Notes: I am currently working on three different Spitfire fics at once because new ideas keep coming to me, so I apologize if I'm slow on updating some of the others I have posted on here. I promise they'll all be finished eventually, but this was just a short one that popped into my head last night, so I wrote it down before I would forget. (For some reason I just really wanted them to have matching tattoos. Maybe in another fic I'll give Wally a tattoo of a bow and arrow or something.)
She hadn't slept in their bed in days. The scent of him on the sheets was still too painful. She slept on the couch, with Nelson curled up beside her. Most nights, she cried herself to sleep.
Artemis wasn't sure she could survive without him much longer.
Before, she had always thought that he would be with her forever, that Wally West was a permanent fixture in her life. She had looked forward to spending her days and nights kissing him, sleeping beside him, laughing at his stupid jokes. Starting a family with him. Loving him for the rest of her life.
It was silly, but she thought he would always be there to call her babe.
After, she didn't even know if she wanted to see a future without him in it.
The team tried to contact her, but she never answered the phone. She kept herself locked away in the house in Palo Alto, barely eating, hardly ever sleeping. She was as much a ghost as he was.
She talked to him sometimes, when the floorboards creaked or the walls whispered with the wind outside. She saw him in everything. She wished he were here.
She only got up from the couch when she felt like she would die of starvation or Nelson needed a walk. She didn't like leaving the house. It felt wrong to go anywhere without his fingers laced through hers.
She heard his voice sometimes, echoing in her ears. Sometimes she pretended she could still feel his arms wrapped around her waist or his lips on hers.
"You can't keep doing this to yourself, Artemis," he would whisper.
She would close her eyes and clutch the blankets tighter around herself.
She dreamt of him most nights, when she actually slept. She would dream of the wind whipping through her hair while he ran with her in his arms across a Bialyan desert, tanks chasing after them relentlessly. She would dream of them running through a thunderstorm in Paris, and she would dream of kissing him underneath The Eiffel Tower.
The idea of something permanent came to her in one of those dreams. It was an idea that turned into a want, a burning desire, and then a pulsing, aching need.
She needed something permanent. Without him there, without his constant presence by her side, she felt as if she would cease to exist just as quickly as he did. She wanted something to hold her to the earth, because he wasn't there to do it for her anymore. And that was just too painful to bear.
She left the house with a destination in mind. She thought of his laugh on the walk downtown, his sparkling green eyes, his groggy voice when he murmured "Good morning" to her every time they woke up together. Those were the things she missed the most.
As she came up on the short, stocky building with the flashing neon lights, she felt like maybe, just maybe, she was starting to feel a tiny bit whole again.
When she left the building, something in her chest felt lighter. She smiled down at her wrist.
His body wasn't permanent, but he was. She would always have a part of him now, tattooed on her skin. The mark of his symbol on her wrist - the tiny circle with a lightning bolt inside - was proof that Wally West had existed, and Artemis Crock had loved him. And she would keep loving him until the day the earth stopped spinning. No matter what happened, that would always be permanent.
When she looked up at the sky, she could picture him running through the stars with her in his arms.