[Central City
March 15, 14:30 CDT]
Wally West dug the heels of his palms into his eyes. His body was going into full panic mode. He tried counting the number of times his heart beat so he could have something to focus on. His heart only started beating faster. 387…401…465…499…515 beats per minute. It was getting fast even for a speedster. He switched to reciting the periodic table.
Lithium, Sodium, Potassium, Rubidium, Caesium, Francium. Beryllium, Magnesium, Calcium, Strontium, Barium, Radium. Scandium, Titanium, Vanadium, Chromium, Manganese, Iron, Cobalt, Nickel, Copper, Zinc, Yttrium, Zirconium, Niobium, Molybdenum, Technetium, Ruthenium, Rhodium, Palladium, Silver, Cadmium, Hafnium, Tantalum, Tungst-
"Kid…" Uncle Barry said softly. Aunt Iris curled a delicate hand around Wally's shoulder and rubbed his arm soothingly.
It helped a little.
503…493…487…466…456…
Typical.
It was always harder to slow down – especially when he didn't want to. And, oh, Wally wanted to run. Uncle Barry would catch him – would stop him. He still had two days to go before he was cleared for superspeed. Wally didn't understand what difference fifty-seven hours, twenty-five minutes, and forty-nine…forty-eight…forty-seven…forty-six seconds was going to make.
He dropped his hands and tried talking himself into opening his eyes. 'It won't be that bad,' he reasoned. It's nothing he hasn't seen before. Clear blue sky – miles and miles of it. Bright green grass – ooh, he could count the blades to calm down. Huge, towering trees – thicker than some cars. Stone. Granite. Slate. Sandstone. Marble. Neat, long rows curving along Missouri's gently sloping hills.
Wally had seen graveyards before. He'd teen tombstones before – just not his mother's. He didn't want to see it.
"Take your time, kid." Uncle Barry's calming voice helped Wally breathe a little easier. It sounded corny, but being near someone who was so strong helped him feel strong – not necessarily strong enough to deal with this, but enough to help him stay sane.
Wally cracked one eye open. The sun blinded him, but not long enough. He saw the cemetery plot.
Rhenium, Osmium, Iridium, Platin-
Stop it.
He could do this. He would do this for his mom.
Wally took a step forward. He looked down at the headstone without breathing. It was…
Nice…
The headstone was a slender slab of dark marble. It was very well polished and engraved with curvy lettering. Tiny lilacs clustered around his mother's name. They were the same flowers that he'd brought her today – her favorites.
Wally's eyes burned. He felt his aunt's hand slide off of his arm as he moved even closer until he was standing right over the plot. Wally sat down on the grass and placed the flowers on his mom's grave. He grit his teeth together and tried to keep his expression neutral as the first few tears slid down his face.
He'd missed the funeral; he'd been in too critical condition to be moved at the time. Afterwards, Uncle Barry and Aunt Iris had given him every detail that he'd asked for, but it wasn't the same. He'd never gotten the chance to say goodbye – not until now.
He didn't deserve the closure of a goodbye.
In all his life, Wally had never felt like such a colossal failure. Everyone told him it wasn't his fault that his mother was dead, but Wally couldn't see how that was true. It was him who had kept silent all these years when he literally had dozens of people that he could have run to. Just one call to Aunt Iris could have prevented this. It could have ended when he was six.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, stroking the marble with a thumb. "I'm really sorry."
Wally really missed seeing his mom's face. He hadn't gotten the chance to go home yet, but as soon as he was allowed to, Wally was going to go get a picture of her.
He heard someone approach slowly and settle down on the grass beside him. A strong arm wrapped around his shoulders, and Wally let his uncle pull him against his side. He leaned his head on Uncle Barry's shoulder and wiped at his eyes.
"What's your favorite memory of her?" Uncle Barry asked.
"It has my dad in it," Wally shook his head.
"Cut him out," He said lightly. "Just remember your mom. Okay?"
Wally shut his eyes and thought hard about it. It was their last family vacation. They'd gone to – No, wait... "I have a different one."
"Tell me about it."
"I was in fourth grade. It was like November, and I'd gotten really sick with the flu. I had to stay home from school, and Dad had to go to work. Mom was working then too, so I was home alone. I remember sleeping for a long time and then waking up and Mom being home. She'd mentioned at work that I was sick, so her boss sent her home to be with me," Wally smiled a little at the memory. "Mom made me get dressed, and then we went out. She took me out to lunch somewhere, and we went to see a movie – some pirate one. Then, we went to the river and she taught me how to catch frogs."
It wasn't a fancy memory, and they hadn't really done anything special. It had just been him and his mom spending the whole day together. What he remembered the most clearly was his mother's laugh. The smile had never left her face that day.
"Mary touched a frog?" Aunt Iris asked in surprise.
Wally looked up at his aunt and exhaled in a laugh, "She was really good at it. I always thought that was weird. Mom would catch frogs and lizards, but she always made me kill spiders for her."
"Ooh, they are not the same," Aunt Iris smiled lightly. "Barry made me squish a spider for him once."
Uncle Barry twisted around to stare at her with a mixture of shock, disbelief, and the deepest betrayal on his face, "You…promised."
"Really?" Wally cocked an eyebrow at his uncle and bit back a laugh. "I've seen you fight Vandal Savage. You can't kill a little spider?"
"It was one time, and it was a big spider," Uncle Barry said defensively. Then, he pointed straight at Wally. "Don't tell Hal."
"I won't," Wally promised, making a mental note to tell his surrogate uncle about this the second he saw him next. Aunt Iris winked at him knowingly and came closer until she was looming over them both. They all fell into a semi-relaxed silence for the next half hour, just thinking to themselves and listening to the spring robins chirping in the trees.
Wally spent most of the time thinking about his mom. He wished he'd spent more time with her. Almost every weekend and a lot of nights had been spent at Mount Justice with the Team either training or on missions. He should've stayed home more often. When was the last time he'd gone out somewhere with his mother? Wally honestly couldn't remember.
Did his mother know how much he loved her when she died? Wally had always made sure to say it whenever she left the house and especially when he went on missions or patrol. He'd learned very quickly that there was always the chance that he might not come back one day. It hadn't occurred to him that his mother would ever be the one in danger. He thought that he'd taken care of things for her.
"What's going to happen to my dad?" Wally asked quietly. He couldn't look at his aunt and uncle or the headstone.
Uncle Barry's grip on his shoulder tightened, and when he spoke, his voice was grim and dark with anger, "He'll be in League custody for life."
"League custody? He won't be in prison?" Wally asked numbly.
"Oh, he'll be in prison," Uncle Barry said bitterly, like he disagreed with that fact. "Just not one on Earth. We can't risk him telling anyone your secret identity."
"He knows Barry's and Jay's as well," Aunt Iris said sadly. Wally knew that she was still reeling from his father's betrayal even worse than he was. He'd known his father was a violent scumbag his whole life. For Aunt I, it all came out of the blue.
"That puts you and Joan in danger too," Uncle Barry told her, running a hand through his hair tiredly. "It was one hell of a fight with the government to get them to back off from this."
Wally's head whipped around to stare at his uncle questioningly. He hadn't heard anything about this before. No one had told him much of anything concerning what was being done with his father. Wally had guessed that everyone was trying to protect him from having to deal with it until he was ready. They'd done a good job of keeping it from him if he hadn't heard word of a legal battle with the government.
"They wanted us to release Rudy into their custody the second the police got involved," Uncle Barry explained, seeing his confusion. "They wanted him to go through the judicial system, fair trial and all, like he was any other criminal. Wouldn't stop hounding us about it and threatening to come up and get him themselves until Superman and Wonder Woman went down to Washington to tell them that it was a League matter, and there was no way in hell they were getting him."
"So, what's the story?" Wally asked, picking at his shoelaces. "What do I tell people happened?"
"It's a little complicated. Johnny did his best with the evidence, but he doesn't know a lot about forensics, so we had very limited options. There's only a small part that you need to remember, okay?" Uncle Barry looked apologetic for bringing up what had happened again. "We went mostly with what you told us. You were in your room working on homework when your dad called you downstairs. He attacked you and told you Mary was dead, and then it changes a bit. You're going to tell people that you escaped and ran until you passed out, then woke up in the Watchtower several hours later. Is that alright?"
Wally nodded his understanding, carefully constructing his expression to reveal nothing. He tried to imagine himself running with the kind of wounds that he'd sustained, but it all just brought back flashes of his father's scowling face and the sound of gunfire. "What about the rest?"
Aunt Iris looked upset at the conversation. She kept shifting her weight back and forth between her feet and rubbing her thumb between each finger like she always did when she was anxious.
"The story is that Superman was flying over Central with Atom on his way to Smallville when he smelled your blood. He flew down to find you and took you to the Watchtower once he saw how injured you were. That won't be too much of a stretch; it's happened before, and it's no secret that our medical bay is much better than any hospital on Earth," Uncle Barry went on very calmly and without any hesitation, like this was what had really happened. Wally guessed that Batman had come up with the details and drilled them repeatedly into each League member involved until they knew the new story by heart. "Then Superman went back to where he found you, and he and Atom followed your trail back to the house where your father surprise attacked and severely injured Atom. Superman then knocked out Rudy and took him, Atom, and Mary back to the Watchtower. Then, Mister Terrific called in a favor and had Johnny Quick sit on the crime scene while he notified local police."
Wally listened silently but with a sense of growing unease churning in his stomach. Now he understood Aunt Iris' anxiety. "That's… a pretty big lie."
"I know," Uncle Barry ran a hand through his hair uncomfortably, clearly not happy with the way things turned out but resigned to it. "But it's the only explanation that keeps your identity intact. If we don't have someone 'find' you by accident, then it's very obvious that you're either affiliated with or protected by the JLA. There's no way we can let the public know that three retired speedsters from three different parts of the country were called in to save you. As for Atom, we needed a Leaguer to be 'injured' by Rudy in order to designate this as a crime against the Justice League. Otherwise, we'd have to turn him over to the authorities, and I'm positive that Rudy would give away your identity the second he's given the chance."
That was probably true, Wally thought miserably, "Why Atom?"
Wally could count on one hand the number of times he'd even seen the tiny hero. Atom was fairly new to the League, too. He'd been inducted at the same time as Roy. Wally could faintly recall a few stories where Uncle Barry or Hal had needed Atom's help with a villain or run into him on a mission, but that was it.
"He volunteered. We needed a Leaguer to be injured enough to warrant the kind of response against your father that we showed. Atom is going to pretend to be in a coma for two months, so he's going to stay out of the public eye until then. He said that he has several projects over in Ivy Town that he needed to focus on in his civilian identity, so he's just going to be taking a bit of a vacation from the League until this all blows over," Uncle Barry tried to smile reassuringly at Wally.
All Wally could think about was how much trouble he was putting everyone through. An entire town was being deprived of its hero because of him. The Justice League's integrity was being compromised big time just to protect him. If anyone found out about this…
"Hey," Uncle Barry turned him to the side so that they were face to face. "This is not your fault."
"I wasn't-"
"Don't give me that. I know that face," he stared directly into Wally's eyes so that he could make sure his nephew was paying attention. "The League is doing this because you're one of us, and you are absolutely worth it. Yes, no matter how well we spin it, the League's public trust will take a hit for this, but it's no worse than some of the crap Hal has pulled before. I'm sure you remember the knock-down, drag-out fight he and Wonder Woman got into a few years ago. Broad daylight. Middle of a suburban neighborhood in Washington D.C."
Wally did remember. The fight had been caught on camera and broadcasted all across the country. It had broken the standing record for the most watched video on the internet. He actually thought that it still was number one.
"My point is that this isn't the last confrontation the League will have with the government. It will blow over with time, and then we'll move onto the next problem," Uncle Barry hooked an arm around Wally's neck fondly and ruffled his hair. "Superman will cause nine buildings worth of collateral damage, Hal will insult Diana in public again, Aquaman will forget that Atlantis laws aren't surface world laws… it happens. A lot."
"But this is a big deal," Wally argued insistently. "The League is lying for me – to the whole country!"
"You aren't the only one unhappy about it; Wonder Woman is extremely upset. I don't like it either. I feel like it opens a lot of doors to some things that could change the League forever – doors that can't be closed," Uncle Barry spoke slowly. His voice was worried and his expression grim. "But this is the only way to keep people from guessing that you're Kid Flash. You haven't made quite as many enemies as I have yet, but you're on Zoom's list, which is more than a death sentence if he ever finds out who you are. I already told you that I'd do anything to protect you. You and your aunt will always come first for me. The League is secondary."
Wally felt his chest tighten at that. He felt safer around his uncle than he'd ever felt with his own father. He didn't have to watch his back with Uncle Barry or be careful with what he said. Wally never had to worry about his uncle getting angry at him for no reason. That was how it was supposed to be, right?
So, why the hell couldn't his father treat him like that?
He didn't have an answer. Wally leaned against his uncle gratefully and shut his eyes. They stayed for two more hours until the sun started to go down. Aunt Iris left to go bring the car around, and Uncle Barry helped him up, waiting patiently to start walking back until Wally had said his goodbyes.
Wally took one last look at his mother's grave and forced himself to turn away, feeling lower than ever before. He climbed into the back of his aunt's car and tried not to notice her sneaking worried glances at him from the driver's seat. Uncle Barry slid into the passenger's side and buckled in. He hated to drive, Wally knew. It was hard to restrict yourself to the speed limit, especially when you could jog faster than the vehicle you were driving could ever go.
They made it about ten minutes before Uncle Barry heaved a sigh and twisted around in his seat. Aunt Iris looked at him sharply, clearly upset, but said nothing. Wally watched the brief exchange wordlessly. The past few times that his aunt and uncle visited him up in the Watchtower, Wally had sensed that there was something they weren't telling him and didn't want to tell him. He hadn't asked and hadn't let on that he knew anything, hoping that no one would tell him, but he guessed this was it.
"Kid…" his uncle began reluctantly. Aunt Iris' hands tightened on the steering wheel. "There's something I need you to think about."
Wally said nothing, his stomach twisting itself into knots.
"The League is finally done with all their questioning, and the government has declared this a closed case. So, we're ready to lock your father away for good. He'll be in isolation for the rest of his life."
So far, so good.
Uncle Barry looked like he had to force the words out of his mouth, "I need you to think about whether or not you want to see him one more time."
Wally's heart started pumping faster. He saw his father's red, angry face glaring at him and the gun pointed right at his chest.
Oh.
He must've had a terrible poker face, because Uncle Barry took his hand within picoseconds and squeezed it. "You don't have to ever see him again if you don't want to. I just need you to say the word, and he's out of your life forever. It's up to you."
Wally fought down the panic and brought his eyes up to meet his uncle's, "Did he ask to see me?"
Uncle Barry winced. Aunt Iris' teeth ground together.
There it was.
This was what they'd been hiding from him.
He wished it could stay hidden longer. Why had he said anything?
"Yes," Uncle Barry almost growled. He took a deep breath and controlled his anger. "He's been asking to see you for the last two weeks."
That didn't make any kind of sense. Why would his father try to kill him and then ask to see him later? There's no way he regretted trying to kill Wally. He'd never seemed particularly regretful in the past whenever he'd hurt his son. Maybe he just wanted the chance to hurt Wally some more – tell him how much of a disappointment he was. Again.
That really wasn't the bigger issue though, Wally realized belatedly. Why hadn't his immediate response been 'Hell no' instead of asking if his father wanted to see him?
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[Star City
March 15, 15:00 CDT]
"Hey, would you mind opening those kidney beans for me and draining them?"
"Yes."
"Thanks. Oh, but don't drain them all the way; I want at least some of the juice left over to put in."
"That was a 'Yes, I do mind'."
"I need those tomatoes diced, too, if you could. And the onions."
"I'm not helping you cook this."
"Well, I need a little bit of help! I've never cooked for speedsters before; I'm almost quintupling my recipe."
"Ollie, I'm not taking this to Central."
"How else is it going to get there?"
Roy slammed a fist down onto the expensive, dark marble counter and glared at his former mentor and adoptive father angrily, "I'm not giving your damn chili to Wally!"
At this, Oliver whipped around from the state of the art stove where he was browning eight pounds of steak. He wiped his hands on the ridiculous apron he was wearing and brandished a pancake turner at Roy sternly, "That boy has been through some serious trauma. This chili will light the fires of life within him and give him the strength to recover."
From the end of the kitchen island, Dinah gave a small laugh without looking up from her book and took a sip from her iced tea.
"Your chili will give him trauma," Roy growled, remembering well the first time he'd ever seen a grown man cry: The day Green Lantern came by for a cookout at the Queen mansion.
Since then, Ollie's chili had earned something resembling infamy within the League. As it stood, only Oliver and Batman really enjoyed it, but those dismal odds had never stopped Ollie from making new people try his recipe in an attempt to find someone else who was able to join their little masochistic, napalm-eating club.
"He'll like it," Ollie smiled suddenly, one hundred percent sure of himself, and turned back to the stove. Roy and Dinah exchanged a skeptical look behind his back. The blonde martial arts expert silently pulled a small pill bottle from her purse and slid it down the counter to him. Roy caught it easily and turned it over in his hands to read the label.
Heartburn relief.
He shot a dirty look at Dinah, but she was reading her book again, nonchalantly turning a page.
"Did you call me over here just to be your chili mule?" Roy asked irritably. He sat down beside Dinah on one of the barstools lining the kitchen.
Oliver busied himself with measuring chili powder and refused to face him, "Mostly."
Dinah's reaction was immediate. She closed her book with a snap and fixed Oliver with a deep, disapproving glare. When he ignored her, she opened her mouth wide and sucked in a lungful of air with a loud gasp, readying a screeching canary cry. Roy clamped both hands over his ears, and Oliver spun around with a scared expression, arms thrown out nonthreateningly.
"No! Wait, wait!" he begged. "I had another reason."
Dinah cocked an eyebrow and exhaled slowly. She crossed her arms over her chest and tapped one foot against the island as she waited for him to continue. Roy cautiously lowered his hands.
Oliver hesitated a second to make sure Dinah wasn't going to deafen him, "I…wanted to make sure you were okay."
Roy watched him carefully, a firm frown set on his face. Clearly, Dinah had bullied him into this. "Make sure I'm okay…?"
"Yeah…" Ollie floundered uncomfortably. "Are you okay money-wise? And stuff?"
Roy just stared at him.
"How are you managing solo? Are you-"
His temper flared, and he shot to his feet, "Am I screwing it up?! You want to know how much I'm struggling so that you can lord it over me?"
"What?" Oliver looked completely taken aback for a minute. "No! I just-"
Roy grabbed his keys from the counter and moved to storm out of the kitchen, deciding to head to Central City early. It had been a stupid idea to let Oliver talk him into coming by the mansion. He was clearly not going to take Roy seriously.
"Roy William Harper!" Dinah barked sharply. Despite his anger, Roy stopped in his tracks. Then, he felt foolish for doing so. Oliver's girlfriend wasn't his mother. True, she was the closest thing he'd ever had to a mother figure, but she was only six years older than him!
He spun around to tell her exactly that, but caught one look at the menacing glare she was giving him and withered.
"Sit down!" she kicked one of the chairs away from the counter and pointed at it severely. "That's not what Oliver was going to say."
Roy stayed where he was.
Oliver eyed them both nervously. Why the hell was he dating a woman he was afraid of?
Dinah tossed her hair over her shoulder and slammed one fist into her other hand, cracking the knuckles ominously. Roy could see the lethal muscles in her legs tensing in preparation.
Right.
He leaned down to right the stool and took a seat on it, resting his elbows on his knees unhappily. Dinah nodded at Oliver to speak and then took up a guard position by the kitchen's only exit.
"Watching you two talk to each other is like watching a five-year-old try to diffuse a time bomb."
Roy wondered which one he was supposed to be. The child or the bomb.
He decided that Oliver was the five-year-old.
"I wasn't trying to imply that you're a bad hero. I just hadn't heard from you in awhile, and nobody could tell me if you'd had any injuries lately." Oliver reduced the fire and came around the counter to stand in front of Roy. "I know how expensive our gear is too and how easily it gets smashed."
A small silence dragged uncomfortably between them, and Oliver tugged on his goatee, "Do you have any way to get your injuries treated?"
No.
Roy actually had three bruised ribs right now that he had taped himself. His tiny kitchenette was more triage unit than cooking space, and half of his bookshelf was filled with advanced first aid books and medical texts. Last week, he'd had to badly stitch up a gash in his leg that would leave a particularly nasty scar. He'd also taken to trying to collect and reuse his arrows after fights.
"I manage," he said stubbornly, letting the anger leave his voice.
Oliver looked upset by this, and his eyes began darting all over his adopted son's body, no doubt trying to see if he could find any hidden injuries. Roy sat upright and crossed his arms with a scowl. He was hiding four.
"Why the sudden concern for my well-being?" He asked sharply, annoyed at being detained against his will.
"I've always been concerned-" Oliver protested angrily. He stopped himself and took a deep breath to calm down. Roy warily watched him pinch the bridge of his nose and scrunch up his eyes like he was trying hard not to think about something. "Back in February, up at the Watchtower…"
Roy's chest throbbed. He remembered February tenth very well. He'd been a little downstate in Coast City as a favor to Hal. The Green Lantern was good friends with Oliver and had always gotten along well with Roy. In fact, Hal was the only Justice Leaguer who'd taken Roy's bid for independence seriously at first. He'd asked for Roy's help a couple times on missions, and while Roy knew very well that it had partly been to keep an eye on him, he appreciated being treated like an adult.
So, when Hal had asked him to watch over Coast City while he was away on corps business, Roy had accepted very quickly. Hal had said that it would be a good chance for him to patrol solo away from Green Arrow's stomping grounds. Roy had tossed aside his JLA communicator and dove right into familiarizing himself with the legendary Green Lantern's home turf. It had been great until, just before dark, Oliver tracked him down on top of the Sharks' football stadium. Roy remembered being furious and unreasonable until his former mentor had said that his little brother was hurt.
"Dinah and I went in to see Wally, and the whole time we were in there, I kept seeing you in that hospital bed," Ollie confessed quietly. Roy's eyebrows turned downwards in confused surprise, and he waited silently for Oliver to continue. "I don't worry about you because I don't respect you or because I don't think you can handle yourself. I worry because I care about you."
Oliver looked away then, rubbing at the back of his neck like he was embarrassed. Roy took the break in eye contact to glance over at Dinah for an explanation, but she was smiling at Oliver like a proud dog owner who had just taught their puppy a particularly difficult trick. He turned his gaze back to Oliver and sighed to himself. This was…unexpected.
"You're like my own blood – my own kid," Oliver examined his feet closely and fiddled with the ties on his apron. Dinah leaned against the doorframe and switched to looking straight at Roy, her smile turning a touch menacing in a look that clearly said 'Don't screw this up'.
Roy chewed the inside of his cheek and took the time to think before he spoke. Of the two of them, he had not expected Oliver to be the one to reach out first to try and fix things, but now he had. Roy couldn't just ignore that; he couldn't brush it off as nothing. Plus, by this point in Oliver's little speech, it would make him look childish and petty if he stormed out.
He was also pretty sure that Dinah would knock him through the wall if he did that.
It wasn't as if he wanted to be fighting with Oliver. Roy was just tired of not being taken seriously as a hero. He took another look at his former mentor and thought about how hard it must have been for him to stuff away his pride and take that first step.
Roy decided to take the second one and meet him halfway. He slid off of the stool and walked past Ollie to the pile of ingredients by the stove. He grabbed the five cans of tomatoes and the bag of onions and carried them to the center island, picking up a paring knife, "How small did you need these diced?"
Both Oliver and Dinah stared at him blankly for a few moments. Then, Oliver's ridiculous mustache jumped with a wide smile, and he cautiously moved closer to Roy to continue measuring out the rest of the spices, "I'm not sure. Do you know how Wally likes them?"
Roy snorted quietly, trying not to notice Dinah's overly pleased grin, "Wally's a garbage can. He'll eat anything."
Oliver chuckled behind him, and Roy heard the sound of simmering steak chunks being moved around in a pan. He passed the cut up vegetables over to be put in the stock pot and got started on mincing cloves of garlic.
The relationship between he and Oliver was far from fixed, but it was a start. It would take time to get back to their original father-son dysfunctionality.
Four relatively amicable hours later, Roy was standing just outside the Queen mansion with Oliver and armed with three massive pots of lethal chili. They'd just finished strapping the chili onto Roy's bike and had said their goodbyes when the younger archer held out his hand firmly.
"How about we team up a few times out on patrol once this is all settled with Wally?" Roy offered gruffly, trying to make it sound like it was no big deal. His little brother was his first priority at the moment, of course. "Not like with me as your sidekick or anything and not because I need help. Just for the hell of it."
Oliver smiled, but managed to hold back any snarky comments he might've had, and grasped Roy's offered hand tightly, "Red and Green Arrow working together again? I'm not sure Star's criminals could handle it. We'd look like Christmas Justice."
There was a joke to be made from that, but Roy decided to let it go. He swung a leg up onto his bike and jammed his helmet over his head.
"Oh, by the way, you wouldn't be interested in ten thousand free arrows, would you?" Oliver slowly backed up towards the mansion, messing with his hair and shuffling his feet – trying to look nonchalant. "Because I may have accidentally ordered my next shipment of arrows in the wrong color. Do you know how ridiculous I'd look firing off red arrows? They don't match my costume!"
Roy revved the engine on his bike and rode down the winding driveway leading away from Queen Mansion, unaware that he was half smiling.
"Idiot," he muttered under his breath.