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Coming back from the Speed Force leaves Wally West knowing a different version of the truth than the one Dick Grayson has known, and he’s known him for a long, long time.
Before that, Dick does what he’s always been good at.
“You know, Artemis.” Dick starts and he feels like he can apologize for the rest of his life and it will still never be quite enough. “It wasn’t supposed to go like this.”
She understands, and that is the worst of it. When she directs that kind turn of her mouth to him, Dick almost wishes he wouldn’t be forgiven quite so easily.
“And you know, Dick,” Artemis tells him in a home she shared with Wally that, “I’m not the only one he loved.”
It is the finality of the past tense that Dick doesn’t know how to face. Artemis isn’t supposed to give up. Nobody is supposed to. Because Wally wouldn't have.
Loves, he wants to say but he doesn’t and when Brucely comes up to him, Dick gets down and gives the dog belly rubs just the way Wally does. He doesn’t say anything else when Artemis resolutely turns to look away.
He remembers a promise made only because it is one he cannot keep.
With Wally gone where he cannot follow, Dick figures he has every right to be angry.
Nightwing resigns from the team, hands it right back into Kaldur’s hands to start a search of his own.
He goes to every speedster he knows, digging open wounds both old and fresh. He elicits some very painful emotions but it is the pity he brings forth that makes all this so ugly. Because it feels like everyone but him has accepted that Wally is not coming back.
“If you’re out there, Wals.” Dick says in some last ditch effort. “I’m going to need some kind of sign.”
He is in his Blüdhaven apartment when the sky flashes with lightning that splits the darkscape in half. Dick stares outside his window in disbelief and he manages to let out a small mangled noise of what could be laughter if it didn’t sound so foreign.
“That’s a little too on the nose even for you, West.”
Thunder comes next, rumbling in an almost assent.
Wally West comes back from the Speed Force and describes it as something other-worldly, velocity and movement and inertia from where power can be drawn from. Dick has some idea how interesting it all is but he doesn’t really care.
“Don’t do that again.” He tells him, like he ever had a say that first time.
They exist outside of one another but it’s nice that they don’t have to. Wally remembers their promise like it is yesterday and finds himself grounded in facing this truth.
“Thank you for being here.”
Dick laughs and it is a sound that makes him ache because Dick is his lightning rod, teetering him from there right back here.
“Wally, where else would I go?”
His question is a genuine one.