a totally foreign thing, an impossibility, when the truth was they probably didn't even doubt whether they considered her their friend or not. Morgan actually felt guilty when she realized that she'd taken their friendship for granted by assuming it didn't actually exist.
Vowing to stop treating herself like a victim and start acting like a true friend, Morgan stopped staring down the empty hall and resumed her previous wandering.
As it had happened so many times before, Morgan heard Mal's voice carrying down the hall before she actually saw him.
"Aquaman has all of Atlantis on the case." She heard him say as she rounded a corner, the main room coming into view. Mal and Connor stood together in front of a holographic screen with Nightwing standing a little ways off, listening in but not quite joining the conversation. He seemed to want to keep his distance.
Morgan silently wondered if she wasn't the only member of the Team that kind of blamed him for Artemis' death. Judging by the tone Mal had used two nights prior when asking about his whereabouts, the way he'd said that Nightwing 'should be here' during their mourning, Morgan thought that the gentle giant at least partly blamed Nightwing too.
"He says they're, and I quote, 'searching the seven seas of Lagoon boy and his captors.'" Mal supplied.
The fact that the team supervisor appear to hold ill-will towards Nightwing as well only served to make Morgan fell even worse about it. Nightwing was her mentor, she was supposed to stand up for him.
"We'll find La'gaan." Connor reassured Mal, placing a hand on the taller man's shoulder.
"And Aqualad." Mal seethed. "I want his fishhead on a platter after what he did to Artemis!"
Morgan had rarely seen Mal upset. To see him this angry and vengeful was scary, despite that fact that he was the most harmless person in the Cave at any given time. Morgan had wondered what the perfectly normal teenager was doing with a bunch of superpowered weirdo's in the beginning, but she'd quickly learned that his role as squad supervisor on missions was just as important as the work the squads did. Him and Nightwing kept the Team together.
She hoped the two of them hadn't damaged that work relationship and that Morgan had been mistaken when she suspected him of blaming Nightwing for Artemis' death.
After Mal's words, Morgan saw a strange look come over Nightwing features. He looked to the floor and glared to himself, like what Mal had said angered him.
Or maybe because he was angry with himself.
It puzzled her, but she decided to let it be as she slowly crossed the room, intending to get away from the tense group of three.
Connor sighed harshly. "I don't suppose we're any close to identifying the Light's new partner, either?" He directed his question at the silent Nightwing, but as he turned, he found the teenager gone.
Morgan hadn't even seen him leave. It was a Batman thing, she supposed.
"Nightwing?" He questioned, annoyance creeping into his tone. "Where is everyone?!"
"The girls are all heading out." Mal explained.
Well, all except me, that is. Morgan thought to herself. She guessed Connor had reached the same conclusion when they briefly made eye contact.
"The rest.. They're down in the grotto."
The grotto.
She should've known the others would be down there. The statue of Artemis had been put up today and many had wanted to go and pay their respects.
Morgan had intentionally avoided the place but now she felt the need to go down there.
She'd been on the mission where things had happened. Going down there to at least, in some way, acknowledge Artemis' sacrifice, seemed like the right thing to do.
Secretly, Morgan was also hoping that it would offer her some peace of mind.
Slipping down the hall, she headed for the lowest level of the Cave.
She walked slowly down the steel staircase, wrapping her arms around her body when the temperature seemed to drop several degrees with each step. Morgan's ears twitched as she picked up the conversation going on between Bart and Jaime.
"So why is this here?" The speedster asked. "I mean, it's pretty and all, but these people were heroes, died in the line of duty. They should have, like, big awe-inspiring memorials in the Hall of Justice, or something."
Taken a few steps further down, she could finally see the two heroes talking.
"I asked that too.." Jaime admitted. "Captain Atom says the Leagues neither wants or needs a public shrine to fallen members. But it sounds to me like they just doesn't want to advertise that they aren't immortal."
Morgan had to admit she agreed with Blue Beetle. And she thought it as a stupid excuse from the League. The heroes that died deserved to be recognized. Not hidden away in a freezing Grotto underneath a mountain.
"The few people who have seen me in action thinks I'm just this guy in a new costume." Jaime motioned for the statue of the former Blue Beetle. "They'll never know the sacrifice he made."
Impulse, in a moment of clarity, seemed to want to comfort his team mate. "But you know, right?" He pointed out. "And you get to carry on the Blue Beetle tradition."
That had apparently not been the right thing to say, as Jaime just scowled at the ground. "I wish! It sucks!"
He sighed and stared at the statue of his predecessor. Morgan had reached the bottom of the stair case by now and was slowly making her way across the small room, towards the new addition to the memorials.
Three statues had become four.
"Superboy has Superman. Wondergirl has Wonderwoman. Robin has Batman, Batgirl and Nightwing! You've been in this year for, what, five minutes and you already have three Flash mentors, one who feeds you junkfood!" Jaime complained, poking Bart in the chest accusingly. Bart hid the bag of snacks behind his back.
"But me?" He looked sadly at the statue in front of them and motioned for it. "I never even got to meet the guy who should've been my mentor."
"Well," Morgan spoke up as she passed by, unable to keep her mouth shut. "At least you have a guy with similar powers who could've been your mentor." She clapped her hand briefly on his shoulder and joined Robin and Beast Boy in looking at the statue of Artemis. It was an unfair and stupid comment to make, but Morgan couldn't bring herself to care.
Jaime didn't respond. She hadn't expected him to. But she could feel his eyes bore into her back as she passed him.
"Heh, I hear ya. We have more in common than you might think." Impulse told Jaime. "Our love for this particular snack for example." He held up the red bag of chips and Morgan was starting to wonder what the story behind that bag even was. "Let me buy you a new bag. We can hang out, it'll be totally crash!"
Morgan turned her attention away from the two boys as they headed for the exit, Jaime sighing before letting out a hesitant "I guess," allowing Impulse to guide him away.
Finally forcing herself to look up at the green-clad memorial, she felt the lump in her throat grow bigger.
She swallowed the lump and looked away immediately.
Then she steeled her nerves and looked at it again. Forced herself to keep her eyes trained on the memorial.
Her hands shook unexpectedly and she clenched them together, stuffing them into the front pocket of her hoodie.
Morgan sighed. "Screw this." She said out loud.
Tim looked over at her. "What?"
"Nothing." She quickly responded. She'd almost forgotten she wasn't actually alone. "I just.. don't understand why I thought seeing the memorial as going to make me feel any better."
The dark haired boy never got the chance to respond to her statement because as soon as she'd said it, Morgan turned on her heel and walked out of the grotto.
March 22nd
The sky above had been clear half an hour ago, but now rain clouds were rolling in, faster than Nightwing would've liked. The wind whipping his hair around, his position on top of a five story building only reinforcing it.
If a storm was coming, he was going to head home, patrol or not.
He didn't even have time for this stupid patrol anyway. He should be working on Team stuff. Or visiting Alfred, whom he hadn't seen for a month now. Or looking into Morgan's father's history.
But he'd needed to get away for a few hours, to think. And he thought best when he was on patrol.
Nightwing hadn't had such a row of lousy days since Jason had died.
And this was a much different lousy.
Jason's death had made Nightwing feel horrible for weeks, he'd mourned and cried and beaten up so many bad guys so harshly that he'd sent several of them to the hospital in his anger.
But he'd never felt responsible. He'd known that Jason's death wasn't his fault, he hadn't been involved in that incident at all.
But this time..
This time, even though nobody had actually died, the absolutely crushing weight of the guilt he felt almost brought him to his knees. He kept reminding himself that he was doing this for the greater good. Artemis was alive and undercover, helping him and Kaldur bring an evil organization to its knees.
But that didn't help much whenever he saw a member of his team stare off in the distance with tears in their eyes, whenever somebody went down to the Grotto to look at her memorial.
Whenever somebody aimed a thinly-veiled accusing look at him.
To be fair, very few members of the Team had actually done that. Only a few of them actually blamed him for her death.
The first day, Mal had barely spoken a word to him. But the big guy had come around. Mal was a smart guy. He knew trying to put blame on anyone wouldn't bring Artemis back, wouldn't solve anything.
Rain slowly started drizzling down, soaking through his hair, leaving it plastered to his forehead. Nightwing fired his grapple gun and propelled off the building, not caring to stay out in the rain. It wasn't like he was actually patrolling much. He was mainly brooding on top of large buildings.
No, Mal had dropped the issue pretty quickly.
Morgan was another story entirely.
Three days had passed since Artemis' staged death.
Three days, and Morgan hadn't uttered a word to him.
He could tell she blamed him for Artemis' death, but he could also tell she hated that she did. She felt guilty for blaming him.
Nightwing was pretty sure he could train her for a decade and still not understand how that girl's mind worked.
What nobody in the Cave actually knew was that Artemis' 'death' was entirely his fault. After all, Kaldur, Artemis and Nightwing had staged the whole thing since the beginning.
And, Nightwing already dreaded it, the moment the news got out, the moment the rest of the Team found out that Artemis' death hadn't been real, that he'd been operating behind their backs and let them believe one of their friends had been killed..
Some of them may never forgive him. Some of them might never get over the betrayal. The lies.
Being a leader means having to make hard choices for the greater good, Nightwing reminded himself.
He knew that. But it didn't make him feel any less guilty about lying to all the people he trusted and worked with. All of his friends.
Nightwing landed on his own window sill and pushed the window open, nimbly jumping into his room.
Quickly shutting the window behind him and walking into the bathroom, he stepped into the shower before stripping, avoiding too much water on his floor.
He was the team leader. Which meant he had to be prepared to make the decisions the other didn't have the courage to.
Batman had taught him long ago that a good leader wasn't necessarily a popular leader. A good superhero wasn't necessarily a popular superhero. No, it was someone who had the guts to do what was necessary without worrying about his own image. Bruce had long ago stopped caring what people thought of Batman. All he cared about was getting the job done.
Dick remembered telling Black Canary a long time ago that he didn't have that drive to sacrifice everything that Batman had.
And yet – the thought chilled him – wasn't that exactly what he was currently doing?
So not a lot happened in this chapter, but I felt like Morgan experiencing - seeing - that death needed its own space to be properly adressed. And then a bit of Nightwing POV at the end to elt you all know how he's feeling about all of this.
But I promise that the next chapter will be explosive! (Was that a pun? Yes. Yes, that was a pun.)
So after seeing the nutcracker ballet, I can confirm that I'm much more of a musical gal. I think it's because I'm not interested in/know anything about dance and ballet at all, but due to being a singer myself, I can recognize and enjoy the different technique and stuff in musicals, and then try them out at home myself, ect.
Fun Fact: I'm working on a sequel to this story. Not writing it yet, just.. developing the idea in my mind. I usually dont' write sequels, but this one was too good to pass up. I have so many ideas! Since the sequel will expand the universe quiet a bit, I'll listen to suggestions if any of you have some characters from the Batman Universe that you'd like to see in it! (Damian is already going to be included, so no need to ask for him)