A Man Gone with the Wind

It wasn't all that cold, but Bludhaven's damp chill had a way of wrapping itself around a person's bones.

Wally pulled the coat closer around himself as Dick made his way to the edge of the building's roof, the view of the city stretching out before them like a child's toy car-mat.

The tiny lights of cars moved lazily through the streets, no one bothering to rush at such a late hour.

A couple staggered by on the sidewalk below, the faint sound of their drunken laughter echoing up to Dick and Wally's rooftop vantage point.

Dick watched them go, like he wished he could shadow them home. Make sure they got there safe.

It was peaceful, despite the city's reputation.

Wally found himself glad he'd decided to talk outside the apartment. Not only because he didn't want to wake up the others, but because his heart felt a little more settled in the open air.

It seemed the setting was having a similar affect on Dick, his hands no longer clenched fiercely in Kaldur's coat pockets.

"I've always liked rooftops," the vigilante said, as if reading Wally's mind and offering an explanation. "Something about being high-up, I guess."

Wally glanced down at the street below, a rush of vertigo spreading up through his stomach. He took a quick step back. "Well, I don't. I prefer my feet on solid ground."

"This is solid ground," Dick hopped up onto the blocky concrete rail surrounding the edge of the roof. Wally felt his entire soul leave his body in a gust of air. "Solid enough."

He stomped up and down, seemingly unaware that he was performing a dangerous balancing act. Dick stuck his hands out, like a scarecrow, and lifted one foot off the concrete.

His damaged ankle trembled; body clearly wracked by the strain of his injuries. It was almost as if he was proving something to himself, proving everything still worked.

Wally, on the other hand, almost died. Forget his soul, his entire brain just leaked out through his ears and dripped onto the pavement.

Dick was going to be the death of him. The death of all of them.

"Please…don't do that," he said, pulling back his hands in an aborted grab at Dick's stolen coattails.

Dick glanced over his shoulder at Wally like he'd just said something offensive. "I'm not going to fall. I've been balancing like this longer than you've been alive, Flash-Boy. A little sprained bone isn't gonna slow me down."

The speedster swallowed thickly. It was unsettling being with a non-powered person who had absolutely zero regard for their own wellbeing. At least if Superman fell off a roof, he could fly back up. "I am older than you. Also, please get down."

"Oh," Dick slung his head back, staring up at the smoggy sky in mock-contemplation. "I guess you are older. Oops."

Wally narrowed his eyes at the other man's unrepentant tone. Jerk, he was enjoying Wally's pain, wasn't he?

He hopped down, staggering once before quickly righting himself, and Wally sagged backwards. Were his knees shaking? His knees felt like they were shaking. "I appreciate you exercising your freedom or whatever, but please never do that again."

"This," Dick gestured at the roof, "is quite literally my night-job. Trust me when I say I know what I'm doing."

"Still," Wally took a hesitant step towards the edge, glanced down, and immediately ducked away again. "I would rather not scrape your bone-matter off the pavement tonight."

He grinned that evil grin Wally was really beginning to hate. "But tomorrow you wouldn't mind scraping it off? I'll keep that in mind."

"Well I changed my mind. I should've pushed you over the edge while I had the chance."

"Nah," he sank to the ground, pulling his knees up and resting his chin in the palm of his hand. "You love me."

Wally joined him, ignoring the concrete that dug uncomfortably into his back and the screaming death-drop behind him. "'Love' is a strong word. I'd say, 'mildly less annoyed with you than I used to be'."

"Mhm."

"It's true."

"Mhmm."

Wally nudged the other man with his elbow, tilting his head back so he could look up at the sky. Grey clouds rolled by, obscuring the stars. "You're alright, I guess."

Dick's laugh was reminiscent of the first time Wally had met him, the cackle they'd heard back in the warehouse parking lot, when the Team had stumbled upon him getting bandaged behind a patrol car.

It felt like years ago.

Back when Dick had just been a detective and this whole mystery a weekend-mission.

He sighed, closing his eyes as he felt the wind in his hair. It tickled at the nape of his neck, drying the nervous sweat along the knobs of his spine.

"So," Dick's voice was almost swept away by the wind. Wally had to lean towards the other man to catch it. "Do you. . .have a problem with me?"

The speedster didn't even have to think about it. "Not with you, no." He shifted, easing his back against the cement. "Maybe with your methods."

"My methods?" Wally didn't have to look to know Dick was crinkling his nose. "Like being a cop? Because I really don't agree with some of the methods in place either, if that's what you're worried about. In fact—"

"No, no," Wally waved Dick's concern away. "Your other job, the vigilantism. It bothers me, a little bit. Just because of how I was raised. I think. Maybe."

"Oh." The other man tilted his head back too, staring up at the smoggy skyline like he could see stars behind the noxious fumes. "That makes sense, I guess. I imagine being raised by heroes would colour how I viewed vigilantism."

Wally frowned at him. "I wasn't raised by heroes."

For the first time since Wally had met him, Dick looked surprised. That, or he just wasn't disguising his facial expressions from them anymore. "What?"

"I wasn't raised by heroes," Wally repeated. "C'mon, man, I thought you knew everything about us. Whatever happened to the 'all-knowing-all-seeing Man-Bat'?" He made finger quotes, pitching his voice lower.

Dick snorted. "Bruce is far from 'all knowing'. Did you know it took him almost an entire year to figure out the Flash's identity because—" he warped his voice into an alarmingly accurate mockery of Wayne's. A chill ran down Wally's spine. "Barry Allen was just a small-time forensic student, and surely he couldn't get all honours in forensics while also being the fastest hero alive. Almost drove Bruce crazy."

Wally laughed. "I didn't know that. I'll be sure to tell Uncle Barry when," it occurred to him, then, that he'd probably never get the chance to tell Barry about this. Not if they were keeping Dick's alter-ego a secret. "Uh, I mean…"

"Yeah," Dick smiled. It had a soft, borderline hopeful twist to it. "That'd be neat."

The reality of such a scenario ever happening was extremely unlikely, but Wally still found himself smiling back. "Yeah. It kinda would be, wouldn't it."

They were both silent for a moment, lost in their own imaginings, when Wally abruptly remembered the reason they'd gone up to the roof in the first place. "Ah, shi—uh, damn, I mean…uh…" He facepalmed. "Shoot."

Dick just laughed his witchy laugh again. Seriously, if the guy ever needed an alternate career, voice acting would be the way to go. "I don't care if you swear, Wally. My ears won't bleed."

"I know, but we've gotta maintain our Teen Audiences rating."

"Our what?"

Wally waved him off. "Nothing, nothing. I am sorry about earlier though, downstairs. When I said that stuff." He glanced down at his hands, suddenly finding Dick's brilliant blue eye-contact uncomfortable. "I read the news articles about you. I know you didn't have a 'silver spoon' in your mouth, or whatever it is I said earlier. That was a jerkish thing to do."

"Ah," Apparently Dick suddenly found his own hands incredibly interesting, too. "I guess everyone on the team probably knows about me. I forget, sometimes, that it's all just out there."

"It's not, though." Wally glanced up at him again. "I mean, the bare-bones of the story might be out there, but not your experiences. Not what you thought, or what your memories might look like."

Dick was looking at him, eyes boring into the side of his face. For a second, Wally was worried he'd said something wrong (wouldn't be the first time), but then the other man's face broke out into a quiet smile.

"I guess you're right. When you put it that way," the smile transformed into a smirk, one that had Wally's danger-senses tingling, "my tragic, orphan-child backstory is still a deep dark secret."

The speedster choked on his own spit, jerking his head away so he could cough into his closed fist. "Your words, not mine."

Dick's chuckle was downright evil. Wally was beginning to understand how the first Robin had gotten his terrifying reputation.

They watched a plane make its steady way across the sky, barely visible in the low hanging clouds, then Dick was speaking again.

"And it's fine, what you said earlier." He shot Wally a toothy grin, the expression pulling at his bruised eye. His injuries looked even worse in the darkness, the bags under his eyes packed for a one-way trip. "I've heard way worse than that."

The speedster winced. "No, I shouldn't have said that stuff. Sometimes my tongue gets ahead of my—" he frowned, "head."

"It's actually kind of nice."

Wally raised an eyebrow at him. "Getting trash-talked is nice? Can't say I relate."

Dick snorted. "No. Being around someone who just says what they mean. No political shenanigans or smooth-talking or old men being all 'say helloto Bruce for me, kid, I've got a proposal I want him to take a look at'."

"I guess that makes sense." Wally thought back to the open honestly in the Allen-West household. He couldn't imagine how different he might've been without it. "In that case, I can trash-talk you anytime. For a small fee, of course."

Dick barked a laugh. It rang out across the rooftop, loud in the night's silence. "I appreciate it. I'll use Bruce's credit card, give you a thousand-dollar-tip."

"What? Your desk-jockey job in New Jersey's most crime-ridden city not paying well enough for your own tips?" Wally scoffed, mock outraged. "Preposterous."

Dick tsked. "With how many times I have to repair my suit? Hardly."

Wally frowned, thinking back to the swathe of dark fabric Dick had dragged himself back to the apartment in.

He still wasn't sure he understood.

"Why'd you do it?" He asked, voice soft in the stillness of the rooftop. "I mean, why would you become 'Nightwing'? You could've left the whole vigilante thing behind, just done good work as a cop."

At first, he thought Dick wasn't going to answer (or that he was going to tell a lie) but then the other man's lips thinned, and he shook his head, like he was banishing someone else's voice from his mind. "It's complicated, and a really long story, but the short version is that I wanted to help people in a way the law couldn't. Bruce gave me a way to do that."

"He stuck you, a child, in a bedazzled, traffic-light coloured suit and popped you out into a crime-ridden alley? For the 'greater good'?"

Dick flushed, hands moving in an aborted embarrassed twitch. "It wasn't bedazzled. And I followed him, the first night. He was very much against sending me out at first, believe it or not."

It was actually somewhat of a relief to hear that Bruce hadn't been all 'gung-ho' about making a child into a vigilante. "Still," he said, "you were pretty young."

"So were you," Dick shot back. "You were fourteen when you first debuted. That's definitely young, and definitely still the age of a minor who can't calculate their own taxes."

Wally frowned. "Hey, I could totally do my own taxes at fourteen. If I'd had them, which I didn't."

Dick pointed an accusing finger at him, "You were also a child prodigy though, so silence."

"So were you," he muttered petulantly. "But I guess you have a point. We were both kids, I just happened to get scouted by the Justice League instead of a middle-aged goth."

"Ha. Bruce would hate that." Dick grinned. "Almost makes me wish I could tell him."

"Why can't you? You guys on the outs or something?" He'd meant it half as a joke and half as an in to fish for information, but the other man's expression pinched in a clear sign of discomfort.

"I think that's a story for another time." Dick yawned, narrowly avoiding smacking Wally in the head as he stretched. The yawn was clearly fake, but Wally decided he'd let it slide. For now. "It would take too long and I'm exhausted."

"I respect that." Wally fought the urge to yawn as well. "If I'm tired, you probably feel like you got hit by a truck."

Dick rubbed at his ribs, like they were bothering him, "A small truck, but yes."

Wally laughed, then slowly peeled himself off the pavement and to his feet. He offered Dick a hand, pretending not to notice how the other man was intently studying his face. "So, we're good then?"

Whatever Dick had been looking for in his expression, he must've found it. His hand met Wally's and the speedster helped him up, supporting him until he'd found his one-legged balance again.

With his hand still on Dick's back, they headed towards the roof exit and their slumbering team.

After coming back down from the roof last night, Wally had fallen asleep almost immediately.

He'd given Dick one last look to make sure the other man hadn't pulled a martyr and laid on the floor instead of the couch he'd been offered, then tumbled into unconsciousness, the last thing he saw being Artemis' closed eyes and pale face.

He'd been in the middle of a bizarrely detailed dream about traffic lights when someone was suddenly shaking him awake.

"M'wha?" He said eloquently, still trying to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth.

"Wally, he's gone. Get up." The hands shook him again, but it was the words that had Wally shooting upright, his blanket tumbling off him in a heap.

"What? Who's gone?"

"Dick," Artemis pulled her hands back from where she'd been rattling the brains out of him. "I woke up a few minutes ago but the couch was already empty by then."

Conner, with his stupidly good hearing, stuck his head out from under he and M'gann's blanket pile, blinked at them, blinked in the direction of the apartment door, nodded, then promptly gone back to sleep.

Artemis launched Wally's pillow at him. She was. . .violent, in the mornings. And in the afternoon. And the evenings.

Really, she was just violent all the time.

"This isn't funny," she grabbed a chunk of Wally's hair and gave it a surprisingly gentle tug. "We have to find him."

"Hey," Wally said as he watched his pillow fly through the air and get assimilated into Conner's blanket pile. "I wasn't done with that."

She poked him in the chest. Did her harassment know no bounds? "Yes, you were. Now get up and help me look for our stupid vigilante."

Kaldur, who must've already been on the receiving end of Artemis' rude wake-up treatment, scurried down the apartment hallway, his too-large plaid pajama pants flapping like they were in a hurricane. "The bathroom's empty, so is the extra bedroom." The Atlantean's eyes were huge. "He's really gone."

"Alright," Artemis' voice was calm, but Wally could read the panic in her eyes. She was going into crisis-management mode. "Conner, you're on street duty. I want you listening for any movement in the building, there's a possibility he was taken."

A slim, slim possibility. He could tell they were all thinking it.

Wally pressed his forehead into his hand, letting his eyes slip closed as a wave of disappointment swept through him.

There was no doubt about it; Dick had run.

(A/N): Soo Dick ran, or did he... :)

fun fact, i almost accidentally deleted this entire chapter because my cat kept stepping on my keyboard while i was editing 😃

thank youu all for reading (and for the reviews last chapter yall are so sweet) happy new year lovelies💕

~ASL