Five Things That Never Happened to Connor Hawke

By Re White

Disclaimer: All characters and associated trade marks are property of DC.
Spoilers: None.

Rating/Warning: For mature readers only. Contains content of a sexual nature, violence and themes some readers may find disturbing.

Acknowledgments: Thanks to cathyrne for the hand holding and akavertigo for the cheering on.

Speedy: Into the valley of dying stars

i.

He loves Star City. Especially how it looks during the day: so neat, clean and tricky. There are fewer gunshots and muggings during the normal people hours of course, but it's still Star City. Day time here just means the bad guys have to try harder, be a little but meaner, quicker. His father calls day patrol the Grind. Connor loves that. Loves how if he squints just right all of roofs downtown will morph into a long line of glass and steel teeth. How the alleys will gape under him like wide dark grins when he lunges across them on those really good nights. How all the shadowy corners in Star City are just waiting to swallow him up. But they won't, ever.

Because he's Speedy.

Maybe it's strange to think of his city as something alive and dangerous, as something that can smile and be hungry. And…it is strange, but it's also right. Correct. The kind of thing Speedy should think.

Even if he isn't as fast as he thinks Speedy should be, even if he doesn't hit the mark every time, the way Speedy should (the way Green Arrow does), even if he doesn't love the bow as much he loves the way his fists never seem to veer out of true; he can at least think the way Speedy is supposed to.

He can follow Green Arrow across the rooftops, across their wet, bright, beautiful, tricky city, and think all the things his father is too busy to think.

Ollie can't really see Star City the way Connor can and maybe it's supposed to be that way.

Connor can see it – the way it grins at them, a little mean and a little hungry.

It's his job - Speedy's job- to grin back.

ii.

The new kid is already better than him.

Just a little taller, and a lot bulkier, Roy is marked in a way Connor never will be. He has old scars on his legs and slightly newer ones streaking his forearms. His eyes are older than Connor's and the skin around them crinkles like old news paper when he sees something he wants to hit. Roy always seems hungry. All of his smiles make Connor shiver where he can't stop it.

Connor shifts on his feet and tries not to frown when Roy whoops and laughs at the arrows buried deep in their targets – five out of five. Connor can still only manage four out of five. On a good day.

He breathes deep and feels something tight and panicky in his chest. Roy made his father laugh yesterday, in big loud gulping breaths, the kind of laugh Connor's never been able manage, even though he's been trying for years.

It's so easy for Roy. Easy for him to say exactly the right thing to make Ollie smile as though the bad old days with Hal had never happened, as though he never doubted anything or anyone. Roy does it with the kind of ease that can't be anything but natural reflex, and that means it's something Connor can't teach himself. No matter how much he watches and listens. One day the new kid is going to be street ready and Green Arrow is going to take him out into their city and Connor can already feel Speedy slipping away from him.

These days more than ever, Connor feels like someone is laughing at him.

"Let's hit the mats."

Roy's face twists up into a smirk when he turns to look at Connor.

"Time for my daily dose of punishment?"

Connor tries to keep the wince inside (and the shiver, it just won't stop), but it must show on his face anyway because the smirk is gone just that fast, peeled away like wet paper. Roy isn't frowning at him exactly, but the younger boy's brows are drawn together and he's chewing on his lips like he's trying to stop himself from saying something.

Roy wears that face a lot around Connor.

He shifts again, and watches Roy respond to it. Connor doesn't quite know yet, what it means when he does that. "Roy, if you don't want -"

"No way Speedy, come on."

Sometimes it's like Roy doesn't know his name is Connor.

He…he likes that.

iii.

Connor's not even awake before his hand closes around Roy's throat. Sometimes Connor catches himself wondering about reflexes and impulses and what it means that he can't sit with his back to a door.

He knows it's not the kind of thing his father and Roy ever really think about.

Connor feels Roy's vocal cords rumble, and the thud of his pulse, not slow, but very steady. He knows if he slides his hand down (he wants to, he wants that) about five inches he'll reach fresh bruises. Occasionally, Connor gets the feeling Roy fails to duck during their spars on purpose.

His bedroom is dark and quiet and he doesn't move his hand.

"I like the way you move."

He hears himself gasp, and starts to take his hand back, but Roy catches it and keeps talking. "Just, whoooosh. I like it when we spar, I like your hands on me man, even if it's just because you're beating the crap out of me." Roy's eyes are huge and bright and there's no way he can't feel Connor's pulse quicken. God, sometimes he's so obvious, all he wants to do is hide somewhere.

"Speedy." Roy presses Connor's hand flat against his diaphragm. That curious hungry look is back. He tries to speak but the words die in the back of his throat.

Roy frowns and squeezes his hand. Connor can feel the heat and beat of Roy's heart under his palm. He wants to feel that against his tongue. He wants everything; he did the moment he and Ollie saw him take down that drug dealer. Connor knew right then, if Star City grinned at him, it laughed for Roy. The way Ollie does. It makes Connor afraid, makes him doubt. Makes him want in so many directions he feels like ripping his own skin off.

There's no way Roy can't know that – there just isn't, because he's going to be Speedy one day and it's the kind of thing Speedy sees.

Connor breathes hard and stares at the scar looping lazily down Roy's throat and it's so hard to keep him self from leaning up to taste it.

"I can't tell if you hate my guts man, or…"

"I – I don't hate you." I'm afraid of you. I want you.

"Show me. Just…show it to me."

He bites his lip and (finally, finally) lets his hands do what they want. Roy's moan is low and sweet and it makes Connor flex all over. Roy jerks and shudders, squeezing Connor's hips with his knees.

The new kid is hot and heavy and hard in his hands.

Roy's growl makes him want to lick his neck, - and Roy asked him to - so he does. The blooming taste of sweat under his tongue is good and salty and perfect.

"Mmm. C'mon, c'mon, Speedy – please."

"Yes."

iv.

Connor doesn't blush. He doesn't.

"Well," Ollie raises his eyebrow, and oh god, he should have locks on his bedroom door, several.

"It's nice to see you two finally getting along."

"Oh man, this is fucking awkward."

Connor elbows Roy's very obviously naked ribs, and says, "Language, Speedy"

Kid: This is the house of your desire

i.

The bed is cheap and squeaks loudly when he moves to sit behind Eddie.

"I have no idea what the hell I'm doing with you, kid."

It's an old and familiar complaint.

Connor smiles behind his face and studies the new line of stitches down Eddie's shoulder. The sutures are tiny and as precise as he can make them. The wound will heal cleanly and the scar will be thin.

Of course, it shouldn't be there at all, but Eddie is always a little off his game whenever Oliver is involved. He wonders if some where Speedy is thinking anything like the same thing as he tapes Ollie's ribs. (Connor didn't flinch when Eddie slammed the heel of his boot into the Green Arrow's ribs – he doesn't wear nearly enough armor- and by then Eddie's shoulder was already bleeding and...and...)

His father didn't want him. Eddie did.

Eddie does.

"Christ, I'd be pissed if I wasn't so goddamn sure I deserved it. I have no idea what the hell -"

Connor tightens his legs around Eddie's waist, the only warning he's in the mood to give and licks a wet stripe down Eddie's new scar.

Eddie jumps and makes a truly undignified little noise.

"Nnnhg. Is that your own very special way of telling me to shut up?"

"Edward."

He tries to save saying his name like that for when Eddie needs the reminder: Connor is fifteen and that has nothing to do with how old he is.

Eddie's inhale is shaky and telling. Connor knows that shake from the inside out. He can't stop himself from moaning when he moves to mouth the back of Eddie's neck , to bite down- the familiar taste of sweat and the tang of gun oil - always there, always no matter how much Eddie showers.

Connor is flipped on to his back before he knows it. Spread before he knows it. Kissing Eddie as hard as he can before he knows it. It's so fast. It always is.

He hitches his legs around Eddie's hips and stretches, tip of his tongue between his teeth as he hums, and pushes against Eddie to get the contact right where he needs it most.

"Connor, kid."

"I love you."

ii.

The night the man in glasses arrives Connor shoots his step father in the head.

He is 12 years old and his mother is dead.

The gun is heavy in his hands. When the man in glasses kneels next to him and takes the gun away Connor doesn't try to stop him.

"My mom's dead."

The man in glasses makes a sound Connor doesn't understand. He tries again.

"He was a bad man."

This time he looks at Connor for a long moment. His eyes are a very clear light blue that make Connor think of the cups Armitage broke before he strangled his mother on the kitchen floor. When Connor flinches and hugs his sides (his ribs still hurt) the man in glasses touches his shoulder and then starts to wipe his face with the cuff of his shirt.

"Yeah…I, yeah kid."

The man tells him his name and says they can't stay. Connor nods, sniffles and tries to stand, but his legs aren't listening to him anymore.

He doesn't start to cry until Eddie picks him up, even though he's much too big to be picked up and carried anymore. It's a long time before he can stop sobbing into Eddie's shoulder.

iii.

They leave New York.

Eddie gripes at him a lot during the day, makes Connor think maybe he doesn't like him, but then the nights are different. When Eddie re-tapes Connor's ribs and checks all of his stitches, he talks softly and his hands are careful.

Eddie doesn't make him sleep alone, even though he always gets a motel room with two beds. He never says anything when Connor slides in next to him.

By the time they get to Star City, Connor's bruises are just beginning to turn from purple to greenish. By then Connor knows Eddie was hired to kill his step father. He knows that if Eddie had arrived just a little sooner his mother might still be alive.

The night they get to Star City, Eddie brings him out of a nightmare by stroking his back and his hair. That's when Connor realizes it's too late to decide to hate him.

Eddie takes him to a grime laden rooftop to see Green Arrow and Speedy work. He knows as he watches them bob and weave through gunfire and alley sludge that there isn't any room for him there.

"No," Connor says as clearly and steady as he can, "I want to stay with you."

iv.

Connor was fifteen the first time he kissed Eddie. At which point, Eddie failed to cope and actually had the nerve to send him to a Buddhist monastery in California. Connor had been ready to humor him, to give Eddie time to get over it, and kill time touching up on his technique with the monks until the Eddie came to his senses. That plan lasted for exactly as long as it took for Master Jensen to approach him with a pair of scissors . Matters rapidly deteriorated from there.

The first thing he did when he caught up with Eddie at the Holiday Inn was punch him in the jaw.

Eddie glares at him from a sprawl on the floor. "You hit a guy in glasses, kid?"

Connor strips off his jacket, and moves to straddle Eddie before he can make a go for the motel room door.

"You only wear those so people think you're smarter than you are." He doesn't say, "You were the one who taught me not to take anyone at face value".

It isn't the most effective of pins, but Eddie is still and more or less accommodating under him. Connor catches and holds Eddie's wrists when he starts to try and cup his hips, to remind Eddie just who he's trying to get the drop on.

There's nothing Eddie could do in this position Connor wouldn't be ready for. He's been too well trained for anything else. It's the kind of reality check that always makes Eddie a little cranky and a little…proud.

Connor studies his face, his skin color, and pupils, the rate of his pulse under Connor's fingers. He tries to gage just how much of the irritation on Eddie's face is genuine.

Not nearly enough.

The skin between Eddie's eyebrows crinkles up – he doesn't like it when Connor decodes him so easily. He doesn't say, "If you didn't want be read, you shouldn't have taught me how."

"You should have stayed at the monastery."

"I didn't like it there. I like you."

Sometimes when Eddie scowls at him the man looks much, much younger than he is. Connor very carefully doesn't say that either.

"I kissed your boo-boos and held you when you cried, you don't think it's a little fucked up to go from that to sucking you off?"

Connor cocks his head, considering, before he nods. "Shock tactics. It would be a little more effective if you weren't," he bites his tongue and nudges Eddie, hard, with his pelvis, "interested." He can feel Eddie, hot even through the slacks and half hard against him. Connor wills himself not to blush. It's something he's had a lot of time to work on.

Eddie frees one of his hands, and drags it up Connor's sternum. He feels his body break out into a prickly sweat, making the skin around the medical tape securing the knife to his back itch. It makes him want to squirm, scratch and bare his teeth. Connor doesn't let himself try to hide it. Eddie will see it. He sees everything. Eddie's fingers curl a little into the skin under Connor's ribs and he can feel bruises forming on his hip where Eddie's grip is tight. He leans into it a little. He wants to be marked.

Connor doesn't know if it's a test when Eddie bucks under him, and doesn't know if he passes it when he lets his head fall back, when he lets himself grind in reply, and feel it.

Eddie's hand crawls up his ribcage. Connor lets his eyes slip close at the first feel of Eddie's fingers across his lips. Moans when he takes them in and sucks.

Eddie's hips snap against his and just keep going. Connor hums around Eddie's fingers and inches up his body, to make it good, make it perfect. Heat rolls through him, sensation spiking from where they're rubbing together, down to his toes.

Connor moans, and rides and bobs his head on Eddie's fingers, wondering what it looks like. Eddie hisses, and curses and pulls him in further.

They're loosing the rhythm, or maybe it's just Connor. But he can't help it. He's so close, so close. It's exactly what he wanted. He's going to come, on top of Eddie, right there on the scratchy motel carpet, and whatever shuddery high pitched thing he might have said is muffled by Eddie's fingers sliding in and out from between his lips.

He catches Eddie's hand, bites the pads of his fingertips. "Don't send me away again." Eddie makes a sound like he's being gut punched. "Promise me, not ever."

His hips never stop working; he watches Eddie's hand spasm in his hold, fingers wet and slick looking from his mouth. He can't stop moving. He's so close now, so - "Edward." His gasps are loud, breathy things.

Just say it he thinks, say it, say you need me, please, need me –

He has to squeeze Eddie's hips to keep from sliding off, he's jerking, pushing, just that hard.

Connor falls forward and buries his face in Eddie's neck, sucks aimlessly, licks and bites and begs, "Please, please, please."

"Kid – fuck, fuck, you already know."

It's enough.

The Red Arrow: The heart beats on and will not stop

i.

They don't all wear the same shade of red.

Connor's sure that if he mentioned it, Tim would give him any number of completely valid and tactically sound reasons for the variation. But…

Connor knows that Redbird's uniform once lead a past life as an eggplant colored cape and cowl belonging to a girl named the Spoiler.

Connor knows that Red Hood's leather coat – a heavily modified, heavily armored, leather coat- used to belong to the Joker.

His own uniform is…

It's the jacket Eddie carried him in. ("It's me. Getting you out of here, kid.")

While the Justice Lords took the Outsiders down, one by one, Eddie carried him through what was left of Star City. Connor never saw Superman break Superboy's neck or which of the Lords and how many of their military it took to stop Roy, Grace and Oliver (Oliver). He never saw Batman and Nightwing make their last stand against Superman and the Green Lantern. (He heard it though, didn't he? That terrible wall of noise, and the sound of human bone breaking, the skitter of shattering kryptonite against the pure green heat of John's ring? Buildings falling into the sea, a scream he couldn't identify.) What Connor did see would never make him grateful for what he didn't. (He should have known Eddie was dying, bleeding out, should have seen the wound – he just, he should have, it would have changed so much. )

He was still wearing Eddie's jacket when he got to Bludhaven, and by then Redbird and Red Hood were already waiting for him.

ii.

He breathes, and breathes and holds on.

Jason's mouth is a sharp, wet, hot slide down his neck.

"Jay… "

"He held you down, right?"

He can't help the buck of his hips or the way his nails dig into Jason's bare shoulders for purchase. He feels Tim exhale wetly against the nape of his neck and then bite down. Connor can't stop the next hard buck against Jason, or the one after that.

"He would of, Jesus Connie, he would have had to."

(Yes.)

He wants to run, he wants to fight his way of out this, he wants to bite and pull. He always does. Connor's heart hammers in his chest, crawls up his throat to the back of his mouth. He can almost taste the beating red of it. Tim's hands slide into the bowls of his hips and squeeze, hard. Neat, sharp, nails dig into his skin, holding him there, keeping him rooted. Tim understands. They both do.

When he lets his head fall back onto Tim's shoulder, Jason's growl echoes off the shower walls and rumbles home near the base of his spine. Connor knows Tim feels it too, because it makes him pant, and snarl into Connor's neck. He stretches and their lips skim awkwardly, and they're really not in a comfortable position for this. He doesn't always know if that makes it better or not.

Tim nips at his mouth. He tastes like Jason's sweat and grape Zesti. Tim's hair sighs across his cheeks. "Connor. We need you."

Sometimes the only reason he knows he's alive is because something small and important dies a little whenever Tim says that. (Eddie's voice rasping against his ear as they move, as he thrusts in and in – "Need you, kid. Need you.")

Kissing Tim hard enough to draw blood quit feeling selfish a long time ago.

There's something comforting and almost sweet about Jason literally head bunting his way into the kiss.

iii.

There are rules.

No one ever sleeps alone. Ever. Even if that means Connor sometimes ends up napping against Tim's legs as he obsesses over new intel. Even if it means he has to be a little quieter when he works in the weight room because there's usually a Jason shaped pile snoring soundlessly right there on the mats. Even if it means Oracle will stop teasing them about the bath tub incident sometime around the next millennium. They follow that rule.

The kind of nightmares they all have. No one should wake up alone.

Connor's first night in Bludhaven, when the Birds (what was left of the Birds) went on their shift, he dreamed Cissie was trying to talk to him, but couldn't because there was just blackened, still bubbling meat where her throat should have been. She tried to make some kind of gesture, but her arms were gone. Maybe she had wanted to warn him, because when he turned his head, Ollie was there, and most of his skin was gone, but he was still wearing the Green Arrow costume. Connor tried to tell him to be careful, that he was sorry, that he'd try harder, and please don't, but his father just grinned and pushed one ruined melted gauntlet into his stomach. When Connor tried to scream, nothing came out, just a terrible breathy moan.

It was Jason who shook him awake, and turned Connor's punch into something that only bruised his arm instead of crippled. Connor never had a chance to apologize before he had to stumble towards the toilet and be sick.

Jason pulled his hair back, and pressed the cool napkin to his neck. Tim held his hand, fingers clamped tight enough to hurt.

When he finished heaving they pulled him into huddle against the bathroom wall. That's where they stayed until morning.

iv.

There are rules.

And sometimes following the rules means he and Jason have to drag Tim, often kicking, out of Redbird.

Following the rules means he and Tim look the other way when Red Hood decides it's a night to use the guns, instead of the escrima sticks.

Following the rules mean they will let Connor drop off of Oracle's grid, and run, and run, and run - right up to the edge of Bludhaven, where their territory ends and the Lords' begins. It's where he goes to be with his dead, as surely as Jason finds his own in the click of the chamber, or Tim with his analysis, and all that cool, unfeeling, computer light.

Most of the time, Connor finds his way back to Tim and Jason on his own. But sometimes he doesn't. Those are the nights when two shades of red flicker at the edge of his vision. To lead him back home.

The rule is they have to survive each other, for each other. No one else is alive to do it for them.

The Spoiler: This is Home

i.

In Connor's head, there is a vivid streak of purple that hums and sings and laughs.

The first night Robin saw him in the Spoiler uniform, his face twisted into something raw and terrible. Something the mask couldn't hide.

Connor lost two back teeth and knew his nose would never heal quite right, but behind his eyes he felt Stephanie loop and coil in happiness as she whispered, just wait, just wait, just wait connie, he'll come to us.

Connor remembers pressing his swollen cheek to the cool mirror and thinking, yes, in time.

ii.

Connor died in the alley behind the parking lot after Onomatopoeia shot him. That's not the part that hurt. That came after.

He doesn't remember much, Stephanie keeps many things away, but he does remember the pain. The color of agony was purple.

iii.

Three weeks later, Connor was in bed drifting somewhere between asleep and awake when he realized they had a visitor. Stephanie twisted into purring helixes through the center of him. His toes curled in helpless response. Connor turned his face into the pillow and pressed his tongue to the back of his teeth and shivered.

Tim was absolutely silent as he moved through Connor's apartment (walking by the book case maybe?), but they could still feel him. Stephanie made a hungry hum in his head (already as familiar as his own heart beat) and his hips rolled without him telling them to. Connor took a deep even breath, planted his feet and stretched, inside and out.

he should see this, see this, see us.

Connor smiled at the ceiling and reached for his pajama pants. I don't think he's ready for a two and a half-some just yet, Stephanie.

When he steps out of his room Tim spends one long apprising minute staring at him.

"You should have kept the splint on longer. There's going to be a dent in your nose now."

"I think it'll add character."

"Batgirl thinks you have plenty already."

Connor lets his eyes close when Stephanie twines through him. never calls her Cass, he can't, we have to fix it. When he opens his eyes again, Tim isn't glaring holes in him so much as looking at him like he wants to dissect him thoroughly. Connor looks back and hopes it doesn't bother Tim that his eyes aren't exactly green anymore. (His father reacted badly, looked at him like he was a thing, and not Connor. I'm sorry connie, you knew there was a trade off.)

Tim leans against Connor's book case and does a bad impression of someone not armed to the teeth and deeply aware of how to use them. Stephanie makes some kind of affectionate sigh, freakboy.

"She's convinced – Batgirl – that…that Steph is in there. She said she could see it."

Connor only has one clock and it ticks loudly in the intervening silence.

"Is she?"

"Yes."

"Why."

"Because…" Connor moves around to the front of his sofa and sits down, slowly and obviously because there's a fine line of stress in Tim's shoulders and he has no real desire to loose anymore teeth. "Because there are," Careful. "ways, and…loopholes. And gaps. Robins who don't follow the rules. Because I was dying and she was there to pull me back."

Tim's laugh is actually kind of ugly, his expression caught somewhere between weirdly vulnerable and hostile. It makes Connor wish it were okay to touch him, to sooth that bitterness away. Stephanie vibrates a deep violet in his chest. Tim, Tim.

When Connor reaches out he flinches.

"Stop".

He does.

"It's just that I'm not sure I don't want to hit you again."

"It's alright."

When Tim starts rubbing his thumb and index finger together it isn't a gesture either of them is familiar with. It makes Stephanie itch. She's getting anxious. Relax, we both knew this wouldn't be easy.

"Are you saying if I had had the good fortune of getting my head nearly blown off, I might have a time share in my soul?"

"Would it make you feel better if I said yes?"

"No."

"Then no."

The side of Tim's mouth twitches in a not-smile and it feels like a victory.

"What am I supposed to call you now?"

"I'm still Connor." Stephanie buzzes through his skull, yes. "With a little extra."

Tim takes a deep, obvious breath. "Purple clashes on you. Badly."

Connor smiles. "It's eggplant, actually."

iv.

When he wakes up, Stephanie has started without him.

Connor's back curls off the bed and his palms smack against the headboard as he gasps. He feels Tim move beside him, a pale, scarred suggestion of skin and heat in the corner of his vision. He'd reach out to touch, if his fingers weren't busy twisting in the sheets. The purple swells down his spine and scrapes across his nerves. Coming like this hasn't stopping being a surprise, and he doesn't think it ever will.

"Oh."

Tim leans over him, mouth parted and watching Connor's face like he wants to remember it for a report later. When Connor's hips still, wet and hot with sex, Tim licks his own lips, trails a finger through it and asks, "How often does that happen?"

"Mm. Enough to make public transportation distinctly interesting."

Archer and Arrowette: Willful Creatures

i.

Martin Maxwell doesn't scream when they flank him. His jowls quiver and jump, his eyes bulge wetly out of his skull, and his bowels loosen when he sees the glint of the arrows.

Archer and Arrowette fire as one, and Martin Maxwell, convicted child rapist and newly released parolee, makes one high pitched animal stupid grunt before he hits the floor with a meaty thump.

Connor almost never hesitates anymore.

ii.

There are gaps in his memory.

Connor remembers stirring the chili and trying to think of a way to breach the subject of Armitage to his mother when she comes up behind him and wraps her arms around his waist. He remembers the smell of her hair and her cheek against his and the gentle surprise at her affection. It had been a long time since she hugged him like that.

It should have tipped him off, but he was too busy being awash with relief that she could still want to hug him after…after everything.

He remembers how his body seized around the blade. How every nerve burned from white hot to numb so fast he never felt it when he hit the floor. He remembers Moonday whispering, "I'm so sorry baby, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I was never the strong one, he won't hurt you now." He remembers her petting his face and pushing the blade in further. His breathing turned into a high, needy, ugly thing that made his mother cry, even as she cut him open.

Sometimes he wonders if things might have been different if he hadn't seen Moonday take the blade out of his stomach so she could use it on herself. But he did see it, and he couldn't stop it. He bled out on the kitchen floor and couldn't move, not even when her blood began to seep into his hair.

He knows he was screaming inside his head.

He remembers it because his heart was a sluggish thud in his ears, and because the heels of her shoes squeaked across the linoleum when her body twitched in its death throes. He remembers it because it was the sound of the world breaking.

Connor lost time between fading away on the kitchen floor and waking up screaming when Eddie's doctor friend began cutting and cauterizing and stitching. It was worse when Eddie held him down and began to say, "I'm sorry kid, I'm fucking sorry, shhh, shhh, easy, I'm so fucking sorry."

"Hold him still Fyers!"

"Shut the hell up and just do it!"

The drugs hit him then and he cried his way into unconsciousness.

Connor didn't wake up for days and he knows the only reason he managed to do what he did next is because Eddie thought he'd be out for a least another.

He remembers taking Eddie's guns, and the explosives he stored in the fridge, right next to the carton of soy milk Eddie always bought for him.

He doesn't remember using them. He knows he's the reason the Armitage International building is nothing but a burnt out pockmark marring the business district, but the knowledge doesn't touch him the way it should.

He has flashes and weird spasms of memory that mean nothing to him; a lobby full of people trampling and scrabbling all over themselves to get out, burn scars on the walls, the brief panicked glare of a security guard's eyes before Connor cracked the man's skull against the floor, the scatter of glass and the way some of the windows seemed to swell before they shattered under the force of the blasts. Armitage reaching for a gun.

Armitage clutching the red pulpy mess of his chest.

There are gaps.

But there are things he does remember.

Connor remembers those first, raw agonizing attempts to drag himself back into his own body when it was all over. How Eddie held his hair when he sagged to his knees and added to the filth of the alley. He remembers city grease, and brick dust, the wreckage of Armitage's ruined building spilling over the streets, for blocks. He remembers the burn of bile crawling up his throat and how he couldn't catch his breath. Eddie's hands running over him, searching for new injuries and finding them. How Eddie didn't do anything but cup his face when he started to babble.

"Oh, god. You knew didn't you, that's why you always tried to give me an out. You knew what I could do if, if – I'm not sorry, I can't be, I don't feel anything. I was always going to be this, wasn't I? You knew. You were waiting for this, it's why you stayed, you knew, you knew."

iii.

It turned out Eddie knew a lot.

Knew not to expect anything from Ollie but a great wall of silence and…and disillusionment. Connor wished he had been that smart too. The one time he saw his father after Armitage was put in the ground, he stood in the door way of Eddie's guest room and stared at him.

Every stitch in Connor's skin screamed wordless little exclamations, and all his bruises throbbed, his body primed to hear something, hear his father's voice. Every second that passed without Ollie speaking, something receded a little more, became worn down until Connor looked away and waited for the sound of Ollie walking out.

Eddie handed him a note and a picture later.

"She left Young Justice after she put one in the guy that off-ed her therapist, it was right about the same time as…Anyway, she might be your half sister. Might not. Want to take a ride?"

When they got to the Elias School for Girls, Cissie King-Jones was waiting for him with her suitcase and the same raw burnt out look he saw in the mirror every morning.

He took her bag, and they piled into the back seat of Eddie's car.

("I think I've been waiting for you. I have an idea." Her hand reaches for his and for the first time in months, Connor feels something steady under his feet. )

He knew they weren't correct. But they did have each other.

The first time Cissie kissed him on the mouth his heart made one great yawning stretch, slackened, and continued to beat on.

ix.

They have to leave Gotham immediately after.

Huntress is only an ally when she can get away with it, which is less and less these days. Ever since their last four missions in Gotham, Oracle has set a steady and noticeable, if not mildly dissuasive eye on their activities.

Batman is considerably less ambiguous about his estimation of their work. Connor has scars now that point more towards his occasional inability to duck batarangs than Cissie's penchant for biting.

Robin isn't a dilemma in as much a question of time and circumstances. Sometimes he watches them too long.

They are short on allies but never alone.

Eddie calls them the Wonder Twins when he's feeling generous and nothing at all when he's not. It's hard to tell what he knows about them and what he doesn't, but Connor isn't afraid of him leaving. He hasn't decided yet if it's fear or love that tethers Eddie, but he wouldn't be surprised if it was a mixture of both. (Sometimes he and Cissie catch themselves thinking, 'Soon? Maybe?' at each other when Eddie fails to keep his so very careful distance from them. His first-aid isn't always as quick as it could be.)

Connor watches Cissie jump down from the fire escape outside of Martin Maxwell's apartment from his perch on the bike. (Eddie wouldn't let them use it until he was sure all the trackers Roy installed were gone – the eight separate components they found struck Connor as excessive but not especially surprising).

Arrowette is a dark red cut of a shadow against the wet cement, all speed and slick movement. Connor rolls his shoulders and feels the scratches down his back sting companionably. Cissie presses her mouth to the nape of his neck when she slides back behind him on the seat. He doesn't stop himself from leaning into it a little. It's her way of saying not yet, not here, and his way of saying he knows. It's tempting to suggest they stay and find new reasons to sweat, but Eddie would be annoyed (Jealous? More and more it's a question Connor finds worth studying) and besides. Their routine keeps them alive.

Archer and Arrowette work quickly, carefully, and never linger.