A SINNERS SONG → DICK GRAYSON

05 | rekindled friendships, if you can call it that

Don't overthink the world that was once so comfortable.

Yet, she couldn't help it. The thought had come from her own mind much like Athena from Zeus, now it was there and it wasn't going away. It had put down roots right inside of her heart, weaving their ways through her vessels until it reached her brain where it began to scratch and scratch until she recognized something was eating away at her. Augustine was never the one to run away from pain, although, it was a constant in her life. If it wasn't physical, it was emotional, she knew how to hide it. She knew how to lock those fears away, how to push those feelings of things being wrong away. Augustine Finley knew how to make herself feel comfortable in the life she was living by pretending nothing was ringing the alarm bells within her. Growing up in the spotlight, thrust into a world where cameras and stories would follow her until the day she died, she was good at putting on a smile. Placing one on her face and letting the world believe she was happier than ever, she had been doing it since she was a child that had watched her mother narrowly escape death the night before. It wasn't anything to hide the doubt that festered within her.

Of course, it wouldn't be anything to hide it from the people who didn't know her. No one knew the real her except for three people: Dick Grayson, Margaret Halliwell, and Roy Harper. She found it ironic that Roy was one of the few people who knew who she was inside and out. How to read her like an open book, yet he wasn't able to see this part of her (or, maybe, he was pretending to not see it in order to save himself a world of pain). Dick Grayson surely had, he took one good look at her the next morning after she woke up and knew something was eating away at her. The way she was smiling at Dawn wasn't how she normally did, nor was her laugh, and she gripped her coffee cup the same way she did when she was stressed during high school. He fought the urge to say something, make a comment, and ask what was bothering her. Because he knew it wasn't his place anymore — he didn't have the right to speak to her as if she were still his best friend. He was the one who fucked that all up.

But he still knew her. And he knew she was hiding something from herself that was going to get her one day. It always does.

Dick grabbed a mug for himself, pouring in the coffee, "Did I miss anything?"

Augustine watched as Hank rolled his eyes, "No."

Hank followed up on her answer, "What would you have missed?"

Dick looked at the table now full of empty plates that had trace bits and pieces of a food — the only remnants to show that they had had breakfast. He narrowed his eyes at the sight, glancing back to the four people sitting around the table. Leaning against the kitchen counter, he kicked one of his feet over the other and sipped on the coffee. Augustine bounced her leg quickly, silently begging for someone to speak and fill the silence. She had never been the one to enjoy the silence — it was uncomfortable, growing up in her household it normally meant something went wrong. Harlow Finley was typically a person of many words, she always had something to say. So when the house was silent it could have meant a few things, but oftentimes it meant something went wrong and her mother had been injured. While now it's not such a scary thought, Augustine couldn't help but still feel like the ten year old little girl who was terrified of the void that silence filled because it meant she could be losing her mother. Granted, a mother who didn't do much to mother her, but she was still someone Augustine cared about. Enough to worry over her each and every night she went out. Enough to think about bending her rules, her guidelines for how she wanted to live, to ensure she was okay. In all of her life, there had only been a few times that Augustine got close to saying fuck it. To throw caution to the wind and joint what felt like the family business (even more so now that she knew who her father actually was, perhaps this was a birthright at this point), once was after her mother nearly died at the hands of the Joker, the second was when Dick had almost died at the hands of another Gotham rogue, and the third was that one time a gala she attended was crashed by the Joker.