sᴛᴀɪʀᴡᴀʏ ᴛᴏ ʜᴇᴀᴠᴇɴ ━ ᴊᴀꜱᴏɴ ᴛᴏᴅᴅ

² ★ ℭ𝔥𝔞𝔭𝔱𝔢𝔯 𝔱𝔥𝔦𝔯𝔱𝔢𝔢𝔫 ★

ROY HARPER HAD FAILED HIS YOUNGEST SISTER WHEN SHE WAS TEN YEARS OLD.

In his own opinion, that is. There wasn't a single person who blamed him for DJ's little stomach getting slashed open in her first encounter with Deathstroke. No one other than himself, but he still refused to ever let himself forget the sound of her screams in his ears. When he looked down at his little sister and watched her cry and scream in pain, when his baby sister was dying in his arms while he looked on helplessly, he made a promise. He would always protect her. No matter the cost, no matter what he had to do. She came before everything and anything.

Again, he had failed her miserably. Laughably. He chose poison over her too many times to count. He was single handedly responsible for plunging her into a fit of depression and leaving her to wonder what she did wrong while he chose to ruin his life rather than to put the needle down and get help. He hated himself for it everytime he sobered up after a high, thinking to the few weeks after Garth died and DJ would sit to herself with a sad look on her face. He wondered what she would do if he didn't come down from a high like how you're supposed to. If the next funeral his sister would attend would be his own.

He only ever got so far into that train of thought before he was so overcome with self-hatred that he couldn't handle it. Thinking of DJ in all black, sobbing over his grave and asking the headstone why he didn't come back to her always sent him over the edge. It was some miracle, a stroke of God's mercy, that he was able to get clean. It still pained him every day, of course. The thought of the complete release that his drug of choice would bring him. The inviting call of the temporary cease of his poisonous feelings.

There was one thing that kept him away from it. The thought of staying clean for his sister was keeping him from jumping off the edge of sobriety and back into the darkness. Getting back on track with his eight-year-old promise he had made in that disgusting warehouse to his sister, being the one she ran to when she had nightmares again. It was like a lifeline he grasped everytime the tempting thought of drugs entered his mind.

So when she called him, begging for his help against an enemy that had tore through her home and stolen her friends, there wasn't a second thought that went through his mind when he told her he'd be there. He was on his bike and racing towards San Francisco in record time, not stopping for even gas on the way there.

DJ met him outside the Tower when he pulled to a stop at the front. She stood up from the curb she was sitting on, dusting off the back of her jeans.

"You're just sitting out here in the dark like a sitting duck?" Was the first thing he said to his sister, pulling his red helmet from his head and revealing his flaming red hair.

DJ rolled her eyes as she waited for him to park his bike. "Sorry, m-mom-mom." She stuttered, making her brother look at her sympathetically.

He had heard the way she was forced to talk over the phone, but there was something different about in person. Like matching a face to a voice. He was just surprised that the voice he had listened to for fourteen years had changed so drastically and from such harsh causes.