I was really conflicted about writing this. I dislike making death cheap in fiction. So, I made it cost something at least. I also feel like reviving Wally is kinda pandering. However, in this he's really more of a plot device. Think of him as the viewers after the first time skip. He's all confused and angry and thus a lens for which to observe the universe.
I also wanted to reconcile the infidelity that takes place in this universe (yes my Sea Arrow fic all happens in the same universe).
There is no sex or M'gann in this and I feel like I need to apologise to myself and the world for that. *Shudder*
Also, credit where credit is due to the tumblr YJ fandom for things like "aquasad" and the creepy doll Kim chases Nike around with. That was inspired by a comic on tumblr showing Artemis and Jade doing a similar thing.
Artemis watches Kim and Nike play hopscotch on the front path. She's on the phone talking to Dick about an assassination attempt on some Egyptian official's life -and no, it wasn't Jade this time.
The normalcy of it all strikes her and makes her ache.
She didn't think it would be so easy to become this happy. To make her daughters fried tofu sandwiches for lunch and pay her bills.
Of course, that's when lightning strikes and creates a huge tear in the road just down the block. She hears the roar of some meta-human-god-chaos-lord-demon-whatever and drops the receiver.
Her dog starts barking and snarling like mad. Still, he stands on the porch with his tail between his legs.
"Girls!"
Kim comes running, obedient and full of survival instinct.
Nike stands there and watches the light with an intense fascination.
Artemis grabs her bow and snaps into action. She tackles Nike and hauls her under the arm not holding the bow. Whatever it is attacking San Francisco will have its hands full of Teen Titans in about two minutes.
"Do you wanna die?!" She screams at her youngest.
Nike looks at her with glazed eyes. Kim shivers in the corner. The bass of some hero hitting the pavement causes the windows to rattle.
"Basement, both of you. I need to call your dad."
When Kaldur arrives his face is ashen and taught. Artemis clings to him. His hands pat at her in a way that should be comforting, but succeeds in being detached.
Their daughters are climbing his legs and burying their faces just above her knee.
Artemis bends to pick up Nike who has shiny eyes pointed away from her.
"I'm so sorry, Nike. I didn't mean to yell. I was scared."
Nike mumbles something and cries a little into Artemis's shoulder. She makes soothing noises and runs her fingers through her daughter's hair.
Kaldur is bouncing Kim. He is still unfocused.
"Baby, what is it?"
"Wally's alive."
She feels like she's going to throw up. His legs. He's sitting up in bed, so it's harder to tell, but he doesn't have any legs. Worn down. Worn off. Fourteen fucking years of running made it so that'd he'd never be able to again.
It's really Wally. Dick is sitting on the mattress and has his face buried in Wally's red hair. They move in sync. In and out. Sobs that become regular breathing. She watches them fall asleep. Dick's like a Disney princess when he sleeps. It's like all of the grief and responsibility slides off his face. She sees the sensitive young man beneath the mask.
God, he's lost so much. She's glad he gets to have this.
Kaldur is flighty next to her. He's scared. She tangles their fingers together. Her not-wedding ring presses hot against his webs and callouses.
"I love you." She says.
She enters the decontamination chamber and Wally looks up. He looks ill and malnourished. Like he should be dead. He died. He fucking disintegrated before her eyes.
His voice is hoarse, "Hey beautiful. Love what you've done with your hair."
"Hi Wally."
Artemis remembers that she would give anything to see him again.
"Do you ever think of Jacqy Kennedy?" She says.
Kaldur looks up from his book. He can tell this non-sequitur will lead into something relevant to her current feelings. He puts a bookmark in and gives her his full attention.
"Just imagine going for a drive with your husband and then the back of his head explodes. Nothing you can do or say. No way to apologise or forgive. He's just gone. No closure."
Kaldur feels his chest tighten. He thinks of pretending to kill her. Watching the light fake-fade from her eyes. The image of her dead on that beach twists into a cruel remix. Talking to her and then watching a bullet, a knife, an alien laser plunge through her chest. The smile wouldn't fully slide off her face. She'd be fighting.
She's been through this. One minute everything is normal, then the person you love is gone forever.
"I think we should retire." He says.
"Baby, I've tried." Her eyes are full of tears.
"You told me you didn't want to get married." Wally's trying not to be accusatory. (And failing.)
"I'm not. Not officially." She twists the ring.
"So, who's the lucky guy… or girl? If it's M'gann, I won't be mad."
She laughs a little humourlessly. It's breathy and apologetic.
"Kaldur."
Because there's no easier way to put it.
Wally looks like he's going to break something. She watches the stages of grief he goes through.
"I waited for you. I waited for years, Wally."
"You two were sleeping together before I died."
"That was a mistake. I'm sorry."
"But you married him."
"Cheating was a mistake. Kaldur was not."
He pushes away from the table and paws at his hair and face. He begins pacing. She hears the squeak every time he changes direction. The room is white and the definition of nondescript. The scrubs he wears match the room. It doesn't feel like Wally. Too pale, too clean.
In just a minute she'll wake up and find that she's fallen asleep while watching Buffy and the kids are making chocolate chip cookies in the kitchen with M'gann. Then she'll sit up and cry for ten minutes in the bathroom, but her life will be okay and normal.
She keeps pinching herself and she still hasn't woken up.
"So Superboy's bald now?"
"He traded hair for the ability to age."
"Kinda like the gift of the magi."
Artemis raises her eyebrows. It's a little intellectual for a Wally reference. He senses her confusion and shrugs.
"Mickey Mouse version got me educated."
"Yeah. He can still grow a beard, downside is that it's mostly ginger. It makes him and M'gann look like members of a cult. Especially because they have like ten kids."
He growls and punches the table.
"Fuck. I've missed ten kids worth of birthdays. Everyone has families and lives and I'm fucking stuck. None of you wanted to settle down!"
"Well, actually M'gann-"
"You told me you didn't want to get married or have kids! I guess you just meant not with me."
Artemis gets up and leaves. His anger is fair. She just doesn't have to sit around for it. He calls after her, apologetic.
"I'll see you later, Wally."
"Dad. Why are you sad?"
Nike holds out a tray of crackers like a peace treaty. He pulls her into his lap. She's small and scrappy like her mother. Except she's six and hasn't learned three ways to murder people yet. (He hates Lawrence Crock with a passion.)
Kaldur tips his head and thinks about the matter.
"An old friend of mine is back after being gone for a long time. I'm happy to see him again, but things are more complicated now. I don't know how to act around him, and… I did some mean things to him before he left."
"Is this Mama's old boyfriend?"
Kaldur is gobsmacked and looks at his daughter agape. She's giving him the Crock 'don't bullshit me' look that Jade actually has patented.
"Who told you that?"
"Puh-lease, you two are totally actin' like Spiderman and Mary Jane after Gwen Stacey comes back from the dead and is all like 'how's my Spider-boyfriend?' and MJ's all 'swiggity swag I put a ring on that'."
Kaldur closes his eyes and curses the gods.
"That's…. exactly our situation."
"Okay. Now I need you to tell Grandma that because she thinks cartoons are dumb kid stuff."
Nike asks if she can put red food dye in the water balloons for her birthday.
"That way it can look like it's a fight to the death!"
Artemis snorts and shares a look with Kim, because she gave birth to Aang and Xena and thinks that's a pretty apt summary of her reproduction with Kaldur.
"And I was thinking we could use a wooden katana instead of a bat for the pinata. That'll make our party more ethically diverse!"
"Ethnically." Kim corrects.
Nike sticks her tongue out and Kim shows her the scary doll she's been making out of string and fabric.
"This is Scary Mary. She's going to eat your toes."
Nike shrieks as Kim chases her around the kitchen island. Brucely hears her cries and comes skittering in. He inspects the situation by sniffing the air and barking. Artemis has two girls and a pit-bull orbiting her counter space and legs by proxy.
"Alright, girls, take it down a notch or take it outside."
She watches them run out the sliding glass door in search of super soakers and fairy crowns. Kim's afro puffs are bouncing like twin honeycombs and Nike's hair is almost white in the sun.
She can't picture them with red hair and freckles.
"They're beautiful." Wally says.
She feels dirty and wrong showing him the pictures instead of just introducing him to the girls. She's going to ask for the pictures back because it's fucking weird for her ex to have photos of her daughters in his white walled room.
"How goes the physio therapy?"
"Oh, you know, I can almost stand now."
He smiles at her, it's weak and bitter. Bitter because he ran for fourteen years. He's been in constant motion, yet stuck in the same place. He's a tourist in another timeline.
"Have you spoken to Bart at all?"
"Yeah, he was in here earlier. He's been thinking it's almost time for him to go back. His dad's a teenager and things are getting weird."
"Did he know anything about this?"
"Nah, nothing since The Reach. But, you already know that."
He's caught her making small talk. Artemis frowns and shrugs.
"Sue me."
She hears the hissing of the decontamination chamber and turns in her seat. In walks Kaldur. For a minute she sees him through a stranger's eyes. He is big and powerful. A thick-necked force of nature with cheekbones that could cut glass.
And then the illusion is shattered and she remembers that milk makes him gassy and the time they got caught having sex in the communications room of the Watchtower. Instead of a fierce black adonis it's just her sassy husband.
He leans down to kiss her, because Wally knows and there's no use bubble-wrapping the world for him. The kiss is possessive and it's odd. Artemis wonders if Kaldur really feels that insecure.
Wally is having a staring contest with the table. His hands are fisted against the wheels of his chair.
"The girls wanted to say goodbye before you go on your assignment." Kaldur says.
Artemis nods and stands.
"I'll talk to you later, Wally."
Kaldur paces the Watchtower. He has a comm link in one ear and his phone in the other. His eyes are screaming from the dry conditioned air and constant bombardment of images.
Barbara is hunched before him, tall posture ruined by hours of typing and looking at screens. There's something like six coffee cups and two empty pad thai boxes on her work desk. She's directing Blue Beetle and Green Lantern towards a crashed Gordonian ship when a red light starts flashing on the screen.
Kaldur almost drops his phone. He know exactly which mission just went blackout.
"I'll have to call you back."
He's got a white-knuckled grip on the back of Barbara's chair.
"Hang on, Kal, I'm sending back up. She's tough. I'm sure it's just a false alarm."
Kaldur thinks of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. He thinks about snow and Wally screaming-no Artemis collapsing into M'gann's arm. Helpless to help the person they loved.
He thinks about two little girls.
Shit. Fucking shit. Goddamn shit.
Artemis is bleeding. Like, a lot. She's not sure if the wound's bad or if it's just a chip off the forehead that's making her vision all red. Deathstroke caught her off guard. It's not going to happen again.
He's talking right now. Some speech about how they're not all that different and whatever. Slade's like in his sixties now and is clearly going through some kind of mid-life crisis if he thinks he and Artemis are similar.
Maybe he never got over her not being interested in being 'orange-and-black-assassin-buddies'.
"Which is why I've marked you as my equal."
Hey- her right eye's cleared up. Why isn't her left…?
Fucking shit.
She stabs him in the thigh because shut the fuck up Slade. He's either gotten sloppy in his old age and foregone a layer of armour or her knife is the best knife ever.
Artemis isn't going to stop and contemplate. She's pretty sure she nicked his femoral artery. A large part of her is thinking that saving him has way more cons than pros. But, the part of her that's married to a leader of the Justice League knows that qualifies as straight up murder.
So she fashions a tourniquet out of his already ridiculous arm-bandana.
"You'll be lucky if you keep the leg."
"I hope you enjoyed depth perception while you had it." He laughs.
She cuts off his stupid ponytail. He whimpers.
"Slade, your outfit matches the Halloween Aisle at Target."
It's not her best one-liner, but she's been meaning to say it for like fifteen years,
Artemis sees the blur of white and red that is Powergirl touching down. Karen's saying something to her just as she passes out from blood loss.
Kim's scared. Her legs dangle over the edge of the squeaky fake-leather waiting chair. Nike's curled up in Dad's lap like a cat. Kim fists the fabric of her dress. She has to be the big sister. Big sisters are strong and don't need to be in Dad's lap. Auntie Jade taught her that.
Mama's been in surgery for five hours. They don't know when she's gonna be out.
"Dad, I've gotta go pee." She says.
Kaldur's zoned out and just nods. His eyes are wide and almost unblinking. She wonders if he needs a glass of water.
She remembers seeing a sign for the ladies room just down the hall. Her sandals make little slaps against the tile floor as she wanders down the fluorescent hallway.
The visiting room is just down the hall from the bathroom. She's curious and tired of waiting in a chair. Kim walks the extra ten feet to peer in through the doorway.
There are small, comfy chairs and little bookshelves. A TV screen is mounted on one wall and there are toys for children to play with. Near the window sits a man in a wheelchair. He's reading a story to two little boys with tubes in their noses and bald heads.
"And when the mermaid saw the man she loved laying with his bride she faltered. She couldn't kill the prince just because he loved another. Instead, she went on deck and threw the knife into the surf. She stood on the bow as the sun rose, and true to the word of the sea witch, she was turned into sea foam."
Kim bites her lip. It's the original version of the story, or as her mother calls it, 'The Way More Metal than Disney' version.
He turns to see her standing there. He has sad green eyes and Kim ducks from his gaze.
"Hey there." He says.
She steps into the room as if the floor is lava. (Careful and on tip toe.)
The boys turn to look at her. She gives a little wave and goes to sit by them. The red haired man gives her a curious look. Her eyes follow his to the centre of her chest.
"Cool Flash shirt." He says.
"Thanks. It used to be my Mama's. She said I could have it as a dress."
He starts crying and Kim knows who he is. She's been through the boxes that her mom keeps under her bed. The little boys with tubes in their noses look startled and make excuses about having to use the bathroom before leaving.
"How is she?" Kid Flash asks.
"She's not dead." Is all Kim can say.
"Oh god. I'm dead. I'd better be dead. My head shouldn't hurt this much."
"Don't even joke." Kaldur says.
With her good eye, Artemis looks at him in the doorway. She feels tears leaking out and she lifts her rubbery arms in a request for a hug.
"Mama!"
Her husband is pushed out of the way by a stampede of curly blonde hair. They're climbing her bed and (ow) clinging to her legs and chest.
"Mama, we heard that wrestled a bear while riding Powergirl like a motorcycle!" Nike says.
"Did Jade tell you that?"
Kaldur is laugh-crying as he pulls up a chair next to her. Her whole face hurts, but she kisses him anyway.
"Hey Aquasad, why so blue?"
"I was scared."
"I'm sorry, Baby."
Her babies are clinging to her like koalas. Kaldur is as on the bed as he can be without sitting on her. Artemis falls asleep in a too-warm family dogpile.
She doesn't see Wally wheel in to bring some flowers. He does see the tattoo on her arm of a lightning bolt.
"Hey."
She finds him the courtyard. He greets her without looking.
"When did they let you out of the League's hospital?"
"Week ago."
"You didn't tell me."
"I figured you didn't c-didn't want some sad spectre from your past dragging down on your present."
Artemis tuts and rolls her eyes. She doesn't know how to comfort him anymore. If it were Kaldur then she'd tackle him and blow raspberries on his neck until he giggled. Serious talks were easier after giggle time.
"Wally. I love you."
"Yeah, but -right?"
"No. I love you and want you in my life. I'm sorry that I've been so evasive lately. I just… I feel like I'm gonna wake up and it'll be like every other dream about you coming back. Except this one is way more depressing than those typically are."
He laughs and it sounds like a choke.
"But you're here and you're real and volunteering at a fucking hospital because you're like that."
"Hey, just because I'm not a hero doesn't mean I can't be heroic."
She sniffs at this and wipes her eyes. She walks until she's in front of him. Artemis drops to her knees and hugs him tight.
Wally's crying too. They share a kiss. It's the closing of a book. Closure.
"Look at us, a speedster with no legs and an archer with no depth perception." Artemis says.
"I dunno, I think you can rock the eyepatch look."
"I might need to get a parrot."
"I bet Gar would let you use him."
"Now I'm really excited about this."
And just like that Wally feels like this new world isn't as scary and different as it seems.