Title: Confession

Characters: Cassie Sandsmark/Wondergirl and Roy Harper/Arsenal

Rating: K

Author's Note: After today's episode, I needed an episode where Cassie needed to bring Arsenal to his senses

It has been two months since the Runaways formed their own 'team.' Arsenal was their unofficial leader, and it was a leadership role he took on extremely seriously. His team almost never ended up with injuries, they managed to save more lives from abducting aliens, and they were able to foil attempted robberies.

It was while the Runaways were away to see a movie that Arsenal found himself on his laptop, Googling Luthor's locations and the crimes he made in his eight-year sleep. He wanted to find any patterns in these crimes to find out if he could humiliate that son-of-a-bitch later on. Arsenal was reading about Luthor's weapon distribution to both those countries when he heard a soft knocking on the door.

Gearing his arm up, fully charged, and ready to attack anything within 0.16 seconds, he tiptoed to the front door, opened the peephole, and saw a blond head.

He opened the door cautiously and in front of him was Cassie, in running shoes, flare jeans, and a red-and-white shirt. In her hand was a small paper bag, and the other a mini pizza box. Roy focused his attention on her soft smile. "Hi," she said.

"Hey, what are you doing here?" he asked.

Cassie shrugged. "I missed you after you left the team, so I decided to come by, say hi, and see if you were here."

Roy blinked. "What if I wasn't here? What if I was on a mission? With my team?"

"Then I would have waited out here for you," she said simply. "Where is your team anyway?"

"They never told me," he lied knowing that they wouldn't want him giving information about them to anyone, even the League. "So...what's in the bag?"

"May I come in?" she asked instead.

Arsenal opened the door wider and she flew right in, observing the pizza boxes, soda cans, Chinese takeout, and greasy napkins scattered all over the coffee table. "Sorry about the mess," he apologized. "I guess I was too focused on my research that I..."

"Don't worry about it," she said sitting down on the couch and pulling out two ice cream containers-bubble gum and birthday cake. "Join me?"

Roy's mouth watered when he realized how long it was since he had frozen dairy, so he sat beside her, took the metal spoon she gave him, and reached for the birthday cake one.

"What's with the pizza box?"

Cassie opened the lid to a meat-laden pie. "Your mentor said this was your favorite topping," she explained.

Roy nodded and picked up a slice. "Nice...pizza and ice cream, I want you to live here."

Cassie laughed and pulled the lid off bubble gum. "Nah...I have my mother. So...tell me about your team? You guys getting along?"

Roy swallowed his bite of pizza and wiped the tip of his tongue against his teeth. "Actually, we don't talk about each other. We're trying to keep ourselves as away from the public eye as possible."

Cassie understood and bit down on a mouthful of pink. "Sorry, I just...feel bad."

"For what?" asked Arsenal.

Cassie paused before shrugging. "I don't know...it saddens me to think that children can have such a horrible relationship with their parents that they feel the only way to deal with it is to run away."

Roy opened bit down on his slice when he thought of something. "You know...it does sound scary, but I feel I can understand them."

Cassie set down her carton and sat Indian-style on the sofa. "You've been doing research on Luthor, haven't you?"

The redhead smoothed his left hand down his buzz cut and scratched behind his ear. "Well, no, sometimes I do..."

Cassie smiled darkly.

"Alright, everyday and usually for two hours aside from training and patrol."

Her laugh was as gentle as a small stream. "Well, I don't blame you." Her eyes suddenly grew serious. "But...you do remember what happened when we went to space, remember? Nearly all of us died, and...you said that you were too scared of capture again, right?"

Arsenal closed his eyes, and Cassie automatically feared she said the wrong thing. "Eight years of my life...gone...I was afraid that it would happen to me again, that for eight years I would miss out on the world, miss out on my loved ones...what if longer for even eight years...I could never...They stole my life and my arm..."

Her small hand slid into his robotic palm. "And even my own mentor thought me dead..." He peeked out of the corner of his eye to Cassie's sympathetic eyes yet firm-looking lips.

"You know Dick didn't mean to hurt your feelings," she said instead.

"He didn't-"

"I can tell when you're lying," she interrupted. "You wanted to be a hero, you wanted to reclaim your life, but you have to understand-your hatred against Luthor and your embarrassment of freezing eight years of your life and your arm and your fear of recapture...all of these blind you to League and Team standards and the lives of your teammates. When you went to that LexCorp and Reach barn, you never thought that he would come after you?"

Roy didn't answer. He reached for his carton and ate faster.

"I know you're agreeing with me," she said.

Roy shrugged and licked melting ice cream running down his arm.

"You're lucky that Karen and Tim and Wolf did not follow Sphere into space."

"Hey, if Superboy hadn't given himself to let Blue Beetle hit him, you would still be stuck in space," he said defensively.

"I understand that," she said. "But you've endangered the Team twice...and you have to understand that you may be suffering from PTSD...but you're either in denial or too angry to admit to yourself that you are still struggling internally."

Arsenal paused and took another bite of pizza. "I don't know...maybe."

Cassie smiled and patted his shoulder. "You know, Black Canary is trained in therapy."

"I know, cause I used to talk to her when I was younger and when I needed advice," he admitted. "And I hear that even Dick had a therapy session with her, and so did Miss Martian and Superboy and all those other kids."

Cassie felt as if Christmas had come earlier and she happily pulled closer to him. "Alright, so tell me more about yourself?"

Six hours later...

The four runaways came home, saw their leader curled up on the couch with his arms wrapped around Wonder Woman's blond protege, and crept back into their room snickering.

Secret: I'm not looking forward to the finale-this is the first cartoon I've been attached to that I know is ending. With Dexter's Laboratory and Teen Titans, I had no idea those shows ended until years later.