Damn; a lot more was supposed to happen in here but then it ran away from me and now it's at 8,400 words. Why does this keep happening to me.
IN OTHER NEWS, THIS IS IT, GUYS. WE'RE IN THE HOME STRETCH.
"Jade's not here," Roy grunts, and then his eyes dart to the object in her hands. "Please tell me I'm hallucinating and that's not a suitcase."
Artemis sucks in a breath that she hopes will prop up whatever feeble remnants she has left of her pride. The late spring storm outside has left her hair more than a little soaked, so she has no doubt she resembles a particularly angry waterlogged cat, with her single beat-up suitcase clenched in one hand and a rain-dampened paper bag of pastries from the bakery down the street in the other.
"Yeah, and you weren't here yesterday when I came over," she retorts. "Can I just tell you what's going on inside, or do you need a password?"
Roy snorts and rolls his eyes, but steps aside, holding the door open for her. She kicks him in the ankle on the way in for good measure.
There's something funny about being at Roy and Jade's apartment. She feels significantly less inclined to shut herself off in favor of the alternate personality she'd built from the tarred ground up while faking her own death and infiltrating an organization of supervillains. The sensation is ironic, considering the apartment's occupants, but she doesn't really care; Lian balances it out.
She hears the door close behind her and surveys the living room. The couch has been moved off of the far left wall and into the middle of it, only a couple of feet away from the TV. It's freed up a lot more space beside the divider isolating the kitchen area.
"So?" Roy prompts her from behind.
She sets her suitcase down and faces him, but not before tossing the bag onto the nearby kitchen table.
"Jade already told me it was fine to stay here for however long I wanted, so shut up. Basically Kaldur kicked me off the Team and I wanted some people to complain about it to," she explains brusquely. "Plus… this'll give me something to do. I thought you and I could – do some patrolling."
Roy raises an eyebrow, looking unmoved.
"First of all," he says without missing a beat, "Kaldur couldn't even kick a rock off of a cliff if he wanted to; he probably just suspended you and you're overreacting. Second, we are not going to listen to you whine for kicks; what do we look like, Dinah? Third, why are you off the Team; fourth, don't you have a dog you need to be taking care of; and fifth, yeah, sure, we can do that; whatever."
Artemis blinks at him momentarily in the wake of that particular tirade before sighing. It feels like setting down something heavy.
"Zee's taking care of Brucely, and Kaldur, uh…" She cracks her neck, trying to look apathetic. "Have you been – watching the news?"
Roy snorts, loping over to the kitchen table and pulling out a chair. He slumps down into it, leaning back and crossing his arms.
"Let's see. Have I been watching something designed by politicians and corrupt fatcats specifically to mislead—"
"Okay, so that's a no." She puts her hands on her hips and scowls down at him. The expression he returns her is equally withering.
She huffs.
"I basically killed a couple guys and made Lex Luthor start a media crusade against the Team because I tried to kill him," she says as quickly as possible.
Roy's expression doesn't change.
"Nice job missing, genius."
She bristles. "Who asked you?"
"Uh, you did, when you showed up at my apartment with a suitcase," he retorts. "After calling me at the crack of dawn last month for free therapy. And, y'know, when you – joined the esteemed Arrow clan, or whatever."
Artemis stares at him.
"Did you just imply that we're family," she says flatly.
"Don't get any ideas," he grumbles, standing – but it's not a "no."
He shuffles into the kitchen and starts rummaging around, eventually producing a Tupperware tub of something from the fridge.
"So you're—" Artemis wills her voice not to shake. "You're not gonna start asking me what my problem is, or what's wrong, or what I was thinking or why I'm not—"
"No," Roy cuts her off, pulling two chipped bowls out from the cabinet over the stove. "Doesn't seem like something you want to talk about, and I'm sure you've had to answer all of that crap dozens of times. Why would you come here if you wanted to talk about your feelings? Tch."
He turns to face her, holding up the bowls and the tub.
"Ollie left me a ton of chili, because he's insane," he tells her. "You're having some. No arguments."
Artemis doesn't see any point in (or, truthfully, have any desire to) arguing with him. He heats the chili up in a pot on the stove and the two of them wind up sitting at opposite sides of the kitchen table, wiping their running noses with enough paper napkins to probably cover the floor, snarking out insults at each other until Jade comes home.
Roy is unexpectedly appalled to hear that she's no longer using a bow and insists that she take it up again. He can give her refresher lessons, he offers dryly, and she barks out a laugh and tells him not to flatter himself.
Still, though, she agrees.
"And where are you off to?" Jade chirps from her position in front of the stove in a sardonic impersonation of early morning cheerfulness.
Artemis zips up her hoodie and finishes tying her hair back into a comically short, but still there, ponytail. She takes the piece of toast out from between her teeth and, on the way to the door, ruffles Lian's hair, eliciting a giggle. Roy glances up from his bowl of Kix.
"Uh, out, Jade," Artemis replies a bit snippily, per the norm whenever she's interacting with her sister.
Jade snorts, using the spatula to nudge the egg she's frying.
"Well, don't stay out too late, and don't bring any cute boys home; I might have to take them for myself," she coos.
Artemis rolls her eyes and tucks her cell phone into her pocket before leaving.
She walks down the sidewalk with her hands in her pockets and actually dares to look at her surroundings this time, instead of at the ground. It's not until she passes the movie theatre that she's forced to swallow something down and avert her eyes.
"Come onnnnn, Artemis; it'll be fun! It's got dragons! Dragons, Artemis."
"A. Why are you promoting a movie about magic to me? And B. Zombies win over dragons; I'm sorry."
"You're the worst. Why would I wanna watch a movie where all the characters I start to like get their eyeballs eaten?"
"I think you're just a sissy."
"Am not! Pleeease, Artemis? Please?"
"Ugh, fine. Fine! But you're buying the popcorn. Get off your knees, moron; people are staring."
"You sure they're not staring at you, babe? Oh, and if I buy the popcorn, will you kiss me?"
"We'll see."
Metropolis General Hospital is huge, just like everything else in that stupid city. Artemis walks through the revolving door at the entrance lobby feeling incredibly small, craning her neck back to stare at the high glass ceiling. She shakes off the awe and closes her mouth and approaches the round reception desk at the center of it all, passing the plentiful number of people in the waiting room around her.
Conner had called her the night before to tell her where Bart is recovering – and he's fine, of course, the little creep. (No matter how many times Artemis insults him in her head, though, it doesn't take away the thick lump in her throat when she remembers that what he'd done had been for her.) Apparently his super healing had saved him, for the most part, but since it's still relatively spotty due to his age, he'll have a scar across his ribs.
It doesn't seem right, Bart being scarred. But Artemis supposes that it happens to the best of them.
The receptionist's glasses are red and her hair is black, pulled uniformly into a bun at the nape of her neck. She's pecking away at the keyboard in front of her, her eyes darting across the computer screen. Artemis clears her throat and the woman glances up at her neutrally.
"Good morning," the receptionist says in a voice as cool as the tiled floor around them.
"I'm here to see… Kid Flash?" Artemis says in a hushed tone. It doesn't feel too strange to say it anymore.
"Name?" the receptionist asks automatically, clicking at something with the mouse and glancing up at her expectantly.
"Tigress," Artemis replies.
The receptionist scrolls with one finger on the tiny plastic wheel, pursing her lips and squinting. After a moment, she shakes her head and looks back at Artemis.
"There's no Tigress on the list of authorized visitors," she tells her.
Artemis's eyebrows pinch sharply together. So Kaldur had the nerve to not only revoke her access to the Watchtower, but to remove her name from privileged lists, to the point where she couldn't even visit the kid who'd been spending every Thursday and Friday night at her dingy apartment for the past two months, who'd bought a string of cheap paper lanterns and hung them up in a blur in the living room to "brighten up the place."
"Oh," she says in a clipped tone. "Sorry, then. My mistake."
She turns around to leave, but after about three steps, something occurs to her, and she halts.
She's back at the desk again and the receptionist looks slightly tetchier than she had earlier.
"Yes, ma'am?"
"It, uh…" Artemis clears her throat and looks down. "It might be… under 'Artemis?'"
The receptionist looks to the screen again, her expression unchanging, and blinks once, scrolls, and nods.
"There's an Artemis here," she says. "Please take a seat; a nurse will be out to escort you momentarily."
The patient rooms are framed by floor-to-ceiling glass windows instead of walls. Artemis is led down a hallway on the third floor that goes on for just five too long by a nurse whose whole posture and manner of speaking radiate efficiency. Her eyes darting over the beds hidden by curtains, the people in wheelchairs, the families encircling them all.
The nurse halts in front of room 316, stepping aside and gesturing for Artemis to go in. Artemis thanks her and steps inside, willing her throat not to constrict.
The lights are off inside, and only one of the two beds is occupied. The machines splay the dim walls in dashes of cold blue and hard red and neon green, and there's a heart monitor pinging, a TV playing the barely audible sounds of a laugh track.
Artemis's shoulders loosen when her eyes fall on Bart. He's propped up on a mountainous arrangement of pillows, but he's asleep. There's an empty bag of Chicken Whizees on his bedside table, and a Rubick's cube next to it. He looks no worse for wear, really – his right arm is in a sling, and his hair's a little messier than usual, and he looks just a little paler, but otherwise, his chest is rising and falling evenly and he looks like he's… perfectly fine.
Artemis sits down in the white plastic chair on the left side of his bed and the nurse leaves her. She stares half-lidded at Bart, whose twitching face and slightly kicking feet are giving her the impression that he's close to waking up.
Within a few minutes, his eyes crawl open. He blinks blearily, frowning, like he has no idea where he is.
"Hey," she whispers. Her hand immediately darts to his wrist, and her fingers lay across it. The contact with the buzzing skin sends goosebumps up her arm and she almost draws away.
He groans hoarsely, wincing at his newfound consciousness.
"I have reached…" he croaks. "New heights… of moded."
"Yeah, well, you did almost die." She sighs through her nose as she slumps up, releasing him to cross her arms on the mattress and rest her chin on them. Wearily, she glares up at him. "I kinda wish you had. Maybe you'd've learned something."
Bart lets out a chuckle weak in authenticity and stares at his hands. Artemis tilts her head sideways, her cheek relaxing against her wrist.
"What were you thinking, Bart?" she asks quietly. The heart monitor chips away at the stale silence.
"Because he—" He swallows when she glances up sharply. "Because… I didn't want everyone to loseyou, too."
Artemis softens slightly, and her glower dissolves into only a frown. "Bart…"
"Artemis, trust me; I know a lot about time," he cuts her off. She drops into speechlessness – he's looking her in the eye, and his voice is even and serious and far too grown-up for such a small and rampant body, for such bright eyes. "My whole life, I've had to spend every second trying to figure it out. It was my choice to come back here… my choice to fix things. So I know especially what makes time go wrong, and if you'd gotten killed, it…" He trails off, darts his eyes down to his lap. "It would've gone wrong."
Artemis looks at him. In the dimness, the shadows on his face make him look older (to the point that it almost terrifies her, because, for a second, she wonders if everything he does is an act to hide the real part of him, the part that makes her feel like a child who's seen nothing worth being scared of). Just at the tip of his nose, fresh and light from the burgeoning spring, there is a dusting of new freckles.
"But you dying would've been fine?" she finally demands. "Who'd be there to carry on Wally's legacy, then? Who'd be there to drive Jay and Joan crazy? Who'd be there whenever Jaime—"
"Ah, Artemis, c'mon," Bart interrupts in a quiet, but slightly amused, mumble. "There's no future for me; nobody'd miss me. My future's gone. I'm just kinda floating around."
"No, you're not, you little twerp," she retorts. She points at him. "Jay and Joan would be totally miserable if you weren't around. Barry would be lost without you. You think Jaime would be much better off? Or Cassie, or Robin, or Gar? Or me? Give me a break. The whole world would slow down if you weren't here. That's just who you are. That's what you mean to us now. You left your future? Fine. Now you've gotta suck it up and make a new one. No takebacks; sorry."
She sits up straight and folds her arms proudly, and Bart sort of marvels at her, scratching his head. Eventually, that stoniness to his face starts to ebb, until he's back to his cheek-pinching grin and springy disposition.
"You're pretty cool, Artemis," he declares, and then reaches for one of the plastic cups beside him on the table. "But that doesn't change what I said. And, uh, not to be rude, but maybe you could consider taking your own advice. About letting the past go and concentrating on the future."
She doesn't really have a response for that. It doesn't matter, because his attention has been rerouted in an instant.
"You want any Jell-O?" He beams, extending the cup to her.
"Uh," Artemis laughs, taking it and surrendering. "No, thank you."
Bart proceeds to explain the extent of his injuries, babbling wildly with excitement as though they're the best thing to ever happen to him. The broken arm is from where he'd hit the wall and has nothing to do with the blast from Mercy. He'd had to have stitches from where the beam had hit him, and, as he excitedly shows her when he pulls his hospital gown up to his neck, there's a large pink scar all up his side from the burn.
Artemis bites the inside of her cheek to keep herself from telling him that it looks awesome. Then again, she's much more distracted by the bountiful explosion of other scars, all varying lengths and ages, that seems to be on every part of his torso.
She must have whitened, because he drops his gown immediately and looks at her with concern.
"They're really nothing; I swear," he insists. "None of them are from now except the… the big one. So they don't even count. Oh please please please stop looking like that or I'm gonna call 911. Oh wait. This is 911. How do you call 911 when you're at 911? I'm still getting used to this 'call people and they'll help you' thing. Are you alive?"
He waves his hand in front of her face and she glares at him, which makes him grin.
"There we go!" he chirps. "Good as new!"
When her expression doesn't alleviate, he sighs, his shoulders slumping.
"Look, I told you guys that my future was like… a cornucopia of the mode," he tells her, his eyes drifting to the opposite wall, his face darkening with clearly unwelcome memories. "You think I would've gotten out of it without a few scratches?"
Artemis shakes her head to clear it and breathes out through her nose. She takes Bart's hand in hers again, and he looks down at it, surprised, and then up to her. She's glad his eyes aren't green enough to pinch her stomach.
"I guess I'm glad you got out of it at all," she mutters. "That's what matters."
He brightens a little, nodding.
"Well, hey, who else is gonna take care of you?" he jokes, and then blanches when her face spasms with the slightest twinge of pain. "Oh no, no, no, no, no, I didn't say that; pretend I didn't say that. No no no, Artemis; no; that's not what I—"
He gives up on speaking and instead settles for flinging his arms awkwardly around her from his angle on the bed, until her nose collides with his shoulder.
"Just gonna hug you," he babbles. "Just gonna keep on hugging you. No takebacks."
Artemis slumps in exasperation, because, really, what he'd said hadn't bothered her at all – but maybe that's what hurts more.
Her cell phone rings when her feet hit the sidewalk two hours later. The afternoon sun beats down on her through the wind-shaken leaves of the maple trees lining the street.
"Hello?" she says tentatively when she sees that the caller ID is an unknown number.
"The Martian girl's here," Jade drawls without preamble, but it does little to mask her blatant annoyance at the situation. "Just sitting here. In my apartment. She won't go away until you get here, so please hurry up and get here and stop telling everyone in your dumb hero clique where I live, or I'll be forced to personally remove the 'peace' part of 'peace and quiet.'"
"I didn't tell her anything," Artemis starts to say, but Jade has already hung up.
She stares affrontedly at the phone in her hand for a good few seconds before blowing her hair out of her face and starting off toward the zeta tube.
Jade gives her a look that's half-deadpan and half-vitriol when she gets back to the apartment twenty minutes later. Artemis shoots her back a roll of the eyes that ends on the sight of M'gann, seated on the couch with her knees tightly joined and her fingers twiddling in her lap. Her bright purple sweater splashes color onto the black fabric around her.
"Uh, hey, Megs," Artemis greets her with a slight falter: M'gann is in her Caucasian skin.
M'gann looks immediately relieved to see her.
"Artemis!" she exclaims with an uncertain smile. "I'm so glad you're here; I was worried I…"
She catches herself and bites her lip. Jade doesn't miss it, however.
"Worried you weren't going to survive a couple of hours with the most feared assassin in the world?" she finishes for her. "I'd be worried, too, Martian."
"Come on, Jade; lay off," Artemis says with a frown.
Jade shrugs. "The friend of my sister is my enemy. That's how it works. Always. Or I guess in the speedster's case it was my plaything." She smirks, gazing with nostalgia in her eyes at the opposite wall. "Oh, sis, remember that time I told him I'd eat his feet for breakfast if he didn't get you the right color corsage for your prom? Those were the days."
"Yeah, Jade, they were," Artemis says pointedly, shoving at her shoulder as she passes. "Can you leave us alone now, please?"
Jade mocks a curtsy and slips to the bedroom with a mutter over her shoulder of, "Try not to reunite too loudly; Lian's down for her nap."
"Sorry about her." Artemis grimaces when the door closes. "She's kind of the… worst. Ever."
"It's fine," M'gann says softly, looking at her hands.
Artemis sighs and takes a seat beside her, folding her arms and half-glaring at the opposite wall.
There's a pause before M'gann gets up the guts to speak. "How have you… I mean, how're things?"
Artemis shrugs stiffly.
"Fine," she replies in a mumble. "Y'know, they're not as totally miserable as they were at Christmas and Valentine's Day and Thanksgiving and New Year's."
M'gann lets out a soft "oh."
"Just got back from seeing Bart," Artemis continues. She doesn't know why; she doubts M'gann cares. "He seems fine. Which I guess is good. One less thing to have on my conscience."
She leans back into the couch cushions and looks over at the other girl. There's a clock ticking in the kitchen, the only noise beyond the occasional rustling coming from Jade's bedroom. She has no idea where Roy is.
"So, what's the occasion?" she finally asks, unable to dampen the bitterness in her voice. "Feeling sorry for the new black sheep of the Team?"
M'gann visibly winces.
"We're sorry, Artemis," she insists, sounding pained. "But you didn't leave Kaldur much of a choice."
"So you agree with him, then," Artemis mutters, clenching her arm. "Comforting."
M'gann huffs.
"Please don't be like that." She takes a breath. "It has nothing to do with feeling sorry for you. I came over because there's…"
Artemis glances up. Words are apparently failing M'gann, whose face is halfway turned toward hers but whose eyes don't seem to want to dare meet hers. Her lip looks red from being bitten with anxiety.
"I just… there's something that I think you should see," she finally blurts out, but quietly, like she's hoping Artemis won't hear her. "Do you remember that – training simulation we all did together? The one I…"
She trails off, her expression matching that of one who had swiftly and unwillingly reopened a wound.
"Yeah," Artemis says, more gently than she'd expected. "I mean, I was only there for an hour, but. Yeah." She laughs emptily. "Not exactly the most forgettable Team bonding day ever."
"Did you and Wally ever… talk about it?" M'gann asks.
Artemis, taken aback, has to take a beat to register the question, but she shakes her head.
"He never liked to," she replies. "I'm pretty sure he just wanted to forget it ever happened. Why?"
M'gann's face darkens.
"He… made me promise never to show you," she whispers. That certainly gets Artemis's full attention. "Only a little while after we all woke up, he started pounding on my door – at the Cave. When I opened it, he was – I don't think I'd ever seen him look so serious. Not then. Afterwards, a few times, but – never before. I was scared he was angry at me, for a second. His eyes were all red. I think he'd been crying. Conner said he heard him… in the bathroom." Her eyebrows twist a little and her mouth seems to shudder. "His whole mind seemed so… tense. He – he just grabbed my arms and looked straight at me and said—"
When she speaks, an echo of Wally, his voice hoarse and young, blooms out at the back of Artemis's mind and muffles M'gann's entirely.
"M'gann, please, please promise me you won't show Artemis any of what I – just. Please. Don't evershow her how I was. I'm serious. I don't ever want her to—look, it was all just an extension of youremotions, right? So it wasn't even real and she doesn't need to know, so – don't ever tell her, or show her, or… Please, please, please. I don't want her to know. Promise."
M'gann inhales deeply.
"So I promised," she finishes. "What else was I supposed to do? He looked like he was ready to get down on his knees and beg me, and I – his mind was right there, and it was such a wreck I didn't even want to have it near me. But now I… with what you've been going through, and what you must be feeling—"
Artemis waits patiently for her to finish, or maybe it's just leftover shock from hearing one of M'gann's memories, a side of Wally she'd only seen once or twice, when he'd jolted awake in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and refused to let go of her until the morning came.
"I just think it's time you saw," M'gann finally says.
"Saw what, Megs?" Artemis prompts her, unable to take it any longer.
M'gann inhales slowly, exhales slowly. Automatically, because she knows what might be coming, Artemis starts to match her pace – she's had her fair share of telepathic jamborees with M'gann, so by now, the process is a familiar one.
M'gann turns her torso slightly so that she's facing Artemis, tucking one knee up onto the couch. She lifts her hands, halting them on Artemis's temples by the tips of her fingers. Artemis keeps breathing evenly, but her heart is thumping erratically.
"If you want me to stop at any time," M'gann murmurs, "Tell me."
"Yeah."
M'gann nods once and closes her eyes. After a moment, Artemis does, too.
For a second, everything is dark, but then M'gann's mind takes hers in its hand and her vision is overwhelmed by the slightly blurred sight of snow and tundra.
The memory is from M'gann's perspective – Artemis can hear the rest of the Team's chaotic thoughts rattling around in her mind, but M'gann's too busy concentrating on attaching an alien gun to the bioship.
Get inside!
Artemis jumps – that's her voice, six years ago. I'm almost there!
Her heart (or is it M'gann's?) starts to hammer and anxiety courses through her urgency. She has to work faster; Artemis is in danger.
Danger! Something sparks in the back of her mind following the sound of two ships crashing into each other by Artemis's hand. The archer is running back to the bioship, safe, but something sinister is crawling up in her wake.
M'gann whirls, her mind scrambling.
Artemis! she thinks as sharply as she can, in a mental shriek. Behind you!
Artemis's mind spikes in terror against hers and M'gann and Artemis both watch, cold with fright, as the younger Artemis – as if in slow motion – digs her heels into the snow, turns with her bow raised and her eyes wide and frightened and her heart galloping, every bit of the frightful uncertainty of youth beating rapidly against their temples.
She stands little chance. Her arm has just finished the bowstring back when the disintegration ray engulfs her. Her clothes and her skin vanish and her skeleton stays poised for less than a second, but then that's gone, too – and so is she.
No blood. No pain, no body, no warning, no goodbye. She's just gone, erased from the world, like she'd simply ceased—Artemis's mind jolts—to exist.
Artemis isn't sure if it's her stomach or M'gann's that drops sickeningly at the sight.
"Artemis!"
If that sound, that single name delivered in that single broken and horrified voice, is enough to crack the frigid air, it's the next voice that shatters it entirely.
"ARTEMIS!"
Artemis's blood goes instantly cold and still, and a fearsome chill shoots through her at the sound. It hardly seems human.
Her and M'gann's eyes swivel, as one, downwards – where Wally is standing, buckled forward, with a stricken expression on his young face. His mind echoes, over and over, in an endless string, every syllable punching into the mind link at an impossible and desperate speed like his running feet:Nonononononononononono.
It's a precursor to the staggering wave that slams into her next from him: grief, and shock, and sickness, and confusion, and an all-consuming rage like none she could ever have imagined. The telepathic link is, for the briefest of seconds, overloaded by all of it, slipping into white noise, but it's back up again just in time to receive the emotions of the others: emptiness from Conner, utter silence from Dick, sorrowful resolve from Kaldur – and it's all quiet, all paralyzed with shock, but Wally's is a tempest.
"They're dead," he shouts. His fists shake at his sides. His voice is raw and wrathful and dark, a shattering departure from his laughter and his drawl, and it scares her – scares them all – because he's hardly Wally now. "Every single alien, if it's the last thing I do!"
His voice breaks on the last syllable. Artemis watches from M'gann's eyes as the scene changes – now she's doubled over and crying until she can't breathe and it's making it difficult to steer the bioship, but she has to; she has to.
But it's nothing, nothing, compared to the sounds that Wally's making.
Artemis looks through M'gann at him – he's screaming, too grief-stricken to shed any tears or trawl up any semblance of speech, and he's beating his fists against the bioship walls and growing louder and more anguished with every blow. M'gann flinches and cries harder, and Artemis with her, until Wally finally, eventually, goes totally silent, hunched over, his fingers splayed out and his teeth gritted and his eyes wrenched closed. Somehow, it's louder than the shouting had been.
No. They are coming slower now. No. No. No.
Everything blurs again – when it comes into focus, it's the ruins of the Hall of Justice around her, and Wally's mental voice, now delirious with wild hope, thunders across the link with unstoppable exuberance: This thing doesn't disintegrate – it teleports! Artemis is alive!
And then they're somewhere Artemis doesn't know: the red-tinted, fearsome bowels of the alien mothership, and the two of them watch as Wally clutches their arms and tries to soothe their mind with promises of Artemis, but Conner is dead. (And Artemis could choke, seeing him so close, so young, so stupid, his gripping fingers those of a blazing ghost she doesn't fully recognize.)
My mind is clearer now. There is no detention facility, the Martian Manhunter thinks somberly, and Wally's eyes shoot to him, hard and defensive. No prisoners to rescue. Our mission holds no purpose.
Wally, short and skinny and small next to the Martian Manhunter, whose cape is presently fisted in his shaking hands, hammers out denial that borders on delusion, his face wrenched with ferocity.
No. You're wrong! his mind insists – shouts – begs. The zeta radiation proves she's alive! She's—
Dick has to grab him, yank him off, locking eyes with his best friend with a resolute expression far too intense for his almost childish face. Wally's eyes, in contrast, are wild and fierce, cycling through a storm of emotion almost strong enough to cripple M'gann's already fragile link altogether, but something is starting to slowly crumble at the very back of them.
Stop it, KF! I've been scanning for League and Team signals since we got inside – they're not… here.
Grief seems to clench even him at the sound of his words, and Wally's mind starts to slow to a dull throb.
Artemis is gone.
And then it halts. It stills, and settles, and sinks. Dick is telling him something else, something about how the mission still holds purpose; and M'gann's mind huddles around words that she feebly tries to pass to Wally as some sick offering of comfort: New heroes will always rise to carry on.
The last few moments are even more surreal than the rest of it for Artemis: as M'gann gets back on her feet, despite her shaking knees, Dick and Martian Manhunter start to run down the remainder of the hall toward the core of the mothership. M'gann begins to follow – and Artemis with her, but they stop beside Wally, who has not moved. His eyes stare at the ground with a mix of blankness and desolation, and the green in them is dull now in the dark and unforgiving light.
Their hand rests on his shoulder and grasps it. He does not react. Though the contact only lasts for a second, and though she knows it's impossible, Artemis wills the fingers to stay there longer, wills them to lace with his and turn into only hers and try to ignite color in him again. But they don't. They slip off, and M'gann runs, and as she grows farther away, just before Wally seems to haul up the strength to follow her, his mind, red and savage and slowly unraveling into surrender, swiftly knocks only once more into her back.
It's over. She's watching the mothership fall to flames and ruin and she's trying to scrub out the echo of Wally's last thoughts before his bones had turned to ash: the summer, the sound of cicadas around him; his parents, and their embraces, and their smiles; and Artemis, tossing her ponytail over her shoulder and laughing at something he doesn't understand, and now seems certain he never will.
Artemis feels the familiar sensation of falling backwards. When her mind lurches back into her again, dropped from a great height by the palm of M'gann's, the first thing she becomes conscious of is a single wet trail going from the corner of her right eye to the bottom of her chin.
She swipes it away in an instant, but the apartment around her is hazy – when she tries to blink it away, her face gets wetter, and it makes her furious.
"Why," she stutters out, rubbing her knuckles against her cheeks and mouth. "Why did you—"
"You think that you're losing your mind," M'gann says – and her voice is equally tearful, if not more so; Artemis can hardly blame her, having to relive the exercise that made her refuse to use even the mind link for nearly a month. "You think that you're alone, and that you're insane for feeling and acting the way you do, but all it is is hope, Artemis, and he felt it, too. He felt it before he even knew you."
"It's not the same," Artemis croaks. Her shoulders are shaking and a sob manages to break its way through, but she quiets any further slip-ups with a hand to her mouth. "It's not the same, Megs. That wasn't even real."
"But you don't understand," M'gann whimpers. "To us, it was. I made everyone think it was real, so Wally – everything he felt was real, because he believed you were really gone. Did you see him, Artemis? Did you see how he – it tore him apart, but then he started looking for any chance that you could still be out there, waiting for him to just… find. I remember his mind there, Artemis. There was nothing in it but you."
"That's—" Artemis makes a choking noise that she guesses could pass for a laugh. "That doesn't seem healthy."
"You're the same, Artemis," M'gann whispers. "I showed you because it's… it's the same. Don't you remember how little he talked to you afterwards? How much attention he started paying to me? He wanted to forget about what he'd felt, what he'd done, because it scared him. And I knew that, so I just… I let him. You know?"
Unexpectedly, she breaks off and pulls Artemis into a hug, dampening the shoulder of her t-shirt. Her nails dig into Artemis's skin, but not painfully. Artemis, however, makes no movement to return the embrace.
"I can't decide if I should tell you to… to learn from what you saw, and not let yourself get lost in trying to bring someone back who might really be gone, or… or tell you never to lose hope," she says. Her voice is shaking. "He loved you so much, Artemis; and I'm – I'm so sorry I did that to him. To you. To everyone. I don't know if I can ever make it up to…"
"Megs, stop it," Artemis murmurs – but it's gentle. M'gann pulls away, her eyebrows upturned. "We were kids. We were just kids. It doesn't matter. We forgive you. You need to stop being so scared of yourself, because nobody's scared of you, M'gann."
M'gann's eyes start to well up. Artemis, knowing she's said the right thing, repeats it, genuinely, emphatically.
"Nobody's scared of you," she whispers.
M'gann hugs her for a long, long time.
It's only the next day, when she's lying on the couch and staring at the ceiling, that Artemis understands exactly what M'gann had been trying to tell her.
Wally's hope, irrational or not, had swallowed him whole, turned him into someone he no longer knew. He had watched Artemis vanish before his eyes, out of his life, out of the world, just as she had blinked maybe once or twice and been told soon after that he loved her, and that was all. He had sprinted with desperation and a fierce love he barely comprehended through the end of the world, raging, blazing – just as she had, just as they all had watched the Reach encroach the Earth, watched the War World loom beside the moon – and still he had not forgotten her, or accepted any possibility that there was a world that existed, now, that did not have Artemis in it.
She's not sure if it's supposed to be a lesson or a comfort. But the sheer solidarity of their experiences – Wally, before he'd even known what it would mean, losing her; her, when she knew all too well what it would mean, losing him – floors her. She decides, at the end of it all, that she is finished with being broken over Wally, and she is finished with her rage, and she is finished with her hope – it hurts much less when she doesn't have any of that to go on.
She closes her eyes.
"Let me walk you home."
"I'm fine, Wally. Quit hovering; it's weirding me out. I just… I need to go… walk somewhere."
"Then let me do it with you. I promise I won't say anything or bug you or – Artemis, I'm never gonna say this to you again, but… please."
"What for?"
"I just – I want to see you. Being alive. Being you. Is that so weird?"
"Uh, yes. Extremely. But – ugh. Just stay at least two steps behind me and don't say a word."
"Whatever. …Thank you."
She wonders how she hadn't seen it sooner. She wonders what might have been different if she had.
"Nice shot," she snarks out when Roy's high density polyurethane foam bursts over the hostages instead of the bank robbers currently firing their guns up at the rafters where the two of them are crouched.
"Cut down on the smart talk, kid," Roy retorts, nocking another, normal, arrow. "I meant to do that."
"Props for the save." She snorts, and her hands fumble a little when she nocks her own arrow into her old collapsible bow, which squeaks a little from lack of use. She shoots a smoke arrow at the feet of the bank robbers just as a bullet whizzes past her cheek.
"You okay there?" Roy asks her, firing his own arrow at one of the thugs' hands, knocking his gun away. "I'd hate to see you getting your eye shot out."
"Yeah, I'll bet you would," she deadpans back. She takes care of the accomplice, shooting his gun aside until it skitters across the tile floor.
"I'm serious," Roy insists, but his smirk confirms that he is not at all serious. "What would the world do without that face?"
Artemis, tossing her hair over her shoulder, leaps down from their perch and collides foot-first with one of the gunmen's faces. It feels more than a little satisfying to bring out one of her old moves again, and he doesn't seem to be complaining once he's lying unconscious on the floor and his pal is putting up his hands in surrender.
"Subtle," Roy grunts from behind her when he lands as well. "Good luck washing that off the leather."
"Isn't the first time and won't be the last," she retorts, simpering at him with smugness. "These boots were made for kickin'."
"Even more subtle." Roy snorts, putting his arrow back in his quiver and collapsing his bow. Artemis follows suit. "All right, I'll handle the first guy; you take the second."
"Dividing the workload very fairly," Artemis grouses, but not without a smile.
She turns away from Roy's crouching form to deal with the second bank robber, but instead she finds the barrel of a gun in her face.
Oh.
"Well, now I feel stupid," she mutters. The guy's hand is shaking and his face is sweaty.
"T-Turn around!" he orders. "Hands on your—"
Before he can finish, something whizzes by and blasts him in the wrist, causing him to yell and stumble back and drop the gun. Artemis picks it up immediately and points it at him with steadiness, but he's still shouting with pain, clutching his injured hand.
She glances to her left. There's a charred spot on the floor with a flume of smoke twisting up from it.
"Uh, Roy, since when do your arrows have lasers?" she asks.
But Roy doesn't answer her.
She dares to turn her head slightly to see him gawking up at the farthest window on the same level as the rafters. The hostages are all whimpering, wiping foam off of themselves and grimacing.
There's a boy standing above them all, with a shaved head and a scowl angrier by far than anything she's seen Roy's face even vaguely imitate. His prosthetic arm whirs and glints in the moonlight.
"Roy, I think that's you," Artemis says.
"Give me a break," the boy above them scoffs in a voice identical to Roy's. He leaps down, landing on two feet and one hand, scowling at the ground. "We couldn't be any more different."
Roy groans from behind her.
"Jeez, Arsenal; a little more warning next time would be nice."
"What are you griping about, Arrow? I saved your sidekick's neck, didn't I?"
"Whoa, whoa," Artemis interjects, tempted to aim the gun at this little punk instead. "Next time you call me sidekick I'll be kicking your sides; got it?"
"Artemis," Roy grumbles, and Artemis takes that as a cue to step forward and tie up the still blubbering gunman with a computer cable. "That's Arsenal. The guy I was cloned from. Sometimes he follows me around because he gets lonely."
"Give me a break!" Arsenal scoffs. "First of all, I don't get lonely; second of all, even if I did, which Idon't, you are the last person I would come running to. I'm just protecting your stupid city now that you're too busy playing house with an international criminal wanted for too many counts of murder for me to count on two hands."
Artemis snickers and Roy shouts at her to shut up.
She straightens, brushing her hands off, and finally gets a good look at the boy known as Arsenal. He's significantly scrawnier than Roy, but he compensates for it with sinewy muscles and an expression probably capable of striking fear in the heart of Kaldurs; his domino mask is sharp, and his costume is like a duller red version of Roy's. They may have looked alike once, but this kid seems to have tried everything within his power to eradicate Roy's legacy – including, apparently, shaving his head.
"Ignore the angry Q-tip," Roy mutters to her. "He gets sensitive about admitting he's miserable without me to yell at all the time."
Sirens start to sound outside. At the noise, Artemis turns her head, but when she swivels it back around again to ask Arsenal exactly what he's doing there anyway, she's surprised to find that he's already gone.
"Uh," she grunts. "Does he do that often?"
Roy stretches. "Well, he did try to assassinate Luthor once. Plus I can't even count how many times I've had to bail that punk out of jail for backtalking an officer or interfering with police business. You think I'm bad? He makes me look like I should be canonized."
"Oh, he's delightful," Artemis says sagely, which causes Roy to stifle a laugh.
"Yeah. Real hit at parties," he mutters. "We'd better get out of here; c'mon."
"You feel like chili?" she asks him as they sprint across the rooftops back toward the apartment. The night is balmy with the onset of spring, and they can see the police cars speeding by down on the street.
"Maybe if I feel like dying," he retorts. "In other words, no. I vote that ramen noodle place on Fortieth Avenue."
"Fine, but you're buying," Artemis says, jumping with spread legs to the next building. Her lungs are burning, but this is the most alive she ever feels.
"Jeez, get a job," Roy chastises her, and she lets out a short chuckle.
It's been a long time since she's laughed – really laughed. Somehow eliciting the sound, and the unabashed tears and wrinkled nose and doubling over that come with it, seems to be something only Wally had ever had a talent for.
She's okay, she thinks unexpectedly to herself as she and Roy slurp on noodles while in costume, despite the stunned expression of their server. This is okay. She's miles from the Team, miles from the memories associated with it; she's far, far off from chasing vengeance and blindly following whatever piece of hope happens to drop into her path; she's got bruises on her elbows and a headache and crusted red on her lip from a nosebleed, but this is all okay.
She'll go back sometime, in a month, in a year, when seeing the hologram doesn't prompt her to reach her fingers toward the imitations of the ones she hopes will someday be there, someday be tangible enough to hold hers, if she tries just one more time, one more time, when no one is looking.
She's having lunch with Zatanna tomorrow. Going to the zoo with M'gann this weekend. Babysitting Lian on Thursday. Bart's getting out of the hospital on Friday.
She doesn't really know what it is she wants anymore. She stirs the noodles with her chopsticks and mentally thanks Roy for not saying anything and feels her heart twinge just slightly when she realizes she's forgotten Wally's favorite color, forgotten the way his breathing had sounded under her ear at night, forgotten the sound he made when he cried, and even more so the sound he made when he laughed.
She opens her mouth to, maybe, tell Roy that she's not sure if she even misses Wally anymore because there's hardly anything in her memory for her to miss, but then her cell phone rings.
She fumbles around for it. Roy watches, blinking, with a mouthful of noodles.
The caller ID is Strange, Adam.
She almost doesn't answer it. But her thumb swipes across the answer button and she brings the phone to her ear, cradling it in her shoulder.
"Yes?" she says a bit coldly.
"Artemis," Strange replies immediately, sounding breathless. "I'm so glad I got ahold of you; I've been trying to get in touch with you for days! We did it. We did it; I did it! You have to get to the Watchtower as soon as you can; we—"
"Slow down, Strange," Artemis interrupts him in a voice louder than she'd expected. Roy's attention is fully on her now, but she barely notices, setting down her chopsticks, turning out of her seat. "What's going on?"
"I figured it out," he tells her in a jubilant shout. "Artemis, my machine; it – it works! I've found out a way to stabilize it and the chance is only 10% now; I did it; I did it! We can get him back! We're going to get him back!"
There's a thud and a rustle and then the sound of another voice.
"Artemis." It's Conner. "Are you there?"
Artemis tries to say yes, but all that comes out is a short, barely audible rasp.
"Okay, good." Of course he'd heard it. "You have to get over here to understand. Kaldur's given you authorized access to the Watchtower again. We need you here right away, all right?"
His voice slows, and quiets, and, for a moment, even he sounds winded, exhilarated, disbelieving.
"This is it," he murmurs.
"Old boyfriend?" Roy asks dryly when Artemis hangs up a moment later, staring wide-eyed at nothing.
She gulps.
"Yeah," she whispers. Her hand shakes unstoppably when she shoves the phone back into her utility belt. She nods at nothing, wondering why, instead of feeling ecstasy, or any semblance of relief or happiness, she just feels like she's going to be sick.
"Yeah," she repeats in an even hoarser voice, and then she stumbles to her feet, knocking her bowl to the ground, and bolts.
She sprints in a harum-scarum scramble for the zeta tube, five blocks away. Roy shouts after her, but she hardly hears him – she hardly hears anything at all.