Dick Grayson had never once, not through thick nor through thin, considered he was wasting his life. Right now, the bullet wound at his shoulder bandaged for a final time and his legs dangling from one of Wayne Towers' many gargoyles, he wonders if he had it all wrong.

Bruce told him it was time to stop. Eighteen-year-old Dick Grayson was to retire from the mantle of Robin; the end of Boy Wonder, effective immediately. Dick didn't know what Bruce wanted from him ─ a normal life? Graduating from Hudson, majoring in... God, what was he meant to major in? It wasn't like they offered courses in ass-kicking and witty commentary during said ass-kicking.

He'd given him a final night in the suit. The red and yellow and green, the colours that reminded him of his parents and the colours that were meant to remind the innocent civilians of Gotham City that there was always a light. A certain something right behind the black and blue of Batman that allowed the time for a smile or a comforting word.

He'd asked you to meet him ─ his best friend. His final act of love in Gotham City.

He was going to leave. Maybe he'd go to Blüdhaven, or continue with the Titans somehow. He wasn't sure, but the impossibly untamable void that Batman's shadow cast was not a good place for him to be. He couldn't spend any more time in Gotham without listening to Bruce.

Part of him wanted you to go with him, but he knew you had your form of love for this city. A certain romance that only Gotham could allow for, the twisted type of relationship between a birthplace that begs to die and a resident that refuses to allow it. He loved you for it, and he wouldn't take it from you.

He looked down, gloved palms planted firmly on the stone head of the mythical creature. The city gleamed beneath him ─ it went on, the crime and the life and the death, all of it. It didn't need him to happen. It certainly didn't need him to be stopped.