Concealed

Epilogue

"Call me...Nightwing."

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Chapter 7

I wanted to give her everything. 

My breath.

Life. 

Love.

There is no difference. 

Breath gives you life and life gives you breath, life gives you love and love gives you life. 

I got to breathe, but I couldn't live. I got to live, but I couldn't love. 

Pain gives you death and death gives you pain...

Death gives you hate. 

Hate is too many nights of walking in circles around my past and reaching the same place no matter the angle. Thinking; why am I like this. Why am I like this. Why am I like this. 

Shouting, berating at the voices in my head.

And still nothing changes. 

I once caught them kissing on the tower's roof.

I couldn't stand how they locked everything in the world out except each other's eyes, how their kiss was a puzzle piece, and fuck, they just fit. 

No room for me. As usual.

And why would there be? I was stitched into the world like a lopsided piece of a quilt. To bring back its illusion of balance, the delusional certainty of black and white, it stitched me out. Turns out even death didn't want me.

 But she did. For the tiniest of highs, something reckless and passionate and deliciously in-between.

And together we burned. 

But a flame can't survive if one of the embers isn't pure.  

I tried to be better for her. I really tried. Dropped the gun. Took the fall.

You can chip away at progress with yourself. You can love a person with your entire being, promise no more lies and no more pain if only to keep your spark alive.

And still your secrets stay with you. Secrets that you don't even realize are secrets, baggage that you'd be nothing without if you just decided to let it go.

You keep them safe just in case you end up in that same dark place where you lose everything. 

But because you keep those secrets, you just end up losing everything all over again. A vicious cycle, really. 

Only your 'everything' can change. 

A hobby, a job, a dream. In my case, a person. One reason to drag you out of bed when it hurts to breathe. 

What do you do when you lose that?

What do you do if you have nothing left to hold on to?

You can go back. I did. 

Back to my little sanctuary of dysfunction, where my pain and trauma were safe safe safe. 

Or you can go forward. 

Healing isn't a linear thing. It's a jagged, twisted line, with circles and stops and sudden pivots. Sometimes another road appears, an 'easier' route that ends up being false. A trick of the light. 

But it bargains with you anyway. Tells you you can change without changing. 

And I listened. 

After her, I...

There was no 'after' after her. 

I tried to fall back into my old routine. To make peace with my eternal limbo between worlds, choking on air that isn't even mine to breathe.

Love, however, isn't something that can be concealed. 

I loved her. 

She wouldn't believe me. Hell, sometime neither would I. 

Love is supposed to be something that you leave yourself behind for. Something that could unravel the infinite spirals of my heartbeat. 

But some pain is too big for love.

And that's okay. 

You can suffocate yourself with all the things that could've been, puke out the strangled feeling in your chest because you know how many different ways she could've stayed. 

You can make excuses about why she didn't. 

My fault, her fault, right love, wrong time.

But at some point, you have to stand up and walk away from your memories. From her. 

The light at the end of the tunnel doesn't exist. There's a million new different tunnels all leading to new different lives just so you can work your way up the ladder again, facing the angelic glow that promises you a fabled better.  

I think the real light isn't healed or scarred, pain or joy, death or life. 

It's a dream. 

So for now, I watch from the shadows of her sunset. Watch Starfire laugh and cry and live, love the person who taught me how to do those things in the first place from afar. 

I look at my dream.

And smile. 

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note: woah, it's the end of an era. I think i started masks in what, june? Thank you all for reading and watching Jason fuck up the best thing that ever happened to him :) ily