One of You
"Don't, Wally," Jinx said softly as she unlocked the door instead of letting him vibrate them through it. "Just don't. Please."
He followed her into the darkened apartment, not even blinking as she steered herself blindly to the bedroom, then through it to the bathroom. The door was closed and locked before he'd even locked the front door, something that was rare for the young man who once known as Kid Flash. Kid, no longer, he was already assuming the mantel of the Flash from his uncle with a near open invitation to join the Justice League the moment he tired of work as a Titan.
He wouldn't, Wally knew, not without Jinx, and there wasn't an invitation for her. Yet. If he had his way she'd be one of the most honored heroes, a girl who turned away from an easy life of crime and joined him in the fight against it. It he had his way.
He bent his head to the side for a moment, letting the vertebrae there snap once, then twice, before straightening up and peeling the mask back from his face to flop loosely behind his shoulders. The water was running as he followed the faint glow that was now creeping from beneath the closed door.
He stopped at it and laid a hand against it, then his forehead, eyes closed in defeat. "Jinx."
Her name was near whispered, but he knew she would hear simply by virtue of him not wanting her to. It was her charm, her magic, the reason why she was locked inside the bathroom. And crying. He hated to think it but Wally knew better. The water was running, but there was no splashing, no sound of it hitting her pale skin or even running across anything but the smooth porcelain of the sink. It was there for nothing other than to hide the faint sniffles, the quiet sobs.
He hated the water. He hated that she was crying. He hated that he was the reason she was crying.
"Go away, Wally, I don't want to talk to you." Muffled, but not angry, and he closed his eyes, willing his body to move faster and faster until the molecules of it and the door were one and then none, he the solid one on the other side of the door.
"Jinx, I'm not going anywhere. Not without you."
She looked up at him, wide eyes pink and red, and Wally's heart tightened at the sight of wet cheeks. "I can't do this anymore, Wally. It's not fair to ask me to."
He didn't say anything as he dropped to his knees in front of her, one hand finding its way to the soft cascade of pale pink hair and brushing it back from her face, the other to the blistered and near bleeding circlet of raw flesh around one wrist. Without a word he reached for the washcloth she had already laid on the counter next to the sink, slipping it under the warm water and wetting it before pressing it to the weeping wound at her wrist.
Jinx breathed in sharply and Wally steeled himself at the teardrop that fell on his hand. "I'm sorry, Jinx. I didn't mean for this to happen."
"You never do," she whispered bitterly as she tugged her arm from his hands, the washcloth dropping down to the floor as Wally rocked back onto his heels, staring up at her with his clear blue eyes, worried. "You don't mean for this to happen, but that doesn't change that it does."
She sucked in a shuddering breath before covering her face with her hands. The words that she'd been thinking for so long, so damned long, bubbling up and spilling out before she could stop them. Before she thought about stopping them. Before she realized that she didn't want to stop them anymore.
"I can't do this anymore. I can't be one of you; it's impossible."
"Don't say that," he breathed, and she jerked back from the hands that were suddenly covering her own and pulling them away from her face.
"Don't say that, Wally? What do you want me to say?" She shoved her wrists in front of his face, close enough that he would see the very edges of the burns, for burns they were, faintly charred and crisped. "They didn't just use inhibitors, Wally, they meant to hurt me. They were trying to set an example. An example! Of me!"
He looked at her steadily for a moment before pulling her close so that her face rested on his shoulder, the yellow spandex quickly soaking through with the wet on her cheeks as she burrowed her face there. He pressed a gentle kiss to the skin of her neck before sighing. "And you let them. Jinx, I'm so sorry."
That was the real bitch of it, too, and she knew it. He was always so damned sorry, but that didn't change anything. It didn't change the way his… associates was the only way she could think of them as. The word 'friends' left a bitter taste in her mouth when she tried to apply it to them, any of them, despite the obvious acceptance of one or two. Acceptance that would evaporate the moment they suspected her, and Jinx was sure that at least one of them sent malicious thoughts her way at least once every few hours.
"It's not your fault, Wally," she finally whispered. "I know it's not. Doesn't mean it doesn't hurt." She tightened her arms around her, heedless of the pain in her wrists, her H.I.V.E. training only a few years in the past, not so long ago that she didn't still remember the lessons in discipline that she had learned at a higher price than the possibility of a few scars.
"But I can't do this anymore. I'm sorry, Wally, I just can't."
He sighed. "I know." Just like that, his mind made up and the words cutting and decisive. "I know, Jinx. We'll deal with it."
xXx
If it hadn't been for the fact that it was his communicator, Robin probably would have ignored it. Actually, he quite possibly might have smacked at it and then stabbed it into a pleasant silence with a birdarang. If it hadn't been his communicator. As it was he had to try and carefully shift Kori off of him without waking her—he already knew what it was like to wake the princess when the sun was nowhere close to being up and he had no real idea what the emergency was.
The communicator beeped another half dozen times before he managed to grab it and answer it, fully expecting to find Beast Boy on the other end ready to ask him to play video games, or maybe Cyborg wanting to run a new security upgrade by him. God only knew when the two of them slept—it certainly wasn't when he did.
But there was no familiar face to greet him, only a misty darkness that glistened on the tiny screen. There was breathing though; whichever Titan needed help, they were at least still alive.
"Robin here," Dick said steadily into the communicator, his free hand reaching for Kori's shoulder and shaking it gently. She was sitting up in a heartbeat even as he said, "Report, Titan."
Nothing answered him but a gurgling stillness, and Kori's body tensed where she leaned into him. "Richard, that is blood."
A breath hissed out of Dick's throat and his fingers clenched around the communicator, as if holding it tighter would somehow give him the answer that he needed. It wouldn't, and he could trace the communicator to the other link, but that would take time. It always took time, and if that was as much blood—as Kori was sure that it was—there was no time. He cursed softly, not for the first time wishing he had taken a few moments to log in which Titan had gotten which of the spare communicators back when the Brotherhood of Evil was their biggest concern.
And then the screen glowed pink and the picture disappeared, and Dick knew without a doubt that what he'd been afraid of since Flash hooked up with the pink-haired witch had finally come to pass.
"It was Flash," Dick said on a breath before reaching for his shirt and tugging it on, pants and boots following as Kori slipped into her own uniform in silence. He strode surely to the computer console and slammed his hand down on the alert button.
Kori was right beside him as he hit the door, the seal hissing as it broke and the door sliding open. "You are sure it is the Kid of Flash?" she asked him, her voice pitched to be louder than the alarms just now beginning to go off throughout the tower.
He gave a dark chuckle. "I'm at least sure that it was the witch, Kori. I've never met anyone else with magic quite like hers."
She was silent as they headed the rest of the way for the briefing room. The living room, game room, dining room and kitchen as well—they hadn't been particular when the tower had been built. But they'd been roughly about thirteen at the time, so even Dick couldn't blame himself for not having a separate room built just for work. Or maybe he had seen the wisdom of letting his teammates have access to everything else while he was telling them about the latest attempt to die in the name of justice.
They were the first ones there, but not by much, Cyborg and Raven following quickly while Beast Boy stumbled in half a minute later. The second they were all there, the alarms died into silence and Dick spoke, his voice clear and commanding.
"She finally showed her true colors," he said. "Flash is hurt, might already be dead. It's time to take her down."
"Are you sure about this, Robin?" Raven's voice was harsh in the apparent stillness, and Dick only nodded his head.
"Alright, Titan's, let's go."
xXx
The apartment was dark when they arrived, and Dick gave the order to fan out and approach it from more than one angle. Cyborg had already reported that there were only two people in the apartment, and that they were both in the main room at the door. He'd already checked to make sure that exiting any way but the front door was impossible without blowing out an entire wall, so Dick was rather pleased with the neat trap Jinx had placed herself so politely in.
His eyes narrowed as the thought that the price of it might have been the life of a Titan, but he shook it off. Raven would try healing him; anything else was already too late to be taken care of, just as he warned Kid Flash when he took the witch in two years ago.
"Titans, go."
The door was gone in a heartbeat, glowing darkly with Raven's power before Dick and Cyborg headed through, one after the other. He'd thought it would be dark but Cyborg apparently had no such ideas. Dick had an instance to glimpse Jinx standing a little past the door, fingers clenching and unclenching, sparks dancing, cat-slit eyes glancing every few seconds to the body that was lying in a pool of blood. Then Cyborg was batting the girl away with an open hand, hitting her across the face so that she flew back and landed in a heap on the faded couch against the far wall.
"Raven," Dick said without taking his wary eyes off of Jinx, one of his hands waving the sorceress into the apartment and in the direction of the broken, bloodied body that was Flash. The witch was uncurling herself on the couch but not offering to move any farther than to cup a hand against the pale curve of her cheek where a bruise was already forming.
Raven drifted in for a moment, but stopped just over the threshold. "Robin, I don't think—"
"Just try and heal him," Dick ground out, barely taking in the fact that Kori was still at the door with Raven and neither woman was offering to move.
Cyborg took a step toward Jinx, a hand rising to grab her, his other already at his waist where a set of inhibitors was dangling, and then the world as Dick knew it shifted. There was a blur and suddenly Flash was standing in front of Jinx, a fierce glare to his face, his blue eyes dark and narrow, candy coated with blood that matted nearly black in his hair and dried in thick brownish red clumps along his skin. If it hadn't been for the fact the Dick had been so sure the man was nearly dead, if not there already, he might have fallen back into a defensive stance. As it was he could only look at the blood covered body in front of him, so obviously protecting the bad luck witch.
And then he spoke. "Don't touch her ever again." His voice was a harsh growl, so unusual for the normally easygoing hero that Cyborg stopped before his hands had even touched the inhibitor cuffs, his eye wide and even his electronic eye a little surprised looking.
"But you're—" Dick was cut off abruptly with a slashing motion through the air at him.
"Yeah, I know. I'm supposed to be dead."
xXx
"Or dying, at any rate, and it's automatically her fault, isn't it?" Wally's voice was heated as he glared at the shocked boy wonder standing in front of him. He lifted a hand to his face and picked at the drying liquid there, peeling a brownish piece off and flicking it at Robin. "The wonders of special effects blood nowadays, huh?"
He turned his back on them for a moment to kneel by Jinx. "Let me see," he murmured and she obligingly dropped her hand to let him see the darkening spot along her cheek, the skin already tender and swelling. He raised a hand to it but stopped just short of touching it, his eyes pale and worried. "I'm sorry I didn't believe you."
She nodded once then took his hand to stand beside him and Wally gratefully let his fingers thread through hers and hold it tightly before daring to speak again, the control that he found a thing wrenched from the depths of his very being.
"You've been gunning for her all this time, haven't you?" he asked softly, the silence around the words deadly. "You've never trusted her. That much was obvious, even to me. But could you really think that she would hurt me, much less kill me?"
Robin's mouth twisted in anger. "She's a traitor already; it was only a matter of time before she showed her true colors."
"A traitor?" Jinx's voice was incredulous and she nearly laughed with the absurdity of Robin's accusation. "A traitor to who? To the H.I.V.E. Five? To the Brotherhood? To anyone like that. But not to Wally."
"Couldn't you?" Robin asked, his eyes narrowing behind the mask. "You've already done it once, or so you say. You're nothing but a traitor."
She sneered at him, willing the anger to be just that, and not to bleed over into her magic. That was all she needed to do to prove Robin right, to suddenly blow up half of the apartment because she lost control. Never mind that it was her home, too, as well as Wally's. Reason wasn't anything that the Titans were interested in.
"You have the nerve to call me a traitor?" she breathed out. "Such accusations from you, Red X."
It was almost like the room took a collective breath in, and Jinx couldn't help but laugh cynically. "Did you really think I didn't know about that? Robin, I knew everything about you and the rest of the Titans that I possibly could. It was how I stayed alive. You were Red X. You worked for Slade. You were a traitor. So how can you dare use the same word on me?"
"Robin, I do not think that we should be doing this right now," Starfire broke in.
Jinx cast a glance at the Tamaranian girl, wondering whose side she was really on. It was an easy enough guess to assume that she would take Robin's part, it was a well known fact that the two were lovers, and Jinx already knew that she'd follow Wally to the ends of the earth if that was what he needed, she loved him that much. Starfire was no different, it only took one look to see that she watched Robin the same way that Jinx herself watched Wally—complete and total love. But Starfire's eyes weren't on Robin, they were on Jinx, and the witch almost flinched back from the open stare.
"But we should," Jinx said, her eyes slipping between Robin and Starfire and then just dropping to look at the floor. "We really should. What do I have to do for a second chance?" Her voice caught, nearly broke, and Jinx swallowed the emotion down as Wally's hand tightened on hers.
"I've had to get her released from prison at least a dozen times in the last two years." Wally's voice was soft as he held her hand forward and pushed her sleeve up. His fingers were gentle as he undid the tape that bound the wound, and he showed them. "They make an example of her. Of the one that got away, every time thinking they're finally the ones to catch her."
Raven started forward but Wally held a hand out and shook his head, the distrust obvious. "What will it take for you to trust her, since my word obviously isn't good enough? An equal amount of years serving your justice, imprisonment? She's saved hundreds of lives, she's turned on her own and come to us, bringing the intelligence that let us lock away near fifty villains." Wally's face twisted with anger. "And you still won't trust her."
Robin breathed out. "She visited her old team weekly. Did she tell you that? In fact, she was there the day that they escaped. She was there while they escaped."
Jinx glanced up, wondering how anyone could ever have thought she would let her old team go. "You're insane if you think I helped them escape. The first person they would have gone after was me, not you. Hell. I was the first person they went after."
"She could have been killed that day, Robin, and you know it," Wally told him tightly. "She brought down half of a cell block trying to trap them when they attacked her. Half of a cell block, and it landed on her."
"No one told us that," came a whisper from behind them, and Jinx spun, hands out and glowing bright magenta with her power as Beast Boy appeared from the wall, a fly of grotesque proportions for a moment before it changed to the face of the man. "The reports only said that Jinx failed to stop them, so she must have planned it."
She lowered her hands. "They were my team. They were the only family I had since I was a kid. I couldn't turn my back on them. But I wouldn't just set them free."
"It doesn't matter." Robin's voice cut through the stillness. "She still has a dept to pay. She was a criminal for years."
Wally laughed. "You're insane, man, if you think I'm going to hand her over to you so you can throw her down some hole and forget about her." His eyes cut to Jinx and he shook his head. "And you're not going to let them take you this time, either."
He dug into his pocket and pulled out his communicator, whole and unharmed, just turned off. He waved it at Robin. "There was a time when having this was the most important thing in my life, you know that?" he looked down at it, then at Jinx.
It was a lifeless piece of yellow and black plastic, and he wondered how he could ever have thought it was so important. But then, he hadn't known then how petty the man who controlled them could be. And Jinx. Oh, Jinx. She was everything he wanted, everything he needed. She was just everything.
"To you, she's the one that got away, isn't she?" he asked quietly. "And you just can't bear that, the thought that she really did come to our side, that you really can't touch her."
"Wally?" Jinx looked at him questioningly, and it struck him for a moment that during the whole ruse he hadn't been a hero. He'd just been himself, plain old Wally West. It made what he was doing that much easier.
He chucked the communicator at Robin and watched as a green gloved hand snapped out to catch it. "I can't do this anymore. I can't be one of you, it's impossible."
He didn't think twice as he scooped Jinx up into his arms, and she gave him a startled stare. "Where are we going to go?"
He smiled and kissed her once. "I hear Mexico is nice this time of year." He never looked back as he left the Titans behind.
xXx
It was always hot in Mexico, but Jinx had long since learned the way of ignoring it. It mostly involved wearing next to nothing, and what you did wear being of very thin, virtually nonexistent material, and an unimaginable ability to deceive oneself about the actual temperature and humidity. The hadn't gone far, considering that Jump City was technically a short run north into California, but Jinx felt safe where they were and in the lives they'd made.
They settled halfway down the peninsula, on the beachy outskirts of Santa Rosalía on the Sea of Cortez. It gave them a city to roam and an easy ferry trip across the water to Mexico proper, so that Wally needn't use his powers all of the time, especially not when working. It was all at once home and an exotic refuge from the world with a curious melding of Spanish and French and American, a blend that pleased Jinx and certainly didn't put a frown on Wally's face.
And it was safe, the most important thing that they needed.
It was safe for her to be out here on the beach, waiting for him to come home to her. She picked at a bit of peeling skin and sighed. Maybe a few more years and she'd have something resembling a tan, instead of this pitiful paleness that she couldn't seem to get rid of. Already the sun had bleached her hair out from the blindingly bright bubblegum color it had been to something much paler, an altogether ethereal pink that was nearly white. If her skin barely held a tan, though, at least it looked a little more human, instead of the bluish cast it had held when she'd stayed with Wally in Star City, and before that in Jump City.
The sand kicked up behind her and she shook her hair out at the bits that landed on her before Wally dropped to the sand beside her, his ever present smile there for her. "So what are we doing today?" he asked, his hand slipping over her hers.
Jinx shrugged. "I helped someone get rid of a mal occhio today. Then I tried to work on my tan."
Wally chuckled. "They are a bit superstitious, aren't they?" He slid a glance at her. "Or was there really one this time?"
She quirked a smile. "There was one, but it was just supposed to make her hair go gray."
"Such a wicked little villain you are, Jinx," Wally teased her, and she squeezed his hand with a laugh. "Helping people keep their naturally dark hair."
She only murmured an unintelligible response before leaning back to look out at the water in front of them.
"Hey, Jinx," Wally said after a while. She turned her eyes to him curiously, the pupils dark and slit in the magenta of her irises. "I… I would have gone villain for you."
She smiled at him, then leaned over and kissed him. "What makes you think you didn't?"
He could only laugh.
xXx
You'll note that I used the characters actual names, not the heroic identities (with the exception of Jinx— I believe that she doesn't know her name.) But, at any rate, I've gone along with popular decision with Kid Flash being Wally West, the precursor of the Flash, as well as Robin being Dick Grayson. For what happened here, I prefer it that way, because Jason Todd is dead anyway and Tim Drake is my favorite Robin and I would never write him this way. Thank you for reading, review!