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What did you do on a day like this, when for most of your life your father was your worst enemy? If the man who sired you was the one person in the world most responsible for your pain and sorrow, what was there worth celebrating? He had pumped her body full of foul drugs in the hopes of making her something better. Out of all his children, she had shown no signs of being something more, not like her brothers. So he'd helped the process along. Funny how that had revealed the power she'd always had within her.
She'd survived her teen years, which neither of her brothers had managed, so perhaps there was something to be said for his interference. Then again, the serum had driven her so crazy she'd stabbed out her own eye. Sure there had been good times, tender moments that the two of them had shared, but their past was littered with manipulation and machinations. He'd never done anything without an ulterior motive, he'd always had some bigger picture that she was just a tool to move towards.
So Rose just stood there in the card aisle of the drug store, staring blankly at the wall of cheerful greeting cards expressing how much you might love your dad in pleasantly generic terms. She'd come in here for... something. She couldn't remember anymore. She hadn't even known what today was. She was so disconnected from normal society, all that existed for her anymore was the next job. She reached out with a shaking hand, tentatively picking up a card that featured a smiling cartoon little girl hand in hand with her smiling cartoon father. The inside held some mundane rhyming couplet about a father always being there.
The white haired assassin snorted, crumpling the card angrily in her hand and tossing it on the ground. Her father wouldn't know how to be there for her if she explained it in small words. Turning she left the small pharmacy, whatever she had gone in for could wait another day. She'd strode down maybe five city blocks before she realized she wasn't heading anywhere in particular, and that there were tears running down her face. Madder now than she had been in a long while, she dashed the moisture away with the back of her sleeve.
Damnit, she thought she'd gotten over all this. Rose found herself in the park, passing between the trees almost at a run as she tried to find somewhere empty of people. Instead she kept running into smiling families, punches directly to the gut as she watched doting daddies and their little girls celebrating together. Finally she came out into a rundown basketball court, the tarmac in disrepair to the point where it was unusable. She climbed the broken down bleachers, stepping across the cracked wood to huddle near the top, arms wrapped around her knees.
Here, where she was private, she let the tears finally flow. All she had ever wanted was a family. Someone to love her, but that was denied her. Even the foster family that took her in, Slade had denied her, sending his brother to kill them all. The friendship and support she'd gotten from the Titans, the touch of family she'd had with Roy, Jade and Liam, that was ripped away from her too. It was clear if she wanted love, it had to come from Slade, and that he wasn't capable of giving it. Now she was alone. Incapable of the trust love needed to grow. Her spine bowed, shoulders shaking as muffled sobs escaped her. It felt like her heart had been hollowed out of her chest, like she had this great, gaping wound there.
She was raw, hurting, and she didn't know what to do about it. When you cut yourself off from everyone so completely, there was no one to turn to when the night came rushing in. She'd done it to protect them, her father was too big of a risk, but now... now she was alone and these emotions were too much to handle. She dug her fingers into her chest, trying to shock herself out of the hysterics with pain, or maybe just trying to rip her heart out through her rib cage. If this is what it felt like to be human, she didn't want it. Best to be what she was so good at, empty. Blank. She didn't want to hurt like this.
For the millionth time, she cursed Slade Wilson. For everything he had done to her. For everything he hadn't done for her. For giving her life in the first place. What she needed was a big old bottle of oblivion. Tomorrow, tomorrow she would try again. Eye red and puffy from the crying, she slowly unfolded herself from the pretzel of despair she had formed and stood up. Finally she had a plan. Liquor store. Whiskey. Home to chase the demons from her mind, and the emotions from her chest. Oblivion was a gift.