ɢʜᴏꜱᴛꜱ | ᴅ. ɢʀᴀʏꜱᴏɴ

chapter 3

03. ghost

•—✽—✽—✽—•

the next morning

DICK HAD GONE TO SEE WHAT HAPPENED after his curiosity got the best of him. He had heard about the murder that took place in the blown-up warehouse and wanted to go check it out for himself. Crime scene investigators had been all over the place taking pictures and setting up evidence markers when he arrived.

He had gone over to the body to take a closer look at whatever was left. The body had still been intact even after the explosion; it had just been severely burned and harder to identify. There were gashes along the man's stomach as well as a deep one across his throat which left a puddle of blood on the floor.

What stood out to Dick the most were the knives that were still stuck in the body. He had seen them a couple of times in the past. After taking a moment to remember, his face hardened as he realized who had committed the crime.

Dick watched as the masked woman kicked the man in the face, his body hitting the ground hard after it had given out from being previously choked and punched repeatedly. Her shoes echoed in the alleyway as she moved closer to the beaten-up man who lay helplessly on the ground.

He noticed her staring at the man for a moment before she stood back up normally and jabbed him in the throat with her foot. She pushed and twisted until a crack was heard. Dick, who had been disguised as Robin, swallowed thickly as he took notice of how she went back to each body and pulled out the knives she had thrown at them before he had arrived.

"You are a long way away from Gotham, Robin," she said as she turned over her shoulder to meet his gaze, the smallest smirk turning up at the corner of her lips; nevertheless, fading as quickly as it had appeared.

After collecting the four weapons, she wiped off the blood before sheathing them to her thigh as she approached him. Realizing that he had spent more time staring at her than coming up with a response, he cleared his throat before speaking. "I guess I needed a change from things."

She merely nodded, stopping once they were shoulder to shoulder. Once their eyes locked onto each other's—more like they both stared at the white that covered the holes of their mask—his breath hitched in the back of his throat.

"Well, I do work alone, but I wouldn't mind if you dropped by," His eyes shifted to the last knife that she had flipped in her hands before adding it to the set around her legs as her body became invisible

Shaking his head, Dick sighed as he muttered the words, "Goddamn Ghost." He had learned her name after they had partnered up again and he had grown curious as to what she called herself. She never revealed to him her identity and he hadn't either.

"What do you think happened?" An officer asked as he walked up to Dick.

"I have no idea."

•——a day later——•

"You look..." Dick began as he watched Paige sit down at her desk after not seeing her for a day. The bags under her eyes were dark enough to be mistaken for a black eye if you didn't look closely. Her hair was out of place and she, overall, looked like one huge mess.

Her gaze shot towards him in annoyance. "Finish that sentence and I will slit your throat with a pencil." He put his hands up defensively before getting out of his chair. When he returned he had one cup of coffee in each hand.

She thanked him for the drink as he placed it down in front of her. "So..." Paige sighed looking around with a bored look on her face. "What did I miss?"

"There's a Robin situation apparently and some guy's body was found not too long ago in a burnt-down warehouse. Both of those things are unrelated."

"Any signs pointing as to what happened?" She asked, curiosity spiking in her tone. He shook his head as he shrugged.

"I went to check it out. All they found were knives that were obviously used but had no fingerprints or anything on them."

Her eyebrows furrowed at the thought of any traces being left behind that she hadn't thought about, but quickly remembered that it was physically impossible to find a single piece of her DNA anywhere in or outside of that warehouse. Her powers wouldn't allow it. Any physical piece of her DNA that lay around would just turn to dust. She was untraceable. Even if she had somehow been captured by a surveillance camera nearby they wouldn't know it was her since she had made herself invisible while she was outside of the building.

Blinking a couple of times to snap her out of her thoughts, she asked, "What do you think happened?"

"I'm honestly not sure but whoever did that had to have been extremely pissed off," Dick suggested. The signs of aggression were all over the place; it was pretty obvious to anyone that whoever did that wasn't all sunshine and rainbows.

"What do you mean?"

"The guy was slaughtered to death and on top of that blown up. That seems like overkill to me."

She shrugged as she thought about it. Maybe she had gone overboard but at that moment her mind was focused on bringing as much pain and suffering to him as he had brought to her. And in the end, it didn't help. At the end of the day, her mother was still missing and she was still a vigilante with an insanely skewed moral compass that was put out for display every time she put the mask on.

The entire day Paige had been away from the department, she had made the fifth stool in the bar across from her apartment her best friend. She had gone to do what every sad piece of shit that had given up hope in their life did: she had gone to drown her sorrows away in cheap beer that tastes like piss water more than anything.

When she wasn't there, she was locked up in her bedroom looking at old pictures of her and her mom from when Paige was a child. The pictures showed the sweet innocent little girl who had turned into something she would have feared years ago.

Her thoughts were interrupted by someone's throat clearing. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"I'm fine, Dick. For real this time." His eyes were full of concern as he tried to get through to her. Nodding, he decided not to pry into her life and let the whole thing finally go.