Full chapter name: You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to. Chapter title is a quote from "On Grief and Grieving" by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross.


"So, what's the deal with the Happy Harbor Mall?" Em'ree asks, her voice tinny. M'gann put her on speakerphone so she could finish the laundry while she talks.

"What do you mean?" M'gann asks.

"I just pulled into the parking lot and the place looks deserted. Where is everyone? I thought malls were supposed to be Earth's main cultural hubs."

"It's a weekday morning, most people are at work or school," M'gann says. "But you have a point. The tapes Uncle J'onn sent us are outdated. Malls aren't as popular as they were a couple decades ago."

"Well, I'm going to check it out anyway. After that I have a few more errands to run, but I should be home by this evening." There's a pause, and when her sister speaks again, her tone is soft. "Are you going to be ok by yourself a little longer?"

"Yes, I'll be fine. I've got plenty here to keep me occupied," she says, then dumps the last of her dirty clothes into the washing machine.

"I hope 'plenty here to keep me occupied' includes getting rid of all the food in your apartment."

"Uh… yeah that's on the to-do list," she says, pushing away thoughts of the half-eaten plate of spring rolls now cluttering her coffee table. "I've also got a few friends coming over. One of them should be here any minute now."

"Good, I'm glad you're not lonely. Call me if you need anything, okay?"

"Will do," she says, then the call disconnects.

M'gann sweeps through her suitcase one last time to make sure she didn't miss anything. The inside compartment is empty, but in one of the outer pockets her hand brushes against something smooth and cylindrical. A tube of hair gel. Brand new, the plastic wrapper still sealing the cap shut. Conner had almost forgotten it, she recalls. As she was closing the Bioship storage compartment, he yelled for her to wait and ran back into their apartment to grab something. In his haste, he must have stuck it in her suitcase instead of his.

Conner's black duffel bag rests on the opposite side of the garage, next to the Zeta tube control panel. M'gann insisted she take it home with her. She doesn't need it, she doesn't want it, but she couldn't leave it behind. The thought of Conner's possessions collecting dust in her parents' guest bedroom or decomposing in one of the vast Martian landfills brought her too much grief.

"Recognized: Nightwing B01."

The Zeta tube whirrs and glows bright yellow. Dick's silhouette- along with a several foot tall rectangular object she can't make out- fizzle into view.

"Hey, it's good to see you," he says. The object is a serving cart, stacked high with plates covered in shiny silver lids. The cart, coupled with his athletic shorts and worn GothamU hoodie, give him the appearance of a very underdressed hotel bellhop.

"What's all this?" M'gann asks, gesturing at the cart.

"It's every recipe from Hello, Megan!. All 22 episodes, including the unaired Christmas special."

Dick flashes a proud grin and lifts one of the lids, revealing the pineapple upside-down cake from episode 19. Dick certainly knows his way around a kitchen. Back when she lived in The Cave, he used to play sous chef when she baked sweets. He hosted team dinners at his apartment, made fresh with ingredients from the Blüdhaven Farmer's Market. But with his job and his vigilante work he rarely has time for it anymore. He's confessed to her before how much he misses cooking.

"Ma'al, how long did this take you?"

"Not as long as you'd think. Most of it was us standing around waiting for things to finish baking."

M'gann raises an eyebrow. "Us? You didn't make poor Alfred do all this cooking, did you?"

Dick laughs. "No, he just supervised - maybe cracked an egg or two- but I promise 99% of it was me, Babs, and the rest of the bat-sidekicks." He pauses. His expression softens. "They're gonna swing by later. We thought all of us showing up at once might be a bit overwhelming."

She nods. "I'll let you know when I'm feeling whelmed and ready for more people."

"That's the spirit," he says. He puts a hand on her arm, closing the distance between them. There's a streak of cinnamon on his nose. She's tempted to reach out and wipe it away, but instead she rests her head in his chest as he wraps his arms around her, his embrace smelling of citrus and root beer.

"M'gann, I'm so sorry," he says softly. "If I could've gone to Mars to be with you, I would have. You shouldn't have had to go through losing Conner alone."

"Don't worry, I wasn't completely alone. I had my uncle, my parents, my sister, Gar stuck around for a bit. And I had Megan, of course."

She rewatched Hello, Megan! on the return trip to Earth. Once, twice, six times in a row, mouthing along with the dialogue she has memorized by heart. It was soothing, the familiarity of her favorite television show. She always knew what was going to happen next, no surprises or plot twists that would come out of nowhere and take the people she loves most out of her life.

"Hello, Megan! How could I forget your favorite comfort character?" Dick says, and taps his forehead with the ball of his hand, à la Megan. "But still, I wish I could've been there," he looks away, at the washing machine droning on the opposite side of the room. "When Wally died, I was kind of a shitty friend to you."

"Dick…"

"No, I shouldn't have abandoned you and the Team like I did, quitting and running off without thinking about your pain and your grief. I didn't want to do that again with Conner so… I enlisted the help of my friends and my girlfriend to make you more food than you could possibly eat."

Dick laughs, in a self-pitying way. M'gann breaks away from his embrace. She wipes the cinnamon streak off his nose and cups his cheek in her hand. He's good at putting on a happy-go-lucky mask, but it's just that, a mask. All of her friends know grief, but none more than him. His parents, his brother, his best friend, and now another best friend.

"You're not being fair to yourself. You were mourning too. Sometimes you have to take care of yourself first before you can care for anyone else."

Dick smiles. "You sound like my therapist."

M'gann shrugs, laughing. "Well, I am a therapist."

"Speaking of: have you talked to Dinah yet?"

She shakes her head. "But I'm going to."

"You mean it? You're not just saying that to placate me with no intention of following through, are you?"

"I mean it," she says, giving him a reassuring smile. "Later on today I'll call Dinah and my civilian therapist."

"Good, that's good." He says, then picks up one of the plates. "So… where do you want me to put all this? I can take it up to your apartment if you want?"

"Actually, we'll probably need to put it in the garage fridge. You're not the only person who thought to bring me food, and I'm kind of running out of space."

When Dick said he made all the recipes from Hello, Megan!, he really did mean all of them. M'gann helps him unload the plates, and there's Aunt Elaine's macaroni salad, root beer floats from Sally's Diner, Megan's improvised party appetizers made of cornflakes and strawberry jam. And of course: the gingerbread house from the Christmas special. She's stunned at Dick's attention to detail. The blue and green gumdrops spaced in neat rows along the roof. The heart-shaped windows made out of mini candy canes, three of them on each wall. She runs her index finger along the base and sniffs the icing. It's mayonnaise, the same mistake Megan made in the episode.

M'gann coughs when she lifts the lid of the final plate, the scent of burnt cinnamon filling her lungs. There's a dozen blackened lumps that vaguely resemble cookies. "Grammy Jones' snickerdoodles?" she laughs. "Did you burn them on purpose or…?"

"Unintentional. Someone, not naming names," Dick coughs, and it sounds an awful lot like Stephanie, "forgot to set the oven timer and they got a little well done. We were going to redo it, but I figured it was fitting considering..."

M'gann nods, thinking fondly of her first few kitchen blunders. So excited to greet her new friends- so excited to have real friends for the first time in her life- she let her first batch of cookies burn to a crisp. So in love with Conner that when he offered to help with dinner she couldn't rein in her enthusiasm and doused him in milk and raw eggs- not that he minded. Years later, as they were slow-dancing in the kitchen of their new apartment, he leaned in close and told her that was the day he fell for her.

"I've been thinking a lot about the early days," Dick says. "It was almost 10 years ago, the day me, Wally, and Kaldur freed Conner from Cadmus. Can you believe it?"

She shakes her head. "It doesn't seem like that long ago."

Dick's expression shifts, turning cold. "If you'd told me then, that a decade later two of us would be dead and the guy we rescued wouldn't even get 10 years of freedom before he…" he sighs. "Conner deserved so much more. You should've gotten married. Grown old together. I mean, I know he didn't age, but still…. he should've gotten a hundred decades, not just a fraction of one."

M'gann looks down, tightening her grip on the plate. The burnt cinnamon and sugar smell makes her want to throw up. 10 years. Conner didn't even get 10 years. It's not fair, it's not fair, it's not-

"Hey," Dick's voice pulls her out of her grief spiral. He smiles, holding up the root beer floats. "Do you want me to put these in the freezer? They'll probably melt in the fridge. Or... we could have them now?"

Last night's storm left the patio furniture wet with rain. The forecast calls for intermittent showers throughout the day, but the sky looks clear now, and they'd rather eat outside than in the musty garage filled with boxes of Conner's things. Dick wipes down one of the plastic chairs with his sleeve and offers it to her. She sits and wraps her hands around the frosted mug. A fat drop of melting vanilla ice cream trickles down the side of her glass, landing cool and sticky on her thumb.

"Spoon or straw?" Dick asks, offering her both.

M'gann shakes her head. "On the show, Megan drank hers straight from the glass."

"Oh yeah! And it gave her that gigantic milk mustache," he says, laughing. He passes her a spoon and straw anyway, along with a napkin for good measure. Dick picks up his mug, but before taking a sip he raises it in the air, as if giving a toast. She follows suit.

"To Conner," he says.

"To Conner."