A/N
...slowly tiptoes into sight.
Ummmm, hi guys *ducks flying tomatoes* I'm back? Ahem. Anyways, thank you Yuuki GB for prompting me into picking up my pen...wait...well, anyways, to getting back to writing. I finally got off this super hectic schedule (like, literally a week and a day ago), so I'll hopefully be able to write a bit more...actually, once January is over, my life will literally be 20 million times easier (I have two more big events this month I need to study/train/freak out for) and then I'm freeeeeeeeeeee!
Just so y'all know, I'm still going and have no intention of stopping anytime soon.
...and, um, this chapter has a little more feels than usual. This month has been sorta sucky for me (Happy New Years), so it kinda reflects my mood. Promise future chapters will be more cracky ;)
YAY EXTRA LONG CHAPTER!
Disclaimer: Do I even need to put these things here?
Chapter 8
Rehab-ur-ability
Wally stared at his mom. His mom stared back.
"...I can explain?"
Shaking the red ball gown in her grasp, his mom continued to stare, an eyebrow raised in question. Wally's mouth moved soundlessly for a few minutes, making wild gestures with his hands and puffing out frustrated breaths of unsaid sentences. Her foot began tapping and Wally finally managed to spit something out.
"DickjustshowedmeanditwasinterestingandIkindastaredmakingclothes?"
His mom just blinked at him. Taking a deep breath, Wally began again. "Ok, so, you know how the Teams' been kinda busy lately?" At her nod, the redhead continued. "Right, um, so, there's been some problems lately and, well, that was the solution."
Bracing himself for her wrath, Wally was wholly unprepared for what came next. "...You've been wearing dresses to undercover missions?"
"NO!" Wally turned bright red, "I've been designing and making cloths, and it's actually kinda fun and it's to help the Team!"
Giving her distressed son a once over, Mary West reluctantly let the topic go and sat down on his bed beside him, giving him a side hug. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong," Wally muttered, burying his face in her side. "It's fine, I'm fine."
"Wally, you're my son-I know when something's upsetting you, and it's definitely not the dress. Is it that blonde girl you like?"
"What?" Wally's face exploded in red color. "I don't like Artemis!"
Mary grinned at her son, "The fact that you assumed I meant Artemis means something, you know. But that's not what's bothering you, is it?"
The speedster sighed, leaning over to wrap both his arms around his mother. "It's just a lot of stuff is happening, and I'm not really sure I want it to happen, and I'm just worried about what's about to happen."
"You know you can tell me anything, right?" Mary said quietly, rubbing his back like she used to when he was little. She felt her heart breaking a little as he let out a boneless sigh, melting into her embrace like it could hide him from the world.
"I know being a superhero is hard," she quietly murmured, "and there's not a day that goes by that I don't worry about you. And, and I know you would do anything for the good of everyone else, but Wally, you need to think about yourself too. You're so stressed out nowadays and running yourself ragged between school and the Team. If it's too much, you can always take a break, just for a little while."
Wally shot up, and Mary felt her heart breaking even more as she gazed into his misty, sleep-deprived eyes. "I can't! Not now, there's no time, and if we slip up at all, something bad is going to happen!"
"...Come here, Wally," Mary whispered, rubbing his back soothingly as he broke down into tears in her arms.
Taking a deep breath in, Kaldur let his lungs fully fill up, before slowly exhaling through his nose, his eyes closed. Letting his mind wander, Kaldur enjoyed the silence only 5 am at the beach could bring. The calming waters lapping at the shore, the cool sand against his legs, the absence of human activity. This was nature at its calmest.
With each breath he took, his body relaxed just a little bit more, the calming meditative pose allowing the stress that had accumulated over the past week slip away into the dark waters.
Eventually, Kaldur became aware of soft breathing besides him. Allowing his senses to observe his partner, he smiled. "Good morning, Conner."
There was a beat of silence before the clone responded with a soft exhale. "Morning."
They sat in peaceful quiet for a few minutes, Conner observing the Atlantean next to him as he sat stiffly in the sand. Kaldur allowed a few more moments to pass before releasing one final breath and opening his eyes.
"What brings you here this morning?" He asked softly, careful not to scare what little courage Conner had seemed to have gathered to approach him.
The dark-haired man shuffled uncomfortably in the sand, glancing up at the rising sun before staring back down at his hands. "...Are we even heroes anymore?"
Kaldur blinked a few times, startled by the question. "Yes, of course. What makes you ask that?"
"We haven't trained or been on a mission in a long time," Conner muttered, "and we're making clothing. For a fashion line. I know Superman doesn't do anything like that."
Kaldur sighed softly, smiling gently at his friend.
"Being a hero doesn't always mean fighting off the criminals, Conner. Sometimes, to be a hero, you have to take a step back and change things to make you a better person to better serve the people. And sometimes being a hero comes from the littlest things."
"Like saving cats from trees?" Conner asked, staring off into the sky with a pensive expression.
The Atlantean nodded, softly placing a hand on his friend's shoulder. "Exactly. Now, why don't you meditate with me until M'gann awakens?"
"...I don't know how," he softly admitted, hanging his head in shame.
Smiling, Kaldur gently sat across from the uncertain boy. "Then let me teach you."
"...the seam just doesn't want to line up, and the gathering in that skirt just looks wrong on my dress form, not to mention-!"
"M'gann, calm down," Dick said slowly, eyeing the panicking martian wearily and slowly extracting a tightly gripped half-made dress from her grasp. Conner wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and the heaving girl leaned into his touch.
Dick critically looked down the fabrics, noticing a little bunching in said seam (which he liked to call a "birds nest"; funny enough, that was an actual term people used for situations like this), which was pulling up on M'gann's painstakingly stitched gathering on the skirt. Pulling out a seam ripper, Dick meticulously undid the scrunched up threading, slowly pulling out the cotton fiber strings. Carefully shaking the form out, Dick handed the slightly fixed dress back to Megan.
"There, see? Nothing to worry about. Probably just the tension dial not tight enough on your sewing machine," Dick said softly, patting the tearing up girl on the arm. "No need to stress out."
"Why don't we take a break," suggested an exhausted Artemis, handing M'gann a cookie from a nearby platter in their group huddle. She took it gratefully, nibbling on the edges and trying to calm down her fraying nerves.
Kaldur nodded, carefully taking the garment back from M'gann's arms and placing it on her mannequin. "I think we all need one-we have been focusing on creating new designs so much that we've not had much time to relax recently. Why don't we train for a little bit, and then take some time off?"
Wally shrugged, feeling a bit lighter than usual (his mom was a miracle worker) and quickly cleaning up his work space. "Sounds good to me. Meet you guys in the workout room."
There were a few noncommittal sounds and shrugs of agreement. Dick suddenly smiled mischievously, a thought occurring to him. "Well, why don't we multitask?"
A little while later, the Team congregated in the training room, each wearing workout clothes designed by the others. Silence reigned as they stared at each other, cataloging areas of wrinkling and misshape on their respective designs.
"You know, when you said we should switch dress forms to try fitting to new body styles, I didn't think you meant we were actually going to wear each other's clothing," M'gann said to Dick lightly, grinning as she twisted her body around, feeling the tension in her shoulders slowly disperse.
"Agreed," Kaldur nodded, stretching his arms across his body and smiling as the material went with the movement.
"Well, all things considered, this fits pretty well," Wally commented, tugging on the slightly loose running pants he was wearing. "Who made these?"
Conner grinned, raising his hand slightly. Artemis whistled, "Nice, the tapering in the legs fits his form nicely. Ohhh, and you added elastic cuffs?"
"Those are in style, nice choice," Dick nodded, grinning at the blushing clone.
"Now, let's begin," Kaldur said, flicking on the power for the equipment-they never went halfway with training, even if it meant using up some of the precious electricity-and gathering the group in the center of the room. "This is going to be a Team workout. We should all start with some stretching, and then a warm up jog, and then a cross fit workout designed by Batman for the League after recovering from a long term injury, followed by a simple yoga routine."
"Hold up, why are we working out together?" Conner asked dubiously. "Most of don't share the same skill sets, and I need to work on different things than most of you."
"We haven't really trained in a while, which is poor form on our part," Dick explained, "sooo we're going to do a little remedial training; GT, back to basics."
"GT?"
"General training," Dick shrugged. "Anyways, while our superhero selves might not have needed this back when the League was in charge, we do now, if not for super-heroing, then for modeling. Many of us have only focused on a specific set of muscle groups in the past," Dick eyes Wally, who grinned sheepishly and waved a leg around for emphasis, "which, you know, was not really ok, but I guess not too important for us. But as models, more specifically ones for a wide-range set of clothing, we're expected to have a wide skill set, especially since a lot of the clothing we'll be designing is sports apparel. Yoga poses, weight training, shots of flexibility, you name it-we're expected to be able to do all of that. And right now, most of us can't."
Dick moved to the center of the room, pointing his finger at each hero in turn. "Conner, you're all about the muscles-I don't think I've ever seen you stretch in my life. M'gann, while your shape shifting and abilities may allow you to make muscles or perform feats of strength, while in human form, you won't be able to do those things-and the glowing green eyes are sorta a dead give-away, which would be very un-turbing. Artemis, you and I are used to hiding and using the element surprise, not so much the constant spotlight and endurance. Wally, you like, only run-where's the arm strength, man? And Kal, while you are possibly one of the best swimmers in the world, your experience with human exercise equipment and training techniques is minimal and sorely lacking. We all kind of need a refresher as well, since we haven't really been doing any training in the last few weeks-with the way things are going, I wouldn't be surprised if Batman benched me soon."
Wally let out a noise of *surprise, staring wide eyed at Dick, who grimaced. He hated not being out there-actually, if Wally thought about it, being cooped up inside sewing all day had to be killing the ever moving acrobat. Looking closer, Wally could see the slight slump in his best friend's shoulders that he only noticed from years of knowing him, and little dark rings under his eyes concealed by Bat-approved concealer. Maybe he should try and talk to him later-it had certainly helped him.
"Anyways, that's why we need to get back to training-and basically any trainer in the world would tell you that when jumping back into something, you need to start it off easy. Thus, GT."
"But why are we all doing the same thing?" Conner persisted, his arms crossed over his chest in annoyance. Artemis raised an eyebrow in agreement.
"Because we all need to work on a little of everything, no matter what we were good at before the magazine start up. And in doing this, we strengthen our bonds," Kaldur took over, his Team leader instincts coming to the surface. "Our lack of training has put us far behind the criminal classes. Do you think they ever stopped training while we let our skills go lax? Next time we're called in to face them, do you think we will come out unscathed?"
Slowly, each person glanced at each other, the realization that it had been a week since they last trained dawning on them (I mean, they'd heard it, had it explained to them, but the far reaching consequences hadn't occurred to them till just then).
Artemis shrugged, "Ya, ok."
"I guess I do need to work on a few things," M'gann added, floating over to Conner and tentatively landing next to him. The teen gave her a small smile and turned to face the rest of the group with a neutral expression.
"YJ, go!" Dick cackled, bouncing off the walls and into the rafters.
Wally gazed upwards, his lips tugging into a frown. "...I have a bad feeling about this."
"Oh, my god," Artemis huffed, bending over and breathing heavily, sweat dripping off her face. Conner sneezed from the floor, carefully sitting up from where he had been lightly stretching. He flinched as his legs twinged in pain.
"Why does everything hurt so much," M'gann whimpered, rubbing her neck muscles tenderly.
"Our muscles are not used to the stimulus," Kaldur panted, slowly rolling his calves over a foam roller and basking in the agony/pain-relief. "It is going to take a few days to get back into our old regimes."
"I think I'm dead," Wally murmured from his splayed out position on the ground, his arms screaming at him.
"I feel great!" Dick laughed giddily, flipping backwards a few times to release some of his excited energy. "I don't think my muscles have burned this bad since Batman's 4th of July Cross-Fit muscle-buster."
Wally managed to prop himself up on his elbows for a minute to flatly stare at his best friend, before flopping back to the ground with a huff. "Dude, you're weird."
"You're just normal," Dick rolled his eyes, rolling his back backwards in a contortionist-like move. Popping back up, he gave each Team member a shark like grin, "Now up and at 'em, we've still got some yoga to do."
"OH MY GOD!"
The heated room was silent save for the incessant panting and groans from the Team as they laid on their backs, fresh from the yoga cool-down.
"Everything hurts, but I feel so good," M'gann said in amazement, her arms tingling in a pleasant sort of way as compared to the hurt they had just been experiencing.
Conner grunted, rolling his shoulders experimentally. When nothing happened, save a loud pop, he let a small smile slip onto his face.
Wally merely marveled at his quivering arms, slightly in awe of how many push-ups, planks, and burpees he'd managed to do. "So this is what it feels like to be a bodybuilder."
"You're doing really good," Artemis stated, her face turned away from him.
Wally frowned. "Are you mocking me?"
Turning around, Artemis raised an eyebrow, spreading her arms in a 'who, me?' sort of gesture. "Why would you think that? I was merely complementing your impressive performance."
"Ok, now I really feel like you're being sarcastic," Wally muttered, crossing his arms defensively. "It wasn't that bad."
"You only managed to face plant 7 times over an 8 minute period," Dick added helpfully, cartwheeling around the room in a nauseating manner.
"Thanks, Rob," Wally rolled his eyes, pushing up from his yoga mat with a groan. "Really feeling the love over here."
Winking, the ebony sprung back to his feet with a bow. "Always happy to be of service. But in all seriousness, that was really impressive, Wally. The average person can only do 25 push-ups, but you were cranking out all one hundred of them like no tomorrow."
"And you kept planking way longer than Kal and I could," M'gann said encouragingly.
Artemis sighed, "...and you ran nearly three times the distance I could."
"Thanks guys," Wally grinned, his shoulders setting back into his familiar self-confident stature. "Hey! Now that we're done, we need to EAT. Like, five hours ago."
"Sluuuuuumber party in the hanger," Dick shouted, suddenly popping up and barking out orders. "Everyone hit the showers! Then, M'gann, Conner, you're snack duty. Artemis, Kal, go find us a good movie. Wally, you're with me."
With a laugh, Artemis and M'gann raced towards the locker room, the boys quickly making their way to their own. A quick minute under the intense sprays had them smelling like flowers and sunshine, as Conner eloquently put it. Meeting back up in the main hanger, M'gann gave Dick a two finger salute, grabbing a bewildered Conner's hand and dragging him off towards the kitchen. Artemis just huffed, puffing a clump of hair out of her face before following a smiling Kaldur to the living room.
Wally turned towards Dick, the two sharing a conspiratorial grin. "So, what did you have in mind?"
Up in the loft-as Wally was electing to call it-the speedster paused in his pillow gathering, eyeing the Boy Wonder's tense shoulders. On one hand, Bats hated to talk about their feelings, to the point of literally running away and hiding for days on end. On the other, Dick probably wasn't too close with the Bat right now, and severely lacking a confidant. Plus, talking really, really helped in Wally's opinion (what could he say, after that afternoon he was a changed man).
Pulling on every bit of Bat-glare resistance and courage he had, Wally walked-like, actually walked-over to his friend and placed a hand on his shoulder. The ebony tensed, and Wally took a deep calming breath before venturing out. "You alright, dude?"
A few seconds later the Dark Squire let out an unconvincing laugh, turning to face his friend with a forced grin. "'Course I am, just a little tired right now. Boss man had me do an extra long training regime when I got back last night, so I didn't get that much sleep."
"And?" Wally prompted carefully, stepping back to avoid the tumble of pillows that Dick dropped.
The ebony sighed, rubbing his eyes tiredly. "What do you want me to say, KF? He threatened to shut off my ZETA access to Happy Harbor, increasingly thinks that I am neglecting my patrols and not taking anything seriously, threatening to bench me, leaving without me to patrols every other night? Because he is, and I'm handling it fine on my own."
"The thing is, you don't have to," Wally said softly, giving his partner a bro hug.
Dick sighed, leaning back and giving Wally a genuine smile. "Thanks."
Wally shrugged, exchanging a fist bump with the younger teen. "No problem. And, um, not to get off topic, but I kinda told my mom what was going on?"
To his surprise, Dick burst into laughter, "I'm actually impressed you managed to keep it from her until now."
"Are you insulting me?"
"Well, only a little. Your mom is like a telepath-she knows all."
"She's sorta scary like that."
Glancing down at the pillows, Dick let a smirk creep up on his face, mirroring his comrade's. "Now what do you say we have a little fun?"
To her credit, M'gann didn't drop her tray of food when she saw the massive pillow fort. She shrieked and flung it across the room, barely managing to catch it with her mind before it splattered against the wall. Artemis and Kaldur were already there, both tentatively poking the scorched pillows with matching looks of disbelief.
"I thought we threw those away," a voice commented lightly beside her, causing the martian to shriek and drop the food again. Conner shrieked as well, dropping his pitcher of lemonade.
A quick gust of wind twirled around the food and drinks, yellow lightning eventually dissipating and revealing a smirking Wally. "What, and waste a batch of perfectly functional pillows? I think not."
M'gann glanced beside her, blushing at Conner's confused look. "Sorry, you startled me."
The teenager shrugged lightly, grabbing the food from a protesting Wally and placing it back in her grasp. "Not your fault."
"Are you coming up or not," a voice shouted from somewhere near the top, a head of ebony hair poking over a wall to smirk down at them. "Best seat in the best projector room on Earth-the Watchtower's is better-and you're having a good fight. Honestly, KF, I would've thought more of it would end up in your mouth-waster!"
Wally rolled his eyes, ignoring the comment, "Well, if you would open the door, then yes, we would. Not all of us are made of rubber and can flip up walls, you know."
"Well there's your problem," Dick snarked, rolling his eyes and pressing a button on his holo computer nonetheless. The Team gaped as a trap door made of pillows slowly rolled down, thumping on the ground and revealing an interior of...pillows.
"...This doesn't even make any sense," Artemis protested weakly.
A/N
POINTS TO ANYONE WHO RECOGNIZES THE REFERENCE I MADE AT THE END! Also, can you guess where the pillow fort came from? :3
...so everyone kinda had a mental breakdown...sorta like me...but anywho, bonus points if you can guess how many film quotes I embedded ;)
Kisses!
Alyss
