AN: I originally didn't plan on posting this chapter until after Halloween. But seeing as so many of you reviewed (and even more of you are mad at me!) I've decided to post early!

Picks from the playlist: Drive by Pollimer, Feels Like We Only Go Backwards by Tame Impala, and Second Lover by Noah and the Whale.

She dreams for a while.

Or at least she thinks she does. She dreams of her mother's legs supporting her weight; dreams of daisies pressed to her nose in childhood. She dreams of Wally; a Wally who is smiling at her and pulling her closer, a Wally who presses his lips against her hair in a way he never did when they were living.

She hears the sound of ripping fabric, feels the icy air sending goose pimples all over her blood soaked leg as it's exposed to the freezing rain that's falling. She winces when she feels a weight over top of her, everything aching when she jerks away from a scrubby moustache and the lips trying to breathe life back into her. Someone screams her name in her face, shaking her, and she doesn't even feel scared when she realizes she can't open her mouth to respond.

... She wants to die, just let her go...

She feels someone make the mistake of trying to unclamp her hands from around Wally; something awful awakens inside her and the forces her eyes to open.

She dreams some more.

This time she sees rolling hills, the beaches of oceans she's never visited. She dreams of Kaldur teaching her to swim; her heart stalling when suddenly his fists press her arms to her sides... Something slices through her legs, severing them from her body; she's being dragged below the surface, water and blood filling her lungs, and now she's drowning, drowning like Wally-

She inhales so hard it she things she can feel her lungs bursting, eyes opening and blurry and not seeing anything other than white.

"Artemis!" She hears Kaldur screaming when she starts jerking around, unknown hands grabbing at her like she's a wild animal being dragged towards the slaughter house, muscles aching and popping as she thrashes against blankets. There's wires everywhere, metal pressing her into sheets, her own skin bursting open as she rolls over, leg not supporting her as she tumbles to the floor; her injured jaw strikes against the white tile and now she's the one screaming, teeth biting down on fingers as they press into her mouth to silence her.

Someone yanks her hair back and she catches her reflection on a metal surface; sallow, unhealthy skin. Bruises blossoming like flowers all over her face, blood trickling from her nose. Blood shot eyes and scraggly, brittle blonde hair.

She's no longer Artemis Crock; she's whatever she calls that dark park inside her. She's madness, she's feral in nature, she is less a girl and more a dead body reanimated.

Artemis Crock is as she knows herself is dead.

Someone taps once, hesitantly, at her cheek. She feels callouses that match the notch she has in her finger from firing arrows, feels a jagged edge of a nail as it drags across her chin; she hears her own mouth open to release a breath that turns into a dry sounding groan. Her jaw hurts.

But she hears her own breathing, shallow and quiet, in the silence of the room. This is good, she tells herself. She's breathing.

Tap, tap, the fingers tells her in response. Tap, tap. Time to get up. Tap, tap, get out of bed.

Bed. She's in a bed. For some reason this comforts her; if she's in a bed that means she has a body, or at least enough of a body to save. She's in a bed, with pillows and blankets; she's not in a cage, not in a shallow grave, not in her own coffin. She's in a bed.

She forces her muscles to jerk to life as she mentally does inventory of her body. It's not like how it was before, the pain is more isolated; she feels it, the lump on the back of her head, the bruises on her jaw and aching in her arms and chest. One leg fine and the other mangled but still responding as she bends her knee, what she knows to be old wounds stretching under the tightness of dried blood.

"You awake yet, kid?" A voice she knows whispers, warm breath hitting her cheek and sounding afraid of her.

She hears a whir of beeping around her (she can hear things, she's alive, and it makes her way happier than it should) and it takes her a second of not really seeing and instead inhaling the familiar scent (moist dirt, washing detergent, leather) before she realizes whose finger is rubbing tenderly at her cheek—she winces as Oliver Queen lets out a loud chuckle, red rimmed eyes staring at her like she holds all the mystery and wonder of a newborn. "I'll be damned." He swears. "I think that's the first time you've actually listened to me."

His chuckle dies out quickly when she finally fully opens her eyes, blinking around blearily—she's right, she's in a bed, there's an IV in her arm—and almost immediately she realizes he's looking worse for wear too; his hair is rumpled with lack of sleep, moustache bristling at odd angles and there's three deep scratches running down the length of his face, the third running dangerously close to his eye which is so swollen that he's forced into a squint. It takes her another half second of looking around and not really registering anything before everything comes rushing back to her—the Bialyan soldiers, the attack on S.T.A.R labs, Wally, Wally Wally Wally Wally—

"Whoa, slow down." He tells her, jumping up from the chair he's been occupying and raising his hands defensively, as if ready to push her back into bed should she get up. She can hear the machines around her that are monitoring her vitals begin to beep wildly again, her heart pounding along too quickly to get any sort of silence in the room- Wally, she needs to find Wally...

(If the feral part inside her looks at Oliver and considers hurting him, really hurting him should he be hiding Wally from her, she manages to keep it at bay for a moment)

There's a television on above her; she sees important looking men shaking hands, sees the American flag and men in military colors... And there he is, Luthor, Lex Luthor-

And then she sees it, running in bold letters across the bottom of the screen: America at War, America at War-

... The country is at war...

This... this doesn't make any sense...

"What's going on? Where's Wally?" She snarls, not sounding at all like herself—Huntress is speaking, that part of her mother inside her, and for a second she loses control, already looking around the room for weapons to torture the information out of him (She sees a framed photo on the wall, she'll smash it, grind the glass into his skin... She could choke him with her bed sheets, wind them around his throat., stuff an edge into his mouth to stifle the noise...) She's feeling desperate, murderous, until she tries to sit up and instead feels immediately light headed. "What happened?" She gasps out, eyes blurring and not allowing her to see him, to plan her attack...

She thinks Oliver looks properly wary as he leans over her, sitting on the edge of her bed and pressing one hand against her shoulder to get her to lie down again, ignoring her fingers as they try to claw at his wrist in her panic (someone has cut her nails, who has cut her nails and why?) "You need to calm down, Artemis. They're going to kick me out of here if you get too excited."

She doesn't give a damn if he wants her to calm down, doesn't care about him- she needs to find Wally, she needs to make sure he's okay...

"Artemis." He says sternly, ignoring the way she winces when he pins her harder against the mattress. "Stop looking at me like that. I can't tell you anything if I'm dead."

She hates the frankness in his voice, hates the way he can tell what she's thinking with just a look; childishly she glares at him, the wrinkle on her nose popping up as she bares her teeth; it's never worked before but for some reason something shifts on Oliver's face, something she can't quite identify. Whatever it is it's off putting, so much so that she actually quails slightly as if she's being yelled at, eyes searching his. "I..." She says, voice cracking with lack of use. "Okay, I'm sorry." She blurts out, making a show of forcing her shoulders to relax into the pile of pillows someone has put behind her, fingers releasing his wrist.

Oliver relaxes, his hands going back to rest in his lap and eyes flickering between hers, still reading her and looking for the danger that lurks inside her. "Alright." He says after a while. "Ask away. Just for the love of god, Artemis... Don't pretend you're going to kill me again, okay? I've had enough of that."

She ignores his tone, even if it is half teasing, trying to force her anxious heart beat to slow. "Where's Wally?"

"He's here, in the hospital." He hesitates, the corners of his lips quirking. "He's alive, Artemis. He's going to make it. I don't even... It's that fast metabolism. It was already healing him before we even got him through the doors."

She hears herself sigh with relief, eyes leaving Oliver's as she stares at the ceiling, (she doesn't tell anyone, not even months after, that in this moment she thanks whatever God answered her prayers and allowed Wally to survive what she put him through) her mind struggling to think of another question now that her most important one is answered. "... Is anyone else here?" She asks, keeping her voice level.

"M'gann is... Or was. I think she checked out early this morning. Second degree burns; the streets were so ripped up, I'm not surprised something broke into a gas line during the fight... and with all the gun power and explosives... Everyone else is fine too. Mostly minor injuries all around, a few flesh wounds and broken bones that needed to be set, Robin has a cast all the way up to his elbow but other than that..."

"So no one else is hurt?"

"No."

Immediately she exhales again, her body seeming to unwind and lungs aching with breathing so heavily. Everything suddenly doubles in pain despite the relief she feels, as if her own worry had been distracting her, blurring the sharp lines of her aching. She glances back to Green Arrow, her eyes tracing the unfamiliar injury and trying to decide what to ask next. "Why us?" She asks, her voice wary and too quiet, as if she's afraid of his answer. "Why Metropolis?"

For some reason Oliver sighs, chin dropping and eyes glancing towards the door, as if half expecting someone to burst in and stop him from speaking. "I'm not exactly sure." He pauses, going back to looking at her. "… You've been under a while kiddo. A lot has happened. A lot has been happening..."

She swallows, her throat slightly dry. She's been out a while? "What?"

"The attack was on the sixth. It's… it's the fifteenth now." Oliver pauses again, finally reaching out for her the way she was expecting him to and grabbing her hand, fingers stitching between hers and holding her against the top of her sheets and refusing to let go, even when she twitches uncomfortably at his closeness. "How about... Tell me the last thing you remember?"

She exhales again, eyes leaving his face and staring at their intertwined hands, her fingers curling around his in a death grip. She can hear the machines around her whirring to life again, the pronounced beeping around them warning her mentor that she's in a panic. Nine days… She lost nine days. "I…" The memory comes rushing back to her, the machines beginning to buzz even faster as she screws her eyes shut, fighting the tears she hates. "I remember getting shot at by a soldier. A-and Wally…" She forces herself to stop for a moment, not trusting herself not to cry. "And I think I remember someone trying to pull me off of him, I don't..."

Oliver nods, looking troubled. When he speaks he sounds as if he's trying to lighten the mood. "It's okay, Artemis. You know it's going to be okay, right?"

He waits until she nods, eyes still shut, before he starts talking low and fast, as if afraid of being overheard. "We never should have sent you kids in there, it was so... But we thought we knew what we were dealing with. The guards at Belle Rev told us Ivoh had been bragging to some other prisoners, talking about bombing the city. But he was in prison. We thought we had him. Superman and Batman were going to check in on him, just to double check, maybe scare him a bit, I don't know... We only sent the Team out for something to do, you all had been so jumpy, so ready for action...

"We knew the second the radios went down that something was wrong, something really wrong... It took us way too long to group together, nobody was taking it seriously... I can't tell you how I felt, when I zeta'd into the city. It was the worst feeling I've ever had in my whole life... I hadn't even been there five minutes and it was all over, the Bialyans had won, S.T.A.R labs was burning to the ground and then I saw you..." Oliver's voice waves before he clears his throat, and when he speaks against he forces himself to chuckle. "You wouldn't let me touch you, either of you. It wasn't until Aqualad and Zatanna came back for us that we managed to separate the two of you."

He stops speaking again, the soothing voice he's been putting on trailing off and being replaced with something she can't quite identify. She wonders what that must have been like for him, finding her covered in blood. "... Go on." She whispers, voice breaking. "What happened next?"

"Superboy met up with us with M'gann. The rest of them Team was down, Rocket was helping Robin... We rushed you to the hospital, naturally, half the city was destroyed, there wasn't anything left to save... And… You woke up for a bit." He says this last bit oddly, his lips quirking up slightly at the confused look on her face. "You don't remember? How do you think I got these?" He chuckles bitterly, gesturing to the scratches on his face.

Her heart stalls. "Oh."

She can feel her cheeks redden and Oliver grins, seeming to get some of his nerve back as if her embarrassment at her ferocity is a good sign, as if the fact that she's ashamed of it means that part of her is being kept at bay; for a moment it seems like they're almost normal, a few minutes passing where he seems to enjoy showing off his injuries, which consist not only of the scratches on his cheek but of cuts on his arms and the indentations of her canines on his fingers. After a few minutes his face falls and he grabs her hand again, looking serious again. "It was like something out of a horror movie… You were like an animal. You wouldn't let anyone nearly Wally. I—I had to get someone else to knock you out so we could treat you both."

She wonders why he didn't do it himself.

She's ashamed, humiliated, can't believe that she behaved like that towards him despite the fact that she had been considering it only a few minutes before; at last something sobers in Oliver's face, and she tries not to flinch when his free hand reaches for her, still wincing as he gently cups her cheek. "You scared me, Artemis… Don't do it again, okay?"

She wonders what he means... Don't get shot again? Don't try to fight him again? Don't almost die again? ... How had he had felt when he found her, unconscious and bloody and covered in her own sick… Oliver Queen's never mentioned any family. He never mentions parents or siblings or even Black Canary, who she knows well enough now is a big part of his life. The whole thing strikes her as odd, and for a moment she simply looks at him, wondering just how scared she had made him…

She doesn't know what to say but she nods, allowing him a few moments of touching her face before she frowns and jerks away, wanting to continue talking. "… I don't get it, though. Why the Bialyan soldiers? Why S.T.A.R labs? How did they even get that kind of tech? If the League still believes it was Ivoh—"

"We know it wasn't Ivoh." Oliver cuts her off, his hand falling from her face and onto her bedsheets. "That wasn't anything like what he's capable of. We've been analyzing fragments of what we found at the scene and almost every sign points to Lex Luthor's signature style. "

"That's what we thought to." She says, running her hands through her hair and ignoring the machines as they whirl to life around her. "But—But Luthor's an American, what's he doing— And what's that, on the television?" She gestures wildly to the screen, wincing with pain as her muscles stutter and halt the movement.

"Artemis, calm down." He warns her, gripping her hand a refusing to answer the questions she fires at him until she takes several deep breaths and the monitors slow. "I don't know the specifics. But I do know that is Luthor's working with Bialyan soldiers it means he's working with Queen Bee. He wanted to start a war Artemis, and the United States government is playing right into his hands... Look, I don't really know how to explain this. But for a man like Luthor, wars mean money, they mean an exchange of resources... We can only assume he's trying to generate a massive amount of profit, especially if he's selling to the Bialyan government."

"Isn't anyone at the League warning, oh, I don't know, the President? The CIA? Somebody?" She bursts out, ignoring him when he gestured for her to relax. "Why does Luthor want a start a war? What about the attack on S.T.A.R labs?"

Oliver sighs, finally succeeding in pinning both her arms against the mattress again. "I told you, Artemis, I don't know. I've barely seen anyone with the League since I found you. Your mother and I have been here day and night, she's just stepped out for a shift at work—"

She ignores the hurt imbedded in her body as she forces herself to fight him off, wrists slipping from his grasp and yanking back her bed sheets. "I don't care. Let's go, we need to tell someone—" She cuts herself off with a grunt, muscles jerking painfully and stopping her as she sits up.

It barely looks like her leg sticking out of her hospital gown, more like a mess of bandages with warbled skin poking between slats of gauze. Her muscles feel bothered by the movement, the sharp sensation dulling was she still until nothing more than a twinge remains, feeling older, duller. More permanent.

She feels the shock lingering at the front of her mind and allows Oliver to push her back in her pillows, his grin not quite reaching his eyes when he tosses the blanket back over her leg, hiding it from view but doing nothing to stop the numbing sensation she's beginning to feel, as if her own blood is avoiding the ugliness of the new scars she's procured."You're a lucky kid. We managed to stitch you up okay, no broken bones or anything. We had to use some skin grafts on your thigh though." He pauses, clutching at her hands. "You looked like you had been dragged through hell."

She had been. She made a stupid mistake that got her and Wally, stupid Wally, almost killed…

She blinks quickly before she answers, the memory still pricking at the back of her mind but matching words not finding their way out of her mouth. "... I was stupid, Oliver." She tells him, ignoring his wince at how harsh her tone is. "I had been shot and Wally came over to—I don't even know, there wasn't anything he could do. And I saw a soldier about to fire, I didn't even think, I just knew that if we stood a chance of stopping whatever the Bialyans were doing at S.T.A.R labs I had to stall him, Wally would have to be the one to keep going… Oliver, I could have kicked him out of the way. Pushed him or something, I had been doing that all night. But instead I told him to run."

... She told him to run and was stupid enough to think Wally would know that she wanted him to leave her behind... Stupid enough to think that he would know that running with her, running slow enough for her to take the shot, was a fatal mistake...

Oliver doesn't ask for clarification, instead listening intently as she pulls her hands away from his, her palms pressing against her eyes and forcing stars to pop against her lids. "I was so stupid, I don't—I had just told him an hour before that I couldn't shoot while he ran, he moves too fast... He grabbed me and I still tried to take the fucking shot. He was trying to be slow for me, I should have just told him to go, I should have been more clear, I shouldn't have tried..."

Oliver hesitates before answering. "But you didn't miss sweetie." Oliver tells her, busting out a random pet name as if to comfort her, voice breaking slightly. "... You hit your target, dead in the throat."

She can tell he wants to say something, can tell that he knows she killed more than just the one person that night; she knows he wants to call her a murderer, wants to tell her that what she did was wrong, wants to tell her a thousand things but he's blinded by his emotions, too thankful that she's still breathing to condemn her for all the throats she's slit...

"I didn't hit it in time!" She bursts out, throwing her hands off her face. The monitors are going crazy again and she actually raises her voice to shout over them. "Don't tell me I hit it, Oliver, I didn't—don't give me that shit when he's sitting in a hospital bed with bullets inside him." For some reason her voice breaks and she drops her eyes back to her bed sheet. "… He tried to run and I ended up flying. I should have just—and I had to watch him bleed out, Oliver, I had to watch him think he was going to die." For the first time she allows herself to cry in front of him, tears running down her cheeks so quickly she can't conceal them. Without seeming to give it a second though Oliver reaches for her, pulling her over a pile of blankets and sheets and into his lap.

She's a mess—the movement makes her injured leg ache and suddenly she's crying out in a mixture of grief and pain; Oliver ignores her hands as she pushes at him, thrashing against him and trying to keep him at an arms distance, her dulled nails scraping over his face and doing no damage. There's a struggle that she loses, Oliver ignoring her screaming and her fighting him off until he's got both her wrists pinned in an over large palm, the rest of her cradled against his chest. "Don't fucking touch me!" She screams, wanting to kill him for thinking he can hold her, for thinking he has the right to comfort her...

She can't remember once being held like this, can't remember anyone fighting her in order to comforting her, as if they were a parent; without her permission her fingers fist in his sweater and pull him closer as he shifts his weight to rock her, muttering words she can't distinguish over her sobs.

"It's alright, sweetie. Happens to the best of us." He tells her, a free hand smoothing the hair that's falling out of her pony tail off her face. "Everyone feels like this, doing this kind of job. It happens, it's alright."

He tells her that this is what every hero goes through, that it happens to everyone. Everyone second guesses themselves, especially when people they love get hurt.

He tells her not to over think.

She privately thinks he's wrong. It's not that it happens to everyone, it's that this time it happened to her.

He holds her tighter when she screams again, and even though she doesn't say anything on the matter she thinks he understands.

It takes long, too long, for her to pull herself together; finally when she's on the verge of hiccups she pulls away, already off-put by the closeness. She's expecting Green Arrow to tease her, to make some sort of funny comment about her tears or the mucus that's been dripping down her chin; instead he looks away politely while she wipes her nose loudly on the back of her hand, mouth quirked up when he looks back as if nothing unusual has happened and as if he can't feel the massive wet spot her tears have left on the shoulder of his sweater. "Well, we've got all the bad news out of the way. You ready for the good stuff?"

She nods like a child, wet nose still dragging across her wrist as he bounds off her bed, already looking substantially more chipper as if hoping his good mood will rub off on her. She has enough time to drag her knuckles once more over her lashes before she feels an unfamiliar weight being dropped in her lap, forcing her to wince.

Ridiculously when she opens her eyes she feels her mouth fall into an "o" shape, for once not bothered when Oliver chuckles at her.

It's the most beautiful bow she's even seen in her whole life. It's not just the deep green coloring or the ornate golden detailing about the edges, it's the weight of the thing itself as she holds it in her hands; she can tell just by touching it that it's perfectly balanced, not just one but two strings already set and tightened the way she likes them, already adjusted individually for longer and shorter ranged attacks. It's sturdy, it's perfect, the ultimate weapon, highly polished titanium, a little heavier than her father's old bow but much more powerful— She flexes her wrist, watching as it snaps down and compresses tighter than her old one ever did, back into position only seconds after she repeats the movement.

What did she do to deserve it?

She shakes her head, looking confused. "I don't... What?"

"Custom-made by Queen Industries." Oliver tells her proudly, looking pleased when she lifts it up, ignoring the way her arms ache as she mocks the position she would normally use to fire. "I couldn't help but notice that your other one didn't make it out of the battle. This one's sturdier, a bit heavier than what you're used to working with but I figured you're a big girl now, a little extra weight will help take down those tougher guys—" He cuts himself off slightly, trying to read the expression on her face. "I went back too, gathered up the fragments of your old bow too. You know… I could probably have it rebuilt if you want me to. Might need a little tweaking here or there but…?"

She hates herself for hesitating as he trails off, not quite knowing what to say. It's odd, the knowledge that she can leave her father's final gift without a goodbye. She's been lugging it around all these years: first growing into it and then growing out of it, holding onto it for sentimentality's sake…

But it's not really the bow she's been holding onto. It's been her father all along and the hope that he'll come back, change his ways. But Lawrence has already proven time after time that he won't; he won't ever hold her in his arms the way Oliver just did. He won't worry for her, won't give her life a second thought. He's no more a father to her than he ever was—now more than ever he's just another threat.

"No, I want this one." She blurts out, voice high pitched and congested. She looks away as Oliver's face cracks into a smile.

"That's my girl." He grins, and it occurs to her that maybe, after Dinah, she is his girl. "Excellent. I'll have it boxed up and sent home with you when you check out. Unless…" He trails off, a brow raising and signaling that she's about to endure some teasing. "I know someone in room 46-B who wouldn't mind taking a peak."

"Ugh!" She snarls, and despite the angry look on her face she seems to get the impression that her mentor knows how fond of him she is; how much she treasures the small amount of time they spent together.

He laughs at her again, raising his hands in defense. "Relax, kiddo. I'm just saying... Your little boyfriend is doing well, really well."

"Oliver!"

Ridiculously she can see herself now; walking into Wally's room like she did all those months ago on his birthday except this time... This time she can taste the kiss she's going to plant on his mouth when she sees him, can already feel his hands as they tangle into her hair; it's going to be the start of better things to come, and despite all the guilt she's feeling she knows it will be okay if they can just talk, if she can just apologize, just laugh together...

In answer Green Arrow shrugs, looking as if he already knows where her head is going. "Alright, alright." He chuckles. "I'm calling your mother, she'll be delighted to hear you're back to your usual sneering self."

He waves her out as if nothing emotional has passed between them, leaving the new bow on her lap.

Her mother visits and predictably cries; in the face of someone else's tears she manages to keep her own eyes dry. Together they watch as a nurse removes her bandages, and silently she thinks the flesh of her thigh looks less like a leg and more like the rough terrain of the battlefield she scared it on.

Paula looks long and hard at the speckles of uneven and torn skin, eyes roaming the grafts that have been placed on exposed muscle to help it heal and still, relentlessly, calls her beautiful. She thinks her mother is being stupid but doesn't have the energy to disagree and therefore shrugs against her pillows. The nurse tells her she can go home in the morning.

It takes the better part of the day to work up the courage, but she decides to go and find Wally.

She doesn't know why but she's afraid... Afraid of the boy in the hospital bed. Because it's one thing to think about it in the privacy of her head, to acknowledge that almost losing him was perhaps worst moment of her life, to admit that she wants to be with him, to admit that she needs him in her life to be complete... But it's another thing altogether to stand before him, as vulnerable as she is naked beneath her hospital gown, for him to see all her flaws, all the pain she's endured and inflicted on others and still want her... It's another thing completely to see him smiling smugly in front of her, opening his arms and inviting her to lie beside him...

She waits until it's after midnight, long after she's stopped receiving visitors and the lights in the hospital hallway have gone out. She wants to see him when she knows there will be no interruptions, when she'll have the time to say what she needs to say without being cut off or forced to quicken her words—whatever they'll be, she'll decide when she sees him.

She forces herself to move and it feels like it takes her decades to get out of bed; she's used to being quick, or at very least somewhat agile. It takes too long for the muscles in her leg to respond to the movement she wants to produce, her heel slipping off her bed clumsily and landing too hard against the tile—the jolt of the impact seems to radiate up her leg and through her spin, reworking tissues and nerves that aren't willing to be worked yet. Gritting her teeth she ignores the numbing sensation and the sharpness of the pain that follows, already adjusting her weight.

She already knows this is the kind of injury that will never heal, at least not fully; she'll always have the scar, maybe always have the stiffness she's encountering now or else have it at odd moments, like during rain or when the seasons shift. But she's never been one to stop, slow down, let things heal; when things heal they settle, they solidify, and if there's one thing her life has never been it's solid—by nature she's precarious, on the edge. Of sanity, of forgiving herself. Of allowing herself to let go.

She doesn't blink when she rips the IV out of her arm, nor does she flinch when she unhooks the machines monitoring her. She ignores the stinging of the medical tape as it lifts from her skin, leaving small sticky spots that will fade to dirty splotches as they collect fluff and dust over the next few hours—it's a step, a step in getting out of the door and finding Wally, another step that must be completed before her nurse—the only one on duty tonight— notices her lack of heart beat and comes to investigate.

It takes her a bit too long to think of checking the door behind her—she has a concussion, Oliver had told her, her thinking is a little slow—in reference to where she knows Wally is. She's 21-B. Wally is 46. Walking is hard, but not impossible.

Impossible is the fact that both of them are alive.

She doesn't hesitate when she sees his door, not the same way she might have done months ago, not the same way she did when she visited him in the hospital on his birthday. She can't decide if that's a good thing or not; it means there are no barriers between them anymore, it means that she's allowed him to penetrate the confines she keeps herself in, it means they have no secrets... It means that as much as he has the potential to be the greatest thing that ever happened to her he also has the chance to be the thing that finally mentally undoes her completely. In a last act of girlishness she checks her reflection on the glass window pane on his door; creaky finger tips pushing her hair off her face, twisting the tangled locks over her shoulders to cover the perking of her nipples through her hospital gown, index finger and thumb pinching her cheeks and attempting to revive the dull skin stretched too tightly across her skull.

She twists the handle and braces her arms against the doorframe, not so much walking in as dragging herself, voice breaking as she calls for him. "Wally?"

She hears the buzzing of machines, the whirring of air through tubes. And in the dim light she sees him, heart soaring up into her throat for less than a second before it plunges back to her knees.

He's not sitting up.

She's never seen anyone lying on their stomach in a hospital bed before, but this is how the nurses and doctors have chosen to place him: face down, back exposed, head turned to the side and tubes sticking out his nose and mouth, softly humming as they force his lungs to accept the oxygen they won't have. There's too many scents for her to process in the small space, the whole room reeking and telling her one thing: beneath the scent of bleach she can taste the sweat, the metallic scent of blood, the sourness of her own sick still caked in his hair... They haven't properly washed him yet.

They've been too busy, trying to keep him alive, to take care of him...

Her hands clench so hard against the door frame that the scabs on her finger tips break open; too quickly there's blood pouring down her palms and dripping off her wrists... More to staunch the bleeding than anything she forces them without thinking into her mouth.

And suddenly she's back in the battle field, back to holding Wally as he dies... Back to pressing her lips against his mouth and tasting his blood as it drips off his lips-

She gags, and her empty stomach forces a blackened bile into her mouth; without thinking she leans forward as if to spit it away, the imbalance of weight sending her knees collapsing and crashing to the floor on her hands and knees, her own vomit dribbling from her chin.

Wally doesn't move when she cries out, doesn't sit up to investigate as she chokes on sick, mouth spitting and tongue bitter and lungs straining and aching as she coughs it out of her system. She's disgusting, a mess of a human, and he can't help her... Nobody can help her, nobody will help her, nobody cares about the girl lying in her own vomit on the hospital floor... It had been naïve, another stupid mistake to think that he'd be okay, awake even—he had taken bullets for her, bullets that could have killed him, of course he's not awake. She feels like an idiot for getting her hopes up, for expecting him to be sitting there, grinning at her, scooting aside to make room for her... She feels herself cough out another shuddering breath. Why did Oliver think she would want to see this? In what universe is this defined as "doing well"?

He's nearly dead, he's been nearly dead for a weak, and it's all because of her.

She's been thinking of him all this time as invincible, ever-enduring—to her he'd always be there, always be annoying, always be the itch she's been unable to scratch since the moment she first met him. Maybe this is the fault of the cloak of superpowers, of his fast-metabolism… Her Wally isn't immortal. He isn't anything special. He's a kid in a hospital bed.

He's going to die, he's going to leave her, just like everyone else, one day—

He doesn't stir when she forces herself to crawl towards him, doesn't stir when her bloody hands claw up the edge of his mattress, a low moan escaping her lips when her shoulders strain to pull her upright, her whole weight collapsing on the edge of his bed and shaking the entire flimsy bed frame. She feels herself panting, feels her ribs bruised and straining as she forces them to move, injured leg hanging off the mattress as she drapes herself like a dead body over Wally's calves, the only part of him she knows isn't hurt, the thick muscle that lurks there pressing into the lines of bruises the bridge has left against her breasts.

She sobs as she clings to him, not trusting herself to pound her fists against the mattress in her frustration should she accidentally hit him.

She did this.

It was her, her and her lack of focus, as always... Disgusted with herself she stares at the layers and layers of bandages and medical tape holding the muscles of his back to his body and tries to imagine what he looks like beneath the hospital gown and gauze... It sickens her, her curiosity at his body. The body she almost destroyed...

It wasn't firing that arrow that sealed his fate, it wasn't even telling him to run. She's brought nothing but pain for the boy beside her since she met him, she always has—the snarky remarks, the keeping him at an arm's length, the rejection of his advances, it's all been her fault. She's already killed this boy a thousand times over, and it's taken seeing the evidence of his battered and broken body for her to come to her senses.

And it's not just him. She's a danger to everyone, she's too reckless, too dangerous, and too hot-headed to think through the consequences of her presence in other's lives. It was almost her mother once, now its Wally… Who next? M'gann? Dick? Kaldur? Oliver? Her sister? Who else is she going to make suffer? Doesn't this just prove that she's better off alone?

"I'm so sorry, Wally." She bursts out, and when she sobs he stays still beneath her, machines pumping oxygen inside him and ignoring her tears as they roll down her cheeks, disappearing into her hair and finding their way to his bed sheets.

But she's knows too much to run away, know that they can always find her. She can't stop them from chasing her.

She doesn't know what to do anymore and the more her thoughts race onwards the more she wishes she had just let that Bialyan soldier kill her when she had the chance.

Her head jerks up as there's an odd sort of gurgling sound coming from the tube, and before she can will her leg to support her weight so she can run away in terror (she's still afraid of the boy in the hospital bed, she'll always be afraid of him and what he means to her) Wally's eyes crack open, unfocused in the dim light of the room. He's not looking at her, not exactly, more so staring unknowingly at a blank wall of the room.

It's enough to break her heart, and enough to seal her resolution: she's no good for him.

She'll actually kill him if she doesn't stay away from him.

Her whole body protests as she forces herself to get unsteadily to her feet, ignoring the gurgling coming from Wally and his eye as he looks past her, unseeing. She gasps out when she gets to her feet again, the bed quaking beneath her and his covers sliding down his back... Despite her new found resolution she pauses to look back at him, for what she knows is the last time... It's the last time she'll allow herself to be alone with him, the last time she'll admit that she could have fallen in love with him, if things were different. She gives herself this moment, the moment of his unfocused eyes and her wet ones, the sound of machine whirring around them and the radiator buzzing to life in the corner... One moment, in all the moments that have made up her entire existence, to admit the truth to herself. She could have had this boy and he could have had her. They could have completed each other. Maybe they almost did.

Maybe a lot of their time together is based on the word almost... Almost together. She almost saved him. She almost allowed herself to make the mistake of letting him in...

She's tired of mourning the loss of something she's never had. She's tired of considering the fact that she's back to forcing her feelings back inside herself; she's back to watching Wally run past her, back to watching him live his life without her, like he used to. She's back to closing him off, for his own good...

She's back to eliminating the vulnerability he brings out in her.

Because he does make her vulnerable... Her one weakness, she admits, looking at him once more. Before she can stop herself she's reaching out a hand, allowing herself one last moment of caring for him, one last moment to touch him, her crusted finger tips tugging the blanket back above his waist, straying to touch the tender flesh of his lower back, milky and freckled in the blue light glowing off the machines.

He doesn't react much more than the twitching of his eyelashes, the gurgling coming from his tub ceasing; when she forces her eyes from his face she can see his skin prickling, the freckles on his back bursting into goose pimples when she runs the scabbed edges of her fingers over his body, carefully keeping her distance from his wounds as she traces more than an inch clear of the medical tape, up his ribs. She skims the flesh of his shoulder, running her hands down the tendons of his arm in a way she would have called lovingly, should she allow herself to love him. Pausing a movement almost eerily familiar of all the months before she hesitates, almost pulling away before she skims his wrist, palm encircling around the bones that rest before his hand, squeezing.

A heartbeat.

It's pounding along to the beat of the monitors around them, like some sort of odd tribal music that does little to comfort her. His eyes, still unfocused on the wall, drift shut again, and she almost tricks herself into thinking that his finger twitches.

"Okay." She whispers, voice breaking in the darkness. She doesn't know what she's confirming, what she's allowing herself to do, what she's allowing herself to feel or not feel. "... I'm going to go now."

He doesn't say anything back, and she wonders what he would say if his mouth wasn't occupied with tubes and wires. She wonders if he would call her back, stop her... He probably would. And that's why she has to leave.

When she talks herself out of lingering she can almost feel her newly resurrected battle arena, the one she plans on encasing herself in; from now on she's in constant combat with herself, a constant watch to make sure nothing, nothing, like this happens again.

One her way out she hears the strange gurgling sound again, and in some sort of sick-half wish she wonders if he knows that she was there.

She leaves the hospital in the morning, flanked by Oliver (who insists on wrapping an arm around her shoulder and helping her even though she doesn't need it) and her mother rolling beside them. It's humiliating.

Everyone is quiet when they ride the elevator up the apartment, her mother immune to her sour mood in a way that Oliver isn't; he glances at her repeatedly, eyes narrowed when she responds to his questions with short sentences and narrowed eyes.

In a way that's borderline fatherly he stops moving once they reach her floor, refusing to release her but also refusing to help her move closer to her front door. "She'll be inside in a minute Paula, I need to update her on official Team business."

"What?" She asks him, tone cold. "Is it Luthor?"

Oliver winces at the fact that she's mentioned something supposedly confidential, but still has the good grace to wait until her mother is inside and out of ear shot before he turns to her, eyes crinkling unsmilingly in the corners. "You're acting more bad-mannered than usual. What's going on?"

She tries glaring at him the same way she did the night before, wrinkle popping up over her nose and canines bared, but this time it doesn't have the same effect; Oliver keeps looking at her dryly until she's forced to puff an annoyed breath out her nose, scowl lowering to the floor. "… Why would you tell me to see him? Was that some sort of sick joke you were trying to pull?"

There's a pause. "What? Who?"

"Wally!" She bursts out, frowning when she looks up at him. "The way you were talking about it, you made it seem like—I went to see him last night, Oliver. He's… I've seen him in the hospital before, he's never looked like that."

There's another pause in which the darkness of her tone seems to fill the tiny hallway they're occupying, and then suddenly Oliver lets out a disbelieving chuckle. "You're kidding, right? Artemis, the kid took over a dozen bullets in the back, not to mention his punctured lung and concussion. And that's just the big stuff. Were you really expecting him to be up and ripe for the picking?"

She can feel her cheeks reddening at the way he says the last part. "No—I just thought—you made it sound like—"

Something in her voice shifts, the very real panic and anger at herself slipping until it's exposed. Oliver's smile drops slightly as she goes back to glaring at the floor. "Okay, okay, that was my mistake. I'm sorry." He says, unhooking her arm from around his shoulder and holding her at an arms length to better look her in the face. "But you shouldn't be as worried as you are. Artemis, that kid's metabolism is what saved his life—it's what's saving him now. Most people wouldn't be able to survive something like that but, like I said before, his system started healing him before anyone in the hospital could even get their hands on him. He's already rehabilitated to the level that a normal patient would be at in four weeks. In nine days, Artemis. Wait, ten. He's probably going to be up on his feet and walking, if not running, around in another week, maybe two tops."

"A machine was helping him breathe." She tells the floor.

"As they would do with any patient who just had lung surgery a little over a week ago. It's a precaution." He reminds her. She isn't comforted. "He's Meta, Artemis, you don't have to worry."

"I'm not worried." She snarls childishly, remembering her new resolve from the previous evening. "Whatever, I don't care. Did you bring my new bow?"

She takes three days to rest before she heads back to The Cave, and when she arrives she nearly topples her newly built walls herself when she's bombarded by the Team. It's horrifying, downright humiliating, when she catches herself biting back tears when M'gann, skin blotched and unhealthy pink in many places, embraces her so tightly the air is forced out of her lungs. She excuses herself quickly, ignoring Dick as he insists on her signing his cast.

Her rehabilitation is immediately demanding, not just physically—Black Canary gives her exercises to build up her strength in her leg again, to help the newly grafted skin adjust to her body, but what deems itself most challenging is the quiet moments of her training, when she's prompted to talk about her feelings and relive the more violent moments on the battle field. Stubbornly she retreats into her shell and remains silent, and Canary decides to dub these moments quiet meditation.

It's more difficult than she had thought it would be, remaining silent during these sessions; it's difficult the same way it's difficult for her to keep to herself, to hide in her room and be alone with her thoughts rather than find distraction in others. Slowly, she feels an old part of her she thought she buried awaken again, and suddenly she's the same girl she was before she joined the Team: cold, bitter, and perpetually lonely. Her own self-loathing thoughts turn inward and start attacking her in the form of dreams—always the same, always a mix of Bialyan soldiers and the exercise, always Wally getting shot and always reasons for why M'gann looks burnt— and more than once she wakes from nightmares to run to the bathroom, vomit in her throat.

She doesn't hear a word about what's happening with Luthor and the League and the world as a whole, and she can't find the courage to ask.

She seems to get it into her head that if she can just avoid seeing them, any of them but especially Wally, she'll be okay... As long as he stays in the hospital he's safe from her, as long as she stays inside her bedroom and puts up and cold front she won't be able to hurt anyone...

Zatanna bursts out in frustration nearly a week after she returns, stamping her foot and looking ill-tempered. "God, Artemis, will you just talk to us? You can't stay hidden in your room all the time, brooding. We all fought in that fight together, we're going to heal together too."

Against her better judgment she peeks out from behind her book, glaring at the other girl as she taps impatiently at her door frame. "Look who's talking. Didn't you do the same thing when... You know." She trails off, losing her nerve towards the end of her sentence.

Zatanna seems to know what she was about to say, her eyes narrowing and chin wobbling before she releases the door frame. "That was different." She scowls, vanishing from sight without another word. She hears her teammates whispering to each other more often after this, always falling silent and looking worried when she enters the room. Kaldur knocks on her door once but seems to understand her silence, his desire not to push her outweighing any insistence he has at getting an apology out of her for Zatanna's benefit.

She decides it's better for everyone if she doesn't join them when they visit Wally, and instead she presses her ear up against her own door when they arrive back at the Cave after these occasions, quietly desperate to any news she can get from eavesdropping.

She starts reading instead of sleeping, working her way through the bookshelves in the Team library; she reads anything she can get her hands on: books about the ocean, on Atlantis and its sister city New Venice, all about ancient Greece and the goddess she's named for; she reads about architecture, criminal organizations, advances in internet technology, children's psychology... Before long her newly healed finger tips are covered in paper cuts and the underside of her eyes become bruised and puffy.

She's becoming the person she hates again, and she doesn't know how to fix it.

She goes straight to the Cave from school nearly two weeks after the incident in Metropolis, still in her school uniform and intent on grabbing another book; she's read her way through over eleven shelves in the library, so close now to making it an even dozen that she can taste it. Unconsciously she stalks towards the kitchen, tender fingers reaching up to loosen her tie when she hears the unexpectedly cheerful tone of M'gann's voice. Somewhere in the back of her mind she remembers she hasn't eaten anything in a while, maybe a day or so, and absentmindedly she wonders if the Martian has found the time to make cookies yet.

She rounds the corner and freezes, index finger still caught in the fabric about her neck.

It's like a dream, a nightmare all over again—it's like nothing even happened, yet her heart beat is still stalling and restarting and redoubling its thudding—Wally, in the kitchen. Wally, looking normal. Wally, looking round at her from where he's been leaning on the counter, breaking eye contact with M'gann to look at her, full on in the face.

Her fingers tighten their grip and without knowing it she yanks the fabric from her neck all together, her tie falling from her hand and landing on the floor.

Oh, god. Oh go oh god oh god. No no no no no no no...

... He needs to go back to the hospital, he was safe in the hospital, he was safe without her...

"Artemis!" M'gann squeals, so happy at her arrival that her feet leave the ground, levitating nearly a foot high before returning to standing against the tile. "Wally's out of the hospital! Isn't that great?"

She can feel herself breaking out into a cold sweat, the cheap cotton of her school uniform sticking to the dampness that's beginning to pool at her lower back. There's a ringing in her ears, she can feel blood pounding at the front of her forehead— Wally, standing in the kitchen. Wally, looking normal, maybe a little paler than usual but still, ridiculously and improbably normal.

Wally, back in the Cave and back in the battle field; back just in time to die again.

He shifts his weight a little unsteadily, standing up straighter to better look her in the face. Out of the corner of her eye she can see M'gann's smile falter, can tell that she's tasted the energy in the room and is being caught off guard by the palette—she's reeking of fear, of pure terror.

Wally half smiles at her, brows pursing slightly at the shocked expression on her face. "Artemis." He says her name as if it's like a breath of fresh air, his chest stuttering slightly as he pushes it out of his mouth, sounding hoarse. "Hi." He breathes, taking a half step towards her, arms raising as if to reach for her, as if to embrace her, as if after watching him almost die she's ready to pick up exactly where they left off... She has only moments to feel the sweat on her upper lip, to feel her mouth as it salivates.

Then she pushes past him, ignoring the ache in her leg as she runs, colliding with the edge of the counter and immediately vomiting in the sink.

AN: Another chapter up! Same rules as always, the more reviews I get the quicker I post again.

Let me know what you think, and Happy Halloween!