You have no idea how relieved and happy I am to see that the whole reunion arc was met with (what looks to be) resounding approval. That is undoubtedly the part of this fic that caused me the most stress and second-guessing, so I'm so so thrilled to know it went over well with you guys.
I had originally planned for the previous chapter to be the second to last one, to follow it up with a sort of "two months later" kind of epilogue thing, but then I realized exactly how stupid that would be because I wasn't about to pull a Greg Weisman and skip over the nitty-gritty messy development stuff for the sake of a neatly tied little ending. So. (cracks knuckles) This isn't over yet. Not by a long shot. Because since when have I ever let things be easy?
Wally is rudely awakened by the sensation of sharp metal jabbing into his throat.
His eyes fly open in an instant, but he stays frozen, clutching the pillow under his head. He shifts his eyes, slowly, to his left, to see a bare arm clenching a knife that's presently poised right at his jugular.
"Okay okay," he whispers to himself, swallowing (and the motion brings his skin closer to the blade than he would prefer). "I'm, uh—"
He turns his head minutely and immediately stiffens, wrenching up every ounce of self-control in him to keep himself from jumping away, because, no matter how many times he's faced down the Joker, no matter how many times he's been assigned a five-page English paper, no matter how many times he's come within an inch of his life on any given mission, he's never been more terrified in his life.
Artemis is sitting up next to him, her teeth bared with feral fury, and the arm that he'd noticed earlier just happens to be hers. Her hair hangs in her face, which is contorted ferociously in either anger or something he really doesn't want to call bloodthirst.
He feels the blade break the skin a little and has to try not to yelp.
"Babe," he settles for saying instead, slowly, quietly. "Put the knife down."
She growls, a terrifying sound from deep in her chest, and Wally raises his hands at either side of his head as best he can while lying down.
"Artemis, it's okay; it's okay," he murmurs. "I'm not gonna hurt you. I promise. It's just me. Just me. Just Wally."
It takes just a second too long for some semblance of recognition to shift in her eyes and coax her into lowering her hand, dropping the knife onto the mattress. Wally gradually moves himself up into a sitting position, but is still unable to control the fact that his breath is coming in and out more quickly than he'd prefer.
"Uh, morning," he greets her in a high voice.
The snarl in her mouth and nose ebbs, and the fearsome spark in her eyes dims, and her raised shoulders go low and benign again. Wally cautiously reaches down with agonizing slowness (for him, anyway) to pluck the knife up between two fingers and drop it on the bedside table next to him.
"Sorry," she says matter-of-factly, but he can hear the uncertain quaver in her voice. "Guess Tigress isn't exactly used to waking up with intruders in the bed, or whatever."
"This is so weird," Wally mutters, but when Artemis shoots him a look, he quickly appends, "But fine! It's fine. Should I, uh… I can sleep on the floor for a few days if you want."
Artemis snorts. "The couch might be a better bet."
"I seriously didn't mean to scare you." He knows that, largely, her reaction has nothing to do with him, but there's no stopping the unsettled (and guilty) sensation in his stomach at the fact that she'd considered him a threat. "But, uh… maybe we should remove all hidden weapons from the premises for now."
She gives him a familiar unimpressed look that instantly assures him that she's back to normal.
"I could still strangle you," she says flatly. "Or smother you. Or break your neck."
"Okay, we can remove the pillows and your hands, too, then," he jokes.
He takes an iota of pride in the way her lips twitch infinitesimally upwards.
"I…" He fidgets with his hands in his lap, picking at the loose threads at the hem of the sheet. "I know I already asked, but, uh… really. What happened? To you, I mean. While I was, uh…"
He gestures lamely and she averts her eyes, pushing some of the rumpled hair that had earlier been dangling in her face back behind her ear. She turns away from him, and he stares at her profile, gulping at the way the shadows are gathering in the corners of her face.
(Artemis, for her part, wars silently with herself: Tigress wants to brag; Artemis, scared and ashamed, wants to lie. She's not entirely sure which of them wins.)
"Killed a few guys," she mutters, curling her fingers and gazing at them with an apathetic shrug. "Tried to kill Lex Luthor. Got the Team royally screwed over in the P.R. department. Reckless habits and stuff; not exactly great for their image. To be fair, though, I did resign for a while before they brought me back on, but then I kinda got suspended for my 'behavior problems'. Whatever."
She gives him a smile that, coupled with her cold words, feels harsh enough to make his heart wince.
"Just reverted back to the stuff Dad taught me." She sneers – blamefully. "Nothing major."
Wally's stomach sours at her tone and he grips the sheets more tightly, sighing.
"Artemis, I'm sorry," he says, unable to fathom what else he can possibly tell her. "It's not like I did it on purpose; there was… I didn't know what was going to happen, okay?"
"Give me a break," she snaps, her eyes flashing, knifelike, onto his. "You know what would've been nice? A simple little 'I'm just gonna go to the Arctic; if I don't make it back, here's a goodbye,' instead of me suddenly turning around to see you halfway through the zeta tube! 'Didn't know what was going to happen' my ass, Wally West; you knew. If you hadn't, you would've at least looked me in the eye before you bolted."
"I-I didn't bolt!" he retorts hotly. "You seriously think that if I'd stopped to tell you good-bye, I would've still gone through with it? There wasn't time for me to be thinking about what I wanted, Artemis; I wantedto stay there with you and never have to risk my neck again, and I wanted to tell you so many…" He swallows down the last of the sentence and it festers in the pit of his gut. "You think I'd've left you withthat, instead of – instead of Paris?!"
A heated spasm of fury jolts across her face and his stomach drops.
"Well, wasn't that just selfless of you!" she shouts, lunging to her feet from the bed and facing him with her arms thrown out. "Aren't you just a stand-up guy, giving me Paris over closure!"
"You've got closure now, haven't you?" he exclaims, mirroring her actions in a livid blur. They stare each other down from opposite sides of the bed, savage glares and clenched fists. "Why does any of that stuff matter now; aren't I right here?"
"That's not the point!" she snaps, jabbing her index finger in his direction. "That's not the point and youknow it. The point is that you dashed off to save the world and you knew how it was probably going to end and you didn't even have the guts to look at me before you did it! I turned around and you were just—"
Her voice catches, but she swallows fiercely and impels herself further.
"That was it," she finishes hoarsely, finally dropping her arms to her sides until her wrists bump against her thighs. "I was stupid enough to blink, and look what happened."
"Artemis, it's not like I wanted to finish off the day by ceasing," he snaps. "But it's kind of an occupational hazard! It's part of the job; it's what we do!"
"What we do?!" she shouts, her eyes flying open wide with rage and bewilderment. "What we do?! You're the one who wanted to retire, Wally!"
"Yeah, and look how that turned out!" he yells back without thinking. "You just dump the life we made together to risk your life like an idiot, I basically die for a year, and now you're even more messed-up than you were before!"
The silence descends on them in a sudden, plunging drop. There's maybe a heartbeat between the moment he stops talking and the tremor that wrestles its way across her face, but it's exactly enough time for his ribs to clench up and his tongue to go numb and his whole body to bristle with a broiling and absolute panic.
"Artemis," he stutters out, chilled by the stillness in her eyes, the way her mouth thins and her jaw clamps and her nostrils flare. "No, stop; that's not what I—"
"Get out," she says. Her voice is low and disquieting and it may as well be a row of knuckles colliding with his stomach.
He shakes his head mutely, struggling to heave up some adequate words to eradicate the ones still hanging, black and bitter, in the air between them.
The corners of her mouth spasm at his refusal and she bends swiftly down to scoop up her clothes, and then she's already halfway to the door, a stomping flurry of aimless and ire-spurred stumbling. She yanks a t-shirt over her head without a bra and trips into a pair of jeans with the underwear still in place, and he doesn't have the sense to go after her until he's standing alone in the bedroom and hears the clank of keys being torn from the metal dish by the doorway.
He jerks back to attention and speeds out, still completely naked, to block her way. She keeps her dampened eyes focused, unblinking, on the wood of the door over his shoulder.
"Move," she snarls.
"I didn't mean it like that," he insists desperately. "Artemis, please; please, please, please, just wait one second and listen to me; I—"
She growls, low in her throat, and slams both of her palms into him before shoving him bodily aside, ramming him into the wall. The back of his head bangs against the coat rack and sends a flash of white over the backs of his eyes.
He really should be used to being knocked around, but there's something about being on the receiving end of Artemis's wrath that stuns him, that exacerbates the throbs to the point that they go purple and red and blind him. He clutches the back of his skull with one hand and hisses through his teeth, and when he wrenches his eyes open again, it's in time to see Artemis fling the door off the latch – her nose running, her cheeks scarlet, her hair still mussed and knotted – surge out through it, and slam it behind her.
"Artemis!" he yells to the empty apartment, but he makes no efforts to pursue her. "Just wait one…"
He pounds his fist against the wall behind him and shouts, wordlessly, in frustration, before slumping against it, sliding to the floor with a thud. He rests his elbows on his knees and grasps at his hair with his shaking hands, gritting his teeth together and hating himself.
"Second," he finishes in a useless mumble.
That's when Brucely, in the living room, blinks awake and spots him. His ears jounce up and his whole posture stiffening for several seconds before he lets out an ecstatic bark that nearly rattles the windows and gallops over, scrabbling claws and blundering, flailing legs.
He's in Wally's lap and snuffling at his face in an instant, his tail thundering against Wally's knees.
"Looks like I messed up, boy," Wally sighs when he can no longer ignore the unceasing licks being given to his face. "Hi, by the way. I'm alive. You miss me?"
Brucely woofs enthusiastically and Wally smiles ruefully at the dopey, overjoyed expression and lolling tongue.
"Did she?" he asks, quieter, even though it's stupid because dogs can't talk and magic isn't real and nothing in the world consigns itself to the miraculous no matter how much he wishes it would.
His eyes rove up to the apartment that had, only the night before, made him absolutely certain that he would never have anything resembling an appetite ever again. The walls are bare and dark and there is no color in it, save for the feeble string of paper lanterns over the couch in the living room, flickering from overuse in every color imaginable.
He gets to his feet, his palms sticking to the hardwood floor, and Brucely paces loyally around his ankles, staring up at him.
"Okay, boy," Wally murmurs. "I'm gonna get some pants on, and then I'm gonna forage around for some authentic Gotham City grease cuisine, and then I'm gonna get myself acquainted with this missing year. Sound like a plan?"
Brucely shakes himself out and slobbers with the motion. Wally snorts, running both of his hands back through his hair and halting them at the back of his neck, sighing.
"Guess I'll take that as a yes."
"Do you think it'll be enough?" she asked quietly, her eyes focused on the screens in front of her. She opened her mouth to continue, but the sound of an activated zeta tube silenced her, and she turned, surprised, to find the space that Wally had been occupying now empty.
"Recognized. Kid Flash. B03."
She had just a second before the light from the machine engulfed him altogether that his back was turned to her.
She stood there, her feet rooted firmly in place, her arms hanging at her sides, her throat closing in on itself. Something in her chest was simultaneously hiccuping into motion and irreversibly sinking, but she couldn't bring herself to move.
"Oh, no," she finally heard herself whisper, shaking her head and wrenching herself into motion. "No, you don't. Don't you dare."
Dick's hand grabbed her wrist before she reached the zeta tubes, and when she whirled accusatorially to face him, his solemn and sallow face beckoned her toward the bioship hangar. She was the first to board and the first to disembark, stung into numbness by the ravaging Arctic winds.
The sky is a rich, hot blue absolutely devoid of clouds. Downtown Gotham is unusually busy, its sidewalks crawling with window-shoppers and a few good old homeless lunatics, its avenues congested by honking Lexuses and sports cars, and the heat is already close to swallowing all of it whole.
Artemis hates it.
It takes her about three blocks to realize that, thanks to her reflection in a glass pane she passes, she isn't exactly dressed in the chicest of garments. She comes to a stiff halt, ignoring the way the sidewalk sears the soles of her feet, and scowls at herself.
Her hair is mussed and out of place, a few rumpled strands dangling past her nose. Thanks to the fact that she's not wearing a bra, even her loose shirt doesn't leave much to the imagination. Her fly is halfway open, there's a hickey on her shoulder, and her nose is scrunched with displeasure, disrupting her still-flushed cheeks.
"Tch," she spits out at herself before tossing her head, shoving her hair out of her face, and continuing on her way.
Thankfully, it's Gotham, so she doesn't get many strange looks for her attire, probably – she expects that some of the lingering, skeptical glances have a little more to do with her undoubtedly rage-contorted expression and tight fists. She probably looks like she's about to commit murder, but whatever; that's a standard weekend activity in this city.
She rounds a corner, storming past the café with intent and belligerency that clearly startles the outside diners, slams her bare feet onto a stoop five doors down, and crams her finger onto the buzzer three times.
"Jeez, it's about time," a feminine voice answers after a second. "I thought our friendship was dead to you, or something. Uh, why are you dressed like a frumpy fugitive?"
"You have ten seconds to open this door before I move on to my other magician sounding board," Artemis snarls.
"Betrayal!" Zatanna gasps, and Artemis hears a click. "Come on up, Prince Charming. Sorry I can't let down my hair."
Artemis rolls her eyes with a tight jaw and shoves the door open, her feet thundering on the carpeted surface of the stairs. She hates herself for feeling winded before she reaches the eighth floor, but she gulps down a breath and bounds up the rest of the way with gritted teeth. Zatanna is already standing in the open doorway to her flat halfway down the hall, one hand on her hip and the other grasping the doorknob.
"I figured I'd save my door the trouble of being kicked down," she comments. "Good news for you, though, is that I brought home an inhuman amount of Cadbury eggs."
Artemis narrows her eyes – somehow, despite the fact that her hair is pulled back in a ponytail and she's clad in a Green Lantern t-shirt and a pair of Gotham Academy sweatpants (which has always been highly suspicious, if you ask Artemis), Zatanna still manages to look like the infinitely more well-dressed of the two of them.
"Just get out of the way," Artemis growls. "I need to pace a few laps on your floor before I stop wanting to break everything I see."
"Whoa, message received," Zatanna comments, tossing up both of her hands in surrender and sidestepping to allow Artemis full entry into the flat.
Artemis marches in, her arms ramrod straight at her sides, not noticing Zatanna's exaggerated grimace at her state. She does as she'd said she would – she strides in circles around Zatanna's living room, grinding her teeth and muttering seditiously to herself, her legs slicing past the sagging purple couch and wicker chair and glass table laden in enough coffee table books about Italian cinema to sink a whole battalion. Zatanna watches her impartially, leaning against the now-closed door with one heel on the wood and her arms crossed at her chest.
"Um, not that this isn't super fun to watch, or anything," Zatanna finally says, "But I think you're going to wear a trench into the shag rug. The—" She winces when Artemis, seeming to ignore her, stomps furiously on the mentioned rug. "Very expensive byzantium shag rug. Artemis, sit down before I have to make you."
"You wouldn't," Artemis snarls threateningly.
Zatanna blows a strand of hair out of her face before flicking her wrist in Artemis's direction and muttering, "Tis nwod."
Artemis lets out a loud "oof" as she's knocked several feet backwards into the wicker chair, collapsing squarely into it. She groans loudly and struggles to stand up again, but her elbows stay stuck to the armrests and her butt to the cushion.
"I would," Zatanna retorts cheerily.
She flounces in, radiating self-satisfaction, before sitting primly on the edge of the couch, closest to Artemis. Artemis rolls her eyes hugely and sneers at the ceiling, dropping her head back.
"I hate you," she grumbles.
Zatanns shrugs. "Sweet, but… kind of irrelevant. What the heck is going on? Who let you out of the house in that?"
She points derisively to Artemis's get-up, eliciting another rotation of eyes.
"I mean, I'm assuming they're related, but—"
"Okay, you know how I hung up on you yesterday?" Artemis cuts in, but she doesn't give Zatanna the time to reply. "Well, guess who showed up outside my door ten seconds later! Yeah, the prodigal idiot. Really great of him to just drop in on me like nothing's happened, isn't it?"
"Well, I mean, for him, technically, it hasn't," Zatanna says quietly, but Artemis rants over her and doesn't hear it.
"He's sorry!" she barks. "Did I tell you that? None of this 'Artemis, he wanted me to tell you he loved you' crap – no, apparently now it's 'Artemis, he wanted me to tell you he was sorry.' Swell of him, huh? So we yell at each other a lot, kind of our norm, and then things go, uh, I don't know – things…"
She slows, sounding winded, and slackens slightly in the chair, her shaking fingers going to her forehead. She bites her lip.
"For… a while, Zee, it was like—" She scoffs in disgust at herself, looking down. "He managed to make me think that going back to the way things were wouldn't be so hard. I just kind of – switched off all the worrying and freaking out and remembered who he was, and that had… favorable results, I guess."
Zatanna's eyes widen, ecstatically scandalized.
"You've gotta be joking," she gasps. "Did you…" She lowers her voice. "Teg nwod dna ytri—"
"Yes!" Artemis snaps, managing to wrench her arms off of the chair enough to toss them in the air and strangle some invisible neck. "Yes, Zee, we did. Real mature and level-headed of us, right? Just jump right back into everything, no problem! How stupid do I have to be to think that's not going to go wrong?"
"Whoa, how wrong," Zatanna asks flatly, and her raised eyebrows immediately drop into an uncertain frown. "As in, like—"
"No, I mean… that part was… fine," Artemis flummoxes, glowering at her hands and shrugging jerkily. "Like, uh. Like usual." She gestures rapidly in frustration. "Ugh, look; that's not the point!"
"Oh great," Zatanna exclaims with a wince. "All of that and it's not even the point?"
"No," Artemis says darkly, fisting one hand into her hair and tugging at it, huffing out a breath through her flared nostrils. "But… I-I kinda woke up this morning and, uh, tried to kill him."
Zatanna visibly blanches.
"Please tell me that's the point," she says weakly.
Artemis snorts, but the sound is humorless.
"Uh, no again. The point is that I…" She gulps, releasing her hair and dropping the now-limp hand into her lap. "This whole thing is… too broken to even try fixing. We can't go back; not anymore, because I'm too screwed up."
"No, you're not—" Zatanna starts to counter.
"Yes, I am; he said so himself!" Artemis shouts, cutting the room into quiet. Her throat twinges on the sour aftertaste of the words, of the sentiment encased in them, and she slumps, shaking her head infinitesimally. "Guess it was only a matter of time, huh?"
"Can I please get a word in edgewise now?" Zatanna demands a bit hotly. "Because, I mean, if you just wanted to hear yourself rant, all you had to do was go stand in an alleyway."
Artemis settles churlishly into the cushion further, but says nothing, which Zatanna apparently takes as a sign to pinch the bridge of her nose and exhale sharply through her teeth.
"First of all," she says crisply. "I cannot believe you guys banged and you didn't call me immediatelyafterwards. Second, I'm sorry that you guys are fighting, but maybe if you just settle down and switch Tigress off for a second, which I know you can do, you'll figure out exactly what the problem is. Which brings me to my third point, and this is the important one, so please pay attention—"
She shifts forward, clasping her hands in her lap and giving the most earnest stare Artemis has ever seen, her clear blue eyes sincere and beseeching.
"Your problem," she tells her softly, "is that whole 'wanting to go back to the way things were' issue. Youcan't, Artemis. That's life. That's how it is now. You can't go back, and neither can he, but it's okay – because this isn't about going back. It's about going forward."
Artemis blinks at her, and her feverish heartbeat finally starts to calm. It's a little hard to register what Zatanna's saying, at first – her ears are still thundering with leftover rebellion from their encounter with Wally's harsh and blurted-out words – but it settles on her within a few moments. She curls and uncurls her fists.
"And I'm sure that whatever he said," Zatanna continues with the same unusually tender inflections, "he either didn't mean, or got misinterpreted on because you were looking for any excuse to run out of there. Which is totally fine, since, y'know, you've just gone through a year of basically switching personalities to cope with something that would've totally destroyed you if you hadn't, and it's not like you wanted Tigress being bedfellows with a nice guy like Wally, or whatever. But – and I can't believe I have to tell you this…"
She sighs, lowering her head to keep Artemis's eyes on hers when they start to stray.
"He'd never want to hurt you on purpose; you know that, right?" she asks. "He loves you so much it makes me want to puke. And the scale on your side is even, from what I remember."
Artemis folds her lips in tightly for a moment.
"Yeah," she whispers. "From what you remember."
"Listen to me," Zatanna orders, pointing a finger. "And don't get me wrong; I am just as unhappy with Wally Foot-In-Throat West as I am with you right now, but: He's freaked, too. Think about it. A whole year's gone by without him, and it's been a pretty huge year in terms of people's lives totally changing – and it doesn't feel like any time's passed for him. He's still expecting everything to be the same as it was because that's where he just came from. He came from June 20, 2016, and now – you're hiding behind a different person, Dick's off doing who knows what, his parents are probably totally destroyed and still trying to fight their way back from being empty nesters, and I've got bangs now!" She gestures illustratively to her face, and only then does Artemis notice the sleek, straight curtain that's now cut across her forehead. "It's a lot for a guy to take in, especially a guy whose stupid brain moves as fast as Wally's, and then for you to wake him up with a knife to the throat instead of, I don't know, like fifty waffles? Not exactly the best 'welcome home' present ever, especially when he doesn't feel like he ever left home in the first place."
"I can't control it!" Artemis retorts, ignoring the way that Zatanna's accusation had blasted through her like a bullet. "I spent months on that stupid submarine training myself to be ready to fight off an attack at any second, and then I have to put the whole readjusting thing on hold so I can use whatever I became down there to my advantage when my—when Wally…"
She doesn't know why she can't finish. She bites her lower lip, hard, until it sends a blossoming of pain through her skin, and roughly blinks back the moistness welling up behind her eyelids. Zatanna's shoulders sag with resignation, but her mouth is still hewn with resolve.
"Like I said," she repeats, cracking her neck and slowly, cautiously, reaching an ungloved hand over to clasp Artemis's. "Going back… isn't an option anymore. Things might've been easier, happier, better then; I don't know and you shouldn't care, because they're over." She adjusts slightly, and then her face loosens as something occurs to her. "You know that part in Alice in Wonderland – duh, of course you do; it's rhetorical – where she comes back from her little jaunt a completely different person, and she says, 'I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then?'"
Artemis blinks in bewilderment at the fact that Zatanna has just dredged up the very passage that had squirmed through the back of her skull the night before, as Wally had stared her down with tears in his eyes.
"That's you. You can't go back; you have to go forward. And Wally's… a fast guy. He might be a pretty good asset to have in your lane on the way there, is all I'm saying."
Artemis marvels at her, scoffing quietly.
"Anything else?" she asks with a trickle of cynicism.
Zatanna flops back on the couch, her bare feet swinging into the air with the motion.
"Yeah," she says. "You're really, really dumb. That's it. So how about we get into those Cadbury eggs?"
Artemis toys absentmindedly with a loose string on the chair cushion – bright red, and frayed at the end, but still sturdy and sleek in her fingers despite its worn-down ends.
"Sounds like a plan," she mutters, but not before she detaches herself from the chair, crosses the floor on shuffling knees, and pulls Zatanna into an immediately mutual hug.
"You have been way overdue for one of these, girlfriend," Zatanna comments with a wobbly laugh.
Artemis nods, squeezing her fleetingly, gratefully.
"You have no idea."
"You have been way overdue for one of those," Dick quips as Wally finishes the last of his triple-decker bacon-and-nacho cheeseburger.
"You have no idea," Wally says, slumping back in the booth with a satisfied burp.
Dick wrinkles his nose.
"And, uh, right now, you're overdue for an 'excuse me.'" He sniffs. "Just because we're not eating out of Bruce's dining room doesn't mean you get to act like a total peasa—"
"Jeez, excuse me," Wally groans, throwing his hands up in surrender. "Nice to know that a year of having to live without me has given you a little incentive to ease up and get off my case."
"Please," Dick retorts. "Not even ceasing can give you that luxury."
Wally chuckles in a subdued hum and reaches forward to fiddle with the corner of his crumpled napkin. The plexiglass window of the diner turns the sunlight outside to white illumination for the checkered linoleum floor and torn red leather booths. Shadows pass over the surface of the salt-and-pepper-dusted table, rippling on the contours of Wally's burger wrapper.
"So, uh, do I have to play twenty questions to figure out what you screwed up, or can you just tell me?" Dick asks matter-of-factly, leaning forward and folding his hands on the table.
Wally starts, staring in dumbfoundedly at him.
"I didn't say anything about screwing anything up," he splutters.
"Yeah, not in so many words, but I get the funny feeling that if you're not spending some quality time with our resident crossbow-wielding assassin after a few months of separation, you're either a really good friend, or you screwed something up." At Wally's still-baffled expression, Dick flashes him a dazzling grin. "Hey, I'm a detective. Do any of you people know what that means?"
"Well, I mean, uh…" Wally rubs the back of his neck, biting the inside of his cheek. "It's… complicated."
"Dude, I'm the king of complicated; have you seen the way I interact with Barbara?" Dick retorts in an instant. "Talk to me. You're normally so good at it."
"It just sounds ridiculous and terrible when I say it out loud," Wally whines.
"Please. I live for that kinda stuff." Dick snickers. The corners of his clear blue eyes crinkle together with amusement, but even their mischievous twinkle still leaves room for the earnestness shifting in their depths. "Just spill, Wally. How bad can it be?"
"I… I told Artemis she was messed up," Wally blurts out. "After she, uh, tried to slit my throat, but that's not important."
"Of course," Dick deadpans, leaning back to look at the ceiling. "She almost splits open your jugular and the thing you're worried about is the fact that you said the worst possible thing to her."
Wally pulls a pained face.
"Th…anks, buddy," he grinds out, dropping his forehead onto the table with a loud clunk that garners several skeptical stares (all of which Dick magnificently ignores). "Hit the nail on the head. But listen, I – I didn't mean it like, messed up, like a problem; like she was some kind of head case I didn't trust to let me live through the morning; I meant… I don't know what I meant."
He grips his head at either side and muffles his groans on the table.
"Have you considered, I don't know, telling her this?" Dick suggests dryly, playing with the leftover toothpick from his tuna melt. "I thought that years of experience taught you that talking things out with Artemis is always the way to go."
"I don't know," Wally mutters. "There was just… there was something about her face. The way she lookedat me, after I said it. I feel like I screwed things up for real, for good."
"That would definitely be impressive," Dick says. "Especially considering exactly how much work it would take on your part to make her have even the tiniest bone of contention with you after she's been all torn up over you for the past year."
"Isn't that enough?" Wally demands. "Dick, she saw me come back in the Arctic and she bolted. I had to get her address from you. She's… it's great that I'm back, and all, but… maybe she…"
He runs a hand through his hair, halting it at the back of his skull and gazing, half-lidded and forlorn, at the silver napkin dispenser.
"Adapted," he finishes in a resigned mutter.
"Yeah, you know how she pulled that off?" Dick cracks his knuckles calmly. "By dragging Tigress back into the front lines. Artemis is sitting back somewhere waiting for Tigress's shift to be over. And once it is, I'm sure that calling her 'messed-up' won't be much more than a tiny bump on the road back to being repulsive."
"You're gonna have to find someone else to gross you out now, looks like." Wally mopes, flicking at a stray French fry. "Since she's probably not even gonna look at me now. I crossed a line, Dick. I made her think that I… that she was bad, somehow, and I was supposed to be the one person she could come back to who would always be there to remind her that she wasn't. That she never had been. And now she must think I'm feeling sorry for her and that's the only reason I've stuck around this long, and just…"
He trails off, shoving his palms onto his tightly closed eyes and baring his teeth in miserable frustration. He rubs at his eyes until the lids turn red and sighs erratically, hanging his head.
"It's like I trip once," he croaks. "For maybe a few seconds… and once I manage to get my footing back again, she's gone. Replaced by this… completely different person, and I hate feeling like I'm responsible for whatever it is she's apparently had to 'become' since I, uh, ceased." He shakes his head. "Man, that is weird to say. And scientifically impossible, actually, if we wanna get into it—"
"We don't," Dick assures him with a simper.
"Great; way to take away the one thing I'm actually guaranteed not to screw up talking about," Wally grumbles before letting out a loud groan, scrubbing his hands over his face. "I hate this. I hate myself."
"Cry me a river," Dick mutters, reaching across the table to clap him on the shoulder. "Wally, seriously? Snap out of it. You're gonna be okay; you both are; it's what you do."
"It's what we used to do!" Wally corrects him. "In case you hadn't noticed, things are a little different now!"
"Yeah, which is why going back to the way they were isn't an option," Dick says, pointing a finger at him. "But going forward is, right? Look, if you keep trying to somehow turn back time so that everything's the same as it used to be, you're just gonna be fighting a losing battle. Trust me, Wally." His voice quiets, and his eyes stray downwards with a sudden disconsolate glimmer in them. "I know. I know what happens when you try to go back instead of… learning to accept where you are. It just slows you down and makes things worse."
"I'm—" Wally's breath hitches and he scratches at his wrist to distract his hands from wanting, inexplicably, to clasp Dick's. "I'm sorry; I didn't mean—"
"What're you sorry for?" Dick asks airily, now promptly and perfectly back to his usual façade. "The past is the past, dude; I've learned to take it in stride. You and Artemis are never gonna be exactly the same as you used to be. You guys were probably all ready to just pick up where you left off the second she got back from that mission, but even then, things wouldn't've been completely perfect."
"I'm not asking for perfect," Wally sighs, slumping forward and propping his temple up by the heel of his palm. "I just… I'm just asking for okay. You know? I just want her – us – to be okay."
"Then tell her that," Dick says with a wave of his hand. "Man, if I had a nickel for every time I had to saythat to you, Wayne Manor would look like a shanty, is all I'm saying." He rests his chin in his palm, glancing sideways out the window and blowing some loose hair out of his face. "You just need to sit down and talk to her. Take things slow. I've got even money going with Zee that you guys have already fornicated withgreat enthusiasm, if you know what I mean—"
Wally splutters, his ears going scarlet.
"—which is, y'know, fine and all," Dick continues undaunted, "But now that you've had your fun, it's time to stick your feet in the nasty stuff. And probably brush up on your self-defense lessons, at least until you can find a place to sleep that doesn't risk evisceration with your morning waffles."
"I'm not leaving her," Wally insists, though his ears are still pink. "Are you kidding? I don't want her sleeping in that place by herself."
"I'm pretty sure she can take care of herself." Dick snorts. "Just let things… settle. Figure out the right things to say instead of just running your mouth. In the meantime, we might have an opening on the Team for you."
Wally's face splits into an immediate, thrilled grin that admittedly surprises him.
"That's…" He shakes his head with a chuckle. "That might be kinda good, actually."
If his smile had been ebullient, it looks like the dimmest expression in the world compared to Dick's.
"You're serious?" he asks giddily. "Dude, I thought I was gonna have to like, twist your arm and hold your Oreos hostage!"
"First of all, I'm pretty sure my Oreos have gone a little stale," Wally replies. "And second of all… I dunno."
He thinks back to Artemis's words the night before, and to Paris, to the whirling winds of the empty city tousling her hair and crawling up his back. He thinks back to the glowing red impression the burning ruins of Mt. Justice had made on the dark Happy Harbor sky. He thinks back to the summit, to true friends, to the natural energy bounding through his blurring limbs as he sped circles around every guard he could find. He thinks back to running his thumbs over the scarlet goggles in the bathroom, just a few hours before deploying to Metropolis, and locking eyes with himself in the mirror to find a scrawny, idealistic sixteen-year-old grinning back at him.
"I feel like it'd do me some good," he finishes with quirked lips. "But, uh… I might have to think of a new alias. Since the yellow and red does such wonders for Bart's stature, and all."
"I wouldn't worry about that just yet," Dick replies. "Waiter, check please. He'll pay."
Wally rolls his eyes. "Of course. My millionaire best friend still makes me pay for the lunch dates."
"And you're always such a gentleman about it." Dick sniggers, filled with mirth and liberation. Wally shakes his head in fond disbelief when the waiter drops the bill in front of him, but pulls it over, rifling around in his pocket for the twenty his mother had given him the day before.
"I missed you, dude," Wally mutters after a time, finally looking up to meet Dick's eye with a lopsided smile.
"Uh, it hasn't been that long, by your calendar—"
"No, I mean…" Wally sighs, folding his arms loosely and resting his elbows on the table. "I missed… seeing you act like yourself. Being in charge of the Team would've been great for you if it'd gone on at anyother time, and just – seeing you keeping the lid on all those secrets and lies and that whole insane plan… I don't know. It kinda sucked, watching that eat you up." His smile widens warmly. "But it's… nice to have you back. After all of this."
"Yeah," Dick agrees, quiet, rueful (but at ease). "Looks like we can finally put a ribbon on this thing. And for what it's worth… I missed you, too."
"Aw, shucks," Wally laughs halfheartedly, but Dick shakes his head.
"I did, Wally," he insists, sounding, suddenly, almost hoarse. "More than you kn… more than I everthought I would." He snorts. "Pretty pathetic, I know."
"Nah," Wally denies with a shake of his head.
"Guess it happens to the best of us," Dick sighs. "I mean, what do you expect, when we lose somebody likeyou? The biggest idiot I've ever met and you're still the glue that holds us all together. You know what the stupidest thing about all that is, though?"
Wally, having been distracted by the way that the bright red cellophane on the toothpick reflects on the table in a dozen fragmented particles of color and light, absentmindedly responds at first.
"Nope; what?" he says before returning his attention to the conversation.
Dick glances up with certainty and looks him in the eye.
"That you don't even know it."
In retrospect, Wally should have foreseen that any one-on-one reunion with Bart would be detrimental to his lung capacity.
It's been close to four minutes and, based on his count, sixteen seconds, and Bart still hasn't relinquished his (extremely tight, extremely confining) hold around Wally's arms and waist. The younger boy's face is squished into Wally's shirt and his whole body is vibrating with what Wally can only (even in his oxygen-deprived state) describe as sheer happiness.
Jay and Joan's living room is as immaculate as always, warm colors and high couches and the familiar ticking grandfather clock that had once looked like the tallest thing in the world to a young Wally.
"I'msogladyou'realiveI'msogladyou'realive," Bart babbles, his voice buzzing with the movement of his body. "You'realiveyou'realiveyou'realiveyou'realive—"
"Yeah, but I won't be for long if you don't—hnk—ease up a little," Wally wheezes, but Bart shakes his head fiercely against his chest.
"Inyourdreams," he retorts, though his voice is, blessedly, a bit slower. "ThishasbeentheworstyearofmylifeImissedyousomuch—"
"Bart," Wally croaks, and he's positive that he's turning blue. He manages to wrench one arm free enough to pry Bart off of him, gasping loudly at his freedom and bracing himself on his knee, coughing. When Bart starts toward him again, he puts up a finger. "Do not touch me. You've fulfilled your hug quota for the next five hundred years."
"Come onnn," Bart whines. "Listen here, first cousin once-removed, old buddy, old pal, my hero, crashest ghost in the universe – I've had to deal with a whole year of thinking it's my fault that you're even dead to begin with; d'you know how long that is in speedster time? Like ten gazillion light years!"
"Whoa, whoa," Wally halts him, finally straightening up and frowning (and only sort of at the fact that Bart seems to have gone through a growth spurt in his absence, not to mention the fact that his once boyish face is now slightly more chiseled and his voice isn't cracking as much). "What do you mean, your fault? You didn't do anything."
"Uh, yeah, duh I didn't do anything; that was the problem!" Bart exclaims, throwing his hands out before sighing and dropping them again. "I could've… done something. Could've helped you. Instead I just stood there. Less than two weeks later and I'm running around in a costume I don't deserve."
"Hey," Wally chides him, jabbing a finger in his direction. "I wanted you to have that costume; remember what I said at the summit?"
"Yeah, of course I do!" Bart retorts. "But the conditions of that deal didn't have anything to do with youdying; I thought you'd still be… around, so I wouldn't be a total fraud!"
"A fraud?" Wally frowns, his heart sinking at the sight of Bart's darkened expression, his slightly running nose. "Bart, what're you—"
"It was like I was stomping around trying to be somebody everyone knew I wasn't," Bart mumbles, sniffing. "Artemis kept… thinking I was you if she wasn't looking hard enough. Sometimes she'd even call me Wally, if I'd get hurt. So I started keeping the dumb suit on stealth mode, because at least that way I wasn't a complete sham, but it's not like I could just forget the fact that I was a cheap replacement for the real thing."
Wally gawks unabashedly at him.
"I, uh, honestly don't know whether to be flattered or offended," he says after a time. "A cheap replacement? Bart, you're the fastest out of all of us – you could lap me a dozen times with your hands behind your back! Probably going backwards! On water! What part of that says 'cheap replacement?' If anything, you were an improvement!"
Bart's chin jerks up and Wally gives an imperceptible start at the sight of his face: it's flushed, and twisted, and dampened by messy trails of overflowing tears.
"You're so stupid!" Bart shouts at the top of his lungs. Wally jumps, admittedly and embarrassingly terrified at the potent, wrathful volume. "Who cares if you're not as fast as we are?! You saved the stupid world, didn't you?! You stopped the MFD, didn't you?! And by the way, it turns out Luthor was trying to off me andgramps, so if you hadn't been there, we'd've both been dead! How much of the mode are you even on? It's not a stupid contest! You're better than both of us put together and you know it, so just – shut up and stop it!"
"Buddy," Wally says quietly, hunkering down to one knee and reaching forward to loosely grasp Bart's now-shaking upper arms, to try to still his quivering, bitten-down lower lip and dribbling nose. "Hey, I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
Bart shoves him roughly off. It takes every ounce of resolve that Wally has not to visibly wince from the qualm in his throat, and his arms go to hang limply at his sides, and his stomach hardens with contrition. He gulps and looks to the rug, to the fading stains and loose threads, his fingers curling loosely.
The silence is abruptly eradicated by a sudden blast of air in his face, and there's a noticeable delay in his reaction time to noticing that Bart's arms have flung themselves around his neck and are presently strangling him with relief again.
"You really gotta make up your mind," Wally chokes, but he ropes Bart into a reciprocal hug anyway, concentrating on the holes in the cottage cheese ceiling to keep himself from passing out.
"Please," Bart whispers, in a voice as flimsy and uncertain as a child's, "Please don't leave again."
Wally softens. He's seen his fair share of Bart's slips in persona, gotten a few glimpses into the fragmented and wilting shell around which Impulse was built, not just for disguising, but for forgetting. Recognizing Bart's broken whimper for what it is, he holds him more tightly, sighing and rubbing circles onto his back.
"I mean, I can't make any promises, but… I'll make an active effort."
Bart weakly punches him in the shoulder with a hiccup.
"Fine," he rasps, sagging. "Instead you can just promise me that you'll quit moding yourself. You're better than that."
"Jeez, Bart," Wally mutters, drawing slightly away and bracing Bart at the shoulders. "Who gave you permission to get all… mature and wise and cool while I was gone?"
Bart's smile wobbles slightly, but it's still there, and it makes Wally's chest give off a spark of satisfaction.
"Dunno," he mumbles, wiping his nose noisily. "I had big shoes to fill."
Wally expels a quiet laugh through his nose and ruffles Bart's hair, which causes the younger boy to snicker and, after a second, flail out of reach.
"Well, you, uh… you did fine," Wally tells him genuinely. "Great, even."
"Thanks." Bart's grin fades slightly, but his eyes are no longer chilled or stony. He bites his lip apprehensively for a second before speaking. "So what… I mean, where did you go?"
"Wow," Wally mutters, not unkindly. "You just… jump right on in there, don't you."
"Nobody's asked you, have they?" Bart stands, moving to sit on the couch, and Wally automatically joins him. The cushions smell like oatmeal and lavender, the same way they always have.
"Nah," he mumbles. "I mean, uh… I guess I kinda told Artemis some stuff, but not anything specific. I didn't wanna freak her out."
"A wise choice." Bart scratches his head. "I just, uh… it sounds like it was kind of… a speedster thing. So, y'know, if you wanna get it off your chest, I might get it better than the average slowpoke."
Wally scoffs, but with amusement rather than derision. "Yeah, maybe."
Bart watches him expectantly. Wally leans back on the couch, folding his arms at his chest and gazing distantly at the ceiling.
The memory starts to come: of the world, white and brilliant and impossible to see, blazing past him in indistinct but impossibly beautiful streaks. Of his chest, ablaze with exhaustion and shoved mercilessly to its limit. Of his eyes, stinging and watering even behind the protection of the goggle lenses; of his feet, numb with motion, unstoppable; of the power and the loss of direction coursing through him as if he was a divining rod aimed for glory. Of losing track of time, and of how many times his heels would hit the ground made of air he couldn't reach, until, on occasion, for instants that he barely remembered after they were done shooting past him, he'd remember blonde hair or bitten fingernails or a limber silhouette against the moonlight, and a name would come out of him, a name he was both far too conscious of and inexplicably unfamiliar with, and she'd turn her head or her breath would catch but then he would be gone again, hurtling through the void, until a fierce squall of frigid air slammed into him and he was on all fours in the snow, already rapidly forgetting the journey he'd just spent a few seconds taking.
The place had been filled with voices and tears and shouting, Christmas lights and subway signs and sidewalks, fireflies, baseball fields, earthquakes and rubble and thunderstorms and quiet living rooms, all of the scraps of carpet his feet would never touch again. No one had said his name, but they'd all been thinking it at him, alternately crushing him and shoving him onwards.
"It was fast," he hears himself murmur. "So fast it scared me. It was like everything I was… all of myspeed… came from there. Every second I'd ever lived was in there, going past me, and no matter how fast I ran, it kept trying to make me go faster. And I didn't feel that different, coming out, but at the same time – everything's even slower now than it was before, but it's not like I'm not going at the same pace; it's… like I learned how to stand still again, to help myself learn to go faster."
He shakes his head. "It doesn't make any sense."
"So it was an alternate dimension for speedies," Bart summarizes, tapping his chin. "Hermano. I think you might've discovered a new plane." He sits bolt upright, beaming in excitement and bouncing. "Dudedudedude, what're you gonna call it? Huh? You gotta name it!"
Wally snorts and rolls his eyes, but humors him regardless.
"Think I'll call it… the Speedway," he says after a time, gesturing grandly as though envisioning a marquee.
Bart brays out a laugh. "That is so lame. How about the Speed… 'Force?'"
Wally lets out a tch sound. "Speaking of lame! See, kid; this is why we don't leave you in charge of the christenings. That's my area of expertise."
"Yeah, I can totally see that," Bart retorts. "Since 'Kid Flash' is such an awesome alias."
"Hey," Wally snaps with furrowed eyebrows. "For your information—"
Before he can reach another syllable, Bart has zipped up and sped out of the room, down the hallway, and he's back in again in less than the blink of an eye.
"—that name is awesome," Wally finishes primly.
His eyes are drawn to the folded gold-and-scarlet Kevlar in Bart's hands. They widen with astonishment.
"Whoa, Bart, I can't—"
"Yeah, so awesome that maybe it's time you took it back for a while," Bart talks over him, extending his arms toward Wally, who's still seated on the couch. The goggles glint on top of them.
"I can't," Wally repeats, shaking his head.
Bart rolls his eyes hugely and drops the suit in Wally's lap. The goggles land against his palm and he glances down at them, lifting them slightly, frowning at the way they glisten, as though untouched.
"I'm…" The words catch under his tongue and he looks back to Bart, helplessly holding up the goggles. "Are you… sure?"
"Yeah," Bart affirms, closing his hand around the goggles in Wally's palm to keep them there. "I don't think I'm set for the big leagues yet anyway. Plus, your costume gives me wedgies."
Wally's half-lidded smile is a little rueful, but fond. He curls his fingers around the goggles and nods.
"It kinda does tend to do that. So…" He clears his throat. "You gotta come up with some awesome new name of your own now, or…?"
"Eh, think I'll stick with Impulse." Bart stretches. "Suits me a little better anyway. For now." He freezes, and beams, realizing his genius. "Get it? Suits? Ha, ha!"
"Yeah," Wally murmurs, grinning at the buoyant pride swelling up within him. "I do."