Night Rider

4: Waking Up Again

Damian~
Out on patrol later that night, Damian couldn't keep his thoughts off of that afternoon. It was a quiet evening for Gotham so he didn't worry too much about the wandering of his mind- their patrol was nearly over anyways. For the moment Gotham didn't warrant his full attention.

Batman wasn't a fan of his distraction though.
"Robin, stop zoning out before it gets you in trouble. Where on earth is your mind tonight?" He intoned as they paused on top of a building, thirty stories up and overlooking one of the nastier portions of Gotham. All was quiet save for the ceaseless nighttime crawl of the city.

"The girl, Walker, there's... More to her than I thought. I believe I may have been..." Robin trailed off.

Batman's face was a mask as ever.
"Wrong about her?"

"Yes. Perhaps she isn't the dimwitted melodramatic I thought. Not at the same level as us of course," Damian added quickly, "but definitely smarter than I would have originally given her credit for."

Their earlier conversation at the oddity of Walker's horse whispering came to mind, but Damian didn't want to think of it at the moment. It was coincidence, nothing more.

"I see," Batman said nothing else, merely pulled out his grappling gun and fired it to the next building. Damian followed.
...

Lyn  Walker~

I don't even know how to explain the next weeks leading up to Christmas time. I mean, emotionally life was sort of sucky still. I missed my family, my friends, the more moderate temperatures of my home town.

Well, moderate in comparison.
Gotham turned out to be an angry cesspit of cold in the winter- no matter where one's from. And this was the first holiday season I would be spending away from everyone. It was hard, to say the least.

But on the other hand, I had Tuffy and Sitdka to help me cope. And strangely enough, Damian and I were developing a friendship over our daily rides, something that quickly started to bleed over into other aspects of life at the manor.

He started to teach me basic self defense (where a ten year old kid learns such things... Not exactly normal, but then again, this whole mess wasn't normal) and I showed him how to draw. It wasn't quite so lonely to be technically dead when I had a friend to share it with.

Even thanksgiving wasn't as horribly depressing as I had been expecting, though I broke down later that night when I was finally alone. Alfred put together an amazing meal however.
Bruce, Damian, and I were present, as well as the dark haired man my age I had seen around the house before. He turned out to be Dick Grayson, Bruce's ward from several years back. From what I could tell he was a lot like Damian's adorkable older brother.

I was awkward the whole evening. Mostly because I tended to clam up around cute boys my age, and mostly because he kept looking at me throughout dinner when he thought I wasn't paying attention.

Damian proceeded to tease me about it the rest of the night. And mortifiyingly enough, he did it in front of Dick while I blushed crimson. I still wasn't sure what to think of the way Dick laughed and gave me a grinning wink.

But despite all of the time I spent with Damian and Alfred- there was also too many days when I couldn't find my new friend in the house. And I still knew next to knowing about the elder Wayne who had greeted me on day one.

It was like looking at one way glass.
There was something going on on the other side, but I could only see the person when they were standing next to me, our reflections available to us both. If I wasn't with them, they ceased to exist in a way I could know about.

When I asked him about it, Damain said something vague about extracurricular activities, but I couldn't see him having the patience for anything that didn't involve fast paced action or punching people who pissed him off. So that ruled out anything involving other people and all of the activities requiring calm calculation. This left only video games as an iffy option, but Damian was too active and athletic for anything sitting down so that also ruled out everything inactive.

Essentially, the only thing that made sense was if he was a) partaking in extreme parkour, b) training to be the next Jet Lee, c) visiting his adoptive brother to raise a little hell, or d) an even blend of all three that I couldn't quite put my finger on.

Yet every time made a vaguely outlandish mention of such a thing in his past time, he would shut me down and change the subject. Alfred was already a clam when it came to information, and if Damian's actions made him suspicious, then Bruce was definitely in on it too with the way he behaved.
I was on my own for information gathering.

I took to trying to follow my friend when he disappeared, but my efforts were in vain.

Up until Bruce was out of town on "business" for a week or so that was. The moment he left the house, things finally started going somewhere.