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Wally isn’t dead.
Artemis isn’t sure how she knows- she just does. It’s not quite intuition, but it’s not instinct either. It’s… hope. That’s what it is. There’s no body. Blue Beetle’s scarab didn’t say he was dead, just ‘ceased’, whatever that means. Stranger things have happened, and worse things, and she hopes, for once, that the world will have pity on her. That something greater will be on her side. Just this once. She dares to hope.
There are darker names for it, too, and she hears them whispered, passed around from person to person in the Team and League when they think she’s out of earshot. Denial. Rage. Losing it. They think it’s her defense mechanism against losing what was arguably her soulmate before her life even had a chance to start.
They’re all cynical bastards, thinking the worst of her. She can have innocent hope just this once.
Right?
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Wally’s funeral is small.
She didn’t bother to learn the cover story they’re using with his civilian friends, but they elect not to invite them to the funeral. That would require acting, and funerals are hard enough without lies. None of them are willing to try.
Everyone here knows his sacrifice, knows what he did and why he’s gone. He’s a hero. He might be gone but he saved everyone, and that should make it better, empirically, but it doesn’t. Nothing does. He’s still gone.
This is why they got out. Because Artemis knew, deep in her gut, that this was going to happen to one of them eventually and she wanted to be selfish.
Only their closest friends are here- not even everyone on the team or league, just family. Kaldur is silent, with the composure of a commander who has let a soldier die under their command, nights and nights of guilt evident on his face. Conner and M’gann, although not together, lean on each other, wearing identical drawn expressions, taking strength from the other’s forced composure. Barry holds Iris’s hand on one side and Bart’s on the other. She’s already beginning to show in her stomach, with the twins that Wally would have made faces at and given piggyback rides and spoiled with cookies and-
Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.
Dick isn’t here. She would be angry with him if she didn’t understand him so well.
“We are gathered here today to mourn the loss of a great hero…”
He wasn’t a hero, Artemis thinks, fighting back tears. He had a dog. He had a Vietnamese lit midterm in two days. He had a girlfriend who loved him. A lot.
He had a ring under his bed.
She bites her lip until she tastes blood in her mouth to keep from screaming. She will not be a spectacle.
“He will be greatly missed…”
Only if he’s gone.
They have no body to bury. It’s an empty grave. It’s an empty grave, and the significance of it feels stronger than ever before as she stands there in her black dress and everything inside of her is stripped away in the rain. Something that everyone else is missing and she feels so light to realize it. It feels like hope, like a beacon in the dark day around them.
Wally, she thinks, now. Come back now. Everyone’s here. Show us you’re not dead.
But the funeral lulls, lapses, and ends without him showing up to upstage them, and Artemis doesn’t have the heart to tell his sobbing parents what she believes so she stands silently at the back.
--------------------------------
Jason Todd comes back to life.
The irony of it, the unfairness of it, makes her a very unpleasant person to be around for weeks, bordering on months, and the pettiness of that makes the pit of guilt in her gut feel physical and overwhelming. She should be happy for Dick, who actually falls to his knees and starts sobbing when he gets the first real, undisputable proof of it. Before there were pictures on camera, that other people could see and verify, he thought he was going insane. Artemis understands that to her core.
(She still spins around at least twice a week, around holidays twice a day, thinking that she saw a yellow blur speed past her, running so as not to be late to see her this time, just a hair out of her reach.)
It’s a while before all the rest of them learn the details, since Batman is Batman and the most secretive person on the planet. It was due to something called the Lazarus Pit, used by Ra’s to bring himself back so many times he’s more resurrection than man. It… isn’t without its limitations, or its cost. Jason is alive, but he’s unhinged. He nearly puts at least ten bullets in Dick while he’s trying to get close enough to talk to him.
And when Artemis goes with to help corner him, when he does speak, he’s… harsh. Cold. She didn’t see a whole lot of Jason when he was Robin, she was a tiny bit bitter about somebody trying to replace Dick on the team and he was another reminder of her status as a low-class outsider, but she did talk to him. He was cocky, and mouthy, and seemed to like pushing people’s buttons because he was used to having to fight for his place and respect.
He wasn’t this angry.
And he looks at her, at the raw grief in her eyes still, and says, “Not going to work, blondie. Need a body. Your boyfriend’s dissolved.”
Artemis lunges, and Dick has to pry her off before she manages to re-kill him. In the chaos, Jason manages to escape. He wears red, now, to hide the blood from Gotham’s alleys, and she can track him but can’t follow. God bless the Bats and their suicidal, insane dedication.
(She’s slightly bitter.)
“Don’t.” Dick says, but he sounds exhausted, more eighty-year-old than eighteen. “Please.”
Artemis sighs and backs away from the building ledge. “He has it coming.”
Dick looks at her sideways. A knowing, accusatory look, accentuated by the dark circles under his eyes and his sunglasses slipping off his face even though it’s midnight.
“Don’t.” He repeats, and leaves.
But Artemis considers what this means, later, when no one’s there to talk to but their dog and the echoing enormous rooms. Jason is, against all odds, alive. He came back from the dead.
If he can, then, then…
She visits Wally’s grave. She’s come here often, probably more often than she should if she’s going to move on before she’s seventy years old, but she’s never before been so aware that it’s an empty grave she’s standing above. It hasn’t mattered as much before, it just lent her a bit more insane possibility… but knowing how Jason came back, suddenly it’s an abrupt slap in the face.
Another thing she can’t have. Not this way, anyway.
She closes her eyes. Focuses on that light that she feels, sometimes- and it’s clearest here, staring at his headstone. That’s why she’s almost certain she’s not imagining it. This is where she should feel his absence, not become more convinced he’s alive and coming home to her.
Or maybe she’s in deep, deep, deep denial.
Wally, she thinks, come back. If Jason can do it, you can too.
But hours later, when her hands are numb and her mom is worried, she has to concede defeat for now.
--------------------------------
Artemis stops being Tigress.
It’s a mission that goes sideways that does it. It always is. It’s a mission where all four members come back covered in blood (she’s not sure if it’s hers or not, it’s a safe bet either direction these days) and the Watchtower snaps into nervous attention to make sure everyone’s going to live. She’s annoyed with all the attention. They’re overreacting. Only people that are too good for the world die, like him.
(She’s a tiny bit bitter.)
But this time, when everyone snaps to attention, it’s because they came through the zeta in pairs. Static is supporting Arsenal with his arm over his shoulder, and Conner is dragging Artemis through by the arm. People are asking them what’s going on, is everything okay, and Artemis’ leg feels like it’s about to fall off and her muscles burn from overuse and her mind is still sharp from combat and she feels like an actual tigress. She feels like she could rip everyone and everything in this room apart and keep on going.
(She’s so angry and she doesn’t even fucking know why.)
“Conner,” she says through gritted teeth, “Let. Go.”
“No,” Conner snaps, and his grip on her wrist is like iron, enough her bones protest but not enough to break. She could twist out, maybe, but the shock of his anger is enough to keep her silent and following him. It’s been a while, since he spun out. “What you just did was reckless and stupid, and if I’m saying that you have a problem.”
“Oh, right, you’re the authority on that.” He’s actually kind of hurting her now, so she forces him to stop and let go. When he turns and looks at her, his gaze is smoldering with anger and makes her feel… like a kid being scolded, kind of. Coming from him, her younger brother who has his own laundry list of mistakes, it burns at her. Makes her square her shoulders and stare him down. “What did I do that everyone else hasn’t done a million times and not gotten raked over the coals for?”
“Everyone acts as the distraction sometimes.” Conner says; his voice is raised, maybe from anger, maybe so Green Arrow, Black Canary, Batman, Aqualad, all intent on their conversation, can hear and take his side on this. “They don’t do it when someone else is already there, against twenty enemies, when they’re already injured!”
“It needed to be done!” She snaps back. “So I did it!”
“And you shouldn’t have!”
“Well I already did! So back off!”
“It was stupid and suicidal and don’t do it again!”
The blood roaring in her ears is like a tidal wave, like an inferno; they’re both screaming, screaming like children, and everything else is silent behind the building fury. He’s telling her what to do, he’s telling her how to live, he’s telling her ‘get a hold of yourself’ when he has no fucking right-
“It’s my life! Why the fuck do you care what I do with my life?!”
“We already buried you once!”
When his voice stops ringing, nothing fills the silence. Nothing. Artemis feels it, feels it like a cut inside of her heart being doused with salt, because Conner’s voice is too far from angry and too close to grief. His eyes are too raw and young. She forgets. They all do.
He’s her brother, and she scared the fuck out of him, and he already heard her heart stop once. It probably haunted him for weeks the way “he said to tell you” echoes in her ears.
And in the silence of nobody speaking for the long seconds after, Artemis feels something that hurts even more: agreement. They all feel what Conner feels, he just says it because it’s his nature, but they all think the same things. You’re in pain and hurting yourself to try to make it better. You’re too good for this. You’re scaring us.
She burns with shame, and turns and stalks toward the zeta tubes to go home and cry and scream.
Instead, though, she strips out of the orange and black and puts on the Artemis green.
“I’m back.” She says, looking in the mirror, because putting on the uniform that she made herself when she was young and brimming with defiance and desperate hope for heroes feels like coming home. Feels like settling back into her skin again. She can’t wait until the others see. They can stop worrying. They’ll understand what it means, to be herself again. Artemis is back.
And it’s stupid, and juvenile, and a vain hope, but she squeezes her eyes shut so her eyes can’t drift to the empty spot over her left shoulder. Wally should be there. He was always at her shoulder- just behind her, like she was the one always calling the shots. “I like being behind you,” he’d said with a twinkle in his eyes the first time she asked, “View’s great,” and she’d smacked him on the shoulder and not argued when he kissed her neck in a way that wasn’t fully PG even though they were in the crowded cave. She’d figured out later that when it came to carrying her to safety and covering her back, he didn’t want to waste even a split second because he had nightmares about not being fast enough.
(She understood, now. She has nightmares about turning to the zeta tube as it whirred- just slow enough that she couldn’t catch a last glimpse of his light before it was gone forever. Before he’d disappear and leave her with an empty coffin to mourn over.)
“Wally,” she says out loud, just to test it on her tongue for the first time in months, just in case that does something different. “Wally, come back.”
And even though she stands there for so long she starts to sway on her feet, when she finally opens her eyes that space is still vacant, and she shatters one last mirror.
--------------------------------
Conner and M’gann get married.
It’s quiet but deep in magnitude, just like everything else the two of them do. They fit into each other’s breaths so naturally, now, like being broken has made the other even more precious. Artemis has spent more time with the two of them than anyone else, and even she isn’t exactly sure when they started dating again after their breakup. They’re quiet people, now, with tragedy, and private people, and somewhere along the time the pauses got longer and more meaningful and then they were in love again. Quiet. Natural.
(She and Wally were never like that. He was thunder and she was lightning- working in tangent, but always loud, always in a storm, always too fast and too full of life. It wasn’t wrong, how they tore through the world and left a wake, but it was always violent. Violent with laughter, violent with love, but they didn’t move in lingering touches on whispering hands, they moved in strikes, that left goosebumps and drew eyes and dared death to come and get them.)
M’gann chooses Artemis to be her maid of honor; Conner chooses Dick for best man, but there’s a wistfulness in his eyes that’s unlike him and Dick can’t laugh loud enough to chase it away.
The ceremony is limited to only the people in the League and on the team. It’s held in Smallville outside the Kent family barn, with Superman lifting off the ground several times in excitement for his brother, who looks less troublemaker and more presentable young man for once with his hair combed down. J’onn gives M’gann away at the altar and beams at Conner with the utmost approval.
M’gann, her skin pale green and her freckles stark on her cheeks and her orange hair long and swept into the fanciest updo Zatanna’s magic could pull off and a pleated white dress with lace flowers on the neckline, smiles up at Conner shy like the girl who just came to Earth, and Conner smiles back at her with his eyes soft like he could die and be content, and Artemis grits her teeth to keep her smile in place because there are cameras and this isn’t about her.
They kiss. There’s applause. There’s cake and dancing and fireworks and Conner laughs more than she’s ever heard him in his life and M’gann keeps rolling the ring on her finger with this awed look and on the edge of tears, and there’s only one incident with Gar and the fireworks that requires the use of powers. Except the fact that M’gann is green and Conner’s brother flies, it’s normal. Better than normal, Artemis thinks- it’s perfect.
So no one else notices when Conner and M’gann zeta away after dark, to the quiet memorial park in front of the Hall of Justice, and stand holding hands in silence in front of Wally’s hologram. She can’t see either of their faces, from her vantage point hidden behind them, and she can’t hear their thoughts, but she knows what they’re remembering, because she’s been remembering it too.
She’s remembering Wally laughing and slugging Conner in the shoulder even though he can’t feel it, saying things about M’gann that make his ears and neck turn pink with embarrassment, and proclaiming that they are so domestic and he calls best man at their future wedding. M’gann had choked a little bit on her cookie and Conner had started literally sputtering excuses and Artemis and Wally had grinned and high-fived.
And Wally had declared, in all seriousness, that he had dibs on best man and would give Conner a bachelor party so good M’gann would be horrified (“is that a goal?”) and Artemis had dibs on M’gann’s maid of honor, and that meant Conner and M’gann would be the same for him and Artemis.
Artemis’ brain had stalled a little, hearing him talking so casually about getting married to her, but the light in his eyes was so bright and his grin was crooked like trouble so she laughed it off and pushed him off his chair as the other two grinned and shrugged like they could think of worse things than getting married with bad parties. When Wally went “babe, not cool!” and slipped his hands covertly around her waist and M’gann and Conner started teasing instead, the fear dimmed for a little and she could think of worse things, too.
Right now, though, thinking about that memory is the worst thing, and Artemis holds a smothering hand over her mouth so that the tears are silent. In front of her, Conner and M’gann move wordlessly so that M’gann’s hands thread around his neck and his rest on her hips and they sway back and forth to no music. A second first dance, this one in front of Wally.
Artemis closes her eyes and chokes on holding back a sob. That thread is still there, that hope, and right now it’s so immediate it feels like a rope around her neck, maybe, maybe, maybe, just maybe…
But the hologram doesn’t come to life. Artemis sits in the shadows with her could-have-beens and watches M’gann and Conner’s dance get slower and closer until they’re just holding each other and shaking.
Wally, she thinks again, come back, if you’re still there, come back, but it’s feeling more and more like she’s just talking to herself.
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Artemis dies for the third time.
She doesn’t learn about it until after, for obvious reasons, but apparently her heart stopped for two minutes. They literally declared her a lost cause, but she was with the original members of the team and they refused to give up no matter how much logic Mal threw at them. She had to be resuscitated four times before she came to, and when she does at long last, it’s to lips pressed against hers.
And even though she has the thought for a split second, she knows in her half-awake gut that it isn’t Wally. This person is rough. Their mouth is unfamiliar and jagged. They taste like salt and blood and they recoil from her gasping breath like it hurts.
Kaldur blinks down at her, pale silver eyes so familiar but dim, and breathes out harshly. “Welcome back,” he says, and his voice is hoarse like he’s been screaming. Behind him are Conner and M’gann, clutching at each other (she can’t tell who’s holding who back), and Dick is sitting on the ground with his head in his hands and either laughing or crying.
They’re on the beach, she dimly registers, when the waves crash against the surf behind them. This all feels very, very eerily familiar.
“What happened.” She croaks.
Kaldur helps her carefully sit up, even though her side feels like there’s a knife being jammed into it (more than likely it was) and her throat feels ragged and about to split open. He doesn’t meet her eyes now that she’s moving, like he’s embarrassed about something, and it’s a stupid thing to think but she understands it.
It’s the first time someone has kissed her since Wally left, even if it’s just mouth to mouth and it didn’t mean anything, and it shouldn’t feel like cheating, but it does. She feels dirty and it’s not because of the sand.
“Ambush.” Kaldur says, voice brusque and sticking to a professional tone. “They struck you first, and you fell in the water. It was a while before we could get to you.”
She doesn’t remember any of this. It’s disorienting and odd. Like she woke up, once again, in a life that isn’t hers- and that sensation is, unfortunately, becoming familiar, too. She lives with it every day.
“Are you okay?” M’gann asks, inching forward, still holding onto Conner’s hand. When they’re freaked out, Artemis has noticed, they cling to each other. It’s sweet, but it makes her heart ache all over again.
She’s surrounded by so many damn reminders that she’s alone.
“Fine.” She says, clearing her throat. “Thanks, Kaldur. I’ll be ready to move in a few.”
M’gann glances at Conner, who lets go of her and gestures for the two guys to follow him a ways away, and M’gann takes her place at Artemis’ side holding her hand. She’s so grateful for them, all of them. They understand her, what she needs so well. They know, somehow, what emotions are current and which are about Wally, and they’re learning when to stay and when to leave. They don’t question, anymore- they just do.
And even though she just came so close to death, to never waking up, her thoughts are of Wally. How he felt when he… ceased. Was he afraid? Did he hurt? Did he think of his parents or her or just nothing at all? She hopes he wasn’t afraid.
Wasn’t. Isn’t. Damn it.
“M’gann.” She whispers. “Wally. Do you… think he’s dead?”
It feels stupid to say the words out loud, like she’s a little girl believing in Santa Claus when all the rest of the world is in on the joke- only M’gann isn’t laughing. It’s deep, all-encompassing sympathy in her eyes, and she turns them down onto the red ground beneath them.
(There was no red ground beneath Wally. No closure. How bad of a person is she to wish there was a body they could have buried?)
“I don’t know.” She stalls. “Where else could he be?”
Artemis shakes her head and drops it. Logic has no place in belief. There isn’t logic in belief. The two are completely, utterly at odds with each other.
“Artemis-“ M’gann reaches out for her, then drops her hand to her side again. Sighs deeply, like she’s much older than she looks. They’ve all aged so much in these last two years. Artemis hates it. Hates how much of that is her fault.
“Believe what you need to believe to keep yourself going.” M’gann whispers. She’s speaking from experience. There’s weight to the words, but also pleading that makes her feel so cold and selfish. “But whether Wally is… is dead, or missing, please don’t follow him. Not yet.”
“I didn’t choose to get stabbed and drowned, M’gann.” Artemis says sharply. Is that what they think she did? She gave up Tigress for this reason exactly. So she didn’t hurt anyone else with her masks and lies.
“I know.” M’gann replies evenly. “But I know you. And I know you should have been able to dodge that.”
“I-“ She’s so outraged and stunned it takes her a minute to stop from stumbling over the words. “I don’t want to die!”
Conner and Kaldur and Dick all look over at her in startled unison from their discussion; she feels shame creep into her head again, the same as she felt when she hid behind her masks. What is she hiding behind this time?
They can all see something, apparently, because this isn’t a normal reaction to a teammate having to be resuscitated. Only she can’t.
She wants Wally here. She wants Wally to hold her and smooth her hair back and tell them they’re being stupid but he can’t.
“I don’t want to die.” She says again, and it comes out mixed with a sob.
She’s afraid and she’s tired of being afraid and not even knowing what of.
M’gann folds her into her arms, murmuring an apology and comfort at the same time, and Artemis can imagine for a second that it’s somebody else holding her. Somebody she misses so much right now because… when she was dead, she didn’t know if she saw him in a bright light reaching out for her like everyone says she should. She doesn’t know if that means she isn’t a good enough person to see him again or if he’s not dead.
How is it fair that she, with all of her sins, with all the people who couldn’t care less if she disappeared, with all her recklessness and bad luck and bad decisions, can die three times and come back in one piece, and Wally can’t do it once?
Wally, she thinks, a last-ditch effort. Wally. Please. If I can do it, you can too. Come back. Come back.
She doesn’t bother to open her eyes and look. There’s just silence. So much damn cursed silence.
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Artemis moves in with her mom.
The day passes in a blur- because that’s how long it takes her. One day. She doesn’t pack up all of- of his stuff (it’s hard to think his name, even, sometimes, because the loss is fresh and blinding all over again) to take with her. She can’t. Her mom doesn’t have that much room and even if she did, she physically can’t. She hasn’t touched any of it. It’s covered in dust but if- when- if Wally comes back, he’ll find all his stuff right where he left it. His clothes. His textbooks. His uniforms. His cell phone. Everything. They’ll be there.
She also does it fast so she can’t change her mind. Chicken out. She wants to do this less than anything else but she feels like there’s no choice.
M’gann, Conner, Kaldur, and Bart are the ones she enlisted to help her. No judgment. No trying to talk her out of it or congratulating her. No open pity. Just efficiency. She wants to get out so she doesn’t keep seeing him in the hallways or feeling him across the bed from her or tripping over his things and feeling like she’s treading on holy ground.
M’gann gives her a hug when she picks up the box from under his bed, the one with the ring, but that’s it, and she’ll accept that one. It’s the lightest box, but the hardest one to pick up, because it’s the only thing of his she’s taking with her. She doesn’t want it to get stolen because she may revert, track that person down, and kill them to get it back.
Some things are changing, and some things are not. She’s leaving his stuff and not paying the rent on the house anymore but without even talking to him, she knows Dick will buy the house and make sure it stays the same, untouched. She knows he still harbors the same hope she does- that maybe, someday, against all odds, he’ll come home.
(Or they’re both sentimental fools, clinging to the past like it’s something they can keep in place.)
If he does come back, though, she needs to be waiting for him. She needs to be alive.
She needs to heal.
Wally, she thinks, come back. I’m waiting for you. But please don’t keep me waiting forever.
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She doesn’t call to him again for months.
Just prays.
Just waits.
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It’s a Tuesday.
She’s sitting on the steps of her old apartment in Gotham, listening to the TV inside and her mom’s wheelchair creaking as she moves around. Jade is inside, too, making disgustingly domestic conversation with Roy (it still blows her mind they’re married, she was sure Jade was too wild to settle down) and passing Lian back and forth. She can hear her happy gurgling through the open window.
It’s still a tiny bit much for her, so she’s wandered outside with her dinner to eat in silence. Gotham is quiet, right now, with the faint echo of gunshots in the background but she doesn’t address it. Batman will take care of it.
Her job right now is just to sit, and to breathe. That’s what Dinah tells her. So she closes her eyes, takes a melancholy bite of terrible noodles, and does. The world feels right, somehow, but off-axis, she doesn’t know why. That’s her life now. A mix of right and wrong she can barely put her finger on. She’s-
“Artemis.”
She chokes and whips around in an instant, the food tumbling from her hands. She knows that voice. She knows who says her name that way.
Wally.
His uniform is torn to shreds and off-yellow from dirt and time, but he’s… he’s here. He’s hunched over his stomach and shaking but still standing tall, hanging a few feet back from her like he doesn’t want to come any closer. Like he didn’t think he’d see her again, either, and he’s afraid this will sweep out from under his feet, too.
If this is a dream, she wants to never wake up. If this is a hallucination, she wants more of whatever she’s on. If this is a trick, she’s going to kill someone.
Artemis blinks, sits up straighter, and focuses herself. Nothing fades out, or flickers, or feels off, except for the obvious.
This… is real.
Wally. Her Wally.
Standing in front of her.
Alive.
“Artemis.” He says, and his voice is broken and soft but his eyes are so alive. Exactly as she remembered. Exactly as she dreamed about. Lively, bright green, taking in everything, missing nothing, focused solely on her.
Alive.
Wally is alive, and out of every time that he could have come back, he came back when she’s sitting on the street in her pajamas eating takeout Chinese noodles.
It’s stupid.
And yet, somehow, it’s perfect.
Artemis laughs as she hasn’t in two years.