Disclaimer- Do not own Young Justice or any of its characters.
OH look more Dick Pov.
Waaaalllyyyyy!
o.o.o.o
Chapter Length: 4,255 words
o.o.o.o
"Heh, how about those two?"
Dick followed the direction Wally was pointing in, eyes alighting on a couple of women walking down the sidewalk as they chatted animatedly, their legs peeking out from some very short shorts. Dick rolled his eyes.
"Oh yeah, I'm sure that'll work asterously. Hey, why don't you go ask them what their favorite scientific achievement was this year? That always wrangles them in."
Wally scowled, his face flushing in the sunlight. "You know, there are plenty of women out there who would find that an interesting conversation starter."
"Oh, I know," Dick admitted, taking a sip of his soda. "It's something in your tone, I think. Like that time with Heather the intern? How was it you asked her?"
"Dick…" Wally warned, waving a french fry in his direction threateningly. Dick was not to be deterred though, ruffling his own dark hair so that it stuck up in some vague resemblance of the way Wally's tended to lay. The cop leaned his arm on the table in a casually suave manner, using his index finger to push his sunglasses down and wiggle his eyebrows.
"Babe, you are like an exothermic reaction, you radiate hotness."
"Dude, you weren't even there, how do you know I said that!" the redhead fumed, the color now spreading to his ears. Dick laughed loudly, earning some curious looks from the nearby patrons. Best bros though they were, life was not complete without making fun of the scientist at least once a week. Twice on the weekends.
"Bart told me."
"That little shit! I'll kill him!"
They lapsed into a silence, eating their meals at an outdoor table that sadly lacked an umbrella for shade. It was a dinky little place in central Gotham called The Devil's Food, which lived up to it's name by serving some of the fattiest, artery clogging crap known to humanity.
Which of course automatically made it a frequent place to eat for the two men when they got the chance to hang. And oh man, the apple pie they made there was considered such a deathbed inducing delicacy that most customers came for their dessert after lunch somewhere classier.
Wally shoved aside his now empty second plate of food, moving on to the third. People could stare all they liked but he would eat as many Gut Burster Burgers as he could stomach.
"Hey, you know, speaking of ladies, how are things going with Artemis," Dick asked casually, pushing his half eaten burger across the table to the scientist, who snatched at it happily before the cop could suddenly change his mind about the offering.
"Oh, um…" Wally murmured, swallowing his food thickly before rubbing uncertainly at the back of his neck. Dick immediately knew something was up. He wondered if maybe Wally had found out about Artemis, her tips and the lycanthropy...
He himself hadn't bothered mentioning anything at all to Wally about the situation down at the police station, about how they'd been getting loads of anonymous tips and tripled their patrols in the slums. Hell, not even the news stations found that tidbit of information useful for the public; it seemed the only thing about that territory they were interested in was death.
Dick was of the mind that Wally needed to figure things out for himself. Not only was it not Dick's place to rat Artemis out to the scientist, but he was tired of trying again and again without success to get Wally to believe in the possibility of actual werewolves.
It would take nothing short of proof discovered by Wally's own two eyes to get him to see the light, and even then he'd no doubt work himself up a scientific explanation for the phenomenon.
"What have you done to her?" Dick sighed, crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair. Wally went on the defensive.
"Nothing! I just, you know, haven't heard from her in like a week…" he trailed off, averting his gaze from his friend. He glanced at the people around them, making sure they were a safe distance away from the two of them before leaning in to speak with a much more measured tone. "Uh, I guess I should tell you something…"
Surprised, wondering if Artemis had already told him about what she was, or that maybe Wally had figured out and then scorned her away or something for thinking she was crazy, Dick scooted closer to the table and listened to the tale of Artemis and the silver trophy.
And god, if he had needed any more confirmation that Artemis was in fact a werewolf, this was it. The moment Wally mentioned the smoke and her tears and the tarnished handprint left behind, he almost wanted to smack the scientist upside his thick skull for not seeing the proof right in front of him.
But of course, Wallace West was not to be altered in his stubborn opinions, and didn't let a little thing like silver burns convince him of supernatural goings on.
Dick could barely contain himself from saying something as Wally finished the story.
"So Artemis got burned by silver, and then she just… leaves and closes herself off?"
Werewolf. Werewolf. Werewolf. Was that so hard for Wally to understand?
Apparently so.
"Yes!" Wally exclaimed, looking lost and confused as he slumped against his chair, upset enough that he for a moment forgot to eat his food. "I have spent the last week studying the thing at home and at the lab. I sacrifice my lunch breaks for it, Dick, and I still can't understand how it happened."
"Woah, sacrificed lunch breaks. You must be at your wits end," he joked, though he was practically on the edge of his seat. He wondered where Wally was going to go with this.
"I am! I even got so desperate that I… uh…" he trailed off, looking embarrassed. He scrunched his face up and got it out fast, kind of like pulling a band aid off in one swift yank so the pain wouldn't be dragged out. "I went to the werewolf site Bart showed me at work."
Dick burst out laughing. He couldn't help himself.
"Oh my god, if I had known you were going to say that I would have brought a recorder!"
Wally threw a french fry, which incidentally smacked him right on the forehead and made him laugh even harder. This was all more than he could have expected to hear come out of Wally's mouth. Never in a million years would he have bet money on anything getting the redhead to visit a website dedicated to the the supposed actual existence of werewolves. A movie website for them, sure, but this?
That silver incident had really shaken him up, that was for sure.
"Don't get any ideas, I don't believe in werewolves any more than I did last week. I just got it in my head that people always say werewolves can't touch silver. And I tried to ignore the feeling but I finally broke down and texted the little twerp for his werewolf fanboy site."
"I bet he gave you hell for that one," Dick mused.
"Hell and a half," Wally confirmed, chomping into Dick's abandoned half of burger viciously. "Anyway, I started cross referencing some things I found there. With you know, legit medical conditions and such."
"And?" Dick prompted, raising an eyebrow.
"I found some interesting things. Mostly old folk tales about werewolves and similar. Stuff about how people used to murder wild wolves because they thought they were evil creatures. Silver allergies are pretty common, lots of men and women get rashes from certain types of jewelry in the rare case it's legitimate silver. So as far as today's medical prognosis goes there's nothing at all odd about metal allergies or severe sinus reactions to wolfsbane. Although some other things I looked up, like a desire to eat raw meat and the double canines some of these goons claim werewolves to have in human form, that was trickier. There were vague accounts of some homosapiens developing a double set of sharper teeth, and even more old tales about it. So when I looked all this stuff up it got me thinking pretty hard…"
"About?" Just get on with it already.
"How in the olden days, before all these stories of monsters were considered myth instead of reality, people were much less educated about certain kinds of medical conditions or reactions. So I'm thinking this could be a rare medical condition, Dick," Wally explained, his passion for the subject rising to the point that he gestured very earnestly and nearly sent his soda cup onto the pavement. "I'm betting this is where the whole werewolf mythos came from to start with. There must have been people, or at least someone somewhere that was affected with all these symptoms of what we know as the common werewolf, and because people didn't know better it scared them and they jumped to the monster or demon or wrath of God conclusion! Thus, werewolves!"
He trailed off thoughtfully, beginning to murmur to himself so lowly Dick couldn't make head or tail of what he was saying. He had gone into full on science geek mode now, completely lost to the outside world, so Dick cleared his throat to bring him back down to earth.
"Wait wait wait," Dick interrupted, making a series of vertical gestures with his hands, a grin creeping up his face. "Are you telling me that you, Wallace Rudolph West, hater of all things illogical and nonsensical, despiser of magic, he who casts out any who believe in werewolves, he—"
"Alright, enough!" Wally groused, shoving some french fries into his mouth and chomping on them bad temperedly. "I get it already. I'm not saying I believe in werewolves, I already told you that! To reiterate, I'm saying I think there could be a medical condition that can be labeled as lycanthropy. MEDICALLY. You know, like elephantitis? Something maybe not even classified because now these supposed symptoms just don't even matter on their own. It's fairly normal. Do you understand?"
"I understand perfectly. Ha, knew you'd have a scientific explanation. Babs'll get a kick out of this one."
"Do you ever not tell her what I say?"
"Never," Dick chimed, sipping his drink again. "So, you think that Artemis might have this, ah, lycanthropy condition? Is that it?
Wally you have no idea how close you are to the truth.
"That's exactly it. She loves bloody meat, silver burns her, she's got weird sharp teeth and she's just so damn secretive… Living in this city with a bunch of nuts that think werewolves are real, and then her having all these symptoms together? That's probably why she was so against me taking her to the hospital that night I found her. It's all starting to make a lot of sense."
Dick nodded, glancing down the sidewalk at the people passing by. He wondered idly if any of them were werewolves. It alarmed him to imagine that the things had moved further into the city, but then there was a gentle reminder of Artemis and her tips; werewolves were obviously just like humans, some bad, some good, some just trying to live their lives.
What Wally was saying at least made some sense, even if Dick himself knew that werewolves were far more than a conglomeration of symptoms associated with the werewolf scares from long ago.
But if this was the best support he could get from his friend, then he was more than willing to take it.
"Are you going to do anything about it?" Dick asked.
"I would like to. Artemis is really stubborn though, and I don't want to make her feel like some lab rat," he frowned, pushing the last remaining fry around on his plate. "I just want to be there for her. It might not seem so bad on the surface, but you didn't see her hand. I was fucking terrified; she just touched it for a second, could you imagine prolonged contact?" he shuddered violently. "I'm afraid to find out how severe other allergens could be. This is serious, I want to help her. Maybe the two of us could mess around in the lab, find something to help alleviate the reactions, make them more manageable, less life threatening. God, Dick," Wally sighed out, running a hand through his hair. "I'm a mess about her right now. What have I gotten myself into?"
Dick smiled.
"Something way bigger than either of us, I'd say. How about some heart clogging apple pie?"
"Oh man, two please."
o.o.o.o
Artemis Crock was done ignoring Wally. One week with no contact and she was about to go bananas.
It wasn't that the blonde had nothing to do outside of visiting Wally West or silently aiding the humans in the territory. She had spent most of her week blowing off steam at her favourite spot in the forest on the outskirts of Gotham, the one she usually reserved for visiting when she was feeling the urge to punch someone or scream. In fact it had served as her only outlet of privacy away from the pack before Wally had come along.
Now it seemed to be a home away from Wally, too, a place she could truly distance herself from everything.
Mostly she'd vent lowly to herself, or spend time clawing up the bark on the trees, or lying in the grass to watch the swathes of cotton clouds roll past while her lip jutted and her brow pinched into a scowl of dark thoughts.
There were white targets spray-painted messily onto some of the gnarled trunks, and Artemis kept a compound bow and some arrows stashed in a nearby fallen oak; sometimes the best medicine was filling the center of the targets full of arrows, imagining each one to be the face of one of the people she hated most.
It was from that particular sort of venture that she returned home late that night, limbs on fire and skin dripping with sweat. Her biceps were burning from the amount of shafts she'd let fly, but her mind had grown clearer with each thud of an arrow head penetrating into pliable wood.
She just wanted to talk to Wally again, to be with him in the lab, or in front of his tv, or stuffing food into their faces while they passively insulted each other and laughed.
Now that she had experienced what it meant to truly have a friend, and not just packmates that barely even tolerated her presence to start with, she realized how lonely her life had been without such a bond.
Which is what she knew she had with Wally. A bond. It was as if the time walling herself away from him had opened her eyes fully to it.
Wally West was her best friend, and she was just going to let him slip away because she was afraid of what he might think about what happened?
It had taken her a week to convince herself that with his logical mind and stubborn avoidance of things he couldn't explain with science, that he would either find an explanation that worked for him, or else completely ignore it in favour of keeping himself on the safer side of the mountain.
His text messages had barely mentioned what had happened, he had only been concerned for her well being, then respected her obvious need to be alone.
It was insane to think that not even two months ago she'd been so at war with herself over this man, over his foolishness and the danger he could be putting himself in. Yet now she was in war with herself to just get back to him no matter the cost of her well being or his.
She needed someone. For the first time in her life she needed someone besides her mom, someone she could trust to have at her back. And Wally West seemed like he could be—was—that person.
So she took her cell phone back out of her computer desk and powered it up. There were no new text messages, the last one having been his affirmation of her alone time. Something thick formed in her throat for some reason as she thumbed back to the main window, realizing there were a couple of voice messages instead.
Brows furrowing in confusion, she called it, then spent ten minutes angrily trying to figure out her password to listen to the damn thing.
Finally it played back, a message that had been sent earlier that day. It was Wally's voice that filtered into her ear, and she hadn't heard it in so long it made her close her eyes and smile at the sound of it.
Fenrir, she'd missed the dork.
"Artemis, it's me, uh, Wally. Listen, I know that I said I would give you your space, and I'm still respecting that, but I needed to let you know a couple of things. Number one, I- my lab really misses you. The beakers are all dusty and the chemicals miss your sarcasm. Or maybe I'm the one collecting dust and missing your sarcasm? Einstein, I don't know what I'm saying anymore. Uh, the main thing I wanted to say is… kind of ballsy actually. I really hope you don't get offended when I say this but—"
The message ended abruptly, having run out of time. Artemis growled in anger at the device, but it announced the end of that message and then started in on another, which luckily continued the conversation.
"—it needs to be said. I've noticed some… things. About you. Oh man, this sounds so creepy doesn't it? I just mean, when we hang, or when you, you know, get close to someone you always notice things about them, no big. It's just, I noticed your teeth! Er, I mean, the teeth. The canine ones? There's like two of them side by side on either side? Totally not a big deal, it happens. Uh, not a lot obviously but. Yeah. And then the meat. And the silver thing. And do you have allergies to Wolfsbane cause that—"
"—could also be a thing. Uuuuuuuh. Ugh, enough stammering, West. Artemis, the thing is I think you could have a sort of… medical condition, something that involves a lot of the symptoms associated with werewolves. I'm not saying you're a werewolf, that's ridiculous! But you could by definition be considered a sufferer of lycanthropy, in a medical sense. And it's nothing to be ashamed of, I'm not trying to like make you feel alarmed or ashamed about it. I kind of figured maybe this is why you seem kind of… closed off.—"
"—Look at the werewolf crazies you live around! I can't blame you. Er, assuming I'm right. Look I'm not trying to assume anything about you here, I just… got pretty shaken by the burn you got. So I did a little research on the subject and came to these conclusions. If I'm wrong you can totally beat me up or ignore me forever. I think I'd prefer being beat up, at least I could see- anyway, I just wanted to let you know we can work on a project together, just you and me doing some pharmaceutical pioneering. Er, trying to.—"
"—We can try to find a way to at least reduce the severity of the reactions. OR just find out more about your condition. Or something. Just… whenever you're ready, I'm here. I'm here for you if you want me to be. You're a good friend Artemis. I'm uh, glad I found you shot. Oh Einstein no I mean, not like that! No, okay, I'm done before I really piss you off. Good-bye, Artemis."
Artemis listened to the messages again. So many emotions flitted through her like a kaleidoscope, weighing her down enough that she had to seat herself on her bed. First she felt happiness that Wally didn't hate her for avoiding him for so long, that he was still compassionate about her need to be alone. Second she felt sheer terror that he was so very close to hammering it all out, to knowing exactly what she was, what made her tick; her weaknesses, oh he knew all of her weaknesses and he thought them allergies of all things.
He had no clue about the severity of it, that silver leached into her system and poisoned her, that the only thing that had saved her twice from the toxicity of it was her mother's wolfsbane salve.
Artemis tightened her jaw, fists clenching on her tattered sheets.
Wally was offering to help though. Even if it wasn't for the reasons he thought, even if he aimed at the problem from the perspective of illness… it was something. She herself didn't even know the nature of her abilities; could Wally actually be onto something, on the right track at least?
Glorified allergies… somehow she didn't think so, especially with the little detail about her being able to turn herself into a gigantic wolf at her own will.
Still, a tempered excitement flooded her. The very thing she had been hoping for, Wally to use his pharmaceutical knowledge to help her find some answers. It was almost too good to be true.
This was a very important step in a direction she wasn't sure of, but she was ready and willing to see exactly where it could lead.
Artemis spent an hour creating a response and sending it to him.
Wally, you're truly something, I hope you know that. I think I've been a little slow to admit it to myself, but you're a good friend too. A great one. My… best one, actually. But enough with the sentimental stuff, you're rubbing off on me. You have no idea how much it would mean to me if we could try and figure something out about me- for me, I mean. Don't worry, I won't beat you up dork, it's nice to have someone know about, well, whatever it is I have. Maybe I just have weird genetics? Either way, I can't wait to get started. I'll drop by tomorrow, and you can do whatever you need to do first; take my blood, subject me to a lobotomy—I am twenty-four years done with this shit.
Oh and, I'm sorry. About the distance. I was just frustrated for letting that happen, and afraid of what you might think about me. Not that I usually care about what people think, but… this was kind of different; you're different. A different case, I mean. Look, I figured if I told you, you'd think I was insane and try to have me committed somewhere. Nice to know that proved to be wrong.
And you know what, Wally?
I'm here for you, too.
o.o.o.o
Their work began.
It was indescribable to be back in one another's company, and despite the nature of their project they felt closer to each other than ever before.
Wally took some of her blood, and began sneaking some of the more heavy duty equipment home from work when he could, claiming it was old stuff that just sat around and collected dust because new equipment had replaced it.
They discovered that Artemis's blood contained enzymes that weren't exactly human in nature, and upon further research Wally had pinpointed that these were commonly found inside the system of dogs and other carnivores, which helped them digest raw meat.
Instead of getting freaked out with her, it seemed that the more things they found strange about her, the more excited Wally got about the whole thing.
Like when the power went out on them one day, plunging them both into darkness. Wally had nearly screamed when her eyes glowed back at him like an animal's, so of course then he'd taken such a long look at her eye that she kept bumping into stuff for the rest of the day.
Artemis never once felt like a lab experiment around him. He was enthusiastic about helping her, not dissecting her from the inside out, and whenever he did something invasive like blinding her with the penlight, he allowed her to do the same to him in return.
He took his own blood too, then had an absolute fit when it turned out to be B- instead of AB+. Artemis had laughed herself into tears listening to him on the phone with his mother, grousing about how he had been lied to his whole life and he swore he never remembered being told by anyone that it was B-.
In the times they weren't in the lab they watched a lot of Wally's favorite classic movies, binge watched any series they could find that interested them both, and walked down a few blocks to buy the most delicious frozen yogurt Artemis had ever let caress her tastebuds.
They played more games of twenty questions, and she let herself open up more than she had in the past, finding that more and more frequently she didn't even have to pause to war with herself over an answer; it would simply spill from her lips as easily as breathing, then she'd ask him something and it was like a game of ping pong.
Artemis was happier than she had ever been.