AN: Wow, another round of awesome reviews. As promised thanks to such a great response I'm updating a little quicker than I normally would have! You guys are great.
Picks from the playlist this week are a bit of a shit mix just to go with the nature of this chapter. I recommend listening in this order: "Shuck" by Purity Ring; "Wonderland" by Taylor Swift; and "Hold My Hand As I'm Lowered" by Noah and The Whale.
Just a bit of a heads up, this chapter contains low level gore...
It's like an earth quake but worse; the whole of the bridge is positively shaking, metal beams bending and quaking and vibrating so hard that they're both instantly thrown off balance; she hears Wally cry out as he's jolted behind her, and before she can even spit her pony tail out of the back of her throat she's being rocked forwards as the pavement around them starts splitting open with pressure. She nearly chokes on her own hair as a metal beam collides with her breasts, her eyes watering as her weight is thrust forward, the river below swimming in front of her eyes.
Even if she won't admit it aloud she's developed a slight fear of water over the past months; yes she can swim, and yes she can hold her breath but something about nearly drowning three missions in the row has given her no desire to repeat the experience ever again, and resolutely she grips hard against the railing until she's sure there are two horizontal bruises etched into her breasts, one hand fumbling with her bow , her precious bow, until it's compressed and clipped safely to her belt.
Her whole body is shaking with the railing, which is vibrating and collapsing and twisting beneath her. It's impossibly loud, the sound of those odd propelling mechanisms crashing against the pavement all around them—she can hear cement being unearthed and buildings being blown through, and even as she tears her eyes away from the river she's watching another one of them landing clumsily, the bottom of the pod catching against the top of the bridge and sending the whole thing positively quaking again. They're going to down the bridge.
She allows herself one hope: that whatever is raining down on them will destroy itself in the landing. She knows it's pointless, especially as the things that glow like comets and sound like gun fire create massive potholes in the earth around her, but she allows herself the one idiotic thought before she pushes anything other than the mission to the back of her mind.
There's the sound of more metal on metal again, the shaking of the bridge intensifying- there's a huge quake on the opposite side as the misjudged pod meets the ground; suddenly the pavement under their feet is cracking, the joint securing the beams beneath them beginning to pop apart under pressure. Another of whatever is falling from the sky has hit the bridge, collided with one side, and suddenly both her feet have left the ground—her railing is beginning to come loose, her weight is going to propel her up and over and into the water—
If she's going to die doing anything it's going to be important. Crock women bleed out on the pavement, in the heat of battle; they don't drown like pathetic little-
"We have to get off the bridge!" She screams, looking over her shoulder wildly before she finds Wally. He's managed to get a grip on one of the supports, but he's wincing painfully—his back is flush against an edge of a metal beam, neck snapped back as if the impact as just thrown it there, metal on spine on skull. Keep it together. "Wally, come on, we have to run!" She yells at him, somehow managing to maneuver like some sort of wild animal, her feet ducking up and pushing her off the guard rail, ankles rolling on uneven ground as she tries to run towards him.
The noise of the impact is still sounding all around them—more and more of those things are landing, it's an invasion, it's something awful—and at first he doesn't understand what she's telling him, not hearing her words, a little stunned from pain of his skull against metal. He blinks at her when she gestures towards the humanoid looking pods, shaking his head weakly. His eyes aren't in focus.
Don't be an idiot, Baywatch.
She could throttle him, and instead settles for screaming at him, arms reaching out to shake his shoulders in the hopes of pulling him together. "Run, Wally. We need to get off the bridge!" She screams, and as if to make the point more clear she wraps her arms around his shoulders, jumping at him and yelling in his ear until he understands, one arm hooking behind her knees and holding her like he did in Bialya.
(Before they even move another ridiculous thought enters her head, the kind of thought only a dying woman thinks: What she wouldn't give for one more day back in the sun with him.)
In an instant they're flying through the air—all around them dust is falling, pieces are cracking and breaking—she had forgotten how quickly he moves, how the air whips through her lungs when she breathes, making it nearly impossible to give her blood the oxygen it needs. It's exhilarating, terrifying, even more so when Wally comes to his senses slightly, speeding up and gripping her thigh in an iron fist.
They jerk to a stop abruptly, the sensation sending her stomach twisting—Wally replaces her on her feet but doesn't let go of her, his hand stiff on her waist and keeping her close, his nails digging through his gloves and keeping an almost painful grip on her skin. The longer she looks on, the more scared she gets.
If she didn't know better she would say it was a tank, would say it was meant to hold something; that much is clear by the opened doors, by the pod like structures etched into the sides that have been emptied. Whatever has crashed, whatever had the glowing red eyes, has abandoned the chunky metallic container it came in, leaving nothing more than a twisted and smoking heap of metal in the middle of the chaotic state of the street—all around them buildings are crumbling, sidewalks are torn up, only the moon lighting what they can see.
And it's quiet, too quiet, only the sound of more of those things in the distance, nothing scuttling or slithering close by—
"Artemis—" Wally says her name when she steps forward, fingers pinching the fabric of her kevlar top and trying to hold her in place as she draws an arrow.
"We have to, Wally." She tells him, glancing at him only once as she twists her bow back into its full form, not giving him a second look when she notches her arrow. "Watch my back."
It takes too long to pick her way closer to the metal structure; there's no clear path, nothing left undamaged by the attack, leaving her to tread over upturned cement and loose cobblestones, boots slipping on broken glass. Occasionally she can hear another low rumble, can feel the shaking of another pod as it crashes somewhere else in the city, can hear the creaking of the bridge as pieces of it begin crumbling, falling into the water; it's a reminder that despite the relative quiet that something, whatever it is, is happening and they're caught in the storm of it. She can hear Wally moving a few feet behind her, being purposely slow so as to watch her advances.
The pod reminds her of seats in a roller coaster, the kind that spins rather than rides on tracks—she can see some sort of belting mechanism that's been detached, crudely ripped from seam to seam, the structure of whatever held the humanoids in place bent and almost indistinguishable. "So the real question…" Wally comes up behind her, looking down at the wreckage with furrowed brows. "Is where did this thing's cargo go?"
"I don't know." She tells him, looking around warily. She's almost expecting something to jump out at them and attack. "Come on."
By the time they pick their way back onto somewhat flat ground they're about a block away from the wreck itself, the buildings no longer damaged and seemingly normal looking despite what's happened. Other members of the Team are sounding in their heads, all repeating the same experience: large seismic activity, wreckage, no cargo on whatever it is that's landed.
"If I didn't know better I'd say it was some sort of weird, metallic meteor shower." Wally sounds in her head. "Or space junk reentering the earth's orbit." Remaining stationary is beginning to get to both of them—his feet are twitching and she's gotten goose bumps on her arm, the air rolling off the water beginning to bother her when she's this anxious.
"So do you think we can rule out some sort of alien attack?" Zatanna asks.
"Have to. Our atmosphere would have eaten anything this size up in a heartbeat. Whatever these are they're earth based."
She turns to Wally as he says it; it's odd, hearing him in her head and not seeing his lips move. "So we're dealing with Ivoh then?" She asks.
"Ivoh's still in Belle Reve, confirmed ninety seconds before the crash." Robin tells her. "I'm tried passing along intel to Batman but I'm not getting a response anymore. Doesn't matter though, nothing I say will mean much if we don't know what these things are carrying."
Connor snorts. "Yeah, yeah. Would have been nice if the League had given us a heads up that these things, whatever they are, were coming."
"Now is not the time to argue. Let us continue the search." Kaldur says, and instantly they all go silent. He sounds worried. "Robin, keep attempting contact every sixty seconds."
She watches Wally as he looks back towards the crash, jaw tight and brows pursed. "We should fan out, start looking." She tells him, fiddling with the communicator in her ear and lowering her gaze when turns back towards her, eyes narrowed. "Coms are jammed still, we're going to have to try and stay within shouting distance, maybe a one or two block radius—"
"No offense, but that sounds like a stupid idea." He tells her, smirking, and despite the fact that they've just kissed and have about a thousand different emotions raging between them the one that jumps to the front of her mind is annoyance.
"You know, just because you begin a sentence with 'no offense' doesn't mean it's automatically inoffensive, Wally—"
"Yeah, yeah." He waves his hand nonchalantly. "Come on, it might make sense for the others to split up, but you're forgetting who you're working with Babe. Super speed, remember? We can cover our whole quadrant in a matter of minutes if I carry you."
She doesn't like the idea of simply being cargo for him to lug around—she wants action, she wants to be part of this, she's missed fighting—and very nearly tells him so before settling for jutting out a hip, glaring. "I can't see anything when you're moving that fast, Wally. I'll be useless."
"Then I won't go my fastest. Come on, I'll be practically jogging by your standards."
The way he says it bothers her—there's some sort of implication there, he's meta, he has super powers, she's just some kid who's good with a bow and arrow—but she doesn't have time to say anything of the matter. There will be time for bickering later, will be time for her to confront him or ask him what he meant. Now they have a mission to complete.
"Okay, just—" She sighs, rolling her eyes before half raising her arms.
At the same time Wally moves, and for a moment they're both awkwardly bobbing and trying to position themselves—it's as if they've bumped into each other in a door frame and are trying to avoid each other rather than touch. It's awkward, terrible, and leaves both their cheeks blushing crimson—she doesn't understand, it had been so easy in the heat of the battle…
After several seconds of this Wally let's out an annoyed huff, and before she can brace herself he's moving too quickly for her eyes to even see, elbow hitting the back of her legs and forcing them to give, arm ready as she falls against him. It's cleaner than anything they would have done naturally but it still embarasses her, her cheeks blotching with red and eyes glaring at him as he adjusts her weight in his arms. "Relax Blondie." He tells her, chuckling slightly at the annoyed look on her face and raising a cheeky brow. "We've been a lot closer than this before."
This only sets her off even more (she can't believe him, flirting and one-liners in the middle of a mission, in the middle of what she's starting to think is a goddamn invasion) and before she can think of a quick response her mouth is sputtering for her, a connection of not-pronounced syllables flowing past her lips that only sends him laughing. It's humiliating, annoying, she wants to throttle him—
Something moves behind them, back towards the wreckage, and it's enough to quail the noises coming from her lips. Before he can stop laughing and read the look on her face she's shifting, sitting up straighter and pulling an arrow from her quiver, no longer embarrassed by the position or even the fact that her breasts, now bruised and sore, are pressing flush against his shoulder. "Move!" She screams, pulling her string backwards, tucking her legs in tight against him.
It takes him a half second and then he's off, the jolt of his movement forcing her arrow to misfire as he bursts into speed in the wrong direction; there's something back there, something that they've left behind and now her stupid arrow has revealed their last position without eliminating the target—she hasn't given him any instruction and he's already taken them several blocks away from their quarry, running too fast for her to see anything other than the blurring of shapes as they whirl around them. "Stop!" She screams, and even though she feels his muscles slowing it doesn't do her vision any good, air whipping her in the face so hard that she has to close her eyes to prevent dust from kicking into them. "Shit, Wally, slow down!"
"What's going on?" He asks her, finally slowing and momentarily jostling her with a bumpy jog before he fully stops. "What did you see?"
"I don't know!" She tells him, frustrated and oddly out of breath considering she wasn't the one running. "I couldn't see, I told you, not when you're going that fast—" There's a halfhearted struggle between them, consisting of him holding her tighter and her trying to get back to the ground where she's useful; predictably she wins, her feet on the pavement for half a second before she's running back towards where they came from before he can even get his bearings. "Come on, we have to go back, see whatever that thing was." She shouts behind her.
She breaks into a sprint and hears Wally let out an annoyed sigh, catching up to her in a matter of seconds despite her lead. "Artemis, it's safer if we work together—"
She cuts him off, snarling. "Wally, there is no working together if I'm being carried around! I can't fire my arrows if I can't see my target!" She can see him opening his mouth to argue but she beats him to the punch, already looking back towards the wreckage they're approaching. "Look, that's something we need to practice, okay? Let's just—you know—like we always do."
"Fine." He barks back, making a motion as if to rush on ahead—then at once, both their muscles seize up, slowing to a stop.
Their quarry is massive, mechanical, and much more threatening out of its pod than in it; almost double her height and nearly five times her weight at least. She's never seen anything like it before, never seen anything that's not quite human yet not quite machine; she can see two arms that look less like arms and more like thick barrels of a gun, two legs, an barely identifiable torso coated in chest plates and an armored helmet for a head. She can see the two demonic eyes she saw before—which she now realizes aren't really eyes, perhaps cameras of some sort. The thing in front of them shifts, its weight leaving indents in the crushed pavement surrounding its abandoned pod and supposedly looking at them curiously, could it be capable of looking.
It's like a human if a human were encased in metal, encased in armor and ready to go to war-
Wally shifts beside her, eyes narrowing. "This isn't Ivoh's signature style." He tells her quietly, as if worrying about startling the thing they've come across. "He always models his robots after humans, always gives them proper facial features, similar joints… This…" He trails off, his hands tugging his goggles down over his eyes. "... It almost looks like one of Lex Luthor's war suits, except... huge."
Lex Luthor.
What's Lex Luthor doing attacking his own city?
They both turn back to glance at the thing, watching it as it goes back to ignoring them in favor of examining the street around them. She can hear the mechanic beeping of machinery, hear metallic joints clicking into place as it toddles around the street—this tech, while expensive looking, is borderline crude, its ability to move compromised by its top heaviness. It takes a half second to process information around it before it turns back to them, metal plates on its arms clicking and mashing together and seeming to whir to life, red eyes surveying them again.
She knows what's going to happen before it does, raw instinct taking over; with a quick movement of her wrist she snaps the jutting edge of her bow against Wally's shoulder. Predictably he yelps and takes a few paces back, enough to get out of the way. The machine is slow, too slow, and they're both long out of range before it fires, low level missiles firing out of cannons attached where shoulder sockets should be, bursting behind them into fire and explosives, easily taking out the base of an apartment building a block away.
It happens several more times: the machine fires and misses and buildings start blasting apart around them, the movements so clumsy and unpolished that soon it becomes more of a matter of avoiding the anarchy of fallen debris around them than avoiding the robot all together. Around them the air turns into less oxygen and more smoke, and before long the two of them are covered in ash and dust.
Wally skids up to her—the humanoid is in the process of turning to face them, heavy feet trudging over debris and giving them more than enough time to come together, confused. "Something's off." She tells him, hardly out of breath from running. "This thing isn't even actively pursuing us; if we aren't careful it'll destroy the whole block."
Wally's eyes narrow, watching the robot as it finally begins to close in on them. "How do we know that isn't the whole point? We know its earth based, what if this is some sort of… Really slow terror attack?"
As he says it she hears the others inside her head communicating the same sentiment; The cannon fires again, and this time they don't even rush to get out of the way, simply dodging back a few feet and moving to a different position on the battle field. "I thought the whole point of terror attacks were that they were sudden? You know, they terrify you?" She yells, struggling to be heard about the cannon's impact as it fires at them and misses, the crumbling of another building sending dust through the air.
"Rob, any luck with the League?"
"I'm trying, Artemis."
"Regardless!" Wally yells as they round back to the road leading to the bridge. "I'm getting tired of this. Take out its cannons, I'm going to move in closer!"
"And do what, exactly?" She asks him, a small spasm of fear sounding her stomach when he tugs his goggles back over his eyes, already moving.
He doesn't answer but she can see him sprinting, a blur across the battle field and suddenly it clicks in her head: he's providing a distraction, trying to get the humanoid to turn towards them though she doesn't need him to—this thing is moving so slowly she could make the shot and be on the train home before it would even know what was happening. She pulls an arrow from her quiver, thinking all the while and hoping someone on the Team isn't too distracted to hear. "I'm going to try taking our boy's cannons." She tells them.
"Us with ours as well." Kaldur replies.
It takes her less than a half second to lock her joints into position, one explosive arrow braced against her string and another singled out in her quiver, ready to be grabbed and used in short succession. "Out of the way, Wallman!" She yells, blinking as dust whirls towards her. She hears the shifting of metallic feet against the pavement, has enough time to mentally picture the mess of bolts and beams turning towards her. She waits until she feels a breeze before she opens her eyes, sensing and trusting that Wally is behind her, safe; her shoulders strain and she lets her arrow fly.
She won't miss.
Her movement is quick, precise; the other arrow hasn't even met its mark before she lets the other one go. There's a half second where she hears the quick procession of metal tips against metal joints, a half second where the red cameras across the odd torso seem to examine her, scanning parts of her even she can't see.
The explosion is small. Too small, considering the strength of her arrows and the amount of metal she's supposed to be blowing apart.
It's bright though—she can see wires bursting and circuits frying, her own explosives coloring the scene an odd green before fizzing out and fading into an acidic black smoke. The thing, the robot, the humanoid whatever is was, is lying, armless and defenseless in the dirt.
Wally moves to stand beside her, eyes narrowing at the scene and his thoughts streaming into both their heads. "Alright… That felt too easy."
"We got ours too." Rocket tells them, in the exact same skeptical voice. "Definitely too easy."
She narrows her eyes, looking between the dismantled parts of the machine and it's whole. It made an excellent show of dying, being defeated, and yet… And yet she can still see the bright glow of the camera attached to its torso, still blinking red at them in the darkness.
She draws one arrow and sets it against her bow defensively, silencing Wally's question in his throat before he can properly ask it with a warning look. "Watch my back." She tells him, flexing her fingers around her bow and setting her arrow in the notch of her finger.
She keeps her eyes fixed on the camera as she walks, stumbling twice on the uneven ground. She can hear Wally twitching behind her, nervous, as she watches the camera pull her into focus as she stops, less than a foot away.
"I have a bad feeling about this." Wally calls to her, and she makes the mistake of glancing at him over her shoulder.
It's fast; suddenly the helmet of the mechanism is bursting forward and the chest cavity of the humanoid is ripping itself open as if this was what it was meant to do. She has enough time to turn her head back and see the colors of the Bialyan flag before the heel of a machine gun is kicked up, shoving itself mercilessly into her jaw.
She hears Wally scream her name, feels all her teeth smash together and blood bursting from her mouth as the strength of the impact nearly flips her head over heels. She can hear voices calling to each other in a language she doesn't speak and hears guns clicking into place before she feels a breeze whirling past her, her bow clattering somewhere she can't see as she collides against the uneven pavement; she can feel parts of her back being torn into, can feel blood bursting through the seams of her skin...
Suddenly Robin's voice is loud in her head, sounding sharp and seconds away from death, and she knows that whatever she's just done was a grave mistake."These things aren't just robots—" Robin screams, his own voice immediately cutting off and the sharp feeling of pain and impact sounding in her head. She hears the dull thunk of fists colliding with skulls and feels her own hurt at the front of her mind; spitting blood down her front as she looks around dazedly, trying to find Wally in the yellow and red blur of his movement, weaving between bullets.
The machine has started clunking away internally, and suddenly something is slithering out of the shoulder joints she's just blown apart… It's metallic, unfolding plate by plate, and in front of her beneath the moving and rolling and not stopping of the machine she sees more men being birthed by the mechanism, which isn't humanoid but designed to hold humans-
"We have five goons in ours. Multiply that by about a hundred pods-" Wally grunts, cutting himself off as he switches targets, seizing weapons and sending her an impatient glance as if hoping she'll come back to her senses soon.
A machine gun is carelessly thrown beside her and suddenly she can feel Wally's anger and desperation and panic at the front of her mind; unthinkingly she grabs the gun off the ground, bracing it against her shoulder as she stands.
(She's only used a gun once before, but she knows the basic method; trigger behind her index finger, thumb against handle. Heel fixed against her shoulder and both hands braced exactly three inches apart. Because even though she's more skilled with her bow she can't reach it now; because she'll never have the same speed as bullets, because she won't have the sheer power that's instilled in the mechanics of a gun, because she won't be able to save them like they need to be saved...)
And because this isn't a random terror attack. This is five hundred Quarac soldiers invading a city for God knows what reason.
This is war. And there's eight of them to defend Metropolis.
Any maybe the jolt to the head is what she needed; maybe she needed something to shock her back into the instinct Wally's numbed inside her- the one that thirsts for blood and knows how to fight, knows how to think without getting blocked by emotion...
"Wally!" She screams for him, following the blur that is his body as it whirls behind her, looking down at her in shock.
"What are you doing?" He screams, looking at the way she's expertly holding the gun. "Artemis, you aren't-" She watches one more Bialyan soldier emerge from the machine, metal clicking and barrel aiming square at their faces.
The gun kicks back when she fires it, the whole of her weight colliding with his chest just as the soldier makes to shoot. A little ridiculously she catches him in the knee, blowing cartilage and blood all around them as misfired bullets stream into the air, the soldiers screams and sobs still sounding long after he falls beside his comrades.
"Holy fuck." Wally swears instead of thanking her. She drops the gun to the ground and spits blood, looking for her bow.
It's a mess, immediately—there's a thousand voices in her head, a thousand directions being yelled—where's the Justice League, has anyone tried calling them again?
And they need to all somehow get together because they work better as a group, they need to figure out why the hell the Bialyan government would launch an attack on one of the biggest cities while it's completely empty, why they're using Lex Tech to do it—and just as quickly as they all come together she loses track of Wally.
The way they're fighting is a complete blur, eight teenagers against an army—and okay, it's a tiny army, but still. It's madness, it's like New Year's Eve all over again; before long her shoulders are aching and her muscles have long since been pulled, and suddenly her quiver is rattling with emptiness where arrows used to be. Dick shouts something at her, and she thinks she hears the words, "They're heading towards S.T.A.R Labs, they're diverting us" before she's forced to look away to defend herself. When she looks back she's lost him; she doesn't know what he means, and there's no way to ask him—M'gann went down a while ago, she had heard the scream and felt the pain.
She's in the process of clearing several goons aside for Zatanna—the girl's been shouting something about needing space to work for nearly a minute now; everyone else is too busy with their own pursuers to help her—when Wally skids by her. "What's going on?" She screams at him, foolishly reaching out to grab him and stop him; he's going so fast that it's like he's slapped her whole arm away, the pain of her muscles being knocked back by him sounding through her whole arm; before she can even properly gasp out in pain he's rounded back beside her, grabbing her by the forearms to steady her.
"Are you okay?" He screams back, and instantly his hands are running all over her, checking her pulse and feeling the muscles of her arm to make sure nothing's been seriously dislocated.
"I'm fine." She yells back; it's growing quiet around them, the majority of the soldiers are migrating towards S.T.A.R labs and forcing Zatanna to follow. Despite her saying so Wally's hands are still roaming all over her (arms, shoulders, waist, her jugular, cheek, temple, examining the quickly blossoming bruise on her chin) and suddenly she's having problems keeping focused, her hands reaching out to grip his wrist. "Wally, not now. What's going on?"
His eyes are still darting all over her body, trying to read the blood she's covered in and decide if it's hers or not, silently willing the bruises on her skin to tell him what happened. "What's going on?" She repeats when he doesn't answer her, and out of pure impatience she squeezes his wrist harder than she would allow herself to in normal circumstances, hoping the pain shocks him into paying attention to the mission at hand rather than her.
He winces, but his eyes pull her face into focus, his muscles no longer twitching and wanting him to keep moving. "They're heading to S.T.A.R labs, Robin thinks they're after some sort of tech—we need all hands on deck over there, I don't know what they're about to take but they aren't stopping until they get it. M'gann's down, she's still alive but—Artemis, I don't know what happened to the League before but they're coming."
The way he says the last part scares her slightly—there's an edge of hope there but there's also something else… "Are you okay?" He repeats, his wrist finally escaping hers and reaching up to press against her cheek once more.
"I-" She doesn't have time to answer—her senses are sharper than his, and for that reason alone she has the split second advantage of hearing footsteps approaching, the sound of metal bumping against a belt buckle signaling to her that her quarry has found her again. Without thinking she kicks him, actually kicks him, her foot colliding with the center of his chest and shoving him backwards. She hears the air being forced out of his lungs, sees the shocked look he sends her when he goes flying a few feet, but she doesn't have time to fuss over him; she notches an arrow from her quiver against her bow string and fires without thinking.
Even with the split second advantage she's too slow; her arrow meets her target but not before the soldier's finger presses against his trigger; the impact of her arrow into his chest forces him to fall backwards, his bullets colliding against the ground and flying at odd angles.
(and when she thinks about it later she wonders if she actually saw the bullet that came to claim her)
She screams, low and guttural and more animal sounding than human; instantly she can feel the skin of her thigh splitting open, her own blood spurting out and beginning to pour out of her. Oh god, Oh god, Oh god. Instinctively she presses her hands against her trembling muscle, tries to force the lifeline that's leaking between her fingers back inside her, don't let her die don't let her die, her muscles beginning to quiver and shake like the fallen bridge a few blocks away.
She doesn't collapse, won't allow her muscles to give out on her—instead she blinks back the tears blossoming in her eyes and clutches the wound, and even though her own muscles start bending against her will she pushes herself into a lopsided stance, pushes herself to remain upright, pushes herself to stand and fight even though this is it, this pain she's feeling (sharp and hot and deadly) this might be it...
She forces herself not to think of the worst case scenario; she's going to bleed out alone on the pavement, just like she wanted before—
But she's not alone: Wally's there. "Artemis!" He screams her name, his voice raw and ragged and breathless from the air her kick forced out of him, one hand clutching her forearm and the other her waist, screaming her name and helping her stay upright. She tries to say something, anything, to calm him and catches herself sobbing, clutching her leg like a child.
"It's okay, it's okay. Babe, it's okay, I've got you." He pants out, trying and failing to be soothing; for the first time in her life she registers that he's afraid, one hand leaving its position as he reaches out to prod her shaking hand off her wound, knees bending to examine her. "Shit. Shit shit shit." He swears at her, hand flexing so tight at her waist that she almost cries out as he clenches her ribs, making it nearly impossible to breathe.
She tries to open her mouth to tell him what he needs to know: he needs to help her get the bullet out of her leg, he needs to help her unclench her fingers and do it or he'll have to, he'll have to pry her muscles apart and dig inside her, dig until he reaches bone, but her mouth is refusing to co-operate; hissing through her teeth she places a bloody palm on his forehead, slicked fingers slipping through his hair and trying to tug his head up towards her. He ignores her, frantically mutters something about an artery that she doesn't have time to listen for; there are more voices—someone's yelling into the street that the majority of the troops are taking S.T.A.R labs, they need back up…
Wally's distracted by her pain, distracted by what he feels, and that's why she's the one who spots another straggler like the one that shot her, coming up the slight hill and following the path his fellow made before she shot him. She's not sure of her aim (she can feel the last of her strength pouring out of her, dribbling in warm waves down her knee and into Wally's hands) but there's nobody else to help—Zatanna's long since taken off the main battle, it's just Wally and her and she needs to get them both out of here safely—
"Wally, go to the lab." She hisses; she doesn't think about how badly her leg hurts, tries not to feel the heat of her own blood spilling out of her or hear the sound of Wally's voice as he keeps cursing at her; instead she reaches for another arrow, one of her last, and readies it. "Run, Kid." She tells him, knocking him in the head with her bow when she doesn't immediately start moving. "Wally, go, the Team, needs you! Go! For fuck's sake, get out of here!" She hisses again, knocking him again until he's on his feet, apple eyes looking on in horror as she tries and fails to lock her muscles into a proper stance.
If she has to die she wants it to be here, now, in the defense of her Team and the only boy she's ever felt this way about-
Wally hesitates just as the solider comes up the hill. "Hold on." He bursts out, and to her fury he grabs her, his one hand is still pressing against her thigh, trying to staunch her bleeding, forcing both her legs to wrap around his waist. Her left breast is pressing against the side of his face but she doesn't give herself enough time to be embarrassed, doesn't have enough time to do anything other than focus on her grip—the Bialyan soldier is raises his rifle and she fires.
The same thing happens again—she lets the arrow fly and immediately she ducks down to safety; she can't tell if it's her or Wally pulling her flush against him, forcing her back to bend painfully and the top of her head to wedge beneath his chin, his muscles arms encircling her like a cage—regardless she's beginning to feel light headed, feeling like a coward now as she's (forced into) hiding. She hears her own arrow's impact just as bullets fire, hears the sound of metal sinking into the unknown man's throat.
She's a murder again.
Unexpectedly Wally's muscles falter and at once his running stutters, muscles jerking and collapsing and arms no longer holding her tight to his chest; she feels another bullet enter her calve, hitting bone and leaving her feeling like she's been shattered.
She goes flying, her own blood streaming out like a flag behind her.
She lands several feet away; she hears the sound of cracking wood and metal and her father's only gift shatters beneath her.
Gone.
She can't stop the scream that rips out of her throat, not as the force of the movement drags her over uneven ground, the wounds in her legs ripping open and sending blood and muscle dripping over the pavement. It takes too long for her to finally stop moving, the top of her head finally hitting an uprooted stop sign; it takes even longer for her to be aware of her eyes screwed shut, even longer for the air in her lungs to die out, cutting off her panicked sobs.
Breathe, Artemis.
Inhale, Exhale.
She lifts her head warily and rolls onto her side, sparing her broken bow one glance; it's shattered beyond repair, all that's leaving it recognizable is the largest piece she still holds in her hand: the top half of the arced wood and one long end of her string. Looking at it sends a dull pounding through her stomach, and whether from grief or from banging her head one too many times she ducks her bruised jaw, vomiting bile and blood down her front.
It's quiet; when she finally brings her head up she can actually hear her own sick dribbling off her chin and dripping against the ground. There's no movement, nobody left on the street but her—and then, with a pang, she remembers Wally—
Selfish, self-absorbed, and here she is, claiming to care for him...
"Wally?" She tries to call, throat burning and mouth hardly getting out more than a whisper. She's weak, beyond weak, half dead, eyes black around the edges as she scans the street.
She spots him immediately, the red and yellow that she's always hated bright against the pavement and snow. "Wally!" She calls again, this time louder despite her voice dry from being sick, bitter taste still in her mouth as she tosses aside the broken bow, trying to make a sound for him to follow, to find her.
... The bow clatters on the ground, and for some reason she remembers the sound of a sai on kitchen tile...
He doesn't move and she calls his name again, struggling to shift into a working position from the ground. Her leg throbs again when she tries to brace herself on her elbows; she's bleeding in two places now, and when she's stupid enough to try to move she catches herself crying out, fresh sobs raking through her at the sensation of rubble scraping against exposed muscle. "Wally!" She chokes out childishly, annoyed at him for not getting up to help her, nose dribbling a mixture of sick and mucus over her mouth.
She makes it as far as glancing down at her leg and almost getting sick again at the thought of trying to take the bullet out herself; before she can even raise a hand to probe the injury something clicks in the back of her mind, her eyes instantly switching from herself to Wally. He wouldn't keep her waiting. He never keeps her waiting, not like this. Not when the stakes are this high. Her stomach drops again and this time when her own vomit burns at the back of her throat she swallows it down, ignoring the tiny cries that escape her lips as she forces herself to inhale sharply, blowing out the darkness clouding her vision. Then she braces herself for the worst and tries to move.
It's excruciating, ten fold worse than when her father tortured her with his javelin; she's sobbing again before she even finishes rolling onto her stomach, muscles aching and exposed bone hissing as she grits her teeth. It takes almost half a minute to reach him, her leg useless and her finger tips bleeding as she drags herself though the upturned earth, shattered glass digging into her knees and blooding dripping down her thigh so hot and fast that she's sure that within an hour she'll be completely drained of it all together. She can't stop herself from crying, can't stop herself from acknowledging the pain that seems to have no beginning and no ending.
She's not strong enough.
Yes, she is. Wally needs her.
She manages to crawl beside him, groaning and sobbing and biting her tongue to keep from screaming; if she didn't know better, didn't feel the pain, it would almost be like they were lying side by side in bed together, the way lovers would. Wally's lying on his side, arms still half out stretched as if reaching for her, and in some sort of odd act of emotion she grips his wrist first, searching for a pulse.
There it is. Soft.
... And ridiculously in the front of her mind she remembers wet eyes and him in her bedroom; and even worse she remembers him in a hospital bed, how hot his skin had been on hers... And he's not burning now, why isn't he burning...
He's skidded for a bit too, the side of his face bleeding and crusted with dirt and sharper pieces of upturned pavement. For a second she simply leans over him, weeping and looking around confusedly. Carelessly, she unwinds their hands and places hers on the ground, wincing as she props herself up to better look at him.
It's wet.
Why is the ground so fucking wet?
It's horrible, so horrible that she actually feels her heart stop, feels her world stop turning entirely—it's wet all around her; the snow has melted and it's hot and wet in the way that only blood can be. It's as if someone has flicked a switch in her brain, and suddenly she can physically feel the heat of adrenaline flowing through her, can feel her heart rate increasing and the blood tripling its flow from her leg in her panic... She ignores her own pain, leaning further until she can see his back—until she can see bullet holes, too many for her to count, like a canvas of ripped uniform and freckled skin and blood and muscles and the very essence of Wally flowing from his back, dragging out of the pavement and painting her eye sockets red—
"No!" She can't stop herself from screaming. "No, Wally. No, no, Wally!" The sound rouses him slightly; at once his apple eyes flicker open, unfocused before he finds her face.
His tries to roll onto his back, far enough for her to see another bullet hole; this one is sitting on his chest and looking as if it was the exit point for one of the ones that collided with his other side. Something inside him stops him, muscles pulling and dripping and halting the movement as he winces, the same animal noise she heard all those months ago in the Gotham Academy gymnasium sounding from his lips before he collapses back onto his side, eyes bugging and wincing and as terrified as she is.
No. No. No.
She tries and fails to keep the hysteria out of her voice, one hand running through his hair, still wet with his blood, and gently tugging his face back so she can look him in the eye. "Wally? Listen to me okay? It's Artemis. It's- it's gonna be okay. I'm here."
He tries to mutter something, maybe her name, blood blossoming at the corner of his mouth and dribbling down his bloodied cheek, and she looses it; suddenly tears, real tears, are running down her cheeks, cutting clean trails in the dirt on her face as Wally inhales a shuddering breath.
No. No no no no no no—
"I'm here." She repeats, stroking his hair. "I'll figure this out, okay? Wally?"
She sobs when she sees tears, Wally's tears, blossoming at the corners of his eyes—and now more than ever she can feel the raw panic she always keeps at bay bubbling up inside her. She can't afford to lose focus now, not when both their lives are at stake—but she allows herself half a second to inhale and exhale sharply, willing herself to keep breathing rather than slip into unconsciousness like she's bee threatening to do for a while. "Wally." She says his name, ignoring the way her voice breaks, watching Wally shut his eyes when she pushes his hair back. "Wally?"
It takes him a second to open his eyes again, the holes of his mask shoved awkwardly against the pavement; out of pity she pulls the Kevlar back, trying not to flat out burst into tears when she sees the bright red palm print she leaves on his forehead, a mixture of her blood and his decorating the freckled skin and disappearing into the redness of his hair "Wally, I need you to focus okay? You're gonna be okay. Wally? Blink if you can hear me."
Wally shudders, the blood in his throat spilling out of side of his mouth some more before he blinks, eyes slipping in and out of focus. His back is shuddering, his lungs making strange gurgling sounds as he tries to breathe—he's drowning, she can't save him—
She lets out a sob, allows herself a momentary amount of weakness as he shuts his eyes again, head tilting back to press against her hand. She's praying, actually praying—someone, anyone, even god (who she has never believed in but she will, for Wally) please come and help her. She can't do anything, he's going to die, she's going to lose him— "Wally." She shouts again, hand reaching out to tap too hard against his cheek, forcing him to be alert and not follow whatever animal impulse is pulling him away from her. "Wally, look at me. Wally? Baywatch!"
He opens his eyes and immediately coughs, blood splattering against the tops of her breasts as he draws another long and rattling breath. He looks at her again, this time more focused than before, tears streaming out of the corners of his eyes and dripping off the end of his nose. Because he knows it, just as well as she does—he's going to die here, he's never going to be able to say goodbye to his parents, to Dick, to her. "Arrr..." He gurgles at her, loosing focus half way through her name.
She keeps her grip tight on his cheek, finger nails breaking his skin, talking at a break neck speed to distract him. "Wally, please, please don't do this—"
... Please don't leave her...
He shudders again, impervious to the urgency to her voice and the feeling of her tears as they drip down her cheeks and land on his forehead. She's beginning to fall off the deep end, whatever sanity she has leaving her and forcing her to rely on the sharpness of her own panic to keep her going, her breath coming out in her pants that ruffle even his blood soaked hair. "Come on, Wally! Come on!" She screams, shaking him against her better judgment as his eyes trace the lines of her face one last time before drifting shut.
"Help!" She screams to the street as a whole, not caring who finds either of them—Wally's dead or almost there and she doesn't care anymore, she wants to die too—one of her hands is flying to her ear, pressing random buttons and speaking rapidly as sobs start dripping out her throat. "Team, help! Dick, Kaldur—" She screams.
... And again she remembers, her last resort before and her last resort again...
She has one wild impulse left; grabbing Wally's face she kisses him, her lips mashing against his still ones and hoping in her fervor that he'll respond to her like he always does. It's nothing like the last time she did this, nothing like that time in her bedroom, and unrelentingly his lips remain still, his blood pouring into her mouth and forcing her to taste him.
She pulls back, only one sob leaving her throat before vomit immediately follows, her blood and his blood and more bile forcing itself from her mouth and splattering on Wally's hair. She can't breathe anymore, she's lost so much blood, her muscles seizing up and panicking and forcing her into stillness. Dazedly she locks her arms around Wally's form, the elbow keeping her upright collapsing... She's light headed, so light headed, Wally's face buried into her neck.
... She sees the lights around the bridge, sees the glow of the planet through the window the Watch tower; she sees the Bialyan sun shining down on her and sees the reflection of the sand in his eyes, the feeling of his hand in hers and their backs pressed against their window. In her dying breaths and she sees him, always him, all of him in the best ways...
She can't force her lungs to move, can't force the last comfort of his lingering walnut smell inside her. Instead she feels his hair and her sick beneath her palms, feels the mixing of their blood beneath her finger nails. She feels the wetness underneath them, the warmth of their fluids sticking to the snow, and it occurs to her that at least some part of them, some small part is together.
She's dying, she's dying, and maybe, somewhere, that small piece of their togetherness is enough.
AN: Oh boy, let's see how many upset reviewers I get who are angry at me using all these clichés. Hey guys, they work for a reason! ;)
Same rule as last chapter, the more reviews I get the quicker I update!