Palo Alto, California
February 20th, 2016
7:48 PM, PST
"Hey Wally, thanks for meeting with me on such short notice." Dick said, wiping his feet on the doormat before closing the door behind him. He was wearing his civilian clothes over his armor for this meeting.
"You wouldn't have called if it wasn't important." Wally smiled and hugged his friend in greeting. Dick returned the gesture, though his face remained pensive and drawn. They made their way over to the living room to sit down, with both friends scratching Brucely's ears affectionately as they passed. "Artemis should be back soon, if you want to wait."
"No," Dick sighed as he sat down. "You need to hear this on your own first." He didn't want to do this. But it couldn't wait any longer. "I need her to come back, Wally."
Wally's face was uncomprehending. "Who?"
"Artemis. I need her back for a mission."
The speedster's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "What kind of mission."
There was no way he was going to lie to Wally about the stakes. "The dangerous kind. There's no easy way to say it, so I'm just gonna put it out there. Kaldur isn't a traitor, Wally. He's been working undercover to infiltrate the Light for months."
"What?" Wally replied in shock.
"I sent him undercover to work for Black Manta." Dick said matter of factly. "No one else except Batman knew the truth. He's been gathering intel, trying to determine what we're up against. But we've hit a wall. The Light doesn't trust him yet. They're taking their time, keeping him away from anything too important. We need to get them to trust him faster. That's where Artemis comes in."
Dick activated the holographic computer he always wore, using it to display the Cape Canaveral launch site. "There's going to be an attack on the Ferris Industries Comm Sat next month. I need Artemis to be there so that we can fake her death. If Aqualad pretends to kill her, he will earn the Light's trust."
Despite the fact that he could be amazingly dense sometimes, Wally wasn't stupid. He grasped the implications of Dick's plan immediately. His eyes narrowed. "That's not all you're asking her to do. If you fake her death, there's no way she can resurface without giving away the secret. You're asking her to put her life on hold indefinitely."
"I know." Dick said solemnly. "After she "dies", I have a plan for getting her to into the Light as well, so that she can back up Aqualad while they're both undercover."
He looked at his friend desperately. "There''s no one else on the Team that I can trust to do this Wally. No one else has the background or the training to remain above suspicion like she can."
Wally's expression was murderous. "Let me get this straight." His voice was low. It only got that way when he was full of anger, and trying to contain it. "You want me to let you take my girlfriend and send her back into extreme danger, and force her to live the exact kind of life she spent years trying to escape, for god knows how long."
Dick sighed. He'd known Wally would react badly to the truth of what he'd been planning. "Look, you're my friend, and if you think I wanted to put you in this position, then you're crazy." He said heatedly. He felt his anger growing. Wally had been one of the four, one of the original sidekicks. If anyone could understand what was at stake, it should've been him. "I know how hard you guys have tried to leave this all behind you, but the situation has changed. We're under attack! You're don't get to j-"
Faster than he could blink, Dick found himself yanked out of the chair he'd been sitting in by the front of his shirt and slammed into the wall behind him. A spiderweb of cracks appeared in the wall from the force of the blow.
Wally held him several inches off the ground, one arm pinning Dick by the throat, the other hand grasping a fistful of his shirt. "How dare you." he growled. "You don't get to tell me what Artemis and I deserve. If you were my friend, you'd get that."
He leaned in so that they were face to face. "Stay away from her, Dick. I don't want you to mention a word of this to her, ever."
Dick's frustration boiled over. He lifted his legs and used the wall as an anchor, placing the soles of his shoes on Wally's stomach and pushing him away using his legs. He'd pulled the force of the blow so that it would knock Wally back, rather than hurt him and sending him flying.
"It's not your choice Wally." Dick said hoarsely, rubbing his throat. "I asked her first. She already said yes."
Wally he trembled with anger as he regained his balance. "Get out." He whispered. Dick made no move to leave, hoping in vain that his friend would understand. "Get out!" Wally seized a mug that had been on the table and threw it at Dick.
Despite the short distance and incredible speed of the makeshift projectile, Dick managed to dodge it. It shattered into a million pieces as it hit the wall.
Wally still looked angry, but also slightly ashamed at what he'd just done. Even if it was just a mug, at the speed it had been thrown, it might have done some serious damage to Dick if it hit him in his unprotected head.
Silently, Dick walked towards the door. Neither friend looked at each other. He let himself out.
Artemis was waiting for him when he emerged. She leaned against his bike. "How did he take it?" She asked softly.
"Not well." Dick rubbed the back of his neck.
She exhaled. "I was afraid of that." She pushed herself off the bike, moving to walk up the stairs and back into her home. "I'll talk him around. I'll be in contact in a few days."
He nodded in acknowledgement, hopping onto his bike and pulling his riding helmet on. "Artemis." He called out. She turned to look at him, already halfway up the stairs. "Tell him…for what it's worth, I'm sorry."
The Watchtower
June 28th, 2016
12:34 PM, EST
The Team and the League gathered together in silence. In the atrium that served as the Watchtower's Hall of Remembrance, Nightwing and Aqualad assembled the holographic pedestal that would serve as a memorial to their fallen friend.
As Dick finished his task of connecting the projector to the Watchtower's power grid, he turned his head to look at Artemis, who stood to the side quietly. Her eyes were downcast, and she wore a pensive expression on her face.
He was worried about her, how she was dealing with everything. He was having an incredibly rough time of things, and given the nature of the relationship she and Wally had shared, he knew things could only be worse for her.
From the way M'Gann and Barbara were hovering close by to her, Dick knew he wasn't the only one worried. He knew the girls had taken it upon themselves to watch over her, with each one of them taking it in turns to stay with Artemis out in Palo Alto, so that she wasn't alone at night.
He'd gone to check on her several times himself, though he'd only observed the house from the outside, from afar. Dick couldn't bring himself to enter the home that Wally and Artemis had shared; just being near it had threatened to overwhelm him with guilt. The closest he had managed to get to their house was the driveway.
Based on the bits and pieces that he'd overheard from Raquel and M'gann, she was coping well, though it was clear Artemis was still in mourning. The girls all still watched her closely. Just the day before, she'd attended the small private funeral Wally's parents had held for their son. With Wally having been disintegrated by pure kinetic energy, they'd had to bury an empty coffin.
The injustice of it all made Dick want to scream.
"Artemis." Kaldur called to her as he closed the panels he'd been working on. "It is time."
Her eyes snapped up, and after a moment's hesitation, she stepped forward to the base of the memorial. At the same time, Dick and Kaldur stepped back. This honor was reserved for her. Working slowly but surely, Artemis keyed the activation button on the side of the holographic pedestal, causing the monument to light up.
Dick's breath caught in his throat as the image of his best friend flickered into life, joining the silent vigil of the other three heroes around him.
Ted Kord. Blue Beetle. An ordinary man like Dick, who had died ensuring that the Blue Beetle didn't fall into the hands of the Light. In the end, his sacrifice had saved the world through his successor, Jaime Reyes.
Tula. Aquagirl. Kaldur's true love, who had died protecting the people of the surface world from an ancient alien super weapon. He knew that deep down, both Kaldur and Garth would never really move past her death. It was her loss that had prompted Kaldur to agree to Dick's high risk infiltration plan in the first place; the Atlantean had felt that, with Tula gone, there was nothing left for him to lose.
Jason Todd. Robin. His brother, who died stopping another of Ra's Al Ghul's many plans to cull the human race.
The rush of emotions was overwhelming, and he forced himself to exhale as he pushed those thoughts away.
Artemis stood tall for a moment, tears streaming silently down her face. After a moment, the stream became a flood, and before long she was forced to press her hands to her eyes in an effort to stem the flow. M'gann stepped forward, taking Artemis by the shoulders and and leading her back to where the some members of the Team were standing.
Traditionally, no one gave long speeches at these memorials. Everyone was welcome to say a few words, but based on empirical evidence from last few years, heroes at the funerals of their colleagues tended to be terse. Attendance at the memorial wasn't mandatory, or even expected. Everyone was free to process their feelings and loss their own way.
Distracted as he was, he didn't notice that Zatanna had worked her way over to stand beside him. Without taking her eyes from the display, she grasped his hand and linked fingers with him, supporting him with her presence instead of words. He couldn't feel the warmth of her hand through the padding of his gloves, but the pressure was reassuring. He gave her hand a thankful squeeze as he watched the Flash step forward to address the assembled heroes.
When Jason died, Dick and Bruce had avoided the Watchtower for weeks, and the memorial had taken place without them. This time, Dick forced himself to attend. Being with the Team that he, Wally, and Kaldur had co-founded in order to say goodbye felt right.
Dick was so lost in his thoughts that he didn't even hear the Flash speak about his nephew, or Aqualad's remarks afterward. He knew people expected him to speak, but when the time came, he made no move to step forward. What could he say to make sense of such a huge loss?
Before long, the speeches were over, and everyone started to disperse. The first to leave were people who hadn't known Wally as well, Leaguers like Black Lightning or the Atom who'd never worked alongside the former speedster, but came to show their respect for him. They were followed by Wally's former teammates, members of the Team who'd joined in the Team's later years, right before the young speedster's retirement.
Among the last to leave were Wally's family and friends, those who'd known and worked alongside him for years. M'Gann helped guide Artemis away from the memorial, with Connor, Kaldur and Raquel following close behind.
Zatanna stayed with him at first, blue eyes searching his face for a clue to his thoughts. While he found her presence soothing, Dick knew that Artemis would need her more than he did at the moment. Just meeting her eyes was enough for her to understand his thoughts. She smiled sadly and gave him a chaste kiss on the cheek before following the rest of the Team away from the clearing, leaving him alone.
He stood in the empty field for what felt like hours, gazing at the memorials of his fallen teammates, and the world that they'd died to protect. His sadness and anger built into a crescendo, and he felt compelled to speak to the one person he knew would still be there.
"It's not fair." He said out loud, not bothering to turn around. Most people would have assumed that Dick was speaking to the holograms, but they would have been wrong.
Silently, Batman emerged from the shadows of a tree and walked forward to stand beside his former protege. "It never is." His mentor said sadly.
"I know you feel responsible for Wally's death, but the fact is, your plan to infiltrate the Light spared the Earth from a horrible fate under the Reach's control. The cost was high, but you and I know that it was a price worth paying for all the lives that were saved."
"I know." Nightwing sighed, still looking at Wally's image. One life for an entire planet. The math was clear. "I just wish things had turned out different."
Dick clenched his fists at his sides as he remembered the loss of his family, the trauma he'd experienced as a child that had set him down the path that had led him here, to this moment.
"Bruce," he began hesitantly. "Back when you swore me in ten years ago, you told me that this would be hard, that there would be days that would test me. I've sacrificed so much because I knew that what we were fighting for was right. I've tried to be the man you wanted me to be, that I should be, but…"
Dick's voice wavered as he turned and finally gave voice to the thoughts that had been plaguing him since Wally had died. "I'm afraid. Bruce, I… I don't think I can do this anymore."
He was on the verge of tears as looked Batman's impassive face. He was afraid that he'd disappointed his mentor, somehow wounded Batman by admitting his own loss of resolve.
"I understand." Batman said, and despite the masks that they wore, Dick could see that it was true. There was weariness in his mentors voice, a fatigue that only Dick could empathize with. "I understand completely."
To his credit, Batman didn't even hesitate before reaching out to take Dick by the shoulder. "Dick. It's time to come home."
