FAULT LINES ━━ titans [REWRITING]

TWENTY ONE.

HOMEMADE DYNAMITE !
❝ BLACKOUT. ❞

MAYA BLACK'S HOUSE BURNED TO THE GROUND. It burned and burned until nothing but ashes and dust remained. A phantom seared into Abigail Lance's memories the same way it lay in the glowing embers forgotten. The place she now stood, boots buried in the rubble, hair smoke stained and soot smeared. Bitter morning air stung her cheeks, the cold kiss of winter on a dull and grey day.

"We should go. Never should've come back here in the first place."

Dick Grayson's voice softly reached her ears, soothing the guilt which made her head scream. His voice brought back her memory of the moment in the car, when he was dying, when she couldn't think about anything but trying to show him what she couldn't say. Fuck. Her impulses once again had landed her in more trouble than good. Aunt Dinah was right. That was annoying.

"They won't come back," Abby murmured, tearing her eyes up from the embered coals to meet his gaze, "They took Jess. And Kory. And Gar. They won't come back. They have all they need for us to come to them."

Dick let out a long sigh. His warm breath contrasting the biting cold, rising in a white puff and mingling with the ascending haze of smog. Daybreak City was cold. Icy. Dark. An ironic oxymoron to its namesake, a twisted paradox. Shadows lived here and Abigail Lance knew that's why Maya Black, why the Ghost, decided to move to such a place. To save this city. It seemed Oliver Queen and Barry Allen had rubbed off on her.

"Still," Dick finally said, "We should go. We've all had the shit beaten out of us and —."

"Getting the shit kicked out of you," Abby turned to face him abruptly, "is very fucking different to dying, Grayson. You didn't get beaten up, Dick. You died. How can you have forgotten that?"

"And I came back. I haven't forgotten." he ground his teeth together in frustration. "Obsessing over it isn't going to magically let you understand the reasons. We don't linger on the unknown. We accept it and we move on."

She turned her sharp eyes on him. "Was I just supposed to accept it if you died?" she scoffed, turning back towards the flames. "You know me better than that."

"Yeah." He let out a light laugh. "I do. I'd have woken up in the Lazarus Pit. Ra's al Ghul would be ecstatic."

Abby barked out a laugh. "He wouldn't have a say in it. If it wasn't me, it'd be Bruce or Melanie."

"Melanie, maybe, but Bruce... no, not Bruce," his voice softened, vulnerable like a ribcage split open, heart bore to the world. "He has a line. He doesn't cross it. Not for anyone."