Title: Down the Rabbit Hole
By: Xmarksthespot
Disclaimer: I don't own any copyrighted media
Notes: No actual spoilers for Endgame, but it's sort of a companion piece to it. Actually, in my head, this is the actual ending to Endgame when it comes to Wally and Artemis.
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His head rests on her lap that afternoon, and he stares up at the most beautiful girl he's ever seen. Her head is blocking the sun from him, which is okay, he thinks. Her golden hair cascades down her back and over her shoulders, and he can't help but extend his fingers just to toy with them a little.
Finally, she looks down at him with an amused smirk printed on her lips. Dark eyes connect with his as she lets out a small laugh, especially when the strands of gold fly away from his grasp from the summer air, and he struggles to latch onto his plaything again from his position.
"You're not bored, are you, Wally?" Artemis asks.
He's too comfortable on her lap to shake his head. Instead, he grins and continues to play with the strings of her hair. "Nah," he says. "I was just admiring my view."
He has never understood why her hair was a lioness yellow— the colour of his suit, the colour of the sun—when her mother's genes should have dominated her father's, but he accepts it now. The Crock-Nguyen family was a weird one, but he's glad for it. After all, it has her, doesn't it? He grins blissfully.
The wind teases him again, and hogs her hair for itself, but Wally triumphs. He runs his fingers through the thick locks with the side of his thumb grazing along her cheek, feeling her cheekbones rise and the edge of her lips twist playfully.
Artemis adjusts herself slightly, her lips pressing onto his wrist before he pulls her down so that they would meet with his own lips. She laughs midway when he slides his hand down her neck, and she pulls away when he tickles her. Her smile is still wide, and her eyes still sparkle when she looks at him.
She was gorgeous.
They remain in that position for what seems like hours, just staring at their open ended scenery and at each other. His ideal day.
Ever since he was little, Wally always had the need to be on the move, to fidget even when he didn't need to. But Artemis keeps him mellow; he could stay still with her for eternity, he believes. Just like this.
And Artemis doesn't mind the stillness either. She's used to being quiet and sneaky, especially with her past. Wally feels fortunate to have heard most of it from her, like he's been added to a part of her life, because he honestly doesn't know what he would do if he isn't a part of it. He knows how Lawrence and Paula had once been the ideal couple for her, how Jade would walk with her to school every morning.
Wally thinks that by knowing, he can show her so much more. He can show her one day what a perfect husband and father he can be, that he and her could be the perfect, ideal couple she's always envisioned and more, that the team can be the siblings that pick on her and that it is still okay for Jade to come by occasionally and be the big sister Artemis loves.
"Huh…" His voice captures her attention again.
"Has a new revelation crossed the mind of Wally West?" She asks.
His grin mimics hers. "You know it, babe."
Artemis tucks her hair behind her ear, keeping the ends from tickling his nose, but he insists on running his fingers over the soft ends anyway. "And what would it be this time?" She questions.
He's briefly quiet and spends the time admiring his muse, idly wondering how he was so lucky as to capture her heart. Then he says, "If Jade is Cheshire, then you would be Alice."
She laughs. "How smart of you to realize that, Wally."
"It's a gift."
She laughs again, and teases her fingers through the knots of his red hair. She always said she would love it if she had a child with red hair, but Wally knew genetics, and he knew that any future offspring of theirs would be strawberry blonde. Then again, genetics never really work in her family, so maybe, he thinks, they will have a family of gingers and blondes.
"Cheshire works with Jade because the Cheshire cat always had a knack for disappearing," she begins again, and it snaps Wally out of his fantasies. Her fingers walk up his bare arms, and holds onto the hand that is cupping her face. She closes her eyes, shielding the beautiful greys from him, and recalls her childhood.
"Alice was a little crazy though, wasn't she?" He teases.
"Only for following the White Rabbit," she interjects. She continues to watch her boyfriend go from cupping her cheek to softly grazing her skin with the tips of his uncalloused fingers.
"He's always on the move, you see. And he's rarely ever on time," she continues to muse, and Wally wonders just what Artemis is implying. When he gets it, he pouts.
"Sounds like my kind of guy," he finally responds. He lets go of her momentarily, and just listens to the wind sing all around them. The grass beneath them tickles his arms and legs, and Wally thinks again about their future together. The thought comes often, and sometimes, just sometimes, when they're in public, and he sees a stroller or an old couple sitting on a bench together, he gives her a look, and wonders if she's thinking the same thing.
He realizes they're still young, but how he would love to sit on a bench with her forever until they're old and senile, or just like this: in the meadows of summer's beautiful creations.
"What are you thinking about now?"
His vision fades off in the distance, waiting to be recollected again sometime later in the day. He grins sheepishly, and responds, "I was just wondering: does Alice ever leave Wonderland?"
"Yes," she says quietly, but her voice perks up again soon after. "She comes back though. The White Rabbit always comes to get her. And Alice will always follow."
"But what if he doesn't come?" His voice almost cracks at the thought.
"Then he's late."
Wally grabs hold of her hand, lifting it to his chest, and begins to run his thumb in circles over the fading scars from every arrow-related incident in the past. He thinks he will become a forensics scientist after he's done with school. It will bring a decent amount of money home to provide for their family.
Artemis still hasn't decided on a career yet, but he knows she can be anything she wants to be. He knows they often joked that if Batman had provided them with a salary, then maybe retirement wouldn't have been an option. His smile falters.
"What if he's not late?" He questions out loud and he looks up at her in wonder.
She stares off in the distance, probably thinking about it herself, but then she glances down at him, and simplistically says: "He's the White Rabbit. He's always on the move. He's always there."
"But what if," he presses and gulps, "what if, like the Cheshire cat, he disappears one day and he doesn't come back to get Alice?"
"The Cheshire cat never truly disappears for long, Wally," Artemis insists. "He always comes back."
"For Alice?"
She nods. The edges of her lips pull upwards, enough to make his heart beat erratically, like it has done all these years.
Wally lowers his eyelids again, recalling her voice just now and hearing it in his head along with his image of them in the future, with their four kids—one ginger, one blond, and maybe twins on the way— in their two-story house.
He lets go of her hand, just to raise his arm and play with her golden hair—bright like daffodils that will grow in their garden, bright like the life he hopes to share together with her. He watches her, and he never looks at anything or anybody else.
"I don't want to disappear," he murmurs and she smiles at him.
"Then you won't," she replies.
"But if I do…"
"Then Alice will wait."
"And when I come back?"
"Then Alice will follow."
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fin.