Scarlet Justice: Identity - Young Justice Fanfiction

Message From Hell

Dick's POV

It's been a good week.

Well, good is very relative. And when I say good, I mean no one has died.

But when Jim called me in for this, I wasn't sure what my reaction should have been. It finally felt like I was starting to get a grasp over myself. My recovery was speedy and I was back on patrol at nights by myself. Zatanna was hot on the tails of a spell that would help reverse the effects of Darkseid's manipulation. The team was quiet, relaxed as possible, and recovering from the past couple missions of absolute ass kickings.

I'm telling you, things were good.

Until he called me. "You need to get over here. Now. I have a homicide that I think you need to see."

At first, my thought was, "What the hell do I have to do with a homicide?"

The GCPD could handle homicides without me or Tim or Bruce just fine. It's been a while since we've dealt with any murder M.O.'s that we recognized. But what concerned me was that Gordon didn't even tell me whether it's a pattern we've seen before. 

Normally, Gordon would recognize a specific serial killing murder pattern of any of the various psychopaths we deal with here in Gotham. If he doesn't rule out anything familiar, he looks into it himself before calling Bat Central. And I thought it was strange he was calling me for a regular murder, if murders could every be called regular.

But that was before he sent me the address.

Kristen's apartment.

I was there in minutes. I've never traveled across town that quickly before, and Jim noticed. I met him on the roof and immediately he could tell something was off, probably only confirming his suspicions. 

"One of the neighbors called this in. We have no idea yet how long the victim has been dead but there was a message left behind by the suspect," Just before I could push passed all of Jim's men, he held out his hand to stop me at the threshold. "I'm just warning you, son. This is a pretty hard one to swallow."

I stepped into the apartment and my surroundings seemed to fade away.

It's been months since I've been here. The lights were on in the kitchen. I could see all the dishes in the sink, piled up like Mal threw them there before heading to work or something. There was an old coffee pot on the counter and a slew of magazines she liked to read. I glanced down the hallway where people in GCPD gear tore apart Mal and Kristen's rooms. I flinched at the flash of a camera before turning my attention to the living room, where the balcony door was shattered and wide open, and the tv was ripped off the wall. Glass was everywhere and so was the yellow tape.

I stopped to take in the scene as Gordon pulled back the sheet, covering a body that was sprawled over the broken coffee table.

"The victim's name is-"

"Mallory," I whispered.

Gordon gave me one look before pulling the sheet back over her bruised face. I've seen much worse but this was Mal we were talking about. Her facial expression had been blank with dried blood covering one side of her face where she had been slammed down. The gut wound suggested a sword of some kind, a blade that didn't match Kristen's MO. I know she didn't do this.

But the real question was, does she even know what happened here?

I swallowed the bile coming up in my throat. "That's not the worst of it. Follow me."

My body was starting to num out, I could barely follow Jim into Kristen's room. But as soon as we made it to the foot of the bed, the image of Mal's body was long gone from my mind. "What the hell is this?"