Concealed

Revealed

On the worst days, he wonders how things could've been different. 

He tries not to wander from the present, not to think about it, he should be tangling himself in her hair and gazing into those doe eyes because fuck, that is life—but he does.

He observes his past self abandoning his pursuit of Joker, watches as the Wayne family takes a different route home from the theater.

He can't help but see little slices of different lives he could've had. 

Now he sees the same distant look in his half brother, eyes glazed over with hope and pain, children and grandchildren and a legacy one pull of the trigger could take away. 

And he lets go.

"Bye..."

"...Dickie."

-

Chapter Six

The husky smell of stale cigarettes and baritone whiskey made Robin certain of where he was before he opened his eyes. 

He thought it was a dream at first, one of those fleeting, fitful night terrors that made him clutch and kick off his sweaty, crumpled sheets. He'd stayed up for 3 days straight, only interrupting his hunt for Jason with 10-minute catnaps at high noon, making sure he took them in the living room surrounded by Cy and Beastboy's bickering to make sure he didn't sleep too long.

And to make sure he wasn't vulnerable.

 But tonight he had been tired...so tired. He'd sat down at his desk, opened the latest record of murdered drug dealers, and a map connecting Jason's locations with a digital red ribbon.

And then there was nothing. 

In the corner of his eye, a scarred boy watched Robin twitch against his restraints in a space between the world and the dream state. He blew a puff of smoke and let the ash disintegrate into his nostrils. 

The ringlet of soot traveled down Robin's windpipe, his survival instincts snapping his eyes and mouth open so he could hack the vaporized smog up his tongue. 

He looked up. 

The room was like a square cutout of a black hole, void of any light besides a singular sloped window where the stars could breathe. A titanium motorcycle was parked two stories beneath the pane standing on its kickstand. He stretched to gain more awareness of his surroundings, but his blood vessels rattled against his bindings. A mix of coarse straw rope and looped chains weaved around him. 

That's when he noticed a dinky table in his direct line of eyesight. On the left, an ivory helmet that corresponded with the moped outside. 

On the right, a gun.

It was all so undeniably, utterly Jason.

"I don't know if you remember this place." 

X took a long drag of the cigarette, losing himself in the hazy gray where he didn't have to breathe.

In and out, in and out.

He didn't. Robin knew they were in Gotham, he recognized the putrid stench of a city draped in an everlasting dark, residents huddled in fear with their doors locked and blinds closed. He knew every crook and alley, every secret lab, prison, and dungeon. 

Except one.

"It's where he found me. A little street kid covered in soot, prying the wheels off the goddamn Batmobile."