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Babs nearly startles right out of her chair when the shadow falls across the headstone.
“Holy-!”
The man throws a hand up in surrender, though she hadn't reached for her sticks yet. “Easy, Barbara, it's me-”
She almost doesn't recognize him at all without his flashy costume. In an old sweatshirt and dark jeans, Booster Gold looks...faded. No less handsome, of course, she'll admit it to herself, but. He's fuzzy, around the edges. Human.
Well duh, Barbara, she thinks, mentally slapping herself. This is Ted's grave we're at. Can't expect him to show up like the paparazzi chased him.
She relaxes. “Booster, what-” she swallows the question and gives him a rueful smile. “I was going to ask what you're doing here, but...well, you probably have more right than I do to be asking that, huh?”
Booster runs a hand through his hair, smiling less than his usual 100 watts and dammit, as much of a sellout as he is, she can't help but like the guy for his easy charm. “Nah. Not like I had sole rights to him, or anything.”
“You kind of did,” Babs teases gently. Booster scuffs the toe of his old sneaker in the graveyard soil and the sudden memory of the goofy twenty-something she'd met as a teenager strikes her then, vivid and painful. “I don't think any of us can compete with what the Blue and Gold had, let's be real.”
She knows she’s trying too hard to be kind. Ted's absence had cut her deeply. She can't imagine what it's been like for Booster.
He's been in and out of the spotlight, popping up whenever something big happens and then disappearing again. Barbara keeps tabs on everyone, and lately Booster's been harder and harder to track down. She's worried about him.
He gestures robotically and she notes the bundle of yellow tulips he's got at his side.
Yellow tulips. Friendship, she thinks, or hopeless love.
Oh Booster.
He lays them at the base of the headstone, and clears his throat awkwardly. “Come here often?” And it should be corny and flirty and oh-so-Booster-Gold, but his voice chips halfway through. Babs chuckles to cover it up, smoothing the blanket over her thighs.
“Hm. Not nearly as often as I should,” she confesses. “He was good to me. He was good to everyone.”
“Well, I mean. He was the brains of this outfit, if you think I came up with Kooey Kooey Kooey on my own…”
Babs waves a dismissive hand. “So he helped pull some dumb shit. Doesn't negate that he was a good man and I...I miss him.” she sniffles and goddammit.
Booster looks awkward, patting at his pockets like he's going to find a hankerchief for her but coming up empty handed. “Oh, now don't do that, Barbara, c'mon, Teddy wouldn't want you to cry, you're gonna make me cry-”
She struggles to compose herself and actually wipes her nose on her sleeve like a child. “I'm sorry, I'm fine.”
His grin is broken. “You aren't. Neither am I. That's okay though,” he reaches behind him to pat the top of Ted’s headstone. “We got good company, Teddy here is a little busted up himself.”
A snotty, involuntary laugh tears from her throat. “You're horrible.”
“When you think of me, remember to smile.”
“Hm?”
Booster isn't looking at her. “That's what he said to me,” he runs a thumb along the marble edge. “The last thing he said to me. ‘when you think of me, remember to smile’.”
And Barbara can feel her heart shatter.
The pieces splinter for him, and for Ted, whom she had loved so dearly and hadn’t known nearly as well as she had wanted to.
And she knows, she knows she’s only human, she can’t save everyone.
But Babs is haunted by that missed call.
And why would any of them have become heroes in the first place if they’d had the sense to accept their own humanity?
She swallows, and swipes at her eyes again. “God,” she can hear how raw her voice is, and Booster glances back at her, model perfect in the setting sun and broken, so very broken behind his eyes. “That’s so like him, isn’t it?”
He takes a breath, and chews on his lip. “I tried,” he says, and it sounds like a confession, like he can’t keep this to himself anymore, like whatever is weighing him down has begun to buckle him, and Babs doesn’t think she’s ever seen anyone look so tired. “I tried so hard, Barbara. And I can’t save him. I can’t.”
And she doesn’t know what that means, but it sounds important and before she can even open her mouth to respond-
She can’t shake the feeling that she’d just been having a conversation with someone who is suddenly no longer here.
But that doesn’t make any sense, and she’s alone in the cemetery.
The sunset casts long shadows over Ted’s grave, yellow tulips tilted sideways against his name.
when you think of me, remember to smile.