The days are melting together, the long winter nights moving into slower spring days with breathy gusts of wind and inconsistent showers. And the kisses have melted together too, blending into a long, warm sensation that always somehow manages to feel new and exciting with each breath. They teach each other things – sharing smiles and secrets (and sometimes spit).

He teaches her the names of all the constellations one night, as they're walking home together from a late night showing of Braveheart, and he suddenly stops and races down a grassy knoll, rolling to a stop in the grassy plateau at its feet. She remembers the way the grass had tickled the back of her neck and the sudden flashes of fire had raced across her skin as he'd brushed across her, lying nearly cheek-to-cheek with her and pointing at the sky.

She teaches him the pure satisfaction that the Twang of the bow provides, her steel arrows slicing through the air – a line of fluid poetry. He tries it once, drawing it back and loosing it in the sky, and she can't even tell where he thought he was supposed to be aiming it as it arches towards the sun. He races it, running fast and fast and faster and just catching up to it as it embeds itself into a tree halfway up the cliff face.

He teaches her about the thrill of speed. Maybe sometimes it's a little bit too fast, and maybe it's not her go-to method of transportation, but her heart rate picks up in the best way when he gathers her in his arms and they fly across the ground. The dust obscures her sight and muffles her breath, and after the first two trips he takes with her bundled in his arms, he buys her her own pair of goggles, deep green and tinted lenses.

She teaches him how to wait. He isn't good at it and it takes days and days of practice, but he learns how to be still. They go for a hike one day, in the corners of Star City's National Park, and she makes him stand with her, waiting on the side of the trail, as they watch a baby deer and its mother frolicking in a nearby glen. The minutes run like water through his fingers, and suddenly, the day has wound itself down, and he realizes he can stand still after all.

He teaches her spontaneity and fun. He picks her up after school one day (making the token comment on the way she makes her skirt work for her), and whisks her off to an outdoor movie on the other side of the state. The stars are out and the breeze soothes the hot bite brought on by the rapidly heating days and they wander the grounds and buy corn dogs and candied apples and she licks the caramel off his freckled nose.

And he wants to learn more. They spend their days together without pressure, without worry, and they let time and comfortable being unearth all the secrets and lessons they still haven't managed to air between them. They've never pushed, never pried.

But one night, the mission is dark and dangerous and he can hear the cries of his team as their blood spills on the ground. They try to stop them, they try so hard, and he can see the desperation in her eyes as she fights them, tooth and eye, and tries to keep them from taking her. The little girl sitting in her room with a team of teenagers gathered to protect her – the majority of whom have no idea what they're really getting into.

The smoke explodes in her face and he can hear the crack of maybe her jaw breaking, and he runs to catch her as she falls, graceful. She shoves, hard, against his chest and screams an unintelligible jumble of words as the girl's small form is thrown through the window, caught brusquely by figures on the ground.

She's inconsolable even when they've gotten off the Bioship and been administered heavy painkillers, confined in the infirmary of the Cave. He sits, quiet and subdued, on the bed beside hers, and his green eyes trace the bruises along her arms. His voice is soft, when he asks, "What's going to happen to her?"

But she shakes her head in renewed fury and agitation, and he can see tears leaking from the corners of her eyes, hot and ashamed. "What will they do?" But her hands are clenched so tightly the skin on her knuckles breaks, and she's bleeding again, all over the pristine white of the sheets. The other members of the team are quiet now too, and he knows they're listening, that they want to know. But the Martian's control is wavering with the medication, and the worry and fear and shame and soft, strong determination are saturating the room.

She won't look at any of them.

He doesn't bring it up again, even through the sessions of tracking and looking and doing their best to find this stolen little girl. But he wants to know, he wants to help. "You know though, don't you, Artemis?" he asks, and her name on his lips cuts her to the bone, burning through her years of denial and acceptance and just Dealing With It. "There are some things I never, ever, want you to know," she responds, and it's no longer just a matter of her not telling him. It's something deeper and darker and scarring and it's something she will do anything to keep from spoiling the relative innocence and naivety that still marks his mind.

She loves his smile.

He wants to know though, wants to know so badly and deeply and inexplicably that the knowledge of this strange secret burns in his mind at night. He thinks maybe it would help him focus; help him work harder and more fervently and just better. Help him with this unfinished mission. But that's not really it. He wants to know more about her. About how she grew up, about her life – even if the story isn't an overwhelmingly happy one. But after the second time, he just drops it altogether.

Robin and Artemis work day and night, without sleep, trying to track this girl.

It takes six days for them to work out a location, and the bags under their eyes and the worried, frantic set of her mouth tells him that it's entirely too long. The sneak in through the vents, still so focused despite the fatigue, despite the general weariness, despite the obvious lack of sleep. The Shadows are peeling away from the corners of the walls, moving behind them, sometimes taking them by surprise. There's a heap of broken bodies in the corner, and Miss Martian sweeps them away with a wave of her hand, not sparing the operatives a second glance.

This really isn't the time to be compassionate.

They split up then, because this was as far as their intel got them, and he takes the ground route - flashing along in the shadows in stealth mode and peeking into doors. It takes him less than a second to go through a hallway, and he keeps running and moving and trying until he comes to one that's actually locked. It takes him three tries before he manages to kick it open, and the resounding bang echoes down the hall.

No one comes, and he steps inside.

The walls are lit up in grey images, fuzzy with static. The rooms they show though, are empty. On one side, opposite the screens, are rows and rows of shelves, stretching back into blackness. Records, he thinks, and he reaches up to flip through one, hands closing around a black binder. The name stamped on the side reads Wilson, Rose, and he opens it, expecting photographs and documents. The entire binder, though, is filled with plastic sheets, and in every single one, is a USB.

They'd been looking for her so desperately, so urgently, and here was everything they needed, cradled in his arm. He starts back to the door, about to go, when a sudden thought catches hold, and he turns back, running along the shelves and searching. He can't help himself, really. It helps that everything's arranged alphabetically. After all, it pays to be organized.

The label is old and peeling when he finds it, the 'mis' of her name rubbed off on the spine. She has a whole box to herself, filled with dozens of VHS tapes. Old school, he thinks, briefly, but he doesn't make any passing comments on it, lugging it instead to an old player he'd found in the corner of the room. He pops in one of the tapes, not really concerned about order, his eyes cautious and curious.

He's glad, when it starts playing, that there's no sound.

An arrow is protruding from the television and he doesn't even notice – the sparks thrown dangerously close to his face. She's behind him, drawn by the bang and the echoing yell he hadn't even realized he'd released, and she punches him hard in the side of the neck, his unstable, vibrating form barely registering the blow. She's so blindly angry that she doesn't stop until his hands finally remember how to work, gripping her arms and holding her, so tight it should hurt. She's shaking harder than he was.

He doesn't know what to say, what to do, so he just holds her against his chest as her breaths begin again. And when she's quiet and her eyes are fixated furiously on the floor, he wipes her damp cheeks with his thumb and kisses her. But the image still flashes in front of her eyes, grainy and bright and terrible, the arrow's shaft protruding from the young, blonde girl's bleeding face. She would have died to keep him from knowing. From seeing what it was like.

Now she's ready to drown.

His kisses are always candid, but now? They taste like nothing.