And here it is: the conflict is starting up! I'm so excited. Thanks for all the comments, lovely people! I love hearing from you all. I put a lot of effort into this story and it's like I'm getting freshly baked cookies from the cookie jar every time I get a review.
I sincerely hope you enjoy Chapter 3!
Wally followed Dick to the mountain expecting to find everyone scattered around the living room and kitchen, jesting as they always did. What he found was silence.
"Hello?" Dick called loudly, and Wally winced as the boy's voice bounced throughout the empty space. There was the swift click of footsteps before a blonde head poked out from the kitchen.
"In here, Robin," Artemis said blandly. Dick quickly followed her into the other room. There was an assortment of lettuce, mayonnaise, tomato, and bread sprawled over the counters.
"Binge eating much?" inquired Dick, and Artemis looked startled, pausing as she spread mayonnaise over a slice of bread. Dick tilted his head. "What?"
Artemis just shrugged. "Nothing, you just haven't joked around in a...while," she admitted, before giving a hesitant smile. "It's nice. Are you having a nice day?"
"Did I just hear blondie ask that?" Wally gawked from behind Dick.
Dick ignored the redhead. "Great, actually," he said cheerily as he hopped onto the counter beside the archer, kicking his legs. "I haven't seen you in forever. Where've you been?"
Artemis hummed noncommittally, slapping her covered bread on top of the tomato, turkey, and lettuce occupying the other slice. She leaned back against the counter, facing the fridge instead of her teammate. "I was taking some time off. Focusing on school and whatnot. What about you?"
She wasn't. Wally knew that because she happened to go to Dick's school. In fact, she rarely showed up for class at all. But neither of them could point that out. "You could say the same. Batman's been driving me up a wall," Dick replied. He stole a glance back at Wally, who kept trying to reach for Artemis' sandwich. She took a bite out of it and Wally recoiled in disappointment. "What about the others?"
Wally frowned at Dick. "We're a team, shouldn't we always stick together?"
"M'gann and SB still live here, though they aren't here right now," Artemis replied. "I've tried talking to M'gann before, but I think she can only really stand to be around SB because, y'know, he doesn't really understand that Wally's gone. I mean, I think he gets it but doesn't know how to express it. It's less overwhelming for her, y'know?" She closed her eyes and sighed before continuing. "Kaldur started up training again in Atlantis."
Dick nodded. There was a beat of silence before he hopped off the counter and clapped his hands together. "Well, we'll just have to fix that," he declared.
Artemis' eyebrow immediately rose. "Fix what? The team? We're still on suspension."
"Suspension?" Wally echoed.
Dick looked straight at Wally, who was hovering behind Artemis, when he replied. "Suspension because the team's still broken up about KF." Wally flinched.
Artemis nodded agreeably. "Yeah, that."
"Can we have just one conversation today that doesn't involve my death?" Wally grimaced. "I feel like I ruined everyone's lives."
Dick, unsurprisingly, didn't answer. Instead, he turned his attention to the open refrigerator, automatically scanning his eyes over the presented foods as if they were second nature. As Wally observed, though, the full stock of food seemed to throw him off, and he shut it with a wince. "And no, not the team. The team isn't over, remember? But we're sure going to fix our friendships. We're still buds, and buds don't forget about each other for two months," exclaimed Dick.
"Didn't bother you before," muttered Artemis. Wally wasn't sure whether or not Dick had heard, he didn't act like he did, but the redhead felt angry at the blonde's words. He kind of wished that he hadn't spent so much time trying to get the attention of Barry and Iris when he first became a ghost and instead thought to hang around his friends a bit. It made him feel guilty. He had thought about them, of course, but he selfishly hadn't wanted to see their banter go on without him.
He shouldn't have worried. It hadn't.
"What are you doing here, anyway?" Dick asked as he closed the refrigerator and leaned up against it. Artemis stiffened.
In the end, the girl only sighed and deflated again. "It doesn't feel like just two months since I was last here. GA had a meeting at the Watchtower, so I decided to catch up on my daily dose of nostalgia. You?"
"Batman's at that meeting," he shrugged. "I thought that someone would be here."
Artemis nodded, but said nothing more.
"Come on," Wally urged, hovering nervously behind Artemis. "Harpy, say something mean. Or rude. Or just insult my best bro over there. Something. Rob? Rob, tell her - us - one of your stupid puns. Just, something. Guys?" Dick bit his lip. "Guys?"
"I don't think-," Dick started automatically in response to Wally's plea, but Wally didn't believe that even Dick knew what he was going to say. Artemis didn't move, but her eyes flickered to her teammate. Dick took a deep breath. "I don't think Wally would like this."
Artemis froze up again, and it took her a few seconds to respond. "Like what?"
"This," Dick responded vaguely. A sigh. "Us. He wouldn't like what we've become."
The girl didn't have a rebuttal for that. Even if she did, though, Dick didn't give her the time to come up with one. He plastered a smile onto his face so quickly that anyone who didn't know better would never have guessed that he had just mentioned his dead best friend, Wally observed. Dick planted his palm on the counter and used it as leverage to smoothly land on the other side, racing for the couch.
"Robin?" Artemis called, bewildered. She put the remains of her sandwich down. Dick had opened up the cabinet beneath the television and was rifling through its contents, throwing most of it over his shoulder. She looked at the covers of various movie discs as she approached. Wally watched them from afar.
"Lion King, Princess Diary, Bruce Almighty, Twilight, Fast and Furious, Skyfall...aha!" Artemis cocked a hip and crossed her arms as she waited for Dick to reveal what it was that he had found. He turned to her with a brilliant smile. "21 Jump Street!"
"You think 21 Jump Street is better than Lion King?" Artemis asked incredulously.
"I think 21 Jump Street is funnier than Lion King. And I like funny," Dick exclaimed as he popped the disc into the television without waiting for Artemis' consent and bounced backwards onto the couch.
"Whatever," the blonde said with a scowl, walking back into the kitchen. Wally watched as she reached to grab the popcorn, just as Wally used to do before movies, before thinking better of it and heading back to the couch. The redhead was left to stare at the half opened and abandoned cabinet, wanting with all his willpower just to open a package of popcorn and give it to his friends. Artemis sat down on the other side of the couch, leaving a space between her and Dick.
Both teammates had already seen the movie before, and Artemis wasn't expecting to enjoy it all. Wally could tell that much. She didn't even attempt to appear the least bit interested. But then again, she probably hadn't been expecting Dick to burst out cackling and giggling at comments that she probably didn't even find funny. Against all odds, Wally realised that she was smiling only ten minutes into the movie, and laughing by the twenty minute mark.
Around that time was when the zeta tube announced the arrival of two missing faces. M'gann inched into the room cautiously, her bounce gone and Wally felt that it was as if it were replaced with a guarded mind in a vain attempt to protect herself from an onslaught of emotions when she saw Dick, prepared as she was most likely for the grief that had consumed him for so long. Her walls dropped five minutes after staring at her teammate kicking his legs and claiming how much better of a detective he was than the people she saw on the screen. Connor looked mildly alarmed and somewhat disturbed, walking to the back of the couch and propping his elbows on it, focusing his attention on the movie to see what all the fuss was about.
M'gann, with the grace of everything that Wally hadn't seen in months, skipped gleefully to join them. Wally figured that Dick must have known exactly how M'gann was going to react, and he gave the girl a sideways glance with the smallest smile. It was then that Wally realised Dick was barely giving the movie any of his actual attention.
Even Barry and Dinah joined them, but when he saw Flash, Wally felt something drop heavily in his chest. He left for the kitchen. The two mentors, like Wally, were also quick to leave but, unlike Wally, they left in much higher spirits than when they had entered.
"Black Canary," Bruce called the moment that he had stepped into the Watchtower. The meeting had already ended, and he was there to grab some last minute files that Green Arrow had failed to mention until the man had been about to leave, before deciding that it was also an ideal time to pitch forward certain concerns of his.
Bruce itched to get back. He was more than well aware that Dick could handle himself in a mountain filled with his friends, but it was already nine at night and the two still had to patrol Gotham. At the rate they were going, Dick was going to have to start saying that he was insomniatic to the teachers who kept asking about his lack of sleep.
"Yes, Batman?" Black Canary asked from the computer that she was rooted behind. She quickly kicked her legs so that the chair swivelled to face the just arriving man. She was holding a packet of files in her arms. "If it's about these, Oliver meant to give them to you," she said. Bruce nodded as he took them from her grasp.
"I've been meaning to ask you something," he started just as she moved to turn back around. The woman in black paused and glanced at her teammate.
"Oh?" she inquired curiously.
"Has Robin come to you with anything?" Bruce asked. The blonde woman in front of him frowned and gave him her full attention, folding her hands in her lap.
"You mean comfort? Therapy?" she clarified. At Bruce's confirmation, she continued, frown deeper than ever. "I can't tell you anything about the sessions I have with the team. You know that. But no, he hasn't asked for a room. Why?"
Bruce sighed softly, running a palm down his face as his teammate looked on in concern. He couldn't understand the way that Black Canary helped people. She listened to them in ways that Bruce didn't think he ever could. It was debatable who loved human life more, of course, and Bruce had hard morals that were permanently set in stone, but that was all physical. When it got down to the emotionally relatable level, it was safe to say that Black Canary had him beat. "He's been acting strange," he admitted.
That made the blonde confused. "'Strange'?" she echoed. "You mean happy?"
There was an element to her voice that Bruce couldn't place. "Yes, he's happy, but it doesn't make any sense. I feel like there's something off," he elaborated.
Black Canary considered her options for a moment before responding. "Maybe he's finally come to peace with the situation? I know it might seem a little random, but that could be because we were just used to him being so... depressed," she said carefully. Bruce could hear what she didn't say, and it made him want to look over his life from another perspective. Not to change it, but to acknowledge how other people viewed him. That was what Black Canary did to people. She made them think. Not about cases and not about missions, but about themselves. Bruce knew, in between her sentences, she was telling him that just because Bruce hadn't taken loss in the 'right way' didn't mean that his partner would turn out the same. They were not the same. Bruce knew that. But it was still a hard thing to remember when the only lessons he had left to teach Dick would turn Dick into his clone.
Bruce scowled. "So you don't feel like there's anything weird going on?" he demanded. Black Canary sighed.
"Let him be happy, Batman. I know it isn't like you to just leave things be, but don't do something that you're going to regret," she warned. There it was again. That something to her voice which Bruce couldn't pinpoint.
"My instincts haven't failed me yet," he growled, clutching the files in his hands as he spun around. His cape fluttered against his thigh as he began swiftly walking back to the zeta tube.
"Batman," Black Canary called as Bruce began typing Mount Justices' coordinates into the machine. "If you're right, and something is up..."-Bruce paused in interest-"maybe it's for the best. He's happy. Robin hasn't been this happy in a long time. Whatever it is that's making him this way - don't ruin it."
That's where their morals in human life were different. Black Canary relied on happiness in life. Bruce, on the other hand, already lived in the darkness. His comfort was the truth.
But did Robin need the same darkness as Bruce had in his life?
Bruce thought about that as he stood under the zeta beam and the light whisked him away. He was staring at Mount Justice's living room not seconds later. In it was Dick, bending backwards over the couch in order to make funny faces at Artemis as she tried focusing on the math textbook propped on her knee.
No, probably not.
But Batman still had morals, and those morals were permanently set in stone.
Note: There's a reason that I keep switching between real names (informal) and superhero names (formal). For everyone other than Bruce and Dick, calling someone by their superhero name means that they don't know what their real name is. So if I'm in Wally's POV and it refers to 'Batman', it means that Wally doesn't know that Batman's real name is Bruce. For Bruce, if the situation feels formal and official, they're called by their superhero names. Remember, he and Dick know all of the secret identities of the league. If Bruce switches to 'Barry' from 'Flash', it means that the situation became informal and personal. Same goes for Dick. The only name that doesn't apply in that rule for Bruce is Dick, and vice versa.
Thanks for reading!