ROGUE| DICK GRAYSON

xix. the bratva

TW: Very descriptive writing about children getting killed!
(This sounds so bad)

Note: Sorry i've been gone for so long!

The world isn't just black and white, it was grey too. But, not just one very dull grey color; no. There were lighter greys, darker greys, and even almost blue greys. It would all mesh together and that made everyone frustrated. They didn't understand that people could be good and evil. So, they changed it. They changed the question to, are you good or evil?

Rowan used to believe the world was good or bad; no in between. You had the good guys and the bad guys. She remembers when that changed.

It dates all the way back to her ripe age of seven. She was at a park in Gotham playing with her sister, Kennedy. Her mother was sitting on the park bench, watching her daughters with a loving smile.

Rowan remembered the way the October breeze blew through her hair as she swung on the swing, her sister on the one next to her. The smell of the pine trees and the leaves of trees were slowly turning orange. How her sister laughed about something that her friend said to her.

It was peaceful, to say the least. This was the day her life went to shit.

Now, thinking back on it, it really wasn't the exact day, as her mother was still a druggie and an alcoholic, but she made time for her daughters. Her father still beat her senseless and her sister thought that she was better than her at everything.

But, this was the day that Rowan actually hit the realization that this wasn't normal for a family.

A terrible scream was heard from behind them. Without warning, Kennedy jumped off her swing and ran to their mother, leaving Rowan in the dust. The girl stopped her swing and furrowed her eyebrows. She looked behind her and there was nothing.

Silence overtook the park, parents froze on what they were doing, searching for where the sound came from. Rowan stood up, facing away from her mother who was coddling a little Kennedy.

Then everything happened at once. Gunfire was heard, and flashes of light overtook her vision even though it was daylight. Screams of children filled her ears and wails of mothers searching for their children. She tried to find her own mother, but fog soon followed the gunshots.

All she could see was a man in a scarecrow mask walking into the fog. She closed her eyes and looked somewhere else, but what she saw was worse. Mothers were doing anything in their power to kill their children as if they were insects. She saw a woman grab her crying child and kept pounding her face into the wooden playset. Rowan watched the blood and brain matter almost ooze out of any open hole.

Rowan looked to where her mother would have been, but she was gone, same with Kennedy. They left her. The little girl's eyes teared up and the man in the mask crouched down in front of her. Rowan backed away fearfully, but the man just placed a hand on her shoulder. He slowly pulled out a gas mask, carefully placing it on her head, protecting her from the toxins. The interaction was small and quick, but it left a bad taste in her mouth. Why was she the one that was saved?

The girl looked around but found out he was gone too. She didn't know what to do, so she just stood there, frozen, watching kids get murdered all around her. Soon enough, a whooshing sound came from the right of her.

She looked to see a dark-skinned man in a blue superhero costume. Rowan believed his name to be, 'A-Train', from what she saw on the news. But, instead of taking down Penguin and Scarecrow, he pulled the mothers away from the already dead children. She watched as he carried them to safety and left the kids, clinging to their last breaths. The superhero sped to Penguin and did the oddest thing, they shook hands. Like Penguin did him a favor by killing these children, just so A-Train could be called the hero. He killed families for fame.