"So this is it?" the bloody and dirty woman in front of me asked, a disapproving look on her face while she spoke angrily, "This is what's left of our superheroes? A weak Nightwing with a weak Robin who only try to save their own asses?!"

"That's not true-"

"HELL it is! I've seen you guys...!" A vicious whisper was what came out of her mouth while she was still aiming her gun at me, "I asked you for help! I- I just needed a little help! All you had to sacrifice to save us was one bullet! Just ONE fucking bullet, but instead you let him die! And with him, all that was left of me died too...!"

Her accusations turned into hysterical sobs while her grip around her pistol seemed to get more nervous, so she held it with two hands. Her eyes were red and swollen from her crying, and suddenly her tears turned into blood. I widened my eyes and peeked over to Damian, but as I saw him, I couldn't believe my eyes. He glared at me from underneath his mask, when blood started flowing down his cheek too. He touched the wet substance and looked up at me, suddenly falling to his knees and making me catch his little body, while the cries of the woman seemed to get louder and louder.

"Robin?! Robin! Are you okay?! What did you do to him?!"

The woman's gaze became piercing and her devastated facial expression turned into laughing.

"What I did- I let him die. Just like you let him die. How does that feel, huh? How does it feel to lose the only person around you?" She giggled, while more blood tears streamed down her face until it was completely bloody.

"Do you feel it?" she whispered, her voice only a croak, „Do you feel the burning in your chest? Do you feel your world starting to crack, and break down? Do you feel it, you son of a bitch?! Do you feel how you're dying from the inside...?"

I wasn't able to look at her as I stared at Robin's lifeless body in my hands, wide eyed.

"Yeah, feel it. Give in to the hurt and the hate, and let it drag your remains down to hell."

She removed the security from her gun and aimed again.

"You're not a hero. You're just like everyone else. Pathetic and weak... And now you're alone. Let the feeling eat you up. You'll never be able to recover from this. It's what you deserve."

She moved her finger onto the trigger, and she shot.

Her corpse fell down with a loud thud.

oOoOoOo

"Richard. Richard!"

"Robin... No...!"

"Richard! Wake up!"

I shot my eyes open and sat up with a sudden move. I tried to catch my breath and looked around while someone was shaking me by my shoulders.

"Hey! It... It is me, Damian."

My gaze met his, "Damian...?"

"Alive and healthy, except for the fact that you nearly scared me to death with your cries and screams."

Cries and screams? I slowly lifted my hand to touch my cheek and I felt the wet and warm substance on it. Tears.

Then I remembered.

"That nightmare again?" Damian asked, surprisingly without annoyance in his tone.

"We could've saved her, Damian. We could've saved her. She was right with what she said!"

I clenched my eyes shut.

"We could have done nothing, Richard. She and her boyfriend were already dead. There were too many bastards."

"We could've rescued them."

"Yes, and the fight would have attracted every bastard within a mile. We could not have saved them. Sometimes you have to make choices, Richard. And my choice was to get us safe to our hideout."

"We told her that we didn't have bullets."

"We didn't want her to have hope that we would have destroyed anyway. We made it easier to let go."

"I didn't see her die, Damian. She could be all alone now and we did nothing to spare her from the pain she had to go through."

"There is no chance she survived this. She was screaming and clutching at her bitten boyfriend; the bastards must have gotten to her."

"Is that any better...?"

Damian seemed thoughtful for a moment.

"Just see it this way: She and her beloved are together now. And nobody can hurt them anymore."

He knew what he had to say to make me calm down, but my concerns were still there.

"You should go to one of the camps," I said quietly, looking down at my hands.

"What?"

"You heard me," I replied louder and looked at my brother, "I never wanted to drag you into all this. It's too dangerous..."

"... Says the one who got his leg ripped open by a window."

"Damian, I mean it! I should do this alone, since it's all my fault and I'm the eldest son. You are supposed to be safe somewhere."

"You cannot be serious. You will die without me, you idiot! As far as I can remember it was always ME who saved YOU from everything!"

... He was right and I was ashamed.

"Please. I don't want you to get hurt. I only have you left in this world now."

"And so do I. If I leave, you will die, and then it is me who lost his brother. I will not leave. Never."

"Damian..."

"This is not a discussion. We keep searching for Drake, together. And if we do not find him, or if he is dead, we will move on together. Understood?"

"... I-"

"Great. Now get some sleep, I don't think that four hours are enough for your leg to recover."

Damian pushed me down on the sleeping bag and awkwardly pressed my head to his chest.

And again it was him giving comfort when I should be the one who did.

I fell asleep with Damian's soothing breathing calming me down.

xXx

"About earlier..." I started as Damian was walking ahead of me.

We had gotten up by 6.30 in the morning and were heading outside. We shoved the barricades aside to be able to leave, when Damian answered:

"Do not start."

"I just wanted to say thanks. I don't know what I would've done by now. If you weren't here, I mean."

We arrived outside and first of all hid behind the big columns of the building to take a look at the streets. It was pretty calm from what you could hear. Moans were normal by now, but the current situation didn't look too bad. It was pretty safe to go.

"Which is why I should not leave under any circumstances," Damian continued after moments of silence and surveillance.

"... We'll talk about that. Alright Dami, here we go again."

We darted out of the hideout and walked along the street. The worst thing about Gotham was that bushes were rare and you didn't really have something to hide behind, so we were pretty vulnerable out here. But of course we knew how to deal with that.

"Up to the roofs again, and then the costumes."

"Costumes," Damian quietly repeated with a scoff, but he obeyed.

Soon we had walked into a nearby alley and climbed a building by its fire escape. When we were on the roof, Damian and me settled behind the chimney to get ready.
We grabbed our backpacks in which we kept our suits and masks in. Well, not really suits. The only part of our suits that had remained was the mask.

Our suits were too damaged by our daily tours. It's not that we couldn't have replaced them with new ones that we still had in the Batcave; but after many incidents in which we couldn't help (said Damian), we decided to stay more in the shadows. We were the only persons close to superheroes as it seemed, and it killed me to hear my superhero name without being able to help. And maybe Damian was right sometimes when the situation just seemed inescapable...

However we decided on pants made out of flexible fabric, robust boots and a big sweater whose hood we would always wear to be disguised. In case the hood would drop back during precarious situations, we'd still have the mask to conceal our faces.
Mine was blue and Damian's was green.

It was necessary because we still had some bat-tools like the Batclaw that would give away who we really were, and in a world like this, people's hopes shouldn't be crashed like that. Everyone would lose hope if they'd find out that only presumed rich people could be heroes. Nobody would believe in spoiled billionaire's sons, and neither this outcome of our world was worth revealing secrets, giving up or letting people lose hope. They never needed it as much as now,
but we needed protection as well, since we were only the two of us.

Of course we had an advantage with the tools we had, since moving in the air and on the roofs was much safer than anything else, but the thing was that once we reached the district that we had to search for Tim, we had to move on the streets to find evidence. We had already searched the whole town from every rooftop, but that wasn't enough.

It was more likely that something happened to him when he was down there.

Something must have happened to him; He would never leave us without saying a word. Never.

And we would find out what that was.