where once was rage

[bossymarmalade]

Selina waits in the transport room, going through a large bag. The cat shards are in a box, wrapped and stuffed so they will make no noise. Also in the bag are small canisters of antidote— one for each League member going— that she had obtained when she met up with the lab techs earlier. Isis weaves around her ankles and hops up onto a console beside her. “It’s all right, girl,” Selina says, scratching her head. “I’ll be back safe with everyone else.”

Cass heads into the transport room, pulling on her gauntlets as she walks. She looks up to Selina, nodding, “You set?”

Selina smiles when she sees her and nods, one hand automatically going to her whip tied to her belt to make sure. “All ready. Here, the lab made them up.” She tosses one of the canisters to Cass. “Supposed to negate the effects of the cat’s stuff, but they said for it to work best, it pretty much needs to be spray for spray. If he takes two, we’ll need two to bring him down. Hopefully he hasn’t showered in it, otherwise we’re going to need an awful lot more.”
Cass turns the canister over in her hands, “Well. We’ll see how much he’s packing.” she looks to the cat, frowning when she remembers what little exposure could do, “He’s not going to be happy with that.”

Selina chuckles. “No, he’s not.” She pats the box, a little pleased at how well packed it is that she can’t hear movement inside. “I’m not much of a strategian, but I was thinking that this box might give the rest of you some time to prepare or get into position or whatever you need to. If he’s busy with me and checking out the cat, he might not be aware of you. That could help us, with any luck.”



Cass smiles, “a surprise would be fun.” she agrees. “He didn’t mention anything about Dick. Right? Just, he’s being exchanged.”

Selina “Nothing, which could be a good thing. He didn’t give any great threats, so that seems promising.” She leans back against the console, frowning slightly. “There was something weird when I talked to him. Something happened in the background— I couldn’t hear exactly what it was— but I think someone got… very hurt.” She glances at Cass. “I didn’t say anything about it because I didn’t want to worry anyone, but when Peterson came back, he was very for the exchange. But he didn’t make any mention of it, so I don’t know if it was Dick or not.”

Cass tilts her head against the console, sighing, “Ok.” she presses her lips together trying to lay out which would be better for them on the rescue. “If he’s hurt, we can get him out. If he did the hurting…maybe that’s ok. Yeah.” she nods, but her frown gives away how unsure of it all she actually felt. She bites at her cheek, “Peterson sucks.” she huffs.

Selina barks a short laugh. “I’ll drink to that. Nothing worse than an over-confident ass who gets the advantage once and assumes it’s his sheer greatness.” She looks back at the box. “The kid had a good idea. I’d like to feed these to him.”

Cass “He is arrogant. Ugh.” she doesn’t even want to talk about him he’s become so infuriating through her (thankfully) little exposure to him. She looks from the box to Selina, brow raising, “Damian said that?” she laughs, “Maybe it’ll poison him.”
Selina grins. “We can always hope.”

Damian Wayne marches in to the control room, fully garbed in his Robin gear, scimitar sheathed against his back. “We’re ready, then?”

Mari walks into the transport room right behind Damian, dressed in a matte black utility suit with the usual pockets and belts. “I’m ready,” she says quietly, tying her hair up into a ponytail.

Selina raises an eyebrow at his sword. “Well, you certainly are.” She pulls out canisters for both of them. “This should null the effects of the cat scent.”

Robin sniffs at the contents, one skeptical brow raised. “Only after I see you consume some yourself.”

Catwoman arches her eyebrows even higher. “It’s not edible, child. You spray it. One spray of this for every possible spray of the other should restore a full balance.” She jostles the bag. “There’s plenty more in here if we need them.”

Robin murmurs “Oh” then spritzes Catwoman, watching expectantly for her to keel over or sprout tentacles or somesuch.

Black Bat groans, pressing her mask against her cheekbones and brow, “Stop wasting it.”
Nightstar tucks the antidote into a hidden pocket on her chest. “I don’t know how much the smell effects me,” she admits with a shrug. “But I’ve stayed pretty mad this whole time, so I wouldn’t be able to tell anyway.” She pats Robin on the shoulder quietly, squeezing the thin reinforced shoulder pads. “So what’s the plan? He’ll be expecting you, and probably Black Bat, too. You think he’ll expect a meta and a Robin?”

Catwoman snorts, rearing back like a cat that’s been sprayed with water. “Unnecessary!” she says, one hand clamped tight over her face. She moves away from the lingering cloud— and Robin— and hands the bag over to Cass. “I don’t think so, but I think he is expecting company. He seemed almost pleased with the idea that more people would be coming, so be careful.” She picks up the box. “This has the remaining pieces of the statue. My plan is, I’ll give it to him, keep him busy while you keep watch for any surprise guards. If he doesn’t see so many of us, he might bring Dick out when I meet with him.”

Robin seems satisfied enough when Selina Kyle suffers no evident ill effects from the spray, and he stores his small container in a pouch near his left hip. “Surely he has little means of defending himself against Mar’i Grayson’s abilities. Mine either,” he adds quickly, defensively. “But he can’t counteract a meta.”

Black Bat takes the bag, storing it by her side. She nods in agreement, “Mar’i will be a good surprise. You’re hard to stop.”

Kid Flash appears next to Cass, peering into the bag. “Aerosol warfare,” she notes, with a satisfied tone. “I like airbenders.”
Black Bat blinks just once as Bai appears out of nowhere. She holds out the bag to Kid Flash, “You want to be on ammo delivery? Speedster express.”

Robin starts when Bai Allen seems to apparate out of nowhere, but he recovers himself, straightening his cape over his shoulders. “Kid Flash will be useful as well. This Peterson fellow is sorely outnumbered. Let’s go.”

Kid Flash takes the bag with a shrug. “Sounds cool, okay,” she nods, following Robin. “You’re lucky I showed up.”

Kid Flash is firmly in the slightly detached, fairly rude speedster mode.

Robin: You’re lucky we permit you to come along— an invitation I will rescind the moment you get in the way, so see that you don’t.

Black Bat follows behind Damian, her footsteps perfectly silent, “Be quiet.” she swats lightly at Damian, before falling quiet herself.

Kid Flash puts her hand firmly on Damian’s head as she passes him and screws it back and forth in his hair like she’s opening a jar. “Nobody tells speedsters where to go or not go, but heysure why not.”

Catwoman makes a soft, strangled noise in the back of her throat as she punches in the coordinates. “All right. This should put us a little away from the meeting place, so it’ll look like I’m coming alone.” She tucks the box under her arm and looks at them. “Ready?”

Robin groans his frustration and swipes back at Cassandra and Bai as he hops onto the zeta pad.
A moment later, they are in the darkness of Thrawn Park, dropped in an area full of trees. Ahead along a path is a small clearing surrounding a fountain, with a few benches scattered around for picnicking. This section is often home to many of Blüdhaven’s homeless, but tonight it is eerily deserted. “That’s where we’re supposed to meet,” Selina whispers. “I’ll try to get him to bring out Dick before we trade, but go ahead and get ready in case things go wrong.”

Robin hooks his grapple around the sturdy branch of an oak and pulls himself up to wait, hidden overhead, in the foliage of the tree.

Peterson sits on a bench, arms spread across the back, ankle resting on his knee, waiting.
Catwoman walks ahead along the path as if that’s where she’d been coming from the whole time. One hand settles on the handle of her whip as she takes in the clearing. When she spots Peterson, she heads straight toward him, holding up the box. “My half of the bargain. Where’s yours?”
Peterson smirks. “I’ve gotta make sure it’s right this time.”
Catwoman glares. “So do I. Where is he?”

Black Bat heads high as well, settling in a tree nearby Damian’s. She looks down anxiously, waiting for any sign of Dick to surface.

Peterson holds out one hand for the box, raising the other like a signal. When she hands it to him, he snaps his fingers. From the darkness come two large henchmen dragging Dick. His head is bowed as he hangs limply between the two men, but he’s breathing. “Let’s see how it looks,” Peterson says, pulling out a knife to open the box.

Nightstar watches everything from her own hiding position, already pulling into a crouch.
Catwoman glances up at the trees at the sight of Dick, her hand pulling her whip off her belt. “Not gonna just hand him over, huh?”

Kid Flash is nowhere to be seen.

Robin rises to his feet on the massive limb and springs the moment Grayson is in reach, cape fanning out to either side of him as he launches himself directly at Grayson, using his weight to knock him to the ground as the small daggers in either hand slices into the wrists of his captors.

Peterson snorts. “That’d be easy.” He pulls back the packaging, his smirk fading as he picks up the shards of cat. “What did you….?” He picks up the chipped head and sniffs it, eyes widening when he realizes there’s no smell. It all dissipated. ”What did you do?”

Dick falls to the ground under Robin, his eyes snapping open. He reaches up, an eskrima stick unfolding to catch Robin in the stomach. In the light, they can see a large cloth tied around the lower half of Dick’s face like a mask, blocking everything but his fiercely bright eyes.
Dick only sees red.

Peterson throws the box at Catwoman and leaps to his feet, giving a sharp whistle. Five more henchmen, each as big as the others, come out from the surrounding trees. Peterson himself backs away from Dick.

Robin is focused on Grayson’s captors, not expecting Grayson himself to attack him— and Robin drops to one knee when the eskrima stick connects, knocking the breath from him. “Nightwing,” he hisses in protest. “It’s me! What are you doing?” He hurries to right himself, warding off a swing from one of the incoming men.

Black Bat grip tightens against the bark of the tree as Dick is in sight, wanting to time his rescue perfectly. In typical Damian fashion, Robin dives in without warning and so she drops in after him, aiming for the henchmen over Dick. She targets the nearest henchmen’s right leg to break his balance. Her focus on Dick momentarily blinding her to the emerging reinforcements. Of course it wouldn’t be easy.

Dick hears nothing but the rushing blood in his ears. He follows the movement, striking out at Damian, at Cass, at the henchmen falling toward him, all with an aggressive viciousness.

Kid Flash is still completely absent from the field of combat. Also, she has the antidote spray.

Nightstar moves from the other side of the meeting, opposite Robin and Catwoman, and runs towards the remaining henchmen. “You’re gonna need—” she begins, catching the nearest one’s fist and shoving his entire arm back until the shoulder makes a thick crack, then throwing her weight up and over his shoulders, to lock her legs around his neck as she continues pulling his arm around his body grotesquely. “—bigger goons.”

Catwoman lashes her whip out at a goon coming up behind her. It wraps around his arm, and she throws him into Peterson, sending them both over a bench.

Robin shifts his focus to subduing Grayson himself after he’s cracked in the shoulder with another blow of the eskrima stick. Having been trained by Grayson when they acted as Batman and Robin, he’s somewhat able to anticipate his attacks— though it’s clear by the brutality of his strikes that he’s not acting of his own accord. “Where is Kid Flash,” he roars, jabbing his elbow into Grayson’s windpipe. “Tell her to bring the antidote!” He turns back to Grayson. “Nightwing, you idiot, we’re here to bring you home.”

Black Bat swerves from Dick’s shot to her, “Antidote.” she barks at Damian as if this is his fault. “Kid Flash.” she gasps realizing it’s her’s. Cass ducks from a fresh swing from another henchmen, rising up to strike back at his exposed ribs with a strong crack. As the second henchmen falls she pulls up her comm, calling Bai, “We need you.”

Dick gasps and falls, dropping one eskrima stick. He reaches out to Damian as if asking for a helping hand, palm up and empty, but the second he regains his breath, he strikes with the other hand. He grabs Damian and tosses him into an oncoming henchmen, snorting as he rises to his feet.
Kid Flash comes racing through in a zigzag of cold silver-blue light. She pulls up alongside Damian and sprays him in three quick blasts, tossing him a fresh canister before running off to find Cass.
Peterson pushes the henchman on top of him back into the fight, while he edges toward Dick. He had been dosing Dick with nearly all of their supply, trying to turn Dick against his friends. In Dick’s blind rage, however, he was taking down too many of Peterson’s own men, and that was not acceptable.

Catwoman admires— and only slightly winces at— Mar’i’s attack, almost missing a henchmen running up behind her. He smelled very strongly of cologne, and thank goodness for it, as it gave her just enough warning to dodge him. “Antidote,” she called out. “Start spraying the henchmen with it!”

Robin is indignant over being flung about, but he twists to draw his knee up and smash the thug in the face as he careens into him. They roll across the cement in a tangle, Damian struggling to free himself from the man’s hefty bulk. He rights himself just in time to catch the canister thrown by Bai, and he runs back toward Grayson, spraying him with as much of the supply as the small bottle will produce.

Nightstar gets pulled off the first henchmen by a second, who wraps his arms up underneath her armpits and begins dragging her down. “Bad plan,” she says, turning her head slightly to look at the man holding her, before she throws her head back and shatters his nose without even grimacing. As he yells, she slams down onto the ground, then shoves back a foot to slam into the man’s knee, shoving it backwards. She hunches down, taking handfuls of his shoulder’s kevlar and throws him into the first goon, before pulling out her own canister and dousing them in it.
Dick recoils at the spray, striking out blindly toward Damian as he backs away. It stings just like the other, only it doesn’t feel as red, but the combination of smells is making his head hurt even worse. His kerchief mask is soaked with it, overpowering the new spray, but it’s getting through.

Robin grabs Grayson’s extended arm with both of his hands and drops, keeping his grip on Nightwing as he kicks his feet out from beneath him. Damian fights to clamber atop him, ripping at the fabric on his lower face.

Black Bat catches the word henchmen, from Catwoman, pulling out her own canister to spray down the nearest henchmen to her now. She notices Peterson edging closer to Dick and Damian, and takes off towards him. He’d already done enough, now he’d have to deal with her.

Peterson moves up behind Dick as he backs away from the kid, blade in hand. These stupid heroes were ruining his revenge, but it didn’t matter. The cat was useless, he’d lost everything he’d been working for, and he still hadn’t been able to kill Dick Grayson. But now he can. Now is as good enough a time as any. He lunges, but Dick is dropping down as his knife cuts through air, swiping down to land in Robin’s shoulder.

Kid Flash comes up next to Peterson, but wrinkles her nose and bodily recoils at the smell of him. “He REEKS!” she shouts in horror, backing away.

Nightstar slams a third henchmen into the white granite of the fountain, glancing over her shoulder. “Then let’s clean the shithead up!” she replies loudly, moving onto the edge of the fountain to kick at the decorative cherubs until the granite crumbles away and the water pipe is revealing. Nightstar cranes it with one hand—the other still holding the unconscious goon’s collar—towards Peterson and anyone in his surrounding area.

Dick stares at Damian, watching the blood drip from his shoulder. His mask is down off his nose, and he’s breathing fresh air again, but the only thing he can focus on is blood. Blood caused by a knife caused by a…. He pushes Damian aside and twists around, his eyes wild. The red is creeping back up, but now there’s a face within it, a face that’s tortured and taunted him for too long. Peterson’s features fade into shadow as Dick yells, slamming an eskrima stick against Peterson’s throat. Peterson gurgles and falls, Dick following him, bringing his eskrimas down on him again and again. The gushing water doesn’t even faze him.

Robin yells, loud and guttural, as the blade finds its mark just beneath his shoulderblade. It’s painful, but he’s accustomed to fighting through injury— and he relinquishes his hold on Grayson and turns, withdrawing his scimitar in one fluid sweep. “Mine’s bigger than yours,” he growls at Peterson, flashing the sword skyward to strike just as the spray of water pelts them both. It’s strong enough to fling the boy aside, the hilt still clutched in his hand.

Black Bat doesn’t even have time to tackle Peterson like she’d hoped to as Dick turns on Peterson, Damian has his sword, and they’re all hosed down. The water knocks Cass off her feet momentarily, before she’s scrambling back up for more, “Robin?” she calls for him, her main concern for the moment.

Robin waves his hand to keep her at bay. “Fine,” he calls back.

Kid Flash sneezes rapidly, the canisters shaking out of the bag as she does; there’s a red heat crawling up into her sinuses and spreading out into her brain, soaking into her blood vessels. She scrubs at her face with both hands, then, with a shriek so hoarse and heated that it creates a hiss in the air around Bai’s mouth and nose, the speedster launches herself into Nightstar’s body. The water from the fountain pipe dissolves instantly into steam as she moves.

Catwoman and the goon at her feet watch the quickly-soaking scene before them with a level of awe. Something feels wrong, however, and the longer it goes, the more wrong it feels. She kicks the goon in the head and heads toward the others. “Someone get him off him!”

Dick just keeps beating Peterson.

Robin watches Grayson pummel Peterson and is satisfied with these proceedings, so he ignores Catwoman.

Catwoman is done with these Wayne boys.

Catwoman “He’s not moving,” she shouts. When that doesn’t seem to stop Dick, she breaks into a run, shoving her full weight into Dick’s side to knock him away. He strikes her shoulder, making it go frighteningly numb. She tears off his mask, not too concerned about the way her claws slash his cheek. “He’s not moving, Grayson. Calm down.” She suddenly wishes she hadn’t used up all of her canister on the henchman back there.

Cass joins Selina, “Is he still-?” she starts, before noticing the red tint in Dick’s eyes, “Kid Flash has them.” she turns to Bai and Mar’i, everything a blur for her.

Robin , drenched and his carefully-styled hair sodden flat against his forehead and still favoring one shoulder, eventually joins Catwoman in her effort to contain Grayson. “Stop,” he barks in as close an approximation of Father’s tone as he can manage. He finds the wrist restraints in his belt and snaps them on Grayson’s wrists while Kyle is struggling with him. “He’s down. You’ve beaten him enough, for now.”

Dick pants and growls, baring his teeth. The fresh air is helping, making his vision a bit clearer, but he’s not calm by any means. He pulls at the restraints, flailing against their hold on him. They’re going from shadows to features, now, but they don’t quite register. Just faces around him, unknown and ominous.

Catwoman looks up at Robin, sitting back on Dick’s legs to keep him from moving too much. “Do you still have any antidote left?” She’s half tempted to strike Dick to calm him down as if he’s just hysterical, but the look in his eyes makes her reconsider. She doesn’t need to spike another rage attack. She glances around, catching a glimpse of some of the fallen scattered canisters. “Get me one of those! I’ll hold him still.”

Nightstar grunts when Kid Flash slams into her, sending them both through the remaining cherubs, then across the park in less than the blink of an eye. “Buh—” she begins, but the vacuum created by Bai’s movement sucks out the rest of the air, making speech impossible. A blink later and they’re at Bludhaven city limits. She slams her hands down onto the back of the speedster’s neck, trying to knock her unconscious.

Robin answers, “No,” as he keeps an eye on Nightstar and Kid Flash in the near distance, having expended his entire supply on Grayson already. He gathers the bottles that are scattered nearby, some broken with only drops of the serum clinging to their innards. He carries them over to Catwoman, kneeling to scoop some of the liquid remnants from an opened canister and rub them directly under Grayson’s nostrils. “Don’t bite me, or I’ll bite you right back,” he warns for good measure.

Robin is no longer keeping an eye on them because they’re suddenly out of sight, fucking metas

Kid Flash is feeling that prickling, tickling rage-stench permeate her at an incredible rate, the rushing hypercharged molecules of the Speed Force in her body sending it through her system faster than her system can handle it. She turns almost fluid in Mar’i’s grasp and takes hold of the woman’s hair, scrubbing it together with such speed and force that it even her Tamaranean hair starts to smoke. “We shouldn’tbehere,” Bai bites out, the words in pieces. “We shouldn’t be IN THIS TIME!!” She throws her arms around Mar’i’s torso, starting to vibrate so hard that the area where they’re touching builds in heat and that fluid, melting sensation.

Dick growls and snaps at him, but Catwoman digs her claws into his cheek, so he holds still. The more he breathes in the antidote, the slower his movements become. The red fades to the far corners of his vision, and an unbearable ache washes over him. He shuts his eyes and groans when even that seems to be painful, so he opens them again. “Damian…” His eyes unfocus and he slips into unconsciousness, but this time it feels welcome.

Nightstar struggles as Bai tears at her hair, sending chunks of the long curls into smoke and ash. “St—” she chokes out, trying to push the other hero away as she feels something in her intestines, something in the front near where Bai has grabbed her, start to feel more like liquid than flesh. It is not a pleasant sensation. She hits Bai harder, trying to heat herself up counteract whatever it is that happening, but that only makes everything hurt worse and Mar’i makes some semblance of a terrified screech as she goes aflame with her own energy.

Kid Flash is running them so hard now, in circles that grow tighter and tighter around a pillar of earth that the centrifugal forces have cored up out of the ground, that eventually the two of them lift off into the air. Bai’s head is so full of molten buzzing that she doesn’t realize what’s happening until her breath starts to come short; giving a whining sound — like panicked mosquitoes, if they were as big as hummingbirds — she starts to push harder against Mar’i, patches of their skin melding together as their hyperspeed molecules ooze and slide, interspersed.

Nightstar manages something like a cough, the propulsion of her liquefying skin and organs sending a thick glob of blood up her throat and through her gritted teeth. It’s not just their skin that is melting together—thick leather, kevlar, hyperspeed-resistant fabric, even the metal buckle of Mar’i’s belt all fuse together. Her grip on Bai’s neck slips, muscles convulsing in the wave of pain from her abdomen, and Mar’i begins to go limp, her head lolling in whatever direction Bai’s hands end up pulling her smoking hair

Kid Flash The combination of thinning air as they are propelled higher by Bai’s tight circles, plus the drug running its course through the speedster’s metabolism, causes her to slow her super-fast vibration. Still whining like a top, Bai works to separate the places where she and Mar’i are fusing together. As they start losing height and falling back towards the ground, they’re still grotesquely melted together with the fabrics, and a shallow swathe of skin, with pockmarks of deeper connection — but it’ll cease to matter soon, as their fall picks up speed.

Nightstar flickers her eyelids at the sudden feeling of down and chokes again, blinking like a buoy out at sea as she tries to activate her own energy—most of it sucked away now—to slow their descent. It’s enough to make the fall towards the roof of an apartment non-lethal, but not enough to stop it from breaking bones as they crash down, side-by-side until the force of their bodies going in separate directions rips them apart from one another and sends them rolling away in opposite directions.

Kid Flash shrieks, curling into a ball as she rolls awkwardly, knobbly down the side of the building. There’s strings of tissue and pinky-finger sized holes peppering her abdomen, the longer tendrils where she and Mar’i had been connected on a flesh level now creating matching pieces in the two women, as if they were a jigsaw puzzle. By the time Bai hits a thick plastic awning and falls off it into a small flowerbed, she’s passed out entirely, lying in the dirt and crushed daffodils more still than most people would ever have seen the speedster capable of.

Nightstar slams into the side of the bricked utilities building, twin spirals of blood trailing in both their wakes. Mar’i manages to open her eyes a sliver, and her head is craned down towards her stomach, towards where kevlar is melded into flesh is melded into orga—she makes a keening noise at the sight of her own insides, gritting her teeth too hard when shock starts to set in. There’s an emergency beacon mounted in her gloves, and Mar’i weakly scrapes it against the ground, activating it, before she too passes out.

Catwoman is just arriving on the Watchtower with the unconscious Dick Grayson when her borrowed comm pings from an emergency signal. While two of the Medbay staff take Dick away— only mildly threatened by Robin— she shows her comm to one of the techs. A few moments later, she and a small team go down to the source of the emergency. The medical team hurries to get the women to the nearest zeta pad and take them back up to the Medbay, while Selina heads back to find Peterson’s body.

--- --- ---

The looks Dick got when he returned to the BPD were not entirely unexpected, but they did seem more hostile than he had anticipated. Maybe it was because of the one too many days off from injuries from his other job. Maybe it was the fact that he hadn’t been to work in two weeks. Maybe it was because they’d just lost one officer only to have another one disappear because of it. Good or bad, the death of a fellow officer hung heavy over any precinct.

Matt was at his desk, just where Dick hoped he’d be. Even he gave Dick an odd look as he walked up. ”Hey. You hanging in there?”

Dick shrugged. ”Been worse. You?”

"Been better." Matt shifted in his seat, leaning on the desk and shuffling papers, almost as if he was finding it hard to look at Dick. "Captain wants to see you. Supposed to tell you when I saw you."

Dick pressed his lips together. ”Matt, I’m really sorry I haven’t been aro—”

"Don’t," he said, sharply, looking up at Dick. "I don’t need to hear it. I don’t wanna know. I wish I didn’t."

Dick frowned, about to ask what he meant, when the captain called out, “Grayson! Now.” He nodded, glancing once more at Matt before he went to the Captain. Matt didn’t look at him.

Captain Rohrbach was seated behind her desk by the time Dick reached her office. Once the door was shut, she spoke. ”I think it’s time you quit, Dick. For good.”

"And hello, Captain," he whispered, settling gingerly into a chair.

"Not Captain. If I was doing this as your captain, I’d be yelling at you, and I’d have every right to. I’m doing this as your friend." She licked her lips and leaned forward, resting her arms on her desk. "There’s just too much overlap now, Dick. You’re not handling it well, and you haven’t been for some time. You know that."

"I’ve never wanted you to cover for me, Amy."

"When you did something illegal," she said. "I know. This is different. This is trying to explain why you seem to get preferential treatment. This is you not showing up for work and having to guess if you’re just late or if you’re dying in some alley somewhere. This is Matt coming to my house at midnight after you’ve been missing trying to figure out how to tell me what he knows while figuring out if I know. It’s just not working anymore."

Dick hung his head, nodding as she spoke. Amy continued, “‘Haven’s not what it used to be, and that’s a lot to do with you. You’ve done a lot of good for the BPD, Dick, and you did a lot of things we couldn’t do. But it’s not like that anymore. Cops like Peterson…” She paused, a slight hitch in her thoughts. ”He used to be the standard, but not now. Now he’s the odd man out. That’s good.”

She sat back in her chair. ”I’m not saying you have to leave Blüdhaven; the city still needs you. Just maybe the PD can handle its own, now.”

She watched him closely in the hanging silence. Finally, he met her gaze and nodded. ”I know. I’ve been thinking that, too. I think maybe it is time for me to… move on.” He grinned. ”I’m not really meant to be a cop, am I?”

"In another world, Grayson," she said, a small smile on her lips. "I’ll draw up your papers if you like."

"Thanks, Amy. And I’ll leave you my gun and badge." Dick stood, setting the items down on the desk, before turning to leave. He stopped at the door, glancing back at her. "Matt. You said he came by to see you? What happened?"

"You need to talk to him. After hours. But, when you were gone, he went to your place to see you. I think he found your… other gear." She looked out the window of her office into the main room, where Matt seemed to be pointedly focusing on everything other than where they were. "You’ve got to handle that one on your own."

Dick bit his lip. ”I will. Soon.” He gripped the doorknob, hesitating another moment longer. ”About Peterson—”

"Nope," she interrupted. "Not your concern. Marked down as gang-related death, and that’s how it’s staying."

Dick gave her a tight smile. ”Take care, Amy.”

"You, too, Dick."

With a deep breath, he finally opened the door, ready to take in his last day as Officer Grayson.