disclaimer: I don't own a thing. not even a plushie.
notes: this is, um, very minimalistic detail-wise. it's also sort of off-kilter in terms of characterization, but given this point in their lives I think it's sort of understandable? maybe?
other notes: title from florence + the machine's blinding. :)
Calling Like a Crow
"I should go to college," M'gann says thoughtfully. She eyes the assortment of posters splattered on Artemis's walls and the dying potted plants on the windowsill. "It looks fun."
Artemis is flopped on the bed. She's got a chem test on tomorrow, then a lit paper due Thursday, and Black Canary's been asking more and more when she's coming back to the cave. She'd been hoping for this weekend but there's that extra lecture on Saturday and a psych study group on Sunday, and she's debating whether or not to join the archery team and that has an interest meeting on Friday.
"It's busy," she says to M'gann. Not unfun, just…busy. Constantly moving. It's so easy to get wrapped up in it all. "You'd like the parties, probably."
M'gann laughs. "Probably."
..
Stanford is like any other college. There are parties and few quiet weekends, and the classes keep them busy enough that the spandex suits tucked away under loose floorboards collect a steady amount of dust.
Robin calls now and then. Tells them how the team's coming along, complains about Jason being a pain in the ass. Sometimes mentions that it's been a while since he's last seen them (but he's not guilt tripping them, or anything, just pointing out a fact).
Wally says that they're in college and it's not like they can drop everything and go across the country. Dick pretends that that's an actual excuse.
Artemis fiddles with her pen during these conversations.
(She ends up joining the fencing team and storing her bow in the back of her closet.)
..
"Dick's birthday's coming up," Artemis says. "We could surprise him."
Wally fidgets. He's got his physics final next week and has regressed into a seven year old who flinches at all equations. "Think we could make it?"
They're taking five classes each, so that's ten finals and numerous cans of Monster. They could make the time for Dick's birthday, sure.
"We'll Skype him at midnight," she says after a while. Wally breathes out. "He'll understand."
"Right," Wally says. He's back to staring at his textbook like it's got all the answers to the world. "Yeah, we'll just…make it up next year."
They don't talk about how, for Wally's birthday, Dick had hauled a couple hundred Flash action dolls into his dorm and somehow forced them to sing happy birthday for hours.
..
"So you're enjoying it there? I figure you do," Ollie adds, sounding only a little wry, "since you haven't dropped by in months."
Even if Palo Alto and Star City weren't so close to one another, she could've taken a zeta-tube and been by Ollie's side in minutes. Artemis doesn't say that, though.
"It's fine." She glances at the chem notes scattered over her desk. Some of them have managed to migrate to her roommate's, who sighs and mutters that she's glad she's an English major. "Just, you know, busy. It's school."
Ollie had dropped out of four Ivy Leagues, so the vague understanding sound he makes is about as genuine as Artemis's promises to go to the cave.
"I've got winter break in another week," she says. "I'll try to come over then?"
She's been meaning to see Dinah, anyway. Needs to make her…resignation, or whatever, official.
"Sure, sure," Ollie says. "Keep studying, kid."
"I will."
The line goes dead. Artemis opens her desk drawer, drops her phone inside, and puts her head on the paper-covered wood.
..
Her mom is pleased to see her without Wally.
"Not that he's a bad boy," she insists, "it's just nice to see you for once."
Artemis apparently becomes a different person when Wally is around. She doesn't really believe that, but whatever, her mom's happy.
She's less happy during dinner, when Artemis announces that she's going to Star City the next day.
"I need to go," she says. "I, uh. I need to talk to Black Canary about the whole…" She waves her fork in the air, sketching something resembling a bat. "The hero thing."
A light goes on in her mom's eyes.
"You're stopping," she says.
Artemis loves her mom for saying stopping and not quitting. It's a choice. It's always been a choice.
"Yeah," Artemis says. "I am."
..
Spring semester starts off the same as fall, only she settles into her routine faster.
Her roommate spends the first month back muttering how she can't screw up again (a 3.6 GPA is, in her mind, completely unacceptable); Artemis spends it scarring up her fists in boxing practice (fencing had been too mellow for her tastes) and wondering what her grades had been.
Wally had compulsively checked the school website every day during break, and had nearly cried with relief when he saw the shining 4.0. Artemis hasn't bothered yet; she figures someone would have told her if she'd failed.
"I'm going to check for you," Wally swears. "God. You're the weirdest college student to have ever lived."
She shrugs, picking apart her bagel with quick fingers. "I have three years to make it up, you know."
He shakes his head.
..
Dick still calls as much as he always had, until March.
Wally comes to her room, grim-faced, and tells her that Jason's dead. Says that he's going, he'll be back soon, and to not worry too much.
She doesn't start to worry until Wally comes back an hour later, collapses on her bed and doesn't get up until the sun starts to set. Artemis's roommate wanders in at one point, frowns, and says that she'll be back later.
Around eleven, Wally says, "He wasn't there."
Which means: Alfred had opened the mansion's door, said that Dick wasn't taking any visitors.
It also means that Dick's not leaning on Wally anymore. (Makes sense. It's not like Wally's given him a reason to.)
..
She logs into the school site the day after, starts to slowly click her way through the options until she gets to 'grades.'
Jason, she vaguely remembers, had been freakishly smart but had flunked his way out of the three private schools Bruce had sent him to.
"He's smart enough," Dick had said, "but he just…he can't use his smarts there. He's not used to it."
Her mother had been over the moon when Artemis had gotten into Stanford, with a near-full scholarship, too. The fact that Wally was going with her didn't dampen her mood; if anything, she was glad that he would be there, someone who knew both sides of her kid.
(She'd meant the hero side of Artemis and the civilian, perpetually between a scowl and a grimace, side of her.
Artemis takes it to mean the hero side of her and the kid that had, like Jason, grown up half on the streets.)
The screen loads, inches at a time, and her grades pop up.
2.8, it reads.
Her mouth twists into a smile.
(This is what they gave up the spandex for: a chance at a normal life, which means normal grades, normal struggles. Though really, there's nothing normal about a fifteen year old getting blown up.)
..
Dick starts calling again towards the end of April. Spring finals are upon them, and Wally's slowly starting to twitch from caffeine overload (his credit card, too, is about a day away from being cut and the campus Starbucks is under orders to deny him service).
"Hey," Artemis says. Dick grins at her from her computer screen. "How's, uh. Stuff?"
He laughs. It's not as smooth a sound as it had been two months ago, but it's not cracked and rough either. "Okay," he says, looking her over. "Wally told me he went off on you for your grades."
"Ha. Yeah." She's on academic probation, but at least the financial aid office told her that they wouldn't revoke her scholarships yet, because of her excellent recommendations (namely: Bruce and Ollie, and their collective political weight). Wally had still freaked out. "All of our dates are in the library now."
"Figures," he says. "Wally's anal about school."
Wally makes a face. He's sprawled out on her bed, legs dangling off the side, with his iPad three inches from his nose. He still gives her computer the finger.
"You're being flipped off," she tells Dick. "Don't take it too hard."
He snorts. "I'll try."
They don't talk about the team or how they haven't seen each other, physically, in months. They really don't talk much at all.
..
Hanging up their costumes means more than going by their civilian names and nothing else. It means hanging up all of their old friends and trying to get by with the ones who only know them as Wally and Artemis, the physics kid and the boxer.
M'gann hasn't surprised Artemis with a visit since her first one in September. Kaldur's struggling to keep the team together. Conner's figuring out how to have a family. And Dick, Dick's just trying keep his head above water.
They don't connect with Wally the physics kid and Artemis the boxer anymore. Can't rely on them the same way they once did.
"So," Wally says. They're back in the library, ink staining their hands, words staining the back of their eyelids. "What should we do this summer?"
It's easy to talk about summer. Easier than talking about the funerals they decide not to attend at the last minute, or the costumes they finally packed up and sent home.
Artemis taps her pen against her notebook. "Could do that abroad thing," she says. "The scuba diving one. Or go on a road trip, get in a bar fight."
"We could make a list," Wally says with a straight face, "of all of the great things we're going to do."
Artemis laughs (quietly; she's already gotten shushed by the librarian and several wild-eyed seniors). "We're probably going to be doing nothing," she says, "besides going through everything in my mom's kitchen."
"Your mom's a great cook," Wally says blithely. "She loves it when we do that."
"Yeah, yeah. So." Artemis stops her tapping and uncaps her pen, because why not? "Road trip for sure. The bar fight's gonna have to be mine, since you can't even get drunk."
"I'm gifted," he says, grinning. "Can't help that."
"I'm sure," she says dryly, scrawling a quick stick figure with boxing gloves onto the page. "Anyway. Let's go scuba diving someplace. And rock climbing, or hiking."
"Appalachian trail," Wally supplies. "I've always wanted to go there. It'll be great."
"It'll be great," she echoes.
(They don't really have a choice but to make it great. It's all they ever wanted, after all.)