Sometime during the night- M'gann can't remember exactly when- the rain pattered to a stop. Now sunlight streams in through the living room windows. She forgot to draw the curtains last night. She's grown accustomed to the dark Martian underground and even darker deep space, where there are no curtains to draw. M'gann covers her eyes with a blanket, rolls over on the couch, and pushes away thoughts of how on the day he died, Conner was weakened from the lack of sunlight. If he'd spent some time on the surface, maybe he'd still be here.

Knock knock

M'gann grabs a blanket and stumbles to the door. She gave Em'ree a key last night, after she found the odor in her apartment overwhelming and opted to sleep in the bioship. M'gann assumes she's refusing to use it to get under her skin.

"What do you want, Em-" she stops, and her tone softens. "Oh, sorry, I didn't realize it was you."

Artemis stands in her doorway, holding a tall stack of books with a plate balanced precariously on top. Her smile falters as she takes in the scene: the fleece blanket wrapped around her shoulders, her mussed up hair, the unmade couch where she'd spent the last few hours tossing and turning.

She couldn't sleep in her bed. The sheets still smelled like Conner.

"Sorry, did I wake you?" Artemis asks. "I can always come back later."

"No, stay, please. I wasn't sleeping anyway."

Artemis doesn't need to be told twice. She sets her stack of books on the floor next to the couch, then pulls her into a tight embrace, wrapping her arms around her middle and filling completely the space between them. She doesn't bother with pleasantries, for which M'gann is grateful. She's gotten so used to soft hugs and soft shoulder pats and soft words of condolence. All this gentleness, being treated like she's something small and delicate that might break if handled too rough, it's infuriating. But Artemis knows more than anyone how raw and ugly grief is. There's nothing soft about it.

M'gann closes her eyes and inhales Artemis' scent: magnolia body wash and peanut butter.

"Oh M'gann, I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. Conner was one of the best, kindest, most selfless people I knew. And it's unfair, so fucking unfair that he- that he-"

"He's gone."

"Yeah," Artemis sniffles. She pulls out of their hug and wipes a stray tear from her cheek. "I know how hard this is, and I know there's nothing I can say that will actually make you feel better, but I want you to know that I love you. I love you and I'm here for you. You're my best friend, my sister practically. So if there's anything you need, anything at all, just say the word."

M'gann says nothing, just nods. When Wally died, M'gann's first thought, her first instinct, was to set her grief aside and protect her friend. She held Artemis' hands and whispered words of reassurance and only left her side to get her water or answer her phone. She spent the night with Artemis in her Palo Alto apartment, sitting in her bed and letting her sob into her shoulder. It wasn't until M'gann was certain she was asleep that she snuck off to her bathroom and finally broke, crying over her sink and allowing herself to mourn.

Artemis gestures at the books and plate of food. "Anyway, I come bearing gifts. No pressure if you don't want them- I know you're more of a TV person- but I found them helpful after Wally passed. And there's a few more I picked up recently after Conner."

"Thank you. I don't think I have time to read them right now. I've got a whole list of things I need to take care of now that I'm home- but I do want to, really."

"Of course, take your time. They're yours to keep however long you want," Artemis smiles and squeezes her hands. "Why don't we sit down? Do you want anything to drink? Water? Coffee? Tea?"

She shakes her head. "I'm fine."

"I'll put a pot on anyway. Will and the guys at Bowhunter sent you coffee from this amazing little cafe in Star City. It's got to be around here somewhere."

Artemis finds their gift on the countertop, next to a bagel and cream cheese spread from The Daily Planet. She sets to work, having been to her place enough times for missions and meetings to know her way around her kitchen. She knows she keeps the coffee filters in the drawer next to the sink and she can only fill her coffee maker halfway or else it overflows.

As Artemis paces the kitchen, opening drawers and rummaging through cabinets, M'gann settles back on the couch. She flips through the books on the floor beside her: The Works of Alfred Lloyd Tennyson, Crying in H Mart, The Year of Magical Thinking, We Are the Ants, and the titles go on. Most of them have bent spines and colorful tabs attached to the pages. She thumbs through one at random and the margins are cluttered with annotations.

"Help yourself to a spring roll if you want one," Artemis says over the coffeemaker's sputtering. "I know it's not breakfast food, but I've been wanting to try the recipe for a while. I got it off a Vietnamese cooking blog. I'm not sure how authentic it is, but it got my mom's seal of approval, which must mean it's pretty good."

M'gann picks up the plate, regretting how she'd initially cast it off to the side as one more dish among the dozens. There's six rolls, each wrapped clumsily in lettuce and rice paper. A few have bits of noodles and shredded carrots sticking out of the ends. But the ingredients look fresh, especially the plump pink shrimp encased in the outermost layer. The plate is painted orange with pink polka dots of uneven size- Lian's handiwork she suspects- and there's a blue translucent custard bowl filled with a brown dipping sauce. She catches a whiff of peanut butter along with the mint and coriander coming from the rolls.

"I still have no idea how you make cooking look so easy," Artemis says. "I had to make Will run out to the store after I forgot to buy the rice vermicelli, and again when the lettuce in the fridge had wilted, and again when I ran out of peanut butter."

Artemis can cook- M'gann knew that- but it was a skill learned out of necessity and not pleasure. She confessed to her once, when Wally was still alive, how she couldn't stand his obsession with instant ramen because she ate it so much growing up. It's only now that she's older she's indulged in cooking as a hobby. Buying fresh ingredients at the Star City Farmer's Market. Reconnecting with a culture her father was ignorant of and her mother wasn't there to teach her.

"It helped that we had the Justice League keeping our pantry stocked," she says.

Artemis chuckles. "I'd bet."

The coffeemaker's sputtering stops abruptly. There's more shuffling, glasses clinking, liquid being poured, light footfalls on her kitchen floor. Artemis sets two mugs of black coffee in the sole corner of the table not taken up by plates, one steaming hot and the other on ice. Unlike Artemis, M'gann's never been fond of hot beverages.

Artemis sits beside her. She wraps an arm around her shoulder and M'gann instinctively rests her head in the crook of her neck, breathing in her magnolia and peanut butter scent. And they're quiet for a bit, watching the sun rise through her living room window.

"Do you want to talk about him?" Artemis asks at last.

"I dunno… I think I'm all talked out. I just miss him."

"Yeah, I get that," she says. "I know it's not much, but I want you to know it gets easier. The grief you're feeling right now, it'll never go away completely, but you learn to live with it. Someday it won't hurt as much."

"Does it still hurt to think about Wally?"

"Sometimes. I still have my bad days, especially after Conner... but lately I've had more good days than bad. I have a job I love. I have friends and family I care about and who I know care about me too. And…"

Artemis doesn't finish her thought, instead breaking away from their embrace to grab a spring roll. She dips it twice in the sauce bowl and it makes a soft crunch when she bites into it. Bits of shredded cabbage and noodles fall into her lap, but her face lights up as she chews. "Mmm… these turned out great! You want to try?"

Artemis offers the plate, but M'gann shakes her head. "What were you going to say?"

Artemis chews, swallows, waits before answering. "I was going to wait before I told you this but… I started seeing someone while you were away. Babs set us up. His name's Jason. We don't have to talk about it or anything, I just... yeah, things have been good."

Artemis smiles in a wistful sort of way, and there's a lightness in her expression M'gann hasn't seen in her since Wally.

Life carried on while she was away.

"I don't think I'm ever going to date again," M'gann says. It comes out more defensive than she intended. "I know you're going to tell me it's just the grief talking, but I don't know how I could love someone even half as much as I loved Conner," M'gann stops. Talking like this is only going to make her cry. "I'm glad you're happy though."

"Thank you," Artemis says. She takes another bite of her spring roll, then another, until all that remains are the crumbs in her lap. She's going for her coffee when her gaze latches on to the stack of books. "Can I read to you?"

"Um… sure."

"Any of these books catch your eye?"

M'gann shrugs. "Whatever you want is fine. You know your collection better than I do."

Artemis selects the book at the bottom of the stack: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. This one looks even more battered than the others, the cover ripped at the corners and the pages yellowed by sunlight. She flips to a passage, seemingly guided to the right poem by memory, and begins to read.

Artemis' voice is sure and steady. This must be why she has a waitlist for her university class. She knows how to captivate an audience through speech alone. M'gann likes listening to her, even if she doesn't understand the poems' greater meanings. She's never been read to like this, in such an intimate way. Her parents weren't the type to tell her bedtime stories. Like Artemis said, she was raised by television.

M'gann wraps her blanket around her shoulders and reaches for a spring roll.