30 Days of Demonfire

Legacy

Returning back to school is a little bit different after the dorm fire. There's a mandatory lecture on fire safety for everyone who lives on campus and all of us who lived in the dorm that burned down have to go to a meeting. They tell us about Firefly, about the bank robbery that he was supposed to be helping, about how Robin arrested Firefly on sight. No mention of Nightstar, of course.

I'm not exactly the most popular girl at school. I never was. It's too hard, leading the kind of double life that I do and still being close to other people. My one really great friend who lived in the room next to mine had to drop out. I still text her a lot. She's doing community college, and member when she graduates from there she can come back here.

I see Damian around sometimes. He works at Wayne Tower, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays I leave at about the same time as him. I guess we're being nice to each other. We mostly nod at each other and I smile when I pass him. It's only been three weeks, but I don't see much of a reason to go out of my way to say anything to him.

Since I've been feeling kind of lonely at school, I've been working on a project. It's actually something I've talked about with my dad. I'm feeling distracted. I'm supposed to be studying for Sociology, but I'm bored of that and I close out of the notes I took on my laptop and I open up Skype. Lian lives in Star City, so we spend most of our time either texting or talking on Skype.

"Hey," she says as she answers my call. "Cute outfit."

"I'm studying," I tell her, offended. "Anyway, I have a proposal for you."

"Sorry, I'm attached," she answers, and I roll my eyes.

"Not that, dummy. The Titans thing."

She blows air out through pursed lips, deliberating. "I don't know, Mare. Who else are you think of getting roped into this?"

I lean back in my chair, lifting the first two legs off the ground, and I balance it with my flight. As I go, I tick names off my fingers. "Wyld, Menagerie, Kid Flash, Impulse, Aqualad, you, me, Darkstar, Cyberion... I don't know, maybe Zatara..."

"You know you're forgetting someone."

I raise an eyebrow at her and I run through the list of names again. "Helena's still too young for that kind of thing."

"Noooo," Lian sings, and I can tell that she's amused. "Robin."

With a loud clack the two legs of the chair slam back on the ground and I look down at them, mentally apologizing to the people who live below me. "Not Robin."

"It's the Teen Titans," she sighs. "There has to be a Robin."

"There does not. There was no Robin when Wonder Girl ran the show."

"Who's gonna lead then. You?"

"Hellllll no. I thought you'd want to do it."

Lian throws up both hands. "If you want me to lead then I'm out."

"Cerdian? Robbie?" I say desperately, and Lian just shakes her head.

"What's your deal with Damian, anyway? I thought you were playing nice."

Lian knows about the dorm fire, and she knows that I was there rescuing Alfred when Robin was beating up Firefly, and she knows that I moved into Damian's apartment building. She doesn't know that I'm living across from him. I'll put it this way: I never said that I wasn't living across from him.

Really, I guess having Damian on the team wouldn't be a bad thing. I just don't want to have to ask him to join.

"Okay, fine. Robin's on the team, but you ask."