Author's note: I suggest you listen to the song "It Will Rain" by Bruno Mars before and during this fic. That's pretty much what I did. Also, this is where it becomes drastically not happy. So be warned.
It was weird to think she was gone. It had happened so suddenly, without warning, that it was like he had had a limb chopped off and hadn't even noticed its absence. A week without her, certainly that was fine. It wasn't as if she never disappeared sometimes. But a month? That was cause for a bit more concern.
So, kind, caring, considerate person that he was, he'd thought maybe he should check up on her. Just to see how she was doing.
He'd casually walked into her room, expecting her to be lying there, beneath the covers, sleeping softly.
The room was entirely bare.
Oh sure, the furniture was still there, the covers neatly made. But the walls were bare – no photographs of time spent with the team, no stubs from movie dates or cards from holidays. For a minute he had thought he was seeing things, so he'd just rubbed his eyes and looked again. But walking up to the walls, he could see that there was nothing there but fading paint and the slight discoloration and peeling pigments that suggested that something had been there. That something should be there.
And maybe what he did next could be considered by some to be an invasion of privacy. But he'd been curious – not anxious or panicky, not yet – simply curious about where she might have put them instead. Why she'd taken them down at all. And even though he'd known it was completely out of character for her, he'd even entertained the notion that perhaps she was preparing them for a scrapbook of some kind. So he thought that perhaps he could take a peek (just a quick look) into her closet.
He'd been expecting to find all the decorations from her walls simply stashed somewhere else – in a box, in a folder, even (however farfetched) in aforementioned scrapbook. He hadn't been prepared for the emptiness. The raw smell of smoky wood and leftover dryer sheets clung to the closet, but that was all there was. It was empty. Bare.
He hadn't been able to comprehend it. For some reason, his mind had not been able to make the jump that associated the emptiness of the closet with the only logical conclusion that could be made. He'd started hyperventilating a little bit, and he was getting tunnel vision, and he couldn't function anymore and just what the hell? Panicking a little bit, he'd run over to her dresser and began arbitrarily pulling all the drawers out – looking for something, anything! The drawers had clattered to the floor, against the walls, into the hall (the last few shattering on impact in a violent explosion of wood and metal), but that had been all there was. Even the stupid, secret, sappy notes he'd written and never had the guts to give her, that he knew she had taken anyway and taped to the bottom of the desk, were missing.
He'd turned, stiff and tense, to the washroom, but he'd really only needed to stand on the threshold to be able to see everything he needed to see. The washroom had proved just as bare, even though he could still smell that faint scent of her jasmine shampoo wafting gently in the empty air. She was gone.
He'd had to sit, silently, still, on her bed, just to be able to breathe. He felt so empty – like the closet, like the dresser, like this room – because she'd hollowed him out and taken what he'd thought had been his. The hole in his chest was so gaping and raw and GOD, it'd HURT so BAD that he thought maybe he'd just stop. Just stop thinking, stop functioning, stop breathing, stop being, and he'd shut down.
Robin had found him there, hours later when the sun had gone down, sitting there, in the dark, staring at nothing. He'd been unsure of what to do (and after all, what did a person do when their best friend was in a state of catatonia), but he'd stolen in all the same, sitting on the bed beside him, just being there. M'gann had floated by, clearing the mess out of the hallway, and she'd peered in. Although both boys had been invisible in the dark, she knew they were there, and although she didn't want to intrude, she knew what had happened – what the mess in the hall and their being in there meant – and she'd felt such a tearing, aching loss that she'd had to rush away. She'd ended up going into the kitchen and making cookies. Dozens and dozens of cookies without really knowing, anymore, what she was doing or what she was making because she was really only trying to keep busy. And they'd piled so high around her and she'd run out of ingredients and then she'd had nothing to do but feel empty.
It didn't take long for Superboy to find her sobbing quietly in the kitchen, or for Aqualad to stumble upon the two boys sitting there, just breathing, in that room.
She wasn't coming back.
Wally stares absently at the television, watching some old comedy show rerun and munching on a chocolate bar of obscene size. M'gann is bustling around in the kitchen behind him, and he knows she's just trying to keep busy, because really, it tears at them all, but he can't help finding it a bit grating. He wants to snap at her, but it's not her fault, so he just sighs and moves to stand up and leave.
She turns to watch him go, but she doesn't say anything because really, what can she say? So he walks – walks – dejected and lonely down the hallway, passing by her door. He doesn't mean to look – doesn't want to really – but the door is open, and that's really unusual so he pokes his head in, just a little bit.
Nothing's changed since he's been inside sixth months prior. Sixth months of her just being . . . not here. The closet is closed, but there are splinters and shards from the metal handles littering the floor of her room (even though really, it's not hers anymore, is it?) and he thinks, detachedly, that he should probably clean it up when something on the top of her dresser catches his eye.
He walks closer, wary, because he's positive there was nothing there when he walked in here months ago, but it's sitting there, on the table, obtrusive and foreign. When he picks it up, it almost takes him a moment to recognize it, but then he sees the flat, broken tip and realizes – it's the arrowhead. He's turning it over when he sees the spot where it was lain on the dresser. In the dust on the table, the word Souvenir has been traced. And suddenly he's so angry that he can hardly stand it. Gone with nothing but a goddamn souvenir? It burns in his palm, and he almost wants to throw it at the wall, but he can't. He lowers his arm and palms his eyelids. How dare she.
Taking everything away, leaving them with nothing but this? All those moments they've shared together, working together, learning together. Watching comedy reruns with M'gann and mocking Superboy even as Superman took him to get apple pie, of all things, somewhere in the city, and playing pranks with Robin and taking Kaldur out, sometimes, to let him know that they appreciate him, and they love him, and they think he should stop being so damn uptight and just let loose once in a while. And all the times they've shared separately. Privately. Together. The kisses and heat and passion and the way her eyes sparkled like they were full of stars and the way her hair fell in torrents like a wave over her back and on his skin, shimmering like liquid gold.
And just like that, he's lost again – in the thoughts and the memories and the raw emotions they dredge up. The way her eyes danced when she'd caught him, and the smell of her skin – vanilla and cinnamon and some other spice that he can't quite identify but he knows he'll never be able to disassociate from her, and the way her lips were always soft and warm and sweet no matter what. The way she'd flush when he held her close and the way she'd subtly (and not as subtly) let him know she wanted to be with him, close to him; connected. The way her hair blew in the breeze and sometimes caught him in the face and made him smell nothing but jasmine and fogged his mind and made him trip. They way she'd laughed and tossed back some witty comment when he'd reproached her and the way she'd kissed him afterwards just to bring back his smile.
And he looks at the little arrowhead in his hand, and he pockets it anyway because he can't leave without the little souvenir. And even though that's the only tangible reminder he has, the memories still weigh in his mind and in his chest and he can feel them sitting, there, settling, even if they're still uncomfortable and nestled in between the jagged, sharp reminders that there should have been more.
He stands there and breathes. Her scent is long since gone – faded with the cool mountain air – but it doesn't really matter. The act itself can conjure up the ghost of a fragrance – all sweet vanillas and cinnamon and jasmine and that one other, mysterious flavour, and it alternately soothes the bleeding of his heart and the aggravates the jagged splinters in his chest. He glances down at the floor and decides that maybe he can clean up today after all.
And when he's finished and he's just standing there, staring at the walls that say someone was here, he traces the outlines of the photographs and the ticket stubs and the cards and thinks, she took them. And he presses his palm to the space where he knows that first photograph used to hang – the one from the fair where he was gorging himself on cotton candy and she was dragging him on the rides and she even won against him in the stupid water gun game and she gave him the damn teddy bear – and he even thinks that maybe she still has them. Maybe she's kept them. Maybe she doesn't look at them all the time, or keep them on display, but that's okay too, because really, he can barely stand to look at this room without wanting to cry out, and she probably can't either.
And he remembers, with some chagrin, that the stupid teddy bear is still sitting, tucked away on the top shelf, at the back of his closet. And he won't be able to take it down, or hold it, or even look at it just yet. But just knowing it's there is kind of nice. And maybe she thinks so too.
He closes the door behind him and goes to his room. His cheeks are wet and his vision is blurred and his breathing is a little bit labored, and he holds the arrowhead so tightly that it's starting to cut into his palm. And he knows, without a doubt, that their relationship hasn't yet run its course. It probably never will.
"KidFlash and Aqualad are here today, at the scene of what is now known to be a planned explosion . . . ."
The colors of the television flicker as it turns on. The first thing you can see is the building - a twisted mess of broken metal and melted glass – burning so large and bright that it looks like a giant beacon to the world. Then, faint though they might be, are the strapping, dark-skinned man directing as much water onto the fire as possible, and the colorful blur in the background, almost blending in with the fiery inferno.
A young man in yellow and red rushes forwards, towards the ambulances, a victim of the explosion lying prone in his arms. As he transfers him onto a gurney, a sudden burst of fire spirals into the air, throwing him into a whirling mass of shadow. And then he's already turning back; ready to rush into the fray once more.
Even after the fire is controlled, and they're cleaning up as much as they can and moving to leave, they still look collected and focused and so serious. They move quiet close to the cameras as they go – walking, it seems, because of the odd metal case they're holding between them. KidFlash himself passes by so close to the cameras that every plane of his chest is thrown into sharp relief. And then, within seconds they've disappeared.
If anyone noticed that it seems he has a trapezoidal shaped bump beneath his costume, they don't say a word.
