SUMMARY: Bart and Mia have a lot to talk about. More than they thought, in fact.
DISCLAIMER: These characters belong to DC Comics. I just fantasize about them.
CONTINUITY: TT vol. 3, just before Infinite Crisis.
NOTES: Written for Glossing in the 2006 JBBS challenge and betaread by Saone.
Courage is of the heart by derivation,
And great it is. But fear is of the soul.
--Robert Frost, "A Masque of Mercy"
When Ollie convinced her to join the Teen Titans, Mia had expected many things: adventure, action, injury, and space travel, for instance. But there was one thing she found herself completely unprepared for:
"Oh god, I'm bored," she said, flopping back on the rec room couch and picking up the game controller Bart was offering.
Bart grinned. "Weird, huh?" He started a new game of Gran Turismo 4.
"Who'd've thought I'd be desperate for a supervillain to show up?" She sat down to choose her car, staring at the options for a moment before selecting an Aston-Martin because it was green. "I mean, was there a memo we didn't get or something?"
"I don't think Lex Luthor has us on his cc list."
Mia rolled her eyes. "I know that."
Bart rolled his eyes right back at her. "I know you know. I was joking."
"Sorry," she mumbled, slumping further down. "I just feel like there's something I should be doing. Patrolling or something."
Shrugging, Bart flipped quickly through the game options. "Cyborg is monitoring the board. He'll let us know if there's anything. I guess we could patrol San Francisco...again. If you really needed to. Y'wanna try a dirt track?"
Mia nodded. "Sure. And I guess I don't need to patrol again. It's just weird."
"I know. But it's not like we haven't been busy."
"Well, there were those mutant snakes yesterday, but I didn't do much." Mia leaned forward as the race started.
"You shot out their eyes while Robin was figuring out how they could be killed. That counts." Bart's car bounced along the track and settled down for some serious speed.
"I guess so." Mia sighed. "I don't know what I thought being a superhero would be like but..."
"Have you ever heard of 'hurry up and wait'? And just think how it feels to me."
"Oh!" Mia flushed. "It's probably a lot worse for you."
"Just this week I've been to Japan twice to pick up sushi for dinner, three times to South America to look for birds thought to be extinct, and on Friday, I went to Israel to do research for my history term paper on the Middle East."
"Wow." Mia grinned at the screen as she nearly ran over a photographer standing in the middle of the track and the dust her car kicked up blew in the faces of the spectators. She was almost sure she saw a spectator coughing in response.
"You know, I don't know much about being a normal teen," Bart said, whipping his car around a tight curve, leaving a trail of dust and smoke behind him. "I spent a bunch of years in a virtual reality, until Grandma Iris brought me here. I only started going to school and stuff a few years ago." He paused and Mia looked at him out of the corner of her eye. "When I lived with Max."
"Max?"
"Max Mercury, another speedster. The Zen Guru of Speed."
Mia could hear the capital letters. "You don't live with him anymore?"
"Max is gone. I guess I'll see him again, but not for a long time."
Mia couldn't help it: She made a face. "You mean you'll see him in heaven or something?"
Bart took his eyes off the game long enough to blink at her. "In the Speed Force. He's a speedster, so eventually I'll see him in the Speed Force."
"Oh." Mia wasn't quite sure how to respond to that. "Uh. I'm sorry."
Bart swallowed. "Thanks. I miss him. He tried really hard to teach me to slow down." His car passed the finish line and Bart restarted the race.
"Slow down? You're a speedster." Mia watched him as she zoomed her car out of the starting gate.
"Uh-huh. Fast is easy. Slow is hard."
"Hmm," she said.
The race entered a particularly tricky set of turns and they focused on making it through alive. And Mia thought about learning how to slow down. It sounded like stuff Connor had tried to teach her--without a lot of success.
Mia maneuvered her car off to the pit and watched thoughtfully as the guys changed tires, refueled, and sent her car back onto the track. "It's weird sometimes, being here," she said as her car sped up. "Like I expect someone to flip back my hood and melodramatically announce, 'You're not really Speedy, you're an imposter!'"
Bart leaned to the side as his car screamed around a curve. "Arsenal gave you the arrows and Green Arrow took you on. That's pretty much all you need to be Speedy."
"I know," she said with a shrug. "It's a thing. How'd you get to be Kid Flash?"
"I didn't want to be, originally. Batman and the Flash called me Impulse when I first got here. And the Flash..." Bart scowled. "We don't have the greatest relationship, so I didn't want to take his name. But I got shot and it sort of made things clear. As Kid Flash, I'm honoring my Grandpa Barry. And that's cool."
Mia hesitated. "Ollie said..."
"Yeah?"
"He said you remind him of Barry, but without the conservative attitudes," she said in a rush.
"Really?" Bart sat up straight on the couch. "He did? Wow. That's...that's cool. Thanks for telling me."
"You're welcome."
They played in silence for a while, concentrating on the roaring of the engines and cheering of the crowds. Mia relaxed into the couch and let her mind focus, just as she did when she released an arrow.
Bart whistled as her car blew by his, crossing the finish line comfortably ahead. "Nice," he said.
"Thanks." She brought up an upgrade menu, trying to calculate how much she could afford.
"You've done really well as a Titan, you know. I see why Green Arrow picked you."
Mia blushed at the praise, but had to correct him. "He didn't. Pick me, I mean. I had to practically force him."
"Really?" Bart looked at the high scores and flipped through the international track list.
"Yeah." She put the controller down, stretching her arms over her head until her shoulders cracked. "He got this attack of conscience and decided that he couldn't let a kid go out on the streets in a costume."
Bart snickered.
"Yeah, Ollie's not so good at seeing irony." Mia laughed. "But he means well, I guess. And he does good."
"Yeah," Bart said, nodding. "Is it hard being a sidekick?"
Mia leaned against the back of the couch. "What do you mean? Aren't--"
"I'm not, really." There was a breeze as Bart zoomed out of the room, and an instant later he was back with an ice cream sundae. "You want one?" he asked, holding it out to her.
"Uh, yeah. Thanks." She took it, waiting until he'd gone to the kitchen and come back again. When he'd settled in and started eating, she took a breath. "What do you mean you aren't a sidekick?"
Bart shrugged, but his face was tense and he was hunched over his ice cream. "Like I said earlier, I don't get along that well with the Flash. I've helped him on some stuff, but he's not really a mentor like Batman or Green Arrow. I kind of annoy him, mostly."
"Oh, that's too bad."
"Yeah."
Mia scooped out a big gob of ice cream with the cherry on top. "For whatever it's worth, Green Arrow's not always the greatest mentor either. I'm not sure he's ever known exactly what to do with a sidekick."
Bart's ice cream was nearly gone. "It doesn't help, but thanks."
"But Cyborg helps, right? I mean, that's what he's here for."
Bart stopped and looked up at her, with the oddest expression of surprise. "Yeah, he does. I guess I just didn't think of it that way."
"So it's not like you're all alone or anything."
"And Robin tries to think of things to help me understand my speed."
"I'm sure," she said with amusement. Robin still scared her rather a lot, but if he was nice to Bart, he couldn't be all bad. "So you like being a Titan?"
Bart answered before she'd even finished the question. "I love it."
Mia stared down at her ice cream, watching a gob of chocolate sauce slide down the side of an ice cream mountain. "And you like being Kid Flash?"
"It's who I am," Bart said simply. "I have these powers from Grandpa Barry, so I should use them."
She snorted.
"What?" Bart glanced at her, finishing his ice cream.
"It's just..." Mia shook her head, and put down her own sundae. "Not that long ago, I was turning tricks, trying to survive, and now I'm playing a game with a guy who can run to Japan for dinner." She was proud that her voice only shook once during that sentence.
Bart gave her a look she couldn't read. "Huh," he said as he restarted the game and the race continued.
"What?" She got flustered, suddenly worried that maybe she shouldn't have said it, that he didn't want to be reminded. Her car veered off the dirt track, crashing into the wall, one wheel spinning into the middle of the track.
Bart bounced in his seat, swerving his car to miss some debris blown forward by the impact. "I didn't mean to distract you," he said. "I was just thinking that that was the first time I'd heard you refer to..." He trailed off. "The first time you've really mentioned what happened, except when you told everybody how you got HIV."
Mia looked down at her hands, turning the controller over and over. "Well, it's not exactly light conversation."
"So? I'm glad you said something, because it's not good to hold these things in. I read three books on repression the other day and they say that--"
"I'm not repressing anything, Bart." Despite the subject, she had a strong desire to laugh. A lot. Or hug him or something. "I promise. I just don't like to talk about it, because there isn't that much to say. I did stupid stuff to survive--"
"No!" Bart paused the game and turned on the couch to look at her. "Don't say that. It's not your fault."
"I know." Mia felt tears coming and took several deep breaths. "I know. But that doesn't stop me from being ashamed."
"Don't be."
He was absolutely still, and she thought that was a sign how much he meant it. "Thank you," she said, swallowing a lump growing in her throat. She scowled at the controller in her hand. "But I don't have any powers," she said. "I'm just a kid with a bow and some trick arrows."
Bart shrugged as he restarted the game. "So? Same with Green Arrow and Arsenal and the other Green Arrow and Batman and Nightwing and--"
"Okay, I get the idea!"
"I just mean that not everybody we work with is Superman or Wonder Woman. And remember that you're a Titan, now and forever. I won't let a fellow Titan run herself down."
"Aye aye, Captain," Mia said, waving a hand vaguely near her forehead. She still felt a little teary, but in a good way.
"A lot of people are in this life because..." Bart shrugged again, whipping his car around a corner. "I don't know. I guess they do it because they can. Or they want to."
"Or somebody has to?"
Bart turned and smiled at her. "Yeah."
Mia concentrated on the game for a minute. "I guess that's why I'm here. Because somebody has to stick up for the kids like me."
Bart nodded. "That's a good reason."
--end--