Teen Titans
Absolution
Graduation
The zipper growled, closing around the last of Speedy's things. He had to tease it around a large wad of unmatched socks before the bag cooperated. Then he turned in place.
The room's bare walls and empty shelves gaped at him. There were a few shadows on the wall where his posters had been, and an immodest collection of cobwebs hanging where his TV had been mounted on the wall. The computer terminal was dark. He had already transferred his personal files out of the Lair's server. He had also carefully deleted a few other files from the terminal's local memory, backing them up on a separate memory stick for later, private, viewing.
Outside the wall-sized window, the world was perfectly dark. Soundproofed glass kept out the crash of the waves right outside their doorstep. There were no stars out on the overcast night. Still, he knew that the sea was calm and the skies would stay quiet. He'd been checking them all night.
Speedy hefted the bag over his shoulder where his quiver would've normally rested. He nodded to the room. "Yep. Guess that's it," he said.
Then he lingered for a few more minutes.
When he finally left through the door that no longer bore his name, he found that the Habitat Level's corridor wasn't as empty as wanted it to be. "Oh. Hey, Cassie. Up late?" he called.
Wonder Girl stood at the opposite end of the hall, hunched over the control panel of her room's door. The plate had been pulled off to reveal bundles of wiring tied behind a circuit board. Using a soldering iron, Wonder Girl jabbed at the guts of the panel. Her expression suggested that the process wasn't going well.
"The door chime doesn't work right," she groused, not looking in his direction. "It sounds too much like the Alert klaxon. Every time somebody uses the chime, I get to think that there's an emergency for half a second. I'm a little sick of adrenaline jitters."
He frowned. "That sounds more like a programming issue. I don't think you fix it from the panel, can you?"
Her frown whirled on him with such force that he raised his hands in surrender. Tossing the soldering iron down, Wonder Girl slapped the plate back into place. It fell back out, dangling by its wires, as she said in a flat voice, "Yeah, you're probably right. Thanks. I'll go work on it from Ops."
Lowering his hands slowly, Speedy took a second look at her. Wonder Girl was wearing her uniform, a form-fitting set of leather armor dyed bright red. The Amazonian double-crest glistened gold on her chest before she folded her arms over it. It was well past midnight, and she was dressed for work. So was he, but the difference was that he had places to be. Regular-as-clockwork Wonder Girl should have been asleep hours ago.
He realized that they were staring at each other. Suddenly the silence became awkward, and he rubbed at the back of his neck. "Listen, Cass..." he began.
Wonder Girl's lips mashed together as he fumbled for words. Before he could manage anything intelligible, she held out her hand and said, "That reminds me. I'm going to need your communicator."
His masked eyebrows rose in surprise. "My communicator?" he echoed. His hand grasped the canary yellow device at his waist in an unconscious gesture.
She nodded. "It's standard procedure."
"I didn't realize we had standard procedures for this," he said half-jokingly. His hand remained firmly on his communicator.
Her hand didn't move either. The smile she gave him didn't reach her eyes. "I guess we do now."
For a brief, petty second, he considered telling her where she could stick her procedures. The night was going to be hard enough without her playing Little Miss Rules over something as innocuous as an ugly yellow phone.
Then he realized that he was ready to raise just as much of a stink over that same ugly yellow phone.
Feigning a shrug, Speedy unhooked the communicator and tossed it to her. Wonder Girl bobbled it and pinned it against her chest. The barest hint of a scowl passed over her features before she smoothed them again. "Thanks," she said, and turned to go. She hesitated at the corner, turning back for a moment. "Good luck up there," she added. Then she disappeared through another set of doors, heading toward Ops.
Speedy counted to twenty in his head. He didn't particularly feel like following her all the way to the stairwell before they parted in different directions. Once he was certain she was gone, he started down the stairs, taking them two or three at a time with his bag bouncing at his shoulder.
As he passed the next level, he heard a staccato burst of words flickering through the open door. It sounded as though a dozen different voices blurred by in half as many seconds. Frowning, Speedy wandered onto the level and saw a slice of light sitting outside the floor of the Rec Room.
When he peered inside, he saw long shadows stretching across the room, cast from the base of an old grungy couch. A series of screens glowed around the perimeter of the room, shining out of the refurbished video game machines they had rescued from a bankrupted arcade. A much larger screen took up one entire wall of the room, and cast flickering light across the couch and its sole occupant.
Kid Flash glanced over the back of the couch as Speedy entered. His face was unmasked and his hair freed from its usual half-cowl. The speedster wore a tank top and flannel pants, both stained from the empty quarts of ice cream lying at his feet. As soon as he saw Speedy he was at the archer's side. The television remote he had been holding skittered across the room, abandoned.
"Hey, Roy!" Kid Flash said.
Speedy couldn't help but smile. The shorter, younger boy always seemed like he was about to vibrate himself through the floor with impatience. Nobody ever saw Kid Flash move per se. It was more like they tried to keep up with wherever he went next. "Hey, Bart. Trouble sleeping?" said Speedy.
"Wizard of Oz on basic cable," said Kid Flash. "Love that movie. Huge hit, even where I come from."
Raising an eyebrow, Speedy said, "You're telling me that people a thousand years from now have nothing better to watch than Judy Garland and munchkins?"
His freckles stretched around a smile as Kid Flash said, "Ha! No. But I love it. Girl winds up in a totally strange new place, searches for a way to go home, and then finds out she was home all along? It speaks to me."
Speedy chuckled. "I don't even want to think about the thirty-first century remake. Toto's probably made of lasers."
As he looked Speedy up and down, Kid Flash's smile ebbed. Before Speedy knew it, the collar of his leather jacket was flipped up to his ears, and his duffel was gone. It reappeared under Kid Flash's foot.
"So you're seriously doing this?" Kid Flash said.
"Super-seriously," Speedy said as he bent to collect the bag from underfoot.
Both the bag and Kid Flash vanished, reappearing at the ping-pong table across the room. Leaning his elbows into the bag, Kid Flash called, "Well, maybe all of this stuff isn't yours anymore. You got it all while you were a Titan, so it stays here with the Titans. Nyeh."
Speedy took a deep breath and counted to ten. "Okay, Bart. What's it gonna take for me to walk out of here with my crap?"
Before Speedy could blink, the Rec Room's lights burst to life. Kid Flash stood at the bank of light switches by the door.
"Welcome to the first annual Teen Titans Icosathlon!" Kid Flash announced. "The participants: a handsome super-fast hero from the distant future and a poor throwback user of medieval weaponry. The stakes: a bag full of...stuff. I don't know. But the winner will find out after a grueling competition of the twenty fiercest games Titan's Lair has to offer!" He oohed, flickering the lights for emphasis.
"One game," Speedy said.
"Twelve games!" said Kid Flash. "A dodecathlon!"
"One game," said Speedy.
"Six games! A hex...athlon?"
"One game," Speedy groaned into his hands.
"Thirty thousand games!" cried Kid Flash.
Speedy rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. "I will grease the floors again," he told the speedster.
Kid Flash stroked the goatee he didn't have. "Ah, a shrewd negotiator. One game, then. And to the winner go the spoils!" Then he looked stricken. "But what to play? You won't play me on the Street Fighter machine after those misplaced accusations of button-mashing. And I refuse to play darts with you because you cheat by being good at it—"
"Bart," Speedy pleaded, glancing at the digital wall clock, "I really am on a schedule here."
"Pool!" The weight of a cue stick pressed against Speedy's palm before Kid Flash finished saying the word. Speedy grabbed it reflexively and spotted a blur of movement at the far side of the room, where Kid Flash waited by the pool table. The balls sat racked on the green felt. "And because I'm such a gentleman, I'll let you break," Kid Flash added.
Smirking, Speedy sidled up to the table. His cue stick waggled as he lined up his shot. Then he broke, and watched three balls drop into three different pockets. "Solids," he announced.
"Oh, that is so on-mode," Kid Flash swore. Then he slapped his forehead. "Duh! I should have known better than to 'shoot' pool against you."
"It's not shooting I'm good at, Fleet-Feet." Speedy pulled the cue stick around and made the next shot from behind his back. Another solid dropped into a pocket. "It's being too damn awesome."
Kid Flash watched him line up another shot. As the cue stick drew back, the speedster said, "Is that why you're going up there? You're too awesome for us?"
The tip of Speedy's stick glanced off the ball. It bounced uselessly against the side before rolling to a stop. Speedy didn't notice, though. His eyes widened upon Kid Flash's glum expression.
"Is that what you think?" asked Speedy.
"Yes." Kid Flash took two shots, barely waiting for the cue ball to stop between sinking his striped balls. "No. I don't know."
"Because that's crap," Speedy told him. "And you know it's crap. Right?"
Kid Flash put the cue ball straight into the pocket. As he watched Speedy retrieve it, he shrugged, and tried to appear nonchalant. "Yeah, I know. It's just...I don't know. It's just that you're so slow."
Rolling his eyes, Speedy said, "So you've told me every single day we've known each other."
"No, that's not what..." Kid Flash blew a frustrated breath. He closed his eyes, leaning his head against his pool cue, and said, "You're always behind me, Roy. And you never miss anything. So no matter how fast I go, or who I run past, I always know you have my back."
Speedy's irritation evaporated. "Oh."
With a twinge of anxiety, Kid Flash continued, "Except now you won't have my back. What happens when get too fast for my own good and you don't have my back?"
Speedy leaned back over the table, lining up his next shot. As he aimed, he looked up over the ball at the stricken speedster. "Bart, you don't screw around nearly as much as you think you do," he said. "And when things get serious, so do you. But even if you do screw up, you'll still have plenty of people still watching your back. So don't worry about it."
The thought made Kid Flash brighten. "I guess so. Even though none of them is as good a shot as you."
Still meeting Kid Flash's eye, Speedy took his shot. The last of his solids fell into place, followed by the eight-ball, all in one shot. "Yep," he said, grinning smugly. "And now, if I'm not mistaken, you owe me a bag of my own stuff."
The duffel reappeared suddenly in Speedy's arms, making him stagger. Kid Flash brushed his hands at the far side of the room. He scoffed, and said, "Good. Like I need a bunch of arrows and hair gel slowing me down anyway. Gotta keep my loadout sleek. Aerodynamic."
Speedy shook his head, shouldering his duffel again and keeping a hand on the strap just in case it tried disappearing again. As he strode to the door, he offered Kid Flash his fist. "Just keep moving, Fleet-Feet."
Kid Flash rapped the knuckles with his own. "Always, Slowpoke," he said, grinning.
Shuffling out, Speedy shot down the stairs, trying to outrun the ache in his chest. He had no intention of stopping for any more heartfelt goodbyes. All he wanted to do was keep his head down and get out of the Lair.
But his plans came to a crashing halt when a broad frame in a black T-shirt ducked through a door and into his path. Speedy struck what felt like a brick wall as he bounced off of the boy's back and fell across the stairs.
"Hmm?" Superboy turned around, careful to balance his plateful of sandwiches. Another sandwich hung in his mouth, mayonnaise and mustard dripping from the crust and onto Speedy's boots. "Oh! Hhy, Fpedee," he said around his mouthful.
Speedy grimaced as he rubbed the back of his neck. He accepted Superboy's proffered hand and was jerked back to his feet by an arm that could topple a building. "Hey, Conner. Midnight snack?"
Superboy finished his bite, catching the sandwich as it fell from his mouth. "Yeah. Just grabbing something to bring up to Ops. I'm on monitor duty tonight," he said.
"Looks like you grabbed most of the fridge," Speedy teased. He snagged a sandwich from the plate and made half disappear in a single bite.
A boyish grin made the young clone's eyes glimmer. Speedy had secretly seethed at Superboy's easygoing smile. The archer could practice in a mirror for months and never come close to anything so charming. But then, Superboy wore his heart on his sleeve, whereas Speedy had lived most of his adolescence behind a mask. Maybe that was the difference. He wondered if Superman smiled in that same, instantly trustworthy way.
"I planned on looking over some case files on the recent bio-morphicans we've been taking down. Gotta keep up my strength if we're gonna catch Doctor Sivana, right?" Superboy said.
Speedy felt his stomach drop at the mention of their new nemesis. Hideous, mutated creatures were appearing in Steel City, courtesy of an honest-to-goodness mad scientist named Thaddeus Sivana. So far, their only clues were a few untraceable videos of the doctor taking credit and the decomposing remains of his brutal, twisted creations.
Grimacing, Speedy said, "Uh, yeah. I guess you'll be a little shorthanded from now on. Sorry."
Shrugging his broad shoulders, Superboy said, "You've got places to be. If you stuck around until everything is one hundred percent quiet, you'll be here long enough to have a kid, raise him, and then train him to take your place."
A rueful smirk filled Speedy's mouth. "I could always just clone another Speedy. What do you think?" he asked.
Superboy's laugh sprayed crumbs. "You might not like the results. Just ask Cadmus."
Speedy couldn't help but laugh as well. "Handsome bastard would probably want to share my arrows anyway."
Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Superboy said, "Seriously, Roy? I meant it when I said I was stoked for you."
"I know. You used the word 'stoked' and everything." Speedy packed his smirk with the rest of his sandwich. As he chewed, though, his lips quelled. He watched Superboy strip a chicken wing bare, and wondered if the Teen of Tomorrow would even notice it if he swallowed the bones with it. Snorting, Speedy said, "It's not like you'll need a bow and arrow to catch Sivana anyway. Hell, with me gone, you'll probably have him inside a week."
Superboy grunted. "We'll be lucky if we can find his lab before his next 'innovation' washes up on shore. And when we do, let me tell you, we'll be missing that bow of yours," he said.
Speedy waited for a sign of sarcasm, or a wink, or a snort. But all he saw was a spicy drumstick going the way of the last chicken wing. A chuckle bubbled up Speedy's throat, and he said, "You are something else, Kon."
"Thanks?" Superboy said, hot sauce dribbling onto his T-shirt.
Gesturing to himself, Speedy said, "Don't get me wrong. I know I'm awesome. But powerhouses like you don't usually take guys like me seriously. It's part of my gimmick, and it's saved my life more than once." A thousand close calls whirled behind Speedy's eyes. He remembered too many times when some psycho metahuman had underestimated him.
"You, though?" Speedy continued. "You always treated me like you did Bart or Garth."
Superboy swallowed, then grinned. "Or Cassie?"
"It is very, very okay if you don't treat me like you do Cassie," Speedy told him dryly.
Snorting a laugh, Superboy crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall. "It's no big deal. You're a Titan, same as me."
Speedy scoffed. "You bench-press yachts, you fly, and you eat lasers. We're Titans, Kon, but we aren't the same."
"And that makes me better than you?" Now Superboy scoffed. His hand mimed a ball swinging from some unseen cord as he said, "Roy, I'm a wrecking ball. Maybe I hit harder, and maybe I take harder hits. It took me a long time to get it through my laser-proof skull, but I finally learned you don't need a wrecking ball for every job, or you wind up with a lot of rubble and not much else."
"It would be nice if insurance companies stopped sending us subpoenas," Speedy admitted.
Jutting his chin at Speedy, Superboy said, "Guys like you are scalpels. You're quick, you're sharp, and you do the kind of work someone like me can't. You 'are' awesome, Roy. Don't let any of those wrecking balls up on the Watchtower tell you different."
A grin exploded in Speedy's chest and spread all the way up to his mouth. "All those muscles, and brains too," he teased.
Superboy laughed. "Smarter than a speeding bullet," he said, tapping his forehead. Then he offered his fist and said, "We're gonna miss you around here."
"You mean my bow?"
"That too."
Speedy bumped the fist that could crack mountains—and literally had once, as Speedy recalled the fate of Doctor Light's mountaintop Solar Nexus—and slung his bag back over his shoulder. "Take care, Conner," he said.
That boyish grin returned, filling Speedy with a micron of jealousy and an ocean of reassurance. "Go show 'em what Titans are really made of."
"If they don't stick me at the kids' table." Speedy laughed louder than he meant to as he descended the stairs. His eyes suddenly stung, but Speedy told himself it was just the late night wearing on him.
As he rolled down the steps, he forced himself not to check his watch. Long goodbyes were torment enough on their own. He wouldn't be late on top of them. He would make it to the docks without any more distractions. Get out, get gone, that would be best for everyone.
And he almost believed himself until he saw Aqualad.
The wiry Atlantean sat at the edge of the moon pool, his legs submerged up to the knees. Discarded boots sat beside him, gathering a puddle beneath them on the dull grey tile. A fresh sheen of water glistened across Aqualad's wetsuit, evidence of a recent swim. He often disappeared into the moon pool, using its underground tunnel to slip into the ocean for hours, sometimes days at a time when a lull in crime allowed it.
As Speedy stepped down onto the bottom floor, he marveled at how much Titans Lair had changed. There had been a lot of doubt, and more than a few crinkled noses, when Robin had brought them to the dingy cave system in an oceanside cliff face. But a year of hard work, renovations, industrial dehumidifiers, and tremendous amounts of questionably-taxed money had transformed the space into an architectural wonder to rival the original Titans Tower.
Most of the main chamber's cliff face had been replaced with armored glass as thick as Speedy's thigh. The window normally warped the ocean and sky into a living watercolor, but on a moonless night like this one, the seas were completely black. The white stone dock hung in the blackness, luminous with the floodlights that lit the T-shaped structure.
In lieu of a full evidence room, the main chamber served as a museum to the Titans' greatest adventures, with each trophy mounted on its own pedestal. There was an empty gas canister from when they had stopped the Scarecrow from turning Steel City into a giant madhouse, and the handful of teeth they had knocked out of King Shark during his reign of terror across the city's beaches, and Maxi Zeus's broken lightning rod, and Kid Devil Ray's oblong helmet. And of course, there was the small, round flask of sand they'd gone back and taken from the island where they had first emerged as Titans East.
But Speedy was too busy trying not to look at all the empty pedestals he would never help fill to notice the mementos. He wove between them, keeping his eyes glued to the floor until it became wet tile squeaking under his sneakers.
Aqualad glanced back from the pool. His inky black eyes brightened as he said, "Roy! Thought you were gone already."
Taking a moment to shuck his shoes and roll up his pant legs, Speedy slid down next to Aqualad. Cold water swallowed his shins, and his toes went numb before he settled at the edge of the moon pool. But Aqualad didn't seem to notice the cold, so Speedy fought back the urge to cringe.
"All but," said Speedy. He watched the water in the pool swirl. A dark shape flitted just below the surface, too fast to make out. "Am I interrupting?"
Chuckling, Aqualad pulled up a bucket that floated at the pool's edge. The overpowering smell of dead fish slapped Speedy in the nose as Aqualad pulled a limp mackerel from the bucket and dangled it above the water. "I'm just catching up with Fluke," Aqualad said.
"Fluke?" Speedy echoed.
The shape coalesced into an oblong gray head that popped out of the water. A bottle-shaped snout opened into a smile lined with tiny needle teeth as the dolphin clicked and chattered impatiently. Aqualad tossed the fish into the dolphin's waiting mouth. Fluke snapped up the fish, then vanished beneath the murky surface, becoming a flitting shape once more.
"It's the name he uses when he's messing with humans. You don't have the vocal cords to pronounce his real name," Aqualad explained. He took another fish, which Fluke snatched from his hand before he had a chance to toss it. Chuckling, Aqualad said, "He's catching me up on the latest gossip back home. And telling bad porpoise jokes."
Evidently the next fish took too long to appear, because Fluke's tailfin burst up from the surface and flung a wave of water across the two teens.
Speedy doubled over, snarling a curse as ice cold water soaked his crotch. The numbness was spreading through more than just his legs now. "Your buddy is kind of a dick," he hissed.
The water rolled harmlessly off Aqualad. He hadn't so much as flinched at the wave, which trickled down around his ready smile. "Yeah. That's the kind of friends I attract, I guess."
A begrudging chuckle rumbled in Speedy's chest. He drew his legs up out of the pool and hugged his knees to his chest, trying to rub the feeling back into his skin. All too quickly, though, the laughter faded between them. Water lapped against the side of the pool, a thunderous roar in the midst of their silence.
Some part of Speedy begged him to just leave out the front door and wait on the dock. He didn't need to take this kind of emotional baggage with him into space.
"Hey, do you remember the Tournament of Heroes?" he said.
That small part of Speedy cursed his mouth.
"The Master of Games," Aqualad said, sounding grateful for a reprieve from the awkward peace. "He was the first bad guy we fought together, wasn't he?"
"When we became Titans," Speedy agreed. As he rubbed his feet, his gaze drifted up to the sprawling ceilings and windows around them. "Did you ever think it would bring us here?"
Aqualad laughed. "Living on land? Inside a cliff carved to look like a giant letter? If somebody had told me that when Cyborg handed me that ridiculous yellow communicator, I would have told them to pull the other fin."
The mention of their communicators tugged at Speedy's ire. Bitterness filled his voice as he said, "I know what you mean."
Glancing sidelong, Aqualad added, "And now you're going even farther. Justice League, man. That's huge."
"Yeah," Speedy grunted.
Aqualad frowned. "Or, not huge?"
Shaking his head quickly, Speedy lifted his voice an octave and said, "No, it's good. It's great! Every cape should be so lucky to get up there. I'm finally going to be part of the real show."
Dark, deep eyes narrowed at the archer. "So why don't you sound convinced?" Aqualad asked him.
Speedy's hands fumbled, his fingers burning with the effort of waking his legs. He stuffed them into his jacket pockets and sighed. Next time, he promised himself, he would listen to the part of him that wanted to cut and run. Freezing to death outside couldn't possibly be worse than being uncomfortably honest.
"I just don't want to leave anything behind," Speedy admitted.
Aqualad glanced at the bulging duffel behind Speedy. "Doesn't look like you're leaving anything behind to me."
Nudging the bag, Speedy grunted, "Yeah."
Fixing him with a hard look, Aqualad said, "I mean it, Roy. You're not leaving anything. But even if you think you are, you can always come back for it. Always."
Speedy nodded, half-smiling. He wasn't convinced, but somehow knowing that Aqualad believed it made it easier. Not easy, but easier.
He shambled to his feet, and said, "I'll let you and Fluke get back to your stitch-and-bitch. There's probably some slutty octopus sleeping its way around Atlantis he's just dying to tell you about."
"Go write your Spongebob fanfic somewhere else," Aqualad sneered. He slid up out of the water, waiting patiently while Speedy stuffed his icy feet back into shoes. By the time Speedy had finished, Aqualad still hadn't worked the awkwardness out of his smile. "So I guess two macho men like us can't hug."
Speedy shook his head. "We are way, way too manly to hug. Our testosterone would curdle."
They stepped together, wrapping each other in a tight, tense embrace. Speedy felt his eyes grow hot as Aqualad held him, and whispered, "Don't forget us while you're saving the world."
"Not a chance, Garth," Speedy whispered, fighting to keep his voice steady.
After trading back-slaps, they stepped apart, coughed, and shook hands. Speedy hauled his bag off the wet floor and, with one last forced smile, turned to the Lair's front doors.
"And try not to puke in microgravity," Aqualad called after him.
Speedy barked a laugh. "Maybe you should visit me up there," he called without looking back.
Scoffing, Aqualad said, "I grew up thinking sea level was the highest anyone sane would ever go. Now I joyride with surfacers in a supersonic jet. It'll take me a little longer to work my way up to orbit."
Fake laughter worked Speedy's chest like a bellows. But once the doors sealed behind him, his voice stilled and his smile collapsed. Alone on the white dock, with a wall of obscuring glass between them, he finally felt safe enough to wipe at his eyes. A long, wet sniff rattled his nose as he steadied himself.
The breath left him in a puff of steam. Winter was ending, but it wasn't gone yet. Cold winds sweeping in from the ocean reminded him of that as they scrubbed his face raw. Clouds masked the stars, and the only lights besides the Lair's were the distant buzzing motes of Steel City up the coastline.
Speedy stared hard into the black, looking for any sign of running lights. Then he checked his watch. "Late as always, Ollie," he sighed.
Shrugging deeper into his jacket, Speedy turned and started walking backwards along the dock. The large T of the Lair's windows loomed above him, glistening under the floodlights. Their base was large, and inconvenient, and even impractical in certain respects, but it was a good home. His stomach did cartwheels at the realization that he might never set foot in the Lair again.
As he lost himself in the reflective wall of windows, he noticed a glint of red high at the edge of the floodlight's reach. He squinted hard, and then blinked, surprised to recognize a pair of ruby-red boots dangling over the edge of the seaside cliff.
After a moment's deliberation, he retrieved his collapsible compound bow and an arrow from his duffel. A shriek pierced the night as his shot planted the grapnel arrow into the rock face between the boots. The micro-motor attached to his bow carried him up the composite graphite line in seconds. When he arrived at the top, he found Wonder Girl's irritated expression waiting for him.
"That wasn't very funny," she snapped as he clambered up over the edge.
He rolled his eyes. "Please. We both know I wouldn't have hit you."
She scowled. "You're still a jerk for startling me like that. I was...checking on a few of the seismic sensors up here. We've been getting false readings all week, and I'm sick of it," she said.
"Uh-huh," he said. "You definitely weren't goldbricking. I've done plenty of that, so I know what it looks like." He flashed her the grin that had made many a girl weak in the knees. It only made her scowl deepen. Sitting down at the cliff edge, he patted the ground next to him. Mumbling some retort, Wonder Girl settled in next to him.
Their feet hung over the sprawling height, glowing in the floodlights. So high up, Speedy could just make out the edge of the clouds above him in the edge of the Lair's glow. Everything else was pure blackness. There was no horizon, no moon. The world had vanished into night.
Crashing waves marked the time through their silence. Speedy tried to read Wonder Girl's expression from the corner of his eye. She stared out from under furrowed blond brows, her gaze diving somewhere deep beneath the surf. Every so often, her mouth would twitch with some words left unsaid.
He sighed. "Would you just let me have it already?" he said, exasperated. "You've been jumping on my tits all week. And you took away my communicator, which was pretty shitty, by the way. So yell at me, or do whatever you have to do so you're not angry anymore."
"Am I an idiot?" Wonder Girl blurted.
Speedy sat flabbergasted. "Um...okay. Didn't expect that," he admitted.
"I'm serious. Am I just being a stubborn child?" Wonder Girl ran her hands back through her long hair, her fingers raking through sheaves of gold. "I mean, it was just last year that we told the Justice League to go screw themselves. We didn't need them or their stupid, condescending invitation."
He smirked. "I remember. Good times, if you ignore that horrific fight."
Laughter rang hollowly from her armored chest. "I know, right?" Then her arms folded across her stomach, and her smile twisted into an ugly shape. "Except now the League's made peace with Cadmus, and the public loves them again. They're bigger than ever and doing more good than ten teams of Titans ever could. And here you are, joining them."
"Oh," Speedy said, losing his smirk.
Cracks shot through Wonder Girl's voice. "Everyone else has been treating this like your graduation. Like you're going on to fight the real battles. And I want to be happy for you too, but all I can think about is, if joining the League is the next step, am I just kidding myself staying here? Should I be joining the League instead of playing kiddie hero clubhouse here?"
Speedy set his jaw. "It's not like that, Cass," he said.
"Sure it isn't," she said sardonically. Her voice grew mockingly high. "The amazing Wonder Girl, leader of the Teen Titans! Watch her punch out an insane scientist with a light bulb on his chest while the Justice League ends war and world hunger forever."
"Cass..."
She shut her eyes hard. "I haven't even talked to Diana since Jump City. What the hell is wrong with me?" she hissed. "Am I just being too stubborn? Too proud? Am I stupid for not riding that Javelin up with you?"
The question hung in the air between them. Speedy stared at his hands, watching his fingers wring together as he wondered if he were brave enough to say what she deserved to hear. He had faced down metahumans with strength enough to tear buildings in half, and marksmen so deadly that they could have killed him from a different zip code. But he felt more scared of speaking now than he'd ever felt in any fight in his life.
"I was in rehab," he said too suddenly to stop himself.
Wonder Girl's head whirled around so quickly, Speedy had to wonder if she pulled a muscle. She stared at him, and finally managed to stammer, "What?"
He drew a shaky breath, and said, "It was back in my sidekick days. Green Arrow and I were on an extended mission in Moscow tracking a Grade-A asshole assassin named Merlin. I spent six months pretending to be the clubbing, druggy, fishnet-shirt-wearing son of a globetrotting billionaire." Shrugging, he said, "Somewhere down the line, I guess it stopped being a cover."
"Can..." She squirmed. Her arms tightened around her bare midriff as she forced herself to stop staring and look back across the ocean. "Can I ask what it was?"
"Krokodil," he said, exaggerating a mangled Russian accent. When her brow crinkled, he explained, "It's a street drug. They make it from codeine, I think."
Her voice shrank. "What was it like?"
"For a frustrated kid who didn't speak the language very well and felt seriously homesick? It was a way out." He laughed humorously. "What I didn't know then was it makes you grow scales. Skin damage, or something. That's how Green Arrow figured it out."
"What did he do?"
Speedy's empty smile grew wry. He touched his cheek at a remembered bruise, and said, "He kicked my ass, is what. Scrubbed the entire Moscow job, flew us home, and tossed me into a clinic." Then his voice dropped. "And he told me that if I didn't stick it out, if I superheroed my way out of there, he would burn his secret identity, my secret identity, and every part of our operation in Star City to find me and get me clean."
Wonder Girl drew her knees up to her chin. She looked down at her toes as she asked, "What happened then?"
"I dried out." Speedy rubbed at his mouth, which ran dry at the memory. His other hand clenched into a fist to keep from shaking. "I spent a month puking, shaking, and feeling like I was gonna die. Spent the next two months wishing I was dead. I was a methadone zombie. It took six months for the meds and the head-shrinkers to put me back together. Ollie was waiting to pick me up the day I got out."
"And then?"
His eyes burned again. Speedy clamped them shut and said, "I decked him as hard as I could, and just walked away. Got my suit, my bow, a few arrows, and took my show on the road. About a month later, the Master of Games zapped me into his tourney. You know the rest."
Wonder Girl said nothing as Speedy lapsed into silence. Minutes passed as Speedy's ragged breath began to slow down again. Finally, she asked, "Roy, why are you telling me all this?"
His eyes still burned too badly to open. He felt something trickle down his cheek, and hoped Wonder Girl wouldn't notice. "Dunno. I never even told Garth that stuff," he said too jovially.
"Huh."
Then he sniffed, and sighed, and said, "That's a lie." It took another deep breath before he could say, "Cass, it took me years to figure out that all that hate I had for Ollie was just me hating myself. But I'm not that loser anymore, and I want him to see that. I want to make both of us proud of who I am now. That's the reason I'm joining the League."
She watched him carefully, her cheek resting against her knees, as he steadied himself. "I don't think I've ever seen you be so serious," she said. "Usually you're just trying to sneak glances at my cleavage."
"Only because I think you're seriously hot," he said. Then he laughed when she swatted his arm.
Wonder Girl couldn't pretend to stay annoyed, though, and laughed with him. She reached over and laid a tentative hand atop his arm. He flinched, but didn't draw away. "I hope the Justice League realizes how lucky they are," she said. "I really am happy for you, Roy."
His laughter waned, and his eyes cleared. As Wonder Grew drew her hand back, the moment began to pass, and they settled back into silence. A knot in Speedy's chest he hadn't felt before began to unwind itself. He felt at peace with leaving, and knew he could leave everything else unsaid.
Well...
Almost everything.
"Hey, Cass?" he said.
"Hmm?"
"When the League accepted me, I was happy. Excited, even." He watched her eyes crinkle into a quizzical frown. A sheepish smile cocked his lips. "But that's nothing compared to the day you guys asked me to be a part of this team."
Wonder Girl rolled her eyes. "Don't be corny," she said.
"Corny, nothing," he told her. "Those West Coast guys may have made me a Titan, but I was still just an honorary to them. A part-timer." He smoothed his hair back, and admitted, "I swear, I was so sick of being on my own, I actually considered quitting the costumed biz.
"Then one day, Superboy and Wonder Girl, two of the most powerful superheroes in the world, tracked me down." He looked her dead in the eye. "They told me they wanted a burnout second-string archer to be one of their Titans. I felt ten miles tall that day."
"Roy..."
He steamrolled over her words, shaking his head. "Being in the Justice League is a big deal, sure. But I was a Titan. And..."
He bounced his fist off his knee, suddenly feeling empty. It was the realization that he was leaving behind the one team, the only other heroes in his life, the only friends, who had chosen him out of the blue.
"And that meant more to me than the League ever will," he said.
A flash of color made him turn his head. He blinked in surprise at the communicator Wonder Girl held out to him. The scratches and dents in the casing felt immediately familiar as he took it and turned it over in his hands.
"You 'are' a Titan, Roy," she told him. "And that means a lot to us too."
He sat in shocked silence, unable to come up with any words that could mean as much as the return of his communicator did to him. The quiet was an amicable one, and it lasted nearly an hour until the both spotted a set of running lights bobbing in the dark ocean.
Wonder Girl wrapped her arms around Speedy's waist and flew them both down to the dock. As they landed, a garish yellow speedboat shaped like an arrowhead bumped into the rubber guards lining the edge. A handsome, athletic blond man dressed in a turtleneck stood behind the wheel of the boat. His goatee split for a grin as Speedy collected his duffel.
"Sorry I'm late," the maskless Green Arrow called. "At least it gave you some extra time to spend with your girlfriend."
"I should be so unlucky," Speedy said, smiling impishly at Wonder Girl. She stuck out her tongue in reply.
"Well, if you're not interested, maybe I'll take a crack at her," Green Arrow said, and winked at Wonder Girl. She made a gagging face at him, but laughed.
"Be creepier, Ollie," Speedy said.
Green Arrow shrugged. "What can I say? I have a new appreciation for tough blondes who can kick my ass. You ready to go?"
Speedy started to answer when Wonder Girl piped up, "Almost." Before he knew what was happening, he felt a warm pair of lips pressing his cheek. He reached up and felt a smudge of lipstick as he stared blankly at Wonder Girl's beaming smile. "Don't be a stranger," she told him, and helped him stumble onto the boat.
The elder archer caught Speedy and settled him into a passenger seat. "Don't worry," Green Arrow told Wonder Girl. "We'll take good care of him."
"You better," she threatened him teasingly. Then she caught Speedy's gaze and added, "Call, okay? And visit. When you're not saving the world."
Speed smiled. "First chance I get. Thanks, Cassie."
Wonder Girl watched the Arrowboat pull back from the dock and turn toward the unseen horizon. As it faded into the night, she caught sight of one last look from the passenger seat. She waved, keeping her smile in place until long after the running lights disappeared into the black.
She stood on the dock for a long while after, staring out into the ocean. Her hand clenched and opened while a tempest raged in her chest. At long last, she drew her communicator and scrolled through its preprogrammed contacts. It was several minutes more before her thumb touched one of the names, a name she had almost deleted more than once.
The communicator trilled as she raised it to her ear. Her heart thundered against the inside of her armor as she waited. Then the beeping stopped, and a familiar voice said her name.
"Diana...hi," Wonder Girl said. Her lip rolled between her teeth as she listened. "Huh? No, there's nothing wrong. For once. I just..."
She steeled herself with a breath.
"I just wanted to see how you were doing, is all."
An endless hush echoed from her communicator. Wonder Girl berated herself in her head, cursing herself for even thinking that her former mentor would want to speak to her again after the brutal defiance Wonder Girl had shown her the previous year in Jump City. She should never have called. She should hang up.
Then the voice returned. After a moment, Wonder Girl's face blossomed into a smile.
"It's good to hear from you too," she said.
To Be Continued
