a/n: I started this one as a fill for the anon meme at its new community, but then let it go for a while when it became apparent I wasn't getting any feedback. I think the story might be better received here, so I'll go ahead upload the chapters I've finished so far and see if the urge to continue writing strikes me along the way.

Let me know whatever you guys think!

After the Reach was defeated, they all thought, perhaps naively, that the nightmare was over. They were runaways, once: kids who slipped through the cracks or were pulled through, forced to suffer one injustice after another at the hands of people that only wanted to use them. Break them. Mistreat them. Like they didn't even have real feelings, thoughts that mattered.

Like they weren't human.

With the Reach finally gone, the world saved, they thought they had their chance to start over. Without the omnipresent specter of truth, inevitability, lurking beneath the worst of their nightmares, it was all too easy to believe that their lives were once again firmly in their own hands. That they alone controlled the courses of their own destinies. And, furthermore, that nothing would ever happen again to take that agency away from them. That they would never again have to fight for it, to steal themselves back from somebody else.

They all believed, at that point, that they had found safe places they could go back to. Places to call home. Where they'd finally, finally belong, for real, after all the running had stopped.

They were wrong.

—

Surprisingly enough, Virgil Hawkins is the first of them to slip back through the cracks.

"I'm resigning," he mumbles disjointedly into the radio, aware of practically nothing besides his shaking hands on the comm, and the smell of smoke. "It's over. I'm done. I'm sorry."

Aqualad's voice is remarkably calm through the communicator. "Static—Virgil. Please, tell us what's going on," he says. "I do not know what has happened to you that provoked this decision, but I assure you there are other ways for us to solve whatever problem you are having. If you would just Zeta Beam to the Watchtower we could—"

"No! I'm, I wont go," Virgil stammers, sinking slowly to his knees on the freezing ground. He folds his body in on itself as tightly as he can, rocking back and forth. "I can't, Aqualad. Please trust me on this. I can't go anywhere with you guys, not ever again, I'm not...I'm not like you. Not a hero. I don't belong at the Watchtower."

"You and I both know that is not true, Virgil," Aqualad says calmly. "Something traumatic has clearly occurred to make you talk like this. If you only would be patient for a little longer, I can ask Black Canary to—"

"No. Th-There was a fire. A gang fight," Virgil hears himself saying in a jittery rush, cutting Kaldur off. "I thought I could do it, but—it w-wasn't. Nothing wasn't. God, I was so stupid to think I could be a hero in a place like this, or anywhere, so long as it's just one and I know too much about it...I think I shouldn't have tried to be both me and somebody else, if I was gonna go home and be with my family, too. Y'know?"

"Calm yourself, Static. I do not understand. Tell me, was there a fire in your hometown? Or was it a gang fight?"

"It's not that. It's what happened," Virgil says emphatically, trying to make him understand the gravity of the situation. "I just wanted to help. I didn't—if I hadn't been there, maybe some of them would have lived. I was just trying to help, but then I saw her inside, and it was like—all the others just completely disappeared."

He knows, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he's being utterly incoherent. Virgil just can't get the stupid words to come out the way he wants them to, but that's all right, too. He's already said far more to Aqualad than he actually meant to.

"Virgil—"

"No, you listen! I saw her, and that was it, I had to, I had to get her out," Virgil says frantically, feeling a familiar panic bubble up inside him. "Whatever it took, I had to get her out of there. It didn't matter if any of the other gangbangers, or pedestrians, were—it was like I couldn't see them anymore, like they weren't even there. I didn't care what happened to anyone else in the plaza if it meant I could just save her. But, I couldn't. She didn't make it, and then I realized after all that what I had probably—maybe some of them would have lived. I'm sorry, Aqualad, but I-I can't be a member of the Team anymore. I have to go."

It's a long, tense moment before Kaldur says anything, and by that time, Virgil realizes he's about to start crying again. Kaldur's last, frantic plea comes through the comm, begging Static to stay exactly where he is, but Virgil's already turning off the radio.

He forces himself to stand. He zaps the communicator with a pulse of electricity to destroy it, dropping it to the ground without feeling. He doesn't want the Team to be able to trace him tonight.

Tears blur his vision. He tries to fight it, but it's no use: gasping sobs shake Virgil's entire frame for a long time, escaping his body out from his chest and through his throat. He struggles for several minutes to control it, to rein himself in, before he completely breaks. He hears voices screaming and sirens wailing somewhere out in the distance, but he only cringes and turns away from them when it registers. These aren't his people to protect anymore. Not after tonight.

It doesn't matter that he didn't start this, never intended to make it worse, whatever actually happened in those seconds he lost when he whited out. He understands now that he's too emotionally invested in the part of him that's still Virgil Hawkins, to operate as Static in any place he really cares about. One familiar, helpless face in a crowd will be enough to undo him completely, if he lets himself have a normal home and be a regular teenager like he really wants.

A jury wouldn't find enough evidence to convict him for what happened earlier, would send him home with a warning or possibly even their pity. But that doesn't mean it isn't still his fault. Virgil knows, in his heart, that it is. It has to be.

He has to leave.

Mechanically, he slings his backpack onto one shoulder and walks over to his filthy skateboard on the ground. Forcing himself to step up onto it, he begins riding slowly toward the edge of town. The soot-covered wheels leave black lines that trail behind him on the pavement, but Virgil doesn't notice them. The dirt on the wheels doesn't matter. They'll be clean again by the time he makes it to the next town over from Dakota City—or maybe the town after that.

Some lost, distant part of him, whatever part can still feel anything in this moment, hopes his father and sister will believe him to be just another casualty of the riots. He cannot face them now, after tonight. He can't go home again.

All that's left is to run, like before, until he stumbles across whatever comes next.