A/N: Okay, this is a short chapter, even for me. And I think Artemis is a little off, though I have been assured that it works, so...? Anyway, chapter six will be up within the hour (I hope.)

"Wally!" he was dimly aware of someone shouting his name, shaking him roughly. "Wally, come on, you can't sleep! Wake up! Please, wake up!"

He convulsed, coughing violently as water was purged from his lungs. He gasped, choked as coughs racked his body and more and more salty-warm water gushed from his mouth. He was awake now.

The coughing fit subsided, leaving him gasping for breath. He let himself fall back into the sand… sand? I'm alive! Artemis—

He opened his eyes, and light flooded into them, blinding him. He squinted, could barely make out a shadow leaning over him. "Artemis…" he murmured.

"Oh, thank God," came her voice. "You're back. I thought— I was so afraid—"

"What—happened? Where are we?" He tried to sit up, but a wave of nausea overcame him. Artemis pushed him back down.

"Just rest. We're somewhere on the coast of Maine… I think."

Maine? His brain didn't seem to be working well; hadn't he collapsed in the water? "How?" was all he could think to say.

"You got us closer than you thought." Something in her tone changed. "Wally, what you did—it was unbelievable. Not even the Flash—" her voice cracked; she cleared her throat. "Anyways, after you collapsed, I could still see the shore, but you were unconscious. I managed to get you to the surface, and then… I don't know, I was scared out of my wits, I think I was just going on adrenaline after that, but… somehow, I got us here."

"Just like that? We must have been at least a mile from shore, and you swam the whole way with a deadweight?"

"You're one to talk! Do you even know how far you ran? On top of the water? Carrying me?"

"Do you?" he said acidly. He realized what they were doing: throwing themselves back into their old habits, desperately trying to find something to bicker about, to restore some sense of normalcy to their suddenly shattered world. But what was the point? He didn't really care, not anymore.

Artemis sighed, and he guessed she was thinking along similar lines. He waited for her to say something, a comeback maybe, or maybe she wanted to talk about what had happened, about Robin—but she didn't say a word. When he looked at her, she was sitting with her legs pulled up into her chest, arms wrapped around them and resting her head on her knees. She wasn't crying, she just looked… hollow. Empty, like a shell of her true self. Vulnerable.

He pushed himself into a sitting position, then onto his feet, gritting his teeth against another wave of nausea. "Come on," he said, putting a hand on her shoulder. "We should get moving." Movement meant distraction; if he stopped moving he would have to face it, the horrible truth, and he wasn't ready, yet. Keep moving.

Artemis could see how much he needed to move; if she was honest with herself, so did she, for she could feel herself slipping into depression as she sat there on the beach. But it was so hard, so hard to care anymore, about anything. Seeing her teammate—no, her friend—murdered, shot in cold blood; she was shattered on the inside, broken, dull. She couldn't make herself care.

I thought I was stronger than this, she thought, but even that caused no stir inside her, no emotion. It was just a thought. It didn't matter.

She forced herself to reach up, to take the hand Wally had offered her and let him pull her to her feet. She would go, she was going to make herself care—for Wally's sake, because some distant part of her knew she owed him her life.

Like I said, Artemis... a little OOC? Chalk it up to trauma or something, because this is how it came out in my head. Review Please!