Hey. I was so afraid I was going to be stuck on this forever. I've been having such roadblocks. Anyway, I think this is going to end up being a little bit longer than my intended six chapters. Maybe seven or eight. Oh well. I wanted this chapter to cover more ground, but I reached a good stopping point and I need to update. So, enjoy and review please!

Chapter 4

The day progressed. Kid Flash ate. He fought. And he thought.

So after a day of uselessly wandering around and looking and bus schedules, after weighing the pros and cons of living in one of the greatest hippie territories of the world, after wondering who else lived there, after realizing that Seymour had a bunch of friends there who could easily call him up and tell him where she was, after realizing that she really might have to stay at least one more night with Kid Flash, and after realizing that she detested the idea of going back to his clean-cut apartment, after all this had happened, Jinx decided there was only one thing left to do, and that was to go clubbing.

She had not been clubbing, such as it were, in a long time because there were no other girls to go clubbing with. She could never take the boys clubbing. They didn't dance, and they especially didn't dance like people usually danced at clubs. It was a comfort zone thing. The dances at HIVE had always been incredibly lame because nobody would just break the ice and dance. It sucked in indescribable ways.

Jinx was well aware that clubbing was not a particularly punk thing to do, but the problem was that she was good at it. She loved dancing. At HIVE, they had twisted it all around and forced her into ballet, gymnastics, and the classical, structured stuff that sucked the life out of you. Jinx didn't like the graceful part of dancing; she loved the wild side.

She slipped into the first club she found, and hastily stole one of the markers the bouncers used to mark those who had paid their entrance fee. She noticed two girls staring at her marking her hand, so she graciously held out the pen for their use, smiling conspiratorially. They took it, and Jinx slipped off into the middle of the crowd so she could lose track of everything.

It was about one in the morning when she got back to his place, sweating and freshly electrocuted from the buzz of physical contact. She slipped the doorman, took the stairs, and used one of Seymour's card maneuvers to trick the lock. Inside, the lights were on, as was the TV.

He goes to bed at ten, does he?

Kid Flash was not in obvious sight, and Jinx assumed that crime was happening somewhere. In other words, none of her business. She pulled off her sweater and threw it onto the couch.

Something groaned. She peeked over the couch, and saw Kid Flash rubbing his eyes and yawning.

"What was that earlier," She said brightly, "About going to bed around ten?"

"I was waiting for you," He said, handing her the sweater as he sat up. "I wanted to make sure you got back in all right."

"Because I'm so obviously incapable of walking through a door!"

"Don't yell. I was worried."

She rolled her eyes. "I'll bet. Go to bed."

"No. Tell me about your day."

"Don't you have an entire city to worry about?"

"Yes. And you're a part of it. Tell me about your day."

"I loitered at five different stores and resisted the urge to shoplift a new dildo so I could work off my stress. Subsequently I am still stressed and still pissed off. Go to bed."

He laughed half-heartedly. "Thanks for worrying about my health. But if you get to worry about me, then I get to worry about you."

"I am not worried about you!" She snapped. "I'm tired. I'm usually in bed by at least midnight."

"Midnight?" Kid Flash shook his head. "That's bad. You should be in bed by at least ten. I mean, how can you get seven hours of sleep walking through the door at one in the morning?"

"By sleeping in until noon. Duh." She cocked her head to the side. "Are you kicking me out?"

"No."

"Well, you're not being very hospitable if you won't even give up your couch."

"Jinx," And he grabbed her hand. The very act stunned her into submission, and that was the only reason he was able to guide her around the couch and push her into sitting next to him. "I'm worried about you."

"I'll bet," She glowered. "What are you trying to be, my mother?"

"I'm sorry that I sound like an over-protective parent," Kid Flash replied calmly. "I'm sorry I'm nosey, and I'm sorry I'm butting in where I'm not wanted. But the way things usually go around here, we're not going to be able to talk in the morning, so we might as well do it now."

"I'm tired---"

"And never hungry. Why?" Kid Flash watched her expectantly. "I just want to know." When Jinx continued to not respond, he added, "Not to sound creepy, but you look amazing. You'd look even better if you put on a couple pounds."

Jinx shook her head numbly. "It's just not what I do. Food is…look, a bunch of crap happens to food that you don't even know about."

"Like what?"

"Pesticides. "

He set his chin in his hands. "What else?"

Jinx blinked. "Don't you know any of this?"

Kid Flash shook his head. "But you sound like you know a lot about it."

"Oh." Everyone at HIVE knew everything that was wrong with food. It was a fact of life. "Well, pesticides," Jinx repeated. "And diseases. I mean, you…you just don't know where it's been. People get sick all the time."

Kid Flash considered this. "You know, I eat twice as much as a normal person. More than that. I've never gotten sick."

Jinx rolled her eyes. "You're a super."

"Aren't you?"

"We can still get sick. I've seen people get sick from food, okay? Really, really sick. I'm not just making stuff up."

"I don't think you're making stuff up. I just wish there was some way I could convince you to eat," Kid Flash ran his hands through his hair and eyed her carefully. "My pancakes are amazing, you know."

"They don't have cinnamon in them," Jinx replied automatically.

Kid Flash laughed. "That is so backwards."

"Look, I…it's not as if I never eat. I just eat at…certain places. With food by certain people."

"Food made by people you trust?" Jinx nodded, and Kid Flash practically clapped his hands. "Great! Let's go there now!"

"Um, hello, it's one in the morning! I thought you had your city to worry about," said Jinx.

"Well, it's more your city than mine. You've been living here longer," Kid Flash shrugged. "You swear you ate something today?"

"Yes."

He smiled. "Okay, then. I'll see you tomorrow. Good night, Jinx. Have sweet dreams of the pancakes, with cinnamon, that you will eat with me in the morning."

Jinx rolled her eyes. "Yeah, sure."

The smile grew. "What was that?"

"What was what?"

"I didn't hear what you said."

"I said, "Yeah, sure." Whatever," She added.

"And you also said…?"

She scrunched up her face. "Um…go away?"

He laughed. "Good night, Jinx."

"Whatever," She mumbled again.

The next morning, he was not there.

Jinx rolled her eyes as she read his apologetic note, which promised that they would hang out later, but in the meantime please, please eat the pancakes so she could tell him how wonderful they were later.

She could potentially run off right about now, to San Francisco. Even if Seymour knew people up there, San Francisco was big. Or there was Berkeley. Or Los Angeles. Well, not Los Angeles. Angelica had nothing but horrible things to say about it…

Angelica would probably understand about all this. Needing space, and girl time, and new foundations. That was what she was doing right now, wasn't it? Making a new place for herself?

Of course, if she was trying to do something for herself, she probably wouldn't want to be bothered by annoying little friends from before.

And besides, Jinx didn't have her communicator.

She lifted one of the pancakes from the stack and began tearing it into smaller, bite size pieces. Billy, or somebody anyway, had taught her that if you split food into three portions on a plate, it looked as if you had eaten much more than you actually had. No, it had been Bailey that had taught her that. Or Montego? Somebody older…

She sat down in front of the plate.

The problem with her plan, she decided, was that she just had no clue what to actually do. She was tired of trying not to think about things; doing something would take her mind off them for good.

She decided to take a walk.

Kid Flash found Jinx pacing two streets away from the apartment. He sped up, and asked how she was doing.

"Fine."

Had she slept well?

"Decently."

Had she eaten?

"Sure. Whatever."

How were the pancakes?

"Fine."

She hadn't really eaten them, had she.

"No."

He steered her back in the direction of his apartment, and sat her down in front of her plate. She had played with her food, at least. Kid Flash wanted badly to think that she was at least trying.

He sat across from her and stared at her intently. She looked so…boring. He hated to even think it, but it was true. Where was the energy? Where was the vibe?

Where was the connection?

"It's probably cold now," He said. "Do you want me to heat them up?"

She shook her head.

"Jinx," He said exasperatedly. "I ate the exact same pancakes this morning. There's nothing wrong with them, I swear. You could at least try to eat the pancakes I slaved to make for you." She was staring fixedly at the plate, and he ducked his chin a little to try to catch her eye. "Jinx?"

"It's fine," She said, picking up one of the torn pieces and placing it in her mouth. "You added cinnamon."

"I've never made them with cinnamon before," He admitted. "How is it?"

"Good." She ate another piece. "I like pancakes better cold, to be honest."

"Really? I always had a thing for piping hot, fresh off the griddle, like-mom-used-to-make kind of thing," Kid Flash grinned.

"Like mom used to make?" Jinx picked up the fork next to her plate and put it to employment. "Did she?"

"Well, no," He admitted. "My mom wasn't much of a cook. I had to learn to cook for myself, because I eat so much."

Jinx raised her eyebrows. "My mother was an amazing cook."

"Really? I'm jealous."

"Of what? As far as I could tell, that was all she was good at. Cooking. And looking pretty."

"Pretty?"

"Gorgeous. Unbelievably so."

"Do you have a picture?"

"No." Jinx stabbed at a stubborn pancake piece. "I ripped it up when I got to America."

"When you got to America?"

"I'm from India." She glanced up for a millisecond, as if daring him to ask a stupid question.

"Cool."

Her nostrils flared, as if she was repressing something. It was kind of cute, in a dangerous, dominatrix kind of way. And it showed energy. That was encouraging.

"So I take it you're not really in contact with them anymore," Kid Flash continued. "And that's why you're not going home?"

"I don't think they want me at home."

"Have you ever thought about going back to India in general?"

She paused, fork in midair. "No." She put the fork down. "No. I actually don't know anything about Indian culture anymore. I started attending western private schools when I was six. I barely even remember the language. I can speak Spanish or French better than…well," She snorted. "I don't even know what language I used to speak."

"Spanish and French? That's cool."

"They taught it at HIVE. It was key that we be fluent in at least five languages other than English, for networking purposes." It sounded as if she was quoting the fact verbatim from a lecture hall.

"So what other languages have you got?"

"I forgot the others. They were kind of arbitrary, not common at all." She made it sound as if everybody ought to have five or six languages they had learned and promptly forgotten.

"That's still cool, though," Kid Flash said, a little defensively. "I can barely manage conversational Spanish."

"I've always wondered; what sort of education do the Titans get?" She glared at him challengingly.

He thought for a moment. "A decent one. We have something like a homeschooling system. I…I used to go to school, but I've taken this up full time. I know Robin and some of the others worked through the high school requirements as fast as they could just to get it over with, and they study other things when they feel like it. That's what I'm doing right now."

"How much do you read?"

"When I can. Mostly classics. And science fiction."

She snickered at that. "Oh, god, if I see one more science fiction book in this lifetime I'll die. The boys always used to…" She pulled a face, and stood abruptly. "'Scuse me." She ran to the bathroom, and Kid Flash heard her retch. He sped over and found her kneeling over the toilet bowl, hair hanging in wild chunks around her face. Her reached over and gently pulled her hair back, and patted her back as she coughed up the rest of the contents of her stomach.

"Are you okay?"

She glared half-heartedly at him from the corners of her eyes, panting. "Sick. What did you put in the pancakes?"

He felt his face going hot. "I didn't put anything in them. What kind of guy do you think I am?"

"I don't know," She said.

They stayed like that for a little while until Kid Flash offered her something to drink. She nodded weakly, and he was back in less than half a second with a glass of water.

"Maybe I just ate too much," She said grudgingly as she took a sip. "But that's never happened before."

"Do you want to see a doctor?"

She shook her head. "There's about one and half doctors I trust, and I don't know where they are."

"You could trust me, and come to see my doctor."

She groaned. "Why do you always say---" She stopped, and pressed her hand to her mouth as if she might throw up again. After a few moments it seemed to pass, and she sighed. "Who's this doctor of yours?"