Location: Keystone

Date: Nov 26th

Time: 05:15

Wally paced his room, forcing himself to do so at a normal human speed. The last thing he needed was another lecture from his mom about wearing down the carpet.

What he needed was advice. His sleep had been interrupted by the frenzy of butterflies banging into his gastric lining. Megan and Artemis couldn't be trusted with any information relating to Emmy without immediately telling the girl in question. Dick was too cheeky. Kaldur was too mature. Supey was too...Supey. Wally bit his lip. He had some suspicions about the Kryptonian and his favorite Martian, but not quite enough evidence to justify exposing his dilemma to a teammate. And Wally did not want anyone on the team to know about the issue running through his head. Unfortunately, that ruled out most of the people he talks to on a daily basis.

No one superhero related, so it had to be family or one of his other friends. Uncle Barry was a double no because he was both a hero and a maniacal family member who would tease him without mercy. And Wally was absolutely mortified by the notion of speaking to either of his parents, so those were all no's.

He glanced at his phone again. The last text from Emmy stared back at him innocently. She had sent him a photo from the cave's gym, teasing that the West LifestyleTM was making her stomach hurt during workouts. He hadn't replied yet for three reasons:

He had come to the rather conflicting realization that the person he would really like to talk to about this whole Emmy situation was Emmy herself. The lantern was one of his best friends. However, he was worried he couldn't formulate a reply without it being drenched in awkward 'I just became aware of my massive crush on you, and I have no idea how I normally act because I haven't had to think about being normal in the past because it was just me being normal but now it's not normal because I'm covering up the fact that I feel very not-normal around you right now' energy.

The text was timestamped for 1:30 in the morning. Emmy worked out when she couldn't sleep, so the information Dick told her couldn't have been good. He wasn't sure if he could pull of casually supportive right now.

The photo was of her stats on the treadmill (which was alarming in and of itself because Emmy was always very vocal about her hatred of running) with a threat that she's coming for his record. He normally would have snorted and thrown banter back, but the picture included her reflection in the mirror. Seeing her in short shorts and a sports bra, only a few hours after seeing her in lingerie and a couple hours after realizing he had a crush on her had him throwing his phone across the room before he could reply anything stupid.

So, yeah, no way he was talking to Emmy about anything right now. It needed to be someone he trusted, who knew him pretty well, and could be serious when the mood called for it. Andre was studying for an AP test all Thanksgiving break and told them not to talk to him until Tuesday. Jacob had only been on one date, so he wasn't exactly ripe with Casanova knowledge. Wally glanced at the clock. The most important detail about his confidant was that he needed them to be someone awake at 5AM on vacation. The speedster sighed…Brandon it is.

Wally bit the hangnail on his thumb during the three-ring-eternity it took Brandon to pick up. Pixelated guns blasted in the background as his friend punched at his Xbox controller.

"Yo, Wall-man, is this about me taking your COD disk because I'm going to give it back once-" Brandon started.

"I like someone," Wally blurted, bouncing on his toes again, silently grateful that Brandon pulls all-nighters at every opportunity. "I just realized it tonight, and I'm not sure what to do, or-"

He frowned at his bookshelf, a previously inconspicuous gap between two games making itself known, "Wait, when did you take my Call of Duty disc?"

"Let's focus on what's important right now," Brandon deflected, loudly slurping on a drink with enough caffeine in it to euthanize a horse. "You really like someone new?"

Wally ran a hand down his face, defeated yet bashful, "Yeah."

"Damn," Brandon sounded a bit surprised. "Way to play the game, Man, but I bet Emmy will take that pretty hard."

"Hey!" The speedster affronted. "I'm a catch!"

"Of course, you are, Bro. I'm just saying I didn't expect you to move on so fast. I thought you really liked her." Wally could practically see Brandon raising his hands in peace.

"We broke up over a year ago. I wouldn't really call this moving on fast," Wally frowned.

"I thought you met her in July?"

"Stacy?" Wally raised an eyebrow.

"Huh? No, who said anything about that snake?" Brandon huffed.

"You said I was moving on fast."

"No, I was talking about trading Emmy for your new girl."

"What new girl?" Wally pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Dude, I am so confused. Just tell me what you called about." Brandon huffed.

"I called to tell you that I have a crush on Emmy, and then you started rambling," Wally snapped.

Brandon's side of the call went silent. The shooting in the background momentarily paused.

"Seriously, Dude?" Brandon scoffed. "You called me in a panic to tell me that you have a crush on your girlfriend? I'm in the middle of a Veteran level! You know how hard those are."

"I-" Wally stuttered. "She's not my girlfriend. I just realized tonight that I think I want her to be when I walked her home after dinner."

More silence.

"You idiot."

"Hey!"

Brandon sighed, "You mean to tell me that you have been hanging out with this girl platonically even though she obviously kissed you at the arcade, like, two months ago?"

Wally shifted uncomfortably, "I mean...I didn't think..."

"Damn right you didn't think!" A slapping sound implied that Brandon hit his forehead. "How are you just now realizing that you like her? You literally invited her to spend a major holiday with you so she could meet your family. How can you possibly have better grades than me?"

The speedster was glad he didn't videocall because he could feel his annoyance and sheepishness painting his cheeks red.

"I...I mean," Wally had not expected this barrage when he called for help. "When did you think I started liking her?"

"July, Dude!" Brandon slapped his forehead again.

"It was definitely not July. She was a total pain back then," The redhead countered.

Brandon scoffed, "Yeah, sure. That's why you started sharing smoothies and following her around all day the second she came to our school."

Wally rubbed the back of his neck, "I don't 'follow her around all day.'" He gnawed the inside of his left cheek, "Do I? Do you think she's noticed that?"

"How could she not? She has eyes and proprioceptors," Brandon snorted.

"Dammit," Wally scratched his forehead. "I haven't figured out if I should even tell her how I feel yet. She's hard to read."

"Hard to-" Brandon sputtered. "Hard to read?!"

"Yeah?" Wally didn't like that Brandon seemed to be gearing up to yell again.

"Dude. Bro...Dude."

"Can you try actually saying a real sentence?" Wally rolled his eyes.

"She obviously likes you."

Wally's stomach flipped. He cleared his throat with false nonchalance, "What makes you say that?"

"An idiot. An actual idiot. I know a lot of teenage boys are stupid, but I did not know how bad we can be until this conversation started."

"I knew I should have just risked his wrath and called Andre," Wally groaned.

"Hey!" Brandon took his turn to be offended.

"I'm asking for help here, Man," Wally snapped. "And all you've done is call me an idiot five times."

"Three times."

"I'm hanging up now."

"Wait," Brandon snorted. "Sorry."

Wally fell back onto his bed.

"I can tell she likes you the same way I can tell you like her."

"...Which is?" The redhead prodded.

"She was fine sharing the smoothie. She sorta follows you around too. She threw my cake at Stacy. She pressured you to man up and throw the dodgeball that one time." Brandon paused. "Oh, yeah, let's not forget the fact that she kissed you, you idiot."

Wally groaned, "It's not that simple."

"How is it not that simple?" Brandon countered.

"She only ever kisses me as a distraction," Wally lamented.

"Excuse me, did you just say kisses? As in plural?" Brandon asked after a pause.

The redhead flushed down his neck, "Uh. I mean. Yeah?"

"Wallace Rudolph West!"

"Don't bring my government name into this! She just did it to win."

Brandon snorted, "So you think she would have kissed Jacob if he were the one guarding the base instead of you?"

"I don't know. Probably not," Wally admitted.

"And why not?"

"They've never really interacted, I guess?"

"And she doesn't obviously like him."

"It's not obvious," Wally pouted. "She's just...everyone once in a while I'll think she might have a thing for me, and then she starts pulling away."

"Didn't her parents just die?"

Wally shifted his response to match what the civilians at his school knew, "Yeah?"

"She's probably just scared of losing more people." Brandon provided uncharacteristic wisdom around the crunching chips in his mouth.

Wally blinked at the ceiling. "That...is actually a very good point."

Wally was embarrassed that he hadn't even considered Emmy might be afraid of admitting any theoretical feelings. He thought back to their sushi outing. She implied that she had too much to take care of before she could consider a relationship. She even tried to make it sound like their Halloween Heat was just a side effect of trying alcohol, but he was pretty sure she blushed when he brought up the arcade kiss. Maybe she was trying to push him back because they had been getting along too well. Maybe she was trying to distance herself because of what she'd experienced in the past. Wally could understand hesitating to start something new.

The last guy she dated was Akio, and that was clearly a disaster. He hadn't seen her flirt with anyone at school. Trent kissed her, sure, but she hadn't done anything to imply she wanted him to and had written him off afterward. She complimented Megan and Artemis all the time, but Emmy really only got a flirty tone with one person: him.

Emmy was a girl of action, so it would make the most sense to weigh her choices more heavily than her words, wouldn't it? His brain scanned their interactions and missions over the last five-ish months. If he were an objective observer...he wouldn't find it all too crazy to think that Emmy might like him. A little. At least a little. Hopefully, at least a little.

"So...I should tell her?" Wally grimaced at the mere prospect.

"Yeah, Man," Brandon crunched on another handful of chips. "Or just wait until she tells you or something. She seems like a take charge kind of gal who'd ask you out first."

If only. Wally threw a hand over his eyes, "I don't want to make things weird. What if she really doesn't like me, and then I have to see her at school every day, and at every team event, and-"

"Counterpoint," Brandon interrupted. "What if the girl who hangs out with you all the time and is clearly attracted to you does like you back, and then you get to see her at school every day, and every team meeting, etc."

Wally didn't stop the dopey grin that crossed his face in the privacy of his own room, "That'd be pretty ideal."

Brandon snickered, "Yeah, no duh, Wallman. When's the next time you see her?"

"Uh," he looked at his clock again. "Tomorrow. The team is going to a fair for a couple hours."

"Cool," Brandon suppressed his jealousy over the team mentions and moved on. He and Wally could only have the same fight so many times. "Win her a stuffed bear, take her on the Ferris wheel, tell her she's pretty, and lay one on her. Girls love that gushy shit."

Wally snorted, "Like I'm going to take romance advice from you."

"You literally called me for romance advice."

"Jacob was asleep, and Andre is studying."

"Rude! I'm going to go back to your game now."

Wally chuckled, "Sure. Thanks, B."

"Anytime, Wall-boy."

Wally exhaled slowly as the line went dead. He had a lot to consider. His stomach growled. Once he ate First Breakfast, that is.

Location: Mount Justice

Date: Nov 25th

Time: 22:50

Emmy rolled away the slight ache in her right shoulder as she followed her favorite bird into a debriefing room.

"What's up, Rob?"

The bird put his hands on his hip, jaw set, "We may have a problem."

"What kind of problem?" Emmy quirked an eyebrow. "I heard Akio got attacked at the prison. Does it have anything to do with that?"

Robin huffed a humorless laugh, "Of course, Wally told you about that."

"Any particular reason why I got that update from him and not you?" Emmy tilted her head in question.

Robin's left cheek indented slightly as he gnawed on the inside of his mouth. It was one of his few tells; he was nervous. Emmy assumed he was working on stopping it because he had been doing it less often. She stood up straighter in preparation.

"Billy Sparks died at 9:58 this evening," Robin frowned.

Emmy blinked. That isn't exactly upsetting news. "From complications of his wounds?"

"He was murdered in the two-minute window between officer and nurse shift changes. Someone injected hydrofluoric acid into his IV. He burned from the inside out." Robin bit his bottom lip, hesitating while jerking his arms across his chest. "It was the same method employed to kill Akio Park at 10:15 tonight."

Emmy inhaled sharply, "Oh."

Half of her brain stalled while the other cycled through the small collection of positive memories she had with Akio. She swallowed down the heat in the back of her throat, "I…do we know who did it?"

Robin folded his arms, "We're working on it. We think it's related to our Tijuana mission. Sparks had yet to admit who the aborted Venom shipment was supposed to go to."

He pulled two security feeds up on his wrist device. A split-hologram stopped on a thin figure in a long black trench coat with a hat covering their face from every angle. In one feed, they had their gloved hands in their pockets, but in the second they reached for a door. The subtle curve of hips through the coat and the slender wrist were the only implications that the figure might be a woman.

"This individual was seen leaving the respective hospitals at 10:01 and 10:22," Robin flicked through a few more images. "Their face is hidden from all the camera angles available, but we can see that they're 6'2" and Caucasian. They match the description of a woman who has been working with the Shadows for the past 6 months."

"The Shadows?" Emmy quirked an eyebrow. "You think they were the buyers?"

"We're still working on that," Robin turned off the feed and crossed his arms again. "Our Tijuana mission was covert, so there's no record that we were involved. The buyers didn't know if Bobby double-crossed them or got arrested. They're most likely sending this agent to track down information. We seized millions of dollars of Kobra Venom, broke up a human trafficking syndicate, and contributed to a new power vacuum. They would want answers about what happened before trying to fill the void."

"What does that mean for us?" Emmy pushed down her conflicting emotions over Akio to focus on the problem at hand.

"It means everyone on the team needs to be extra alert until we figure this out and apprehend the assassin." Robin sighed. "There's no reason to think they will be able to track the seven of us down. We were either in masks or unseen, but the assassin found Akio and Bobby in less than two weeks."

"Right," Emmy nodded. "Doesn't hurt to be more careful."

"Particularly you," Robin frowned.

"Me?" Emmy's stomach flipped. Her father worked with the Shadows more often than not lately. Was he connected to this?

"We should assume that Akio and/or Sparks gave up your name."

Emmy relaxed an iota before she snorted, "Akio wouldn't do that, and Bobby was half-dead from getting shot."

Robin gave her an unimpressed frown, "Regardless of your…complicated relationship with Akio-"

"That has nothing to do with it!" Emmy snapped, unable to stop herself from getting defensive. She took a calming breath. It helped a little. "Akio would never rat me out. He wants…well, he would have wanted to be the one to hurt me himself."

Emmy wasn't confident in many things regarding the slightly older boy, but she was confident in Akio's particular type of dysfunctional. He would never give anyone else the opportunity to make her life harder when he could do it himself. The back of her throat started to burn. She shoved down the shame that flared at the unintentional signs of mourning. She shouldn't even be a little sad about Akio. He tried to drug and kidnap her the last time she saw him. She tried another steadying breath. An unwelcome memory of Akio putting a small red hibiscus behind her ear because it "matched the cuts on her knuckles" popped into her mind. Her jaw clenched. Like it or not, and she did not like it, Akio was the first person outside of Sage and Hunter to treat her like she mattered.

Even though he was inconsistent and broken in a similar way she was, for a while, he had been one of the brighter stars in her sad, dark little sky. She wouldn't miss him, but she would miss the way he made her feel when she was 13.

Her face must have given away a hint of her inner turmoil because Robin nodded once, "If you think so, then I believe you."

Emmy blinked in surprise at the warmth that filled her stomach from that phrase alone. It felt like drinking slightly too hot tea after walking home in the snow, jarring in a comfortable way.

"I'm sorry about, y'know," Robin's confident air faltered, "I just thought you would want to hear it from me instead of Batman."

"Thanks, Rob. I appreciate it," Emmy smiled. "Happy Thanksgiving."

"Yeah, you too."

The bird disappeared. The lantern stared at the floor. She didn't know how to feel. Akio was dead. Sparks was dead. And her father was probably related to the Venom shipment in one way or another.

She thought back to her time as Sparks' prisoner. He hadn't told Lawrence about his suspicions that Emmy was his daughter yet. She didn't have to worry about that. There was no way her father could know. He wasn't anywhere near Tijuana when the bust went down, and she was certain that he would have already made a move if he knew his second eldest daughter had faked her and her siblings' deaths.

Rob was right. Yes, the team needed to be more careful since there appeared to be an assassin out there tracking down information about the missing Venom shipment. But there was no way for it to be tracked back to her problems with her father. He didn't know, and she was going to keep it that way. Emmy sighed and headed toward her room. Time to put on some gym clothes, I guess.

Emmy ran until she couldn't feel the reach of her father's fingertips behind her, and then she texted Wally a picture of her mileage and a challenge. She snorted. Even though they both knew there was no physical way for her to beat Wally at anything running related, he would still get upset by her threat to decimate his Cave treadmill mileage record.

Emmy's lips twitched upward as she thought back to her night before the Akio news. It had been kinda nice. Wally's family was nice. The food was nice. Wally was…nice. Emmy coughed at the slight warmth in her cheeks and shook her head. Not the time, East. Whatever. You'll see him at the team 'bonding event' soon anyway.

She straightened her back and coughed guiltily. Not that it matters. Emmy frowned at the text she was about to send, images of Akio changing Hunter's diapers while tickling his stomach flickered into her mind. She frowned and pressed send. Suck it up, East.

She huffed to herself. The last thing she needed was anymore drama. The fair would just be a nice time to 'heal from the Failsafe mishap' with her teammates and keep a watchful eye on her siblings while they rode rides and ate corn dogs. Emmy grinned a watery smile, refusing to shed tears over Akio. A rollercoaster sounded really good right about now.

She fell asleep in the gym with mental images of rickety rides and cotton candy and sporadically sweet, dead, ex-boyfriends vying for her attention.

*Looks around brazenly yet awkwardly because it's been 10 months since I updated* …Hey.

Surpriseee. 'Tis me. No, the story is not abandoned, and no, I am not dead. These snippets were initially going to be part of a longer chapter, but it's been so long since I updated, I figured y'all would be okay with getting a little teaser of what's to come.

Seems like Wally and Emmy might have different mindsets for this upcoming Team Event everyone keeps mentioning, hmmm?

Anyway, I appreciate everyone who has been favoriting and reviewing despite my radio silence. You all are spectacular. To answer a few questions, I think I have about 4-5 chapters left. I wrote the epilogue and one of the final plot chapters, like, 16 months ago. I'm still just working on writing what's left to connect those. I would expect the full story to be complete around December-January. #TwoYearAnniversaryOfPostingTheFirstChapter

Anywho, I hope you've all been doing well,

TheDarkAbyss