It's nights like these that I remember and hate myself for wanting to go back. Bloodhaven is my home now, my city like Gotham is his... and no amount of snow or bile frost clinging in incicles to the rooftops, street-sludge frozen into gutters, or stars like glacial daggers grinning coldly from the deep black nothing of the sky -- nothing will make me return to the Cave, hoping to be wrapped up in a warm familiar embrace.

We're not like that anymore, and as much as the season makes me wish we were... I'm Nightwing now, and I don't need the Batman; that's what I tell myself, at least, when the hours get thin and the petty villiany stacks up against me, when there's no one to stitch the bullet-wounds or understand the nightmares...

I know if I was there, just up and turned up unannounced, he wouldn't ask, would assume I'd finally cashed in my chips despite the stubborness he himself had taught me. He'd kiss me -- like I belong to him, like I did... and I'd end up naked beneath him, screaming, crying, begging for the love of God, his name falling past my lips like every time since the first: Batman... Bruce... And I'd be sick in the pit of my soul knowing I'd proven him right because I really wasn't strong enough, I didn't have what it took -- and all the things I know he feels but hasn't ever said.

It's nights like these when the snow sticks to my suit so much I look like part of the architecture, crouched down on the rooftop like just another gargoyle, hideous to passer-bys -- a threat of terror to wrong-doers with a little bit of reputation just beginning to settle in. In Bloodhaven, they know my name, and I'm teaching them to fear the night -- even if I can't say I am the night like he does. In some ways, we have to be different, even if I can't help thinking how alike we are, my image in a glacial puddle hard-lined and broody.

May be it would do good to go and see him... not like going back, just stopping in: Dick Grayson and Bruce Wayne, like old times, catching up that's all. Surely the city would be safe for that little while, days perhaps, not even into one night if he decided to get unreasonable; I could read his tells even better than he could. May be it would make the winter seem less chill to be able to have coffee and cake with Alfred again, check up on Barbara even... Yeah, nights like these were made for decisions.