A/N: Longest. Chapter. Yet. I hope you are all thrilled.

For any of you who are still holding out for Robin to somehow come back, allow me to inconsiderately burst your bubble. If a certain description in this chapter doesn't clear up any lingering doubt, well... it'll clear it up. The End.

Also, part of this chapter pays tribute to the brother/sister relationship between Hawkgirl and Flash in the Justice League animated series. I know that it was actually Wally as Flash in that continuity, but we're just gonna pretend it's Barry, because whatever my personal feelings about Shayera (not a big fan) I needed another League member for this chapter and I did immensely appreciate the non-romantic friendshippy relationship that Hawkgirl/Flash had in JL/JLU. So there it is.

One last thing: I poured my HEART AND SOUL into this chapter, so if I don't get a ton of reviews I'm gonna be devastated. Okay, not really, but please review, I really like knowing what works and what doesn't so I can adjust/improve with time. And it's nice to know people are reading my story...

All right, I've talked enough. Disclaimer: I do not own Young Justice. Or Civil Twilight, if you read the author's note at the end.

Wally needed sleep desperately. The fatigue was slowly claiming him again, a gray fog that gathered at the corners of his vision, threatening to envelop him. His hands shook; he felt sick to his stomach. Beads of sweat dripped from his forehead, and his breathing was harsh and ragged. He needed to sleep. But he couldn't.

Because every time he closed his eyes, he saw the whole thing playing in his head, over and over, till he wanted to scream for it to stop. He saw Robin, helpless and struggling, dangling over the side of the ship. Saw the gun, awful, black, shining malevolently. Heard the crack of gunfire, saw Robin thrust forward with the force of the bullet, his upper body blown apart by the point-blank shot. Saw him, his body mangled and broken beyond hope, falling…. falling; then slowly sinking beneath the waves. His best friend… his 'little brother'… and he had stood there and watched, and done nothing.

Over and over. He couldn't close his eyes to it, couldn't turn away, couldn't escape. It would haunt him for as long as he lived... How was he supposed to live with himself, live with this, his whole life?

It seemed impossible. He felt like he had been the one shot, an awful, painful tightness in his chest that refused to go away, made it nearly impossible to breathe. The thought of sleep, then, was laughable—if there was any such thing as laughter anymore. He wasn't sure there could be.

He didn't think he would ever sleep again.

Barry was driving. Speeding. Even in a car, normal speed wasn't fast enough for the speedster. Wally and the others had been missing for two days; Barry Allen's only thoughts were relief at finding his nephew and anxiety to get him home. They reached the location the Artemis girl had given them; he slammed on the brakes, barely waiting for the car to screech to a halt before he opened the door and jumped out.

It was growing dark, the sky beginning to turn a sultry magenta. Crickets chirped; there wasn't another soul in sight.

Barry looked around frantically. The girl had said this was where they would be. Where were they?

"There," said Hawkgirl, pointing as she got out on the passenger side. He looked where she was pointing and saw that some of the tall grass had been trampled down, recently if he was judging correctly. The trail of flattened grass led to a small grove of trees. He was there in less than a second, Shayera spreading her wings to follow.

He stopped short when he saw them. Artemis was there, and Wally—he breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that his nephew was unhurt—but no one else. What on earth happened to them all?

Artemis turned to look at him; he expected Wally to do the same, expected to see relief and thanks in both their eyes—but it wasn't there. And Wally didn't even acknowledge that he had noticed his uncle. He stared straight ahead, eyes wide in spite of his obvious fatigue; and Barry saw the stretched, tightened facial muscles, the trembling of his jaw, the look of horror in his eyes—and the fear returned. Artemis had not been exaggerating, or lying, or… he didn't know what. But he knew now: something awful, something truly terrible, had happened. He knew the look in Wally's eyes, and he was afraid. That wasn't a look that should've been in any child's eyes. His nephew wasn't a child anymore; but why? What had done this?

He stood there, staring at the two teenagers with no idea what to do. He felt as though he'd been doused by a bucketful of icy water. Shayera appeared next to him and squeezed his arm reassuringly, then walked past him and extended a hand to Artemis. Hesitantly, the girl took it, allowing herself to be pulled to her feet. Shayera didn't know why she did what she did next; maybe she recognized the look in the girl's eyes, recognized it in herself. Letting instinct guide her, she pulled Artemis into a light hug, trying to let her know without words that it was all right now, that she would be okay.

Later, once she learned what happened, she was bitterly glad she hadn't said those words aloud. Because they would have been a lie. It wasn't all right; she wasn't okay, and wouldn't be for a long time.

Artemis didn't return the Thanagarian woman's embrace, and when Hawkgirl released her, she trudged towards the road and the car, her body on autopilot, her head somewhere else entirely. In a world where everything was grief and pain, despair and guilt.

Barry had a harder time with his nephew. He was barely conscious, and he too was lost in another world; in a memory, that awful memory that would haunt him forever, always surfacing when he had a quiet moment. He barely responded to his uncle's touch, barely felt himself being helped to stand, barely let himself be led—dragged—to the car and pushed into the backseat to sit beside Artemis. Neither of them had said a word. Not one. Again Barry wondered what sort of hell they had been through. But he knew well enough that if he asked he would get no answer. Not here. Not now.

Shayera drove this time. She could tell even through the mask how disturbed Barry was by the looks on the children's faces. Even she, the imperturbable warrior who had seen things so much worse, was slightly unnerved. They're too young, she thought, too young to know the kind of sadness that makes people look like they do. Even so, she was in better control of her emotions than Barry was.

"Two hundred and fifty-three miles to destination," droned the GPS in a choppy female robotic voice. "Approximately four hours and thirty-six minutes."

Shayera hit the mute button. And broke the GPS, sending shards of plastic raining to the floor. No one noticed.

Four hours and thirty-six minutes of complete silence lay ahead of them. And for the two husks in the backseat, the two empty shells that had once been children, vibrant and full of life, it would be four hours and thirty-six minutes more of the nightmare that had swallowed them alive.

Conner woke up surrounded by glass.

I'm in my pod at Cadmus. I'm home. None of it really happened; it was all implanted. The team. Superman. The League. School. My friends… If only he could make himself believe it. Because then, he could pretend that he didn't care, could pretend that that last disastrous mission had never happened. He could pretend that he hadn't watched Robin die. It wasn't real.

He knew better.

How am I alive? he wondered. Maybe I'm… not alive? He remembered dying, the agony of drowning, finally succumbing to blackness. Just after someone had…

His head snapped up, eyes fully open now. And what he saw made him think that maybe he really was dead. Because this was just too bizarre.

He was in a glass pod. And it was surrounded by water. Schools of colorful fish flitted in and out of his vision. And—strangest of all—on the outside of the glass, completely under water, a girl with dark red hair peered at him with worry in her eyes—as if he were the one that needed worrying about. How was she not drowning?

She saw he was awake. Then she spoke. "Garth, he is alive!" she exclaimed in a strange accent. "Come over here!"

I must be dead, he thought. Another figure—a young man—swam over to the pod and looked at him, his expression unreadable.

"Where…" Conner started, mildly surprised that he could talk, "Where am I? Is this… real?"

The girl nodded, with a small smile. "Yes, it is. You are alive, though we feared for a long time you wouldn't make it. You are in Atlantis."

Kaldur's home. And Conner thought he knew who his two rescuers must be. "You're Kaldur's friends. The ones he talks about."

The girl nodded again. "My name is Tula. And this is Garth. We've been searching for him since he disappeared, but we found you instead." A note of desperation crept into her voice. "He was on that ship, I know it. Did you… manage to free him?"

Conner felt a sinking in his stomach. "No," he murmured, but he wasn't thinking of Kaldur. "We didn't save him."

Superboy's alive! What?

**P.S. if you wanted to know what inspires the total depressing-ness of this entire story, go look up the song 'Human' by Civil Twilight. Discovered it shortly after I started this story, and basically, it made me bawl because in my mind it completely embodies everything I'm trying to put in this story emotionally. Quite serendipitous, actually :) So go listen to it! You will not regret it. Favorite lyric from the song: 'It's only love, it's only pain, it's only fear that runs through my veins... It's all the things you can't explain, that make us human...'

Needless to say, I was also listening to the Dark Knight soundtrack while writing this chapter. More bawling.