Don't talk to me of love I've had an earful, I get tearful when I've downed a drink or two.
She'd found it earlier that evening, sitting in a box of his things that she'd kept around to remind her of him; a box that hadn't been touched since that cold, fateful night.
She hated thinking back to that night.
She hated this cycle of grief that seemed to have no end
She hated hoping that he'd magically walk through the front door, stuffing his freckled face with the damn chicken whizzes, praying to whatever God there may be for his return.
At around midnight she got up, grabbing the faded red jacket, that was about two sizes too big for her and no longer smelled like his cologne. She slammed the panelled door behind her.
She climbed through the window into the apartment he and Dick had once shared, this had been her way of entering in the early day of their relationship.
Her thin fingers danced along the top of the crystal scotch decanter set, it looked out of place in the apartment once shared by the three twenty- something year olds. She stood there for a moment contemplating pouring a drink, it was almost calling to her.
Numb the pain.
Lord knows she's going to need the alcohol.
Dick ambled in about two, possibly three hours later. Uniform still on, bone tired after a long night. He knew she was there, there's no way he'd lived in Gotham for all these years without some sort of security system.
He didn't acknowledge her presence.
"Did you know?" she asks, her voice low and interrupting the still darkness that lay between them.
His icy blue eyes briefly met her steel grey glare, but he swiftly moved his gaze away.
She asks again forcefully, "Did you know?" her voice cracking slightly. He doesn't answer, and hangs his head.
She screeches in frustration, flinging a crystal glass at him. It barely misses Dick's head, before it shatters against the white wall behind him; it's amber contents staining the wall. A single tear falls from her eyes as the emotional tidal wave she'd been holding back breaks free.
She starts to throw things in frustration, grabbing anything she can get her hands on, coffee table books, cushions, hurling some form of curse word at him with every object; often indistinguishable and quite possibly not in English.
She reaches for a wooden picture frame. She stops when she see the picture inside. It's from graduation, they're smiling, well she and Dick are, Wally's grinning like an idiot, arms wrapped around her. He just looks …. He looks so alive.
She pauses, placing the picture down, breaths ragged like they're being ripped from her body, like someone's tearing strips off her very soul.
She lets out a choked sound.
Then a heavy sob echoes around the room.
She's soon being comforted by the man who has been like a brother to her for the last five years. Dick's arms wrap around her, She knows that they aren't his, but they're a comfort in a different way.
He keeps his arms around her as she falls apart in a convoluted mixture of anguish and resentment at fate's cruel hand.
"Did you know?" she whispers hoarsely.
"I helped him pick it out." He mutters quietly.
The pair sit on the floor. Grieving the loss of the man in the picture on the window sill above them.
The man who would be forever etched in their memories.
Wally.
A/N: So if you're in the YJ fandom you know what today is. This was inspired by a poem called In Paris with you by James Fenton.