Work Text:
She wasn't the one to tell Dick, in the end. Damian did, in that blunt, matter of fact way he did most things. She wasn't sure he saw how Dick's eyes went blank for just a moment before they settled back into that practiced smoothness. It was remarkably similar, she thought, to when he made her look in mirror and told her she had a hunk of cancer for an eye. But missing the anger, this time. There was nothing to be mad at. The anger died with the man.
She's still furious, of course she is, she doesn't know how else to grieve. She's pulled, sobbing, off Emiko, and yes it's for all the normal reasons but it's also because she thought she could trust the Arrows, out of everyone. If a hero ever broke and killed him, she was ready for it to be a Bat, or hell, even a Lantern or someone else, but the family that had taught her superheroing didn't have to be a death sentence, that had let her take care of a child for years... She doesn't know how to tell Emiko fucking Queen that this isn't a betrayal because he's dead, it's a betrayal because it wasn't supposed to be a Queen that killed him.
It wasn't like she had official claim to it, or anything. She's pretty sure she lost that when she backed off during the zombie invasion. Gave rights back to Joey, who was so terrified of himself that he tied himself to the only person brave or cowardly enough to kill him if things went south. And isn't it telling, that even now, after all this, she still thinks in terms of contracts and rights? She wonders if he'd be proud or horrified. She wonders if he'd have cared at all.
She organizes the funeral. Maybe Joey should have, maybe that would have been better, but she needs something to do, something to distract from the blips in her vision and the way she keeps seeing Lian. She looks it up, and the internet tells her psychosis is worsened by stress. Try meditation, try speaking to someone. She laughs, a hollow thing from deep in her chest, and greets the dead toddler in her vision with a sigh and some apple juice. When it's untouched an hour later, she knows for certain it's a hallucination. Lian would never leave apple juice alone that long.
She commissions the gravestone, and she's there when they put it up. He's not in the ground yet, but there's something comforting about talking to a gravestone. She doesn't know where her mother is buried, but this, at least, she can have certainty with. It's raining, but she kneels in the mud without a second thought. You were never the thing that went bump in the night, she tells the stone, letting herself pretend that the salty wetness on her cheeks is just a product of the rain. The thing I felt for you was never fear. Love, and hate, yeah, - and, she thinks, the two are only different sides of the same coin - I modelled my life around you. What I wanted to be, and then what I never wanted to be, and then somewhere in the middle. But all I am now is tired, and you're dead, and now I don't know what to do, or who to be.
She pauses, laughs. Wasn't this supposed to be the thing that set me free? She stands, caked in mud and emotions that she can't name. She goes home, leaves apple juice on the table for a spirit that doesn't even exist, and tries not to acknowledge how much whiskey she's drinking.
On the day of the funeral, she considers not going. Rolling over, going back to sleep. Her dead watch her, and finally, she decides she can't stand Lian's sad little five year old eyes. Apple juice on the table. It's untouched when she grabs her jacket and leaves.
He wakes up. She's not even sure she's surprised.
She goes home, and the apple juice is drunk. Half her weapons are gone, and there's a shitty doodle of a cat grinning down from where she hides the chocolate from herself.
She flips it over. Tell no one, I'm not ready. But I thought you needed to know more than I needed to hide. There's a cheque, for what she knows immediately is the exact price of the resale value of what was stolen. There's a post-it note on that. Minus the apple juice and chocolate. There's another doodle, a little paw print. And a therapist's number.
She sits down at the table and laughs and cries until she's not sure what's what. Her ghosts are coming back. She's never been ready.
She thinks about Emiko, about Jade, about Dick, about Cass, about Joey and Tara and Respawn. She takes her sword - left untouched, thank fuck. Burns the therapist's number, buys more apple juice, and walks out to find her father. She still isn't sure if she'll kill him. Maybe her ghosts will tell her.