He knows he should just give up now. He knows that Kaldur's gone, too gone to help, to salvage. The look in his former friend's eyes when Roy had used up all of his arrows just to take off his headgear was… Unthinkable. Roy had never seen that kind of rage show on the Atlantean's face before, and it if he had not already been starting to get crease lines in his forehead and frown marks around his mouth, Red Arrow would even say it didn't fit him.

But he couldn't think of the lost cause now, not when he had the real Roy, the real Speedy to find.

It proves to be a great distraction.

He still hasn't given up. Not on the cause that was lost so long ago, not on finding the archer captured even longer ago. But he's given up on Jade. Jade, who he thought understood him, understood why he couldn't just give up on his search. Apparently, he was wrong. The redhead finds that he's been wrong a lot, lately.

Wrong that Kaldur would be at the heist last week. {He wasn't. Just some of his henchmen.}

Very wrong in assuming that the Atlantean would forgive him for not being there to help when Tula died. {He was unconscious for six hours after that encounter.}

Very, very wrong thinking that Kaldur would talk to him in a civilized manner at all. {It seems that attempting to kill Roy was the second Manta's only way of communication.}

And so extremely wrong in thinking that he could pursue both Speedy and Aqualad simultaneously.

No, in the end, Roy had to forget about Kaldur once more in order to obtain the less hopeless goal.

But he still had not given up.

Roy's destroying his body. This, he knows. He goes without meals, wastes his muscles away all day with activities that are simply too much for them, and defends Star City all night with only an hour or two of rest if he feels like rewarding himself.

He usually doesn't. What was he supposed to reward himself for? Being a clone of a boy who never got to live his dream? Failing his best friend when he needed Roy most? Being unable to stop his wife from leaving him, even though he thought she understood?

Nobody did, this was something Roy had learned the hard way. Nobody understood why he did this, why the archer refused to stop searching for the real Harper, why he would show up at the Manta's hideout every once in a while, and try to talk some sense into the young corrupt leader. Not that he was all that surprised anymore- once he finally did find the real Speedy, once he finally did convince Aqualad to come back, then they'd all see how wrong they were. Green Arrow, Black Canary, Miss Martian, Nightwing, even Kid Fla-Wally and Arte-…Yeah, Artemis- They'd all see.

Maybe he'd even be able to smooth things over with Jade.

Well, the last chapter was mostly dialogue, and this has none at all.

There will be another chapter to this, I've already got a few ideas, and it will be more Roy/Kaldur apparent.

Also, thanks to the three who reviewed my last chapter, I will try to keep the one-speaker-per-paragraph rule in mind for my next chapter.

Oh, and if you'd like to add a review that'd be awesome because I'd love to know what you think, maybe give me some idea on what you'd like to see next and I'm now off to watch the episode of YJ that first aired yesterday!