I don't know where this story came from. I started writing this months ago, and then I think I lost the file or something. Either way, I didn't touch it until about a month ago. Even though it is horribly sad and depressing, it is kind of my baby. I'd desperately appreciate feedback on this. Also, please note that I am not in any way possible trying to glamorize cancer or terminal illnesses such as this. I also kept the specific disease she has as vague as possible, mainly because I know so little. Additionally, this is not in any way related to The Fault in Our Stars: the only link between the two is the cancer and the cannula, and it was not my intention for this to be a TFIOS au of any sorts. Thank you.

(also, in case anyone was wondering, the second half of this will be up no later than next tuesday, August 25th!)

~prelude~

Red Tornado assures him that her medical condition has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Artemis spends 103% of her time at physically straining herself as much as she possibly can.

Rather, the universe just seems to hate her so much that, after all she's done, killing her in the worst possible way (and by worst possible, he means smothered in blankets and without honor, without a scream of rage nor spear like he knows she'd revel in going out in) seems fit. After all she's gone through, it is blatantly cruel.

After all he's gone through, it's blatantly cruel.

In fact, Wally treats the whole situation like a personal insult, and in the precious few moments he is not cross-legged by her bed, he stalks around the mountain, cursing wildly and recklessly anytime his team so much as speaks to him.

And meanwhile, her monitor beeps like the last chapter of a long-loved book; completely normally, but with its ending so subtly hinted at that your own heart speeds up until it implodes.

~medical bay~

They sit outside the medical bay and watch as Black Canary makes notes and talks with Batman. There is glass in the way, but to Artemis, she imagines that their voices are hushed. Loud voices could not coexist with this life, this body, this disease.

"You're dying." Wally's voice comes, uninvited like the pizza guy you thought you paid but apparently deserves a tip. Quiet and raw, it breaks both the silence and her heart in a single blow.

This conversation has been waiting, ever so ominously, for days now. It was born in the shockwaves of her confession and festered when she avoided him for as long as two people cohabitating one mountain can, because even her diagnosis killed her less than this goddamn boy and his hollowed breathing did. Now, she watches as Black Canary inspects the vial of her blood, her hateful, useless blood, and sighs heavily. "We're all dying, Wally."

"Fuck you Artemis, you know what I mean." She doesn't know how to respond to that - since when does Wally swear at her, he swears, but never at her - and blinks at him. He clenches his fists and flattens then against his forehead but the tension does not dissipate and she imagines running a hot iron over his fingers until they relax, and melt, and she can melt with them -

"How could you not tell me?" he says suddenly, harshly, staring at her, and his eyes are scrunched. She feels like she's in one of those nightmares where everything goes wrong but you're still running at an infinitely slow speed and can't fix it. "How? Like, I don't - you know damn well that if I had cancer I would tell you, Artemis, because that's what people in relationships, or people who are remotely friends do, they tell each other when one of them has cancer that cannot be cured."

"Gee, thanks for the pep talk," she hisses - why is she upset, she knew all of this since the first doctor appointment and her mom cried - and stands up. She fidgets with the bracelet Megan gave her when she turned sixteen and debates storming away dramatically (everything she knows about dying slowly comes from stupid movies she watched with her mom). But she knows she can't because, like Klarion and his cat, the stupid equipment that the doctor shoved at her, along with an information sheet she never read, is the only thing keeping her in the physical world. She settles for turning away instead. "Thank you for this delightful chat, really. You're so great at making people better, Wally, truly one of your greatest talents. Why don't you go ahead while you're at it and call my mom? She needs it."

He blanches like she slapped him. "Artemis -" He reaches out, and it is only then she realises how badly he's shaking.

But she shakes her head and grabs her chains and turns on her heels, because if she stays any longer with him she'll crumble.

~somewhere beautiful~

In a way, the Cave is nothing short of a paradise.

There is the ample space, to begin with, hallways that she can wander down and be so totally alone. And there's a kitchen that is perfect for dancing in when the radio is staticky and too loud and there are ice-pops to be had. The television has countless channels, but more important is the DVD player, which is used so heartily it could be classified as abuse.

And the beach - going to the beach is no longer driving in a hot car next to a sister who pokes her and behind her father and his dark glasses or her mother and her worry lines. Going to the beach is running out onto the sand and pressing her palms into Wally's shoulders as he twirls her around and plummeting into the ocean and being so utterly free.

And so, if she is going to die, the Cave is an excellent place to do so.

Missions are the first things to be taken from her, which is absolutely absurd to her. If she is going to die either way, why delay the inevitable and stop her from doing the one goddamn thing she has?

She voices this opinion and M'gann starts crying and Kaldur avoids her eyes for a solid day, and so she stays quiet.

Even though she is off the Team for all-intensive purposes, she refuses to leave the Cave, although thoughts of her mother home alone make her feel physically ill (no time to be selfish like the minutes before you die). She'll be okay, she tells the Team as they depart for their first archer-less mission. She has their DVDs and its beautiful out and she can make them pies or something if she gets bored.

It's fun, at first. She sits out on the beach and rereads The Golden Compass for like the eighth time, and then she rewatches The Great Mouse Detective and Moulin Rouge (the latter she can only bear to watch once, because in the florescent lights left over from the hospital, the ending is suddenly too horrifying a possibility). When she marathons the Spider-Man movies, she is able to enjoy them without Wally pointing out every single plot hole and Robin's jokes and Connor asking countless questions. She turns the music up so loudly in the kitchen that the very walls of the great mountain shake with ACDC, and when Red Tornado asks how she is, she says she's great, and for a second, it isn't a lie.

But then the singular turns into the plural, and she is retracing her steps each day, and her life is defined by spurts of energy followed by heartachingly long periods of solitude, and when she says goodbye to the Team before they go on missions, there's another archer with them, because Red Arrow thinks that now she has fucking cancer it's a great time to make amends. She rewatches movies and mutters the comments under her breath that her friends would make and rereads the same books and relistens to the same albums, and it is with a shudder that she realises she is not living but reliving.

Yes, it is indeed a paradise.

~raggedy man~

The place she loved his hands to be most was in her hair, especially when they were knotted in her locks and she felt his fingers against her scalp.

This has been made especially easy after she cut off her hair.

Artemis, sitting on her bed wearing her sports bra - ha. As if she needs it anymore - and a pair of sweatpants, closes her eyes as Wally runs his hand through the ghost of her golden ponytail. "I can't believe it's gone," he mutters.

She snorts. "What a tragedy." Absentmindedly, her fingers travel up to her nose and she touches the cannula, which is ever the more blatantly obvious now that there isn't a gold curtain to hide it. "But I – it didn't matter, Wally. You know that, right?"

"Of course, and I'm not saying that it does," he says, throwing up his hands like she's pointing a gun down his throat, and she laughs and takes his hand and presses her lips to his palm.

"I just thought your hair was like... well, I thought it mattered to you," he says, a little subdued. Lightly, he tugs on the end of a piece of her hair, which just barely tickles her chin now.

"Hair is pretty," she admits, playing with his pointer finger. He has a blister on his fingertip that she didn't know about. "But temporary. And..." She wasn't looking at him before, but now she really does not look at him, focusing on a scar on his pinkie he got from an Exact-o blade in 7th grade shop. "I... when they start treatment – which is by the way totally pointless because – anyway, you know how it – it'd just be such a mess if it was the length it was and falling out. This way, it just… falls out quietly." With sudden vigor, she throws herself down on her bed (getting herself tangled in the damn tube that is her lifeline) and groans. Wally, thank God for this person, doesn't immediately comfort her, and she is able to clench her eyes shut and shudder and think for a few moments by herself.

After a few moments, she opens one eye. He is still standing, a muscle jumping in his jaw. She makes an apologetic face. "I guess I'll never win America's Next Top Model, huh," she mumbles, a stupid joke that doesn't deserve him.

Wally extends himself and lies down next to her. "You're beautiful," he says almost violently. "You know that, don't you? Like, wow, Artemis, you are so, so pretty."

"But temporary," she says, and she's almost whining, but she's earned the right, hasn't she?

He stares at her for several moments, and then he rubs his face with his hand and leaves it there. "But temporary," he agrees, and she ends up having to wipe his tears away with the back of her hand.

It's the first time she's seen him cry.

~to drive~

"We're going out. Driving. Now."

Artemis blinks wearily at the face above her, with the set in stone smile and the eyebrows raised just enough so that every expression is set to a mocking tune. Zatanna blows a wide pink bubble of gum into Artemis's face and pops it just as the gum, frightfully thin and sticky, grazes her nose, barely missing the cannula. She frowns and sits up, wiping the gum off with a throw blanket.

"In case you haven't noticed, there are several problems with that plan," grumbles Artemis. She yanks the sweater that's slipping down her arm back up to her shoulder, the one with that's grey and thin and not used for keeping her warm so much as preventing others from asking her repeatedly if she's cold, because she cannot stand seeing Robin bring her blanket after blanket when she knows she'll never be warm. Self-consciously fingering the edges of the bandana on her head (blue with white design, M'gann gave it to her and it smells like lavender), she huffs out an annoyed puff of air. "Namely, neither of us can drive, you aren't even old enough to get your permit, and it's like midnight and also we will die." She hesitated just a second before plowing on, hating herself with every syllable she breathed. "I'll die anyway, but, yeah."

Zatanna however is not phased, and maybe it's just because she, as a person, is generally unphaseable. Or maybe it's because Artemis holds in these dismal little observations all day and (between Kaldur's quivering shoulders and Robin's desperate soap bubble of an idea that she can salvaged and Wally's hand that grips her own both too tightly and not nearly tightly enough) her best friend is the only who hears them and is therefore used to swallowing and moving on. Either way, Zatanna says cheerily, "We all die, in the end. And it's only eleven forty-two exactly, so please don't be my really crotchety grandmother. In case you haven't noticed, Happy Harbor isn't Gotham City. There's going to be no one out driving right now. Except us."

"And the police," says Artemis. "It's dark out. I'm tired. I am going to sleep."

Twenty minutes later, Connor, whose face is a rather amusing mixture of the annoyance of an older brother and the distanced bewilderment of a parent, pulls over on the side of a road that extends from the gas station to the horizon, the one that makes Artemis really appreciate the difference between dark (the sky, the silky touch of stars on her lips and the moonlight on her skin) and black (the lack of light that melds the trees and the hills and the cities into one silhouette). She crawls from the passenger seat to the driver's seat, lugging her equipment with her, and stares down the steering wheel, and Zatanna leans over her shoulder and reminds her unnecessarily which pedal is which. Connor gets back into the car on her right, and she snickers when he checks to make sure her seat belt is buckled, but she is still when he says, "You'll be fine," and doesn't look away. She takes a final pre-driving breath, and presses her foot to the pedal.

When the diagnosis falls into her hands like a grenade, her hands the only thing keeping the pin from falling out – but they're sweaty and useless and slipping – she gives up a lot of plans. One of them is driving. Because what's the point of getting her permit when, in the time it takes for her to legally be able to drive, she will fade so noticeably that the girl in the photo taken at the DMV will cease to be relevant?

But she forgets about the photo and the DMV and the grenade when she races down a stretch of lonely highway, and Zatanna shrieks joyfully and Connor whoops into the night, and she grins as the wind whistles through her teeth, and everything is okay again.

~crumble~

Artemis stops keeping her door closed at night.

The shut door became a habit when she shared her room with Jade, because all Jade ever was and ever will be was a doorknob that won't turn and light shining through the crack at the bottom. It turned into a necessity when Jade and Mommy and Daddy and me slowly shed layers to reveal Daddy and me, because her father always had new training ideas and Artemis always had homework that had to be done and bruises that could not heal fast enough.

But now her mother sits in the kitchen outside Artemis' door at night, drinking tea and pouring over her scrapbooks and kindergarten projects as if she is already gone. Her mother sits in the kitchen and her back, which is always straight, slowly folds into itself until her head is on her knees and her pleas trickle down to her toes.

Artemis stops keeping her door closed at night, and she stomps around and flushes the toilet repeatedly and leaves the sink on running so she will be reprimanded, and she takes up as much space as possible (until she crawls under her covers and lets herself shrink). When she stubs her toe, she shrieks and groans loudly enough so her mother wheels herself into her doorway, because she has finally come to realization that the only people whom pain exists for is the living. And she so terribly wants her mother to know she's alive.

It doesn't change anything, but it's nice to feel like she tried her hardest.

~not an outlier~

Truthfully, Artemis really does not know what everyone expected to see when she arrives at the Cave at nine am on a Saturday morning, the day after her news spilled like boiling acid. Apparently, it wasn't her sitting on the counter eating a granola bar as she rolls her eyes at Wally's pitiful attempts to hit on her (never mind that she went to junior prom with him and kissed his pulse in his neck like it was something worth saving). Kaldur looks askance and all too wary when he walks into the kitchen, hesitates, and then continues just as she lightly flicks the back of Wally's head because of a pitifully bad joke.

Of course, today the jokes are pitiful because Wally keeps clenching and unclenching his fist, and he won't look at her, but there's nothing she can do about that. He, after stumbling over a punchline to a joke she knows he has down, mumbles "I can't –" and pushes his way out of the kitchen. She watches him go, but the combination of the wires and tubes that are now a part of her along with her inability to do anything for him (because she is his problem right now) keeps her seated.

Kaldur's eyes don't change color, but they seem darker than usual. "Don't take this the wrong way, Artemis, but… you seem happier than you should be."

She shrugs, and she blows out a breath of air that she hopes he mistakes for a laugh, and she tries to be as light as possible. "Oh, yeah. Why should I be happy?"

"I didn't –"

"No, I know. I'm just kind of an asshole." She rubs her hands over her face. "Sorry. But, uh… no, I'm not happy. I'm just…"

She sits in her bedroom, after coming back from the doctor's, and stares at the walls, at the faded squares where posters and calenders once hung and the indents in the carpet from desk chairs. Her mother's wails reverberate and in ten minutes a neighbor who will move out before the year's end will bang on the ceiling and demand quiet. She fingers her nail and looks at everything she owns, and it slowly occurs to her that everything she's ever had has been short-term. Her father. Her sister. Her mother is on and off. The clothes. The bruises. The dolls that shattered too quickly and her bows that snap as they pierce matter soundlessly and the fireflies that lit up her window one summer night when she was ten were all in and out of her life like soap bubbles.

"I've accepted it," she mutters. Accepted isn't really the word she's looking for – she's accepted defeat, that's what she is trying to convey. "What's the point of, I don't know, freaking out… I'll be dead before Christmas either way."

Everything has always been short-term. It's only natural that she should be as well.