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Whatever was left of Wally West drifted through the world between worlds, sometimes screaming and sometimes cursing and sometimes bitterly silent. It had been a long time, or possibly one terrible afternoon. Time had meant something to Wally once, but it couldn’t touch him now. Nothing could.
Sometimes he moved his legs (if he had legs, here) as if to run. It didn’t change his trajectory or speed. Wally drifted all the same. Every now and then, a wound opened in the fabric that separated his between-space from all the others. Wally could never make his body cross through these, but sometimes, for a few minutes, he could see just a glimpse into another world.
The young woman’s hand shook as she trained the gun at Nightwing. “Don’t come any closer,” she begged.
“This isn’t you, Alexa,” Nightwing told her gently, taking one small step and then another. His feet as light as any acrobat’s even on solid ground. A grown man now, infuriating and funny and clever. He might never match Batman’s detective work, but Dick had the old man beat in the heart department every time. “Put the gun down, and I’ll help. Whatever it is, you still have options.” He reached for her. “Just take my hand.”
“No! You don’t understand!” A scream from the void as the gun fired and Nightwing crumpled. Then the tear closed.
Another tear, some unknowable time later. It came just in time. The remnants of Wally West were disintegrating slowly but surely, fading back into the Speed Force that had ripped him from his home and family. It wouldn’t be long now, not that that meant anything anymore.
“Dick?” There she was. Finally. It had been so long since the tears had let him see her.
Artemis sat on the toilet lid in the tiny bathroom of the house she and Wally had shared in Ivy Town. The room was a mess. All the rooms were a mess. This was the first time in days that she’d gotten out of bed long enough to bother throwing on clothes.
She stared blankly at the still-unused pregnancy test in her hands.
“I’m here,” said Dick through the door. “I’ll be here as long as it takes.”
The double meaning floated in the air between them.
“I’m sorry it’s taking so long,” said Artemis quickly, blinking back tears. “I just… if I am pregnant, it’s his. It has to be his. There’s no one else.” Another scream from the void, because there could be someone else. He’d never wanted Artemis in a possessive way, not since he grew out of his fifteen-year-old stupidity about women. She had to move on.
“I know,” said Dick. He pressed his forehead against the other side of the door.
“And I can’t handle a baby right now.”
“I know.”
“Will you hate me? If this is the last part of him and I get rid of it anyway?” Artemis stifled a sob. “You loved him as much as I did. You’re the only one who loved him as much as I did.”
“I did love him,” said Dick. He held his face still, Batman-trained to prevent too much grief from slipping through. “And I love you enough to want you to make whatever choice you need. Does that answer the question?”
There were no answers for Wally. The tear closed, a door slamming in his face.
There was Gotham, changed in some dreamlike way to a regency-era town with a grand castle towering in the distance. Mordred cackled with childish glee as he led a procession down the main thoroughfare, horsemen cracking their whips at the civilians lining the sidewalk, who were imprisoned in stocks. A green-fletched arrow flew through the air, clipping Mordred’s jaw and sending him reeling.
“Guards!” he shrieked. “Find me that interloper and see him drawn and quartered!”
High above the city street, Nightwing crossed his arms as he watched Artemis take aim at the spokes of wheels, knots in ropes, and a dozen other strategic weak points, timing each shot perfectly.
“The life suits you,” he said. “What is this, the first time you’ve been out in months? You’re practically glowing.”
“Wally would kill me if he knew I was here,” said Artemis. “But I was in town, and these people…”
“You still bring your gear whenever you travel. Surely that means something.”
“I raided an old cache.”
“And found unexpired foam arrows and a uniform that still fits you in the waist? Yeah, right.”
Artemis shot Nightwing a tight smile. “Yeah,” she said. “Right. What Wally doesn’t know won’t hurt him, but I’m not coming back for good. I like my life. I like caring more about books than bullets.”
“Hey, I get that.” Nightwing scratched the back of his head. “Just don’t be a stranger. Live by the book, die by the book, right?”
“I’ll ignore that that’s obviously bait.”
The tear winked out as she laughed, eyes crinkling up in that familiar beloved way, and he was real again for the moment, real enough to love her. Real enough to ache when she disappeared from view, living out a life he couldn’t touch.
“Well, this is trippy.” Artemis tugged on the red string emanating from her fingertip, frowning when Dick jerked unwillingly towards her.
“Do you have a lot of experience with drug trips now, college girl?” he teased.
“That’s my business.” Artemis stepped back, looking relieved when Dick wasn’t forced to follow. “Okay, so the strings lengthen and shorten as long as we don’t think about them. But what do they mean?”
Dick scowled. “I’m no literary analyst, but red strings like this do have a symbolic meaning, right?”
“Sure. But then how come you’re not tied to Barbara and—and vice versa?” Artemis paced the room, sending loops and ripples through the string that joined their hands as it expanded and contracted to accommodate the movement.
“Wotan’s evil, right? It’s an evil spell. Doesn’t have to mean anything.” Dick sank into an armchair by Artemis and Wally’s front window, looking out into the street where string-tied civilians ran up and down in a panic. “Want to go out there, do a little crowd control?”
“Not on your life.” Artemis crossed her arms; the string jumped slightly. “Artemis the archer can’t be seen in Ivy Town, and Artemis the professor can’t be seen tied to a superhero. Especially a superhero I haven’t slept with since I was seventeen.”
Dick winced. “Haven’t talked about that in a while.”
“It hasn’t mattered in a while! This stupid string feels like it’s slut-shaming me.”
“Could be a simple proximity thing.”
“Then explain the chaos out there!”
“You were my first,” said Dick.
Artemis froze. “But you said Zatanna—”
“I lied. It feels stupid now, but I was embarrassed.”
“I get it.” Artemis chuckled. “So, what, we took each other’s virginities and now some stupid spell thinks that means we’re soulmates?”
“Looks like.” There was a long silence. Then Dick said, “I always assumed you and Wally had fooled around by then, even if you weren’t an official thing.”
Artemis shook her head. “No way. I was too scared of superfast cumshots to try anything with him until undergrad. Don’t tell him I said that.”
Now it was Dick’s turn to laugh. “Don’t worry. I won’t.”
In the impossible expanse between realities and times, Wally West concentrated hard enough to try out a beard for a while. If he focused on nothing else and ran a spectral hand back and forth along his insubstantial jaw, he could almost feel it.
“Doesn’t really suit me,” he tried to say, letting the beard dissipate into the void along with most of his neck and chin. But there was no air to carry the sound.
The world opened back up in a fountain of brightness and laughter. A birthday party. Maybe the last time all of them had gathered in one place, happy and alive and not pretending to be supervillains.
“Connor, stop!” Artemis insisted as the others gathered around the cake. She drew her friend aside, letting the singing fade into the background.
“Happy birthday, dear Kaldur, happy birthday to you!”
“I saw the way you flinched when Wally slapped you on the back just now,” said Artemis, looking Connor up and down with a practiced eye. “You’re hurt. Where? How bad?”
“I’m fine,” Connor insisted. “A little slapfight with some interdimensional imps on the way here. There are a few scrapes on my back, nothing that won’t heal.”
“No harm in letting me clean them, is there? Come on, take off your shirt.” Artemis fetched the first aid kit and winced at what she saw. “Some of these are going to need stitches. I’ll get M’gann to phase the needle.”
Connor stiffened. “Don’t bother. I don’t want to lean on her too much right now. Besides, it’s Kaldur’s party.”
Artemis put a comforting hand on his arm. “And I get that. But you and M’gann are still teammates, and everyone here wants you to take care of yourself. Okay?”
Connor nodded slowly. “Yeah. Okay.”
The rest of the party passed in a cheerful haze, their teammates operating as one body that branched out in many directions, the way they had hundreds of times before and never would again after that day. Kaldur was already preparing for deep cover. Artemis and Wally’s college acceptance letters were already in the mail. M’gann and Connor, fresh from their breakup, were already drifting apart.
Many hands cleaned and stitched Connor’s wounds, feeding him bites of pizza and cake and taking turns making him laugh through the pain. For just a split second longer, everything in the world was perfect.
The soundless scream of the thing that had been Wally West rose in force. This was a torture unlike anything else. It was hard to see his loved ones suffering without him, but it was true agony to see himself happy, ignorant of the fact that it wouldn’t last.
“Is it messed up that I want to keep as much of our uniforms on as we can?” Artemis laughed. “The just-a-mask look is already pretty kinky, but there’s something about fucking the Robin persona itself that’s really hot to me. Know what I mean?”
“Totally.” Robin carefully piled his body armor on the floor next to her hotel bed. They’d spent two nights in this airport hotel, waiting for a shipment of drugs to come through so they could intercept it. Eventually, a sort of dam between them had broken. “But Batman would kill me if I got a cum stain on my cape. To say nothing of… other people in my life.”
“What, the Boy Wonder doesn’t do his own laundry?” Artemis raised her eyebrows. “I mean, the tech alone says Batman’s loaded, but that’s crazy. Do you even know how?”
“Of course I know how. I didn’t grow up rich. And most of our gear is dry clean only.”
“Sure, I guess.”
Robin crossed his arms over his bare chest. “Look, I don’t really want to talk about things I shouldn’t.” His eyes drifted down to his erection. “Especially, uh, right now.”
“Can’t argue with that.” Artemis squinted at him in the weak early morning sunlight streaming in through the blinds. “What are you waiting for?”
“Oh, uh, I didn’t know if you wanted me to tie you up or anything.” Robin’s Batman-trained body control prevented him from blushing, but only just.
“And mix business with pleasure? No thanks.” Artemis stretched, spreading her legs wide. “Missionary, then? It’s a classic for a reason.”
“That works for me.” Robin gave his dick a few speculative pumps with one hand, eyeing Artemis’s pussy like it was the entrance to a League of Assassins hideout. “I’m going in, then!”
She giggled. “Quit talking like we’re on a mission. It’ll get me too wet.”
“Shut up.” He tickled her, and suddenly things between them were easy.
They rolled back and forth in the bed, wrestling and laughing.
“I needed this,” said Artemis after it was over. She ran a hand through Robin’s hair. “Whoever you are under that mask… thanks for not being weird about this.”
“No big deal,” said Robin with calculated care. “Sex between friends is a great way to relieve tension.” He nestled his head into her chest.
“Did I do enough?” Artemis asked. “For you, I mean. Obviously I have had sex before now, with many satisfied partners.”
“Same here.” Robin cleared his throat. “And yeah, you did enough. To be honest, I don’t like it when things are all about me in the bedroom. It’s kinda nice to just focus on someone else’s pleasure for a while.”
“Noble,” she chuckled. “Batman-ass sexuality.”
“Please don’t make me think about whether or not Batman eats pussy. I’ll die.”
“It’s so weird that you know I’m from Gotham and everything, but all I know about you is that you grew up poor and now you have Batman’s money somehow. For all I know, we’ve passed each other in the street hundreds of times.” Artemis hesitated. “Have we?”
“You could say that.” Robin chewed his lip. “Look, I just gave you a pretty decent-looking orgasm. If I just… tell you, will you promise to remember that and not be mad at me?”
“Uh, yeah. We aren’t enemies or anything as civilians, are we? I don’t think I have non-super enemies.”
Robin sat up, clearing his throat. “Can I kiss you first? Just once. I don’t really get to just… be with people very often.”
Artemis put a hand on the back of his neck. “One kiss, for practice and moral support. Then you tell me who you are.”
They kissed, short and tender. If Artemis didn’t know what to do with her tongue and Robin’s teeth came into it more than they should, neither of them mentioned it.
“Not many people know this,” Robin began. “Not outside of Batman’s circle, at least. Wally knows. You know that. But I’ve had to be careful, kept so many people at arm’s length. I want you to know, Artemis, even if this never happens again. I want you to know all of me. I want our friendship to matter no matter what outfit I’m wearing.”
She nodded, taking a deep, careful breath. “Okay. I trust you.”
Robin’s hands shook a little as he unfastened the domino mask. His hands shook the same way when he told Wally four years previously. The little details were what made him so easy to love. Not that Wally was gay for his best bro.
Wally wasn’t gay for his best bro.
Wally had never had gay thoughts about the way Dick’s ass looked when he flew through the air on a trapeze or at the end of a grappler line. He had never wondered if Dick’s lips were as soft as they looked, with those rich kid beauty products keeping them smooth and supple.
Now he knew what Dick’s cock looked like, or what it had looked like when he was sixteen, anyway. The foreskin was a slight surprise.
It turned out that sexuality crises were great for firming up disintegrating interdimensional travelers. Wally managed to have fingers for the first time in… however long, and they found their way straight to where his cock would have been, if only he could focus.
“So this is me,” said Dick Grayson, watching Artemis with frightened blue eyes. “Is that okay?”
Artemis rolled off the bed, landed in a crouch, and started cramming herself back into her top. “What do you think, Dick? Have you been laughing at me all this time? Playing both sides?”
“No! Of course not!” Dick’s lip trembled for just a second, but Batman’s proteges didn’t cry. “I couldn’t tell you. You know that.”
“You told Wally.” Artemis, free from Batman’s tutelage, was crying freely. “I should have known this was a terrible idea.”
“I told Wally when I was twelve. A stupid kid. That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Then the next time you want meaningless sex, why don’t you go fuck Wally?” Artemis burst out, zipping her pants and clipping her travel quiver into place. A minute later, she was out the door.
Wally West wasn’t gay for anyone.
Really.
“You sure don’t smile much,” said Wally, circling the sullen child Batman had dropped on The Flash’s doorstep earlier that morning.
“No reason to,” said the pipsqueak. He couldn’t have been more than eleven, and even that guess was only if he were extraordinarily small for his age.
“Says you. We’re having pancakes and syrup!” Wally dove back into his chair and swallowed another sticky mouthful.
“I’m avoiding processed sugars,” said Robin. “Bad for my training regimen.”
“Oh.”
There was a long silence.
“Are cartoons bad for your training regimen too?”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“I’m not!” Wally dumped his plate in the sink and ran for the TV remote. “Come sit in the living room, Boy Wonder. Someone has got to teach you to have fun, and the sooner the better! Otherwise you’ll run out of childhood before you’ve even had one.”
“I remember this.” Dick unpinned a snapshot from the cork board above Wally’s desk. In it, the two of them laughed as a carnival ride tossed them upside down. “Three seconds before you threw up. Is that really the memento you want to save?”
“Hey, we’re pretty cute right there,” said Wally defensively, sliding the snapshot into an envelope for safekeeping. “That’s going front and center in the dorm room. For one thing, chicks dig men who are in touch with their inner child.”
“Then you’ll be swimming in college girls, because you are all inner child.” Dick ruffled Wally’s hair, and both of them laughed.
Wally West wasn’t gay.
He’d have noticed if he was gay. He didn’t even like gay things. Rainbows and Broadway didn’t count. Gay guys liked… gay guys.
“Just a few days,” said Artemis, pulling out the knife and pressing a wad of cotton into its place. “And you have to see a doctor. You can’t bleed out on my couch.”
“Thank you, beautiful,” said Wally, wincing as she applied pressure to his stab wound. “I also don’t want to bleed out on your couch.”
“Glad we agree.” Artemis sighed. “I’m sure Icon can help me find you an understanding doctor in this city. You’ll get sewn back together, rest it out for seventy-two hours max, and then it’s back to going to the same classes and pretending we barely know each other.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Wally coughed, propping himself upright and clutching his side. “I already feel better. Body’s trying to heal. If I ate a big enough meal, I might not even need the doctor.”
“No way,” Artemis told him, tapping out a text on her phone. “See a doctor, or I throw you back out on the street.”
“Fair, fair.” Wally watched her for a while, realizing just then how deeply he was and always had been in love with her. Realizing that she was the spitfire Kent Nelson had told him to watch for. Realizing how foolish he’d been. “Hey, Artemis?”
“What?”
“Uh, nothing. Just… thanks for answering the door.”
“Anytime, asshole,” she said, but she was smiling.
“Social media’s blowing up over what seems to be confirmation that the Justice League has been employing a team of youthful covert operatives. Cat Grant has the story.”
Dick muted the TV as the news anchor continued. “We need you,” he said, spearing a piece of broccoli with his fork and using it to gesture for emphasis. “All of us do, but especially me. Feels like the Team’s getting too big to hold all in my head, losing its moral center. Like maybe its moral center walked out the door with you two.”
Wally and Artemis exchanged glances.
“We love you, Dick,” said Artemis carefully.
“But our answer’s still the same,” said Wally. “We’re happy here.” He scowled at the TV, where Cat Grant gesticulated next to a rotating lineup of anti-Justice League social media screenshots. “I’m turning off this ragebait. How about a movie? Dick, you still haven’t seen that trippy Czech Alice in Wonderland one, right?”
“I should go.” Dick rose to his feet, ignoring Artemis and Wally’s protests. “You see how bad our PR is right now. I’m in charge of turning that around, and that means I can’t afford to take a break.”
“Why don’t you go after him?” Artemis asked after the front door closed behind Dick. “You’ve always been better than anyone at convincing him to blow off steam.”
“I’m not Dick’s manager anymore,” said Wally, shuttling plates into the kitchen with singleminded fury. “Sometimes, I’m not sure I’m even his friend.”
And so he loaded the dishwasher and rewatched the movie and drank a glass of wine and went to bed, and three months later Artemis was playing dead to help Dick the way Wally had refused to.
He tried screaming again for a little while. The soundlessness meant it was barely even cathartic.
“It doesn’t get easier,” said Artemis, turning a page in the fourth scrapbook of the afternoon. Wally smiled out at her from every one, frozen in time, unreachable.
“No,” Dick agreed. He hefted a thick pile of envelopes bound together with a pink ribbon. “What are these?”
“From my summer in Prague,” she said. “He wrote to me every week, the romantic goof.”
Dick chuckled. “Dirty letters, knowing him.”
“Filthy,” she agreed. “I was reading one of them the first time I realized he was going to propose. He didn’t come out and say it, exactly, but it was between the lines.” She mimed nocking and firing an arrow. “Smitten. Totally smitten.”
“Maybe someday it won’t hurt,” Dick agreed, setting the letters aside. “What else can I do?”
“The closet,” she said, pointing. “Barry said he might like a few of the shirts, maybe an extra costume or two. The rest, I’ll probably donate. I haven’t managed to start packing it up.”
He reached for her hand, freezing inches away. Stood. Walked to the closet. Maybe it was fucked up, but part of Wally wanted them to kiss. Maybe then she could move on. Maybe then they both could.
Dick was unfolding crumpled graphic t-shirts emblazoned with science puns. “He had the worst fashion sense,” he called to Artemis with only a slight hitch in his voice.
Only someone watching the scene from a vantage point outside the flow of time could have seen how tenderly Dick handled the shirts, the way he lifted one to his nose to inhale the last vestiges of Wally’s scent and stayed like that for far too long, just holding the shirt with his eyes shut tight.
Wally West was not gay. But maybe he was just a little bit bisexual for one dude in particular.
As if it even mattered anymore.
“Nightwing! What’s going on? What did he do?”
Tigress clutched at her convulsing friend, holding him tight as he vomited up a stream of rose petals and a froth of bloody spit.
“Aww, precious,” Klarion cackled, watching them from a throne made of twisted rose bushes. “He must have bottled these feelings up for a long time if it’s hitting him that bad. Tell whoever it is that you love them, Boy Blunder. Tell them, or my thorns will gnaw through your guts by dawn.”
Tigress squeezed Nightwing’s hand. “It’s okay,” she murmured. “I know how you feel about me, how you felt about—about both of us. I’m not sure Wally ever realized, but I felt it every time the three of us were alone together. Like fireworks. We don’t have to talk about anything. Never, or whenever you’re ready. Whatever it needs to be.”
Nightwing spat another bloody handful of petals into the grass. “I love you, Artemis,” he said, watching as a golden glow illuminated his abdomen, the roses vanishing from his guts. “That was never meant to be a secret. But everything else got in the way, and now…”
Tigress shattered Klarion’s Hanahaki orb with a perfectly timed crossbow bolt.
“My vision of Wally told me to move on,” she said quietly as Klarion howled in rage. “So I’m ready when you are, if you ever want to try.”
They met for dinner in Gotham, because it amused Dick to be seen with a model-pretty girl on his arm after the Gotham Splort had run a whole-page article speculating that Bruce Wayne’s eldest ward had a secret gay lover.
“The more waves I make, the less heat there’ll be on my adopted siblings with actual secret gay lovers,” he joked.
“As long as you pay for dinner,” said Artemis, stunning in midnight blue and pearls. The pearls had been an anniversary gift from Wally. Tonight, she wore them as a reminder that she was allowed to be happy. Wally would have wanted it that way. He did. He did. He did.
Dick opened the car door for her, playing up the spoiled-sweet billionaire’s son. Just a carefree man wining and dining an old schoolmate in the hopes of coaxing her back to his place.
The last particles of Wally West watched them strut past the cameras to their reserved table, chuckling together over the menu and playing footsie under the table. Dick looked happy, even accounting for the carefully constructed press facade. Artemis was radiant. Even to bask in her glow from afar, dimensions and time and space separating them forever, was an honor.
Dick leaned across the table and pressed a chaste kiss to Artemis’s lips. For just a moment, Wally imagined the ghost of that kiss touching his own, a bright spot of human contact in the void that had imprisoned him for so long. Then the sensation faded away, and he faded along with it.