Young Justice -:- Hello, Goodbye

Drabble Summary: It's the first anniversary of the Fall, and Dick isn't coping so well. But there's a big party at Wayne Manor – the orphan circus boy's introduction to high society – the perfect distraction, right?

Author's Note(s): Right, keeping it short this time around. Thanks so much to the people taking an interest in this little series! Hope you enjoy this bit too!

Warning: For implied potential molestation of a minor, though absolutely nothing explicit.

Save the Last Dance

It was supposed to be like putting on a show.

Well, that was how Alfred had sold the whole evening to me anyway. It was a Wayne Foundation charity gala – the first one that I had been forced to attend in person; my introduction to society, if you will – and the wasps were out in force.

The manor transforms into something almost unrecognisable when it's hosting a party. The silence is shattered, and the old house's years of history and secrets hidden behind a veneer of superficial glitz. Everything is brighter and shinier and the epitome of opulence. People buzz around; gossiping or show-boating or swarming the buffet, the music of a string quartet harmonizing with all the voices like an audience anticipating what's to come.

I could almost imagine it being like a stage dressed for a performance – like the centre ring prepped and set for the night's show – but it just wasn't the same.

But like my Dad used to say; we were born in the spotlight. I could grin and fake it better than anyone and that... well, that was what really appealed to me about attending the gala.

I had watched a few of these shindigs from a distance before, studying how Bruce's entire aura changed just for these events. The gruffness and the seriousness of the Bruce Wayne that I knew vanished beneath a façade of false smiles and pseudo charm. It was another mask that he wielded like a shield. An escape from the darkness. And when Alfred had told me that I would be joining the act, I have to admit that I was excited.

You see, I wasn't Robin yet, and the red hoodie had long since been hung up. Right then, I was just me. And 'just me' wasn't coping so well.

It was so much easier to not think; to not dwell on memories or feel the loss, when there was a mask to hide behind. Another personality to slip into. It was a crutch that being the Red Hood had offered me that I was sorely missing. Without that opportunity to avoid, I was finding it harder and harder to pretend that everything was okay.

(I realise now that maybe willingly developing a dual identity wasn't the most healthy of coping mechanisms...)

But whatever. Back then I didn't care, I was just falling back on what I knew would work. That night, for the first time in a long time, I had a role to play. I was going to bury everything behind a wall and focus on all the manners and conversational skills and accent developing that Alfred had taught me. I wasn't a broken orphan, I was a budding socialite just like my new billionaire father figure. I was going to pretend and hide and escape because dammit, it really wasn't a good day.

It had been a year.

One year since the Fall.

I didn't know whether Bruce had simply forgotten or just didn't realise, or if maybe Alfred thought that the gala was the ideal distraction or whatever, but no one had said a word. No one had acknowledged that this was a hard day, so I had just assumed that maybe it wasn't supposed to be. I was supposed to be tougher than this, so I would be. I was determined to throw myself wholeheartedly into my new role as Richard Grayson, and try and forget about the pain and the loss like everyone else already had.

That was, until the cheek-pinching started.

"Oh, isn't he just adorable?" a woman literally squealed as she squished my face between her perfectly manicured hands. She wasn't actually looking at me though, but rather scanning the hall for Bruce as if to impress him with her treatment of me. It took every ounce of acting ability that I had not to wrench out of her grip and run; Alfred's voice in my head reminding me that it wouldn't just be my new reputation that I'd be damaging.

There were (and still are) only ever two responses to me at these events. The first is generally the most common, where I'm shown off like a prize and praised for my looks or successes in spite of my 'rough start'. But it's all fake. It's all to garner Bruce's favourable attention, just like the woman that had assaulted me that night. I could handle that. It's the second response that always make my skin crawl and my hackles raise.

My heritage wasn't a secret. The fact that I came from a circus had been plastered over every newspaper and television show and social media feed ever; and from that the 'gypsy' association had come quite quick (despite me only being half-Rom which doesn't make me a gypsy at all, but whatever). In the eyes of many of Gotham's elite that made me a lower class citizen, undeserving of being in their presence. They couldn't understand what could possibly have made Bruce Wayne actually want such a dirty child in his mansion.

(Kindness and empathy clearly didn't occur to them.)

And so they assumed the worst. Obviously Bruce just kept me around for entertainment purposes. Being just ten years old I didn't totally understand just what some people were implying; but it made me uncomfortable and creeped out... especially when, every now and again, someone would get it in their head that Bruce wouldn't mind 'sharing'.

"Well, he is a rather pretty little thing, isn't he?" a man said, more to himself than to anyone else. He had caught my shoulder once I had finally wrested myself free of the cheek-pinching brigade that had joined in with the woman, halting me from escaping the hall entirely. I froze at the tone of his voice, his hand feeling icy cold through my suit jacket as I forced a polite smile onto my face.

"Evening, sir," I said through only partially gritted teeth. I was silently impressed by how many of Alfred's lessons I was able to remember, even as every instinct warned me to get away from the man practically pinning me in place.

"Richard, isn't it?" the man asked, smiling at me like a shark. All around us the party continued, oblivious to the encounter that was making me more and more nervous by the second. I nodded, uncertainly, hoping someone else would notice that something really wasn't right. "And how old are you, Richard?"

"Ten," I answered distractedly, because it was impolite not to. I was scanning the crowd, trying to spot Bruce among the sea of black ties, but at my minuscule height I couldn't see a thing.

The man hummed thoughtfully, his eyes raking over me in a way that made me squirm in his grip. I really wanted to just hit him and run away as fast as possible, but I didn't want Bruce to get mad at me for attacking one of his guests. So I kind of just stood their awkwardly as I was studied up and down like a piece of merchandise, figuring that maybe this was all just a part of the party experience. I had never been to one of these events before... maybe this was how I got accepted...

But then the man was leading me by the shoulder – away from the party. And down a dark corridor.

Instantly I struggled, but the man just gripped me tighter, his free hand planting firmly on my other shoulder as he steered me further and further away from the bright lights and laughter of the gala. "Quiet now," he said, his voice taken on the edge of something threatening. "Don't make a sound."

A trickle like ice water ran down my spine, screaming at me to get away. This was wrong, this was so wrong. The man turned me around and pressed my back to the wall, his eyes staring at me in the dark.

And that was as far as he got.

All thoughts of Bruce's reputation and Alfred's manners training fled my head as self-preservation took over. I had been in enough fights on the streets as the Red Hood to know how to escape the hold, kicking the man somewhere ironically painful in the process. I ducked under his arm as he staggered back with an agonised whine and took the opportunity to run like hell.

I never looked back. I don't know the man's name or what happened to him after. I never told anyone about what very nearly happened, but mysteriously, I don't remember ever seeing him at any other Wayne Foundation events again. Odd that.

In my haste to get away, I sprinted around the edge of the main hall hosting the party, ignorant of any scandalised yelps that I may have earned when I whipped past the posh peoples' kneecaps, and darted down the service hall past the main kitchen. I probably would have kept going indefinitely – my emotions were already a train wreck before the near-miss, and they sure as hell weren't any better after – but then I barrelled straight into something soft and wound up on the carpet.

"OW!" yelped the mound next to me that turned out to be a girl in a green dress with bright orange hair. She pulled herself into a sitting position and rubbed at the arm that I had ran into, glaring daggers at me. "Can't you look where you're going you rich pompous ass- oh my god, are you okay?"

I blinked, my eyes suddenly feeling hot and itchy, and realised that I was crying; which explained the girls sudden change in tone. Instantly my cheeks flushed in embarrassment, and I scrubbed at them to try and get rid of the tears. "I'm fine," I snapped defensively, climbing to my feet, ready to run again. And then I paused. "Sorry for running into you."

"Woah, hey – wait a sec!" the girl called as she struggled to her feet in her too-long dress and hurried after me. The heels that she was definitely not used to walking in clacked unevenly on the marble as we crossed into another hallway, each step bringing her closer until she was able to reach out and grab my arm. "Hey, why are you crying?"

"I'm not crying!" I said angrily, which for some strange reason made the girl giggle, of all things. I glared at her, having to look up because she was at least a foot taller than me.

"Sorry," she breathed through her laugh. "It's just your voice went all weird."

My accent must have slipped, despite all of Alfred's attempts to the contrary; but it happened sometimes when I was upset, and right then I was very upset. It was turning out to be a very long and very hard day and I just wanted to go to my room and be alone for a little while and being laughed at by some random girl after some weird guy had just... and where was Bruce or Alfred or damn it all what I really wanted was my Mom and Dad but...

SNAP.

THUD. Thud. Thud. THUD. Thud.

"Oh, oh no, please, I'm sorry," the girl was saying, panic lighting up her eyes as if she had been saying the same words for a while but I just hadn't been listening. Which is when I realised that I was on the floor, curled against the wall and crying my eyes out. I could barely breathe between sobs and I must have looked completely pathetic, but the girl just stayed there with me, constantly muttering. "I'm really sorry I laughed at your accent, okay?"

I almost laughed out loud at that; that she thought that that was why I was having some random breakdown in the middle of a thankfully deserted hallway. I probably would have if I didn't need every ounce of breath I could get between the gradually slowing sobs. "It's okay... I'm okay..." I murmured, trying to sound reassuring, though now that I think about it I'm not entirely sure that I was even speaking English.

The girl watched me pensively for a moment, her eyebrows furrowed in concern. "You're Dick Grayson, aren't you?"

I paused at the fact that she had used my nickname rather than the full name that was given to the press, before it finally dawned on me just who the girl was. I should have recognised her straight away. True, we had never met before; but her hair was a dead giveaway. I had only seen that shade of ginger once before, on one particularly magnificent face caterpillar. "Gordon?"

The girl smiled kindly. "Barbara. Nice to meet you. Dad's told me all about you."

The sobs were finally subsiding as I managed to regain control of my breathing again. I rubbed at my face to try and get rid of the evidence of the panic attack even though Barbara had witnessed the whole thing. I still had some dignity left, after all. "He told me about you too."

"I wondered why he had asked me to come along tonight," Barbara said thoughtfully, dutifully looking away as I put myself back together. "We never get invited to these things; not that I want to be with all the rich people flaunting their wealth and claiming to be charitable by 'helping' the dirty poor people-" she cut herself off, realising that her tone was getting a bit sharp and that technically, I was one of those rich people now too. "But Dad was invited, as he's the Commissioner now, and said I should come too. I guess he figured we should meet or something."

"What a way to meet someone," I muttered, referring to our earlier collision. Barbara smiled again, before absolute horror washed her pale skin ghostly white.

"Oh."

I blinked at her, confused. "'Oh'?"

"Oh," she repeated. "It's today, isn't it? One year... no wonder... what are you even doing at this stupid party? You should be... oh."

I watched Barbara warily as she worked through whatever revelation it was that she was having, a hollow feeling beginning to grow in my stomach. And then she hit me with a look of absolute pity and I flinched away. I hate pity. It made me feel small and fragile and broken, and I hated that feeling. It made me feel too much like I did that night.

"Your parents..." she whispered, and the hollow feeling became a ball of ice sitting heavily on my gut. "I'm so sorry."

"Don't be," I said shortly, trying to deflect and act tough. Trying to act how I was supposed to be. "It's been a year, I'm... I'm over it."

Or at least, I should be... right?

Barbara stared at me for a moment, analysing me like a complex equation that just wouldn't balance out. Beyond our hallway the party was still going strong, the gentle thrum of the music and voices mingling as it bled through old walls. All those people didn't have a clue what it felt like to be left with nothing, to be so totally alone as everything they knew was ripped away from them. They couldn't relate. They couldn't understand.

And I was starting to realise, that I couldn't pretend.

"Let's get out of here," Barbara said suddenly, dragging me out of my staring contest with the wall that connected to the main hall beyond. I looked up at her as she stood and offered me her hand, wondering why she was still hanging around. "What makes you feel better?"

I wanted to argue that I wasn't feeling sad or lonely or broken or whatever so I didn't need to feel better, but the way that the redhead was looking at me I got the feeling that she would see straight through my denial. Hesitantly, I took her hand and she tugged me to my feet. "Heights."

"Really?" Barbara asked. "Huh. Well, do you know a way to get onto the roof? I mean, it doesn't get much higher than that around here, right?"

Of course I knew a way onto the roof; it was one of the first places that I had explored early on in my official stay at Wayne Manor, the old building providing some fantastic views of the surrounding countryside, and even the city beyond if you picked a spot on the south side. I hadn't told anyone else that that was where I often disappeared to, knowing that Bruce wouldn't approve and Alfred would probably have a heart attack.

I led Barbara up to the window on the third floor, pushing up the sash with barely any effort. But then I frowned at her high heels and my stupid dress shoes that had come with the tux, figuring that it wasn't exactly footwear designed for scaling trellises and navigating roof tiles. We both ended up going barefoot, with Barbara tying a knot in her dress so that it hung at her knees instead of her ankles; the pair of us finally making it up onto one of the dormers on the east side of the manor.

Barbara lay back against the slope of the roof and watched the stars overhead, her long red hair splayed across the tiles. I, on the other hand, stared down at the courtyard below, calculating the drop.

"It's okay, you know," Barbara said quietly, breaking the stillness. "To be sad. You're not supposed to be 'over it'."

I didn't say a word. I couldn't, really. I was afraid that if I opened my mouth I might start crying again, and despite the fact that I was listening to what Barbara was saying, it didn't shake the believe that I was clinging to that everything was supposed to be okay by now. I was supposed to be okay by now.

It had been a year.

"Look, I know that the last thing you wanna hear is 'I understand'," Barbara continued as she stargazed. "Because it's true. Nobody knows exactly what you're going through or can understand just what you've been through because that's your pain, and everyone is different. But I do know what it's like to feel as if you have to hide how you're feeling."

Barbara sighed heavily, and I found myself distracted from staring at the ground far below and turned my attention to the girl in the green dress. "A couple of years ago, my Mom left us. In the middle of the night. She just left us a note to find in the morning and then vanished. It hit my Dad hard. With his job and then Mom gone and then me and my brother... It nearly broke him. At first I was sad, angry... I figured that it must have been my fault because no one could tell me just why she had abandoned us. But then I saw Dad falling apart and James getting all quiet and I realised that I had to be the strong one."

I didn't even know that Barbara had a brother – Jim had never mentioned him in our short chats during car rides, but I just kept quiet and listened as the redhead continued.

"I play it off like it doesn't bother me," Barbara shrugged. "Like I'm 'over it'. Like it doesn't hurt every Mother's Day when James comes home with a card he was told to make at school, or every anniversary when Dad gets all distant and throws himself into work. But that doesn't make it true. That doesn't mean that I can't cry or get angry or upset – letting it out doesn't make me weak. I guess, I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's okay to feel however you're feeling for however long you feel it. You get me?"

I nodded, though I still couldn't bring myself to speak. I didn't want to cry again despite Barbara telling me that it was okay. I wanted to be stronger than that.

Barbara huffed in annoyance. "Whoever it was that decided that boys weren't allowed to cry is an idiot," she grumbled, more to herself than to me. "I mean seriously, no wonder we're a nation that spends small fortunes on therapists."

I snorted a laugh that kind of ended up a sniffle, and Barbara moved so that she sitting right next to me and slinging an arm around my shoulders. "Tell me about them," she instructed, her tone brokering no argument though I could tell that she wouldn't force me to if I didn't want to. "What's it like growing up in a circus?"

We ended up staying on the roof most of the night, just talking and laughing, and okay, yeah... there may have been some more crying, but it was good.

It was just me and Barbara, and I began to realise that 'just me' might be able to cope after all.

I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship...

So yeah, another random one-shot for you because my muse has been on vacation lately and I haven't had the motivation to write a single thing. Hopefully this has broken my writer's block so that I can actually get back to work on Loyalty, but who knows. I'm hoping to get chapter one up tomorrow (it would be the 31st... that's still October! I am not a liar!) but due to lack of progress it's unlikely to be as rapidly updated as previous fics...

But hey! Potentially more one-shots to be posted here as and when... hope you liked!