"D'you ever wonder why you're here?"

They were on the back porch, stargazing. Dee had been drinking, too, because that was what he did every night, only tonight was special because he'd brought out the box of expensive cigars as well. With his feet up on the battered fiberglass table and a cigar clamped firmly between his teeth, wearing his favorite tattered bathrobe, Dee was the picture of a sleazy business exec who'd just finished screwing his secretary.

Clearly tonight was a special occasion, indeed. Tristan hated special occasions; they usually involved some sort of paradigm shift. "Are we talking "here" in the cosmic sense, or "here" in the backyard sense?" He wouldn't have been surprised if Dee had an answer to the former, since the man hadn't gotten any less strange since that night in the Quik Check.

"Backyard and not in juvie or worse. Because, you know, between my arm and my wallet and the gun you've got a couple of felonies, at least. And you dropped the gun, which was stupid of you; that took us a while to clean up."

Tristan didn't react, though ice tricked down his spine. "They'd have tried me as an adult for the gun," he said quietly. And he wouldn't have survived it, wouldn't have wanted to survive losing Carly and Jim. He did wonder, sometimes, what his manic depressive socialite guardian was thinking when he ordered Tristan to pick up the phone in the hospital and dial a number that shouldn't have worked.

His life had been simpler, then. Not much simpler, but things had made a hell of a lot more sense, before. Now he spent most of his time walking on eggshells, but he'd been doing that his entire life.

Dee leaned back in his chair and blew a smoke ring at the stars, keeping his regulation three foot distance between them. Tristan had tested that in the past, inching closer at random intervals. Dee would twitch and move away without even realizing it most of the time. He did the same with Carly, and managed to avoid even looking at Jim most of the time. Tristan stood and removed the brandy snifter from Dee's hand, noting the way every muscle in the older man's body tensed with his approach.

"What the hell are you afraid of?"

Dee smiled thinly, without humor and without turning to look at Tristan. "Squirrels."

"Don't be an asshole."

"I used to kill them for fun, just to make a mess of things. They're so small, but if you do things right, you get blood everywhere. There is no power trip greater than that caused by the senseless torture of small, helpless animals." He blew another smoke ring and gestured expansively with the cigar. The smoke twisted itself into a heart, and snapped in two. "That was years ago, though, and the squirrels came after a few other not-so-random acts of violence. I figured, it was better to be cutting up rodents than myself, right? At least the squirrels stay dead when you kill them. I've always had a hard time with that."

The rest of the world went very, very still. Tristan watched Dee unbutton the cuffs of his sleeves and begin to roll them up, slowly.

"Did a few years in jail, but I don't remember them. Left with a few more scars than I went in with, but that happens all the time. Went home, saw what little was left of my family die and moved on. Ended up in a psych ward on and off, and rehab, but when I couldn't get drugs I'd just find new and creative ways to set myself on fire."

The scars ran from his wrists to his elbows in crisscrossing ropes of white and red. The burn scars started where the knife and needle scars ended, running up to disappear beneath his shirt.

Tristan realized his hands were shaking, and he put the glass down on the table. "Why-"

"They're not all self inflicted, don't worry. Most of the older ones aren't, anyway, and the newest ones aren't either. Only a few of them were ever life threatening- but then, not much is life threatening, to me." He retrieved the brandy snifter and swirled the dark amber liquid absently. "Do you want to know what I'm afraid of, or do you want to know why you're here?"

Tristan closed his eyes, and saw the image of his brother, smiling and alive, burned onto his eyelids. His throat hurt. "I want to be able to trust you."

He sighed, softly, and tilted his head back to stare straight up at the sky. "You're a good kid, Tristan. You didn't deserve half the shit that happened to you, but then, neither did I. We're both lucky someone believes in second chances." Dee stood slowly, unfolding himself from the chair like a long legged bird, and paused in the doorway. "I'm leaving tomorrow on business- don't know how long it'll take. More than a week and less than a year, but you guys can take care of yourselves."

Then he was gone in a swirl of cigar smoke. Tristan resisted the urge to break something and viciously stubbed out his cigarette on the door frame.

There was a manila envelope on the kitchen table with his name on it, and no trace of Dee anywhere. The evelope was stuffed nearly to bursting; the first thing Tristan found were his school and medical records. Then there was a stack of college applications- all for top tier schools and universities. There was a post-it note stuck to the Princeton application: "You get four years to act like a normal delinquent. Use them well."

Passport, birth certificate, social security card...his entire life was in that envelope. He flipped through the papers until he came to the very bottom. There, covered in official looking seals and signatures were papers placing him under the legal guardianship of one D. Wexford. There were similar papers for Carly and Jim, and another post-it note.

"Sometimes you don't understand why you do something, but you know that it's right. Sorry it took so long; we're not always above the law."

Tristan set the legal papers aside and began carefully replacing the contents of the envelope with remarkably steady hands. It was late. Too late, really, and he still didn't have any answers. His eyes fell on the guardianship papers, and he shook his head, laughing bitterly. D'you ever wonder why you're here? "Manipulative old bastard..."

His head hurt. Clearly, it was time for bed.

---------------

MOST INAPPROPRIATE SEXUAL TENSION EVER.

Gawd.

Carly: The two of you are so Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson, it hurts. And damn you for being such a geek that I was able to make that analogy.
Tristan: You try having a coherent conversation with him. You'd get more sense out of Len on a bender.
Dei: Hey, I had nothing to do with it. It's my job to be sexy and mysterious.
Me: Sure thing, bathrobe boy.

I'm going to shoot myself in the head, I swear. *huggles characters* The good thing is that while Tristan doesn't get a significant other, Dei does, and she doesn't have any of the bizarre incestuous overtones that keep popping up in the story line. (They're screwed up for entirely different reasons.)