Robin wasn't the only one who had nightmares. The terrors that clawed at the seams of his sleep, forcing their way into his mind, were not exclusive. The entire team, this group of heroes who knew nothing of the fabled innocence of youth, suffered in silence. Not every night, and not always of the same intensity, but it was there and it hurt and there was nothing any of them could do about it. They were supposed to be strong. They were heroes with something to prove.
In his sleep, Robin melted into Dick Grayson, just before a performance with his parents. Had he been awake, he would have known what would happen next. Unconsciously, it was all happening again for the first time. The crowd, the noise, the leap, the fall…the silence. When he was awake, Dick was alert, vigilant. In his sleep he was vulnerable, no matter how much time he spent training and fighting.
His eyes opened, half expecting to see his mother smiling softly, and soothingly rubbing his shoulders. Less than a second later, his eyes focused on the alarm clock beside his bed, and the cold of the cave hit his damp skin. Must've left the fan on. Rubbing his eyes, he got up and groped around his dresser for a dry shirt, not wanting to turn on the light so early in the morning. He closed his eyes for a moment and took a breath before slipping into the hallway.
The linoleum was frigid under his bare, calloused feet as he tiredly padded his way to the kitchen. He reached up on his toes to pull a cup out of the cabinet and then bent over to pull a carton of orange juice from the fridge. As the liquid sloshed into the cup, he tried to breathe deep to untangle the knots in his stomach. Seconds later he pulled himself onto the counter and sat with his legs dangling over the edge, cool drink in hand. It was only when he pushed his sunglasses up his nose that he realized he had them on. Force of habit, he supposed.
How proud Batman would be.
~.~.~.~
In a bedroom nearly identical to Robin's, Artemis lay awake on her bed. The room was too hot, there must have been something wrong with the ventilation. A short pile of blankets were resting neatly on the dresser across the room, completely untouched. She never needed them anyway. Sleeping was difficult enough as it was, but it was worse in the cave.
Artemis was careful to make sure she was always on her guard when she was with the team. It wasn't a matter of trust, she trusted her teammates wholly. All she wanted was for that complete trust to be returned. If she was being honest (and she wasn't, she was constantly lying to be people she most wanted to know the truth), it didn't matter whether she was conscious or not. Either way, she worried about the family secrets she had worked so hard to keep under wraps.
"The truth will set you free." Artemis had definitely read that before, though she couldn't remember when or where. Still, it stayed with her, even more when she started the hero gig. And she believed it, too, which was probably worse than not believing it. Keeping her past hidden meant she could never relax around the team, she was too preoccupied with keeping her walls up. Nothing would have made her happier than to tell them everything, but at the same time, it was the last thing she could do.
Rolling over and pushing herself upright, she felt a rumbling in her stomach. She sighed and gathered her hair up into a sloppy bun perched atop her head. Her feet found their way into slightly worn green froggy slippers. She gave the button on the wall an ungracious slap and the door quietly slid open, and then shut behind her.
Artemis walked to the kitchen lost in thought, those thoughts largely being, "I swear to God, if Wally got into my butterscotch stash…" So in the dim lighting she didn't even see Robin at first, sitting on the counter with his head leaning back on the cabinet. And then she did see him, and he saw her. For a moment they said nothing. And then Robin looked down and back up, and raised an amused, slightly curious eyebrow from behind his dark shades.
Oh crap, she thought. The slippers.
~.~.~.~
Superboy's ears perked up. Muffled laughter wasn't uncommon for him to overhear in the cave, since the team generally got on so well. It was not, however, common at half past two in the morning.
Of course, they didn't wake him up. He didn't really feel like sleeping much. He hated sleep, he felt he did too much of that in his pod back at Cadmus. He wouldn't say he was afraid of sleep (of course, he wouldn't say he was afraid of anything), but maybe he was afraid of living.
He was a weapon, after all, and he would never have a life outside of fighting. There was no way he could ever settle down and live a "normal life", no matter how much he wished. The bad guys would never stop, so neither would he. He'd be fighting until the day he died, and he knew it. There was no retiring for him. No stepping down. Dreaming of anything else only made it harder to wake up to reality.
So sleep didn't end up being much of an escape route. Instead, he read the books in the Cave's extensive library. Not only that, but he read them slowly, appreciating the pages and the words and the story. He didn't just read nonfiction and history. Conner read adventures, and ghost stories, and all the words in the world couldn't satiate him. He was fascinated by the emotions that came through in the stories, how entire universes were spun from strings of words. How each individual sentence blended into each other leaving behind excitement, or tension, or laughter.
Conner let out a sigh and closed his worn copy of The BFG. Supposedly Roald Dahl was a classic author, and the librarian at school couldn't believe he'd never heard of him. "'The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been,'" she had said. "That's Madeleine L'Engle, by the way. You should read her next." Reading was never going to happen now that the silence had been interrupted. He couldn't live in a fantasy world forever, anyway.
In the kitchen he found Robin and Artemis sitting side by side on the counter, and they waved and greeted him as he entered. Artemis reached into a white paper bag next to her and pulled out a handful of candies covered in translucent orange wrappers.
"Butterscotch?" She asked carefully around the one in her own mouth. Conner smiled ready to turn her down, but instead he shrugged internally and said, "Sure." Artemis picked one out of the bunch and tossed it to him and he caught it before settling on the floor across from them with his back against the counter. Slowly he unwrapped the sweet and popped it into his mouth.
He looked up and noticed Artemis was watching him intently. The butterscotch melted in his mouth a little, and he swirled the sugar around his with his tongue. After swallowing a little, he proclaimed that it was good. Artemis smiled satisfactorily and threw another one at him, which bounced off his chest and into his lap, prompting him to smile. A real, genuine smile.
It was times like these when Conner wasn't afraid to live anymore.
~.~.~.~
Kaldur awoke gasping for breath, the air in his room suddenly and unforgivingly arid. His tongue had never felt so dry, his throat so dusty. He launched himself out of his room and down the hall to the bathroom, not bothering to make sure the door closed behind him as he did so.
Icy water ran from the faucet and splashed into the sink and onto the counter as Kaldur wet his face and swallowed gulps of water as big as he could manage. The young man in the mirror who stared back at him was panting slightly, though the red was beginning to fade from his cheeks.
Kaldur tried to be a good leader. He was a good leader. He was able to suppress his inner conflictions and emotions during missions, and he made good judgments under pressure. Overall, he did fine. He did all anyone could ask of him.
Kaldur's subconscious, however, was riddled with imperfections and shortcomings. It didn't matter what went right, every stressful situation he had faced since becoming Aqualad had made its way into one of his dreams. At night, he watched his friends die. He watched himself make bad decisions, he watched as entire cities burned to the ground. He watched Tula and Garth and his King and Queen disappear into a harsh darkness. Every single what if, every potential mistake found him in his sleep.
It took a minute or two for the ringing in his ears to stop, but when it died down, another sound echoed through the hall. Mirth. Idle chatter. Slightly relieved, he followed the sounds of teenagers in the middle of the night.
When Kaldur found himself in the middle of the kitchen with three of his teammates, none of them even looked surprised. Except, perhaps, for Artemis, but that may have been more due to the fact that in his rush to rehydrate, the Atlantean had forgotten to don a shirt, and was standing there in just his boxers. He didn't seem to realize this though, and the moment passed as he took a seat on the floor next to Superboy, after politely declining Artemis' offer of butterscotch.
~.~.~.~
I am not a monster! I'm just like everyone else. Why can't you see that?
M'gann begged and pleaded with the people she thought were her friends. In her true form she was less than nothing, not worthy to lick the dirt off the boots of a green Martian. No matter what she heard from the people who loved her, looks did count. They counted on Mars, and they counted here on Earth. Some things never really change, regardless of where you go to escape them. Could she really be a hero if she didn't look like the rest of them? Wouldn't it be better if no one saw past her cute-girl façade?
Hot tears spilled from her eyes and she curled tighter and tighter into herself until after one heaving sob she opened her eyes.
Hugging her pillow proved helpful. Sometimes all she needed was to hug it out. Soon her cheeks were dry, and her gasps had subsided into little more than ragged breaths. Repositioning herself to sit crosslegged, she quieted her mind and calmed herself. In this state she was open to everything around her, and noticed an unusual amount of energy for…she checked her clock. Three in the morning? By now she was accustomed to not intruding in the minds of her teammates and got up to walk toward the muffled mind waves.
Four teenagers in the kitchen were amiably talking, and trying to stifle bouts of laughter so as to not wake everyone in the cave. She was greeted by smiles and went to stand by the counter where Artemis was sitting, and silently accepted the hard candy handed to her.
~.~.~.~
Could you be blinded by light in your dreams? Wally wouldn't have thought so. The scientific part of his brain argued a million reasons why it was impossible. But then why did it hurt so badly? Why did one familiar flash of light leave him with an ache in his heart, with a crushing weight on his chest?
Everyone else seemed to have gotten past the stupid training exercise. Why couldn't he? And not only that, but Artemis wasn't the only one who died in that mission. So why was she the only one who haunted his dreams?
Each time he relived it, he felt the same way as he did the first moment it happened. He felt scared. Not that he would admit that. Heroes don't get scared. Heroes save everyone.
Not him. Not this time.
He was scared, and he was angry. For once, he wasn't fast enough to save someone. Someone he cared about.
So many nights he laid awake, thinking about what he should have said. The things he should have done. He should have told her how he felt. He should have at least gotten the chance to be a real friend to her, not just endless bickering. He should have been able to feel her in his arms, and she should have been able to hug back.
Wally shuddered and pushed those thoughts from his mind. She was here, now. And she was safe. For the moment, that was all that mattered. He would tell her soon enough.
Turning his head tiredly, he looked at the clock, mentally debating pros and cons of getting up to pee. With a soft groan he picked himself out of bed and forced his feet to move him to the direction of the bathroom. He yawned and rubbed the sleep from his eyes as they adjusted to the bright light that meant someone had left the bathroom light on. He blinked and stepped inside, shutting the door behind him.
Back in the hallway a minute later, a burst of laughter jolted Wally out of his daze. Was he still dreaming? Why would anyone be up at this ungodly hour? He didn't think about it, it was still too early for thinking. If he had, it probably wouldn't have taken too long for him to figure out that they were all up for the same reasons. Eventually they would all realize that, but none of them would say a word about it.
In the kitchen he saw every single one of his teammates sitting around, merrily exchanging stories and rumors and exaggerated tales.
"Did I…miss something?" he asked dumbly.
They looked around and back at him and laughed, shaking their heads that no, he didn't miss anything. Something flicked off his forehead, and he recoiled, and caught whatever it was. He opened his fist and peered suspiciously at the contents of his hand.
"It's a butterscotch, you big dumb," Artemis said, feigning impatience. He looked up at her, for once, speechless. She must have misinterpreted his look of surprise and bewilderment for one of expectation, because she quickly drawled, "You get one."
Robin elbowed him in the ribs and Wally chuckled and leaned against the counter opposite him, throwing the candy up in the air and catching it in his mouth.
And in the hours that passed, all six kids shared more about their lives and their families than they ever had before. By the time the sun peered over the horizon, they were out of butterscotch, and their eyes were bleary. The panic, the anxiety, all melted away. The bonds of camaraderie that had existed before (out of necessity) were now strengthened tenfold (out of love). The secrets and fears they kept were swept under the rug, and for once the masks came off and they could be real.
When Black Canary entered the cave later that morning, she would find a pile of sleeping teenagers on and around the couches and easy chairs set up around the enormous flat screen TV, limbs draped out carelessly, mouths wide open. A chorus of soft whistles and snores and sleep-mumbling tumbled together through the air. Dinah smiled maternally and thought there was no harm in postponing training for a few hours. After all, she had never seen anyone sleep more soundly.