InsaneJournal

Who:Dick and Ruby
What:Working things out.
When:Back dated a day or so after the disappearance act he pulled.
Where:A coffee place.
Warnings: none
STATUS: Complete.


He knew he’d done it again. The obsessing thing. He knew Ruby wasn’t the only one annoyed with him currently, but she was the one he worried about most. He knew he had to make things right with her, try to explain the sudden paranoia and disappearance. He’d had a suspicion since that weird kid had shown up and started telling him he could feel how he felt. Dick had instantly gone into work mode, checking out every local traveling circus and its ring masters as well as trying to find his own. His own had vanished with Dark and Dick had been prepared to chase him to the ends of the Earth. Fortunately or unfortunately he wasn’t so sure which, the Bruce at the time had damn near drugged him not to while Dark made his cross country escape.

That was the only thing Dick could think of when Gershom showed. The kid reminded him so much of Dark, had the same creepy vibe Dark did. Dick had to work, he had to make sure there was no possible way that this kid was Dark. That his circus was not near Kansas. He wouldn’t risk the teams of heroes again, even Clint after everything that’d happened. Clint had nearly gone with him and it all weighed heavily on his shoulders. Clark and his had been effected, the Avenger and Marvel types, the Jedi, and it had been his team to stop it. He had to know that Dark was gone for good so he searched worldwide for any red flags and found nothing. No sign of his family circus or Dark’s.

It was enough to drive him out of his mind. Haley’s Circus made him who he was. He had to find it at the very least. He couldn’t even do that. If Dark came back to town somehow everyone would fall victim again. He didn’t think he could fool him twice.

Sitting at a booth with a coffee and a hot chocolate for Ruby he waited, looking out the window a anxiously as the world passed by.

Perhaps it was just the stress of everything going on in the house with Snow, not knowing what to even say and not knowing if her friend meant it when she said she wanted to fix things. Perhaps it was the fact that she suddenly heard from Dick after days on the day of the full moon and he hadn’t seemed to think anything of his disappearance act. Perhaps it was a lot of things, but the fact remained, Ruby was upset. The entire month had seemingly been one drama after the other and she was always the one trying to talk sense into people, be the stable one and voice of reason. The one who asked the questions and dealt with the fights.

Either way, by Tuesday morning, she wasn’t any less upset, but she was at least calmer. So that had to count for something. Because really, the stress was ridiculous. Ruby, Red, no matter what world she’d been in, what memories she had, she never liked stress. She liked to deal with things straight on. And disappearing boyfriend types? Didn’t help. Especially with her past and especially with the nature of the Seal.

Walking into the Starbucks, it didn’t take long for Ruby to spot Dick and she moved over to the booth, sitting across from him.

“Hey.”
Stressed or not, she’d at least try to keep her temper in check and not be as curt as she had been the night before on the boards.

He knew he had issues when it came to certain traits. Those had been made rather clear to him as of late, so he would attempt explaining them as best he could. “Hey.” He offered her a faint smile, though it was a little forced. “So..scale of one to ten on how badly I’ve messed this up?” He tried for humor but he really wasn’t feeling it so instead he just toyed with his coffee awkwardly.

“I know I’ve been kinda weird.” He started, this really wasn’t a thing he wanted to explain. Dark was still a sore spot. So many people still hurt from it. There was no try to prevent, there was only a do it. So he just took a breath and fidgeted slightly. “It’s that kid that showed up. The way he went on reminded me of someone that recently or so I thought, was gone.” How to explain without sounding like a paranoid weirdo” 101. Failure. Total and complete failure, the kid so far was just a weird kid. He’d posed no threat for Dick to go off at all except eerie feelings. If anyone asked for evidence he’d be up the river without a paddle.

“Anyway. I told you I grew up at a circus right?”

When asked the question on how much he had messed up, Ruby pursed her lips then shrugged.

“I’d say eight given the nature of this place.”

Usual words and a disappearing act maybe wouldn’t warrant the amount of stress it did in Lawrence. But Lawrence wasn’t usual. Lawrence was full of dangers no one could predict. People disappearing without warning and leaving those that cared behind with no closure. Even with Peter, there was closure. Very violent and messy closure that sometimes haunted Ruby in terms of it coming to something like that again, but she at least knew what had happened even if she hadn’t wanted to. People being kidnapped by the Seal? Not so much. Especially with the paranoid role call right before said disappearance.

Not to mention Ruby’s dead boyfriend issues. Thus while it may be overreacting in most places, for Lawrence and with Ruby’s past, maybe not so much.

The statement of acting weird was met with a brow quirk as she sipped the hot chocolate he had gotten her. Though the added reasoning of it being over a kid? Okay. Yeah. Definitely wasn’t really reassuring Ruby at the moment. Well, yes, the kid was sort of creepy in the way he talked but how did that really tie into Dick going all missing for days?

“Okay, then...”

She could go with it. She was a fairytale character, and the villain of her own ‘story’ on top of it. But that was Red. Ruby? Ruby was just a waitress learning to run a bed and breakfast who was trying to find herself while pretending to be completely confident and making stupid mistakes in the process. At least with guys. And she really didn’t want that to be the case yet again. But she was going to hear him out. Because Lawrence sort of rewrote all rules no matter how strange they might seem.

“Yeah, you mentioned that. Why?”

Between messing up and then being freaked out by a kid, how did his growing up in a circus tie into anything?

He had to try to keep everything in check. Dark still got to him to this day even when explaining what’d happened. “Just before Summer we were granted wishes. I wished my family circus here. Then this guy who called himself Mr. Dark rolled into town with his traveling carnival. He approached me about wanting to sign with Haly’s Circus.” Picking up his coffee and drinking idly he winced as it burned his tongue. Figured. Even the coffee didn’t like him much at the moment. Setting the drink down he leaned back uncomfortably. “Mr. Dark’s carnival wasn’t an ordinary carnival. He hurt a lot of people, including the team I lead into taking him down. Clark, Allana, the list goes on.” If there was one thing he couldn’t stand it was people being hurt and unable to help. He’d been unable to take him down faster and the results were horrible.

“I had to use my family circus in the process. That’s gone too. The last thing I really had in connection to my parents. It wasn’t under magical protection, only I was when it happened.” He chewed at his lip awkwardly and shifted some. Maybe a public forum wasn’t such a good place for this chat but he really didn’t feel like being at home was much better. It’d suddenly felt terribly claustrophobic when that kid showed up.

“That kid reminded me of him. Turned on every single mental red flag, but I looked for his carnival, my circus, I found nothing. I had to look though, I couldn’t just let him hurt anyone again. I won’t. I brought that team together, a team that hated eachother from the start and that happened.” It weighed heavily on him still. As much as he tried to play the part of the one who had things under control, he only did out of paranoia and loss of sleep and a single thread of sanity.

“I should have said something. I just..” He looked up at her with worried eyes. “I’ve got to be ready. I won’t let him take you, or Lois, no one again.”

Okay and the circus thing was beginning to make more sense. So while Dick spoke, Ruby sipped her hot chocolate in thought. The name Mr. Dark sounded vaguely familiar but it hadn’t been one of her saved filters so she wasn’t really certain on that. Not to mention the whole first full moon thing. Needless to say, Ruby had been distracted at the time between settling into this place and dealing with the guilt from attacking people and thinking one person had died because of her.

This wasn’t something that was easy to handle, and Ruby could see that. Between family circus being used in an attempt to get rid of someone, people being hurt, everything, it made sense. But that didn’t make randomly disappearing okay. That didn’t make the accidental as it was worry okay. And Ruby was used to being the voice of reason, more so here and especially since getting her memories back of her true life, but she also acknowledged her life in Storybrooke. Like it or not, they were both. Or in her case, all three.

“I get needing to be prepared... I do.” Because she had at least three fail safes for should she need them to keep from hurting people, one of which was telling Jason he could kill her if she ever did lose control of the wolf and had been in a position to stop it.

“And the only reason I’m as upset as I am, and I imagine the other people were who commented, is the fact that people being unreachable for days can mean they were sent back and I’m sorry, but I have bad luck in that and so it’s more upsetting than maybe it should be or would be elsewhere.”

Sighing, Ruby looked out the window for a moment, trying to wrap her mind around what she was told. Evil carnival that she had plans on looking more information up on once she was back at the house. Shaking her head, the brunette looked back to Dick.

“But... people care about you here, I care about you and that’s terrifying enough as it is without disappearing acts, as well intentioned as they are. Because wanting to be prepared because something could be on the horizon? Definitely a good reason to want to check in on people and look for clues. But sometimes we just have to take things as they happen no matter how much we want to prepare. And if this kid is a threat, well, we’ll figure it out. But you also shouldn’t feel the need to do it all on your own. No one should.”


“That’s still taking some getting used to.” He admitted and looked down at his cup. Talking about the past wasn’t something that was easy to do, but growing up he was incredibly lonely. Bruce had taken him in and then decided only to pay attention to him when it was convenient or when work needed to be done. When Dick needed anyone to rely on he was nowhere in sight and those issues still showed to the day. The only person he’d ever really trusted fully until he was nearly eighteen was Alfred, and the butler of course was not in Kansas.

He was still working on the trust thing with others, still trying to realize that he wasn’t alone. Emma was helping by inviting him in, they all hadn’t left. He had. Maybe a part of him worried it was still too good to be true to have people to rely on that actually wanted him around. His brows furrowed as he listened and he fidgeted with his cup. “Sometimes I could disappear for days and nobody would even notice.” It came from having no one to let in. From putting up walls and keeping people out. Leading a double life brought an extra fear of people close to him getting hurt because of his extra curriculars.

“No place has really felt like home after I lost Bludhaven until now..” He trailed off and gave her a faint smile though it was strained. “I don’t want to lose it.” For any reason, whether it was apocalypse related or Dark, or his own paranoia. “Together then.” More of a promise than anything, at least he’d try.

“Tell me about it.” Goodness knew that this was new to Ruby. For all of her flirtations, she never had a steady or stable relationship of any sort that wasn’t her friendship with Ashley or declaring Graham her brother and giving him no say in the matter so that he just had to accept it. Snow back home though here she was trying to make sense of where they stood. Emma and Henry were family now. This sort of relationship, though? No. There were mindless flings and broken hearts in Storybrooke. Peter which was, well, a very large part of her paranoia in terms of relationships, seeing Billy or Gus be killed because of being interested in her...

She worried about losing this but she fought for it because everyone said this was for second chances and everyone around her found someone or had someone. And she did fear what would happen if something happened, if somehow she lost control of the wolf on a full moon but she also knew she couldn’t let that determine everything. Not now.

Knowing that Dick didn’t really recall any place being home beyond Bludhaven until now spoke to Red, always on the run with Snow, trying to fight for their land. While for Ruby, she’d only known Storybrooke. Always dreamt of getting out but Storybrooke was home and now Lawrence was home. With people from home and new friends.

Smiling faintly, Ruby reached over and took Dick’s hand squeezing it.

“Together.”

Because in some ways, they both had things to learn and grow accustomed to, grow used to. But it seemed more a thing they could and probably should learn together given this was new for both of them.

Dick wasn’t even going to touch on his love life back home, that hadn’t helped in his paranoia either honestly. This relationship with Ruby, whatever it was actually was the most sane he’d been in. What did that even say about him? No more analyzing. Analyzing was what got him as paranoid as he was. He was trying not to let his paranoia spike again. That lead to rooftop searches and angry girlfriends. Things he wasn’t trying for, or used to but had happened as a result.

“I tried to have a life in Bludhaven once. That city literally tore itself apart and I wasn’t there to save it. I won’t let the same thing happen here.” He insisted, and that was a lot of the reason he fought. People had lives and families even. He wasn’t about to see those melted into nothing. They all deserved to have a life, and hell maybe even he did again. It’d been so long since he’d tried that he was beginning to forget who Dick Grayson even was outside of Nightwing.

When she took his hand he rubbed his thumb against hers and nodded. “Want to get out of here? Go for a ride maybe?” He looked outside and at the sky, it was dark but that had never stopped him from going for a drive before.

The comment about not letting it happen here was both touching and worrisome. Mostly because she could tell he carried guilt on trying to have a life in Bludhaven and then it being attacked and him unable to help. To save it. If there was something Ruby was good at spotting, it was guilt over the consequences of one’s actions that they thought they could have stopped otherwise. The feeling she had for those she had hurt as the wolf. So instead she merely nodded.

“So long as you don’t let it control you and thus shut everyone out. Because I know there are a handful of us who will fight you on that if you even try.”

Because Ruby had no qualms calling people on those situations. Would fight them and fight with them. It was who she was. Every day she was finding herself more in Lawrence as she found the balance between Ruby and Red. And this was part of it.

At the suggestion of a ride though, the brunette nodded.

“A ride sounds great.”


There were many things he regretted in his career as Nightwing, but none more so then Bludhaven. So many lives lost and ruined because he’d been away, because he had put other responsibilities over his own home. So many people he cared for whipped out because that city was corrupt to the core. He had done his fair share of things as Dick Grayson as well that he wasn’t proud of but this with Ruby wasn’t one of those. He was trying to let her in. Trying to trust her. Emma had brought him into their family, if he couldn’t then who was he?

He really didn’t’ want the answer to that so he left the rest of his coffee, it was just a simple black. Nothing special. He never ordered special coffee and kept ahold of her hand as if it were the last thing that reminded him of who Dick Grayson was. That he existed and had a purpose as well as Nightwing.

Leaving behind the coffee shop he lead her toward the motorcycle and handed her the spare hemet. Turning the keys into the ignition he left the paranoia behind as well as temporarily Kansas and pushed forward.