Chapter Four
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Warning: this chapter does include a mention of character death, and arguably suicide.
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Living on the Justice League Watchtower is...not bad.
It's always a center of activity, even more so than the Cave used to be. Of course, the activity is almost exclusively centered around official League business. Nobody is ever watching TV, or playing video-games, or studying, or anything like that. There's never even much in the way of cooking- the Watchtower has a kitchen, but it's more like a cafeteria than anything, and almost entirely stocked with fast, easy to make snacks that somebody can grab on the go. Nobody is ever baking cookies, or preparing a huge meal, or setting places for dinner. Conner misses all that.
Still, it's leaps and bounds above the abandoned Bludhaven warehouse Nightwing had set up as their temporary hide-out. It actually has a proper kitchen, for one thing- not to mention washing facilities, a med-bay, training area, and an entire indoor park. Oh, and actual quarters, not just cots separated by sheets.
They are, however, quarters, not bedrooms. All the Justice League members have their own, real homes to return to, so the rooms were only designed for functionality, not comfort. They are small, bare, and have only a token amount furnishings- bed, desk, side-table, dresser, all in this in minimalist, metallic style.
Honestly, Conner's surprised by how much that bothers him. He's never needed a huge amount of personal space, and he had never felt much of a need to personalize it, not in the way the others had. But the funny thing was...well, over the years he had personalized it. As time had worn on, his room at Mount Justice had slowly grown more and more cluttered. Framed pictures of friends had accumulated on the dresser. On his bed, along with the original plain white sheets and pillows, had sat a Superman plushy he'd received one Christmas. Once, Zatanna, Raquelle and Artemis had dragged him out to a concert, which had been surprisingly enjoyable, and he'd ended up with one of the band's posters on the back of the door. Tucked into one corner of the room had been an over-sized dog-bed for Wolf. The bookshelf had slowly filled up, eventually overflowing to his bed-sized table, all the books he'd had to read for both school and pleasure.
And then it was all gone, in a matter of seconds. Everything he had owned in his entire life.
His new replacement quarters remind him painfully of how his old room had looked, those first year or so. That said, he's been spending an awful lot of time inside them.
He's not a big people person. An introvert, as Black Canary would say. And since the Watchtower has even fewer hideaways than the Cave, it means that his room is one of the only places he can consistently go for some proper alone time.
There are many ways he could spend this well earned privacy. He could make sure he's actually up to date on his readings for college. Maybe he could take some time with his iPod or a nice book, relax and unwind. Conner's pretty sure he deserves that.
But there's something he needs to do first. Well, doesn't need to- but he'll feel better if he does. So sits on the bed and lies back, arms at his side, and stares at the ceiling. He breathes deeply, letting his mind clear.
It's a habit he picked up nearly three years ago. It had been prompted by a tiring, week long series of...incidents...started by some freak villain with a hypno ray. Under the ray's influence, Conner (or his body, at least) had done some pretty shitty things, and if his friends hadn't caught onto his odd behaviour, it would have continued. Even as it was, he'd helped to steal a good thirteen thousand dollars and put four people in the hospital by the time his teammates managed to snap him out of the trance.
And of course, that was hardly the first time he'd dealt with mind manipulation. His entire existence was based on mind manipulation. He'd had secret programming coded into his brain to make him a docile slave to Luthor. He'd once woken up in the middle of the Bialyan desert with his entire self erased. He, along with the rest of the Team, had nearly gotten caught out by the Light's puppet tech. He'd become dangerously addicted to S-Shields which had made him reckless and violent- but even they weren't nearly as bad as the time he'd gotten affected by some Red Kryptonite. There had been that terrible conflict with Queen Bee; he had witnessed her powers of enthrallment first hand, and discovered later she had used her powers to make Gar's mother kill herself.
So after the hypno ray incident, he'd decided that enough was enough, and asked both J'onn and M'gann for help in detecting, and if possible, defending against mental assaults. He was surprisingly good at it, once the basic meditative technique had been explained- but then, he had spent literally his entire life interacting with telepaths, so he was highly receptive. When his hero work left his mind under siege again, he had been able to fight back.
And then, when he had been sleeping one night, and felt something in his head, twisting his memories...he had automatically lashed against it. Even against M'gann, who had been so familiar in his mind, the defenses had held, recognizing her as a threat. Even he hadn't realized how strong they'd become.
He'd grown so paranoid after that, that for months he'd done meditative checks every day, strengthening his defenses, terrified of the person he'd once been closest to in the entire world. Terrified that his very thoughts and memories would be altered without his consent. He'd eased up eventually, when nothing had happened, and M'gann had truly seemed to have moved on.
Now it is less likely than ever that the Martian will do anything- Conner knows that she is truly regretful. But he keeps the practice up, nonetheless. M'gann was not the reason he started with the mental defenses in the first place, and there are still countless others who would seek to take advantage of him, to turn him into nothing more than a weapon, to be wielded as they see fit.
So he breathes. With each breath, his thoughts, his worries, his emotions clear. He falls into himself, through the strong barriers he'd raised, into his core, the very center of his being.
And what he senses there startles him.
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As Wally runs, the ache in his stomach grows stronger and stronger. Soon, a similar ache begins to develop in his head as well, and it becomes apparent that this isn't simple hunger, but something far more dangerous.
Hypoglycemia, he thinks, because apparently medical terminology is one of the things he knows. All this running is using up a lot of energy, and now my blood sugar is low.
This is only the first step, he recognizes. It's only going to get worst. And it does, much more rapidly then he could have anticipated. The white expanse around him begins to blur, the line between white ice and pale blue sky blending together. With the blurriness, he almost manages to hit a polar bear; he hears it make a strangled noise of confusion and fear as he just narrowly avoids it. He begins to sweat- the air against his face, which previously felt cold, sharp and bracing, now just feels hot. There's a tingling all over his skin, especially in the hands and feet, and the pain pounding in his temples becomes even stronger, the beginnings of a proper migraine.
Fuck, Wally thinks.
His heart is beating fast, thumpthumpthumpthump, in his chest. He hadn't noticed it at first- of course his heartbeat is high, he's running at inhuman speeds and kinda freaking out about the whole amnesia deal- but now he realizes that this, too, is another symptom.
His limbs feel heavy. It's getting harder to run. He needs to- he needs to find people, and fast.
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Author's Note: Apologies for the long wait between updates. Real Life has been keeping me busy of late, and I also managed to hit a wee bit of writer's block when trying to get this chapter to come out the way I wanted. Still not 100% happy about it, but whatever. :)