Vigilante Justice - A Young Justice Fanfiction

Chapter 15: A Dire Development

'Follow me' turned out to be a difficult order to obey.

With the Young Justice team sporting various bruises and Dick's accursed limping, they were extremely slow going.

He could tell Addams was getting progressively more annoyed with them, the man's face that familiar mottled violet. Dick was tempted to go at a snail's pace, just to spite him.

He and Addams hadn't exactly started out as enemies, but they also hadn't been friends. Then again, 'friends' weren't exactly something a ward of the great Bruce Wayne could have.

Not real friends, anyhow.

'Richard Grayson' had plenty of people he knew. People he tolerated. A few kids his age who were also forced to attend all the elite's mind-numbing galas, sipping at champagne they weren't legally allowed to drink.

He'd left them behind when he graduated from Gotham Academy, all personal ties with any getting immediately severed.

Not necessarily by choice. But also...yes, completely by choice.

So when Dick had first arrived at the BPD training facility, he had no intention of making friends. That, and he'd just gone through his first true fallout with Bruce. A fallout both of them had known there was no coming back from.

The things that had been shouted at each other across one of Gotham's windswept rooftops, the actions the oldest Wayne had taken...

He fingered his cheek absently as they walked towards the scene of the crime, remembering the weighted bruise that had rested on his skin for weeks afterwards. It'd been finger shaped and stung more than any blow he'd ever received.

There was just no coming back from that. Not in Dick's books.

Needless to say, the soon-to-be-detective hadn't been in the best headspace when he'd showed up for his first day of training. It hadn't helped that the rest of his fellow trainees were already halfway through their semester, having already bonded over their horrible coaches and sketchy cafeteria food.

Training had honestly been a blur to Dick, as things tended to be when there was no one around to pull him out of his head.

Usually that task would be delegated—when Bruce was busy (which he often was)—to Alfred, who would call upon the late-night magic of milk, cookies, and good conversation.

But there'd been no British butler in his then-newfound apartment, only some peeling paint and a saggy bottomed couch.

So Dick and his one-track mind had thrown themselves into his newfound career, working his way to the top of his class, to the top of the academy; not caring enough to sugar-coat his rapid ascension.

And then he'd graduated, arriving one overcast Bludhaven morning to Commissioner Griffin's precinct. She'd immediately yanked him out of his hazy thoughts and put him to work, earning his loyalty and respect in the process.

His rise to the top certainly hadn't earned him any friends, and, at the time, Dick hadn't even thought he wanted them. But, as he allowed Artemis to carry him down the darkened hall....the team pressing up against them on either side....

He thought, perhaps, he might've.

-----

Addams was only the first example of many who believed he'd paid his way to the top, and Dick refused to stoop low enough to correct him.

The detective had learned from experience that denying rumours didn't put them down. Interacting only inflamed the media, gave them the ammunition they needed to carry the story even further.