Disclaimer- We do not own Young Justice or any of its characters.
Ha, funny story about this: it wasn't even supposed to be a collab. XD I(Ranty) had the first half of this written from a loooooong time ago, and just thought I'd share it with Veggy, then it turned into this monstrous angst collab and hot damn! What fun! I'm usually allergic to angst, but this particular type I can handle.
Enjoy!
o.o.o.o
Written by TheRantDragon, IronicVeghead, and Alfhild
o.o.o.o
This wasn't how it was supposed to happen.
"Is...is that all you—"
CRACK!
He was meant to be the distraction, meant to keep Sportsmaster away from her until the others could arrive as back-up. That's how it was supposed to have happened.
But nothing ever went right.
All it had taken was one slip up from Kid, one misplaced foot catching on a loose board and a well placed baseball bat to the shin to bring him crashing down to the rotted floor, gasping as the air exploded from his lungs.
WHAM!
A second hit to the arms he had attempted to support himself with, then Sportsmaster was upon him, striking every inch of spandex clad skin he could possibly reach.
Meanwhile she struggled desperately, angrily against the gag, the ropes binding her wrists. A searing hatred burned through her veins like corrosive venom eating her away from the inside out. Her bow lay broken and useless a few feet from her, just out of reach and useless anyway with her quiver devoid of arrows.
Sportsmaster had relented his beatings momentarily, yelling something at the struggling redhead, something that Artemis couldn't hear for the blood pounding viciously in her ear drums. She could barely see through the moisture in her eyes, the tears of anger and distress and helplessness and frustration.
God, how could she have let this happen?
She hated feeling like this, feeling like a damsel as she watched Wally being trounced within an inch of his life. It tore at her chest, her heart, rage bubbling up within her throat like bile. This was the absolute last thing she ever wanted to be seeing; her teammate, her friend... Wally dying in front of her and helpless to stop it. Her own dad, her own flesh and blood murdering her—
By this time Kid Flash had managed to flip himself over, blood seeping from the corner of his reddened and bruised eye. He started to say something to the villain but suddenly the wooden, gore spattered bat was swinging toward his face, smashing into the goggles situated lopsidedly above his forehead. Glass exploded in a shower of tiny shards, some of them tearing ragged gashes into Kid's cheek.
He cried out in pain, turned back to Sportsmaster looking resolute and ireful. The cuts created from the glass licking across his skin were already trying to heal themselves, but before the process could be completed Sportsmaster struck him yet again, driving the pieces into his cheek and smearing red everywhere. Kid Flash's body jerked to the side from the blow, sweaty hair hanging over his face as he spat blood onto the floor. After a moment, he brought the back of his hand up to wipe at his lip, breathing heavily.
"Is... is that all you got? You're just a deadbeat in a hockey mask, Casey Jones!"
Artemis struggled harder than ever as her dad resumed flaying Wally with a vengeance. She tried to block out the sounds of the bat smacking his flesh, the stifled cries of Wally as he tried not to let the pain get to him, the crack as a rib snapped in half...
Wally, please! Please be okay.
This was the worst, the worst thing her father had ever done. The tough training, the missions to kill... those things she could handle him doing to herself, but killing her family...
Her dirt crusted fingernails scrabbled desperately at the old wood flooring behind her back.
That's when she felt it: glass from Wally's goggles.
It was a jagged, triangular shape just big enough to get the job done. Her heart leaped into her throat at the sheer luck, and without further hesitation she grasped it, heedless of it digging deeply into her skin as she began sawing relentlessly at the binds.
When it finally snapped she was on her feet in record time, snatching up the bigger half of her broken bow and clutching it tightly in her slippery hands. She moved up behind her dear old dad and braced her body before sending the makeshift club crashing down hard on the back of his skull; once, twice, thrice, with a strength she didn't even know she possessed, one that reverberated through the muscles in her arms and clacked her teeth together with each jarring swing.
Sportsmaster fell to the floor, blood welling in his blond hair as he slid sideways off of Wally. The baseball bat slipped from his limp fingers.
Limbs quaking, Artemis dropped her ruined bow and roughly shoved her dad's immobilized body aside with the toe of her boot. She didn't know how to feel, didn't care if he was dead or alive as long as Wally was okay.
Nothing mattered but Wally.
"Wally!"
She knelt down next to his torso, put her hand on his cheek and turned his face in her direction. One eye opened, the one that wasn't crusted shut with blood, and he gave her a very forced, lopsided smile.
"Hey. Nice job, beautiful."
He coughed forcefully, flecks of blood landing on his lip. His cuts and bruises were no longer fixing themselves, which didn't bode well.
"God, Wally, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry for the things that son of a bitch did to you. I can't... he's..." Artemis managed, but trailed off. Her emotions were twisting and forming into a thick mass at the base of her esophagus, constricting her speech. She bit at her bottom lip, ignoring the pain from her crack there. The water pooling above her lower lids was threatening to spill over.
She had nearly lost him.
Her speedster.
Her crass, flirtatious and all around ridiculous speedster. The one she couldn't go a day without rolling her eyes at least once, the one that was always there for her when she really needed it, the one who constantly tried to one up her in the sparring circle but ended up on the floor with an arrow inches from his face, grinning like a fool; the one who had nearly kissed her a few nights ago against the counter in the kitchen, the one who...
The one who had gone silent in her arms.
She was screaming when the team arrived. The blonde didn't even realize she was doing it.
"WALLY!" Her voice was hoarse, the syllables cracking and bouncing off the dried walls until they'd reached her again. "WALLY, WAKE UP! PLEASE!"
She didn't notice her team was there until they were pulling her away from him, prying her stiff digits from the places she'd had them fisted into his tattered uniform. Their questions and orders were falling on deaf ears, and the only thing she understood was that Wally wasn't waking up.
The heroes had to talk louder to hear each other over the archer's continued shrieks, M'gann trying to assist her as she raced after the speedster Aqualad was urgently running to the Bioship.
Her eyes didn't move from his still form; it could have been anyone taking him away and she wouldn't have noticed as long as she could follow. M'gann tried to usher her into her seat on the ship, but the sight of Wally's chair seemed to knock the girl back into the present.
"He's not dead!" She glared at her teammates, challenging them to tell her otherwise. Their faces were grim as the ship took off in a rush. "Wally's not dead!" she yelled, and she wasn't sure if the reassurance was for their benefit or her own.
No one would look at her.
Aqualad was in the back with Wally. He was patching him up, trying to stabilize him long enough to reach the Mount...
Wally would be fine tomorrow.
Tomorrow they would watch Star Trek like she'd promised him.
She would tease him about the new casts he'd have to wear.
"He's not dead!" Artemis screeched, completely and undeniably hysterical, body quaking with emotion as she searched for a fighting reaction.
Any reaction.
She barely registered the Martian creeping into her head until the pull of consciousness fell away, her screams growing as silent as her mind.
o.o.o.o
Artemis awoke on her bed in Mount Justice, just as easily as if she'd been taking a nap. She was dressed in a soft cotton tank top and a pair of shorts, clothes that had already been draping off the dresser before she'd been taken. They weren't clean, she knew, but she supposed that whomever had changed her clothes—probably M'gann or Black Canary—had grabbed the first thing they could find.
She let out a soft sigh, her hooded eyes adjusting to the darkness around her. Rather than being comforted by the downy sheets encasing her torso, she felt encompassed, trapped and stifled. Suddenly the archer's brain went into overdrive and she sat up in alarm, turning her riveted attention to the door, the events of Wally's torture crashing down on her with the weight of a boulder, making her nauseous. She wanted to leave her room and learn of Wally's condition, how well he'd been doing since they'd brought him back.
But in the back of her mind laid a picture.
A memory.
"Hey. Nice job, beautiful."
She pulled her hands away from the covers, holding them close to her face for inspection.
Her digits and palms were wrapped securely in tight medical tape; small blotches of long dried blood had welled up here and there on them. The sight of her hands was undeniable confirmation of what had taken place, but still...
Still she held on to the naive hope that maybe it'd been a dream. A terrible, terrible dream. And soon Wally would burst through her door, complaining loudly that she'd slept in and that they needed to get started on the marathon before someone else stole the tv.
The thought had scarcely left her when there was a knock on the door.
"Wally?" Artemis called automatically, ripping the covers away from her legs, scooting to the edge of the bed and walking to the door. The metal handle felt cool against her skin.
The floor had been cold.
Dotted with his blood.
"Artemis?" Dinah had opened the door. Artemis released the handle from her grasp, like the metal had suddenly turned molten in her palm. "How are you feeling?"
Artemis ignored the woman's inquiry for a much more important question.
"Where's Wally?" she demanded immediately, voice firm. It was an order. Tell me where Wally is.
"Artemis, he's..." she paused, uncertain with her words. Like she was holding something back, something she was wary to tell the young hero. "Are you sure you're feeling well enough for this? I-I'm not sure if anyone's told you about what happened, Artemis, but—"
"I was there! I know what happened!" Artemis shouted, her voice strangled and cracked with emotion. "I saw everything, Black Canary. Please, please. Just take me to see him."
She didn't know if it was stubbornness against death that told her the speedster was alive, or something in her heart, or blatant hope. All she knew was that if someone didn't take her to Wally right this second, she was going to have a conniption fit.
Wally wasn't dead. He couldn't be.
"Follow me," Dinah said after some hesitation, holding the door open for her. "I'm just not sure how you'll react..." she murmured to herself, an afterthought that didn't reach Artemis' ears as she marched passed and into the corridor beyond.
Artemis saw her distorted reflection in the marbled walls as she follow Dinah through the twisting halls of the Mount. Her hair was halfway out of her ponytail, her bangs sticking out like they'd been electrified. It was hard to tell, but Artemis thought there were bags under her eyes.
Or maybe they were bruises.
She didn't know. She didn't really care. The last thing she gave a rat's ass about right now was her appearance.
The archer looked at her bandaged hands again as they walked, envisioning the small cuts that must litter the skin beneath. Cuts made from the broken fragments of his goggles.
These cuts had saved them. She mused to herself, welcoming the blemishes onto her skin like a warrior returning from battle. The nails at the tips of her fingers were dirty and chipped and covered in dried blood.
Dinah wordlessly stopped in front of a door, turning the knob and opening it before allowing the archer to pass. Artemis didn't glance at the heroine as the door closed. She could find him. He was probably chomping on something, being loud.
That was when the surroundings clicked into her mind.
This isn't the medical bay... this isn't the medical bay...
This room was far too small to be the medical bay, and it was lined with metal walls, filled with a single row of what looked like oversized filing cabinets. There were pristine tables with carts nearby covered with dusty looking autopsy equipment sitting on top of them.
A morgue.
She was in a morgue. A morgue in Mount Justice.
Why was she in a morgue?
Wally shouldn't be in a morgue. He wasn't dead. Artemis stood completely still as she gazed around. She was so horrified, so shocked that she didn't process the blatant look of disuse the room had, like it had been sitting here for years just waiting on a new victim...
As Artemis surveyed everything around her, she noticed that this was only the first part of the room; it continued to the left, but she didn't know how far, she couldn't see from where she stood, frozen.
She didn't want to see. She was in the wrong place. Dinah must have lead her to the wrong room...
But Dinah wouldn't have done that, a voice whispered in the back of her mind.
Artemis's heart sped up as the stale smell of alcohol and formaldehyde cut into her senses, making her feel delirious, lightheaded. Sharp scalpels sat on the cart, glinting menacingly in the fluorescent lights, just waiting to be used on someone.
Someone who was dead.
But Wally wasn't dead.
She started to breathe faster, the facts running through her head. She was out of excuses, out of ways to push away the truth. But it just couldn't... because he couldn't...
"Wally!" His name tumbled through her lips without conscious effort, a last plea of hope before she would surely be crushed under the dead weight of the truth she so desperately wanted to avoid.
How was she supposed to live without him? Whether she wanted to admit it or not, his presence had rapidly become a big part of her life, maybe more than she had ever intended it to. How was she expected to go about her days normally without ever seeing that goofy grin again, or the obnoxious way he ate food while barely chewing, or the satisfaction that came with handing his ass to him on the sparring floor?
How?
And the worst part of it was that every bit of it was her fault. She'd been stupid enough to let her guard down in front Sportsmaster for five seconds, and look at the cost...
The cruel reality of it all was rapidly crashing down on the archer's shoulders, and she backed up, up against the door Black Canary had closed behind her, as if she were hoping to meld through the metal and escape into oblivion.
Get a grip, Artemis! You've been taught to... to deal with death... don't... let... this... get to you...
"Artemis!"
His voice suddenly echoed on the walls, surrounding her and squeezing her heart with the force of his worry. Rather than giving her hope, it filled her with dread, because Wally was dead and now she was hearing the ghost of his voice bouncing around inside her skull. Surely she was tired and delirious and maybe even still asleep back on her mattress, and she would wake up screaming and thrashing and sweating.
She wanted to rip out her hair. Her mind couldn't give it up, couldn't give him up. It was pathetic. She fisted her hands and pressed the palms against her eyes to hold in the tears that were gathering. How could she have ever known that Wally's... absence(because she refused to say the proper word) would affect her so deeply? It was a physical ache, as if she'd lost one of her limbs or the squeezing voice that had constricted her heart moments ago had torn it from her chest upon its departure.
"Artemis?"
God. She couldn't cover her ears and eyes at the same time. Her palms grew damp as the tears escaped, running down her cheeks freely in silent anguish. Why was she still hearing him?
Why did he have to be saying her name?
Wasn't this punishment enough? Loosing him.
"Arty! Beautiful, c'mere."
She was jolted out of her mind's hallucinations when someone pulled her hands away from her eyes, letting go to pull her face close and wipe the salty moisture away with his thumbs. His warm thumbs.
Her vision came back and her voice was lost.
Her speedster was the one wiping away the tears. His green eyes—one of them suffering a bad hemorrhage—were searching her face for any sign of happiness, or maybe he was just memorizing it. She sucked in a breath as she took him in, the sight of him alive and breathing and touching her. His thick red hair was sticking up, the strands showing trails of where his fingers had run through it. His skin was pale, leaving his freckles to stand out as well as the slight bruises dotting his face and arms and hands. His lower lip was split, crusted over and healing.
"Wally..." she breathed, lips parted, throat tight. He gave her a weary smile.
This whole thing felt like a dream.
"I'm sorry I didn't come find you sooner, but they wouldn't let me leave the infirmary," he said, moving away from her a bit to pull his shirt up. His torso was wrapped securely in medical tape, a yellowish-purple bruise peeking out from the top. She reached out to touch it absently, letting her fingers ghost over the dark spot so that his muscles jumped beneath her cool touch.
"I'm sorry, Wally..." she mumbled, turning her eyes away, feeling suddenly so vulnerable and naked before him; she never wanted anyone to see her like this again. He pulled her back to him once again, his calloused hands cradling her face between them.
"What are you sorry for? I'm the one who should be sorry, they just told me about yo—"
Artemis was hardly listening to him. She felt like she was in some kind of trance, mesmerized with the sight of him. She reached out and put her hands on his arms to steady herself, glancing down to at last confirm that, yes, he was in one piece.
He was alive. Just like she'd been insisting this whole time.
He was alive.
And still staring at her, wiping away the tears that were suddenly falling from relief.
"I'm so sorry, beautiful," he whispered, releasing the gentle hold on her face to wrap his arms around her shoulders, pulling her close. "I'm so sorry."
She didn't know what he was apologizing about, but it didn't matter, not now that he was safe in her arms. She rested her head on his shoulder and let him hold her for whatever reason he had deemed fit, feeling as though her heart was slowly mending itself as they held onto each other.
Eventually he pulled back. Why did he look so sad? She frowned, trying to understand, but thoughts weren't coming because everything was fine now, and truthfully all she wanted to do was lead him back to her room and pull him down into the bed with her and just hold him until they both fell asleep.
And maybe she would kiss him, too.
"Are you here to see him?" Wally asked quietly, his eyes on the concrete floor and one of his hands sliding down her arm to hold her own. She let him, because the physical reassurance of his being was better than anything else. That, and she had convinced herself that if he stopped touching her he would cease to exist.
"See who?" Artemis questioned, in a daze. "I came to see you," her voice lowered, "Black Canary said you were here and I..." She took a deep breath, her gray eyes meeting his steadily. "I thought that..."
"You thought what?" he frowned, and she was forced to notice just how tired he looked as he gazed at her. And he probably would be because of what he went through. What he went through because of her. For her.
"I thought that you..." she looked pointedly around the room; at the metal cabinets that held considerably more than files.
And Wally finally seemed to understand, his mouth forming an 'O' and his free hand reaching out to wrap around her waist, pulling her to his side.
"I'm fine, beautiful, I'm here. It'd take more than some bozo in a hockey mask to do in Kid Flash," he boasted, grinning. She rolled her eyes and let the tiniest of smiles grace her lips as she socked him lightly on the arm. This felt comfortingly familiar. Artemis thought she might say something snarky back to him, let it roll off her tongue naturally and send them back into their usual routine, the one she so loved between them.
That is, until his grin evaporated as quickly as it had appeared.
"I-It's someone else," he added morosely.
As he lead her around the corner and a little ways farther into the room, she felt suddenly and inexplicably tired, the events of the last twenty-four hours finally catching up with her in a physical sense. Her feet shuffled and dragged as she followed him, leaning into his side for support until at long last they stopped in front of the far wall.
It didn't take Artemis long to put the clues together. Someone was in one of these. Or, their body was. Wally seemed to pull away slightly, nervously shifting his feet.
"It's all my fault," he murmured, whispering half to himself, and half to the archer.
For one horrifying moment she thought of their teammates, their bodies lifeless and cold in this morgue... dead. But she remembered, vaguely, as she screamed and yelled and cried out for Wally on the Bioship, before M'gann had slipped into her mind and quieted her, that the entire Team had been present and accounted for.
That left one possibility. Her heart sank.
As Artemis's hands rested on the metal handle, she thought about two things: first, the mechanical steps of breathing, and secondly, that these would be the last few moments of her life in which she would lack total confirmation of her father's death. Her mind briefly drifted to Schrodinger's Cat; it could be alive, it could be dead—and once you look inside the box, reality will actually split, and if your cat's alive, then that's the reality you live in, and there's another parallel plane of existence in which you've opened the box and it's dead; but right now, it's both alive and dead.
And suddenly her throat constricted, and she had to take shallow huffs through her nose to keep from gasping, because she didn't want to make any noise.
Artemis had always heard of out of body experiences, but she didn't have any idea of what it was like until she was pulling the door open, and was met with a rush of cold air as she looked down at her blue-tinted father's body. That was when she understood the concept of literally being beside oneself. Because she was. There was the corporeal Artemis, standing between her dead father and Wally West, and then there was the intangible Artemis, who was in several places at once: her apartment in Gotham before her mother came home, watching the news with Lawrence Crock with a bowl of pretzels between them; an abandoned warehouse by the docks and being presented with her first bow and quiver of arrows; every summer "vacation" to exotic lands which had just been a front for her father's work, but still were not altogether devoid of pleasant memories; being introduced at business meetings as Lawrence's "only" daughter; Santa Prisca and finally succeeding in manipulating him as he'd done to her for all those years; last night and using her bow as a club on the back of his skull.
It's always so much easier in the movies, Artemis thought, when your villain father's a deadbeat. It doesn't hurt as much when he goes down, because he was never around before anyway—not much to miss. She was hardly aware that her hand had enclosed her father's much larger one into a fist. But what about the bad guy who tucked his daughter into bed every night before he locked the door behind him and met with the international criminals? Maybe he didn't raise her well, but he raised her nonetheless.
She had spent more time with her father than she had with anyone else in the world, and so much of that time was bad, but there were these little moments of good that she wouldn't forget even as she gasped her last breath, and she wouldn't want to forget them.
Still, Artemis couldn't bring herself to shed tears for this man. She could only stare blankly ahead, half aware of Wally's hand resting tentatively on her shoulder... but that touch of his, the warmth seeping past the material of her shirt and into her very skin, it reminded her vividly of the horrific, unforgivable things her dad had done to him. She tore her eyes away from Lawrence's prone form, glancing down at the tops of the speedster's battered and lacerated knuckles, the cracked skin taut between his digits. She stretched her neck down and kissed each of them before drawing her attention to his face.
"Are... you okay, Artemis?" he asked in low tones, like if he raised his voice it would startle her. She didn't answer him, just turned back to Lawrence Crock, at long last pulling her fingers away from his fisted hand.
Artemis didn't exactly answer his question, because she wasn't really sure. "I'm tired," she said. "I kinda want to go to my room."
She took a few steps forward until she was beside Wally, and gave him a you coming with? look over her shoulder. Wally, who had been worrying his lip and staring at her, nodded.
She took two more steps before she found herself being swept up into his arms.
"Wally, you were beaten to within an inch of your life yesterday. I don't think carrying me—"
"I like to, and I'm going to keep doing it," he said simply.
There was something unyielding in the way he spoke and held her, and so Artemis decided not to fight him. Resting her head against him, she half-heartedly muttered a "giddyap," to which he snorted slightly and set off for her bedroom at a normal pace.
Artemis briefly fantasized about Wally kicking her door down and striding in, but it was already partially opened when they got there, so he leniently nudged it open the rest of the way with his hip. When he reached her bed, he set her down gently, wordlessly removing both of their shoes before laying down beside her.
"M'so glad you're okay, Wally..." she managed sleepily, drawing herself nearer to the heat emanating from his body. He brushed his lips against her forehead and extended his arms out to wrap around her tightly, reassuring her of his presence and trying to leech some of her emotional pain away. But as Artemis searched his face, his handsome, scratched, freckled face, she could see no reason to be sad.
Wally was alive. The phrase had been repeating itself in her head all evening long, like the same lyric of a beautiful song she couldn't seem to shake. She didn't want to shake it. She wanted to sing it until her throat was raw and useless and then sing it some more.
She pulled him closer to her, the mattress groaning beneath their combined weight as they shifted to get more comfortable, resting their heads against the overstuffed pillow. She couldn't seem to tear her eyes away from him, and that alone kind of frightened her. She had harbored feelings for the speedster for a while, a fact she wasn't afraid to acknowledge to herself. But she didn't realize until now, as they lay together on her bed at Mount Justice, just how deep in she was for this man.
The thought made her shiver as she cupped his face with one hand and stroked her thumb over his cold cheek, over the freckles that dusted his face like paprika.
"Are you cold?" Wally asked, mistaking her shudder for sensitivity to their surroundings. She smiled.
"No," she answered, and leaned forward to press her lips to his cheek, above a deep gash that had actually needed stitching.
The speedster blinked languidly at the action, emerald irises moving down the length of her face to rest wonderingly on her plump lips. She felt one of this thumbs move up to caress her lower lip, saw the way he swallowed harshly as his Adam's apple bobbed. She knew what he wanted to do; this wasn't the first time something like this had happened.
"Wally, please..." she spoke up huskily, breaking his concentration. He looked confused. "I'm tired of dancing around this, I'm tired of wishing you'd just kiss me already."
Artemis left no room for him to think or say anything in response as she closed the distance between them. She fisted her hands into his shirt and tugged him closer, shutting her eyes and inhaling deeply before molding her lips into his. She sighed into his mouth, a pleasant feeling spreading from her fingers down to her toes and pooling somewhere in her stomach, creating butterflies there.
God, she'd wanted this for so long.
Wally was only momentarily thrown for a loop. He was quick to respond to her, his hands finding purchase on her waist as he drug his warm mouth against hers. But this time his grip was different from the careful touches he'd been using this whole time. Instead of a gentle hold, pulling her close out of concern, his fingers pressed into her skin and brought her flush against his chest.
Artemis's lips opened and she let her teeth graze against his bottom lip, smiling at the way his breath grew warm and moist against her skin, the way his tongue met her own with a hesitant touch that was fueled by reigned in passion. Their elbows and knees and toes and fingertips were brushing together, featherlight; every place they could possibly touch in this moment, they were connected. And it would grow quickly familiar, like something that had existed between them for a long, long time had finally clicked comfortably into place.
They embraced this way for what felt like hours, tasting, touching. And when at last they pulled apart, breathless and flushed and drowning under the weight of tiredness, Wally pressed their foreheads together and mumbled good night to her, lacing their fingers together on the rumpled sheets between them. The archer reached up to move some jagged hair away from his forehead.
"Hey, Wall-man, we've got a date tomorrow," she mumbled quietly, before sleep could take him. His eyes opened marginally, a slow, languid smirk spreading over his face.
"Hmm, Star Trek marathon for our first date? I like that... I'll make you dinner, too. Nice big bowl of buttered popcorn, how's that?" he asked, trailing off as his eyes drifted closed once more, sandy lashes kissing the tops of his freckle dusted cheeks. Artemis gave a throaty chuckle.
"That sounds great, Wally."
He was already asleep though, no doubt in part to his taxing wounds, and she just stared at his relaxed features for a long time, his soft breaths fanning across her face as her thoughts drifted back, unbidden, to this boy's would-be murderer.
There was no doubt in her mind that the world was a better place without Sportsmaster's shadow looming over every villainous plot, but there was also no doubt his death had left a small ache in her heart. And maybe she might cry in the morning, maybe she wouldn't, but she couldn't regret lambasting his skull with every fiber of strength in her entire body, not when she remembered the god awful images of Wally lying broken and bleeding on the ground, struggling to stay conscious...
And the knowledge that she might not have fallen asleep to his gentle breathing.
That was unforgivable.
o.o.o.o
It's not far-fetched to say the League might've had a small morgue somewhere in that mountain. There might've been cases where something horrible happened and they couldn't take a body to an actual morgue, etc. etc. Not that they, er, had a lot of dead bodies, but you know what I mean.