Disclaimer: I, WithNoFear, do not own Young Justice, or basically anything recognizable in the story, although having a speedster might be useful in getting my chores done faster...
2017
It's funny, really, but most of the time the main thing he can remember is the blue of her eyes. Bart knows that if Nightwing were to take off his mask that the blue would be there, too. The famous Grayson blues were passed down, and, God, sometimes he'll look up and just wonder how she managed to look so much like her father with the shiny black locks and the finely sculpted features and the slim yet powerful acrobats' build. Of course, Bart remembers all kinds of things about her, but he can't help but swallow painfully every time he makes a snarky comment to Nightwing because he imagines a small girl rolling her eyes at his remarks rather than the tall young man who generally takes them in stride.
He sometimes, selfishly, wishes that she was born decades earlier, because then he would have been able to save the world and still had her. He misses everyone from his past—the future—but she was his closest friend. He remembers that her eyes would cloud over with pain and sadness when she looked at the refugees starving in the camps, still remembers the day that Damian Wayne laid a blue and black costume in front of her and watching her eyes harden with determination.
Sometimes, his only comfort is knowing that he changed everything for the better.
Even though he lost everything—everything —he'll smile because he knows that now, she'll get to learn acrobatic tricks from her father for as long as she wants because Dick Grayson won't have to leave her to save the world. He takes comfort in knowing that she'll have plenty to eat, and soft covers to sleep under, and a family, complete with all of the League that she loved that had to die too early, and that she'll be able to tackle her dad with hugs every night he returns from patrol because Bart will make sure that he does. Every night.
Still, though, sometimes, it gets unbearably lonely.
That's when he'll pull out the picture, one of the few that he ever had taken, and he'll stare at it. He'll memorize the faces of his friends: standing on the edge of the group with a wide smirk on his face, a fifteen-year-old Gold Arrow (Bart takes pleasure in the knowledge that now Jace Queen will live past sixteen) had one elbow resting on the short green-skinned girl that was looking up at him in annoyance (Bart shakes away all thoughts of fire, of ashes, of the screams of his close friend). Beside them stood a tall, bulky teen, his black hair cut short as he tilted his head back to stare at the boy perched on his shoulders (and now Bart remembers how the Atlantean gave his life in the midst of battle, trying to reclaim the earth, and his heart lightens because now the teen will live the life he deserved), and the boy on his shoulders has a grin as bright as a neon sign on his face while he waves, his large brown wings folded behind him neatly (Bart desperately wishes that he could stop hearing the sickening sound of wings being broken, of a boy born to fly being grounded for the rest of his life). And then Bart's eyes move to the last two in the picture. There he is, his arm clung casually over his best friend's shoulders, all thirteen-year-old gangly limbs and wide eyes. And there… There she is.
He'll do his best to forget the way that all her skin is pulled just a little too tightly over her bones, try to ignore the deep circles around her eyes, and he'll just stare at her. Even at the generally awkward age of thirteen, she had the natural grace of an acrobat. Her eyes are looking upward (caught in the middle of an eye roll, he remembers with a smile), and she has her arm linked with her Atlantean teammate, a smile tugging on the corners of her lips. Her hair is pulled back into the usual ponytail, but wisps of hair have started falling to frame her face. Bart memorizes every detail, the way she has her arm looped casually around his waist, the way that her smile is a little bit crooked, the exact crinkle of her eyes.
Bart doesn't realize he's crying until a tear drops on the photograph. Quickly, he wipes it off, swallowing thickly. He thinks that it isn't a really good idea to be crying about this now, when he's sitting in his grandfather's kitchen at the time that Barry Allen normally gets off from work, but he can't bring himself to care. He figures that he can let the façade of a happy teen drop for a few seconds, because even though he saved the world, Bart lost his.
He closes his eyes and relishes in the last time he saw her.
He's standing on top of a building, overlooking an ocean of tents.
"This is kind of hopeless, isn't it?"
Bart looks down when he hears his best friend's broken voice. She's sitting on the roof, knees pulled to her chest as she looks out at the only world they've ever known. He's pretty certain that if she weren't wearing her mask, tears would be streaking down her face by now, so he sits beside her and loops an arm around her shoulder.
"I mean," she said into the silence that is her Bart's answer, "There's no way to fix this, really. And we just keep losing more people. It's kind of sucky, really."
"Yeah," Bart whispers. He doesn't tell her his plan, the one he's been working on for months now.
She lets out a broken laugh, and Bart tightens his arm around her. "Let it not be said that we don't try, though, right?"
Bart chuckles a bit at the dark humor.
It doesn't change, really. Every day's the same. The only thing that changes is who dies. Who died trying to preserve a world that was more hell on earth than anything else. As of that day, all of the Leaguers that had ever seen the sun were dead. All that was left were the kids that had to take up the mantels.
"It's not fair," Bart voiced aloud.
She takes off her mask before turning her watery blue eyes up at him. "Yeah."
Bart swallows. "I'm sorry about Da—Batman."
She graces him with a shaky smile. "It's not like he was the only family I had left, or anything."
Bart remains silent, soaking this moment in. He's leaving soon, and he wants to be sure to remember everything about this. The warmth of her skin through her uniform, the softness of the strands of her hair as the wind blows pieces of it against his skin, the coiled-up energy that was bound into a small bundle of acrobatic grace. He resists the urge to sigh when the communicator buzzes, signaling that she is needed elsewhere.
"Duty calls," she says, standing and pulling him to his feet, and there's no bitterness in her voice, and maybe that's what he loves so much about her, that she's willing to go through so much for others with hardly a second thought for herself.
And what Bart does next is impulsive, and he definitely wouldn't have done it if he knew that he would have to face her again, but it's the last time he'll ever see her, and if his plan works, everything will change, so Bart tilts her chin up and kisses his best friend. Her lips are chapped and bleeding from a cut received from an earlier fight, but it doesn't really matter because he's wanted to do this for so long, so Bart is disappointed when his communicator beeps, calling him for business on another side of the world.
Stepping back and giving a grin (he'll never forget how pretty her eyes are, especially when they're wide as saucers), Bart salutes her and takes off running.
"Bart? Are you… crying?"
He opens his eyes to see his grandfather looking at him quizzically, holding his jacket over one arm. Just got back from work, then. Bart shifts his eyes away and unconsciously moves to hide the photograph as he wipes his cheeks, but Barry sees the motion and speeds over before it has disappeared into Bart's pocket.
"What's wrong, kid?"
Bart studies his grandfather hard for a millisecond before pasting a fake smile wide on his face. "Nothing, Gramps. How was work?"
"Lying's not your biggest talent, Bart," Barry teases. Bart snorts inwardly. If only you knew. "Seriously, kid, what's wrong?"
And Bart can tell he isn't going to drop it, so he meets his grandfather's eyes and says, with as much calmness as he can muster, "Future stuff. Can't really talk about it."
And to his grandfather's credit, his eyes soften and he places a hand on Bart's shoulder before gesturing towards the photograph. Bart holds it out to him after a moment and watches carefully as Barry takes the only memento he has of his first family.
"Pretty girl," Barry comments lightly, testing the waters.
"My best friend," is Bart's only answer.
Barry engulfs Bart in a hug, and, briefly, Bart can suddenly understand why his best friend's eyes always lit up for her father in a way they didn't for anyone else.
And it's really kind of funny (tragic), but Bart suddenly realizes that everything he thinks about brings him back to those eyes.
2056
When Ava Grayson finds out that her best friend is missing, she's in the middle of a meeting with her distant cousin, the most recent Batman, and she hears the words while she in the middle of walking across the room. Then she does something that in any other case would be highly embarrassing, but right then was perfectly natural.
Ava, the last living Grayson, trips over her own feet.
Too stunned to catch herself in one of her graceful rolls or flips, she plops onto the floor in front of the Batman, who looks stunned at her lack of coordination. She can't really blame him; in any other case, she's got some of the best balance of anyone she knows.
Soon though, she's recovered herself. "When was the last time he was seen?"
The most recent Green Lantern looks at her tiredly. "About twenty-four hours ago. We know that he was going to see Neutron—,"
Ava doesn't stay to hear anything else.
Before anyone can stop her, she's out of the room, mounting the motorcycle ("Only for emergencies, Nightwing."), and speeding out of the cave. She's done with waiting for permission because right now, her best friend could be in danger, and if it means that she has to torture Neutron (vaguely, she remembers that Neutron is responsible for the death of Bart's grandfather), then she'll do it. Because it's Bart, and he's not allowed to leave her like that.
And yeah, it's impulsive, and stupid, and irresponsible, and really, really selfish, but she does it anyway, because to her, Bart matters more than whatever useless mission the League was about to send her on. Because without Bart, the world would become so much more hopeless, and she really needs him to be there and smile through the pain with her since that's just what they've always done. And, yeah, so maybe she really wants to know what he meant by that random kiss last night.
The cold wind is tearing through the uniform (she finds it really hard to think of it as her uniform because he was the first one to be Nightwing, and she can never replace him) and she realizes belatedly that tears are falling down from her eyes, soaking through the domino mask she wears and letting a thin trail slide down her cheeks. Without taking a hand from the control to wipe her tears, she focuses on the road and pushes the bike faster, glancing down at the GPS (she finds herself amazed that they still have technology like that, what with everything that happened) and counting down the minutes, the seconds.
Because in her world, 'missing' almost always means 'dead', and she refuses to let it happen because they have way too much to clear up before he's allowed to leave her.
Thirty minutes after she fled the meeting, she arrives at the place that the tracker in Neutron's collar says he last was. Killing the engine, Ava quickly dismounts, hearing her father's voice whispering advice in her ears. Be prepared for hostility. Don't allow yourself to be caught off guard. She pulls out a birdarang and clutches it lightly in her hand as she walks forward, her light footsteps barely making a noise on the ground. As she rounds a corner of piled ruins, she sees a man, head resting in his hands.
"Neutron?" she calls, lowering her voice a little bit into the intimidating tone of Nightwing.
His head jerks up, and he stares at her so intently that it puts her on edge, and she doesn't have the patience or the self-control to wait for his reply.
"Where is he?" She abandons caution and approaches him quickly. "What have you done with him?"
"It didn't work," is all the man says.
Ava growls and grabs him by his collar, jerking him up so that he can stare into the blank whiteness of her mask. "What didn't work? If he's hurt, Neutron—,"
"We were trying to crash the mode," he explains, words hopeless. "But it didn't work."
Her eyebrows raise despite herself (crash the mode? Hasn't everyone agreed that it's impossible?), and she lowers him gently. "He was—He's gone?"
"To the past."
She allows herself to sink to the ground shakily beside him.
"I think maybe we ought to compare notes."
A/N: Hey, guys. This is just an idea that wouldn't leave me alone. Although some things will allude to canon after 'Bloodlines', it will probably deviate quite a bit, since I plan on having a completely separate mission for these two. Also, I decided to name Dick Grayson's daughter 'Ava' because it means 'bird' and I found it fitting. Sooooo, review and let me know what you think (for example, who should Ava's mom be? :))
Yours writerly,
WNF
