AN: Apologies for the bit of a late update; I'm in the middle of midterms and finding time to edit has been next to impossible.
Here we go with another long one, enjoy the chapter!
She lets the kettle keep whistling; for some reason the noise is comforting, as if the screaming of the steam out of the throat of the kettle is somehow expressing something she can't. In the cold silence of the kitchen she can hear the water splattering violently against the burner, hissing and stinging the air the way her tears are stinging at her eyes— but she's not going to cry, she's not pathetic enough to cry—
... The buzzing is back, the painful banging against her temples seems to send spasms of pain up and down her spine and the tainted girl keeps clawing through the cartilage between her bones, trying to escape and consume her...
She can feel herself growing light-headed and realizes with a jolt that she's not breathing, as if worried about the invasion of Wally's hardly there scent in her lungs, afraid of letting him in; it takes too much effort to force herself to pull in a gasping breath, to force herself to function, to force herself to swallow down her nausea and focus only on the screaming of the kettle and not the screaming inside her head, not the quiver in her knees—
She makes a grab at the counter, her imagination half convincing her that she can still feel the lingering heat of Wally's body warming the granite; and she had hurt him, she hadn't been thinking— but she had been, her head had been spinning and she wasn't able to focus, wasn't able to comprehend what was happening— and the other girl, the one who's screaming inside her head and dragging her bloody body through the dirt, she had lashed out in her defense... Swallowing thickly and admitting defeat she feels her knees buckle, shoulders rolling painfully over edges and nobs as she slides down to the floor.
Worthless.
Cold.
Broken.
Despite herself she can hear the familiar words slamming against the walls of her skull, the same ones that were pounded into her bones and carved into her skin from the time she was a child— she's her father's daughter, she can't outrun him, can't outgrow the monster he's shaped her into being. This instinct, the one that made her hurt Wally, that makes it so hard to let him in, the one buried the better part of herself alive... It all leads back to the instincts that her father gouged into her, the feral part she hates but needs... And it was a mistake to put her trust in the Metropolis girl, to trust her wanting Wally... Because the Metropolis girl doesn't live in her reality— She's blind animal instinct, sex and sweat and survival. There's no affection there, no tenderness, none of the wonderful things she has with Wally...
... Survival.
The Metropolis girl turned Wally into something she needs to survive— his body, his scent, the quietness he brings to her mind... She can't live without him, that much she knows. It's those... feelings, he stirs up in her, the ones that are less calculated (the ones that wake her out of half dreams about his smile and his thumb pausing on the callouses of her fingers where arrows once rested...) She knows there's a name for this kind of affection but she's too cowardly to own up to it, that's the problem... She's lost herself to this other girl, fallen slave to her tricks and lies and blood thirst— the Metropolis girl doesn't love, she can't love— she only defends what is hers and kills Artemis in the process, gets her lost in other people or inside her own mind, she's broken she's broken she's broken—
Almost violently she pulls her knees up against her chest, pressing tightly on her own lungs as if to remind herself that she isn't worthy of breathing, not when the untainted smell of Wally still lingers in the air; all she feels is anger and shame and knuckles pressed too hard against her eyelids, as if she can somehow force the other girl out the back of her skull...
How is she ever going to save Wally if she can't even save herself?
How is she supposed to fight something that's a part of her?
... How is someone like her supposed to feel these... things, without falling apart?
She doesn't hear the footsteps that guide him there but she does hear his voice, hears the sharpness of a swear slipping from lips; instinctively she feels herself growing still, as if she has a chance of remaining insignificant and hidden in her own despair as she sits, completely in the way and out of place on the kitchen floor. Unthinkingly she presses the tops of her cheeks against her knees, trusting the denim to absorb any incriminating tears still lingering there.
"Goddamit." Roy swears, yelling over the kettle as he storms into the kitchen, forehead slick and skin flushed from training. He starts muttering indistinctly about children and noise and fire hazards as he stomps towards the stove, swearing louder still as he lifts the kettle from the burner and promptly slams it back down, clutching as his burnt fingers in pain. "Fuck." He hisses out again.
She's just tricked herself into thinking that it's possible that she won't be noticed when he turns towards the sink, no doubt about to attempt to save his stinging fingers with a stream of too-cool water— and oddly at the back of her mind a memory stirs, another one of those strange ones that she's not entirely sure is real. She's young, far too young to be using a stove safely and yet her parents allow her... There's boiling water and tea cups and angry reddened welts on her fingers. In a strange bout of affection her father breaks off his laugh at the expense of her tears and lifts her to reach the sink, sitting her on the counter as he carefully checks the temperature of the water— "Not too cold, Baby Girl." He tells her roughly, hand joining hers under the water to make sure the worst part of the injury hits the stream. "People forget how sensitive skin is when it's burnt... You want it cold enough to take out the heat, but too cold and you'll risk permanently damaging your fingers. Don't want to numb the nerves—"
Roy turns towards the sink and immediately spots her, scowling. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" He demands, stomping past her to reach the faucet.
She doesn't have an answer.
Roy mutters something rude sounding under his breath, hand flicking the faucet violently upwards and spraying the basin of the sink with a loud rumble of water, not sparing her a glance as she lowers her chin back to resting miserably on top of her folded arms. Even without really looking she can tell he's not being careful enough, being too hurried with the sensitive skin; he's attempting to scrub the heat out, the faucet cranked all the way to cold, the combination of pressure and temperature no doubt sending his injured skin screaming. "You know," He starts after a moment, still sounding annoyed. "I came here for peace and quiet. I thought with the beach, the harbor, might be nice—"
Roy pauses in his snarling to ram the faucet off again, crossing back to the stove to collect the dish towel hanging across a stray cupboard handle. "Instead, I come here and am immediately reminded why I am never, ever, having children. This place is a complete shit show."
She watches glumly as Roy rubs too hard at the burnt skin on his hand; despite his yelling she has the overwhelming urge to correct him in his ministrations, even to help him. Ignoring this she shrugs her shoulders. "... Sorry."
She goes back to glaring at the floor tile when Roy's brows raise, so surprised by her lack of reaction that his hands actually still in their violent drying with the dish towel. "... What the fuck is wrong with you?" He asks in a quiet, entirely different tone from moments before.
She can feel her cheeks going pink. "Nothing." She grits out between her teeth, screwing her eyes shut to avoid looking at the shocked expression on his face.
There's almost a full minute of silence where she can feel Roy staring at her, can feel the thoughts whirring inside his head; refusing to acknowledge his presence she focuses on breathing, focuses on dragging noisy breaths in through her nose and trying not to smell Wally there—
She snaps her eyes open when she hears the squeaking of shoes against the tile floor, her upper lip retracting to snarl at him as he takes a step closer. "Red." She says warningly, the wrinkle over her nose popping up violently underneath her skin.
To his credit Roy immediately stops moving, both hands raising as if in surrender. "... Were you making anything in particular?" He pauses, glancing back at the kettle. "You know, other than noise?"
She can feel the feral expression on her face break, can feel her own shock breaking through around the corners of her eyes; unbothered by her impolite surprise at his kindness he takes a step backward, pursuing the cupboard above the stove like there's nothing unusual about the two of them, alone and talking, in the kitchen. "... Your sister's on a hot chocolate kick right now." He tells her offhandedly, reaching to pull the tin in question down and not noticing at the way her face goes sour again. "She likes something warm to drink, calms her down when... And there's too much caffeine in coffee, even tea sometimes bothers her late at night..."
It's not until he's withdrawn two cups from the cabinet and finished filling the first with several heaping spoonful's of hot chocolate power that she realizes what's happening. "I was making tea, actually." She blurts out dryly, watching the heaping spoonful hesitate over what she assumes will be her cup.
He pauses, looking as if he's almost debating rummaging around the cupboard again, before shrugging. "You'll take what you get and like it." He says simply, dumping the powder inside.
She scrutinizes him as he pours the hot water into the cups, the spoon he's using clinking around loudly as he stirs. "Alright, Red." She says sternly, glaring at him as he turns towards her. "Have you been brainwashed by the Light again?" She snarls out a little meanly, enjoying the bitter expression that crosses his face before he turns back to his stirring. "... Since when do you hang out at the Cave?"
Roy finishes with the mugs and takes one in each hand; she's expecting him to hand one to her and retreat to the other side of the kitchen again and catches herself flinching when he takes a seat beside her, passing her one of the over filled mugs with an odd amount of care. The distance between them is carefully calculated, the several inches indicating friendliness but not fondness. "Shut it, Sweetheart." He says easily, this kind of banter being old hat to both of them. "Drink up."
She scowls but does what she's told, lips stinging and mouth puckering at the unexpected sweetness; he's added too much powder to the water, the liquid inside unpleasantly grainy and thick. "... Wow." She says sarcastically after a moment.
There's a half beat of silence between them in which they both slurp back their hot chocolate, not looking at each other and instead staring blankly at the cabinetry on the island. "Are you gonna tell me what's wrong?" He asks after a while, scowling.
Ignoring his request she forces another jibe out of her mouth, both hands clutching tightly about the cup. "No. Are you going to tell me why you're pretending to be my older brother?"
She doesn't miss the way his cheeks redden, blotches of crimson leaking out from under his mask. "Shut up." He says grimly, one elbow knocking her a little too hard about the ribs and forcing her to painfully spill her hot chocolate into her lap. "Come on."
She hesitates; if she had to pick anyone for this conversation it would be M'gann or Zatanna, maybe even Kaldur—Roy is pretty low on her list for ideal deep conversation partners, if not absolute last. Hesitating, she gnaws on her tongue for a few moments, trying to figure out a way to be tactful as she rests her cup on the swell of her knee. "… You've kissed my sister before, right?" She asks, already knowing the answer.
Roy makes a grunting noise in the back of his throat, the tip of his nose blushing darker.
"... Okay, maybe that's— that's not the best place to start." She admits, pausing to take another sip of hot chocolate. "… After you found out about… Everything, did it ever make you hesitant to… To let people in? To... be close with them?"
Roy blinks at her once, correctly reading the blush on her cheeks. "... Gross."
"That's not what I meant!" She bursts out angrily, even though yes, that is exactly what she meant. "I just mean… Do you ever find that, like, just because you want to be close with someone, sometimes you can't? Because of, you know. Other things? Messing with you?"
"I really don't need to hear about whatever problems you and Wally are having in that department. I'm good."
"Red!" She sighs, glaring. "I—God, you were the one that asked me about it!"
Roy shakes his head in horror, mouth disappearing behind his mug for a moment. When he emerges his face is set, jaw tighter and more serious. "Alright, alright." He sighs, wiping a stray drop on his chin with the back of his hand. "I guess… I would say that everything we do in life is motivated by fear. Or emotional attachment. So being afraid of some things... I mean, it's natural. But when you're scared you pull back from life, and when you're not you sort of… You know. Dive head first. And maybe for some people, they spend so long being afraid that they forget that not everyone out there is going to hurt them."
She doesn't really know what he means by this and simply shakes her head. "So what? I should just... Power through it?" She asks dully, not comforted.
"I don't care what you do." He mutters, hunching his shoulders and looking uncomfortable. "... Just use a condom."
She hears herself snort before she finishes with her mug, draining back the rest of the too-sweet liquid and trying not to gag on the half dissolved hot chocolate powder clinging to the bottom of the cup. "Your turn." She says after a moment. "... Why are you at the Cave?"
Roy repeats the vague grunt in the back of his throat again, one finger tapping on his own empty mug as he firmly avoids her eye.
"Come on." She prompts him, trying to nudge him in the ribs like he did to her moments before; to her annoyance he's ready for her, already getting to his feet and stalking towards the sink. "Is it Jade? Another fight?"
Roy doesn't say anything back for a long moment, hands busy as he rinses his cup out and then pauses, allowing the cool water to sooth the stinging of his hands again. "... Things are... Complicated with Cheshire. You know that as well as I do."
"... Oliver's probably not making anything easier, is he?"
At this Roy's head turns quickly round to glare down at her; it's very obvious that he wasn't aware that Oliver had been telling other people of Jade and Roy's arrangement, and making his disapproval known. "... No." Roy says carefully.
She hesitates, gaze falling back to the floor. "... I get it." She says quickly, trying to spit out what she wants to say before he gets impatient with her prying and leaves. "I know what it's like... But I know what side of the fight I'm on, Roy. I know what I'm going to do if I see her out there." She can sense the stiffening of his muscles and rushes on even faster, stumbling over her words. "But, I mean— what's going to happen? Exactly? If you have to fight her?"
There's another tense moment of silence, this time so long that she's almost certain that she's not going to get an answer; when she hears the water running again she glances at him, stomach panging at the expression on his face.
"... I don't know." He says, so quietly she can hardly hear him over the water.
Roy leaves quickly after that, and not long after she decides to pick herself up off the floor; despite the fact that it's been months since the injury the muscles in her leg feel oddly tight, bothered by sitting so tensely for such a long period of time.
She's not focused on where she's going, thoughts shifting rapidly between her conversation with Roy and lingering frustration at the situation with Wally; it scared her, what Roy had said about not knowing what he would do if he met Jade in a fight. Is he questioning his loyalty to the Team? To The League as a whole? For as long as she's known Roy she's known him to be startlingly black and white for someone so unpleasant... At his core, despite his personality, despite Cadmus programming, he's good. At least morally so.
And yet... This fatal attraction to Jade, this curiosity at her... It's making him question his identity as a hero. Or perhaps it's not simply Jade but everything that's happened in the past few months— the knowledge that he's a clone, the fact that he isn't truly organic, a proper human being... Perhaps that's hard to manage alone. Maybe you need someone to dull the awful thoughts, to silence old nightmares and insecurities in the dead of the night...
That's what she's been doing with Wally...
But it's not simply a distraction, is it? When she had asked Roy if he loved her sister he had sounded so unsure... But now. He knows her sister much better than she ever will, knows intimate details that seems so starkly opposite from the Jade she grew up with, the one who slept with a knife under her pillow and filled old water bottles with cheap vodka...
"She likes something warm to drink, something to calm her down when..."
When what? What does Jade need calming down from?
... Is Jade scared of Lawrence too?
Jade had mentioned once that she's a lot easier to find than she is... Does that mean Sportsmaster has terrorized her before?
"... I'll just disappear like the Cheshire Cat..."
But it hadn't been that easy; she remembers her father being furious at Jade's abandonment, furious enough to disappear for days on end to hunt her... She remembers him returning home, growing increasingly frustrated as time went on, picking at the blood caking under his nails that he had beaten out of what felt like a thousand men, trying desperately to track down and reclaim his favorite daughter... And he had never told her if he had found Jade, but what if he had, what if he had stalked her and terrorized her and carved his name into her back just like he had threatened to do to her, yanking her pony tail and snarling into her ear— "If you leave, Baby Girl, you're dead..."
So is that why Jade and Roy are living together? Is he... Protecting her? Is she protecting him?
... Are they protecting each other?
Frustrated she catches herself breathing hard— unsurprisingly she's wandered into the library, her usual haunting place when her thoughts are too overwhelming to work through without the comfort of a book in her hands. She's stationary in the same isle Wally and her had once had a heated encounter in, the memory of yelling and backs being pressed against bookshelves still sharp in her mind, the sound of pages fluttering as they hit the floor—
She lifts her head from where she's been staring at her feet, listening hard. Recognizing the creaking, she realizes that someone has just opened the door to the library.
She's not much in the mood for talking to one of her teammates— frankly her conversation with Roy has left her feeling even more gloomy, and rounding the corner towards the exit seems like little more than an opportunity for someone unsuspecting to be caught off guard by her foul mood. Looking around for a hiding place she settles on scampering a few feet forward as she hears footsteps approaching, hoping she's small enough to be mostly hidden by the flat edge of the shelf should whoever's coming glance down the isle.
She's just gotten her back pressed flat against the end of the shelf when the footsteps slow, turning down the isle before the one she's just been standing in. Judging by the weight of the heel against the carpet she suspects it's Kaldur— he's always been slightly duck footed on land, oddly ungraceful compared to the elegance of his movements underwater. "... I believe it was around here that Artemis discovered the book, although I could be mistaken." Kaldur mutters, voice much warmer than what she's used to hearing. "Perhaps you would do better to ask her yourself."
She hears one note of tinkling laughter and recognizes it from the too long sessions she's endured pouring over the book in question. "Hm. Perhaps not, Kaldur." Tula muses coyly. "I do not believe your friend Artemis is very fond of me."
"If I am being honest, Artemis is not very fond of anyone." Kaldur says back, the teasing sound of his voice oddly muted for a moment as she feels an angry pang sound through her, annoyed at being talked about as if she were an ill-tempered child rather than one of his closest friends.
Tula seems to feel the same way she does, an annoyed click sounding close by. "She is fond of you."
"That is different." Kaldur says very seriously.
"I am aware." A few feet from her head she can hear the sound of books being pulled from shelves; scared of being discovered she ducks back round to her and Wally's isle, hoping for the chance to slip out without being noticed.
She's made it a pace or two when she's forced to stop, several titles being removed from the shelf and creating a sizeable gap which she's sure she could be seen through; teetering a little on her still sore leg she hesitates, listening hard to the silence and to what sounds like a palm pressing against a book, pulling it out of someone else's hands. "Please, my friend. Do not be upset with me." Kaldur murmurs, voice sounding affectionate.
"Your friend—" Tula starts, and there's a flash of movement in front of the gap as if the other girl has just made an attempt to push past him before suddenly it's stilled, a few books trembling slightly as if he's caught her arm, upset her balance slightly and forced her to grab onto the shelf for balance.
"Apologies." She hears Kaldur mutter hurriedly, and in her mind's eye she can picture him releasing her, worried that his sudden touching has offended or hurt her. "But yes, Tula. You are my friend. But we both know that is not my choice."
Something in the lowness of Kaldur's tone sends her cheeks blushing, and judging by the silence on the other side of the shelf she suspects it must be having a similar effect on Tula; deciding that this is a conversation she's rather not hear she forces her sore leg to bend down, ducking under the gap in the shelf and practically slithering to the other end of the isle, getting more anxious to leave when Kaldur starts talking again, this time over the sound of book covers being roughly shoved back into their places. "I know we have not spoken of what happened... It has been nearly a month, Tula. Nearly a month of not knowing what you are thinking, how you are feeling—"
"Kaldur—"
"Tula." He cuts her off, the same stern tone she's heard so often forcing her feet to falter, rounding the corner into the main isle and hiding behind the edge of the shelf, wondering if she'll be able to leave without either of them noticing her. "I am a patient man, and I do not demand much of you despite how... Confusing, you are. But you are the one who kissed me. I deserve to know why."
It's very hard to resist the temptation to stuff her fingers in her ears and start humming loudly, sincerely wishing that she were still back in the kitchen with the unpleasantness of Roy than being forced to listen to such a private conversation. "... I do not have an explanation." Tula says stiffly.
"I have known you too long, Tula." Kaldur mutters lowly, still sounding stern. "There is no point in lying to me."
There's hardly a moment of quiet before Tula bursts out, sounding caught between wanting and restraint. "I was curious, Kaldur." She hisses. "It has been... So long, since we were joined. We were still children then, whatever we felt we were too young for... I love Garth." She adds quickly, as if to remind the both of them. "But you are so different... You abandoned me, and he was there, and I can never forgive you for leaving but— you are right. There is no point lying to you... I was foolish, spurred on by lingering feelings, my own curiosity at... How you had changed."
She feels her own dull sensation of surprise at the omission, and can tell Kaldur feels the same; there's a very heavy moment of quiet, and when he speaks his words sound disorganized, flustered, not at all the mature tone she's used to. "Have I... Changed?" He asks, sounding oddly choked.
Tula lets out another tinkling laugh that this time sounds borderline miserable; there's the loud slapping of skin against skin, as if the other girl has just clapped both her hands to her face. "No, you have not." Tula's voice sounds out through muffling fingers. "You are still... Wonderful, as I remembered. As I have been thinking about nearly every night since. And that was simply kissing, Neptune forbid our joining again— I do not think I will ever be able to sleep the night through..."
"... Yes." Kaldur says after a moment, voice back to being low and inviting. "Neptune forbid."
There's another long silence, this one so heavy that her own curiosity gets in the way of her wanting to go unnoticed; stupidly she shifts slightly, peering out from behind the shelf.
She hardly has time to pull her eyes in focus before Kaldur reaches for Tula, gentle hands pulling her palms from her face; as if he's settling himself down for a job to do she can see him keeping her forearms firmly in his grasp, guiding her forward until it would be impossible to do anything other than meet his mouth when he drops his jaw to kiss her.
She realizes with a jolt that she must have inhaled a little too sharply in her surprise; in an instant Kaldur's eyes are flashing open at the intrusion of her noise, instinctively finding hers and no doubt recognizing the steely grey of her irises and the length of her blonde pony tail.
There's the sound of moistened lips being pulled apart, and without thinking she sprints as fast as she can towards the exit.
"It has been... So long, since we were joined..."
So Tula and Kaldur were... together, at one point. Or at least together enough to be having sex.
But they were young— and she realizes jarringly that they're still young. She forgets too often that Kaldur isn't properly grown up, despite seeming much older than the nineteen years he had marked with insisted silence on the twenty sixth of March— judging by the conversation the two were thirteen, fourteen, with enough happy years of childhood love building before their separation made the distance between the surface world and Atlantis seem unbearable when they were apart. Long enough ago for it to seem like a forgotten history, for old feelings to trick their masters into being properly buried. Long enough for Kaldur to leave, to take up the mantle of Aqualad, long enough for Tula to console a broken heart in the closest set of arms and convince herself that she had moved on...
But not long enough for either of them to truly forget the past.
And what she saw in the library... That wasn't their first encounter. That wasn't lingering emotion getting the better of either of them; that was calculation, at least on Kaldur's part— she knows him well enough at this point to understand the way his mind works: getting Tula alone under the pretext of being helpful, steering the conversation towards his goal in a way that was both polite but firm... Stopping her from leaving when she wanted to but not making her feel trapped. It was all very cold, very mechanical in nature, like every other plan Kaldur executes...
She doesn't know why she feels disgusted by it, doesn't know why what she saw is bothering her. Kaldur is free to do as he pleases.
... But it doesn't change the fact that he isn't the person she once thought he was. He isn't the level-headed, logical force she once saw, isn't the person she could rely on when she had her own doubts because of his own failing moral compass... Perhaps it's simply that she's always strived to be more like him, strived to be better, do better, and now she's discovering that what she's been striving for isn't as perfect, or as undoubtedly good, as she once thought—
"Artemis? Are you even listening?"
It's several days later and still she's dwelling on what she saw in the library, the sound of Zatanna's impatient tone jarring her out of her own head. "I— Sorry." She says stupidly, looking up from where she's been staring blankly at a page of one of Zatanna's magazines, sprawled out on the other girl's bed and pretending to read. "You were talking about that guy in your French class? Jared?"
"Jeremy, Artemis, and that was ages ago." Zatanna clicks her tongue impatiently, her reflection glaring at her from the mirror on her vanity as she pauses in her attempted curling of her hair. "What's wrong with you?"
She feels her eyes narrow, her thumb and forefinger pinching at a corner of the magazine and ripping it slightly. "Tired, I guess." She mutters evasively. "... So it's Jeremy now? What about Dick?"
"Dick and I have an understanding." Zatanna waves her off, pausing in her talking to raise her curling iron to the side of her head; almost fascinatedly she watches the younger girl's expression in the mirror as she weaves a section of hair around it, holding it tightly for a half second as a whiff of steam rises before releasing it, a single springy curl appearing for a moment before it unravels, looking just as pathetic at Zatanna's other attempts beside it. "Damn."
She hesitates before rising from her position on the bed, tossing the magazine aside. "I think you're using it wrong." She says, pausing behind Zatanna's chair and frowning. "M'gann tried using one of those on my hair months ago— I mean, it didn't really work, I guess. But she didn't hold the hair around it with her hands, she used that metal clamp thing around it—"
She cuts herself off when Zatanna picks up the flaming hot iron and gestures at her with it over her shoulder. "You do it, if you think it's so easy."
"I don't think it's easy—" Again the iron is waved wildly in her direction and this time she's smart enough to grab it by the handle to stops its movement. Huffing slightly and fumbling with the wire she stares for a moment at the mass of black hair in front of her, feeling ill-equipped for the job at hand.
Zatanna smirks and seems to take pity on her after a few seconds, letting out her usual barking chuckle at the confusion on her face. "One inch sections, please."
One inch sections— her arrow heads are about an inch, she remembers; still feeling stupid she makes a grab into Zatanna's locks, eyeballing a piece on the top of her head and pinching it between her fingers.
The whole process is remarkably tricky, despite looking easy when M'gann had done it to her; she remembers the martian clicking the mechanism on the handle and opening the clamp on the shaft of the iron, sliding sections of hair inside and twisting them into curls. She's much more clumsy— in a matter of moments she's burnt one of her fingers and the top of Zatanna's ear, several pieces of hair getting caught in the clamp and having to be yanked directly from the scalp as she pulls her curl free, the section she's just attempted looking dull and frizzy and only partially curled around the middle, the end jutting into an unflattering kink.
It looks way worse than anything the other girl's tried, and she doesn't blame Zatanna for bursting out in a horrified laugh. "God!" She cackles. "How can someone with so much hair not know how to style it?"
She opens her mouth to argue, passing the curling iron back and not feeling sorry when Zatanna hisses, the edge of her pinky straying a bit too close to the heat. "I do so know how to style it!"
"A pony tail is not style, Artemis."
Blushing furiously she stomps back to the bed, annoyed at the younger girl's continued laughter; despite being slightly embarrassed it feels good to hear Zatanna laugh, feels good to have someone else's happiness fill up the deadened parts inside of her, caught between lingering briefly on Kaldur and mostly on Wally, her unhappiness with her life feeling at least manageable when something so joyous is filling the blank and dreary silence.
She realizes again that she's unintentionally gone quiet after she's sat on the bed again, no doubt looking as if she's pouting at being laughed at. She's a little surprised when she glances up to Zatanna's reflection again to see her staring back, face serious and lips hardly quirked at the hilarity of her half curled hair. "... Something's bothering you." She says simply, with the air of a person telling the facts. "Are you going to tell me what it is?"
For not the first time she hesitates, wondering how much information to share. Sensing her lack of trust Zatanna's eyes leave hers in the mirror, reaching for her hair brush and running it repeatedly through her hair, as if hoping to remove the ugliness of her curl through sheer force.
Her first instinct is to tell the other girl about Tula and Kaldur— it seems safer, keeping the conversation as far away as she can from her own problems. But something stops her, forces her to open and close her mouth stupidly, as if admitting the sliminess of what she had seen to another person would be more wrong than Kaldur's actions themselves. "... I'm still... I don't know. Fighting with Wally." She admits after a moment; glancing back at the magazine she had abandoned before.
(And she's not usually one for confiding in anybody but Zatanna seems to think about these things in a similar way that she does; after all, she had been right about getting together with Wally all those months ago, had been right about it being a lot of trouble and more than it's fair share of misery... What's to say she won't offer good advice a second time— and it has to be better that Roy's, which didn't really make sense and just left her feeling confused and worried about Jade...)
She hears the hairbrush pause in its path through Zatanna's hair. "Still? You haven't made up yet?"
"We did." She admits blushingly, debating how crass to be when she goes into details. "We, uh... Stuff happened. And it was fine for a bit."
Sheepishly she glances into the mirror again and is quickly horrified at the teasing grin on Zatanna's face. "Please tell me I get to hear the disgusting details. I'm begging, Artemis."
Bypassing maroon she drops her eyes again, reaching for the magazine to give her hands something to do. "Uh, no." She mutters, fingers fumbling through pages. "Besides, that's not the important part. After I, uh— I thought I—"
She fumbles through her words again; it's odd, that this is the hardest part to admit— the fact that she had thought she had seen her father, had lost it, had been so terrified and confused that she had hurt Wally, really hurt him... In her silence Zatanna turns in her chair, eyes wide and a little accusing. "Oh my god. Please tell me you aren't having a pregnancy scare."
"No!" She bursts out quickly, hands rubbing angrily over her cheeks as they blush again. "God, no— Zatanna, can you please just be serious for a second? I— I thought I saw my Dad when I was walking home."
It's cowardly, the fact that as she says it she clamps her hands over her eyes, afraid to see the look on the other girl's face. There's several seconds of tense silence in which she can feel her pulse thundering too loudly in her ears. "... Oh." Is all she gets back at first, mixed almost painfully with the sound of the hair brush being lowered to the vanity table top. "Was... Was it him?"
She shakes her head, still not brave enough to emerge from behind her hands. "It was just some random guy... A couple of them, actually. But I don't know, it just made it more real, way more real than just knowing he was out there... And then... Wally and I kind of... Well, things happened in the kitchen, a few days later."
Perhaps the fact that she knows what she'll see when she emerges from behind her hands is what prompts her to do so; she's rewarded with Zatanna's pretend gagging, the normalcy of the reaction making her feel remarkably better. "Ew." Zatanna says good naturedly, looking relieved that she's finally holding her gaze again. "On the island? That's where Dick and I—"
"The counter. By the stove." She grimaces.
Zatanna makes a retching sound in the back of her throat. "Remind me to find a new spot to make my lunches."
"Right." She snorts, the slight wave of comfort quickly being replaced by a tightening sensation in her stomach. "Well, I mean, it didn't really... I don't know what happened. I was just feeling on edge because of my Dad, and Wally tried to distract me and it was just so— it was like I couldn't feel so much at once. And before I even realized what was happening I was pulling his hands off me and knocking him around... It was awful. And now things are weird, and I don't know how to fix them and I just..." She hears her voice warbling and goes quiet. "... I need some advice, Zatanna."
To her surprise the other girl's face goes sour before she turns back to the mirror, avoiding her gaze in the reflection and fumbling unnecessarily with the placement of the hairbrush inside a drawer. "... I have some. But I don't think it's the right kind."
"At this point I'll settle for anything."
Zatanna pauses, as if trying to figure out her wording. "... I guess I'd tell you... I mean, I get it. Feeling like you can't have that much emotion at once. Feeling overwhelmed. But... Okay, and just because I'm giving you this advice doesn't mean you have to follow it. You and Wally may be a mess but when things are good you're great together—"
"Zatanna."
The other girl sighs, teeth biting for a second on her lower lip. "... I guess I'd tell you that there's a reason why things are the way they are between Dick and me." She says almost darkly. "After Dad became Fate... I was feeling a lot, and trying to fall for someone didn't make managing those emotions any easier and... It's all about separation." She says firmly. "When Dick and I are together it's just us, no other feelings or problems or... And when we're not, then I deal with my own issues. There's a part of me that's who I am when I'm with him, and that other part that... Manages everything else."
She feels her stomach tighten. "... Oh."
"Maybe you're just..." Zatanna starts, biting her lip again and still avoiding her eye. "Trying to be too many people at once? Maybe that's not healthy, or whatever—"
Without knowing why she nods, eyes staring blankly as she stops listening, hurt by the words stinging against her ear drums; the tightening sensation seems to bubble up in her stomach and burst into her throat, and as if in agreement the girl from Metropolis chokes her.
She quickly discovers that it's incredibly difficult not to track the time when someone is mad at you; she'd noticed it once before, over the holidays, when Wally hadn't been speaking to her. Back then she had very little to distract her, nothing more than a broken family and her favorite books and a Flash brand ceramic mug she spotted at a gas station; despite the fact that she's kept constantly busy by her piles of missed homework and assignments, not to mention the scandals of various teammates, she still is uncomfortably aware of the passing moments, her gaze frequently flickering up from her textbooks to watch the changing of the numbers on her digital clock, body automatically marking another moment in which Wally's silence has chilled her to the bone.
(And she shoves her phone into the top drawer of her dresser, forcing it almost brutally into a rolled up pair of woolen socks to keep from flipping it open to check it every few minutes; every time she looks at it she can see the crack she had put there and she's reminding forcibly of the fact that she screws things up, she always fucks things up—)
She thinks herself in circles over what Zatanna said to her; maybe she's spreading herself too thin, trying to be too many people at once. Things had been easier with Wally when they weren't a couple... Maybe they weren't as happy, with the constant side stepping and break downs... But it was easier, easier to pinpoint who she was and how she felt when she was just another girl with a troubled past without the cliché of a guy trying to fix her... And maybe it had been easier to define herself when what they were was so unfixed; maybe she thrived in that chaos, maybe all that lack of feeling except in the heated moments was what made it easier...
Or maybe Roy's right. Maybe she's simply spent so much time being afraid to open up to people, afraid to be intimate that now she doesn't know how to let them in. Maybe she is broken, maybe she's unfixable, maybe she's meant to spend the rest of her life in this cycle of wanting and fear and hatred and not-love, never love; maybe she's just not supposed to feel certain things, like feeling safe or happy. Maybe that instinct for intimacy is something too far gone for her to chase after now—
She's just glanced at the clock beside her bed again, the Gotham sirens outside wailing— and suddenly it's been one day, twenty-one hours, approximately eleven minutes since she last talked to Wally— when she hears the tell-tale vibration coming from her dresser a few feet away.
Without thinking she jumps to her feet and opens the drawer, oddly clammy hands struggling to extract the phone from it's woolen cage and dropping it altogether when she sees Wally's name flashing brightly across the screen. The metal and plastic clatterer against the inside of the drawer and slip through the layers of mismatched socks before smacking hard against the wooden bottom; it takes several seconds of digging before she finds it again, still vibrating happily and oddly flipped open, forcing her to see the contact photo he has assigned to himself a few days ago.
Immediately all she can see is the horrific red of his bed sheets, so loud that her eyes can't help but go to it first; it's a slightly blurry photo, Wally's hands still a little clumsy from his recent orgasm. She can clearly see the pink in both their cheeks, can see the way her hair is falling out of her pony tail and twisting in long tendrils on his pillow, can see both their mouths quirking in one of their playful spats.
("Wally, no. No photos."
Ignoring her as usual Wally had extended her phone out of her reach, her nails scratching against the back of his hand as she had made a grab for it. "Why not?"
"Because I look disgusting—"
"No you don't." He had told her firmly, rolling his eyes. "And even if you did, so what? I'm your boyfriend, Artemis, I deserve the honor of a contact photo."
"If it's your photo then why do I have to be in it?" She had tried to glare into the camera when he aimed it down at the both of them, neither of them missing how she had tilted her head closer to his on the pillow.)
And yet despite the warmth of the memory she can feel herself running cold, can feel the weight of both Zatanna cynicism and Roy's confusion sitting heavily on her shoulders; what if she isn't meant to do this? What if being with Wally, being his girlfriend... It had started as the Metropolis girl's plan. She had needed him to survive. But is that really a way to live? Just bare bones, unfeeling, hovering between life and death but never really—
The phone switches over to voicemail and she's saved from answering altogether.
"Hey. Uh, it's me. This whole not talking thing is weird so... Call me back when you want to. Please."
She doesn't sleep, doesn't do her school work; instead she lies mercilessly awake as the days and nights pass by, mind buzzing and eyes blood shot as her subconscious tortures her with snap shots and half dreams of her attack on Wally. Vividly she can recall the look on his face, and grunt of pain that had fired out of his throat, the way he had looked at her— the way he had been afraid of her, the way he had told her to keep her distance...
... She had hurt him...
And maybe Roy was right; maybe she's spent so much time being afraid to open up to people, afraid to really be intimate that now she doesn't know how to go about it anymore. She's always known she doesn't have an instinct for this kind of the thing the way Wally seems to; he always knows how to touch her to get her to soften, always knows the right time to place tender kisses on her neck and how to hold her when she wakes from old nightmares. She's said before that being with someone, being gentle with them, this is something she'll have to learn all over again— and as much as she loves those heated moments, the fire he ignites in her veins and the pants they can draw out of each other... Maybe she's simply lost the ability to find that kind of intimacy with someone. Maybe after nearly sixteen years of abuse she's too broken to find the most basic form of human attachment, of closeness... Maybe she just needs to figure out a way to work through this, like it's some sort of mental block—
But maybe Zatanna's right. Maybe there's something to keeping your distance, something in making sure your own hurt is healed before you drag someone else into it... That's what she had wanted to do, before everything in Metropolis... She had wanted to keep Wally at a distance, wanted to keep him safe from her own brand of crazy— and she had only given in because she was still convinced that they were on the battle field, was convinced that their days were numbered and that she didn't intended on wasting another one without him at her side—
... She had tasted a moment of life without Wally, had watched reddened pieces of him stain the crisp white snow. She had felt that dangerous, all encompassing and pathetic need for his survival, and somehow that feeling, the feeling of a pulse beating against a freckled wrist had become as essential to her own existence as it was to his...
She had given up the idea of her own healing to protect Wally from an unknown, invisible danger— but she's been the danger to him all along. Her family, the Metropolis girl... They're dead set on hurting him to get to her, on killing him and her and the idea of them together... And to keep him safe she has to set him free, has to end things before he starts being hunted like she is— but she can't end things, she can't, if things end and she loses him she'll die, she'll destroy herself from the inside out and is there even a way to protect him? Is she screwed either way—
And so it goes: the seemingly endless cycle of thinking herself into a panic, a few moments of tears and shaking fingers offering her perhaps a few minutes of release before it starts again, spiraling her deeper and deeper inside her own head.
She's locked herself in a washroom stall when the final bell of the school day rings at three fifteen, knees knocking together as she sits on the pristine toilet seat. Around her she can hear the childish babbling of school girls, impervious to her blank stare at the pleats of her skirt and the violent way she's yanking at the hair around her face.
She's driving herself insane.
She runs again.
This time she's unflinchingly stationary; no matter how many times her heels pound against the rubbery plastic spinning circles on the treadmill she stays in place, occasionally picking up the pace to find the muscled pane of her stomach brushing against the oddly cold metal bar she's supposed to holding to measure her pulse. There's no music pounding in her ears to drown out the dull ache that seems to pulse through her body every second step but she doesn't stop, as if despite the frustrating stillness and pain she's actually making progress with outrunning something.
"Slow down, Artemis." Black Canary warns her for the second time as her abdomen starts knocking against the cold metal bar again, arms crossed and watching her progress from a few feet away. "You wonder why your leg isn't healing right— you won't let it build up its strength slowly."
She opens her mouth to respond and instead lets out a ragged breath, her lungs dragging in the sterile air of the training room with an odd amount of ferocity. "It's been months." She pants, wiping at a bead of sweat dribbling down her temple. "I thought you said it would be fine by now."
With an air of impatience Black Canary stalks toward her, hammering at a few keys on the screen and forcing the wheels beneath her to come to a staggering stop, the plastic underneath her quivering violently as her heels struggle to slow her pace. "I hadn't taken into account how stubborn you are." Dinah sighs, watching as she clambers clumsily back to the floor, thighs shaking with exhaustion. "You keep pushing yourself before you're ready."
Instead of responding she lets out another breathy huff, leaning forward to press the heels of her palms against her knees; Dinah seems to take her silence for snark and hums, annoyed. "... And I know for a fact you haven't been doing the exercises I've told you to, I doubt that leg will ever really be the same..." Ignoring her scolding she stops listening, glaring blankly at the floor as the sweat pooling around her hair line dribbles down her jaw and off her chin, leaving a perfectly circular stain on the tile when it finally falls. "... But I guess the harm's now, only thing there is to do is to compensate for it. Come on, some hand to hand combat and then a few more drills—"
She doesn't argue with this but does look up when she hears the door to the training room open; as if afraid of being caught showing weakness she promptly straightens, leg aching with the effort of properly supporting her as she gazes beyond the sweeping blonde hair cascading over Black Canary's shoulder.
"Pardon the intrusion." Kaldur calls out to them, and for the first time ever she feels her stomach tighten at the sound of his familiar low tone.
It's a strange sensation, feeling wary of his presence; even in the early days of her joining the Team she had always enjoyed having him around, could always count on him for some advice or an easy conversation without Wally's prying or Dick's tricking questions. Now she catches herself stiffening, catches her eyes narrowing and scrutinizing him as he closes the door to the training room behind him, wondering if his being here is merely a coincidence...
"It's not an intrusion at all, Kaldur." Dinah answers for the two of them, unable to see the slightly sour expression on her face; placing one hand firmly on her hip she gestures in welcome for him to join them. "You came at a wonderful time, Artemis and I were about to do some hand to hand training."
He isn't even stopped a foot in front of them before his milky eyes are on her, surveying the deliberate aloofness in her expression as if it both fascinates and amuses him, one brow quirking. "You require a referee, perhaps?"
The way he says it is somewhat odd, trying to soften her with his use of common surface world terms and hoping it will amuse her like it always does; trying her best to maintain a cool expression she hears herself speaking. "No." She says carefully, warning him silently to that she's on to him.
(Kaldur was the first one on the Team who could tell what she was thinking with just a look, the first one whose eyes she would catch in tense moments, M'gann's telepathy unneeded when it came to passing messages between them. And now more than ever she can sense his insistence at their talking about what she saw in the library, his insistence at explaining himself, maybe swearing her to silence.
She hopes he can see how disgusted with him she is.)
The look that passes between them is either unnoticed or not thought of. "No, but you'll make an excellent partner." Canary cuts across her, grinning at her when she jerks her neck round to glare at the older woman. "What, not eager to push yourself now? You've been bothering me and Green Arrow for more intense training for a while now." She teases, seeing the expression on her face. "Come on, Kaldur has a good few inches and several pounds on you, he'll be quite the challenge. Besides, I promised I'd help Raquel with letters she's been sending to some colleges—"
She decides to hide the scowl splitting across her face, pretending to scrub some sweat from her forehead for a moment. "Sure." She says coolly, smearing some old make up across her face with a quick wipe of her forearm, not looking at either of them as she stalks off towards the sparring ring.
Almost tactfully Kaldur dawdles before joining her; unnecessarily he seems to take his time with stretching, with fiddling with weights on the rack. She knows exactly what he's doing— once again, the planning is meticulous, well thought out, the strategic delaying so obvious to her but impossible to argue with, should she appear impatient. She knows he's waiting for Black Canary to leave the room before he approaches.
And so it happens: the door is hardly shut on their blonde mentor's back when he turns to face her; before he can open to his mouth to even give her a proper greeting she's cutting him off, symbolically stepping outside of the crimson ring painted on the ground. "You don't have to, you know..." She trails off, trying to read his expression as her toes cross the boundary of the sparring area. "... I was about done for the day, anyway."
She's met with nothing but a stale moment of silence, a little off put to see him raising a brow almost tauntingly at her. "Of course." He says slowly, nodding in acknowledgement but still taking a step forward into the ring. "I hear your leg has been bothering you again... Perhaps after all the training you are too tired to spar."
As he says it— in that low, understanding tone that digs into her in all the wrong ways— her leg gives an unwilling twitch, still bothered by her running and the strain she's placed on it; despite the pain she feels her own ego throbbing loudly under her skin. "... I'm not tired." She says through gritted teeth, jaw dropping as her feet automatically takes several steps forward to place her inside the ring.
Kaldur wastes no time adopting a defensive position as she approaches, arms raised and legs spreading, expecting her to pounce on him the second she passes the red line and her feet connect with the touch sensitive floor. Vaguely she can hear the whirring of machinery around her, can feel the floor below her recognizing her and Kaldur, recognizing the familiar way she carries her weight and her own predictable starting position: legs spread and bent, leaning perhaps a bit too heavily on her right foot to accommodate the weakness of her left, shoulders tight and arms half raised.
Neither of them move for several seconds; as the machines babble behind them she can feel her own resolution setting: Kaldur sought her out, came to find her to scold her for listening in, no doubt wondering if she's been discreet with what she discovered. He came here to interrogate her, and through her own training she knows never to be the one to make the first move, never to be the one to speak first— it's another power struggle, another fight, and she's not going to be the one to surrender before it even starts—
And something odd happens, so quickly she's not even sure she really sees it— there's a half second where the milky whites of his eyes leave hers to glance towards the almost heavy way she's carrying the weight on her injured leg, as if analyzing her weakest point and deciding how best to exploit it. It's such a rookie mistake, so unnervingly amateur that for a moment she actually feels her muscles slacking in surprise before he suddenly lunges at her, irises still blaring a lingering warning of what's to come.
Her mind still reeling over the oddness of the action and she allows her own instinct to take over, leg aching as she ducks under the incoming swing of his arm, bracing herself and ramming a well-aimed elbow into his stomach as the bulk of his weight slams into her. She can hear the breath wheezing out of his lungs but doesn't pause to listen to the pathetic sounding gasp that fires out of his mouth; side stepping underneath him she twists around his crumpling figure, her better leg kicking hard at the back side of his knee she watches almost unfeelingly as his right side collaspes, another slam onto the swelling back of his left shoulder knocking him onto his hands and knees. She pauses, listening to the machines around them whining and watching the floor light up at his touch, as if knowing that her foot is itching to raise and stomp down hard on the center of his back and pound his body into the floor.
Instead she forces all her muscles to go slack, taking several steps back. "... You let me do that." She says accusingly.
Kaldur lets out a fake sounding cough, head turning to wince at her over his shoulder. "I beg to differ." He grunts out, getting to his feet.
Once again her eyes narrow, automatically taking a few more paces backwards and blindly feeling for the edge of the sparring ring behind her; either not noticing her retreat or not caring he advances on her again. "You looked at where you were going to hit me before you moved. You know better than that, Kal, what's the deal—"
Again it's clumsy, predictable, almost too slow when his arm swings around in an attempt to cuff her about the neck; she braces herself as her own forearm jumps upwards to meet his, their bones and tendons knocking painfully together as she easily blocks the hit and throws his arm backwards, no doubt bruising both of them. "Enough." She snarls, impatient with what she knows is less than his best, and this time he does little more than glare at her when she turns her back on him and stomps out of the sparring ring.
"You are angry with me."
He says this so pointedly that she can't help but let out a bitter sounding laugh, busying herself with seizing a towel from a nearby rack. "No."
Kaldur's silent for a moment as she buries her face in the white cotton, wiping a layer of sweat and old, grimy make-up from her cheeks. "... And now you are lying to me."
"Oh what, is that not allowed?" She scoffs, throwing the filthy towel into the hamper before grabbing another off the rack, nearly toppling the careful display Red Tornado had gone to the trouble of fixing for them. "Or is it just that we've known each other too long now for lying to even be possible?"
Almost immediately Kaldur's cheeks fire off in that strange purplish color at her mocking, not quite a blush but not quite anything else either. "That was a private discussion."
She hears herself let out a crude sound snort, running the towel violently over her bare arms and legs, trying to scrub her sweat and exhaustion from her limbs. "Yeah, well, it didn't seem like much of discussion when I left." She snarls. "And by the way, I wouldn't exactly call the library private, Kal—"
"As you would know, given that you and Wally have had your own run-ins there—"
"That's different!" She bursts out, annoyed when she feels her own cheeks blushing crimson, towel slapping against her back as she drapes it over her shoulder. "Wally and I are— I mean— we're together! You and Tula aren't!"
Kaldur goes quiet for a moment, simply surveying her and studying the ragged breathes firing out of her nose, looking bemused. "You are... upset with my happenings with Tula?"
"I—" She starts, not quite sure how to explain it. "Not upset just... Disapproving? She's with another guy, Kaldur. I mean, before she came I know we joked about it but I didn't actually... It's wrong, Kaldur. She's in love with someone else."
(Because it's one thing to break a person's bones, to make them bleed and feel pain stinging the endings of their nerves. It's another thing to break their heart, to break that part of a soul they've given to another person and crush them internally, creating wounds so deep and aching that even blood refuses to run through them—)
((And wouldn't she be doing that to Wally, if she breaks his heart—))
"And you do not believe it is possible to love more than one person at once?" Kaldur counters, raising his brows challengingly.
She opens her mouth and then closes it, glaring. "I don't know."
... Because she's not even sure if it's possible for some kinds of people to love at all...
"I believe we are misunderstanding each other again." Kaldur sighs, finally leaving the sparring ring and silencing the whirring of the machines around them; in the sudden silence he seems less threatening. "I understand the customs on the surface world— You stake claims in people. Mark them as... Yours."
He pauses, surveying the scowl on her face carefully, mouth setting when she shrugs jerkily at him. "In my world, in Atlantis, it is not common to think of a lover as a possession... There are no titles of boyfriends, husbands, that mark out an ownership over another person. Atlanteans do not belong to other Atlanteans. There is only togetherness, in all its forms. You must understand, with Tula... It is not wrong to pursue another man's lover. The real shame is in treating the one you are bonded with so poorly that they need to seek affection somewhere else." She must have made a noise in a slight disbelief because Kaldur's lips suddenly perk up. "You may frown upon it if you wish, but I can assure you that my caring for Tula in her time of need is a most honorable custom in my world.
"I apologize if my actions have made you uncomfortable, or upset. And I will be more cautious in the future. But it is important to me that you understand that I am simply doing what is right."
"What is right." She repeats, a slight wave of disgust sound in her stomach. "Why all the sneaking around then? If it's such an honorable thing then why not be open with it?"
Although she's sure he's been expecting the question his face suddenly darkens, some of the angry blush of before fading with a sense of finality. "... I do not know." He says very seriously. "Tula and I have never been... Simple. She is caught between Garth and I, between the past and the present... There are old wounds between us that may never heal... I am sure you are familiar with the feeling." He nods to her, and despite his politeness she feels a pang in her stomach, as if he's just hit her again. "I have asked her that same question and have never received a direct answer. I believe it is a decision that Tula wants to take her time with making."
She feels herself scowling and doesn't try to hide the disapproval on her face. "... If you want to be with her why don't you just tell Garth what's happening? Force her to come to a decision?"
"I would never force Tula to do anything." He says very seriously. "Besides, it is not simply the balance between the three of us that I must manage... Garth has been attending several meetings with Black Canary and Batman. He is growing weary of his time here as a tourist... He wishes to be as useful to the Team as Tula has been."
"Wait so— Garth? On the Team?" She blurts out angrily, eyes flickering between both of his. "You're not seriously thinking about letting him in, are you?"
"It is not my decision." He says shortly, the displeasure on his face matching hers. "Although perhaps another reason why Tula and I must remain quiet. Garth is a powerful combat sorcerer, and admittedly would make an excellent addition to the Team; I do not want what happens behind closed doors to upset balance on the battle field as it has in the past. Which is why I must ask you to—"
She cuts him off with an annoyed sound at the back of her throat. "Yeah, yeah, I get it Kal, your secret is safe with me." She says impatiently, waving him off. "God, first Roy, now this—"
"Roy?" Kaldur asks quickly, looking suddenly more focused on what she's saying. "What about Roy?"
She hesitates, lower lip suckling up into her mouth for a moment of biting before she forces the words out of herself. "I was talking to him the other day; Wally and I were fighting and— it doesn't matter. I ran into Roy and we got to talking about things and... Look, maybe it's none of my business. But he said... He said he didn't know what he would do if he saw Jade out there... He didn't know if he could fight her."
She watches the progress of Kaldur's eyebrows as they advance further up his face, seeming to pause on the highest arc of his features for a moment before they suddenly twitch downward again, scowling. "Did he mention anything else? Any other... Doubts?"
"No."
Kaldur makes an indistinct noise in the back of his throat, another habit he's picked up from spending so much time on the surface world; strangely enough the noise is distinctly Roy in origin. "Thank you, Artemis." He says unexpectedly, her own brows shooting up into her hair line at the seemingly calm response. "For confiding your suspicions in me. I will be the first to admit that I am not thrilled with his choice of partner—"
"—Neither am I, incidentally." She cuts across him, scowling. "And by the way, I'm not too fond of yours, either."
Kaldur's lips twitch at this, as if silently appreciating her stubbornness. "Regardless, it would be worth watching him... Red Arrow has become increasingly unpredictable in the past few months, perhaps it would not be amiss to keep both our eyes open."
"And not tell anyone else?"
"Yes. I think it is best to keep this quiet." Kaldur says slowly, jaw dropping as he pauses before addressing her almost sternly. "As we should with all the matters we have discussed this afternoon. For the Team's sake."
"Right." She snorts, still bothered by his sneaking around but not brave enough to confront him any more about it; gesturing with a jerky nod towards the sparring ring she tosses the towel she's been twisting in her hands into the hamper. "Come on, round two. This time actually try, Kal."
And he does; this time the two of them last for nearly half an hour, only finishing when her weak leg begins bursting into violent muscle spasms that make it nearly impossible to stand for a few minutes. Despite the pain she feels remarkably better, as if all she needed to get her spirits up again was to hit something.
"You know," She starts, a little embarrassed at the fact that he's had to help her back to sit on a bench, her fingers probing her leg and trying to work out the knots. "It would make things a lot easier if you and Tula... Weren't in love, or whatever."
She's a little too blunt but Kaldur seems to appreciate her honesty, the corners of his lips quirking up into a smile as he sits beside her, bracing his hands on his knees. "Perhaps." He says in a measured voice. "But you know as well as I do that we cannot choose who we fall in love with."
It strikes her as a bit of an odd thing to say, her hands pausing in her ministrations and eyes flickering up to his face. "... What's that supposed to mean?"
Kaldur lets out a short sounding chuckle that she's never heard from him before, one note of melodic laughter hanging in the air for a moment. "Simply that the heart has a tendency to outweigh the mind. If I am being honest I will admit that I do not see the logic in loving Tula, in continuing to hurt myself with wanting her but not having her..." He pauses, sending her a calculating look. "If you were to be honest too— did you ever picture yourself being with Wally? Did you imagine all the fighting and the chaotic nature of your relationship and think it wise? Did you think it logical to fall in love with him?"
He's firing these questions at her as if to be teasing, unaware of the fact that as he's speaking her stomach has started clenching with fear, her fingers pressing painfully into the knotted flesh coating the old bullet wound on her thigh. "... I never really thought of falling in love with anyone." She admits.
"And yet you did." Kaldur says firmly, so much so that she doesn't bother to correct him. "Love is not logical, Artemis. But still, I trust it."
It takes too long of a shower to scrub the sweat from her body, and even longer under the hot water for her bothered muscles to unwind; by the time she emerges from the bathrooms adjacent from the gym her skin is reddened from the heat, and in an effort to cool down she untwists her soaking hair from a towel, letting the water logged strands leave cool strips of wetness on the back of her tee shirt.
Predictably she stalks off to the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea; more than ever her stomach is working itself into knots, now debating the advice of Kaldur, Zatanna, and Roy, growing more and more confused. Her head is buzzing loudly with anxiety again, and rather than indulge it she turns to her usual last resort: television. Forgoing sitting on the leather couch—she can't trust her wet hair not to stain the leather— she hunches awkwardly on the floor in front of it, knees curled up and mug resting on the coffee table.
Almost absently she flickers through the channels, occasionally stopping for a few moments to stare blankly at an infomercial or watch a few minutes of an action movie; maybe Kaldur is right. Love, real love, isn't supposed to make sense— maybe it's supposed to defy every instinct she has, supposed to scare her with its lack of logic or reasoning. And that had been why she kissed Wally in the first place, all those weeks ago in his bedroom— it had gone against everything her father had ever taught her, had been something Jade would have called naïve. But that's why she had done it, because it felt wrong— and she was raised to be wrong, so does that mean it's right, or—
Her thumb passes over the remote again, flickering up several more channels before slipping and stopping. With a pang in her stomach she recognizes Julia Roberts.
("It's that goddamn Julia Roberts movie." His voice had crackled through the phone. "The one from the 1980's? I swear, it's always on. I think there's a whole channel committed to just playing it on a loop twenty-four hours a day."
"... That's why you're calling me? To tell me you're watching Pretty Woman?"
"No." His tone had been defensive, and in the brief pause in his speaking she had imagined the hand that's always on his neck flying out in frustration. "I'm calling to tell you... I don't know. That I miss you?")
She's not even properly finished with the memory when she hears the zeta tubes whirring behind her, the disembodied voice calling Wally's name and number so loudly that she jumps; a larger part of her wants to turn off the television and sprint wildly to her room while the small, braver part insists on standing her ground— in the jerky movement of her own indecisiveness she accidentally cranks the volume up to its maximum.
She can feel her cheeks burning as she scrambles with the remote, knees knocking against the coffee table and jostling a bit of her tea over the edge of the cup; slamming her finger against the volume control she mutes it, making her presence incredibly obvious.
It's too late to run now— all she can do is sit in horror as she hears footsteps approaching the back of the couch, becoming increasingly aware of the gaze that's she's sure is flickering once to the screen and then again to the back of her head before she hears a throat clearing. "... Pretty Woman?" Wally asks, not greeting her.
It seems to take all her energy to produce an answer back rather than attempt to smother herself in the couch cushions, the dampness of her hair feeling incredibly cold against the nervous feverishness of her skin. "Yeah." She blushes, lifting her mug off the coffee table and ignoring the tea she's spilt, sipping at the drink to give herself something to do. "... You were right. It's always on." There's a slight air of awkwardness to both their tones, and she's half expecting him to continue on his way, leaving her and her sopping hair alone.
Instead she's unsurprised when she feels movement on the couch, can tell by the squeaking of leather that he's propelled himself over the back of it, landing a little unsteadily on the cushions. "You don't have to... You know." She mutters, glancing back at him over her shoulder and watching him get settled, flinching slightly when she feels his legs swinging down on either side of her shoulders, knees brushing against her biceps and effectively boxing her in.
(and whether or not it's meant to be she finds his closeness threatening, finds the invasive nature of the walnut smell unpleasant when her mind is already so muddled; he's another distraction that she can't afford to have, not when she's so messed up already...)
"No, I know." He says simply as he leans forward; as if she's embarrassed at his closeness she jerks her head back round to the screen, staring at it with an odd intensity. "I, uh, actually came here looking for you."
"Oh." She hears herself mumble vaguely; in her typical cowardly manner she ignores the heat of his legs on either side of her and instead reaches for the remote, once again cranking the volume up to ear piercing levels, hoping to drown out any attempts at conversation.
The noise does very little to drown out the pointedness of Wally's sigh; even without hearing it she can feel it, can feel the way his lungs expand and the warmth of his breath as it hits the back of her head hard, deflected by her impervious panels of dampened hair and managing to ruffle the sleeve of her tee shirt. It's all too much all over again: his closeness, his scent, the wild and maybe unforgivable thoughts running through her head—
(and for some reason she remembers the heat, remembers the summer she turned thirteen: how the sun sent wavering lines above the Gotham pavement, remembers stumbling down a wrong alley and hearing the rattling of garbage can lids— she remembers the matted hair of a feral dog, remembers the wound on its leg and the festering flesh and the flies, so drawn by the stench and the pus and the scent of infection and death. And she remembers her arrows and the blood and the light leaving a set of milky, chocolate eyes; and sometimes it's the kindest thing, putting someone out of their misery... Maybe Wally's like that mutt, maybe it would be better for both of them if she just ended things now, before they get any closer, before she hurts him again—)
She misses the movement as he leans forward but she doesn't miss his touch; doesn't miss the way his fingers take a piece of dripping hair from where her tresses are hanging over her shoulder, skin brushing ever so slightly in the hardly there space between the denim of his jeans and her bare arm. As always he's warm. "Your hair is down." He whispers, mouth so close to her ear that she can't pretend not to hear him.
She doesn't reply, instead stiffening when she feels his forefingers tucking her hair behind one ear, sweeping the entirety of her tresses round her neck until they're all pooling over her right shoulder and hanging over her lap, dampened ends occasionally dripping and soaking the grey cotton of her sweats. And for one moment she doesn't breathe, doesn't think; instead she quietly closes her eyes and tries to memorize the moment, tries to feel nothing but the dripping of her hair and the warmth of his fingers as he repeats the movement, tracing the shell of her ear and down below her jaw, down the muscles of her neck and pausing on the bumpiness of her scar, lingering nervously before moving onto the swelling of her shoulder, the jutting of her collar bone...
"Artemis." He sighs, and as if some sort of trance is ending she opens her eyes, realizing suddenly that she's got an iron clad grip on the plastic of the remote.
(They've watched this movie together almost a dozen times now, enough for both them to know what's coming next; the last time they had watched it together he had pulled back from her, lips swollen from their kissing and hair mused from where she had been running her hands through it. "Big mistake." He had told her, mouth falling over the words at the same time they were being spewed out of the speakers. "Huge.")
She tenses when she hears movement from the couch, his thighs tightening on either side of her as he sits up properly; it feels invasive again, how close he gets to reach behind her for the remote, chin brushing the top of her head as almost impatiently he grabs the it out of her hands, muting the scene she's just been thinking about and tossing the remote back to the coffee table with a clatter.
Unthinkingly her eyes stray to his wrist, and for one wild half second she's shocked at what she sees there, caught off guard by the black and blue bruises, the swelling having gone down with the help of his fast metabolism and lingering only in the off-putting yellowing of his skin. Too quickly she feels her face crumple at the appearance of the injury, lower lip quivering and mind buzzing with guilt.
"Artemis." He repeats, the hand fiddling with her hair pausing to grip tightly on her shoulder.
"What?" She asks almost accusingly, back tense and slightly frightened; she's half expecting him to shake her or start yelling.
He sighs again, apparently frustrated with her response; she can hear the cushions squeaking as he adjusts his weight. "... I don't know." He mutters.
There's a long moment of bristling silence in which she hears herself let out an annoyed click in the back of her throat. "... Okay." She scowls, making a sudden movement to reach for the remote again.
Wally's too quick for her as always; before she gets much further than extending her arm he's got a grip on her again, one hand shooting out in front of her to contain her wrist and jerk it back towards her breasts, the other on her shoulder growing almost painfully tight as he yanks her backwards, pulling her flush against the leather of the couch and the warmth of his chest. It feels to intimate for the fighting they've been doing, too familiar for all the foreign thoughts and indecisiveness raging around in her head; there's too much of his warmth, too much of the walnut smell, too much Wally pressed up against her as he ducks his head, as if in prayer as he breathes in the lingering scent of her shampoo—
"Don't." He says quietly, his grip like iron around her as he presses his jaw into her temple, leaning over her and containing her, repeating the word once more with such a quiet desperation that she stiffens into stillness. "Don't— stop trying to avoid me, okay?"
"... Wally." She says warningly, coming back to herself as her wrist twists in his hand, struggling for escape.
It's hardly her usual attempt at resisting him but for some reason it seems to hurt him more than she thought it would— or maybe he's simply getting tired of always being the one to call her back, always being the one to hold on while she struggles to break free. Either way he lets go of her and lets out a remarkably bitter sounding sigh, slamming backwards against the couch cushions until he's less sitting and more slouching childishly. "What?" He fires out, one hand reaching up to run angrily through his hair as he snarls at her. "I can't touch you, I can't talk to you—"
She feels herself blushing crimson as she turns around to face him, feeling odd about glaring at him from between his spread, denim clad legs. "That's not fair—"
"Do you really want to talk about what's fair, Artemis? Because I'll tell you what isn't—"
Before she can open her mouth to snarl over him they're both cut off by the familiar buzzing of an alert, the disembodied voice speaking over the swear she's just uttered under her breath and telling the two of them to go to the debriefing room.
The voice rumbles off and there's a tense, disgusted silence between them, Wally glaring at her through clouded eyes and reddened ears; for some reason she feels as if she's being tested, as if it's a mistake to break eye contact with him and scowl at the carpet. "Come on." She says gruffly after a moment, gritting her teeth.
"You're joking." Wally snarls at her, looking as if he wants to hit her when she places a hand on his knee to help herself up, leg still slightly stiff from training. "You're fucking kidding me—"
"Later, Wally." She talks over him, ignoring the hand that reaches out to make a grab at her arm and shrugging easily out of his grip.
She thinks she hears one more half whispered swear before he gets to his feet, obediently following her.
"The archaeologist, Doctor Helena Sandsmark, is missing." Kaldur says gravely when they all quiet.
There's several exchanges of blank looks by the usual crowd, all of them wondering if there's some sort of connection they're missing, not knowing the name; even Tula and Garth, who usually are firmly out of the loop, look more puzzled than usual. She's just raised her brows at Kaldur, about to ask if this is supposed to be important to any of them, when she hears a disapproving noise across the room.
"Wait, I know her." Roy sneers suddenly, all of them turning to glance over their shoulder as he clicks his tongue; a little distractedly she catches herself paying more attention to the still reddened tips of Wally's ears than to what he's saying, very aware of the heat radiating off his body as he stands beside her. "It's she a lunatic? Claiming that Greek Gods actually exist?"
Even though Kaldur, Tula, and Garth's faces all pucker at Roy's scoffing it's Connor who turns fully to glare at Roy, answering for everyone. "Gods do exists, Red." He says severely. "Ever heard of Apokalips? Or New Genesis, the planet that created Sphere?"
Roy's face sours but Kaldur cuts them both off, heading off a fight before it starts. "Regardless of opinion, it does not change the fact that the Doctor is missing." He says plainly, fingers clacking loudly against computer keys as he pulls up a somewhat dated looking photograph, detailing a highly pixelated photo of an older woman, brown hair cropped short and eyes hidden behind glinting glasses. "Sandsmark was researching ancient magic at a dig site outside of Athens, on a project of vested interest for both Aquaman and Wonder Woman, when she suddenly vanished without a trace."
There's a half beat of silence where they all look at him, and Raquel seems to fill in the gaps for everyone. "… So I'm guessing it's not a coincidence that the baddies stole tech that can track EMF surges and now we're suddenly losing track of crazies studying magic?"
"No, I do not believe it is." Kaldur says gravely. "We can only assume that the Light has succeeded in getting the Starro-tablet to function. Although why take an archaeologist…" He trails off, looking uncertain. "I will be sending a select squad to Athens to examine her last known location and obtain records of her dig site. Perhaps the Doctor dug up something interesting."
There's a quick moment where Kaldur glances at each of them in turn, carefully weighing their expressions and deciding who to select for the mission; before he can say anything further Roy raises his hand, looking leisurely. "I'm in." He shrugs, teeth glinting as his face stretches into an unappealing smile. "I need to stretch my legs."
(And as he says it Kaldur's eyes flash to her, and without speaking she knows they're both remembering their conversation from earlier that afternoon, both remembering the danger of letting Roy and his doubts go unchaperoned— but Kaldur can't openly reject such enthusiasm, can't say no without giving a reason and opening Roy up for criticism from his Teammates, and instantly she knows there isn't another option, not unless they want another disaster like the mole incident—)
Throwing caution to the wind she also raises her hand. "Same here." She says, ignoring the way Wally's head abruptly swivels to look at her, questioning. "... Always wanted to visit Greece."
(And maybe going away for a bit is a good thing... Maybe she just needs some space from Wally, from Gotham City, from the Team and her father and the mess she's managed to make of her life—)
Kaldur looks at her for a long moment, silently thanking her before his eyes dart around to the rest of the room. "Excellent. Also—Robin, Garth." He says plainly.
"Me?" The Atlantean in question blurts out in the silence, looking suspicious rather than excited.
"Consider it an opportunity to prove your worth as a member of this Team." Kaldur says evenly, and she suspects she imagines the way his eyes flicker, ever so slightly, to Tula. "I know Black Canary and Batman would not disagree with your attending." He says carefully, and once again she can see right through him: the wording is kind but firm, the opportunity too good to pass up without looking rude or suspicious— it's virtually impossible for Garth to refuse, impossible for him to do anything other than go and leave Tula and Kaldur alone together for an entire weekend.
Apparently Garth feels the same, his face levelling into polite neutrality and hiding the brief flash of annoyance that had lingered there for a moment. "If you think it best then I will go."
Kaldur nods at them all, folding his hands behind his back and avoiding her eye. "Prepare for mission deploy in one hour. The rest of you may go."
She pauses in the action of shoving a rumpled tee shirt into her gym bag— despite the fact that she'll have more use for her civilian clothing given the undercover nature of the mission it doesn't stop her from hiding her folded Kevlar suit at the bottom of the bag, the rest of her packing wrinkled carelessly on top of it— fingers fumbling with the zipper for a moment as her ears perk at the sound of knuckles against her door.
She's not curious, and doesn't tell the knocker to come in, doesn't stop what she's doing to walk across her bedroom and let them inside; she already knows who's there.
(It feels like another lifetime altogether as unwillingly her mind flickers back to another evening, another round of knocking— "Go away." She had hurled at the door, not wanting company.
"It's me." Wally had whispered, voice broken from the imagined reality of the Exercise, and not knowing why she had let him in—)
The silence only seems to get louder before he repeats his distinctive knock (one short rapt followed by three other, much quicker ones) pausing again to listen to the quiet surrounding her. "Artemis?" Wally whispers, hesitating before twisting the knob open.
She keeps her back straight as she watches him over her shoulder, eyes narrowed as he cracks the door open several inches, apple eyes glancing around warily as if wondering whether or not she's actually there; it's stupid, the way he jumps slightly when he finally finds her, brows shooting up as he shuts the door behind him. For several seconds he doesn't say anything, scanning her posture and the expression on her face, pausing almost unnoticeably at the sloppy pony tail she's woven her still damp hair into."Hi."
"Hi." She mutters stiffly, turning back to her bed and fiddling unnecessarily with the arrangement of a pair of shorts inside it, finding it's easier to pretend to be busy than look at him.
She can hear the sound of skin tapping against metal; in his nervousness he's knocking his little finger against the swelling brass of the door knob, the sound only repeating itself once before it stops altogether. "... You didn't answer your door, so I thought maybe..." He trails off, not finishing.
"Yeah, well." She shrugs, giving the bag up as a bad job and zipping the main compartment with the sense of finality. "I'm busy."
Almost defiantly she turns towards him, picking the scuffed gym bag off her bedspread and slinging it over her shoulder; he's got his hands in his pockets, looking politely baffled at the scowl on her face. There's something else there, something she can't quite read in the overwhelming quiet of the room— it's not like how it was before their fighting, when she sensed affection, or maybe something else... It's different, a tender kind of hopelessness that rubs uncomfortably at the forced twist of his mouth, in the freckles on his cheeks that warble into a heart breaking half-smile.
"So." He says after a moment, the one syllable firing out of his mouth in a dark, dry chuckle; almost sheepishly he ducks his head to look at the floor. "... You running away from me again?"
And as he says it she feels as if a pointed arrow has pierced her heart, a sharp pang sounding in her ears and a tightness so overwhelming in her chest that for a moment she can't breathe; she catches herself choking on her own breath, unable to watch his arm as it marks a familiar path from his pocket to his neck. "No." She says to her feet, hating how childish she sounds.
"Feels like it."
She lets out a ragged sigh. "I'm not—"
"You running away from us?" He cuts her off, and she gets the sense that if she doesn't stop him soon she'll be facing an ugly round of twenty questions that he's so prone to starting when he's angry with her.
"I don't know what to tell you, Wally." She says coldly, adjusting the strap of her bag on her shoulder impatiently. "It's a mission. Kaldur needed people to go, and I'm going, that's it."
Finally he seems to gather a bit of nerve to look her in the eye; with a twist in her stomach she can see the startling red of his ears, glassy eyes glaring at her as he wipes his nose noisily on the back of his hand. "But you want to go." He fires out accusingly.
She hesitates, not knowing how to read the wildness on his face or how to react to it. "... I want to help my Team." She says carefully. "And if going on a mission is—"
"Not everything is about a fucking mission, Artemis." He cuts her off, not yelling but somehow managing to scare her with the low and dangerous tone he's using. Finally he abandons the post he's been keeping in front of her door, advancing a few paces into her bedroom. "Missions, the Team— look, they're important, I get it. I do. But they're not— they're not as important as us."
"Wally—"
"Ever since your Dad got out," he talks over her, not quailing in the face of her glaring or the angry wrinkle popping up over her nose, "it's like you aren't the same person. Like suddenly it's August again and I don't know you, and all I get are these moments when you seem like you're okay and then suddenly it's gone, like you just turn it off—"
"Wally!" She yells his name, trying to silence the word flowing from his mouth.
Ignoring her he keeps talking, looking pained when he advances forward and she takes a frightened step back, as if afraid of him or being overwhelmed by all the emotion he's projecting at her. "—I miss you, Artemis. I feel like I'm losing you, and I can't... I can't lose you. I'm crazy about you—" He takes another few steps closer to her when she backs up, the back of her knees hitting against her bed when he stops a foot in front of her. "Please don't go. Just— just stay, okay?"
She winces when he reaches for her, arms linking around her waist and pulling her against him, one of his hands burying into her wet hair and yanking out her elastic, fingers splaying the damp strands along her back and fitting her into the shell of his neck so neatly that she's forced to feel the frantic pounding of his pulse against her forehead. "Please stay." He says quietly, only gripping her tighter when her arms hesitate before half-heartedly resting on the swell of his shoulders. "Don't go when things are like this."
She thinks that this must be what heartbreak feels like; feeling someone fall apart in your arms and not knowing how to comfort them, not having any words to soothe them or make the sting of leaving hurt any less.
(She wonders if this is what Jade felt like when she left her, when she left the little blonde girl in the overalls sniffling and alone in her bedroom and didn't look back.)
And it's too much, the gentle way he holds her, the way his fingers are slipping her elastic onto his wrist, as if hoping that by keeping it from her she won't be able to leave. Not knowing what else to do she feels her palms tighten on his shoulders, fingers pressing down to follow the panels of muscle on his neck; in a last act of desperation she tugs gently on his hair and shifts back from where he's keeping her caged against him, the muscles in her calves taught as she rises to claims his mouth with hers.
It reminds her so much of their first kiss in his bedroom; it's clumsy, unplanned, the two of them continuing to fight with each other in the silence as she pours a part of herself inside him— and like that first time she's trying to remind him of the better parts of herself, before she hurt him and before they started falling apart, as if somehow he'll be able to understand and maybe not hate her when she pulls back. Her thumbs are pressing almost painfully hard into the sides of his face but Wally's doesn't seem to mind, the feral grunt that always lingers in the back of his throat dripping over her tongue as he fights to hold her closer, fights to get her to stay; his mouth is ferocious on hers and unwilling to release her, teeth reaching out in an attempt to drag her back into him when she finally pulls back.
For a long moment she looks at him, memorizing the features and the freckles she so adores, eyes pausing a fraction too long on his chin to observe the overgrown patches of reddened stubble marking his jaw— he hasn't shaved in a few days. "... I have to go, Wally." She murmurs.
"No you don't." He says back just as quietly, the two of them sounding ridiculous arguing in softened tones. "Stay here— let's just take some time to figure all this out—"
She sighs, glancing down at her feet for a moment. "No. I mean... I have to go, to figure some stuff out for myself." She can feel him stiffen as her hands carefully glide down his face, unthinkingly tracing the muscles of his neck, the jutting of his collar bone, the hollow in the center of his chest, the beginning bumps of his abdomen. "You're right, I haven't been... Myself lately. I think it'll do me some good to get out of here, to have something else to focus on other than..."
Wally's brows shoot up when she trails off vaguely, looking alarmed when she nudges him gently in the stomach, prompting him to take a step back. "Other than what?" He asks quickly, obeying her touching but still grasping tightly onto her wrists, pinning her hands to his stomach. "Other than us?"
"I... Maybe." She sighs, looking up at him helplessly. "I just... Just think of it as a break, okay? Some time away from each other to... Refocus."
"A break." He repeats blankly, looking as if he's just seeing her properly for the first time.
She hesitates again, glancing down a little pointedly to the watch on his wrist whose face is half hidden by the stretching of her elastic— she's running late now, she only has about five more minutes alone with him before someone will come looking for her. "Yeah... Just until I get my head on straight again, okay? I mean... I'll be back in a couple days. And maybe when I'm back we can... Talk."
The way she says the last words sends Wally's face hardening, his hands tightening around her wrist bones. "... I still don't want you to go." He repeats fiercely, ducking his head and trying to catch her eye. "If you still want to be on a break that's fine, I mean... I just have a bad feeling about it."
She bites her lip, thinking of her agreement with Kaldur to keep an eye on Roy, and hating the answer she has to give him. "I can't, Wally. I... Kal needs me to do something for him." Wally noticeable stiffens again, and in the momentary furrowing of his brows she manages to get her hands back.
She makes it as far as ducking around him before he's got a grip on her again, his hand shooting out too fast for her to see and grasping her tightly about the elbow, jerking her backwards so quickly that her bag nearly jostles from her shoulders. "Look, can you just... Can you do something for me too then?" He blurts out, dragging her back towards him; a little unbalanced from the weight of her bag she feels herself wobble slightly, steadied only when he grips both of her elbows.
"What?" She tries to say impatiently, accidentally sounding breathless.
Wally pauses, and in the severity of the silence she feels herself quailing under the intensity of his gaze, cheeks going off as he drops his jaw to look at her seriously. "... Promise me you're going to be safe." He says slowly and clearly, over emphasizing the syllables and making it impossible for her to do anything but understand how important this is to him. "I won't be out there with you, I can't make sure—" For some reason his voice breaks and suddenly he's let go of her entirely, one hand scrubbing at the back of his neck. "Just promise me you won't be an idiot."
(It's in her instinct to scowl at him but the way he says the last few words catches her memory— he sounds exactly like she had back in November, when they had gone their separate ways to fight entirely different battles in the blinding snow and she had fought through tooth and nail to find him, frail and alone, in a hospital bed.)
But it's April now, and the snow has melted— and perhaps the colder part inside her has a bit too. She doesn't promise, like always, but a part of her is brave enough to take a step closer to him, hand reaching out to lace her fingers between his.
Wally stays still when she kisses him, the ruddy curve of her lips fitting neatly into the hollow of his cheek and pressing a last bit of affection into his freckles. Instead of saying anything he sighs, looking almost pained but not bothering to fight her when she takes her elastic off his wrist.
AN: Another chapter up! This one is ridiculously long AGAIN...
Please Read and Review :)