From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea
By Re White
Fandom: Green Arrow (comic)
Written for: Kassie in the Yuletide 2006 Challenge
Disclaimer: DC and all associated trade marks belong to people who aren't me.
Spoilers: None really. Set after Infinite Crisis, and makes some vague references
to new canon established in "One Year Later", but otherwise I'm making my own fun.
Drop yourself in the grass
Breathe the air at last
Hold on tight, don't fall down
Breathe the air through the water
And form an arrow.
-The Gathering, "Broken Glass"
Sloppy unpracticed kisses, open mouthed and hotter than anything. Roy gives up. Drags his nails up the inside of Connor's thigh and drinks it in.
Their family is smaller now. In his head Roy keeps tonguing the new gaps, expecting something to be there and it hasn't stopped being horrible and sickening when there just isn't.
It's November in Star City, so it's pissing rain when they put Connor in the ground. Not Mia. There wasn't enough left of her to sweep into a plastic baggie, much less a coffin. Just blackened bone and the heavy stink of burnt flesh. Roy doesn't want to think about it.
He can't not think about it.
There's a three mile wide chunk of Star City still crumbling and coughing up smoke in its death throes and the only reason the whole city isn't one burnt-out pock mark is because of Connor and Mia.
On every TV and front page is something about the destruction of the eastern block of the city, as though there were a single person in Star City who couldn't just look out their window and see the mess for themselves. The papers are calling the deaths of Mayor Queen's son and his female ward the tragic casualties of a mad man's suicidal revenge on Green Arrow. They're calling it the high price of vigilante justice. It's enough to make Roy want to take one of his own guns and just...do any number of stupid things. He can't help that his knuckles ache to do something nasty and destructive, to make something hurt as badly as he is, no matter how stupid the urge is.
Roy only fantasizes about resurrecting Merlyn to beat him until there's nothing left but chunks of wet meat about half a million times a day. Despite it being the antithesis of everything Connor ever wanted from him. If the rest of his family doesn't spend much of their day thinking of the same thing, Roy will eat his gun.
Since Ollie's own funeral it's the first time his family has ever been in one place at the same time. Mia would have something smart ass to say about the imagery, and the cliché of it, and she'd be right. And Roy would tell her sometimes real life really is so picturesque and thematic you could puke. He knows what they must look like, the cluster of them standing over Connor's grave while the sky tries to make up it's mind about whether or not it wants to turn into a storm or just keep drizzling all over them.
They look fucked up and old.
Especially Eddie.
He was the only one of them able to make contact with Connor before Merlyn blasted himself, Mia and most of the east district into rubble. Roy doesn't know what was said, and he doesn't ever want to. As it is he's completely unable to be in the same room as Eddie and not feel, hugely, incomprehensibly, grateful for every little moment he got with Connor. For every thing he got a chance to say. For every time he had an opportunity to kiss Connor and get good and greedy with how easy it was for him to just...give. And give. Like Connor had been waiting his whole life for someone to want that from him. And Roy had been ready to take it, take absolutely everything he could get and love it. Even if in the deepest part of him, he knew it was only because he was the one who got to Connor first.
("I love Edward. And I think he loves me. But I make him afraid and that's why he runs. I'm...I'm tired of people running from me.")
It's a discussion Roy doesn't ever want to have with Eddie. Even if it is a fight they were over-due to have long before a third of the city blew up. For now though, Roy stands with him and tries not to think about how the only thing they had in common is about to be buried under six feet of mud.
Kyle is a dark smudge in the rain, looking as miserable in the cold as Roy feels. Like the rest of Connor's family, the new Green Lantern showed up on Ollie's door step a few hours after the bombs went off and never left. Just another quiet, puffy eyed body sharing the hot water, patrolling on shift and eating Ollie's food when someone manages to remember meals. Hal says he just needs time and for the most part, they've left him to it. Roy can understand that. Wanting to be left to himself, but not actually alone. The kid didn't wear his lantern greens to this, and Roy doesn't know what that means. Doesn't think he has the energy in him to even try. But it feels right that he's there anyway.
Dinah left, but Hal is still around, which is so fucking ironic Roy can't manage to crack wise about it, even in his own head.
Dick and Robin (Tim', he corrects himself, and that'll stop being terrifying sometime around never) couldn't stay for the funeral. But the comm link in Roy's ear has been open all day. Listening to Dick kicking ass and taking names in the haven is weirdly soothing. Nightwing is out there in another, darker, more twisted city, diving through gun-fire and laughing as he takes down thug after thug, like a demon out of someone's nightmare. And he's doing it for Roy. It has got to be the absolute furthest thing away from sanity that this is comfort. That every piercing laugh Dick makes over the comm when he tosses some schmuck through a window is something like a warm, understanding hug. But it is.
The grass squishes under Roy's feet when he shifts his weight. He knocks his knuckles against Ollie's and swallows around the rock in his throat when the old man knocks back before squeezing his hand.
Oliver...is with him. Really with him, maybe for the fist time ever. It'll start feeling wonderful as soon as Roy can get over being terrified of loosing it. It's weird and ass backwards to know that for the first time in years he can close his eyes at any time and be able to zero in on where Ollie is. Where he's going to be. The old man is never too far away from him anymore.
Roy closes his eyes and concentrates on the easy, level rasp of Dick's breathing in his ear.
He finds Connor looking at himself in the mirror and for a moment Roy doesn't know what he's staring at. He watches Connor push the edge of his robe aside and trace the long line of his own hip. Roy squints and...
Heh.
The bruises. And the bite marks.
Roy knows if Connor let the robe slip off his shoulders, there'd be bright red streaks where the wooden edges of the doorsill dug into his back. Roy's feeling a distinct lack of guilt about that. He's pretty sure he can't be blamed that Connor's first time was up against the door frame of the bedroom. Not when Connor had started kissing him hard enough to make Roy's lips bleed, like he was afraid he'd never get the chance to do it again. Like any second Roy was going to push him away and realize it was a bad idea.
Roy couldn't do anything but kiss back as hard and hot as he knew how. Couldn't do anything less than try and let Connor know with every nip, and squeeze and thrust, that Roy wasn't going to let him go. If that meant he left a map of welts and bites on Connor's body, well. There's something dark, hot and mutually possessive about watching Connor trace the red crescent of Roy's teeth marks at his collar bone.
Roy rolls his shoulders and walks up behind Connor, sliding his hands around his bare hips before leaning in to lick his throat. Lingering sex sweat and something purely Connor. When Roy presses his teeth into Connor's skin he doesn't actually need to hear that sweet little gasp to know just how good it for Connor. Roy can feel his artery pounding against his tongue.
It's good for Roy, too.
He bites a little harder and makes Connor jerk, head tipping back onto Roy's shoulder. He catches his eyes in the mirror.
"Mmm. You're kind of a kinky bastard aren't you, amigo?"
An open, bemused smile. Connor laughs a little and shakes his head. "Am I? I don't really know, Roy."
"Let's find out."
It's just another reason to be thankful that Eddie ran. If the poor sonofabitch had been just a little braver, it wouldn't be Roy looping the tie of Connor's robe around his wrists. Wouldn't be Roy about to give Connor his first light bondage session. Connor, who's already shaking when Roy ties his hands to the sink. When he drops to his knees, it's impossible not to feel swamped by how good it is. By how much Roy already loves it.
He closes his eyes and presses his mouth to the taunt line of Connor's stomach. Listens to him breathe in short, uneven gasps and knows no matter how many times he gets to do this, it's never going to be enough. Roy nuzzles Connor's abdomen and feels himself breakout into a hot prickly sweat when Connor's hips snap.
"Roy. Please."
"Absolutely."
Roy likes to spend time in Mia's room because it's slightly less terrible than being in Connor's.
Her closet is still overflowing with clothes, and still smells like the expensive detergent she only bought when she thought no one would notice, like girl-sweat and, faintly, of vanilla soap. Criminals in Star City were regularly getting their asses handed to them by a Speedy who moved like a red nightmare and smelled like French vanilla.
There's still a bow leaning against her bed, and if he checks, Roy knows he'll find several nasty looking blades under her mattress and taped behind her headboard. Roy knows that has less to do with being Speedy and more to do with old instincts. There was plenty they never had to teach Mia. That's something Roy was always weirdly proud of. The ability to share familiar ticks and habits of street-born paranoia with someone else in the family and know that yes, they were probably fucked in the head, but hey, post urban survival was the gift that kept on giving.
Mia was one relationship he knows he never screwed up, mostly because he was smart enough to keep it all in his pants. There are a lot of people who would jump to the wrong conclusion about that if he was ever stupid enough to open his mouth about it, and that's just fine with him.
It was enough to catch her eyes across the room or the roof top and just...know. It was their secret. Their thing. A Speedy thing. Something deep and important that made him feel connected to greater things in way that being a Titan never did. The first time he saw Mia in the uniform he knew he was done being angry.
Speedy wouldn't ever be his again, but he knew it couldn't really belong to her either.
They belonged to Speedy.
And that meant he and Mia belonged to each other.
And whoever puts on the costume after Mia, will belong to Speedy. Some other angry, messed up kid in love with the bow and the city will put on the red kevlar and sign their soul away with the shot of an arrow. Again and again and again, long after Roy's dead. And no matter who dies with the name, or who grows out of it, whether they meet each other or not: they'll all belong to each other.
Roy knows nothing will ever feel as right as that.
"He keeps touching me!"
"I am not!" He so is.
The Arrowcar screams around a corner, and three of the five cars following them skid right off the road and into the front window of Win Lee's Lucky Buffet. Roy takes advantage of gravity by letting himself fall into Speedy's armored breasts. She elbows him hard in the shoulder but it's worth it.
"You perv!"
They bicker in the back seat while a hail of gunfire plings into the bulletproof sides of the car. Ollie's missing his incredibly gay hat, is covered in sweet'n'sour sauce and reeks of smoke from the Chinese syndicate building they just blew up.
"Goddamn it, Arsenal, stop touching Speedy!"
"I'm totally not touching her-"
Something behind them goes boom in a fairly spectacular way.
"He totally fucking is-"
Ollie steers with one hand and reaches back with the other to smack whoever he can reach. Reddish goo flies everywhere.
"Gross! What're you hitting me for? He started it!"
Speedy kicks the back of the driver's seat and Ollie curses as he tries to steady the Arrowcar. Roy grins and licks a glob of sweet'n'sour sauce off Speedy's cheek. She tries to hit him with the edge of her bow, misses and gets the back of Ollie's head.
"Hey! Don't make me come back there!"
Noogies are difficult business to pull off in the back seat of an armored vehicle while the Chinese mafia chases you, but worth it if you're willing to get bitten. Which Roy totally is.
It's either terribly late or sickeningly early when Roy gives up on sleep and heads to the kitchen. He stops to check on Lian, getting in some quality parental obsession before continuing down the hall. The nauseatingly expensive carpeting hardly makes a whisper as he walks. He passes Ollie's room on the way, and then Hal's and tries not to think too deeply about the fact that that particular guest room hasn't actually been slept in since the man got there.
Roy doesn't pause when he gets to the kitchen and sees some one there already (house full of insomniac vigilantes, it's a miracle there's anything like a diurnal schedule in place). But he does stiffen for half a second as a retreat filters through his head.
The chance that Eddie missed it is as about likely as Batman growing a sense of humor. Eddie doesn't do anything but give him the tiniest hint of a smile.
Fuck it. Roy shrugs it off and gets a beer out of the fridge.
Eddie doesn't say shit when Roy sits across from him at the table, doesn't make any move at all to leave.
They sit in the dark and watch each other.
There are deep lines in his face, like someone had carved them out with a fork. The red of his hair, longer now than Roy's ever seen it, is giving way to silver. Eddie's skin reminds Roy of an elephant he saw once; tough grey hide wrinkling beneath a splattering of white scars.
He's never understood what the attraction was for Connor, never mind the age difference.
Eddie has eyes like a shark. Clear crystal blue, and as sharp as a stainless steel scalpel. Roy can't see whatever it was that Connor saw and fell in love with. All Roy sees in Eddie's eyes is the promise of something fast, violent and remorseless if he was ever taken with the idea of killing Roy where he stood. No one will ever convince him that meta humans are the most dangerous people on the planet, not when there are men like Edward Fyers walking around. Honest to god killers with just enough conscience to make their revenge, when moved to it, something swift and wordlessly horrifying.
It's an open secret within the family that Danny "The Brick" Brickwell was found with no head and most of his massive stonelike body dissolved into puddle of blood and meat across a warehouse floor deep in his own territory. (Along with enough evidence tying him to Merlyn's attack to have sent him to prison for life). Roy's tried to find the nerve in himself to feel something other than sick with relief over that, but keeps coming up short.
Eddie lights a cigarette and takes a long draw before snorting in Roy's general direction.
"I guess we have a situation, kid."
Roy takes a swig and shrugs. "I guess we do."
"I hate your guts and you're not too fond of me." It takes effort not to reach for the comforting hilt of the gun he doesn't actually have when Eddie grins around a set of perfect white teeth.
"Don't get fidgety sport, you'll damage my calm."
Roy pushes the beer bottle away and sits back. "Fine. We have our mutual dislike well fucking established. What now? Are we going to talk? I know Connor would have wanted..." He can't actually finish that sentence, and the look on Eddie's face lets him know exactly how unappreciated the effort was.
"Look." Roy pinches the bridge of his nose and prays for deliverance. "We keep tiptoeing around the fact you were in love with Connor, and want to bash my face in every time I walk into a room, well; one of us is going to get a fucking hernia. I'm not going to let you bust my balls because you were too much of a bad ass to admit you needed him when he was ready to give you everything. Just. Deal with it. Kill some communists, key my car. I don't care. But have it out before you bust a blood vein."
Eddie stubs out his cigarette, and reaches for Roy's unfinished beer. For a minute, he thinks Eddie's going to throw it at Roy's head. Instead he takes a drink and says, "That was eloquent, Harper. All that emoting break anything important?"
"Fuck you."
"No thanks, kiddo. But I'll tell you what." Eddie scratches his chin. "I'll pick a fight with you some time next week. It'll get us out of having to sit through another of Hal's Shake'n'Bake disasters and we can avoid all that Oprah BS and just hit each other until one of us passes out."
"You think that'll help?"
"Yes. No. I don't know." Eddie finishes off Roy's beer. "But I expect beating the shit out of you will be very therapeutic."
"Well, score one for the grieving process."
He wakes up and he's not sure why until he blinks away the sleep and sees Connor wide awake, and watching his face.
Roy stretches until he hears something pop, and then rubs his cheek into his pillow.
"Hi."
Connor smiles and reaches out to tuck back Roy's hair. "Hi."
"What's up?"
"I need to ask you something."
Usually that's his cue to freak out or just start major evasive maneuvers. But it's Connor, so he shifts closer, and waits. His eyes are a deep, deep green.
"My whole life has been filled with people who either didn't show up when I needed them to, or just never really wanted to be there in the first place. It's made me afraid of asking for things."
Roy tries not to frown, fails, and settles his hand on Connor's hip. "Okay."
"I feel like I'll scare you away if I ask for too much. So...I need to know. What's too much?"
It's easy to roll on top of Connor, to pull his hands above his head and stroke his wrists. Connor's quiet and still beneath him, but Roy can feel the thud of his pulse. It feels like something his body's been primed and ready to respond to his whole life.
"I love you."
"That," Connor takes a deep shaky breath that Roy can feel in his own gut, "That's not quite an answer."
"Then I'll just keep trying to convince you it is." Roy licks his way into Connor's mouth and pushes his knee up between his legs. Finding the rhythm is as easy and sweet as that first shot of the night.
"Roy."
"And you tell me when it's too much."
A week later, Roy contemplates a black eye and ribs that feel like mashed potatoes as he hoofs it to the graveyard. Walking down the path towards Connor's headstone, he writes a letter in his head.
Dear Connor, your psycho best friend kept his word and started a fight just as Hal was taking chicken out of the oven. That guy's attempts cooking are an insult to food everywhere so I didn't feel bad when Eddie tossed me at the dinner table. We mangled the kitchen. I guess Ollie, Hal, and Kyle took cover elsewhere until they stopped hearing things break because I sure as hell didn't see anyone step in when he broke the casserole dish with my face. Eddie's missing a molar and I dislocated his shoulder. I think I heard Mia laughing when I threw the bowl of peas at him. We're doing a piss poor job of this without you and it'll only get worse. Lian won't take off your mala beads. I miss you so much I think I could blow my own head off. Love, Roy.'
When he gets to Connor's grave a girl with very straight blonde hair is there. Roy stares at her, ignoring the throb in his ribs, trying place her face when it hits him all at once, like dream logic. Arrowette is staring at Connor's headstone like it holds the answers to everything. Roy takes two steps towards her then stops. He thinks he could play a note on the long line of tension running down her back. She's thin, white and the way she holds herself is deeply familiar. Loosely poised, like she could take up a stance and pull a bow string back any minute. No one stands quite like an archer.
"I'm sorry."
Roy's not so slow that he thinks she's talking to him.
"I always thought there'd be time. To come to you and him - to all of you- and say, Here I am.' But I never knew how I wanted to say it. How to...Without sounding." The girl stops speaking and presses the heels of her palms to her eyes. Roy watches her shoulders shake and waits.
"Without letting it slip how much I hated that you had this huge, beautiful, terrible family, and that I used to have my own but I was too weak to hold on to it."
Roy thinks of everything he heard from Dick about what happened with Young Justice and Arrowette, and the men they found tied up in the woods. When the girl starts talking again there's husky shake to it that Roy knows inside out. He knows exactly how hard it is to speak when there's lead in his lungs and salt balling up in his throat.
"But I'm here now and...and. I'm Cissie. We have the same whoremonger father and I think you would have known me the moment you saw me and you might have loved me without giving it a second thought. And I would have asked if you wanted to spar, and even though you're a hundred times better than me, you would have said yes and maybe we would have patrolled afterwords and I could have run with you. Everything I know about you says you were exactly that type of person. Still."
The silence is long enough that Roy can hear every crinkle the dead leaves make as they tumble all over each other and every crack of the tree branches. Cissie balls her fists at her sides, knuckles whitening and he doesn't have to hear it to know her finger-joints are popping.
"Still. I told myself not coming to you, to him, made me the smart one, that it was nobler to stay out of the way, but that was horse shit. I was just afraid of you saying no."
Roy unclenches his teeth and has to clear his throat before speaking.
"He wouldn't have said no."
"Shut up. I'm talking to my brother."
He shuts up.
"I wanted to know you. And Mia. It would have been nice to have a sister again. And I guess I kind of will. In a way. Because I'm going to see Oliver and I'm going to tell him I'll be the next Speedy, and if he doesn't like it, he can go to hell."
Cissie fights him when he goes to hug her. She catches him in the jaw hard enough to make his teeth ache and his vision wobble. His ribs scream and his bruises ache, but Roy takes it, and holds on until she stops pounding the shit out of his chest and starts sobbing.
When it's all said and done with Cissie picks the room on the same floor as Connor and Mia's.
Roy finds Ollie in the mostly repaired kitchen, frowning over drawings of Mia's uniform and the designs Cissie brought with her.
"She wants to shorten the cape?" Roy's never quite gotten over not getting a cape when he was Speedy, but he's pretty sure it was for the best. There's a reason Arsenal's never had a cape of his own, and sixty percent of it because he'd look like a doofus the first time he tripped over it.
Ollie makes notes in the margins of the sketch in his hands and gives Roy a narrow smile. "Girl wants a lot of things. She was nice enough to put them in numerical order." He nods towards a pile of papers at his elbow. Roy entertains himself by picking up a page ( numbered, alphabetized and really adamant about cleavage being in no way part of the Speedy uniform) and making a personal bet with himself about how long it will take before the really kind of terrifying girl upstairs completely takes over. He's giving it until Christmas.
Roy and Ollie share a few minutes of quiet at the kitchen table before the inevitable happens.
"You seem like you're doing okay. Considering."
Roy spends half a minute wishing he could get his eyebrow up as high as Alfred's before settling on giving Ollie his best, You're-An-Idiot-But-I'm-Making-Do' glare.
"I bashed Eddie's face in with the toaster. How is that doing okay'?"
Ollie scratches his mustache in a gesture Roy's had memorized since he was thirteen. "You are both still alive."
He knows he's supposed to laugh at that, but Roy honestly can't make it happen. He swallows and focuses on the sketch of the new Speedy uniform until he thinks he's got it burned into his retinas.
( "The first time I put it on it was like sex. No, shut up, Roy. Seriously. All jittery and alive and scary. God. How did you ever give this up?")
"There wasn't anything I didn't get a chance to tell him. Or do. And that's..." The words kind of cluster up in the back of his throat, but he tries anyway. "It's not better than having a big lump of regret to chew on but. In a way it is. I know it could be a lot worse. I could be hating myself a lot more."
He doesn't say Eddie's name, but he doesn't have to.
Roy rubs his own face, feeling the stubble catch under his fingers.
"Don't get me wrong. I wake up in the morning, realize he isn't there - that he isn't going to be there - and feel the distinct fucking need to puke my guts out. And sometimes I do. But." Roy takes a breath and knuckles his eyes until he feels the beginnings of a bruise. It helps. "But then I need to peel myself off the bathroom floor and take Lian to school. And then I try not to think about how wrong it is that I don't have to fight Mia for the exorcize equipment, or the last swallow of orange juice or anything else. Ever again."
Roy looks at Ollie, who nods at him like he heard everything Roy couldn't make himself say. He thinks about the age around Ollie's eyes, about how it should be a lot deeper than it is. About how the reason why Ollie doesn't look the way he should (he shouldn't look like anything, should still be dead and hasn't that been the thing Roy's been avoiding since Hal showed up?) is doing fuck knows what up in Ollie's room.
There's a reason Roy hasn't spoken to Hal much, and it has everything to do with all the scars and wrinkles Ollie doesn't have anymore and how much he doesn't want to hear the man apologize when he tells Roy no. Still.
( "When he died all I could think about is what I would do if I could just have one more chance. One hour, one minute, to try and get him to believe I was worth staying for. I...I think that's something you'd understand better than anyone, Roy.")
Still.
"Hal can't do it. Bring them back."
Ollie doesn't bother pretending he doesn't know what Roy's talking about.
"No."
He knew it was coming, if it could have been any other way Hal would have done it by now, but it doesn't seem to stop his traitorous fucking eyes from clouding over. In the past Ollie's way of coping with crying would either be to ignore it completely or to clap Roy on the shoulder before disappearing. Roy remembers both methods making him feel equally sick with himself.
Ollie gets up and moves to Roy's side of the table. He hooks an arm around the front of Roy's shoulders and pulls him back against his chest. When he was thirteen Roy would have tried to cling to Ollie like a monkey. When he was sixteen Roy would have taken a swing at him.
He's not sixteen anymore.
Roy locks his fingers around Oliver's forearms and turns his face towards Ollie's neck. When he speaks it's muffled, and damp sounding but his ego feels so far away he can't make himself care.
"I want them back. I want him back."
It feels good to say no matter how pitiful and obvious it is.
"I know."
When Roy finally pulls away he uses the edge of his sleeve to wipe his face. If Ollie cares that his yuppie button down isn't fit for anything but burning after the mess Roy made of it, he doesn't show it.
To help move the Post-Emotional Outburst Awkwardness along Roy clears his throat. "By the way." His voice is mostly steady. "There's something else."
Ollie eye-balls him over the suit redesigns, like he wouldn't put it past Roy to prolong the unbearably healthy moment.
"I'm thinking of retiring Arsenal."
"Yeah?"
Roy steals a glance the dark red leather of Speedy's uniform. At her red arrows and yellow hood.
"Yeah."
It's the color of a fresh paper cut.
Connor touches his face and smiles a question at him. "Roy?"
"I don't know. It's..." Everything he wanted.
The Red Arrow uniform looks sharp and sleek and ready, even in the box. He's already trying to imagine what it would feel like against his skin. Instead of reaching out to touch it he plants both hands on Connor's hips.
"Roy. Look at me."
He does.
Looking into Connor's eyes is like standing at the edge of a deep green sea.
"I want you to run with me."
Roy breathes and waits for the tide to wash in.