Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Titans. I do think that this is the first Speedy/Wonder Girl fanfic on the Teen Titans cartoon category, though. That's kind of cool, I'm not going to lie.
Dedication: Astoria, you owe me. I'm breaking up one of my OTPs for you. (You're just lucky you didn't ask for me to break up Raven/Beast Boy or Terra/Aqualad. Then this never would have happened.) I'll be expecting that certain fic any day now...
A/N #1: Okay, I didn't read the TTG! comics so I have no idea what their characterization of Wonder Girl was, so this version is entirely my own. I'm sorry if this is off or what, but I kind of like her. Just thought I should say that before you guys begin.
And That's How It Started
And then just like that she enters their life. Bumblebee is going away for over a year, she's looking into some things from her past and is going to do some undercover work on the side or so she says, and they need a new member until she gets back.
So Robin suggests her, because they're really good friends, and he trusts her, and because Robin always knows best they let her on.
So she walks into Titans Tower East, all sparklesand jagged smiles and blue eyes.
"Hi," she tells them, her eyes bright. "I'm Wonder Girl. Nice to meet you."
.x.
On the third day she's there he decides that he hates her. He hates the way she struts so confidently around (his) their tower, the way she crosses her legs and raises her eyebrows like she knows best.
As loathe as he is to admit it, he misses Bumblebee. At least she didn't get the twins addicted to The Golden Girls and didn't spend at least an hour with them talking about the merits of each of the grannies, and how yes her favorite was Sophia.
(The fact that Speedy even knew who Sophia was should have been considered a crime against humanity, in his opinion.)
Bumblebee didn't make Aqualad explain to her every little thing about the tower, what they were all like, and she didn't make him take her around the city. Speedy knows that he should let the last one go, everything's unfamiliar to her and by the end of this (going to be a long) year she would start to know everything that they did, but he still didn't like it.
She was taking up some of his best friend's time, and even though Bumblebee still did it too he still didn't like it. For some reason Wonder Girl just rubbed him the wrong way.
He couldn't wait for her to go back to wherever she came from.
When he told Aqualad this he just bit the inside of his cheek and didn't say anything. "Have you even talked to her?" Al asked, his expression as placid as ever. It was a feat even for Speedy, who prided himself on being able to push anyone's buttons with the right word, to get him riled up.
Speedy thought of the few words that they exchanged, mostly in passing for shifts on patrol or to pass the eggs, and nodded. Aqualad shook his head. "No, I meant as in an actual conversation. Like the one that we're having right now. Not as in, 'Dude, where's the catsup?'."
"First off, it's ketchup, not catsup. I've told you that a million times. And second off, no, I haven't." He watched as Mas and Menos went up and down the communications room, where Wonder Girl, present as ever, was trying to catch them with her lasso. All three of them were pretty busy, so Speedy felt comfortable talking about her. She was actually pretty good at it, but Speedy never said that.
"Well, maybe you should try, and be nice to her while you're doing it. You never know, maybe you'll actually have something in common. You might even like her."
Speedy snorted. "I doubt that."
.x.
Their first actual conversation happened sooner than Speedy thought it would. He would have been comfortable never speaking to her other than the occasional word here and there, but some things just can't be avoided.
They were all exhausted after battling a rogue robot from Dr. Bolt, one of their more annoying criminals. This one, though, had been tough to beat and the battle was a long and hard one. It was their first serious crisis since Bumblebee had left and her absence was glaring, but Aqualad had done alright all things considered, and Wonder Girl had finally showed them everything that she could do.
Speedy didn't want to admit it (he didn't want to admit a lot of things), but she was actually a pretty good fighter. She finally proved herself as something other than a pretty face, even though the reporters that surrounded her afterwards liked that aspect of her too.
As soon as they got back to the tower they had all plopped down on the couches and one by one they had all drifted up to bed, except for Wonder Girl and Speedy. Eventually, though, Wonder Girl dragged herself off the couch that she was previously draped on and made her way to the kitchen.
"Do you want some hot chocolate?" Wonder Girl asked, her voice like nails on a chalkboard to his ears. She sounded pretty drained though too, and he figured that this must be one of her rituals after fighting crime.
Speedy actually would have loved hot chocolate right then, the creamy drink was one of his guilty pleasures and during winter time he would go to the stores and load up on the stuff and then hoard it in his room so that the twins wouldn't find it, but he'd be damned if he admitted it to her.
"No thanks," he practically spit at her, and Wonder Girl raised her eyebrows but said nothing. She made herself some, the kind with milk and real chocolate, not the cheapo powder kind that Speedy had in his room for convenience, and then came and sat down on the couch that Speedy had silently claimed as his.
Wonder Girl crossed her legs and turned toward him. He noticed that the nail polish that he had seen her putting on this morning was chipped now. "I'm just wondering, and you don't have to tell me or anything but I'd be kind of nice to know, why do you hate me?"
The question almost made Speedy fall of the couch, but he kept his composure and didn't. Instead he sat up slowly- he was going to have a bruise on his back tomorrow, no doubt about that- and looked at her through his mask. "I don't hate you."
Wonder Girl raised her eyebrows again, she did that a lot he noticed, and said, "Could've fooled me."
"Well you don't seem to be too fond of me either." Speedy knew that there was absolutely no evidence supporting this, but he felt like saying this anyway. Besides, it's not like she came to him to talk to him or anything, not like she came to Aqualad or the twins.
"I don't dislike you. I don't know you well enough not to like you. You seem not to like me, though, and you don't know me either. So what gives?" Wonder Girl took a sip out of her mug, still looking at him, waiting for an answer.
"I already told you that I don't hate you."
"No you didn't, you just said that I wasn't too fond of you either."
"Well I don't hate you. There, I told you."
"This is what I think," Wonder Girl set down her steaming mug, "I think that you have a hard time accepting people into your life and you want to push me out even though I'm going to be around for a while. You don't like people coming in or leaving in your life so you act like a jerk."
Her words hit just a little to close to home. "What are you, a quack?"
"No, just good at reading people." She wrapped her fingers around her hot chocolate again. God, the smell was going to kill him. If she went to bed before him he might just have to go get her pot and drink the rest of it, and then blame it on Aqualad. He would even contemplate licking the bottom of the pot for some if it came to that. "Is it because of Bumblebee?"
"What does that have to do with anything?" Again the eyebrow thing happened, and Speedy bit his tongue, remember what Aqualad told him. Maybe, if he was nice, she'd leave him and that subject alone.
"Did you two date?"
"That is absolutely none of your business." The acid in his tone was sharp, but she didn't let that effect her. She just kept right on going.
"It is because everyone else on the team probably knows that information but I'm new and so I don't know that. I'm right, aren't I?"
There were a million quick comebacks, some not so nice and some stupid, poised on the tip of Speedy's tongue, but he let it go. If he snapped at her she'd know anyway, and besides, Mas or Menos probably already told her. "Yeah, we did."
Wonder Girl nodded, as if that explained everything. "I'm guessing that it didn't end well."
Once again Speedy wanted to bite her head off and tell her just where and how she could put that nose of hers, but he restrained himself. He figured that she would know either way, because she was right, she was good at reading people. "Not really."
"I'm sorry. It sucks when stuff like that doesn't work out."
No shit, Sherlock. "Yep."
"That explains some stuff, though. You don't like me coming in and taking Bumblebee's place because you still have feelings for her. You feel like I'm trying to replace her, but I'm not. Holy Zeus, it's like I'm your stepmother or something."
"Stop physco-analyzing me."
"Then stop being a jackass."
As she turned and walked away Speedy watched her go, a newfound sense of respect for her, as well as irritation, rising up in his chest.
.x.
Speedy eventually grew used to her being on the team, they still got into a few arguments, mainly because of something Speedy said or something that Wonder Girl did, but things generally smoothed over after that night.
He still missed Bumblebee, of course, but that was fading and he thought about her less and less as time went on because he was just so busy thinking of the here and now, and because Wonder Girl seemed to be taking up the space in his head.
He didn't like that, but if he was being honest with himself he didn't like much of anything. He couldn't help it, though. She was just there and she was new, so he almost expected it of himself.
"I don't really trust her. How do we know that she's trustworthy?" he asked Aqualad, the latter of just rolling his eyes and sighing at Speedy's comment.
"Not Wonder Girl again, please. You've been complaining about her all week. I mean, I'm used to the complaining, just do it about something or someone else, okay?"
"Well I don't. I can't help it. You can never be too careful, I mean, look at Terra."
There was a pause in which Speedy kicked himself mentally for being so tactless. He shouldn't have said that and he knew it. But then Aqualad moved on, acting as if that awkward silence hadn't been there, and stopped the thick and half formed apologizes coming out of Speedy's mouth.
"Robin trusts her, so so do I. Anyway, why don't you just ask her yourself if you're so worried about it."
"Maybe I will."
"Yeah, and maybe I'll grow a third eye."
"Maybe, you never know about you ocean types."
"Shut up."
"Yeah, yeah."
.x.
He sat next to her after training when they were all relaxing in front of the television. Never being one for beating around the bush he asked her straight off, even though she looked a little surprised at him. "Where are you from?"
"Paradise," she sighed as she pushed back a few sweaty strands of dark hair that had escaped from her ever perfect ponytail.
"No, really."
Wonder Girl raised her eyebrows. "I'm an Amazon. Where do you think that I come from? Themyscira, of course. Paradise Island. It's the greatest place on Earth."
"Yeah, a place full of women. Sounds great."
"You know, Speedy, boys like you are probably the reason that the Amazons went to Paradise Island in the first place." Aqualad laughed at that, but Speedy wasn't just going to let her dog him like that, and he had the perfect comeback.
"Really? I just assumed that they wanted to go live on island full of women, without men, because-"
"If you finish that sentence I'm going to have to hurt you," Wonder Girl sang cheerfully as well as loudly. Speedy could tell that he had gotten to her. Well good.
"Speedy," Aqualad called from across the room, "don't make fun of the Amazons. Everyone here knows that they all could kick your butt from here to Timbuktu and back again."
"Si, si," the twins cackled gleefully as Speedy scowled and Wonder Girl smirked, blowing a kiss at Aqualad.
"Thanks for taking my side, Al. Now, I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm going to go take a shower. Have fun smelling yourselves."
They all watched her go, Aqualad with a smile on his face. "I think that Bumblebee would have liked her. She sure put you in your place, didn't she?"
"Oh go to hell."
"With pleasure if I get to watch that all the time."
"I don't even know what it is about her, but..." Speedy trailed off, not knowing what he was going to say.
"She's different, not like your average super heroine," Aqualad supplied readily.
"Ella es bonita tambien," Mas added, and Menos nodded in his agreement.
"What are you guys trying to do?" Speedy asked, his mask narrowed. He didn't like the way this conversation was going and suspicion was getting to him.
"Nothing," Aqualad said, exchanging a look with Mas and Menos.
Speedy groaned and put his hand on his face.
.x.
Four months into her (long) stay with the Titan's East, just as Speedy was (finally) getting used to her presence in his life, she started disappearing for days.
Out of nowhere Wonder Girl would get up and go somewhere, for me than a day but usually less than a week, and no one really knew where. Speedy knew that she probably told Aqualad where she was going or when she was going, but the fact that she didn't tell him annoyed him for some reason.
He had thought that they were becoming friends, or something close to it. But then he brushed that train of thought away; evidently she didn't care about that so neither than he. (It was always easiest not to be the only one that cared.)
Then, all of a sudden, Wonder Girl was gone for two weeks and Aqualad didn't even know where she went. Speedy had gone and asked him after she had been gone for a week and three days.
"She didn't tell me anything, she just left," was the only thing that Al could say about the matter, which just frustrated Speedy more, because Aqualad was the frickin' leader when Bumblebee was away, which was right now, and she should have at least told him something.
Speedy lucked out, though, being the one that saw her return. He had been up (waiting for her to come back) listening to his headphones and drinking his (not her's) hot chocolate. There was frost on the windows because it was two weeks into January and Steel City got cold so he could hardly tell who she was at first.
He was cursing the fact that he didn't have his bow on him when Wonder Girl strolled in, not an intruder, her ponytail not even messy from the flying that she did and her make up perfectly in place, like always.
He still wanted his bow even when he knew it was Wonder Girl. Her face was shocked when she saw that he was still awake. She obviously had thought that she wouldn't have any confrontations until tomorrow.
"Where the hell were you?" Speedy shot at her, and Wonder Girl raised her eyebrows.
"No hello? No 'How have you been, Wonder Girl? Gee, we've been wanting you to come back?'" Wonder Girl's voice was dripping with sarcasm, but Speedy didn't care. He wanted answers, and he wanted them now.
"No," he said sourly. "Now where were you? Did you even think about how worried we were? We didn't know if you'd been kidnaped or killed or worse! But you think it's perfectly OKAY to walk away without a second thought. It's almost like you didn't even care! You probably don't care, do you? You don't care about our feelings, because you wanted to run away! Well good for you."
Wonder Girl's expression turned from shocked to astonished but Speedy just kept on going. She wasn't going to be let off the hook, not today. "But you're on a team, this team, and we don't just leave without an explanation. We tell people where we're going and when. Mas and Menos were practically inconsolable!"
Wonder Girl just looked at him, the expression in her eyes fragile. "You're selfish," he finished, his chest heaving. He was pretty sure that half of what he just said didn't make sense or was repetitive, but he didn't care. He was fucking angry and she was just standing there like nothing was wrong. She probably didn't miss (him) them.
"I'm sorry," she finally said, tears in her eyes. "I just mess up everything, don't I?" And then she sat down on the floor and sobbed into her hands.
Now it was Speedy's turn to be confused and bewildered. He hadn't meant to make her cry. He had expected her to snap back and get after him, the way that she always did, but instead his words had broken her, and they weren't even that bad.
Speedy had made girls cry before, he knew that he had, but this was completely different, because this time he cared. That bothered him, because he hadn't cared about anyone like this in a long time, not since Bumblebee.
He wanted her to feel better, to smile at him, not the smile with jagged edges that she sometimes used, but the real one that he had seen the other smile evolve into. He wanted her to scream at him, to tell him he was stupid, anything other than to see her crying all alone on the kitchen floor with her knees pulled up to her chest and mascara dribbling down her face.
The girl had super strength and she could fly, but here she was, melting into a broken puddle and all because of him.
No probably not because of him. Speedy knew that she wouldn't have left without a reason and whatever the reason was, whatever she had messed up, was the reason that she had turned into the girl on the floor.
Speedy dropped to his knees, knowing that he didn't possibly have anything to say. He could blame it on Green Arrow, maybe, but he didn't have the words that could make anyone feel better. He wasn't like Aqualad, the boy that knew exactly what to say and when to say it, or like Beast Boy who if he didn't make you laugh you at least stopped crying long enough to groan at one of his awful jokes.
If there was one thing that Speedy hated most in the world, it was feeling hopeless.
He almost apologized but he didn't need to. When Wonder Girl heard Speedy getting on the floor with her she looked up at him and then thrown herself into his arms, continuing to cry on his shoulder.
He patted her awkwardly on the back until she fell asleep in his arms and out of sheer exhaustion he drifted off too.
That's how Aqualad found them the next morning, still wrapped in each other's arms in the kitchen floor.
.x.
That's how Speedy knew that he had fallen in love with her, completely against his will and hers, they found themselves wanting each other in more ways than one. It wasn't pleasant or easy being together, but they trudged on anyway because there wasn't anyone else that they'd rather be with.
Aqualad claimed that he knew it all along, Mas and Menos thought the whole thing was hilarious, and even though they didn't have a fairy tale romance things were still pretty good.
Of course they still fought and exchanged barbed comments, because Speedy still could be a jackass and she still could be a bitch, but they there was no other way that they'd have each other.
Speedy still didn't know everything about her, he doubted he ever would, but it was enough for right now.
.x.
"I still can't believe that you're taking me to dinner. In a restaurant. Where a monster could come and attack anytime. And this place could be completely destroyed." Her 'special occasion' Wonder Girl star earrings sparkled in the candle light of the Italian restaurant that he had chosen for their first date.
"I can't believe that you're still saying that, even though I've been telling you about this all week." There was no way in hell that he was going to tell her that this was actually Aqualad's idea.
She put her elbows on the table and leaned closer to him. "You know, it just doesn't seem like the kind of thing that you'd think up by yourself. You're about as romantic as a bunch of rocks."
Oh she was good. Sweating a little Speedy retorted, "I'm actually pretty charming, when I care."
"So you're saying that you don't care?" Wonder Girl's eyebrows just about met her hairline.
"Maybe."
"So... you wouldn't mind at all if I went over to that guy in the table behind us, the one with the navy sports coat, and asked him if he wanted to go to the park with me instead of you?"
Speedy took a look at the older guy behind them. He had slicked up black hair and what was obviously an expensive sports coat on and a pink tie. He looked like he had money. Lots and lots of it. He kept staring at the back of Wonder Girl's head, which made Speedy feel a bit possessive. He wished that he had his arrows.
"I never said that."
Wonder Girl laughed then, showing her real smile. "Speedy, you are one of the most ridiculous people that I've ever met, and I've met a lot of people."
"But you love it."
She never answered.
.x.
As the year drew to a close Speedy grew almost (afraid) worried about the fact that Wonder Girl's time on the team would be over (would she leave him behind). Wonder Girl never left the Tower without one of her teammates after that one fateful night with Speedy, but he still knew that she still was able to leave (him) and that she like to run.
Things were going to have to be decided once Bumblebee got back, though, and she had sent them a message saying that she was going to be back soon. "And I want to make sure that Speedy's treating Wonder Girl right," she added at the end of the message with a smile.
Speedy turned to Aqualad, who was grinning. "Don't blame me," he said, pointing his thumb at the twins. "I didn't say anything."
Speedy turned his glare on the two young boys, who began saying simultaneously, "No fuimos nosotros! No fuimos nosotros!"
"Yeah right."
Wonder Girl put her hand on Speedy's arm, but he didn't stop glaring at the twins who were now running around the tower shrieking about how it wasn't them, it wasn't them. "Doesn't matter now, does it? She knows, and she probably thinks it's funny. I hope she likes me." Wonder Girl bit her lip.
"Don't worry," Aqualad piped in, "she'll like you automatically once she hears about how you can do a perfect Speedy impersonation."
"Yeah, how can you do that anyway?"
"I don't know," Wonder Girl said in Aqualad's voice and then she shrugged. "Just a talent I've always had," she continued in her voice as Aqualad went to go calm down the twins and tell them than no, Speedy wasn't going to eat them. "It used to be real handy when my friends wanted to get out of school. I'd just call the school in their parent's voice and we could go do whatever we wanted to for the rest of the day."
"You went to school?" Speedy asked, kind of astonished. He hadn't known that, she hadn't told him... Well, she didn't tell him a lot of things, to put it kindly. Again this bothered him, but he let it go like always.
"No, when I first came to America... well anyway I had friends that were in school and I used to help them play hooky. Before they realized what a freak I am."
"You're not a freak," Speedy said automatically, and then he corrected himself. "Except, maybe in bed."
Wonder Girl laughed again, looking at him with thanks in her eyes. "We're all freaks here. Mas and Menos are science experiments, Aqualad is from underwater for Hera's sake, I'm a freaking Amazon. You're the only normal one here, and normal's being used loosely."
"Yeah, it really sucks."
"No, I think that you're lucky." She sounded as though she had given the matter a lot of thought.
"Not really. I guess you wouldn't know, what with having had powers all your life and everything, but it's kind of hard being normal when you're constantly surrounded by people who can be a million times better than you at anything. The only thing I've got is talent, and I have to practice almost constantly."
Wonder Girl just looked at him. "If that's true than what's Batman and Robin got that you don't? Other than a brain, of course."
Speedy hit his shoulder with her shoulder. "Haha, you're hilarous."
"I know." Wonder Girl flipped her hair from one shoulder to another. "I'm thinking about a career in stand up comedy. You think that I should go for it?"
"Yeah, if you want to be booed off the stage maybe."
Wonder Girl stuck her tongue out at him.
.x.
Bumblebee came back on the third of September with gifts for them all, even Wonder Girl, who she had only met for twenty minutes previously when she sat the girl down and gave her a talk about what being on the Titans East meant exactly.
"And last but not least for Ginger over here," Bumblebee said, pulling something out of her bag, "I got him some special hair spray from France. Evidently it's all the rage with rich French women."
Wonder Girl laughed as Speedy handed the large purple spray bottle to her.
"Aw Speedy," Bumblebee said, smiling, "I spent a lot of money on that."
"Wasted, you mean."
"Funny."
"So where the boys too much trouble?" Bumblebee asked Wonder Girl, winking at her in the way that women only can to other women. It wasn't fair. "Well, if you can imagine this, Speedy here at first was horrible..."
"Ginger? Never." Bumblebee's face turned into one of fake shock.
"Yeah, I know, so surprising right? Anyway, other than the twins blowing out the all the light fuses that one time so that the tower didn't have electricity for weeks, Aqualad turning into mother hen over here whenever we misbehaved, and Speedy's smell it wasn't so bad." Wonder Girl squeezed Speedy's hand, which she hadn't let go of all night, when he scowled at her.
"Good." Bumblebee smiled and looked at her teammates, all four of whom who nodded. Speedy's stomach tightened and his breathing quickened. What if she said no? "If you can put up with these crazy three for this long I figure that you're alright. Which is why we want to offer you a place on Titans East. Permanently."
Wonder Girl's eyes filled with tears and it was Speedy's turn to squeeze her hand. "I don't... I mean I can't... I just don't..." Wonder Girl sounded overwhelmed.
"Please?" Speedy added, whispering the word to her. It was a plea, and there was a whole lot more meaning behind the normal one when it came to that one word. Stay with me, he was saying. He hoped she got the message.
"Oh Lord, you've gotten Speedy to be polite. Now you've gotta stay. What do ya say?"
Wonder Girl looked at the four teammates before taking a deep breath and telling them, "Yes. I will."
Speedy gave her a hug and Mas and Menos starting chattering away at her in Spanish, pulling on her short skirt. Aqualad grinned as Bumblebee said, "Well, it's settled then. You're staying with us. Hope you're up for the ride, girlie."
.x.
When the party was done, because no one could say that the Titans East didn't know how to celebrate, Speedy and Wonder Girl walked to their rooms hand in hand.
Speedy knew that there had never been a better time to say this. If there was such a thing as perfect timing, this was it, and he wasn't going to let it pass him by. "Wonder Girl, Donna, look, I've got to tell you something."
Wonder Girl turned her big blue eyes up to him. "Yes?"
"I- I love you, okay?"
Wonder Girl just looked at him with unfathomable eyes for a long second, and Speedy started to get nervous. He had never told a girl that and meant it the way that it meant it toward Wonder Girl. And here she was, not even saying anything. What if she didn't want (him) this?
Then she grabbed the front of his shirt and smashed their lips together with her super human strength. They had kissed before plenty, but never like this. There was a desperate and hungry edge to the way that her lips moved against his that they had never had before.
This kind of worried him for a minute, but he let her take them into his bedroom anyway. He even closed the door behind them.
.x.
When Speedy woke up in the morning she was gone, her side of the bed cold. Last night had been amazing... memories of it were swirling all around him head. But then he realized that he had better get up and look for her.
He pulled on some normal shorts and a t-shirt that he picked up from the floor but they smelled alright so he hoped that Wonder Girl wouldn't notice. She'd probably be getting breakfast, she always was an early riser.
Speedy walked by her bedroom on the way down to the kitchen, though, and he knocked on the door and then entered. He figured that she wouldn't mind, he'd seen all of her last night anyway, but the room was completely empty.
For some reason he started panicking, his heart beating really fast and hard and loud, but then he realized that he was just being ridiculous. They probably wanted to move her out of a guest room and into a regular room over by Bee. That was it. It had to be.
But when he looked over in the communications room the only person that was there was Bumblebee, her daily dose of coffee still in front of her, reading the paper. "Hey," he says, holding on to his hope by a thread dangling from the ceiling. "Have you seen Wonder Girl."
When Bumblebee looked up at him her expression was sad. His stomach clenched even tighter than it had the night before when they asked her if she wanted to join the team. It was painful, and he wanted to scream that he didn't want to hear after all, that it didn't really matter, that he was just kidding. (That he didn't care.)
"She resigned, Speedy." Bumblebee didn't say sorry, she never did, but the words were there, hanging in the space between them.
"What do you mean, resigned? She hasn't even been on the team a day yet, she couldn't have resigned. She probably just left, sometimes she does that," Speedy knows that he's sounding stupid, that his words are turning into one long run on, but he doesn't care. If he keeps talking maybe he won't hear the words that are coming.
"She came to my room about four this morning and said that she had to resign. Her bags were packed. She said she wasn't coming back."
That's when Speedy realized that she hadn't said those three words, eight letters, back to him. "Damnit," he screamed and punched the table until his hand bled.
.x.
Wonder Girl hadn't even left a note, she wasn't cliche enough for that. She didn't leave anything behind (except him). When they went to her room that afternoon to clean it out not a speck of anything that whispered was there. She took the picture of them that the twins had taken of them months and months ago, the one that was kind of blurry but her eyes looked so blue and he looked so happy.
In that picture he looked so unlike how he felt right now.
Wonder Girl took all her clothes, all her jewelery, even all of her stupid make up. Her bed was made and the curtains that she had ordered from the Internet were gone.
The only thing that let him know that she even existed was the dull ache in his hand and the stabbing pain in his heart. She even took anything of hers from his room. She had stolen everything from him.
Speedy wanted to hate her, he really did. But whenever he tried he'd see how she raised her eyebrows, the way that the jaggedness had gone away from her smile, the way her blue eyes betrayed everything that she was thinking.
He just couldn't forget her like she had obviously forgotten him, like a mismatched sock that wasn't even worth a second thought.
.x.
It was a year before he saw her again. Occasionally Aqualad would get updates on her from Robin, the one Titan that she would still talk to, and he couldn't help but overhear them so he knew that she was alive, but he hadn't actually seen her for a long, long time.
He still loved her, and he was afraid that he would forever.
But then their paths crossed when the Titans West had gotten a call from a enemy that wanted to destroy the world (again) and they were starting with Jump City, working their way up from sidekicks to the Justice League.
When he first saw her she was punching a monster in the face and he was so surprised that he almost missed his target. He never missed, though, but a flood of emotions, one that he didn't have time for, rushed over him like a tidal wave.
He ran down from his position on the top of a building. He got lucky because she was on the ground still admiring (their) her handiwork when he grabbed her bracelet, one layer and a thousand unsaid words between them.
When she saw who he was her eyes widened. "Speedy," she breathed. "I can't do this right now. I'm sorry."
"What is it that you're so afraid of?" he asked her, not letting go of her wrist. Because obviously there was something that she wasn't telling him and he wasn't about to let her go until he figured out what it is. He had waited a year and he wasn't a patient guy.
Her blue eyes flashed. "I'm not afraid of anything. Obviously, I'm here, I'm fighting. I'm brave."
"No, you're stupid. We're all stupid, because we're here fighting when we should be running away like every other normal human being. But people that are brave don't run away from the people that they love."
"Who said I loved you?"
Her words had the effect that she desired them to have. Pain flared up, hot and heavy. He wanted to hurt her like she hurt him, but Speedy also knew that if he did he would never have her back the way that he wanted. He couldn't completely control his mouth, though. "I guess you do what we did with all the guys then."
He knew that he got to her when he saw both of her hands turn into fists. He gave her the grin that he knew that she hated, the one that made her so angry that she would scream at him. "We don't have time to talk about this right now. We're trying to save the world if you haven't noticed," she said stiffly, clearly uncomfortable. Good.
"They can do without us for two seconds."
This time her lips turned into that jagged smile that he thought had vanished. Obviously it had come back with all of her time away from him. "Maybe they can do without you, but they can't do without me." She raised her black eyebrows at him they way that she always did, and then she turned her back on him and flew away.
.x.
After the fight was over (another Battle won by the Teen Titans, though they're not so young anymore...) all of the Titans gathered at the Titans West Tower and planned to party and figure out where exactly they were going.
Speedy saw her try to run away, but before he could stop her he saw Robin go up to her and talk quick and quiet to her. She shook her head and Robin said something else before, with a resigned expression, she nodded and went to join in the festivities.
As soon as he went over to the refreshment table he ambushed her.
"Wonder Girl," he said flatly. She looked at him and for a second all he could remember was how she liked her pancakes (a Titans East tradition, thank you very much) with syurp and enough butter to give you a heart attack, the way that she always laughed too loud, and the way she looked when talking to the twins, half amused and half maternally because everyone reacted to them that way.
"Speedy," she replied.
"Can we talk?"
"Don't you think that we've done enough of that for today?"
"No, we can never do enough of that. Not now, anyway."
"What do you want to know, Speedy? Hmm? Do you want to figure out what makes Wonder Girl tick too?"
"No, I just want to know why you left me."
"You should know the answer to that."
He stared at her for a while before he answered her. "This isn't you, this isn't the Wonder Girl that I'm in love with."
"What do you want me to say Speedy? That I still love you too? That I hate myself, because it turns out that I'm not worth anything at all? That my own mother didn't want me? That the Amazons felt sorry for me and that's why they took me in?"
Speedy stared at her, but she was really on a roll now. It was obvious to him that she had been wanting to say all of this for a long, long time. They were creating a scene, but she obviously didn't care.
"That I completely and totally don't deserve you? There, I said it. Now you can go back to Steel City and I can keep on breaking your heart. We'll be the best love story ever, don't you think? Even better than the Green Arrow and Black Canary."
And then she started to sob again. And just like before, this time with more confidence and a bit more grace, Speedy went to her and held her.
.x.
And that's how it happened. That's how an arrogant boy and a weak girl came together and tried, and failed, to hold each other and themselves together again. That's how she walked into his life, and out of it, and then back in it again.
This is the story that Aqualad tells their children whenever they ask, because their parents are too chagrined to tell it themselves.
(And they lived happily ever after, minus the fighting and the tears and the monsters of course.)
Fin.
A/N #2: God, I worked on this for FIVE HOURS STRAIGHT. You guys have no idea what this took from me. This is the first time that I've ever said this, I believe, but please review guys. I need it.
(Also, Wonder Girl was in the comics, the show, and the TTG! comics too. Does anyone know how I can add her to the character list. If you do please tell me. If you do, and you're right, you'll get a free request courtesy of moi.)
I'm going to go take some aspirin.
-RFE