Black Dahlia || Dick Grayson [Titans] ✔️

EPILOGUE

Weeks Later

I was standing on a building ledge again, looking down at the passing lights of the cars below and wondering what I was doing there.

The last thing I remembered doing was laying in bed with Dick, his long lashes tickling the skin of my stomach as he laid across the bed, watching tv. Weeks had passed since I finally made the full recovery from my return from death, and Dick still spoiled me with domestic moments like that when he wasn't running one search or another for Hurricane.

A shuffle sounded from somewhere behind me and I turned fast, finding nothing. I was literally on top of the building alone, though for the first time I realized that the building was Titans Tower. I started considering that I'd sleep walked up here, somehow getting out from under Dick, when the voice beside me struck the thought out.

"So this is the view your Robin offered up? No wonder Daniel stood no chance. This guy clearly has money." I spun around again, this time so fast that I nearly fell off the edge. Sitting just a few steps away was Roman, not looking at me but the building surrounding us. He looked the same as the last time I'd seen him, if not a little more haggard with dark circles under his eyes and skin pale. "Then again, he's Batman's little bitch, so that would make sense I guess."

"You're dead," was all I could think to say in response. "This isn't real, I'm dreaming." I had to be dreaming because Roman was undeniably dead. Everyone who was there that night confirmed it; what the metal in his throat couldn't have done, the concrete from the ceiling to his head did.

He turned now to look up at me, an amused smile dancing across his face. "You know what I'm capable of, what I did to get you to show up to that warehouse," he said. "And you're still going to doubt that I'm alive?"

"We saw you die."

"No, you saw someone who looked like me die. You saw exactly what I wanted and needed you to see." He laughed, but nothing about it sounded happy. "Trying to keep you all preoccupied was...tougher on me than I realized it would be. You were smart though, you saw it and you were working it against me. I couldn't keep it up for much longer, so I made a decision. If you thought I was dead, you wouldn't come looking for me. And I was right."

I hated myself; I never once considered what he said, that'd he'd have been able to fake his death that night. I allowed myself to be more distracted with my recovery, then with being with Dick again and looking for Hurricane on the side that any thought otherwise didn't have a place in my mind. But it should've because, like he said, I knew what he was capable of. And as much as I prided myself on being smart, I was stupid enough to let that information go unprocessed until now.

For all I knew, the last few weeks I'd spent with Dick and the others was the real manipulation, and I never made it out of that warehouse.

"Don't be so dramatic, sis," Roman said of my unvoiced thoughts. "Your happy ever after is real enough for the moment. I just thought it'd be fun to shake things up for you a bit, letting you know that it won't last. Like you, I had some recovery and planning of my own to do. Soon enough though, things will be better in my favor and when they are, I'm coming for you."

"You won't have to," I replied, my nose flaring slightly, my body tense. "If you and Hurricane are still together, we'll find you both soon enough. We never gave up looking for him."

"Well you probably should," he chuckled. "I'm not dead, but he is."

"Yeah, because I'm going to believe the guy who just admitted to faking his own death."

"Exactly, I faked my death through my powers. But you see, the thing about them is is that I can only manipulate what you see, not create it entirely, especially not on that large a scale of minds needing to be tricked. You saw me die but I needed someone to make you think was me, someone expendable and that you wouldn't notice otherwise."