"They both died so young." Kaldur's voice.
Artemis could recognize it anywhere. Even through the thick haze of her grief, his voice came clearly past the barriers.
She said nothing, but only continued to stare up at the giant, illuminated statue of Wally. He looked larger than life now, but he had no life. No life at all. Another sob tore at Artemis' throat, and she pressed her nails into her skin.
Kaldur acknowledged Wally. Acknowledged him for everything he was, everything he had ever been, and everything that he could have been. But he couldn't help his eyes from wandering back to the statue of Tula.
He felt the same pangs of remorse and sorrow and grief claw at his soul in the very same way. Everything that she had been to him, and everything that she could have been in this world, if her life had not been cut short.
Both of them felt a painful swelling in their hearts. It was all consuming, like a black hole had emptied in the pits of their chests and were threatening to drag them down into a place where no light ever existed.
"I loved him." It was all Artemis could say.
We all loved him, Kaldur thought. His eyes closed in bitter melancholy, and he set his jaw, determined not to be crushed by the emotions that bore down upon him. Not the weight of the world was so great as this burden.
"I know you did." Kaldur once more.
Wally looked so brave in his statue. Handsome. Healthy. Proud. The expression he wore was confident and happy and just a little bit cocky, as his smile blurred into a smirk and then back into a smile. A hero, true and true.
And so much more than a hero.
And now he was gone.
Another sob wracked Artemis' body as she thought this. Now she understood what everyone else on the team had felt when she'd faked her own death. She couldn't help but hate herself just a little bit for having to put them through that.
She shook her head. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and splashed down onto the ground beneath her.
Kaldur's voice came to her again. "I'd never thought I see the day when we all looked so young." So unbelievably young. Far too young to die.
But that's the essence of heroism, said the same guiding voice in the back of his head. The guiding voice that had been with him for so long, had driven him to do so much.
The essence of heroism: to die so that other people could live.
That is the life I chose. That is the life we all chose. Kaldur felt like shedding tears. He wondered if he even could anymore. No one had seen him cry, not really, but in the past month he'd shed so many tears that not even Atlantis could replenish his eyes.
"I loved him." Artemis repeated her words, for nothing else that she could say would ever come close to expressing what she felt. "Why did he have to die?"
Kaldur knew she didn't want an answer, but that guiding voice within his head told him to provide one anyway. "Because that was the way fate decided he should go."
Artemis let out an anguished sound. Kaldur thought that he had never heard her so broken before. The wetness increased in his eyes, and the picture of Wally–-and of Tula-–blurred before him. He wiped at his eyes with his hand.
"Fate can be so cruel." Kaldur's voice.
Artemis was silent for a long time, as if thinking over his words. "I don't believe in fate," she said at last. "Fate doesn't mean anything. He died because he was a part of this team." And being a part of this team can ruin a life…
Kaldur could only offer a single line: "I wish he hadn't."
We all wish that, Artemis thought bitterly. She wanted to snap, to break things, to scream and yell. But instead she was numb, morose, drained of whatever spirit she had left. She didn't yell, she only cried.
"It's not so bad." Artemis' words made Kaldur turn his head to regard her.
"What do you mean?" he asked, stupefied at such a thought.
"I mean, it's not so bad. After all...we'll join them someday, won't we?" Artemis asked. She could no longer bear to look at Wally's face, for it caused her too much pain. She stood at his feet, looking at nothing but the darkness within her own eyes.
"I suppose so," Kaldur said.
We'll join them. Now, Kaldur did start to cry. Tears silently rolled down his face, one after the other, in a seemingly never-ending cascade. He wondered if they would ever stop, now that they had begun.
If I did ever meet Tula in death, would I be happy? he wondered.
There was no way to know.
"You think about her often, don't you?" Artemis' voice cut into Kaldur's mind, but it could not stop his tears.
"More often than you would believe."
"No," Artemis said in a deadpan voice. "I would believe it. Wally's been in my mind so often, you wouldn't even believe it." She tried to force a small chuckle to escape from her throat, but all was in vain.
A long moment of silence stretched between the two of them.
"I often find that we think of people more when they are dead, instead of when they are alive," Kaldur said. His voice was smooth and quiet, but Artemis heard all the same.
Kaldur continued. "We cherish them more when they are gone from us, but we don't cherish them enough when they are right there, in our lives…"
Artemis heard his voice crack near the end.
She swiveled her head around to see him crying, tears flowing from closed eyes as his face was downcast to his feet. Artemis wondered if she'd seen him cry before; the sight looked so new to her. So strange.
"At least we had them in our lives…for a little while." Her voice was nothing more than a whisper. The only thing that didn't sting her raw throat.
Kaldur said nothing.
Artemis heaved a heavy sigh, and walked towards the mechanical base on which Wally stood. Or Wally's hologram, anyway. She crouched down, and dipped her fingers into the light spectrum that created his image. The shadows from her fingers made Wally's image break and quiver in the air.
She wanted so badly to touch him again.
But she couldn't. She could never touch him again, or hear his voice, or look upon his face. They weren't even left with a body to bury.
"Kaldur?" the hoarse whisper left her throat. Turning, she asked him, "Do you ever sometimes wish that it had been you instead?"
She thought Kaldur wasn't going to answer her question. Would never answer her question. Until eventually Artemis began to doubt if he had ever heard her voice, or that she had ever spoken the thought aloud.
"Yes," Kaldur said, just when Artemis was about to forget. "I sometimes do wish it had been me instead. After Tula died, I kept imagining the scenario differently. That I had been the one directly put in danger, that I was the one who died bravely. My life instead of hers, so that she could live."
"And then Wally…" Artemis said, her voice thick with tears.
"And then Wally…" Kaldur agreed.
No more words could leave his lips. He didn't try to force it, but let the quiet steal over him and wrap itself around him, binding his voice deep inside his lungs where the pain was worst.
"I used to imagine that I was really dead…" Artemis whispered. Her voice was so small. She herself was so small. "I even used to picture what Wally would look like in mourning…"
Guilt stole over her, and Artemis buried her head in her hands as another fit of tears burst free from her.
Is there no end to this? she wondered. How do I still have tears left? I should be dehydrated by now!
Artemis frozen when she felt a hand upon her shoulder, warm and comforting. Nonjudgmental. Kaldur, she knew. Taking her head from her hands, she managed to look at him, with her red and swollen eyes and her tear-stained face.
"Do not cry," he told her, despite the thick flow of tears down his own face. "It is not what he would want."
Her brow furrowed. "How do you know what he would want?" she asked him. Kaldur thought her voice sounded angry then, but there were too many emotions within her. Anger would have been one, no doubt.
But it would be like singling out a snowflake in an avalanche.
"Because…if I had been the one to die…it is not what I would have wanted," Kaldur said gently. He looked back up into the holographic face of Wally.
Wally West. Kid Flash. A lifelong friend. A loving boyfriend. A cherished teammate.
"I know that he would want the same, Artemis. He would not want you to feel so terrible," Kaldur told her. Still he looked up into Wally's face. Yes, Kaldur knew that he wouldn't want tears. Wouldn't want sorrow. Only to be remembered fondly.
"I can't just stop crying," Artemis said. "I have to cry. That's the only way I'm going to get over this."
"I understand." Kaldur thought, And I'll cry with you. For I have too many tears, and it is about time that I let them free.
Wally. Tula. Even Jason Todd, whom they both had known briefly. So much death. All of them so young. All of them ripped away forever.
For them, the only thing they could hang onto was the memory of them, and knowing that someone else felt the same way as each of them did. That someone else felt as lost and hopeless as them, that someone knew how raw and cutting the pain felt.
So Kaldur and Artemis sat together, in front of the holographic statues of their dead loved ones, and wept together.
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