Verisimilitude

Rewind

He slowly sat up as his gaze traveled around the room.

Red Tornado. Martian Manhunter. Two Leaguers long dead.

Kaldur. Wally. Artemis. M'gann. Conner. His Team, who had fallen to long ago.

Batman. His father, who someone stood their in the flesh.

Consternation turned into shock as he sat there, watching his dead friends sit up groaning and muttering. A single thought went through his mind.

How?

When Batman and Martian Manhunter explained that the entire thing had been a simulation. That the last thirty years of his life wasn't real. He blinked

And when it became clear that no one knew he didn't die on the mothership and lived thirty years of his life in a fake reality it just became too much.

So he did what he did best, and when the Leaguer's backs were turned, he disappeared.

Silently walking alone in the hallway, he cast a glance at every door. The Cave was sickeningly familiar, yet excruciatingly different. His face hardened when he passed Tim's room in the mountain, and he clenched his teeth when he passed what used to be Jason's. Both now were empty rooms without a trace of life.

He stopped short in front of his room. He tried not to focus on the door that he remembered as having the Nightwing insignia on it, and instead entered.

The rug and the walls were a different color (he redecorated after a prank made by Tim, Gar, and Bart) and the room itself was completely rearranged. Gone was the dent in the wall he had made one day in frustration, and the setup made by several monitors that he made completely by hand on the far wall had disappeared completely. The Flying Grayson poster still hung, but the pictures of the League and the Team he had hung next to it - as a tribute to them - were gone.

The desk was his old one that he had destroyed testing out a new birdarang (which he renamed Wingdings after letting Lian choose the name when babysitting her. Roy had been so embarrassed when he found out later) and the seat's cushion wasn't ripped (he had never figured out how that happened). The computer on the desk had been outdated for years...but it was cutting edge technology.

Everything was wrong.

He wished he would wake up (again) and find that this was all fake. That Barbara and Jason and Tim and Stephanie and Damian were all waiting for him to wake up after surviving the gunshot. He was just in a coma dreaming about how the Invasion could have been falsified. Yeah, this was all a dream.

But it wasn't. Dreams weren't this vivid.

The last thirty years of my life were pretty vivid. Maybe this is just fake and the other one is reality.

But do I really want this to be untrue?

...Can I really choose between realities? Between families? Between teams?

The answer, of course, was no. But that apparently didn't matter, because Fate had taken the decision away from him.

Not literally, of course. Zatanna wasn't trapped as Doctor Fate in this reality. But it still felt as if Nabu himself had a hand in what was happening to him.

Pacing, he realized how awkward he felt. He was used to longer limbs and no cape. He wasn't used to the bright red and yellow he now donned, but rather black and blue.

Everything was so wrong!

Hearing a knock on the door, he was slightly surprised when he opened it and Batman stood there. He was used to Barbara or maybe Roy comforting him. Being there for him.

Bruce? He had been dead for years and before that he hadn't been adept with emotions.

"Let's go home." Pain shot through him at that gruff voice he hadn't heard for so long and he felt tears tugging at the corner of his eyes. Not meeting the man's eyes, he followed him out of the room, out of the mountain, and into the Zeta tubes.

When he heard the computer recognize him as "Robin" he almost gave a start of surprise. Who could blame him though? He hadn't been called Nightwing since he was eighteen.

But you aren't eighteen. You never have been. You are thirteen. The Invasion never happened. It was just a simulation gone wrong.

He made a beeline straight to his room, not saying a word to Bruce or Alfred or meeting their eyes. He almost went right passed his room to the one he and Barbara shared, but he corrected himself at the last second. He quietly shut the door and locked it, before sinking onto the bed, trying to ignore his room and how different it was.

His mind ran through everything that had happened during the simulation. He could still remember what happened the day of the Invasion in frightening detail - he hadn't forgotten that day or the bloodshed it had brought into his life, into everyone's lives.

And it all wasn't real.

No Aquagirl, Tempest, or Batgirl.

No Troia, Arsenal, or Lian.

No Bumblebee, Lagoon Boy, or Wondergirl.

No Blue Beetle, Impulse, or Black Lightning.

No Beast Boy, Guardian, or Static.

No Jason.

No Tim.

No Steph.

No Damian.

It wasn't real!

His breathing hitched and a sob cut in his throat. He ripped off his mask, allowing tears to flow freely; he hadn't bothered to change, despite Alfred's rule of "no capes in the Manor".

He didn't know anything anymore. He wasn't sure of the line between fantasy and reality. He didn't know what was real and what was not.

The whole thing...all those years...it was just a lie.

He slammed his fists against the wall, making a dent in it. He didn't care. He had to vent. He had to get his anger out somehow.

He quickly changed out of his Robin costume and switching to civvies, ignoring the pang that went through him at the unfamiliar clothes. Sunset wouldn't be for an hour or two. He could still take a walk through Gotham. He pulled up the hood on his sweatshirt and put on sunglasses - the last thing he needed was another Dick Grayson kidnapping.

He slipped out his window, scaling the side of the Manor with the grace of an acrobat. He didn't care if Bruce or Alfred knew he had left - he simply didn't want to see them before he left the grounds. He couldn't confront them, not now.

Several minutes later, walking down the streets of Gotham, he found himself heading to a familiar destination.

He stared over the area of Gotham Park that was forest. The area had been decimated in the Invasion and had later been turned into a memorial for the suffering of all - hero and civilian alike. Now he just stood over the woodland, alive with birds and other critters.

Shaking his head, he turned away and slowly headed back to the Manor. He couldn't bear to look at that spot any longer; it hurt to think about what should have been, but wasn't.

Whether he accepted it or not, he had to face it.

The world he knew, the people he knew, were gone. They never existed.

He was thirteen years old, he was Robin, and the Invasion never happened.