Young Jutsice and Justice League Crossover Fanfiction

Chapter 13

An: I'm so sorry it so long to update. In my head it's like no one is eagerly waiting for my next chapter but there are over 140 of you that chose to follow this story so I should really get around to update. It's just someone in my family died recently and it's been a pretty rough time. Schools been hard and all that stuff too. But I'm really glad that we have a break from school and I've finally gotten the courage to write this. There might be a little of religious stuff in there and that's what I was most nervous about posting this, but it's not anything super strong so I hope it's fine. I still have a while to go in this story since now I have a villan planned. I still haven't written a single action scene in this story yet, so we'll se how that goes. Anyway let's see how this goes.

Zatanna sighed and opened the door. She felt like she was breaking and entering, but it couldn't be called that considering she had the key. Wally and Artemis' apartment looked almost exactly the same. She could see why Artemis had moved out for a while. It looked like Wally never even left.

There was an empty pizza box on the floor, and a pair of socks hidden under the bed. Wally may have been a speedster, but that didn't mean he was good at chores.

The thing that was most different were the boxes of Wally's stuff on the floor. There were his clothes and his cheesy track trophies he had kept just for the memories. Zatanna had no idea if he was actually cheating or not. There were pictures of Wally and Artemis smiling brightly and plenty of souvenirs packed inside those boxes. They must have been so painful to look at.

She scanned the apartment to try and find what she was looking for. What she was looking for exactly she didn't know, but what she did know was that it had be an item that belonged to the person she was trying to track down. In this case Artemis. And if even possible Wally as well. It couldn't be simply any trinket either; it had to be of strong emotional value. Artemis and Zatanna were practically best friends and they both confided in each other their deepest secrets and feelings, it wouldn't be hard for her to find something for her.

Wally however, was a different story. She knew the guy had loved his souvenirs, but most of them had blown up at Mount Justice. Even though there were plenty of boxes to sort through (as much as Zatanna would love to look through every single one of them) She remembered Artemis telling her that she had given some of the boxes to his parents too, and she didn't want intrude on them by poking through their supposedly dead son's stuff in front of grieving parents. That would be a really awkward situation. And there was no proof that any of them held the emotional value needed to preform the tracking spell.

It was still pretty hard to believe that Wally was actually alive. Even though the Reach had been defeated, after that day everyone seemed to be . It had even affected the League. There was this noticeable lack of energy, like the happiness was sucked out of the air itself. The same thing happened after Tula and Jason. Zatanna guessed that's what always happened after a hero dies.

This all lead Zatanna to remember the day where losing him had taken the most impact on her closest friend.

Around 8 months ago Artemis POV

There was a cold knock at the door. I covered my head with my pillow and pretended I hadn't noticed it.

The knocks grew louder followed with a quiet, "Open up. I know you're in there." I moaned and trudged out of her bed to open the door. When I swung the door open it revealed a smiling Zatanna dressed in all black. "I see you're not dressed yet." She pointed at my pajamas.

"Yeah not ready for life," I said like a grumpy teenager as I plopped face first back onto my bed. I felt cold hands on my ankles, and I grasped onto the only warmth I had left. My bed. With a sudden pull the hands tugged on me and I found myself on the floor.

"C'mon Arty time to get ready," Zatanna cooed like she was my mother.

I got up off the floor and like the zombie that I was got ready for what I felt was going to be the worst day of my life.

When I had gotten back from changing into my black dress Zatanna smiled gently and said, "See that wasn't that bad was it?" I refused to respond with words, and just nodded gravely. There was a moment of silence before Zatanna asked the question:

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," I replied, without making eye contact.

"You're not fine, It's okay to not be fine," she said as she pulled me into a hug. It took me a moment before I hugged her back. I really was fine.

When they had arrived at the church together I refused to look up from the floor. The ride there was silent and this place was filled with the same kind of silence. Zatanna took my hand, and gave her comforting smile, but I pulled away. Was she not aware of how freezing her hands were?

As I walked in there were people there waiting. They whispered at each other and gave me pitiful looks. At least in my head that what it felt like they were doing. I didn't want their pity. I was fine. When people I knew came to talk to me, I gave them smiles and laughs as they talked, and they laughed too.

There were two groups of people in this building. There were bunches of heroes without their masks on walking around talking as well. And then there were Wally's family members talking to each other. Some she had meet before at a family reunion Wally had asked her to go to with him. She remembered being so nervous she was sick to her stomach before meeting them, but Wally reassured her that they would love her. That was a really fun night. The other family members were complete strangers. The nervousness settled in my stomach with no one to tell me it would be okay.

I felt stinging behind my eyes.

I tried to shake off the thought as soon as it came, and decided to occupy time by looking around the church. I sat down in the back of the church in the last row of pews. It wasn't a very large building, but it felt grand and important all the same. The arched ceiling was so tall it seemed as if it could reach the heavens. I'm assuming that was point. At the very top there was a stained glass window that let in a majority of the light in the room. On the opposite side of the entrance, in the center there was the altar with a white cloth draped over it. There was a matching cloth draped on the cross that was hanging form the ceiling as well. There were statues of saints hidden in the corners. The only one I recognized was St. Patrick and that was because he was holding a four leafed clover.

My family had never been that religious. I had remembered going to church a couple of times when I was very little, but that all stopped when Mom got arrested. Dad never went to church and I never questioned it, so my sister and I just didn't wind up going altogether. But when my mom was released, there were a couple of times where I would walk in on her in the middle of a prayer when I went to say goodnight. The prayers seemed to calm her down when she was nervous. And if Mom was happy, then I was happy.

I remembered Wally complaining bout going to church every Sunday. His family was pretty religious and him being the scientist that he believed he was knew there was no superior force out there. Just like how he thought there was no magic either. But regardless of his doubts he still went anyway. He knew it was the right thing.

It dawned on me that I was sitting in the very church that claimed he had dreaded.

What brought me back to reality was priest sitting down in his chair behind the altar. After a few more minutes of people chattering the organ started to play the opening hymn and everyone stood up. I, not having been to a mass in ... I didn't even know how many years, stood up after everyone else in the room was already standing.

She saw Barry, Connor, Bart, Kaldur, and a few of Wally's other friends carrying the coffin slowly as the music played. Surprisingly there was no Dick Grayson to be seen carrying it along with them. Only the heroes there knew that Connor could carry the thing by himself. They were also the only people that knew that it was empty.

There was a pang in my chest when a sudden thought came to me: Is this how he felt at my funeral?

I felt cold hands on mine once again. I looked beside me to see Zatanna, Barbara, Cassie, M'gann, and a few others all giving me supportive looks. A few of them looked confused as to how I was remaining so strong. I had already gotten out all my tears, but I felt the stinging once again.

I looked ahead and saw they had stopped, and the coffin was stationed directly under the cross. The song ended, and I heard sniffing.

I scanned for the source of the sniffing and my eyes landed on Mrs. West and her husband comforting her in the front row.

My nose tingled, and I felt my heart break a little as soon as Mr. West left her and went up to say his speech.

I didn't register a word he said. I had my eyes completely and entirely focused on her.

It was that moment that I truly realized:

He is gone,

and he is never coming back.

The realization hit me like a truck, and it ran over me afterwards. I let go of the breath I didn't know I had been holding all morning. I felt all the tears I had been holding back fall to the ground. I had so many tears left in me that I could have filled a fountain. It was my stubbornness that wouldn't let them go.

All this time I had been thinking that he was away for a little while and I would see him again soon, but this was really it. I was really at his funeral. He was really... dead. This wasn't a night mare or a dream. This was, and there was no more denying it, Reality. The reality I would be in stuck in for the rest of my life.

I felt my body shaking. I didn't want to cry and be heard by everyone in the room. The last thing I wanted was for everyone to be looking at me. But at the same time I wanted to scream until my lungs had no air left in them. I felt my face flushing red and I couldn't stop the tears from falling down my pitiful face.

I looked over to Zatanna who once again held me with her freezing hands, but the words she said to me earlier echoed in my head non-stop: 'You're not fine, It's okay to not be fine.'

I finally had admitted it to myself. I'm NOT fine. My mind raced a thousand miles a minute. I would never get to laugh with him again. I would never get to hold him again. I would never get to kiss him again. I would never get to see his smiling face again. Ever.

I shook so hard I could barely breathe. Zatanna snapped me out of my panic, and gave me the warmest hug I had ever gotten. It didn't matter to me how cold her hands were anymore. I would get to cry in her arms.

I looked up with the never ending tears in my eyes, and I stared at that coffin. I wished I had heat vision to make it disappear before my very eyes, but that would not erase what it truly represented. Wally is dead. My heart felt just as empty inside as the coffin was.

Back to the Present

Zatanna sighed full of frustration. She kept trying to put herself in Wally's shoes. Remembering the funeral hadn't helped very much.

She had found an item for Artemis though. It was her Alice and Wonderland poster. She had rolled it up and tucked it neatly under her arm. She knew that Artemis would use her for target practice if she ruined it.

Anyway back to the problem at hand! Think. Think. Think. What would the goofball care so deeply about?

There was this picture she remembered him looking at longingly at Artemis's "funeral", but there were so many pictures in those boxes she had no way of telling if it was the right one or not.

She looked around the room for the hundredth time. And in a last ditch effort looked under the bed only to be met with his stinky socks once again. She groaned, and almost went up to leave, but something caught her eye. She crouched down and swatted the socks away. She stuck her hand out and reached for what she hoped was the item she had been searching for. She stood up looked at it questioningly in her hands. It was a tiny black box. She opened it up slowly, filled with curiosity. Her eyes practically bulged out of her head when she saw what was inside. She had found her item.

AN: Sorry about the change up in perspective and how different this chapter is from the others, but I kept writing in first person by accident because this is basically what happened to me at the funeral I went to. It was awful. Is it bad that the funeral is where I came up the idea for this chapter? Zatanna's hands were so cold because my friend who kept trying to comfort me had freezing hands that day oh my god! That was a couple months ago, but now was when I finally got the courage to write this. Zatanna's spell might not make a lot of sense because I keep adding rules out of nowhere, but I will try for it to make the most sense as possible. Even though I guess magic sometimes doesn't make that much sense in general. I'll try to not use that as an excuse too much. I know this chapter doesn't advance the story that much (even though this is for sure the longest chapter so far), but hopefully you enjoyed it and next time I update it won't take three months. I want to possibly update tomorrow, but we'll see how that goes. I have homework I should be doing right now. Thanks for reading!

Oh yeah I almost forgot,

HAPPY BIRTHDAY WALLY!