#life two

The best and worst thing.

Stream. 1st Time.

That doesn't mean I'm stupid.

It's hard not to see what's coming. Sometimes it's hard to see the wood for the trees. Esspecially whislt you're living it. That doesn't mean that that is what we're hoping to be the outcome.

I believed.

He's not real.

Dick had always wanted children.

When he was a kid in the circus, he declared that all the younger kids were his siblings and therefore he was the one to take care of them.  When he came to Bruce, he often thought of convincing Bruce to adopt more, filling the empty Manor with kids everywhere.  When he was in college, he volunteered at a nearby day care, doing tricks to make them giggle.  With each lover, he thought more and more about really starting a family, how wonderful it would be with her, with him, with them.

When she came into his life, he blocked children from his mind.

It wasn't that he didn't want a family some day, no.  Just somehow the crossing thoughts of children and her didn't match.  Children were innocent, joyful, good things.  She was....

But he'd escaped.  Dick had broken free of her, started again with real lovers, finally moved past the memories that woke him at nights and kept him fighting long after his body told him not to.  He was loving again, connecting again, living again.  Then one day, on the rooftops of Bludhaven--

"Querido."

--he saw her.

Half his instincts told him to run, to flee before she could touch him again, but another side said no.  She was a criminal.  She needed to be put away where she couldn't hurt anyone again.  Where she couldn't hurt him again.

So he chased her.

Across rooftops and bridges, through Avalon Heights down to St. Anthonio's.  There, on the steps of the church, he sees it, the small shivering bundle in a basket.

"He's yours, Querido.  He has your eyes."

He did.

Laughter bubbled up through Dick's lips, turning into sobs as he backed away, stumbling, running, ignoring what she shouted after him.  He didn't stop running until he'd made his way home, somehow, and fallen into a heap next to his bed