Despise ⇢ Dick Grayson

two.

"THEFT AND UNLAWFUL USE of a motor vehicle, one count of assault with a deadly weapon and running away from your assigned foster guardian...All this paired with your past offences and it's not looking good for you, Miss Moore."

I glare at the cop standing across from me. He tosses my file down onto the metal table between us with a thud. "Where's Rachel?" I demand.

"She's safe."

"You need to let her go, she didn't do anything."

He pulls out a chair and sits down, the fluorescent light above us shining off his bald head. "Actually, she assaulted an officer. That's a serious offence."

I scoff. "You've got to be kidding me. A fully grown man with a taser and a gun was scared of being attacked by a fourteen year old girl? You're all pathetic." I sit back, arms crossed loosely over my chest.

"If that's the attitude you wanna take, so be it. But you'll be charged as an adult, seeing as you turn eighteen in less than a month. That means real prison time. You know what happens to pretty, little girls in prison?" He sneers, getting real close to my face. I want to hit him so badly that I have to curl my hands into tight fists to stop myself.

He soon leaves me alone in the cold, sterile room. The empty pit inside of me aches to sleep, to give up. To let myself be taken to prison. Let them do what they want, I think. But Rachel...She'll be alone. Completely and utterly alone. And I can't stomach that, can't live with it.

My left hand is cuffed to the table, so with my right I reach across to the manila folder - the folder of my life, every failure and fuck up detailed by cops and caseworkers. A paper clip holds together a bunch of pages and it only takes me a few minutes to unlock the handcuff. Getting out of the room is harder and it takes longer. I have to quickly sit back down when an officer walks by and glances into the interrogation room. But eventually, I manage to get out. I creep past a bunch of cops all chatting and laughing together, keeping my head down, hands jammed into my hoodie. Heading straight for the room that I saw them drag Rachel toward when we first came in, I am alarmed to find it empty. Have they transferred her already? If they have, I'll have no way of getting to her.

With no time to continue searching for her without being found by the officers mulling around, I slip down a hallway and toward the back exit. Past a police car being serviced, I stop in my tracks when I see a flash of purple and black hair. A cop is trying to force Rachel into his car and she struggles back against him.

"Rachel!" I call out, racing toward her just as he plunges a needle into her neck. "Stop! Stop!" I jump at him and try to pull him away but he flings me off and I crash into the side of the car, hitting my head hard for the second time in a twenty-four hour period. Lying on the concrete, my vision goes blotchy, everything spinning like it does when I'm really drunk. I faintly hear the screech of tires as the car takes off, then a voice calling out.

A man appears above me, blurry and out of focus. My eyes slip closed and open again and I can't really think or move.

I hear the man's voice, distorted and faded, say, "This is Detective Grayson. Can I get a 10-20 on the car number 310?"

A hand presses against my cheek, another against my shoulder. I try to shy away from the touch but I'm still immobile. My ears start to ring in this horrible way and my stomach churns like I'm going to throw up. It's a horrible feeling, one I am both detached from and acutely aware of.

One moment, I am lying against the cold concrete, harsh and biting at my back, and the next I'm cocooned in warmth, arms wrapped around me. The thumping of a heart beat replaces the ringing in my ears. Slowly, my mind starts to work again and I realise I'm being carried. My eyes flutter, my breathing getting shallower. The blurring of my vision recedes enough for me to study the face of the man holding me. Warm skin and dark eyes, a pensive look that seems engrained. He reaches down and opens a car door with some difficulty, then slides me onto the passenger seat.