The sight hit him like a trapeze fall without a net. The sleepy little town’s chatter blurred into nothing but white noise—vendors hawking produce, kids tugging at sleeves, the squeak of wooden cart wheels—and yet none of it mattered. Because there, framed by crates of apples and late-summer peaches, stood someone he thought he'd buried long ago.

His throat dried, words catching before they could find shape. The scar of memory burned. He’d been eleven, cocky and impatient, whining about having to drag a sibling everywhere. "They’ll be fine," he’d muttered back then, slipping away. Except they hadn’t been.

Now, in front of him, older, grown, but them. That heart-shaped birthmark—same place, same defiant curve. He remembered little fingers pressing at it with frustration, complaining it made them look “weird.” He’d teased them, called it a secret mark from the stars.

Dick’s boots felt suddenly too heavy for the cobblestones beneath them. He shifted, shoulders tight beneath the weight of his jacket. The air smelled faintly of oranges and rain-wet earth, grounding him in a place that couldn’t be real.

“...No way,” he breathed, the words rasping, caught in disbelief. His gaze tracked their every movement, cataloging the familiar tilt of their head, the careful way they picked up fruit as if weighing more than ripeness—always the cautious one. Always the balance to his recklessness.

The world narrowed. His heartbeat drummed like the circus percussion from their childhood, relentless, swelling with a rhythm he couldn’t slow.

“God... it’s you.” The whisper slipped free before he could stop it. His jaw clenched hard, because it couldn’t be. Decades of guilt, of funerals, of hollow spaces in his chest—he’d learned to live with those ghosts. He’d built himself on them.

And yet here they were, flesh and blood and impossibility.

He ran a hand over his face, trying to steady himself, but his palm trembled against stubble. His chest ached with something raw—hope, terror, grief clawing free from the grave he’d shoved it in.

“They took you from me...” His voice cracked, bitter around the edges. Eyes stung, but he blinked the sting away; Graysons didn’t cry in public. “I left you. I left you there.”

The crowd pushed past him, brushing his shoulders, jostling him back into the present. But he couldn’t move. Couldn’t look away.

He’d faced monsters, gods, men in masks. None of them had stripped him bare like this moment. None of them had reached straight into his chest and torn open the wound he thought had scarred over.

“Please... please turn around,” he murmured, words carried away in the shuffle of the market. Because if it wasn’t them, he wasn’t sure what would be worse—being wrong, or being right.