He'd been fast enough to see it, but not fast enough to stop it.
The sensors in his goggles had helped him track the beam's trajectory all the way from The Brain's blaster to its intended target and he'd turned on a dime and shouted desperately, mentally and into the night, but he never could have reached her before the beam struck.
She couldn't have moved. He couldn't have stopped it. He'd done everything in his power to help her. There was nothing else he could have done.
That's what they keep telling him. It doesn't make him feel better.
Artemis wakes up after seven, excruciatingly-long hours. From the corner of the room, Wally watches her greet her mother with a hard hug. Artemis doesn't notice him.
"Mom," Artemis rasps, "what's going on?"
"You were hurt."
"I was?" Artemis pulls back and gives herself a quick scan. "I feel fine, I swear, but it must've been bad if they let you out to see me."
The room slows down. Paula shares a look with Wally and draws Artemis's attention to him. Her stormy eyes lock with his as she asks,
"Who are you?"
"It's temporary, Wally," M'gann explains as tenderly as she can, in stark contrast to the way Wally approached her. "This isn't like Bialya. Her memories weren't psychically repressed. I don't want to force memories out of her until it's clear they won't come back on their own. We just need to be patient."
Kaldur agrees, placing a hand on Wally's shoulder.
"M'gann is right," Kaldur assures him. "For the time being, our best course of action is to wait."
Wally shakes off his friend's hand and darts out of sight.
Waiting was never his strong suit.
Wally is staring at her apartment door when Artemis sneaks up behind him.
"So, you're my boyfriend," she says, testing the words on her tongue.
"Uh, yeah." He holds out his hand. "Wally West."
Artemis appraises him as she shakes his hand. "Hm."
"Hm?" Wally repeats, raising a brow.
"I don't know," Artemis says, not releasing his hand. "I never thought of myself as someone who dates guys named Wally. You must have made a great impression when we met."
Wally thinks back to that day and smiles. "You could say that."
"My mom's had me under lock and key," Artemis says as they walk down the street. "How'd you convince her to let me go beyond the mailbox?"
"She likes me," Wally says. "She also knows I'm too scared of her to let anything happen to you."
Artemis stops walking. "I don't need a bodyguard to go to the corner store."
Not for the first time, Wally is reminded that though she might look the same, there are years lost between them.
"Trust me. Where we're going is way more interesting than the corner store."
Bringing her to the Cave was a bad idea. The team lets Wally know this, loudly and mentally and in Artemis's presence, and he thought they'd know by now that that is a bad idea, but they don't.
"Oh my god," Artemis says suddenly, unknowingly cutting off Nightwing's rant about security. "I just remembered something."
The team takes a collective breath of hope.
"Really?" Wally chances.
"Yeah, you guys are really rude," she says, half joking. "I've been standing here for like five minutes and you haven't said a word."
Her humor is not appreciated.
He's almost done giving her the tour when she stuns him with a kiss. When he pulls away, he sees a million questions float around in her eyes before they fade to hurt.
"Sorry," Artemis says quickly, her brows pinching as she looks away, "I thought it would– I thought it was worth a shot. God, that sounds so stupid now."
"It's not stupid."
"I hate this. I don't know who I am, but I feel like I know you, and the others, and this place, and it's not fair."
Wally agrees. "It's really not."
After dropping Artemis off at her apartment, Wally uses his walk to the Zeta Tube to think.
He had spent the whole day trying to get Artemis to remember The Cave, their friends, himself– but he hadn't told her all that much about the Artemis he knew. She needed to remember that she trusts them, that she likes game nights as much as recon missions, that she's kicked her father's ass on more than one occasion– and she needed to remember how she got to this point.
He changes his destination and brainstorms a plan to show her exactly that.
The next day, Wally brings Artemis to a room they hadn't reached the previous day. The shelves are full of mismatched items in varying states of disarray and Artemis doesn't wait half a minute to raise a brow at him.
"What are these?" she asks. "Your hoarding problem?"
"They're souvenirs," Wally explains, a little insulted, as he walks to the far end of the shelf. "Little things we've collected over the years. Everything in here has a meaning behind it. A lot of them have something to do with you, so settle in. It's story time."
"Wait a second," Artemis stops him mid-sentence, "I saved your life and you told me to get lost?"
"You weren't very nice either. You insulted me the minute I met you."
"Whatever," she scoffs. "I'm sure I had a good reason."
She did, he thinks, but how many times must he relive that moment before the universe decides he's suffered enough embarrassment?
"Anyway, before I was so rudely interrupted, you ran up to the roof"– Wally places the arrow on the shelf and pulls out Cheshire's mask,– "and came back with this."
Artemis hesitantly pulls Sportsmaster's mask from the shelf and takes a seat back on the floor with Wally.
Something is different. Wally can tell. Somewhere between the story about the Reds and the Injustice League, something changed.
Artemis weighs the mask in her hands before she traces a finger over the scuff mark across the surface. She looks up at Wally for a split second before she returns her attention to the mask, but it is just long enough for him to see it: a flicker of recognition.
"I kicked him," she breathes out. "I kicked him hard."
After that, Artemis's memory comes back in bits and pieces, from big sweeping moments to small asides during missions. They come back out of order. She can't stand it.
"Was that before or after we met Donna?" Artemis asks, writing another memory down.
"After," Wally answers, not entirely sure of the exact day Artemis had her wisdom teeth removed.
Artemis sighs before she presses her palm to her temple. "We've been here forever. When is M'gann coming back?"
"At least two more hours."
She groans before she scribbles down "Harm".
(They don't know what that's about.)
For some reason, M'gann feels far more comfortable sorting Artemis's memories than forcing them to surface. It takes her less than an hour to clear up the foggy edges and set the timeline straight within Artemis's mind. Wally's a little more than ticked at his teammate for not stepping in sooner, but he keeps his mouth shut because his plan worked.
Artemis is back– mostly. She'll be 100% by the end of the week, hopefully.
Artemis grabs Wally by the arm as she rushes out of M'gann's room. "Come on. I just remembered something. I have to show you."
"This is where I keep my souvenirs," Artemis explains, pulling a plastic box out of her closet. She pops the lid open and pulls out a red shirt button. She hands it to Wally.
"What's that?"
"I stuck that in my belt after your trashed your Homecoming shirt," Artemis says triumphantly. "We had to get to Star Labs and there were too many buttons for you. I made fun of you for pulling a Conner, but I hung onto that."
"Why?"
Artemis smiles. "Because that was the first night you said you loved me."
When Wally's through kissing her (for the moment), Artemis rests her head in the crook of his neck.
"Thank you for bringing me back," she says.
"You'd do the same for me, Babe," Wally says, reveling in the feeling of the world righting itself again.
"In a heartbeat," she adds, pulling back to look him in the eye. "I love you."
He kisses her tenderly, and he thinks about what he almost lost for a second before he resolves to do everything he can to hang onto what he has now.
"I love you, too."