Sorry, I know it's not very good, but I just finished it yesterday and I'm kind of out of ideas on how to transition it. I'll try to get things moving in the next chapter or two, and hopefully I can bank a few chapters so I can spend more time on them. Anyway, Happy New Years. My New Years resolution is to finish this story, so hopefully it'll happen. Hope you like the chapter, and please review!
Two days later, Mallory was sitting on the floor of Dicks living room, her new bedroom, with all of her stuff from her apartment still in boxes around her. Dick was in the kitchen making them lunch, and he came back to the living room a moment later with two bowls of pasta in his hands. He offered her one of the bowls, and she took it and put it to the side distractedly, turning back to the box in front of her. Dick sat on the sofa, looking around at the other three other boxes while he ate his food.
"Is this really all of your stuff? You're sure you don't have anything stashed at your parents or something?" he asked. He'd helped her pack up her apartment the day before, and they'd moved everything over in one trip.
"Yeah, I'm sure," Mallory replied.
"Why, though? There isn't enough stuff here to even fill a closet."
"Well, I lost all of my stuff when the cave went up, and I haven't exactly been in the financial place to replace everything lately. It's fine. I have enough to get by, and once I have some money coming in again, I'll start adding to it. I mean, this is probably better anyway, at least until I get settled somewhere. It'll make moving easier."
He shrugged and opened his mouth to say something, but a knock at the door cut him off. He put his bowl on the coffee table and went to answer it. As soon as he opened the door, Roy walked in, looking around the room until he found her.
"Hey," he said, the greeting directed to both of them. Dick shut the door behind their older friend and followed him to the sofa, though neither of them sat down.
"Hey, what are you doing here?" Dick asked.
Roy shrugged. "Oh, nothing. Just seeing how you're doing," he said, nodding at Mallory.
She raised an eyebrow. "I'm fine. Where's Lian?"
Dick edged around Roy to sit back on the sofa, picking up his bowl as he did. Roy lowered himself to the floor across the table from Mallory. "She's with Jade's mom. They're going to the zoo, I think."
She nodded, looking back to her box. She pulled out the notebook with her shampoo recipe in it and set it on the table along with some other nicknacks she planned on keeping in the side table next to the couch.
"So, how long are you going to be staying here?" Roy asked, pulling her untouched lunch across the table and taking a bite. She glared at him, but she didn't make a move to reclaim her food.
"I don't know, I guess until I can find a job and get on my feet," she said, looking at Dick for an ok.
He smiled and nodded. "Yeah, she'll stay here as long as she needs to. I'm barely here, anyway."
"You know, you could have come and stayed with me. I have a guest room, you could have moved in permanently, if you wanted."
Mallory shook her head, leaning against the sofa. "No, I don't want to barge into you and Lian's lives. She shouldn't have to put up with my mess."
"Are you kidding? You're family, she loves you. Besides, how is it any different than staying the night after a mission? You two used to do that all the time before QU went down." They paused for a moment, thinking about their team, then Roy tilted his head and asked, "what went wrong with that, anyway? I've been thinking about it for the past few days, but I still don't know."
Mallory shrugged. She knew why she left, but she didn't know why Dick and Roy stopped teaming up after she left.
"I don't know, Mal left and then I was always at work, and you had Lian most of the time, so I think we just didn't have time for it," Dick reasoned.
"Yeah, and it didn't help that we were so spread out," Mallory commented, thinking about having to leave Metropolis and walk the two blocks to Roy's so that they could get in the car and drive to a spot to change and go to their mission. It was too many steps, and even though they were always very efficient thanks to their years of training and experience, it still took several minutes just to get to where they needed to go.
"It wasn't bad, though. It was kind of nice to get away from the high stakes and big teams, and just get back to basics," Mallory said quietly.
The boys nodded in agreement. "Yeah, and the downtime was fun, too. It was a good change from running the team and working with the League," Dick said.
Roy nodded, setting the empty bowl back on the table. "Well, now that you two are living together, we could try it again," he suggested.
Mallory looked at Dick, who was smiling. "Yeah, I'm game. What about you, Mal?" he said. He and Roy turned to look at her, waiting for her answer. She thought about it for a moment, her gaze trailing to the notebook on the table, and she could almost hear Wally telling her that it was ok, that he wanted her to move on and be happy. She looked back at her friends and smiled. "Yeah," she said, "let's do it."
Later that day, Mallory went to the closet that she was using and pulled out a jacket and some shoes. It had been a few hours since Roy had left to pick up Lian, and Dick wasn't supposed to be back at work until the night shift. He was watching TV in the living room when she walked past him towards the door.
"Where are you going?" he asked, muting the TV when he saw her.
She sighed. She'd hoped to be able to sneak out without him noticing. Stupid of her, when she remembered who he was. "Just out," she said nonchalantly. "I might swing by the watchtower, see how things are going."
Dick raised an eyebrow, not buying it. "He's not there, you know," he said. Mallory just stared at him, not sure who he was talking about for a moment. "Peter," he clarified. "He's off today, he'll be in Central. Probably at your parents' house." He gave her a pointed look. "You should go over there."
She narrowed her eyes, shoving her hands in her pockets. She forced herself to take a breath so she wouldn't snap at him like she wanted to, and when she exhaled, she felt empty. "Don't push me, Dick," she said quietly. Just, don't push me."
She walked around for a while, going from one zeta tube to another, but everytime she started to stop at one, her indecision got the better of her, and she told herself that one more block would give her the time to build up the courage to go to the place she knew she needed to be. Finally, though, she reached the last tube in the city limits, and she still hadn't built up the courage. She shook her head firmly and forced herself to push open the photo booth and punch in the coordinates, coming out a second later in the phone booth a block away from her parents' house. She sighed and walked down the street, her feet bringing her down to the house automatically, though the walk felt foreign after all of the time she'd spent avoiding it.
When she reached the house, she just stood on the sidewalk for a moment, looking at it. Half of her wanted to go in and see her parents, Peter, and the other half wanted to leave well enough alone. They hadn't reached out in over a month after she ignored their calls for so long. She suspected that Clark and Conner had something to do with that, but it was hard to imagine anyone but Wally actually getting through to them.
She had just decided that she would go back to the apartment and call it a day when the front door swung open and Peter came jogging out, a book bag slung over one shoulder. It was too late to duck away, so she just stood there with her hands in her pockets, a tentative smile on her face. Her brother froze mid step when he noticed her. She expected his face to light up the way it always did when he saw her, but it stayed blank as he walked the rest of the way to her.
"Hey, Bud. Where you going?" she asked, lifting a hand to ruffle his hair.
He shifted his weight at the last second and her hand fell back to her side. "Gar and I are gonna zeta Perdita over. I don't have much time." He was already walking around her. It took her by surprise how tall he'd gotten. Had he really grown that much in a month? Or had she just not noticed it before? "Mom and Dad are inside, if you want to see them," he said as he continued down the sidewalk.
Mallory narrowed her eyes a little, not loving the way he said that last part. Like he didn't think she did. But then, why should he think she did, when she hadn't even called them in so long? She watched as her brother continued down the sidewalk, until he turned off the street to the phone booth. She'd expected her family to be happy to see her, but if Peter acted like that, how would her parents react? The thought almost made her turn back, but she stopped herself before she could move. She needed to do this. She needed to fix her relationships and open herself up again, and if she turned back now she didn't think she would be able to come back.
She walked to the house with unsure steps and brought her knuckles down on the wood. It was a new door, she noticed. Her parents must have been doing some more remodeling. Elaine answered the door a few seconds later.
"Hi, how can I help-" She froze when she saw Mallory, and the pyrokinetic sighed, lowering her head, expecting the worst. But then her mother engulfed her in a hug, pulling her into the house. "Mallory, we've been so worried about you," she said quietly.
"I'm sorry, I know, I should have called you, but…"
Her mom was shaking her head. "Don't worry about it now, ok? Just don't do it again."
She finally let go, and Mallory noticed how much her mom had aged in the last few months. She winced. Losing Wally was like losing part of the family, for all of them. No wonder Peter was so mad at her. She just left. She didn't think about how it would affect them, or the team. She just thought about herself.
"Now, Mallory, come on in and tell us everything," Elaine said, breaking into her daughter's thoughts. Mallory sighed and let her mom lead the way to the living room, where her dad was waiting.
"Well, I'm crashing with Nightwing for now…"