GOTHAM

October 20, 14:46 EDT

Artemis jolted to her feet, knocking Much Ado About Nothing to the wayside. She hadn't been reading it, and neither had I, opting instead to analyze her bloody cuticles. She was picking at them now, and the blisters her bow left. They were always popping, trailing blood and pus down her hands. The threat of infection kept me wary, always inspecting the little injuries.

Townsend jumped at his desk as she rose, and she didn't even wait for his permission as she headed for the door with her bag, "I need to go to the bathroom, sir."

Rising from my own desk, I followed her without a word and without protest from Townsend. There was no sight of her in the hallway, but I already knew exactly where she was.

She hadn't bothered to close the stall door this time, and I slipped in wordlessly, locking it behind us. Her hair was already pulled back in her typical low ponytail, so I just kneeled by her side and rubbed her back as she gagged into the toilet. It was mostly bile, as per usual, meaning she still wasn't eating properly.

Not like I could say much.

I murmured soft reassurances in her ear, her entire body shaking with each convulsion. Eventually, she paused and leaned back, settling against the wall. I took the water bottle from her bag, offering her a drink, "what was it this time?"

She took a swig, swishing the water around in her mouth before spitting it back out. I handed her a swath of the shitty zero-point-fuck-all ply toilet paper to blow her nose with, and she accepted it with the barest of smiles before speaking, "the same. One minute I was reading, the next I was back in the moment before I died. And then afterwards. The… empty."

The white space that had enveloped me for those brief minutes flashed across my mind. What had it been like for Artemis all that time? Had she seen what I saw? I didn't ask. Instead, I tossed her throw-up stained toilet paper in the garbage and helped her to her feet, "is that all?"

She bit her lip, seemingly conflicted, "Wally came to my room, that night."

We had all stayed at the Cave the night of the training exercise, not ready to go home or to leave each other. I suppressed any kind of excitement, it wasn't the time for that kind of thing. "Oh?"

"He was… really freaked out. I think he had tried to sleep, but he had nightmares. You know what it's like." I nodded, letting her continue, "anyway, he was all over the place. Kept ranting about how sorry he was, that he should have run out and saved me, and then maybe this whole thing could have been avoided."

"What did you tell him?"

"That he was being a dumbass," she said with a snort, turning to wash her hands in the sink, "if he had run, he would've gotten hit too."

"He was really upset after you…" I searched for a word besides died, "got hit. I've never seen him so angry and worked up. He was genuinely — and I mean genuinely — ready to kill someone."

Her gaze met mine, "what do you think that's about?"

He's in love with you. The thought tingled at the tip of my tongue, but she wasn't ready to know that. Much less in the kind of headspace to process and understand it properly. I forced myself to shrug, "who knows. The mind of Kid Flash is a strange, strange place."

'Mis laughed under her breath, "talk about it."

I packed up her shit, handing her bag off to her, "we should get back to class."

She sighed, but acquiesced. As we entered the room, Townsend mouthed a quick, 'you okay?' at me. I nodded, but Evangeline hissed at me from her seat as I passed, "is Miss Scholarship pregnant or something? Does birth control not fit in the budget?"

I stopped dead. Cold rage crashing through me, shredding every last inch of composure I might've had. Leaning in real close to Evangeline's face, the tiniest hint of my old Narrows accent slipped out in my anger, "you better watch who the fuck you're talking to Montgomery. If you start spreading shit around, I'm going to make sure that your daddy has to pay for your second nose job. And for the record," I lied, "she's on her period. I know you failed Biology last year, but hopefully you can put two and two together based on your knowledge of your own fucking anatomy. You sure as hell use it often enough."

Her cheeks coloured, gaze hardening, but I was already back in my seat before she could say anything back. Artemis raised her eyebrows at me, but I waved her concern away. She didn't need another source of stress right now, and that was practically Evangeline's fucking job title.

We picked our books up again, and the room descended into peaceful quiet once more.

GOTHAM

October 23, 02:03 EDT

Heat. Pain. Burning hair. Gunpowder. The smell of cooking meat —

I jackknifed awake, feet hitting the floor immediately in a desperate bid to get to the toilet. I barely managed to open the lid before I threw up what little food I had managed to shovel in my mouth at supper. Thank god Selina was out of town. She had been hesitant to go, not wanting to leave me in my current state, but duty called, and Bruce had promised to watch over me.

Clawing my hair away from my face, I retched, and retched, and retched. Tears started to blur my eyesight, and the burning of bile in my throat was going up my nose and making me choke. Eventually the vomiting passed, and I fell in a heap on the marble tile of my ensuite. The cool of it kissed my fevered skin. My heart thumped rapidly in my chest; a reminder that I was still alive. Standing, I turned on the tap, rinsing out my mouth and forcing water up my nose in a desperate attempt to flush out that burning smell. The sting of drowning hit me, and I started to hack as water flooded my sinuses.

I didn't feel… real. My body was trapped in the sensation of exploding; shredding to pieces and burning up in the same moment. I needed to move, to feel my muscles stretch and pull. Running back to my room, I pulled on the nearest pair of jeans and shirt, throwing my leather jacket on over it and pulling on my leather boots. The keys to the motorcycle were in the dish in the kitchen, as per usual, and I grabbed them and went out the door without a second thought.

The cool night air was exactly what I needed, and I was tempted to flip up the visor of my helmet just to feel the wind hit my face and sting my eyes. But I had places to be, and I wove through the late-night Gotham traffic, heading towards the Robert Kane Memorial. Towards Wayne Manor. Towards Dick.

My hands tightened on the handlebars, the memory of his dying face turning my stomach again. The expression of pure agony, his skin burning and falling away. The exposed muscle. Melting fat dripping down his uncovered cheekbone. I sped up, ripping down the mostly abandoned highway. The seawater beneath me smelled just faintly enough of the actual stuff to remind me of nights at the Cave. Of warmth, and love, and safety.

I pulled over just outside the range where someone from inside the Manor would have been able to hear my engine. Turning off the bike and ditching it in some foliage, I opted to walk the rest of the way. Scaling the ivy-covered brick was easier than breathing, but I stopped myself about halfway up to assess the situation. Was I seriously about to climb up to Dick's window Edward Cullen-style just to make sure he hadn't spontaneously died? No. It was definitively not Edward Cullen-esque, because I was here to make sure my best friend was okay, then get the hell out of dodge. Not creep around the bedroom of a girl I barely knew for the whole night.

Scaling the last few metres of the wall, Dick's curtain flew out of nowhere to hit me in the face. I almost toppled off the side of the Manor, tightening my grip on the ivy. He had left his window open, and upon peering inside, I saw that he had fallen asleep at his desk. He was still in jeans and a hoodie, the lamp on his desk the only thing illuminating the room.

My roll into the room was near silent, and I closed the window back up behind me with a quiet snick. I paused, turning my head in one silent, fluid motion to make sure I didn't wake Dick. He was still sleeping.

I examined the papers he had been working on. Math equations. Not homework, these were too advanced, even for Dick's AP class. He was distracting himself, the same way we all were. Artemis had opted to spend all her time reading and practicing with her bow. M'gann had never cooked so much in her life. Wally ate everything M'gann made and drafted up experiments, going through pages of paper on complex chemical formulas. Kaldur swam, and swam, and swam, and when he wasn't swimming he was reading or practicing with his waterbearers, claiming it had been too long since he worked on his magical skills. Connor trained, or worked on motorcycles in the hangar. And Dick did things like this, spending hours on calculus problems, or proofs, or coding.

He was too heavy to move to his bed without waking him up. Instead, I tugged the papers out from beneath his head and arranged them neatly on the other side of the desk, replacing them with one of his pillows. I grabbed the big, soft blanket off his bed too, wrapping it gently around his shoulders. He was still dead to the world, strange for his light sleeping habits. Exhaustion hung on his face, dark circles there like he hadn't slept in months.

But he was alive. The steady rise and fall of his chest was comforting. He was breathing, his heart was still beating, he wasn't burning alive in an alien ship. I clicked the lamp off and slipped back out the window. Maybe I could finally get some sleep.

MOUNT JUSTICE

October 23, 17:21 EDT

Silence was heavy in the air. The whole of the team had been called to the Cave, not for a mission, and not for a fun hangout.

For therapy.

I was familiar with the concept by now. I had been seeing Dinah for months. But everything we talked about had happened to me years ago. I had spent the better half of my life processing it. This wasn't something I could talk about with her.

I was on the couch with Dick, curled into a ball with my head against his shoulder. He was more relaxed, but that same exhaustion I had seen in him last night was etched into everything he did. M'gann was making a cake, stirring the batter almost absentmindedly. I couldn't tell if she was worried about Connor, who was the first to enter Dinah's room, or if she was thinking about the exercise. These days it seemed like all we did was think about the exercise. Wally was sitting with his chin in his hands, half-lying on the counter. Kaldur leaned against the cabinets on the inside of the kitchen, eyes flicking to our morose faces every few moments like he was trying to distract himself. Artemis was leaning against the couch, facing away from all of us.

Time passed. It could have been hours, days, or minutes. But eventually Dinah came back out, with Connor nowhere to be seen. She didn't speak for a moment, her gaze passing over us like she was analyzing something. "Connor is taking some time for himself," she murmured, "Artemis, if you could come with me?"

'Mis detached herself from the couch slowly, following Dinah at the pace of a snail. I reached out to grab her hand, squeezing it lightly. I tried to force how I was feeling into my eyes, that protective support. She gave me a nod in response, turning her eyes to Dinah's back as the doorway swallowed her. The door clanged shut, and the room was silent again.

When Artemis came back out, her face was stormy. I knew that look by now. It was her, 'I-don't-want-to-admit-anything-but-that-was-a-fair-point' face. She was heading for her room, and I followed her. Wally sent me a soft look, and I knew what he was asking without him having to say it. Take care of her. Make sure she's okay. I nodded, and entered Artemis' room the same way I had been following her into bathroom stalls for the past week.

She was on her bed, leaned back against the headboard. I put myself at the foot of the mattress, sitting cross-legged. The last time we had been like this, she had told me about her family. Her father, her sister, her mother. Now I was hoping she would open up again.

We sat in silence for a long time, but eventually, she broke it, "it's my fault."

I wanted to refute that. To grab her, and hug her, and tell her of course it wasn't. Instead I sat, not saying anything, and she kept talking, "I should have been faster, smarter, better. If I had never died, M'gann's subconscious wouldn't have taken over, and none of you would have gone through what you did." She was crying now, shoulders shaking, "and I'm so fucked up by all of it, but I have no right to be. I was barely even there. But I keep seeing Ollie get incinerated, and feeling myself die, and feeling what it was like to die."

"You have every right," I said softly. "You died Artemis. That's been your number-one fear since you could toddle. I was only like that for a moment, but god, I can't imagine what it would have been like for hours. You saw some of the only people you trust get killed. What you went through, it was traumatic. You're traumatized. You have every right to be."

She reached out for me, pulling me into a hug. Pleasant surprise at her trust in me bloomed in my chest, and I wrapped my arms around her, rocking back and forth. She just sobbed into my shirt, folding herself over to fit into the loop of my much-smaller frame. I hummed some French lullaby Selina always sung to me after nightmares, focused on comforting her. She cried, and cried, and cried, gasping for breath between sobs. I had no doubts that everyone could hear her back in the living room, but I just upped my humming into full-out singing, the half-remembered French gliding off my tongue with unexpected ease.

We stayed like that for a while. Her sobs subsided into shaking, and eventually I let her go when the shaking shifted into long, slow breaths. She pulled back, wiping at her face. I rubbed her shoulder, "why don't you go get some tea?"

She nodded, and we reentered the impromptu waiting room. I watched her make herself some matcha, satisfied when she sat next to Wally. Kaldur walked out of the door then, shame and guilt clear on his face. Dinah stood behind him, still seeming concerned. She looked at KF, "Wally, you next please."

He grabbed a bowl of popcorn off the counter, sending us all a last, resigned look. And then the door closed.

I grabbed Kaldur before he could zip off to the water, taking him to the 'back door' of the Cave. The sea air seemed to comfort him, his shoulders easing. I plopped down on the edge of the rock, looking up at him, "talk to me."

He took a seat, breathing a long sigh, "I almost resigned as leader of the Team. I still desire to do so."

It made sense. He had never wanted to be our leader, never wanted that burden. But he bore it so that no one else needed to. I rested a hand on his shoulder, "you can lean on us Kaldur."

"It is not the pressure of leading that I wish to be rid of," he said, "I am unfit. I abandoned you. I forced Robin into a position of power he was not ready for." His pale eyes met mine, "but how could I not save them? By all rights I should have put myself through the Zeta instead of you, but how could I watch you die knowing I could have saved you? What kind of leader would sacrifice their followers before themselves?"

"Sacrifice is necessary," I said. "I would have died happy knowing that I was saving you. I would have died happy saving any of you. I understand the urge to protect your teammates Kaldur, I understand that better than maybe anyone. You were between a rock and a hard place, and you chose the option that maybe made you the better, more compassionate person… but maybe not the better leader."

"Then how can I continue to lead the Team?"

"You'll know better for next time. This was intended to be a training exercise." I laid my head on his shoulder, "you're still young Kaldur, you don't have to be perfect. Remember what I said to you last time? You're not Atlas. The fate of the world doesn't depend on you holding the sky on your shoulders."

His voice was rough, "Robin is the better leader, but he is much too young for me to hand him this burden."

I clenched my jaw, unsure what to say. Dick had known, had snapped at M'gann when she had said that Kaldur would never have sacrificed Connor. He had been right, our leader was stolen, and we were left stripped bare and unsteady. I propped my chin up on Kaldur's shoulder, "I don't know if Dick will ever be ready to lead. I don't even think being ready to lead is something that happens to someone. I think he understands that now, after taking the reins. It isn't easy, it isn't even desirable, and every day you're going to be hit with something you're unprepared for. That's why leaders have others they can go to for support and advice. All that goes for you too, Kaldur. There was nothing you could have done to be prepared for that exercise. You did what you thought was right at the moment, what else can we ask of you?"

"It may have been morally correct," he said, "but it was not what was right for the Team at the moment. I could have saved you all trauma if I had not left you directionless. I could have saved Robin that weight."

"There's no such thing as a perfect leader, Kaldur. Hell, Batman makes mistakes. And they cost him. Your mistakes are going to cost you too, but you can't let them keep you from your duty."

He sighed, "I suppose you are right."

I flashed him a smile, "when am I ever not?" My voice softened, and I laid my head back down on his shoulder, "and Kaldur?"

"Mhm?"

"Thank you for sacrificing yourself for me, but if you ever do that again I will resurrect you and kick your ass into next Tuesday."

He chuckled, his laughter jostling my head, "duly noted."

Getting Wally to follow me wasn't difficult.

He had come back, and Dick was gone in his place. My heart ached for my best friend, but I had to focus on KF right now. I stood in the doorway of the living room, hands on my hips. He followed, grumbling as we headed towards the mission room, "what, are you coming for Dinah's job?"

I rolled my eyes, "I just know you probably didn't tell her jack shit. Now, when are you going to look what we went through in the face?"

"Like you can say anything," he spat, "have you opened up to anyone about it? No. You just play baby shrink with everyone else and ignore how you feel."

"This isn't about me," I hissed, "it's about you. About you and how you were fucking acting during that exercise."

"I don't wanna talk about it," he eyed the circle on the floor, "I wanna spar."

I tugged off my leather jacket, throwing it on the floor, "you wanna spar? Okay, let's spar."

We entered the circle, and Wally was flying at me before the floor could even light up to tally our scores. I dodged, rolling to the side as he skidded on his heels, "why the fuck were you so upset when Artemis died Wally?"

He wheeled around, managing to clip me on the shoulder with a punch as I twisted away from him, "what part of I don't wanna fucking talk about it was unclear to you?"

"Where did all that anger come from?" I asked, landing a hit to his leg, "why did you get so venomous?"

"BECAUSE SHE GOT TAKEN AWAY FROM ME," he roared in my face. We were standing stock still now, his chest heaving with heavy breaths despite the fact he should have barely been winded by now. He spoke in a whisper, "I couldn't save her. I couldn't save any of you."

"You can't save everyone, Kid."

"I can damn well try," he said, "and I didn't. I should have been the first one to die. Not her."

His eyes were welling up, and damn, didn't I understand that feeling? Hadn't that been something I had tortured myself with late at night? I just nodded at him, "I know. I know."

"I had to watch everyone die one by one, had to watch them get picked off and keep going, knowing I couldn't do a damn thing about it."

He fell to his knees then, shaking, and I joined him on the floor, "I know. I know KF, I know."

Dick dragged me into the hallway before I could demand he go anywhere with me. He was shaking, voice unsteady, "I told her I don't want to be Batman anymore."

I blinked. This information wasn't necessarily new to me. I knew Dick, I knew he didn't have the brutal tunnel-vision Bruce did when it came to missions, where the ends would always justify the means. But I hadn't expected him to give up on being Batman completely. Tossing all of that to the wayside, I furrowed my eyebrows at him, "so?"

"What if she tells him?" His voice was low, and fearful.

Bruce had tried. Had forced Dick to wear sunglasses and never tell anyone his birthday, or about his past, or open up. And I had my issues with how Bruce treated people, how he seemed to view them as tools in one moment and as friends in another. How he seemed to see Dick not as his son at times, but as his soldier. But he couldn't squash the empathy that Dick had, and my mind flashed back to my conversation with Kaldur. Did a leader really need to sacrifice it all for the sake of the end objective? Or was that just what I had been taught? I pushed up Dick's sunglasses so I could look him in the eye, his dark circles worse even then when I had seen him at two this morning, "calm down. You know Dinah better than that. She would never. And if Bruce somehow riddles it out? Fuck him. He can't decide what you do with your life."

Dick paused, "so you don't care that I don't want to be Batman?"

"I've known for a long time that you were never going to be the Dark Knight," I murmured, "it's not in you. I don't care if you take up Bruce's mantle and change it, or if you stay Robin, or if you quit being a hero altogether. All I care about is that you're happy. That's all I'm ever going to care about."

Something in his eyes snapped, and his entire posture changed. He seemed to loosen, settle, relax. Tugging me into a hug, he squeezed me so hard the wind was knocked out of me, "thank you, Belle."

"Always," I breathed.

M'gann was my last case. I knew not to push with Connor, if he wanted to talk to someone, and he decided that someone was me, he would seek out my attention.

She came out of Dinah's room on the verge of tears, and I wrapped an arm around her shoulders, leading her away from everyone else. Dinah called after me, "Arabella, you need to come in. You're next."

I shot her a look over my shoulder, "I'll be there, I have something I need to deal with first."

M'gann and I went to the hangar, her second-favourite part of the Cave apart from the kitchen, probably because it was Connor's favourite. She almost collapsed in my arms as the doors slid shut behind me, already crying, "h- how can you even look at me after what I did?"

I gathered her up, letting her cry into my shoulder, "oh M'gann, none of us blame you." She only sobbed harder, so I continued, "if anything, what you did proves how much you love us. You were so devastated by Artemis' death — Artemis, the newest member of the team — that your subconscious took over the simulation. You have such a big heart M'gann. How could we abandon you when what you did was because you love us?"

"My — my powers," she choked out between sobs, "they're dangerous, and I can't control them. I can never use them again, not if I wind up hurting someone I love."

"That's not the answer," I said. "I don't know what it's like to have superpowers, never will. But every time Wally's injured his leg, he wouldn't shut up about how awful not using his speed was. Not because it meant he couldn't wait until five minutes before an event to get ready, or because it took longer to get pizza or something. He loves running. He loves the speed, loves how it feels like flying. Loves the wind against his face and the feeling of his feet hitting the ground. Always has. Do you really never want to use your powers again? Never connect with something the way you do when you use a mindlink? You talk about the intimacy of it like it's sacred. You never want to experience something like that again?"

"Of course I do," she said, "but how can I? When I know what I'm capable of?"

"You're untrained. Your uncle said as much. And you have a lot of raw power. Do you think Wally came out of that experiment he did having full control of his powers? No. He still doesn't. He used to slam into walls and get whiplash and was so covered in bruises you couldn't tell if his skin was supposed to be white or blue. Now he has more control, but that's because he worked hard with the Flash to get there."

M'gann's voice was weak, "training with Uncle J'onn is what Black Canary suggested too."

"Well," I said, "if we're both telling you that, don't you think it's got to be good advice?"

She sat up, sniffling and wiping at her cheeks, "I guess so."

I offered her my warmest smile, "well, there you go then."

Meeting my gaze, she managed a smile back, "thank you Arabella."

"Anytime."

The waterfall in Dinah's room was as infuriating as ever. The whisper of it across the rock wall was the only sound in the room, and I was starting to go a little crazy.

Dinah had tried her usual strategy of asking how I was, and other mundane questions designed to both put me at ease and let her know how my general mental health was. But as soon as she had started doubling down, I clammed up. And now we were staring at each other in silence.

She sighed, "Arabella, I can't help you if you won't let me. You know that."

"I don't need help on this one," I said.

"I don't believe that for a minute."

Frustration boiled in my veins, "I mean it. I've got this one handled. Right now, all I care about is helping my friends."

"So are you in denial, or are you just repressing how you feel about the situation."

Silence.

"Arabella," she said, "you cannot use the rehabilitation of the rest of the team as a coping mechanism. They're fine. They're handling themselves. They will continue to see me until we are both in agreement that they no longer need counselling." Her voice took on a softer tone, "this isn't a mission, Arabella. You don't need to protect them right now, you need to protect yourself."

"They're not ready," I said, my voice breaking, "sure, Artemis and Rob have both experienced trauma before, but they weren't ready for this. I know what this is like, I've been through this before. They need me to be strong."

"None of you were ready for this," Dinah said, "you can't be ready for trauma. And just because you've experienced similar trauma in the past doesn't mean that you were in any way more prepared than the others for what happened to you."

Before I could say anything, a loud crash echoed through the Cave, followed by raised voices. I was up and out the door in an instant, not giving Dinah any time to tell me to stay. The living room/kitchen area was deserted, so I headed towards the sound, my ears leading me to the hangar. When I entered, Superboy was standing with a strange-ass motorcycle, etched with glowing ruins, and Wolf. Batman, Martian Manhunter, Captain Marvel, and Red Tornado were all standing there, along with the rest of the Team.

I pointed at the motorcycle, "what the hell is that?"

Connor looked over at me, "Sphere," he rubbed the back of his neck, "well she was, this is new."

"She?"

His eyes lit up, "that's what I said!"

"Dude," Wally said, face bright for the first time since the exercise, "you could call it the Supercycle!"

Bruce held up a hand, "Superboy. Explain what's happened."

Connor ran through his entire adventure with the 'Forever People', a group of 'New Gods' from an entirely different planet. Their run-in with Intergang, of all things. They were a relatively low-profile gang, from what Tommy told me, but powerful in their own right. When he was finished, I didn't even get a chance to ask questions before Bats started up his own interrogation, and then Connor was taken by Dinah to be psychoanalyzed. The rest of the adults swept out of the room, and we were a left standing around.

Wally was the first to break the silence, "so… pizza?"

GOTHAM

October 25, 08:15 EDT

"Happy birthday!"

Selina's voice echoed from my doorway, and I groaned, "it's too early to be awake."

"Nope, I have plans for today," Selina said, pulling my covers away, "starting with a nice breakfast out."

I glared up at her, "it's my birthday."

"And fourteen years ago, I was on my back in excruciating pain giving birth to you. The rest of your day is clear, but you can give me breakfast for mother-daughter time and supper at Bruce's tonight."

"Will Alfred make chocolate cake?"

"Alfred promised to make a chocolate cake with three layers, and the two on top are reserved just for you."

"Well," I said, rolling out of bed, "I suppose I can make that kind of sacrifice."

She laughed, loud and full. I hadn't dared to tell her what was going on with me after the exercise. I had feigned normalcy ever since she had come home. Time and distance from what had happened would fix it. Selina's voice was bright, "don't you want your present?"

Selina had a running plan for every present she was going to give me up until I was twenty-one. Last year she had given me a grand collection of makeup, deeming thirteen old enough to start wearing it, and she had Louboutins planned for fifteen, a car for my sixteenth, so on and so forth. I frowned, "it's pearls this year, isn't it?"

She drew a black velvet box out from behind her back, handing it to me to open, "not just any pearls, South Sea pearls at gem quality. I got them white though, I know how much you hate golden pearls."

I opened the case, the three-piece set taking my breath away. I wasn't much for jewelry, but I had always loved pearls, and this set was beautiful. They were perfect in every way, with a pristine colour and lustre, no imperfections, and they were just the right size to be worn casually or with evening wear. Setting the box down on the bed, I flung myself at Selina, "merci maman."

Her rose perfume wrapped around me like a cloud as she hugged me back, "any time, ma belle."

MOUNT JUSTICE

October 25, 12:23 EDT

When I entered the Cave, it was a ghost town. No one was standing in the mission room, and my voice echoed in the silence, "anyone here?"

A beat passed, and then M'gann's voice came from the kitchen, "in here!"

I settled, muscles slackening. There was no danger. Heading towards the kitchen, I called ahead of me, "is it just you? Where is everyone?"

Before she could answer, I hit the kitchen doorway and stopped dead. The room was filled with balloons and streamers, and M'gann was standing a foot in front of me with a set of cupcakes, each one iced to make an overall picture of HAPPY BIRTHDAY. The rest of the team stood behind her, with noisemakers and party hats I was very positive M'gann had forced them to wear.

Tears welled up in my eyes, and my breath curled in my chest. This was so unbelievably sweet. My hand flew to my mouth, "how did you even know it was my birthday?"

Dick raised his hand, "I might have told everyone."

"Rob," I said, half touched, half annoyed. I had promised not to tell anyone on the Team my birthday either, as a kind of show of solidarity. My resolve solidified, to hell with what Bruce had to say. Come December, Dick would be getting a party of epic proportions.

M'gann handed me the centre cupcake, the candle stuck in it already burning, "make a wish!"

I took the cupcake from her, holding it at a safe distance from my face. What did I wish for? Closing my eyes, I blew outwards; I wish that I'll never lose any of you.

Smoke curled up from the candle, and the team went a little a crazy with their noisemakers. Laughing, I pulled the candle from my cupcake to lick off the icing, "thank you guys, this is amazing."

"Oh!" M'gann said, face a little guilty, "we forgot to sing Happy Birthday."

"Don't worry about it, it was perfect," I said, setting the cupcake down to give her a hug. She squeezed back, and I could feel her grin against the skin of my shoulder. Her first grin since the exercise.

Pulling back to eye the cupcakes, I smiled at my teammates, "are you guys going to help eat these or what?"

We fell on them like the hungry teenagers we were. Which lead to eating ridiculous amounts of junk food, watching old movies, and just generally fooling around. Eventually, we collapsed on the new couch in a big, sweaty pile. It was much bigger than the last, and much better suited for movie marathons. My head was in Dick's lap, and my feet were tangled with Artemis', and we were all giggling at a truly terrible pun Wally had made.

Looking around, I had to wonder if my wish was working already.

GOTHAM

October 25, 19:58 EDT

I was half-tempted to lap up the remaining bits of cake and icing when I finished my plate. "That was as amazing as usual, Alfred," I said, leaning back in my chair with a groan.

He smiled, "I hope your birthday meal was to your satisfaction, Miss Williams."

"I really don't think I've ever eaten this much in my life." It was true. Between everything I ate at the Cave earlier, and Alfred making a freaking five-course menu with all my favourite foods, my stomach had probably expanded to ten times its original size.

"How are you finding your fourteenth birthday?" Bruce asked, "feeling old yet?"

"I don't feel any different than I did yesterday," I said simply. If anything had made me feel older, it had been this past week in its entirety. We had all changed some, each of us holding a sort of harrowed wisdom I had come to recognize on the faces of our mentors. It was the kind of age you could only accumulate by staring the apocalypse in the face and making it through to the other side.

Bruce's face grew graver as he seemed to realize what I meant, "birthdays can be that way."

Alfred cleared his throat, "Miss Williams, would you like your present from us now?"

I nodded, hoping to shake off the tension in the air, and Alfred darted back into the kitchen for a moment, returning with a rather large box that was mostly unwrapped, with the exception of some silk ribbon. Pulling that off, I lifted the lid to reveal an assortment of things. At the very top were a new pair of pointe shoes, the satin soft and gleaming. I pulled them out, marvelling at the make, "these are beautiful."

Bruce smiled, "keep going."

Underneath was a book, and I practically started vibrating in my seat. It was covered in soft, worn, navy blue cloth, and as I turned it to look at the spine, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE gleamed at me in gilt letters. My eyes flew to Bruce, "is this a first edition?"

He nodded, and I flung myself out of my chair first to hug him, and then to hug Alfred, heart flying to my throat. The Brit hugged me back, laughter in his voice as he spoke, "there are footnotes from Jane Austen's contemporaries in there too."

I squeezed him harder, voice coming out in a rush, "thankyouthankyouthankyou!"

He sounded amused, "there's one more thing."

Finally releasing him from my stranglehold and turning back to the box, I spotted a singular key, silver and gleaming. Fishing it out, I stared at it curiously, "what's this for?"

Bruce stood from the table, beckoning the rest of us to follow, "why don't you come and see?"

We started walking for the front door of the Manor, and I nudged Dick, "do you know what it is?"

"Can't say," he said, smirking that familiar smirk for the first time in the last week.

I narrowed my eyes at him, "curiosity killed the cat you know."

He laughed, pointing towards the door, "and satisfaction is going to bring you back in a minute now."

As we stepped outside, I laid eyes on the most beautiful motorcycle I had ever seen. It was pure matte black, and the body was light and compact. It was going to go fast, and it was going to look beautiful doing it. I didn't move, gaping at the machine before me.

Alfred spoke, light and teasing, "do you like it, Miss Williams?"

I practically ran down the steps, desperate to touch it. The handlebars were flat and the metal was light, wrapped in a comfortable yet powerful grip. I could barely breathe, "like it? I think I just died and ascended."

"I would like to note," Selina said, "that it's technically illegal for you to be driving that. And by technically I mean very illegal."

"I've had a motorcycle at home for like, forever," I said, "and I can get my learner's permit now, so."

"Said motorcycle was not given to you by me," she said, cutting eyes at Bruce, "and it was intended for superhero use only."

"Let her breathe a little, Selina," Bruce said, and smoke started to pour out of her ears.

"Let her breathe a little? That's some talk coming from you — "

"While they fight, do you want your present from me now?" Dick said, leaning in to whisper conspiratorially.

I blinked at him, "you have another one?"

"Just come and see," he said, pulling me away from Bruce and Selina's argument and into the gardens towards the back of the Manor.

The air was cooler here, shaded by trees and hedges. The sun had set over an hour ago, and the only light in the gardens came from the moon and periodically placed lanterns. We headed towards the fountain, which provided both seating and perhaps the best lighting at night. The lantern light caught on the ribbons of water that fell from the fountain's top tier, making the waves of it glint and sparkle. The sweet, rich scent of night-blooming flowers drifted over on the breeze, the picturesqueness of the whole scene becoming a little ridiculous.

Dick finally stopped walking, pulling a small silk box from the pocket of his hoodie. My curiosity was piqued. Dick's presents were always ridiculously thoughtful, and both nice to have, and practical. It was pretty unusual for him to buy me jewelry. Handing the box off to me, I noted slight nervousness in his grin. Upon cracking the lid open with a soft click, I saw a stunning necklace set against a pillow.

My breath stilled in my chest as I drew it from the box, the silver of it catching in the dim lighting. It was minimalistic in style, just a small white diamond on a thin chain. My favourite kind of jewelry. I laid it back in the box for a moment, smiling at Dick, "it's beautiful. I love it."

His eyes were bright, "it's not just a necklace you know."

Eyes flicking back to it in surprise, I automatically shifted to hold it further away from me. Dick burst into laughter, and I glared up at him, "what is it then?"

He reached over to pick it up, prying back the cover to reveal the tiniest of buttons, "a truly beautiful piece of micro-engineering, that's what. It works kind of like a beacon. If you're ever in trouble, press the button."

I softened, blown away, "and then what?"

"There's a few levels of urgency. One press is kind of like 'I need some help over here', and it sends a distress signal to the Batcomputer. Two presses is more urgent, and Bruce, Selina, Alfred, and I, as well as any nearby team members receive a personal notification. Three presses gets sent to everyone from before plus the Cave computer and any nearby police stations, and it's more like 'if I don't get help in the next ten minutes I'm going to die'. Four presses is the 'I am actively dying' level and it sends all the same notifications as a level three, plus a distress signal to the Justice League computer, plus personal notifications to any League members in proximity, and a message to nearby hospitals. And the chain measures your breathing and heart rate, and if either of those go out of whack for longer than what could be considered normal, a level four alert gets sent out."

My breath stilled in my chest, "did you make it?"

He grew sheepish, "yeah. I had some ideas for it before, but after the training exercise I really got into it. It's also ridiculously resistant to pressure, corrosion, and has some great tensile strength. Oh, and it's waterproof."

Flinging my arms around him, I couldn't keep a few tears from escaping, "fuck the motorcycle, this is my favourite present."

"Glad you like it," he murmured into my hair, his smile pressing against the crown of my head.

Pulling back, I handed it to him and turned around, pulling my hair up from my neck, "here, I'm never taking this thing off, I swear."

"Well," he said, looping the chain around my neck, "I hope not. That would kind of defeat the purpose."

The gem settled perfectly in the dip of my collarbone, and I shivered at the blend of cold from the necklace and the heat of Dick's hands. His fingers almost lingered at the nape of my neck, and a twinge of an emotion I couldn't quite place echoed in my gut, fluttering up towards my chest. I wheeled back around in an attempt to get a grip, "thank you, Dick. I mean it, this is amazing."

His returning smile was rueful, "anything to keep you safe."

Biting my lip, I took a seat on the side of the fountain, "the training exercise really screwed with you, huh?"

He snorted, sitting down next to me, "that's the understatement of the century."

"I don't just mean trauma," I said slowly, forcibly thinking each word through, "I mean you." I tapped his chest, "who you are. What you believe."

"Well, yeah," he said, voice quiet, "I don't think anyone could go through something like that and not be a fundamentally different person. But it forced me to answer some questions. Hard ones, ones I've been avoiding."

"Like what?" I prodded.

"What it means to be a leader. What's necessary to be a good leader. If I want to be one at all." He stared out at the gardens, hedges and flowers disappearing into shadow, "do the ends really justify the means? At what point is the result not worth the sacrifice?" Running his hands through his hair, he looked at me helplessly, "I don't like who I was when I was leading us in there. I don't like who I became. I had everything I've ever wanted — a place as the leader, respect, the ability to make the important decisions. And I sent Connor to the slaughter without so much as a second thought."

"You were between a rock and a hard place," I said, "what were you supposed to? Let Earth be destroyed and everyone in it be slaughtered?" Reaching out for his hand, I tugged at him to look at me, "you didn't force anyone to do anything. The only one who objected to Connor doing what he did was M'gann, and that's because she's in love with him. We all signed up to be there. We could have backed out at any time. You didn't know if anyone was going to be hurt. It's not like you were strapping people to a table against their will and conducting fatal experiments on them."

"But I didn't hesitate," he said. "Police officers who are forced to kill in the line of duty hesitate. Soldiers hesitate. Hell, executioners hesitate. What does that say about me?"

"That you've had not hesitating drilled into you since you put on the suit. And, might I add, that this was a simulation. If some part of M'gann was aware enough to properly experience grief for Artemis and take everything over, don't you think that maybe some part of you was aware enough to subconsciously realize that the whole thing was fake? Especially as the most rational, logical one out of all of us?" I drew my thumb over the palm of his hand, staring down at the woven lines there, "you have so much empathy, Dick. You care, so, so much. And the fact that you're agonizing over this proves that you're not a bad person. You're a good person who was forced to make difficult, morally gray decisions."

"Morally gray," he said slowly, "there's a word for it."

"Two words, actually," I said, grinning a little. He shot me a glare, and I couldn't help the laughter that laced my voice, "look, I can't promise you that you'll never have to make decisions like that again. I can't promise that you'll never have to bear the burden of being the leader again, carry that weight. But I can promise you this: wherever you are, whoever you become, whether you never lead anything, or you take up Bruce's mantle, or you find your own ragtag group of orphans to order around while busting crime — you'll always have me. I will always be there, helping you make those decisions, bear that burden."

His hand tightened around mine, his breathing loose and shaky, "Belle, when we were dying, what was it you said to me?"

I blinked, confusion sweeping over me, "when we were dying?"

"Across the mindlink. You said something, but I could barely hear it."

A dim memory washed over me, interwoven with fire, brimstone, and fear. The world ripping apart at the edges, a set of last words thrown across our fading psychic link. I dropped his gaze, feigning interest in his palm again, "it was a goodbye, I guess. 'Wherever we're going, I'll find you.' That's what I said."

The sudden weight of him knocked me backwards a little, his arms wrapping around me. My heartbeat quickened as he murmured against the crook of my neck, the skin there heating, "I love you."

My stomach exploded in warmth, something in my chest stirring. I lifted my head out from against his chest to rest on his shoulder, "I love you too."

God I was fucked.

GOTHAM

October 26, 02:23 EDT

The ground was slick beneath my feet — too slick. I tumbled to my stomach, ice shavings hitting the back of my neck as something smashed into the ground behind me, tearing up the ice beneath it.

Artemis.

I flipped over, the glow of her blonde hair in the arctic sun all that mattered. Stretching out a hand to call for her, my head snapped to the left of its own accord, forced by an unseen hand. Some huge, amorphous black creature stood directly in front of my face. Its skin looked like an oil spill, constantly moving like it was made of liquid. It didn't have a face so much as a curved cavern that formed a mouth, making it look like it was always smiling. It opened said mouth, roaring in my face. Baby hairs flew back from my face, and the smell of its breath was hauntingly familiar. Gunpowder, hair burning, the stink of melting skin and fat.

It launched back from me, wheeling on Artemis. I wanted to scrabble to my feet, to fling myself at it, to protect her. But my limbs wouldn't move, and I stayed rooted to the spot as the creature drew closer to where she stood, bowstring pulled taut as she aimed an arrow at it.

It subsumed her. The skin of it expanded, washing over her and tugging her in. Her scream pierced my ears, echoing against the icy mountains surrounding. I screamed too, my throat growing raw almost immediately as genuine, primal fear took me.

The last thing I saw of her was her face, twisted in pain and horrified.

My eyes flew open, my breath coming in short, shallow pants. I had to resist the urge to throw up, the sound would wake Selina if I hadn't already.

She was concerned. She was always watching me, had piled more bacon and toast on my plate this morning when I had barely eaten anything. I had a feeling either Bruce or Dinah had told her to leave well alone, because she hadn't pushed me to tell her how I was feeling. But I hated to worry her, and I could tell she was. I could at least give her the peace of thinking I slept at night.

I rolled over, curling in on myself. My sheets stuck to my sweat-soaked skin, falling away to leave patches of goosebumps as I tugged my blankets closer to me. I focused on pushing the image of Artemis' dying face out of my mind. Instead, I tried to picture her happy, the few times I had seen her genuine smile. Sparkling eyes, mouth curved softly, the slightest hint of a dimple in her left cheek. Bright. Loved. Safe.

Sleep would not come easy.

MOUNT JUSTICE

October 26, 17:05 EDT

Breathe. Kick. Step. Punch. Kick. Turn.

Breathe. Kick. Step. Punch. Kick. Turn.

Breathe. Kick. Step. Punch. Kick. Turn.

I went through the movement again and again, the poor plastic dummy I was using starting to bust apart at the seams. It hung limply from its pole, the interior padding bursting out in patches.

Breathe. Kick. Step. Punch. Kick. Turn.

Breathe. Kick. St —

A hand wrapped around my shoulder, "Arabella."

Suppressing the urge to flick the other person over my shoulder, I turned to find Artemis standing next to me. Her face from my dream last night, contorted in pain, eyes bulging out of the sockets, hit me harder than a transport truck. I reeled back a little, trying to maintain some sense of composure, "what's up?"

She stood firm, unshakeable, "an intervention."

"Intervention?"

"Look, the rest of us can tell you're not doing okay," she said. I opened my mouth to protest, but she raised a hand to silence me, "I know you want us to think you are, but you're not. I get it. You're the only person I've opened up to about this at all. But if I hadn't, I think I might've gone crazy. Like you're going crazy."

"I'm not going crazy," I managed to spit out, "I'm not exactly well-adjusted, but crazy is a strong word."

"Arabella, you've been training yourself tired every single day. Have you looked at yourself in a mirror recently? You have dark circles the size of the Empire State, I've never seen your hair so ratty, and you look like you've lost ten pounds since the exercise."

"Hey there Pot," I said, "my name's Kettle. How are you?"

"I was a total mess, yes," she said bluntly, "I'm still a mess. But I'm going to Dinah's stupid therapy sessions, I shower every day, I don't train until I can't. I'm trying."

"How do you know I'm not going to Dinah's sessions?"

"She and Oliver were talking about it last night. I was eavesdropping. And you sure don't look like someone who's been going to therapy." She rubbed her face, expression growing softer, "I just want you to talk to me, Ara. Like I talked to you. You… you're my friend. I want to help."

I took in her face. The care and concern. And I was so tired. She was right. My days since the exercise were all a blurry mess, like someone had dragged their hand through the ink of them, leaving nothing but smudges.

Looking down, I focused on undoing my hand wrap. My voice came out small and shaky, "I had a nightmare about you last night."

She sat down on the training room floor, patting the space next to her, "tell me about it."

I did, detailing the creature's face, the fact its breath smelled like what the Mothership had before I died. The sight of her dying face. She barely spoke, letting me ramble almost incoherently. I kept going, telling her about all my other nightmares, what is was like to watch Dick and Wally burn in front of me. The throwing up, how I had taken to not eating to keep from throwing up. The desperate need to train until I couldn't think of anything else. How I had gone to Dick's house to check on him, and how psychotic that made me feel.

When I was done, she cocked her head to the side, "can I ask you a personal question?"

Snorting, I gestured for her to continue, "isn't that what this is?"

Her stare made me feel like I was being X-rayed, "why are you so dependent on Robin?"

I blinked, "what do you mean?"

"Your entire life seems to revolve around him. And I know we tease you about liking him all the time, but past that. It's like he's the centre of your world. Why?"

The cold feeling of realization washed over me. My first instinct was to deny it, but Artemis had a point. Why did I spend so much time thinking about Dick? Sure, he was my best friend, but Artemis was working her way up to that status and she didn't occupy my mind half so much. "I — I don't know?" I said, stammering, "I guess it's because… Rob was the first person I let myself get close to. Even with Carla, even though I would've called her family, there was always a distance." Her gray eyes were warm, encouraging, so I kept rambling. "You know what it's like, you lived it. When you're in that headspace — just surviving — barely managing not to starve or freeze to death every single day, there isn't really as much room for loving someone."

"But that changed," Artemis said, stating more than asking.

I nodded, "I wanted to be closest with Selina, I figured I would be because she's my mom. But we're so different. And Robin and I, we are different, he's so much more logical, calmer, whatever. But we had gone through so many of the same things. He made me feel… understood. Selina and Bats, they wanted to know what was going on with me, wanted me to open up so they could riddle me out. But Rob made me feel like he got what I was going through without needing to do that. Like he would just be there, and if I wanted to open up he would listen. Like you make me feel. And I guess along the way, he just became synonymous with home, and safety, and eventually in a way, love."

"And do you think that maybe you're too dependent on him?" Artemis asked.

"Probably," I said, the recognition stinging. "I mean, when Zatanna was here I got my panties all in a twist, because for one, she's annoying. But in a way, I felt like she was inserting herself where I belonged. I guess I never realized how possessive I was."

"I think," Artemis said slowly, "that's kind of a side-effect of where you were when you met him. I get it. When you live that way, anything that's yours is yours, and you'd fight tooth and nail to keep it because people are always going to want to take it. So he became yours in a way, and now you'd do anything not to lose him."

"What, so I didn't have people I loved, so as soon as I did I got possessive over them?"

"Yeah, and as soon as you feel like that person can be taken away from you, you freak out. Like when they die, or cute girls take their attention away."

"But Rob isn't something I can possess," I sputtered, "he's a person. What the hell?"

"I guess that's something that you need to think about," Artemis said, shrugging, "I'm still Team You Have an Unrealized Crush on Him."

The memory of my fluttering heartbeat last night hit me, and I looked up at her shyly, "about that, quick question, what does having a crush on someone feel like?"

Something in her eyes sharpened, curiosity glowing there, "well, what are your symptoms besides rampant jealousy?"

I held up my fingers, ticking them off, "flutteriness, quickening heart rate, shakiness in both voice and legs, unexpected and unexplained warmth in both my chest and stomach, etcetera."

"Do you, like, find him attractive?"

My eyebrows pinched together, "doesn't everyone?"

She exploded into laughter, falling backwards in a heap, "you've got it bad!"

Face heating, I swatted at her, "he's a good-looking guy!"

Her laughter was devolving into little giggles, "yeah, but not everyone finds him attractive attractive. Like yes, he's an objectively cute kid. He'll look great in five years. But the idea of thinking about him in that way makes me feel gross."

I paused to think about it, my curiosity quickly eclipsed by dawning horror, "oh my god it doesn't make me feel gross."

"Exactly," she said, "it makes you feel all warm and squishy, maybe a little embarrassed. You like him."

Flopping back onto the floor, I let myself lay there groaning, "this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me."

"Okay, Miss Dramatic," Artemis said, flopping down right next to me, "at least you've stared it in the face. Now you can do something about it."

I knew she meant that about more than just my crush on Dick. Fuck. I had a crush on Dick. A sense of both duty and resignation settled over me, "well, clearly he doesn't like me that way. So. I'll drop the possessiveness shit, and hopefully we can all keep going with our lives as smoothly as possible."

She seemed to tighten in a way, and as she spoke I had a feeling she was asking for more than one reason, "so you're not going to fight for him?"

"No point fighting a battle you can't win," I said simply, the sting of it burrowing deep in my chest to set up shop for quite possibly the rest of my life, "and I love him more than anything. So I'd do anything to make him happy, even if that means I'm miserable."

"You're more selfless than I am, then," she said, barking a laugh.

Choosing my words carefully, I spoke in a way that hopefully delivered some impact, "this is a special case. Earth orbits around the Sun. All actions have an equal and opposite reaction. I love Rob. He'll never like me that way. It has nothing to do with other situations, like ones where you've been told on multiple occasions by multiple people that you have a hell of a lot more than a fighting chance."

Her cheeks reddened, and she broke my gaze, "but he doesn't…"

Reaching out to grab her hand, I forced her to look back at me, "he's a fucking dumbass with tunnel vision. One of these days, he's going to realize what's up with M'gann, and he's going to look around and realize what's been there the whole time."

"Maybe Robin will be like that too," Artemis said softly.

I tugged her into a hug, the tip of my nose burning as tears threatened to make an appearance. She was hopeful for me. She had to be, in a way, due to the comparison she had drawn in her head between our situations.

But I knew better.

GOTHAM

October 27, 01:06 EDT

Wind blew through the leaves of our magnolia, sending pinkish-white petals drifting through the air. They fell on Dick, Babs, and I like confetti. Babs was pulling out her phone, aiming the camera at me with a bright grin, "oh, they're all in your hair! You look so pretty, I'm taking a photo!"

She brought her phone up over her face, blocking her features from my vision as I gave her my best smile. But instead of a shutter noise, a low hum emitted from the phone, and one of those unforgettable beams of light shot from the camera lens. Lowering the camera, I saw that her face wasn't hers. It was that same oil spill, the inky blackness rippling across foreign features that didn't belong atop Barbara's shoulders. It roared, sending the scent of gunpowder and burning human bodies billowing across the otherwise magnolia-scented breeze.

That cavernous mouth curled up in something just enough like a grin to be unsettling, and the last thing I saw before I died were my own bones, my hands lit up from the inside out to show my skeleton.

I woke up screaming.

It didn't help that my guest room at the Manor was so dark, the lack of city lights outside my window making the room as dark as it had been when the ink-monster-slash-alien thing. Or the grave.

Slapping a hand over my mouth, I cursed myself for having made so much noise. Now someone like Bruce or Alfred was going to come barrelling in here, demanding to know what the hell was going on.

And I would have to explain.

Leaning back against the pillows, I prayed that they would leave well enough alone. Not least because I didn't have the words to explain. I wouldn't be able to lay my brain out in any kind of reasonable, logical manner. And I had a feeling deep in my gut that this was the sort of thing that defied logic, something that couldn't be rationalized no matter how long Bruce stared at me with his X-ray eyes, or Alfred interrogated me with his flawless Socratic arguments.

Nothing stirred in the hall. Maybe, just maybe, I hadn't been screaming for long. And they had been in deep sleep. They had heard it, roused slightly, deemed it unreal, and rolled back over.

Light poured into my room from the hall, Dick's face peering into the darkness, "Belle?"

Squinting against the light, my shaking hands fell to my blanket, "what is it?"

He turned sheepish, rubbing the back of his neck like he always did when he felt awkward, "I heard you screaming, you okay?"

I should've told him it was a bug or something. That I had seen a spider in the darkness and that he should go back to bed. Adhere to my new rules about being so damned reliant on him and shoulder on alone. Instead, I let tears well up in my eyes as I furiously shook my head, shoulders starting to shake.

He crossed the room in three long strides, grabbing my hand and tugging me out of the bed and towards the hall, towards his bedroom. As soon as we passed the threshold, his familiar sandalwood and cloves scent practically enveloped me. It emanated from everything in here, like he had stained every inch of the space.

Getting me settled on the foot of his bed, he dropped to his knees in front of me, his hands still wrapped around mine, "what's wrong?"

Everything burst out of me all at once, and I rambled for what had to be twenty minutes. I told him how the training exercise haunted me, how I worried even more about everyone collectively losing their minds. How I had devoted myself to taking care of everyone while I had refused to deal with everything that was wrong with me. I detailed every single nightmare I could remember, waiting for him to flinch as I described the sight of his face melting off. It never came.

Instead, when I had finished, he spoke quietly, "I get them too. The nightmares. Specifically this kind of reoccurring one where we're standing around in the Cave in that strategy meeting again, and suddenly I'm holding a knife and I order you to walk into it. And you just… do. You casually gut yourself just because I told you to."

I tugged him up onto the bed with me, curling up against his headboard, "you would never."

He settled down too, his free hand coming up to support his head, "but wouldn't I? That's basically what I asked Connor to do."

"No. You asked to him to risk his life in the most important mission possible, and his life would've gone towards saving the world. It wasn't wasted."

Breathing out slowly, he offered me the tiniest of smiles, "you always know what to say."

I poked his nose, "it's because I know you, dummy."

"You really do, don't you ya amar?" he said, his teensy-tiny smile growing just a bit wider.

His new nickname for me, the Arabic foreign and untranslatable to me. I had, in quite possibly one of my most amazing feats of restraint, refrained from Googling it. But I was sleepy, and just generally exhausted, so my mouth spoke before I gave it permission, "what does that mean?"

Surprise stiffened him, "what, ya amar?" I nodded, and he swallowed before continuing, "literally, it translates to 'the moon', or 'my moon'. It's kind of a flowery thing to say though, because of the comparison. It's calling someone the light that lets you see at night." The light that lets you see at night. Damn him, the parts of my brain that I had just recently decided to thoroughly squash were going to have a freaking field day with that one. He cleared his throat, his voice stumbling a little over the French pronunciation, "what does ma motié mean?"

Heat filled my cheeks, and I burrowed deeper into one of his pillows in an attempt to hide it from him. "It's…" I decided to phrase it as clinically as possible, "it's a term of endearment. It literally means, 'my half', but it's intended to be translated as 'my other half', or 'my better half'."

Smiling ruefully, he dropped my hand to push a curl off the side of my face. His fingers lingered, tracing the curve of the crescent-shaped scar on my temple, "honestly I think you'd be my better half."

Oh my sweet lord I was going to die, right then and there. In a last-ditch attempt not to turn into a puddle of human goo, I managed to breathe some words out, "do you know how that idiom came about?"

His quiet laughter shook the mattress, "do pray tell."

"I read about it in one of those one-hundred-and-fifty facts you didn't know books when I was like, eight. And looking back, it was suspiciously sourced, so take this with a grain of salt. But apparently legend goes that in some tribe of unspecified ethnicity, some guy committed murder for unspecified reasons. At his trial, his wife threw herself at the feet of the judge and said that if they were going to kill him, they'd be punishing her too when she hadn't committed a crime, so it would be an unfair punishment. The judge agreed, and the man escaped the death penalty, all because of his 'better half'."

He was grinning full-on now, and the world was turning delightfully hazy at the edges as sleep pulled at me, "that sounds absolutely ridiculous."

"You're absolutely ridiculous," I mumbled, barely awake.

His fingers danced across my scar again, "go to sleep. I'll be here when you wake up."

The thought was absurdly comforting, my mouth curving into the softest of smiles as my body and brain finally gave out.

He would be okay. And so would I.

So it's been a hot minute. Honestly, I feel like I say that every time I update, so y'all probably expect this by now. I've been working a lot, my mental health hasn't been great, shit is going down, my life never really settles down. In better news, I should be able to buy a new laptop by the end of summer! The one I'm using right now is currently being held together by tape, so it'll be nice to be able to carry one around and write in more places than my bedroom!

I'm actually pretty proud of this chapter. It's almost 12,000 words, I tried some new things; that series of vignettes with Arabella talking to everyone is supposed to evoke the same kind of feeling as a montage, so let me know how that felt to you guys. I feel like I learn a bunch about writing between each chapter, and I try to do something new every time I update. So while hilariously cringy to read the early chapters of this fic (new readers, please tell me how you do it, they're so awful,) it's nice to see how far I've come. Speaking of, I plan on dividing my writing time (which there will be more of nowadays) in two, so half of it is going to be spent on updating the old chapters and the other half on putting out new ones. I'm really excited for this story's trajectory now, Failsafe is kind of the crux of Arabella's first arc, and now the juicy stuff can get into full swing. I also may have sprinkled quite a bit of foreshadowing into this chapter, so haul out y'all's magnifying glasses. And Arabella turned fourteen! Fun facts, I put her birthday as October twenty-fifth partially out of plot convenience and partially because I have a MAJOR astrology obsession and you best believe that bitch is a Scorpio.

REVIEWS:

HephaestusBuilds: Hoping I dove deep enough into the aftereffects! I have a lot of personal experience with trauma and PTSD, so attempting to do it justice was really important to me. Writing the nightmares was especially important, because even though having PTSD doesn't necessarily guarantee nightmares, the ones that result from it tend to be really trippy and terrifying. I totally agree that this episode is crucial for Robin's character arc, and I hope I did a good job of showing it. The kids are literal infants, so there won't be any kind of overly sexual stuff when they're this young, as that's something I'm very much so not comfortable with. I don't think Robin's crush on Zatanna is entirely based on looks, but there are other ways to avoid a love triangle than to knock Zatanna away as a love interest entirely ;) Season two chewed me up and spat me back out, and I have a total love-hate relationship with it. I plan on carrying the plot through season one, and then it's going to start deviating from canon. Will there be timeskips? Perchance. BATCAT IS MY OTP AND YOU BEST BELIEVE THEY ARE IN VIOLENT LOVE WITH EACH OTHER IN THIS FIC. No spoilers, but you'll be seeing more of them. Thank you for your long reviews! They're my favourite kind, and I love seeing specific readers come back to review. I hope you enjoyed the chapter!

Aryanne: Thank you! That was what I was going for, haha. The angst train has arrived, hope you enjoyed it!

Guest 2.0: I see you left this on chapter two. Chapter two sears my retinas, and it's the first chapter getting overhauled partially out of chronology and also because THAT DATE SCENE IS THE WORST THING OH MY GOD THIRTEEN/FOURTEEN YEAR-OLD SARAH WHAT WERE YOU THINKING. I started this story when I was in middle school (for reference, I'm going into my senior year in September and turning seventeen in October), so the first half of it is just all my cringy middle school fanfic come back to haunt me. Thank you for the compliment! I love seeing improvement in my writing, and it can only get better so that's what I strive for!

KindOfDone: Hi! You probably won't see this, but just in case you come back, I'll answer you here. So a lot of the first half of this arc of the story was focused on establishing Dick and Arabella's relationship, as well as her dependence on him. It's a character flaw, and one that she's starting to recognize now thanks to Artemis being blunt as all hell (gotta love her). I guess this chapter came a little too late in terms of development on that front, and I'm sorry it frustrated you so much. I feel like I have shown scenes of Arabella without Dick (dancing, hanging out with the girls, etc.), and there'll be more of that now that she's had her moment of realization. I actually plan on introducing more new characters soon, but I like introducing OCs slowly so as not to water down what makes canon so amazing. I'm sorry you had such a bad time with this story, hopefully you find something you like more!

Lorien Legacy: Thank you! Hopefully this didn't come too late!

C.B Weasley: That is such an amazing compliment, thank you! I really wanted to get y'all inside Arabella's head, because obviously this whole thing would be ridiculously traumatizing, and I wanted everyone to experience that with her. I hope you liked the little vignette between Arabella and Kaldur, their kind of sibling-esque dynamic is a lot like the one I have with my sister, so it's always fun to write them! I hope you liked this chapter, thank you for always reviewing, you make my day!

rinpup14: Right? Failsafe has always been one of my favourite episodes, so writing it was a hell of a challenge. I cried at the keyboard!

blackcharizard762: anyone who's curious, this is my brother (yes, the one who told me the first half of my story was awful and I needed to write him. Send him your thank yous for the rewrite of the prologue.)

Briezy23: Thank you so much! That means so much honestly, I wish I could accurately depict how validated I feel right now.

tjgrov157: That's really reassuring, actually. I write the first draft of all of my chapters pretty much line by line while watching the episodes, so as much of the original dialogue and action that can be preserved makes it into the story. My number one goal is represent these characters accurately, and I'm glad you think I've done that!

And that looks like everyone! Sorry again for the wait guys. And thank you for always being so nice in y'all's reviews, there's nothing more disheartening than a negative one, so it's so lovely to have all these positive messages to point at and remind myself that there are people who like my writing, and all I can do is improve. I'm headed to bed, (it's almost 3:30 in the morning here,) but I love you all, and I'll see you next time!