M'gann, if anything, was a meddler. She meddled. If someone was annoyed, she meddled and prodded until they gave up what they were annoyed about and made them more annoyed in the process 8 times out of ten. If someone was being secretive then she would wear them down until they either told her the secret or came up with a convincing enough lie to send her on her way. 

It wasn't entirely her fault in the beginning. Her exposure to Earth culture and Earth friendships was through cheesy sitcoms with a studio audience that laughed and cooed at seemingly random intervals. She was used to every problem being solved by pushing someone to the point they spilled the beans even though sometimes the moral of the story is to let people work things out on their own time. 

Then it got to her one-year anniversary on Earth and she still did it so they just assumed it was who she was. Their consensus had been it was her misguided way of caring for the people around her, unable to let them go on without doing something to help no matter how pushy it came across and how little help it seemed to do. She had to do something. 

So when she noticed Dick was retreating into himself, she crossed some boundaries in the name of good faith and found something she deeply regretted.

For the past hour he'd been there, Dick had spoken all of two words. One was a half-hearted hi and the other was yes when he was asked if he wanted some coffee. He'd been silent outside of that which, if he'd arrived at the mountain with work to do, M'gann wouldn't take notice of. He often stopped by when he wanted some time away from home but didn't want to be alone. He'd sit at either the breakfast bar or curl up on the big armchairs out of the way. That wasn't what happened today though. 

He'd trudged in with an extra big hoodie on with a brand or band name M'gann had never heard of. She'd seen the hoodie before though and when she asked what it was, he'd given her a mischievous smile and asked her to talk to Black Canary about it but when she did the hero had blushed and told her not to mention it again. 

Dick had said his first word, hi, and then walked straight to the free armchair. He pulled his legs up and rested his chin on them, making himself look impossibly small and childish for someone as deadly as himself. He didn't pull out his computer or start on any work, only putting in one earphone as he blankly watched the TV. It was only himself, M'gann and Connor at the time so it at least made a little sense why he hadn't been overly chatty since Connor wasn't the most talkative person and M'gann usually had to initiate conversations.

M'gann was a little worried at that point but she decided he might just be tired. He worked long nights and went to a prestigious school so she didn't doubt that he would get run down some time or other. Now that he didn't wear sunglasses around the team, it was a lot more noticeable when he hadn't slept well for a while. One quick glance told her that he'd been having a few too many sleepless nights. 

"Dick, I'm putting on a pot of coffee, do you want some?" she asked. He didn't answer immediately so she flew over and tapped him on the shoulder. He lazily dragged his eyes over to her and stared. His blue eyes were always piercing but right now they were dull and almost grey rather than their usual sapphire. "I asked if you wanted coffee?" He gave her a half smile and nodded.

"Yes."  She patted his shoulder before floating away to prepare his coffee. He always had it the same way. Black coffee with four sugars unless it was Saturday when he'd have five. Once she saw him take a caffeine pill with a black coffee and he didn't come back for three days so safe to say, he didn't do that again. 

M'gann hoped the coffee would put him right. Wake him up a bit so he didn't look so hollow but he hardly drank it. Just kept it in his hands and took tiny sips that made no real difference to how much was there. All he seemed to do was direct his gaze to the TV but never actually watch what was being shown. It was simply a resting spot for his eyes and he zoned out completely. 

Now, M'gann knew that Dick could zone out for good or bad reasons. Sometimes he'd do it because he figured something out and was connecting the dots in his head. Other times he was planning things for his patrol, places he wanted to investigate further or simply swing by if he had time. 

On school nights he'd zone out because he needed to figure out how homework would fit into his vigilante persona and end up doing at least the first few questions mentally before rushing to scribble down the answers on anything he had nearby. 

This was neither of those. 

This was like he was being dragged down somewhere nobody could reach him and he was essentially dead to the world. He physically sat with them but he wasn't there. He wasn't part of the room any more than the furniture was part of it. She tried to get him to talk, asking how his cases were going and if he had any plans but he either shrugged or ignored her. His eyes never moved from the show it didn't watch.

Any other person would've taken this as a sign Dick had simply come to the Mountain for company and not engagement. Perhaps Bruce was out of town or working or whatever he got up to thanks to both of his jobs. M'gann wasn't any other person though. As stated, she was a meddler and if she couldn't coax Dick into explaining himself then maybe she could do what she did best. Read his mind.

His mind had become a lot more open from when she first met him. She could talk to him telepathically as easily as anyone else but the deeper parts of it had remained tightly locked away. She didn't go poking through their memories, that was too far, but sometimes thoughts of whether they did their homework would come up and a flash of a memory where they saw it on their desk would pass onto her. She didn't get that much with Dick. The most she'd get was a fuzzy image she could never quite make out. 

Now, the images got clearer and whilst they weren't nearly as easy to make out as everyone else's, they were less like blobs floating and more like figures acting. Almost like she was watching shadows being cast onto a curtain where she couldn't make out faces and she couldn't be sure of genders but she got the gist of what she was seeing. Sometimes, only once so far, she could peak behind the curtain and briefly see a face or two before she was pushed back and it was snatched closed. That was all when she didn't intend to go looking so if she set out to look for it, surely it would be much easier to see.

She settled herself on the breakfast bar so on the off chance he shook out of his daze he wouldn't notice the flash of green in her eyes. M'gann wasn't stupid, she knew that he would hate her looking around in his mind but he just looked so miserable. He wouldn't tell her what was wrong so she didn't know how else to help and if she could just get a little peak into his mind to get the context, she could be more helpful without having to press him for intricate details. After watching for a moment more, her eyes went green and she made her way into his mind, not saying anything but rather sitting there so he didn't notice her presence there. That's when she saw it without even trying to find it.

A scarred man stood over her, half of his face conventional and the other half severely burned with turned-up lips yet both sides portrayed his sadistic glee all the same. In his hands was a bat that was already stained with a deep red almost burgundy colour. Someone was screaming. No, there was one person screaming and then another person shouting. Both were pleading and desperate. Then the screaming started gurgling when the bat came down. She couldn't move out of the swing of the bat. Pain shot through her arm.

M'gann gasped harshly, snapping her eyes closed and gripping the table as she almost fell back from the recoil. She steadied herself and felt her stomach churn with a mix of guilt and terror. 

"Are you okay?" she heard Dick ask. She snapped her head up and he was walking over to her with a concerned look. How could he see that memory not a moment ago and even consider her? She would be engulfed by such a memory and wouldn't even notice if a bomb went off in the next room. "M'gann?" he called.

"Just a bad memory," she replied. She thought about telling him what she saw but she couldn't bring herself to do it. He regarded her carefully before awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck. She didn't blame him for feeling a little off if that's what he was reliving.

"Do you want a hug?" She nodded and dove across the breakfast bar, throwing her arms around him and pulling him close. He let out a small surprised noise but recovered enough to return the gesture. 

"I'm so sorry Dick."

"What? Why?"

"I just am."

"There's nothing to be sorry about." There was but for now, she wouldn't go against him. 

The next time she saw him, it was the day after and he was fine for the most part. A little sluggish but nothing special. Meanwhile, she hadn't been able to get a wink of sleep and looked like a zombie as she shuffled from room to room. She couldn't concentrate and every time she closed her eyes, she was jumped scared by Dick's memory. How could he live as normal with that stuff living freely in his head? 

M'gann wasn't naive to the horrors being a hero could bring but that felt like a mental burn that had permanently scarred her mind. Yet here he was joking with Wally and laughing when Artemis threw out a creative insult at the ginger. It all just felt like noise to her. Noise that grated and just seemed to make the flashbacks worse. 

They kept asking her what was wrong but she couldn't tell them. For one, it wasn't even her memory to be scared of. For two, she'd looked into Dick's mind without his consent after he only just allowed them to know who he really was. What right did she have to be scared by something he'd gone through and she'd only got her hands on by breaking his boundaries? She couldn't disappoint her team like that. It also took so much energy to keep up conversations. Like she had to actively sidestep the memory to get her brain to work.

Eventually, she just went to her room and tried to sleep it off. It didn't work very well but it felt better than being surrounded by people who didn't know what was going on. In the darkness of her room, she guessed this was what Dick felt like whenever he remembered these things. That's why he got quiet and despondent, disappearing more often than usual. She couldn't imagine still doing her job on top of that when simple social interactions had her worn down. 

It was from then on that, when Dick got quiet and didn't speak much more than a few words, she'd simply make him a coffee and leave him be unless explicitly asked to stay. She'd herd people from the room if she thought Dick needed the space and tell him if he needed anything, she was there. M'gann never told him what she saw although she wouldn't be surprised if years later he'd reveal that he knew what she'd done. She never had the guts to. Yet, sometimes when the nights got too long and she hadn't seen Dick in a few days, she'd remember that day and spend the rest of the night waiting for some sort of courtesy call that let her know before the news broke that he'd died.