Disclaimer: I do not own Young Justice.
"Impulse says that sometimes in the future I betray Earth and bring about a Reach apocalypse. That's not a future I can live with. So whatever it takes get this scarab off me,"
He knew what he was asking with those words. Nightwing, Captain Atom, Black Canary, they didn't really realise what he was asking of them. He knew that Bart knew, but he didn't want to see the pained look he just knew would be on the speedster's face.
He was asking more of them than to just remove the Scarab. He knew that without it, he had no chance of being a hero, not as Blue Beetle anyways. He'd lose the armour and not be able to be Blue Beetle, which would be annoying but worth it. That was hardly what the elephant in the room about asking them to remove it was.
He'd be losing his life as well.
The Scarab had translated for him in the Reach ship. He'd told Black Canary that the Reach wanted to reboot the Scarab and the only way to do so was to kill him, which was true but not entirely. The only way to reboot the Scarab was to remove it from him and as it was fused to his spine that meant that the removal would mean his death.
He knew full well that by asking them to remove the Scarab meant his own death but he didn't really care. Once upon a time, he had dreamed about being a hero. He'd wondered if one day, he'd have what it took to be a hero, the kind of hero on a poster on a kid's bedroom wall.
He knew that being hero meant saving the day, and right now it seemed that the destruction of the Scarab was the only way to save the day, so to speak.
He knew what he was doing; he didn't care about the loss of his life. He felt sad about the people he'd be leaving behind, his parents, his sister, the team, but what was his life compared to all the ones that would ultimately be lost if the Reach had a chance to turn him against Earth?
He was willing to make this sacrifice – some said it was the ultimate sacrifice – if it meant protecting his home.
I'm not the only one who almost stopped breathing at the last scene of 'Cornered' am I? The entire episode was awesome (fifteen year old Billy! That was awesome to see!) from the fights to the scenes inbetween, especially Jaime's reaction to seeing Tye, but those last 30 seconds? That was what completely sold the episode for me and hit it up to by third favourite episode. 'Before the Dawn' and 'Performance' being numbers one and two respectively.
It seemed at first that Jaime was simply asking them to remove the scarab, then it hit me. That thing is fused to his spine. It has been outright stated that it's removal would kill him. And he's just willingly asked the other superheroes to do just that.
And thus, I wrote an extremely short one shot.