A/N: This vague little ficlet has been sitting at the front of my Documents folder for the longest time, waiting to be completed. Well, tough. It's staying just like it is.
This is a "Failsafe" alternate universe. In this, there was no training exercise, and the six team members are all still alive.
There's fire, fire everywhere, and they run. The darkness and death is left behind them as their only thoughts, their only coherent thoughts, are to get away, save ourselves, hide, escape.
They barely make it to the bio-ship in time, and Megan can't even fly it, she's so lost. She and Kaldur are rushed to the medical bay while Robin takes control, piloting the bio-ship, taking everyone away, and he does his best to ignore the nagging voice in the back of his head, the one that keeps saying Batman would have stayed. Batman would have fought to the end.
But Batman's dead.
The fiery, blackened surface of the Earth grows smaller and smaller as they fly farther and farther away, and Artemis and Wally stand together as they watch from the windows. It's beautiful, sickeningly beautiful, Artemis realizes. The Earth glows like a sick, deformed star, and the tears in her eyes blur everything together into a great, colorful canvas. She doesn't wipe them away, doesn't want to, and she doesn't push Wally away when he grabs hold of her hand.
The two stand there like that, watching the world burn.
Conner can't help but think of just how lucky Megan and Kaldur are. They won't have to live with the guilt of their decision.
After all, they weren't conscious.
They could blame the rest of the team. Megan and Kaldur, they could find solace in the fact that it wasn't their fault. They couldn't have affected the decision. It's not their fault their physiology doesn't leave much room for heat tolerance. It's not their fault their team dragged their limp and nearly lifeless bodies onto the ship and abandoned the world.
It's his fault. Conner's fault, and Wally's fault, and Artemis's fault, and Robin's fault. They're the ones that have to live with the guilt of their choice.
Amidst the terror and tragedy and guilt and loss, part of Conner wonders what the two will think when they wake up.
The bio-ship is surprisingly well-stocked with everything, from food to clothes to hygiene, and when Robin points this out to a now-conscious, but not fully recovered, Megan, she blushes and sheepishly admits (telepathically, of course) that she wanted to be prepared in case something like this actually did happen. Shock and suspicion dissolves into apathy and acceptance; they'd be dead if it weren't for her.
And she'd be dead if it weren't for them.
Kaldur has stepped up and taken control of the team once more, but Robin is always there to help. Red, raw marks crisscross against Kaldur's eel tattoos, a constant reminder that he is not, and will never be again, the man he once was. Still, he puts on a brave face, because that's what they need. He leads them in their everyday activities, because he's the leader, and that's what they need.
Really, there's not much to do. They're stuck on the bio-ship until the threat passes.
It does.