Let's Make A Statement

Neither Did I

From the second Danny woke up the next day he was thinking about what had happened last night. It wasn't just the fact that there was some murderous entity apparently running around Gotham, it was the way Robin stared at him. It confused him, he didn't actually know who he was, as far as he knew, so why didn't he try to stop him?

It was his job to stop criminals and they knew he broke into the government facility, now they thought he'd killed someone. But he hadn't, and that looped back around to the fact that something killed that guy in what must have been less then half a minute. It even had time to run off before he could get there, if those heroes hadn't gotten in the way he may have caught up.

Toxin shifted a little, 'I still do not like this, we need to find whoever killed that man.'

"We will, if they're smart they'll wait until it's dark and that's when we'll be out too, we just have to act normal and wait."

'And for you normal is being angry at everything.'

"Hey." They both knew he didn't take any offense to that, he knew it was true but Danny knew Toxin was joking which he didn't think he'd ever done before. Danny went downstairs and ate breakfast, since he was usually quiet none of them asked about it.

He was still trying to figure out what might be going on, but he was also cursing his luck because of this situation. Now he had to deal with the government, the heroes, and a very efficient murderer which was not what he wanted. To make it worse he had to hide all of this from the people at school, the foster family, and make sure not to draw more attention to himself.

Not just for his sake but also for Toxin, and the others could get hurt whether he told them about all of this or not. He finished eating and they soon went to school, he barely paid attention to the people talking about prom. He didn't glance at the decorations either, until he saw them on his locker and he tore them off and threw them on the floor.

He opened his locker and Richard spoke next to him, "You know someone had to take the time to put those up right?"

"I don't care, I don't want them on my locker."

Richard raised an eyebrow, "Okay, usually you're just mad but today you're, I don't know, really serious."

Danny closed his locker, "Do you want me to get pissed off?"

"No."

"Then stop bothering me about it."

He started walking to class and Richard sighed before catching up, "Is something bothering you?"

"Did you not hear what I just said?"

"I did, that's why I'm asking if something is bothering you."

Danny didn't look happy, "Nothing that's your business."

"But you say that about everything when it comes to you."

"Exactly."

They walked into class and the two sat down, Richard looked at him, "Look if something is bothering you then you can tell me. I might not be able to help but maybe talking about it will make you feel better."

Danny glared at him, "In case you haven't noticed I don't talk about anything with people, there's no point."

"Yeah, I've noticed that you don't do that, but is it because you don't want to or you just don't trust us?"

"Both."

"Why, we just want to help you."

"Yeah, I've heard that one before, it never worked out." Richard was silent and Danny hated himself yet again, "You want me to talk, fine, I'll admit that I've got issues but I have them for a reason. Sure, you've never actually tried to hurt me, but I don't exactly know much about you and everything you learned about me was from my file."

Richard stared at him, Danny looked away and it was silent, until Richard spoke again, "I used to be part of the circus." Danny paused, "When I was eight my parents were killed and Bruce took me in, eventually their killer got caught by Batman. I used to hate going to school because people made fun of me for being from the circus, and for Bruce taking care of me."

"It got better when I became friends with Barbara, then Artemis, and Izzy and Lucas helped too." Richard went quiet for a few seconds, "I didn't want to get close to other people for a while, it's not easy."

Danny quietly sighed, "Yeah, I know."

Richard smiled a little, "You're really not as bad as you make people think you are, that's why we want to get to know you, if you'll let us."

Danny was silent for a few seconds, "I'm not making any promises."

"You don't have to, we can wait."

Danny rubbed his eyes, "You're one of the weirdest people I've ever met."

Richard smiled, then the minute bell rang and when class finally started Toxin spoke, 'I did not expect you to actually tell him anything.'

Danny wrote his response, 'Neither did I.'

Danny thought for the rest of class, there were specific areas of the city he knew they should check. This would be more complicated if the heroes were still looking for him and he was guessing they were. They needed to be careful, if the heroes thought they were murderers now they'd put more effort into finding them.

He made it through all his morning classes and it was finally lunch, he'd been talking to Toxin most of the morning on what to do to find their mystery killer. As he was sitting at the table he heard Richard talking to Barbara and Artemis, "I'm telling you something isn't right about this."

Artemis spoke, "The guy killed someone, you saw him with the body."

"Yeah, the body, without any blood on him when the body was missing an arm, and their head."

Barbara spoke, "That doesn't mean he didn't do it."

"But why would he stop the robber and knock him out just to kill him on a rooftop, it doesn't make sense."

Artemis spoke, "Maybe he didn't want witnesses."

"Then why stop the robber instead of waiting for him to run off and take the risk, no one would have seen him that way. I saw the guy, that wasn't the reaction of someone that just got caught, it was like he was trying to figure out what happened."

Barbara looked at him, "Then what do you think happened?"

"I don't know, maybe someone killed the robber after he stopped him, maybe someone set him up."

The three stopped talking because they were close to the table now but that made Danny pause, what if it was a set up? Maybe someone was trying to set them up, not a lot of people knew about him or Toxin but it wasn't impossible. Now they really needed to figure out what was going on, if this was part of some plan they needed to stop it, and soon.