Tears are Forever – 7

In order to include the Wally from the old DCU, I've had to ignore the return of Barry completely and replace his role in Forever Evil with Wally. This is admittedly problematic, but at least for this arc, I don't think there are any drastic changes. It's a pretty hard thing to reconcile!

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There are those who fail, there are those who fall,
There are those who will never win,
Then there are those who fight for the things they believe,
And these are men like you and me

(From The Snows of New York by Chris de Burgh)

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The statue stood as it always had, tall and imposing, despite the taller tower behind it. It wasn't the height that made it so striking, but the remarkable, larger-than-life likenesses of the original Titans as they had been when the team was first created. Happy, young and alive. A perfect moment, captured for eternity.

A red blur sped up to it, stopping abruptly nearby. He'd been there when the statue had first been gifted to them, remembered the ego rush just looking at it had brought. How things had changed. It was never supposed to be a memorial, but that's what it had become.

He wasn't surprised when his eyes were drawn almost immediately to the stone face of Robin. Dick had been so young, the youngest of them all, yet he'd led without hesitation or fear. He had been their glue, the one thing that held them together, no matter what they faced.

Dick had grown, changed his identity, even moved away. Yet what he'd started had endured. There had almost always been a team of Titans ready to defend the people.

And the people remembered.

There was no reaching the statue currently. Between where he stood and the statue itself, was a sea of flowers, cards and other heartfelt tributes. It didn't matter that he'd not been part of the team when he died. For all that he'd done, they paid their respects in the place he had so long been associated with. Each tribute was a life saved, a disaster averted. And there were hundreds, he didn't even want to count them.

"How?" He murmured. "How did you do it, Dick?" How had he touched so many in his too-short life?

"It's amazing isn't it?" The soft, sad, voice behind him made him jump.

"Donna..."

She smiled sadly as she landed, her eyes never straying from the carpet of tributes, not daring to look at Wally or the statue. "No powers. Too few years. But so much achieved." She blinked, fresh tears building in already reddened eyes. "He was always the best of us."

Wally nodded, his throat too tight to dare attempt words, and pulled her into a hug, burying his face into her hair for several long minutes, until he felt that he could breathe again.

"I... have you heard from Roy yet?"

She shook her head. "No... I'm worried about him. And... Alfred called." She hesitated, leaning into Wally for support. "The funeral is next week."

Wally closed his eyes. It was too soon. A funeral was too real, too final. He didn't blame Roy for not wanting to face it yet.

"Donna... this can't be happening." His voice cracked as he spoke. "We've survived so much and you... you came back..." he said it brokenly, clinging to childish hope in a world that had so often done the impossible.

She rested her head on his red-clad shoulder, feeling the shadows cast from the nearby statue falling over them. His shadow. "That was different."

And it was. Dick had been mortal, no matter how it had never seemed like it. He had no powers and his luck had run out. "What do we do now?" He hadn't felt so lost since Barry died.

Donna wiped her eyes and reluctantly let him go. She looked at the statue surrounded by flowers, by the love of the people he had saved. Flying low, she read some of the cards, stopping to pick up a teddy in a Nightwing costume, a gift from a child pulled from the wreckage of Gotham after the quake. A child who had grown, lived, because of Nightwing.

Flying back, she pushed the bear into Wally's hands. "We remember. We live. And we make him proud."

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