Author's Note: I've given this fic a 'Teen' rating for language, but depictions of violence should be about equal to the source material. The main relationship is Wally X Artemis- there may be a couple others, perhaps Conner x M'gann and Bart x Jaime, but they're going to be very much in the background, which is why I did not tag them.

Chapter One

Magic has laws.

They are not like the laws of physics. They cannot be graphed or calculated or put into equations: at least, not using any system of mathematics yet created by humans. They are more instinctual that that. They run through the blood, not the brain.

The greatest of the magical laws is this: everything has its price. And nothing has a higher price-tag than a life. There is only one way you can buy one of those: a life, in turn.

But how does one define a life, really?

oOo

For a long time, there is nothing. Then there is something.

It isn't much. Just an awful lot of white and cold, but it is something,and that in of itself is remarkable.

oOo

It's the first day of term, and Artemis couldn't be more excited.

She knows that excitement will wear off soon enough, of course, once the essays and assignments start piling up, but for now, she can't keep a smile off her face. It has been a long time since since her last exam, back in May. Only a matter of months, technically, but it feels like forever. A lot of stuff happened in those five months. She died, for a start.

Honestly, it's amazing how easy it has been to put her life back together after her supposed death. Her family, her team-mates, and those in 'the know'- well, they're used to so much weird shit that 'faking your own murder to infiltrate an evil society' hadn't been particularly difficult to accept. If in the end, the plan hadn't worked off, they probably would have been a whole lot angrier about the whole thing, but the euphoria of successfully stopping an alien invasion really had put a damper on all of that. Everyone was just happy that she was alive, and welcomed her back into the fold without much fuss.

Artemis hadn't been expecting it to be quite so easy for her civilian friends (few as they were) to believe, and she just knew that stuff like government and college paper-work was going to be a pain, but she'd gotten through it. She'd gone with a kidnapping cover-story. Said she'd been stuck with some evil supervillain, which wasn't even technically a lie. Her supposed rescue at the hands of the Justice League had been a miracle. A few people asked about the body- but the funeral had been closed casket, on account of there being no body, but it made it easy to claim that it had simply been misidentified. There had been a lot of crying, a lot of hugs, a lot of casseroles. On the paper-work front, it seemed that most large institutions did actually have protocols in place for this sort of thing. Or maybe Batman had helped grease the wheels a bit.

End result: she's now legally considered alive again, signed up for four new classes, and eager to start fall semester. Her time undercover was draining, mentally, physically and emotionally, and to be honest, the two months afterwards hadn't much better. She's looking forward to getting back to work- specifically, the nice normal work of school.

So when the alarm rings at seven-thirty in the morning, she doesn't even complain or hit the snooze button once. She takes the time for a nice breakfast, making sure Brucely gets a large one of his own. She puts on a cute outfit. She takes Brucely for a morning walk. She checks to make sure all her books and stationary are in order, and that she knows where to find her classes. She even pots a cheery little status on Facebook, something she hardly ever does.

Then Artemis Crock grabs her keys and heads out the door, more than ready for a new day.