Author's Note: I feel really bad about how long it took me to update. Really bad. So uhh, here, have this next chapter too! Just to let you know, the previous chapter doesn't necessarily take place before this chapter; more interspersed with each other. I know this one is short, and I'm really sorry! The next one will be much longer, I promise! It was going to be a part of this chapter too, but then it just felt like it was dragging on, so . . . uh . . . yeah.

And on a side note, I sincerely doubt I'll be going over four chapters. I think. I mean, I also thought this would just be a two-shot, so we'll see where this goes.


The base feels empty now – strange. The team sits scattered in the commons room, around a television screen that isn't on, listening to the silence and thinking and wondering how best to broach the subject. Robin's sunglasses reflect the hard glare of the fluorescent lights, shining dancing patterns on the coffee table.

No one's seen Wally in a week.

Robin groans in dramatic exasperation, dropping his head on his knees. "DAMNIT." Everyone's so tense, so wired, so worried, and they don't even flinch. They expect it.

"Calm yourself, my friend. It is not your fault." The gentle voice of their leader floats, teasing and benevolent, just above his head. He hates that he's gone and made Wally run away. Again. Pushing too hard, too much, in that damn kitchen after his idiot best friend went and spit in the face of the person who'd given everything to save his stupid ass. And he hates that he hates the way Kaldur is still so judicious and gracious and calm in the face of another strike on the team roster.

"Just . . . God!" He springs up, flipping the whole damn easy chair over in the process. It's been tough on the little bird, they know. Tortured and dying and having two of his best friends desert the team – they excuse the tantrum, but they aren't any less surprised by it. Batman's protégé is being stretched far too thin these days.

Zatanna steps over, tender hand on his shoulder. "Robin . . ." He flinches, but doesn't move away. Her voice is firm, demanding, kind. She'll let him have his moment, but he needs to focus. "He'll come back. You know he will." She pauses, voice hopeful and low. "He always does."

The short brunet shakes his head, quiet and contemplative. "He loves this team more than anything." The lie tastes insubstantial on his tongue.

She steers him towards the others, seating him beside her on her low, purple beanbag chair. No one bothers to right the one that he's flipped upside-down.

"This little hiatus will just give the rest of us a chance to address a much more pressing issue," M'gann's voice starts, wavering and hesitant. "We couldn't talk as freely with Wally here, but . . ."

Superboy nods, glowering moodily at the glass table. If he had heat vision, it would have melted in a puddle on the floor.

The air in the room has dropped several degrees, and the solemnity is almost tangible.

"The Shadows are closing in on her."


The air is frigid, slapping him in the face as he moves; pushing himself far and farther and fastfastfast. He's almost got his rhythm back. It's strange, he thinks, how insignificant that is to him now. Over a week ago, he would have been ecstatic – primed and ready and finally in condition for another team mission. So why is he here, on a stretch of state road halfway between Nevada and Texas?

One thousand twenty-three.

He's lost track of how long he's been running. That's not necessarily uncommon for a speedster, but his sense of time is warped now; distorted. He's been running and running and only barely stopping for food and necessities, and hours and days have melded together, blurring in abstract like swirling paints washed away by the rain. His heartbeat is almost starting to hitch.

One thousand four hundred fifty-four.

He hadn't intended to start on this . . . road trip. He'd just been restless and worried and unrestrainedly angry, although the source of the anger wasn't yet immediately apparent. At first, he'd though he'd been angry at her, all entitlement and careless abandonment and haughtily jaunted hip. But Robin had come in and stirred emotions and ideas half-concealed in the back of his mind, sweeping brutally away at the dusty, untouched, broken cabinets that had housed his most horrifying thoughts. And he hadn't been ready to see them.

One thousand six hundred ninety-nine.

When he'd left the base he'd really only just meant to go home, to the track, to someplace where he could sit and be free of the weighty presence of compassion and understanding and all that damn pity. Away from piercing gazes and soft touches and Robin's acute, jarring, insight. So he'd run, fast, and he'd had some form of strange misstep on the way, taking state 48 instead of 22, and he'd found himself standing outside a grim, dirty apartment building, staring at a window halfway up and feeling like he was drowning in the smog and smoke and the darkness that stared back. He hadn't meant to climb the fire escape, or swipe at the thick layer of grime that the wind and the rain had thrown like taunting missives at the small window. He certainly hadn't meant to pop it up when he'd found that the latch had broken, or stand just inside, breathing in the stale, musty air of unused rooms, looking at a dog-eared poster of a classic storybook.

One thousand nine hundred thirty-two.

Both beds were made, tight and clean and empty. He'd wandered over to the one on the right, inhaling the vague scent of jasmine and fabric softener, and recalled the way he'd used to come over, to visit her, on bad days and good days and all those days in between. After picnics in state parks all over the country, or after missions, or even after school on some days, when'd he'd run all the way over after the last school bell had rung, just to talk.

Two thousand one hundred seventy-one.

He didn't have to leave the room to know that the apartment had been deserted. Nobody was home, and he wasn't sure how long ago the tenants had moved out. Her alarm clock was still sitting on her table, plugged in and glaring at him with angry red numbers. In fact, it looked like almost nothing had been removed at all.

Two thousand two hundred eighty-six.

The sudden wind was the only thing that marked his exit, tearing a corner of the poster off the wall.


The world is blurring by (even though he hasn't actually gone out of country, he's still not strong enough, not fast enough) in colours so fleeting that they're turning a blinding white, making him lose himself in the motion, in the feeling of escape and desperation and confusion. He runs so hard and fast that he almost thinks he hears the sound barrier breaking behind him, propelling him with a bang to someplace bright and empty; a place where he can exist without thought or concern.

Two thousand three hundred sixty-eight.

He knows running away doesn't solve anything. It's something his Uncle, the venerable Flash, infallible in his wisdom, has always told him. He tries, really, to listen to him, to take his teachings to heart. But sometimes, it's easier to play deaf.

Three thousand nine hundred thirty two.

It's the strange gift of a runner, no matter how fast, that tugs at the back of his mind. He's not counting, not really, but he can feel it; the knowledge of the distance he's covered, large and accurate. He's gone so far, running all over the country, to places that he knows she wouldn't be in anyway. Because it's not like he's looking for her. It's not like he's desperate to see her, to know where she is, to hold her silvery eyes with his own and see them shining and polished with emotions vast and deep and wonderful. He doesn't even see the dark, empty apartment out of the corner of his eye when he somehow finds himself tearing through Gotham again.

Five thousand five hundred ninety-eight.

He wonders, at one point, what the team is up to. Whether they've been dispatched on any missions lately. How they hold up without the particular skills sets that have recently been absent. He feels the loneliness of being out of the loop in a detached way. Besides, they haven't really felt like team missions in a while.

He pushes even harder, and then he's drowning in white noise, in the colourless, weightless nothing of oblivion; blank. Pushes until he can exist outside himself, his uncertainty pulling away, snapping like a tether that can't handle the pressure, the tension, the speed. Until he isn't sure he can either.

He finally collapses in a corn field in a random rural town, legs burning, chest heaving, sweat pouring down his face, at twenty-eight thousand, five hundred and ninety-one miles. The stars swim above him, darting in between his regular constellations, and he realizes his vision is blurring and his head is aching and he can't figure out where he is right now. He falls back, haphazardly crushing stalks and carving out a grave in the tall, green field.

The twinkling blackness of the sky is so beautiful that he doesn't even mind the cool, dry dirt rubbing its way awkwardly into his cowl.

But it only takes a moment for his thoughts to catch up with him, slamming into him at upwards of three hundred miles a minute. He clutches his hands to his head, the force of his thoughts making him arch backwards, digging his scalp into the cold earth to try and alleviate the burning. When his head finally cools, dull ache settled at the back, he breathes out in cool, sharp breaths, panting harder than he had when he'd run fourteen times the length of the country, and is finally, mercifully still. The rasp of the corn husks and the dark glint of gold nibs surround him.

He's run long enough.


The cave is remarkably unchanged in the month or so that he's been away. Rocket's made a few more personal touches in one of the rooms, but he remains largely unaffected by it, so it's not even worth noting. He lounges languorously in the kitchen, his upper torso spread nearly all across the island to allow himself better access to the plate of freshly baked cookies that Miss Martian's left for him, to 'celebrate' his return.

The crunching of the sweetly crispy edges fills his mind; echoing around in his head and muffling all his thoughts. It's a unique pleasure that he allows himself today – the complete surrender to the sensation of sweet, delicious food. That's why he misses the first half of the conversation.

". . . empty. Her mom's already been relocated, right?"

"Yeah. How did you know she would be there?"

"I . . . may have used some magic to lure her in. Don't tell anyone, promise me. It's not exactly the most . . . ethical method."

"You're an idiot. It could have been dangerous."

"It wasn't, I checked! The apartment was completely safe . . ."

The soft, lilting, whispered tones of the two girls halts, dropping away completely as Wally passes by the open door. It doesn't bother him in an immediate way – he knows what they're doing, and he can understand where they're coming from. Even he himself isn't sure in which way his predilections lie. But the one snippet of information that follows him, despite the fact that their conversation doesn't pick up again, is that they went to her apartment. To see her. And she. Was. There.

He's a man of science; eminently practical and logical. So he isn't sure why he thinks she'll still be there, waiting in her empty apartment, when he doesn't believe that Zatanna's mythical 'lure' is even a real thing. Why he's already out the door and running towards that dank, grim building on the shadowy street, towards a conversation he both knows he needs and desperately wants to avoid. Towards something he isn't yet ready for.

He isn't sure how he feels when he stands on the street below it, and knows it's still as empty as it was every other time he's ever run by. As empty as it was when he first went up to find her. And he isn't sure why, but he allows his legs to lead him up the ladder, back into the open room, and stand, staring at the rumpled comforter and the thick marks on the windowsill. Maybe it's because he knows she isn't there, because he knows he doesn't have to stop running yet, doesn't have to stand still and think and accept and work so damn hard to understand. The clock on her bedside table has finally been unplugged.

She hasn't completely disappeared after all.

Later, once he's safely ensconced in his bedroom at home, he can't quite decide what made him do it. But the cylinder is unrolled in his hands, falling lightly to the floor, and he stares at if for one, two, six breaths, before he just picks up the rectangle and tacks it onto the back of his bedroom door. It stares back at him, quiet and intrusive and smelling vaguely like jasmine and dust. It's not like she'll miss the poster when she's not even around to enjoy it.