The actual Jinx walked shakily down the corridor and debated in her head whether she should call Robin; he had told her that if Wally was about to find her that she should call him so he could show up and do enough damage control to allow her to escape and move on to a new identity. She'd never done it yet, but then again she'd never run into Wally since then, until now that was. But she didn't particularly want to change her identity, she liked being a doctor and had worked hard to get where she was, if she could maybe foist his case off onto someone else and lay low maybe he'd leave the hospital without incident and never know she was there. She shook her head, what was she thinking? She's seen the way that he was looking at her, it was that look of his that said the he suspected something and wasn't going to let the matter go until he'd found out whatever it was that she'd been hiding, in this case it would be her identity.
Jinx squeezed her eyes shut and pinched the bridge of her nose; she'd have to call him. She headed over to the nearest staff phone outside the X-ray department and picked up the receiver, she let out a shaky breath and then dialled the number Robin had given her and she'd memorised since day one. She cradled the receiver against her ear and listened to the phone ring.
"Hello?" a startled voice said picking up the phone.
"Robin… it's Jinx." Jinx said quietly as she looked around warily, none of her co workers knew her as Jinx, Jennifer yes, but not Jinx. But it's not like he knew her secret identity name or her his, so it's have to be Robin and Jinx.
"Jinx? Wh-what's going on?" Robin stammered in shock.
"Oh well, gee, I just felt like a little chat- what do you think is going on?! He's here! I work in the hospital and I just happened to get assigned to him, he tried to run through a building or something and I think he's starting to recognise me." Jinx snapped feeling stressed.
"He's THERE? With you?!" Robin gasped in a voice that almost sounded excited to Jinx.
"Yes, why else would I be calling you?" Jinx shot back frustrated with how unhelpful Robin was being.
"Don't let him leave! I'll be right there!" He said in a rush.
"Wait! What am I supposed to do in the-" Jinx yelped but was cut off by the dial tone, "meantime…" she finished to herself as she hung up the phone.
"Dr. West! I was looking for you, the fracture team said that they're ready so I went to his room to go find you but it was locked and you weren't there." The junior doctor babbled at her as he tugged Wally behind him by the wrist. The red head stared piercingly at Jinx and tilted his head slightly as he looked at her, Jinx shifted uncomfortably.
"Well? Are you going to take him there or just stand there all day?" Jinx snapped abruptly.
"I- yes, sorry doctor West." The junior doctor mumbled at her and pulled Wally West along behind him. Jinx lowered her head to avoid his inquisitive stare as they passed, Jinx exhaled slowly and looked at her watch, how long was it going to take Robin to get here? She'd have to find some way to delay his treatment but not let him see her any more than necessary, now… how on earth was she going to do that?
Jinx paced back and forth on the spot a little swearing under her breath the whole time before resolving herself to head down to the fracture clinic to try and interfere with the machines, hopefully in a way that wouldn't be expensive or permanent because goodness knows how badly funded hospitals were and how rarely they got new machines. Jinx cautiously stuck her head around the door of the fracture clinic and quietly observed the people in there.
"Will you just stay STILL? I can't get a clear picture with you moving around like that!" One of the technicians said despairingly.
"Hey, I vibrate on a molecular level, this is as still as you're going to get me!" Wally West shot back, a small laugh slipped out from between Jinx's lips before she could stop it. The technicians and Wally all looked at her in surprise, Jinx mentally smacked herself, this was not what she'd had in mind when it came to being discreet.
"He won't stay still! Jen, you're good with meta-humans, make him stay still." One of the technicians whined.
"You can't get him still, it doesn't work like that. You can't take an X-ray, looks like you'll have to do a long, boring, time consuming ultrasound." Jinx said in what she hoped was a causal tone.
"Since when do you accept that we can't do anything? You're the one always in here telling us how to do our jobs and that a monkey could operate this machine." The second technician frowned suspiciously at her, Jinx opened and shut her mouth, since when did the X-ray technicians get smart with her?
"Just… do it." Jinx muttered. She glanced over at Wally to see him propped up on his elbows watching her intently.
"What?" Jinx snapped angrily, she didn't like the scrutiny that he was placing her under, it felt like he was going to figure out who she was.
"Nothing." Wally replied innocently, still watching her intently.
"So she's not usually like this then?" Wally asked the X-ray technicians without taking his eyes off of Jinx.
"God no, usually it's all, 'we've paid for this X-ray machine so you're gonna damn well use it!' She asks us to do the impossible sometimes." The first technician snorted.
"You only say it's impossible because you two are morons." Jinx growled gritting her teeth.
"So you always say." The second one laughed.
"Look, I don't have all day here so just go give him lots of tests, I need to see his bones properly if I'm gonna do anything and don't come back until you've done it right you got me?" Jinx frowned at them as she folded her arms and turned to leave.
"But-" One of them protested.
"JUST DO IT!" Jinx snarled at them, she blinked and they were gone. She could already feel the push of displaced air from Wally running past and the sound of the lock on the door behind her clicking shut, Jinx span around and was practically nose to nose with Wally West.
"Wh-what are you doing?" Jinx stammered as she stumbled backwards away from him.
"I don't know," he muttered rubbing his temple with one hand, "there's no way you can be her so I don't know why I'm doing this."
"But… you sound like her and you look like her… or how I think she'd have grown up to look…" Wally breathed touching the side of Jinx's face.
"I don't know what you're talking about." Jinx muttered stepping back and looking away. Why had Wally thrown everyone else out of the room and locked them in there? She could already hear the technicians on the other side of the door coming to their senses.
"It's just the way you talk, the way you hold yourself, everything… you're just like her." Wally mumbled more to himself than her.
"You know they're going to break down the door in a minute and get security right?" Jinx frowned at him.
"So? I don't care, it's not like it matters." Wally shrugged walking around Jinx and examining her from every angle.
"Of course it matters, you have a life outside of here, people who care about you, responsibilities. You can't just get arrested for doing something dumb." Jinx said stiffly, she's always hated thinking about his life after her, always wondering if he had a girlfriend, a wife, a family, if he ever became the Flash; but now… there seemed to be so many unanswered questions and he was nothing like she'd expected.
"Mmm, afraid not. I don't have anyone." Wally smiled wryly as he tugged at the hair band on Jinx's pigtail.
"I don't believe you everyone has someone who cares about them!" Jinx snapped jumping back and holding onto her hair fastening, she remembered that one of the first things that Wally had done when he'd run to her after being struck by that spell was to get into her hair and as he already clearly suspected that she was Jinx she didn't want any familiarity convincing him further.
"I didn't say I didn't have people who cared about me, I just don't have anyone alive that I care about." Wally said looking Jinx in the eyes again for the first time since he'd begun his locked door scrutiny of her.
"What about the people who care about you? Don't you care about how worried they must be about you? Heck you were hospitalised and you've not called anyone to let them know you're okay." Jinx frowned, surely he should have called Robin but he'd had no idea about Wally when she'd called so clearly he'd not done so.
"I had friends once, but there are some things you can never forgive people for." Wally said looking away bitterly. His face suddenly showed years of pain, of loneliness, he seemed completely hollow compared to the smiling laughing Wally she'd known.
"What happened to you?" Jinx breathed taking a hesitant step towards him.
"I used to be a hero once you know." Wally sighed his face in his hands.
"You couldn't tell by looking at you, I didn't see you helping when that maniac broke in earlier." Jinx said glowering at him.
"You sound so much like her, that and the telling me off all the time. Anyway I said I WAS a hero." Wally laughed quietly.
"Most meta humans are at one point or another." Jinx said remembering who she was meant to be.
"Maybe, but I was a big time hero, I happened to be somewhere as a favour to a friend and I met a girl, most definitely not the kind of girl my friends wanted for me but I fell in love, really really fast." Wally laughed at his own joke,
"She's the one that you look like, or rather… you look like how she would have. I know you can't possibly be her, and I'm sorry for locking you in here like this. I shouldn't be telling you this and scaring you." Wally apologised standing up.
"No, it's… fine. It's understandable if I look like your old girlfriend that you'd freak out." Jinx said shaking her head gently.
"She was never actually my girlfriend, I never really told her how much I loved her but she wouldn't have wanted to hear it anyway. And because of some stupid misunderstanding she died, I got trapped somewhere and by the time I escaped some bad guy had convinced my friend that she needed to be gotten rid of. My friend ran her off the road, her car went over a cliff. I never forgave me or anyone else for that, here I am, some hero, fastest man alive and I wasn't fast enough to save her." Wally explained with a deep sigh.
"I'm sure he didn't mean to hurt you." Jinx said quietly.
"How do you work that out?! She died because of some stupid misunderstanding and that fool's own self righteousness!" Wally snapped angrily.
"I-" Jinx blinked surprised at his anger and his words, what misunderstanding did he mean? But then again she never knew exactly what it was that Robin had told Wally when he'd found her crashed car.
"Forget it just-" Wally stopped mid-sentence as he was halfway through turning to the door to leave.
"What?" Jinx asked after a second or two of him standing there like a frozen statue.
"You said… him, you referred to him as male." Wally said slowly turning and staring at Jinx.
"So?" Jinx blinked not catching onto whatever it was that Wally was getting at.
"I never mentioned his gender, but you said him." Wally repeated staring harder at Jinx's face. Jinx's eyes widened, had she said him? Had Wally really not mentioned Robin's gender in that story? She needed an excuse and fast.
"Well I just assumed, most men have mostly male friends so…" Jinx shrugged trying to be casual about it.
"No no, you weren't guessing, you knew." Wally said sternly as he grabbed her face and stared at her eyes. Jinx tried to pull away and sincerely hoped that her contact lenses were straight and not showing any pink edges.
"Let me go!" Jinx snapped struggling against his unexpected strength. Wally pulled up his other hand and shot it forward at a speed that Jinx's mind couldn't even register, what she could register however was the sudden pain in her eye. She buckled to the ground clutching her burning eye and swearing profusely.
"I KNEW IT! They're contact lenses!" Wally shouted triumphantly holding one in his hand.
"SO WHAT?! You didn't need to rip it out of my goddamn eye, I think I'm blind now!" Jinx screamed at him still shielding her eye. She tried experimentally opening it and although the image of her hand was slightly blurry she could definitely see, unfortunately what she could see was the pink glow bouncing back from her eye onto her hand, she quickly covered her eye up again.
"They're COLOURED contact lenses." Wally said as if this explained everything.
"So?!" Jinx snarled back in response, trying her best to glare at him with one eye.
"So, if you were Jinx you'd be hiding your eyes, it's not like you can wear sunglasses all the time." Wally said kneeling down in front of her. Jinx said nothing and held her hand firmly over her eye and glared at him even harder with the other.
"I'm sorry, did I actually hurt your eye? I tried to do it really fast but it's hard being precise then." Wally asked softly looking at Jinx in a concerned way.
"Go away." Jinx mumbled staring down at the floor.
"Let me see your eye, please?" Wally asked touching her wrist, Jinx shook him off, she couldn't let him see her glowing eye. If he did he'd know without a shadow of a doubt it was her and then the whole spell would come flooding back and his life would be ruined.
"No. Now go back to your room before I get security to put you in a secure room." Jinx growled, her hand still clamped firmly over her eye.
"Just show me and I'll go away." Wally insisted reaching for her hand.
"No!" Jinx shouted angrily.
"Why do you always have to be so goddamn stubborn?!" Wally shouted frustratedly.
"Why do you always have to be so goddamn persistent?!" Jinx snapped back. Wally looked at her wide eyed, the gasp half stuck in his throat and in that moment Jinx knew that she'd ruined everything. She should have been more careful, she should have called Robin sooner, she should have just rang the second she saw him and now she couldn't do any of those things and she was stuck with the consequences of her actions. Her hand shot up and a hex sprung from her fingers as readily and easily as it had done in the days when she did it without a thought, the days when she'd been a villain instead of a doctor. The last thing she needed was for him to freak out and escape, Robin needed her to keep him in one place, maybe he had some kind of back up plan.
"Jesus… it really is you… I… I… can't breathe." Wally stammered backing up against one of the walls shakily.
"Whoa, hold it." Jinx said soothingly as she grabbed him just in time to stop him falling forward.
"Calm down, god… your heart's beating fast." Jinx murmured pressing her ear against his chest and wishing that she'd not left her stethoscope in the coffee room in place of a bookmark for the novel she'd been reading earlier on in the day.
"You're supposed to be dead. I saw your car, how can you possibly be here?" Wally gasped wide eyed as his lungs seemed to still struggle to take in air.
"Stop talking you idiot, just take a big deep breath, you're panicking." She said harshly as she felt herself slipping into doctor mode. She listened closely and heard the deep though still shaky intake of breath, she listened past that and smiled at the rapid beating of his heart. It was always so loud as well, all the running Wally did literally gave him a huge heart, it wasn't just his personality!
"You know me." He breathed against her neck.
"I know you're an idiot." Jinx muttered straightening up and looked skyward as she raised a finger to her contact lens and tried not to blink or poke herself in the eye.
"I always thought that… if I found you… if by some miracle of god you'd still be alive, that you'd not remember me." Wally said quietly as he watched her disdainfully flick her remaining contact lens across the room.
"Why would you say that?" Jinx asked tilting her head at him hoping in the back of her mind that if she could keep him occupied Robin would show up soon and erase Wally's memory or something.
"Because if you didn't remember then maybe I could convince myself that you'd survived and lost your memory and simply started over somewhere else. But you do remember me. So I don't know what to think." Wally sighed rubbing his forehead. Jinx remained silent and scuffed her shoe on the floor.
"Maybe… maybe I'm just dreaming this." Wally breathed touching Jinx's arm lightly with an outstretched fingertip.
"That sounds a little more probable don't you think? That you're dreaming not that I've come back from the dead." Jinx said persuadingly as her mind desperately latched onto the idea.
"This doesn't feel like a dream. I feel hung-over and my arm hurts, I wouldn't get that if I was dreaming. Plus… you look different to how I've dreamt of you before." Wally said looking at her carefully, he felt fairly sure that this wasn't a dream, the only thing that made him doubt it was Jinx's presence.
"Different?" Jinx blinked genuinely intrigued.
"You're prettier than I imagined you, but… that scar…" Wally mused rubbing the white streak on Jinx's cheek, Jinx winced, she remembered that was where Robin's birdarang had caught her on the day she'd run away.
"Gee, you really know how to make a girl feel special." Jinx grumbled turning her back on him and staring down blankly at the control panel. She needed to stop talking to Wally and think of some kind of plan, she clearly wasn't going to get him to buy the 'this is all a dream' act so she needed some other kind of plan. She could fake her death again, but she'd have to knock him unconscious first or he'd surely follow her incessantly and not give her enough time to set that kind of thing up. She didn't have time to wait for Robin to show up, she needed to act now before this all got even more out of hand.
"This isn't a dream and you are Jinx. So why and how are you here?" Wally asked firmly, Jinx's hands closed around the binder file on the top of the X-ray desk. She span in one smooth movement and swung for his head, he yelped and ducked. In the blink of an eye he was well out of arms reach and staring at her surprised.
'Great plan Jinx, try and hit someone with superspeed, that'll work.' She berated herself internally.
"What the hell Jinx?!" Wally squeaked as Jinx threw aside her doubts and lunged for him again.
"Stop moving!" Jinx ordered as she swung for his head again, he yelped and ducked under the other side of the X-ray table.
"Stop trying to hit me and I might!" He shot back ducking Jinx's binder-wrath.
"Stop ducking and I'll stop trying to hit you, I'll only do it the once!" Jinx shouted leaping over the table at him.
"Why do you want to hit me anyway?!" Wally squeaked as Jinx tossed a hex at him and left a nasty char pattern on the wall behind him.
"So you'll loose your memory or be knocked out! Now come here!" Jinx snarled at the infuriating red-head.
"Stop it Jinx!" Wally yelled grabbing Jinx's wrist and tossing the binder aside with the other hand.
"No! I need to-" Jinx said the desperation evident in her voice.
"Why are you doing this?" Wally asked pulling her in close to his bare chest.
"So that it won't all be for nothing, but it's too late for that now, I've screwed everything up, even if I knocked you out now it's still too late." Jinx whimpered into his chest, Wally's eyes widened as he felt a hot wet tear run down his torso.
"What's all for nothing? Jinx, you're not making any sense." Wally said frowning.
"Everything." Jinx insisted. Wally pulled Jinx away from him and watched as her tearful pink eyes widened in fear as a bang sounded on the door to the room.
"They're in here, Star, blast that door down!" Robin's voice shouted from the other side.
"What's he doing here?!" Wally cursed stepping further away from the door.
"I called him." Jinx replied in a hollow voice as she watched the green light shining through the edges of the door.
"Why? Don't tell me you were in on his stupid plan!" Wally shouted angrily.
"Of course I was, you said it yourself, it's not like I lost my memory. We faked my death." Jinx replied in a dull tone of voice. With a loud bang the door in front of Jinx fell down and Jinx looked up at Dick Greyson.
"I did what you said, I called you. But he already knows who I am, so you might as well take me away." Jinx said in a shaky breath as she held her wrists up ready for the handcuffs that Robin had promised should something ever go wrong.
"What?" Wally asked for lack of anything else to say. Dick's eyes flicked to Jinx disdainfully and then to Wally.
"Wally, you have to listen to me, don't run away." Dick pleaded stepping closer to Wally as one would approach a skittish wild animal.
"What are you doing?! Erase his memory or something! You were supposed to have some kind of plan!" Jinx said in a panicked tone.
"Why are you so fixated on erasing my memory and knocking me out?!" Wally demanded looking at Jinx and backing away from Dick.
"So that the spell will wear off again you idiot!" Jinx snapped back.
"Jinx, shut up." Dick growled advancing on Wally.
"Spell… you mean… he lied to you too? Even after everything?" Wally blurted out in shock.
"Lied? What do you mean?" Jinx asked wide eyed.
"That stupid spell! It's still ruining my life, even now! That damned spell wore off the day we ran away, I told Dick that as soon as I got out of the prison that he'd locked me in so he could kill you… or help you fake your death I suppose." Wally shouted furiously.
"…What?" Jinx breathed wide eyed.
"Dick? You said she knew… that she didn't care about Wally." Starfire said speaking up for the first time as she looked from the shell-shocked Jinx to Dick and back again.
"She DOESN'T care about him! She doesn't even know him!" Dick snapped angrily.
"So it's fine for you to just let her believe that she needed to never see me again or I could never be free or something like that? What did he tell you Jinx?" Wally asked looking over Dick's shoulder at the suddenly very pale Jinx.
"He… he said that Psitron would make you worse, that the spell was permanent and you'd be worse than when you were at first. And that the only way we could stop it was for me to die, or… to make you think I had." Jinx stammered.
"See, this is why I never talk to you." Wally said shoving Dick backwards away from him.
"I never got a chance to tell you that she was alive!" Dick shouted back at him.
"Bull. I guarantee that if you'd started a sentence with 'Jinx is alive' I'd have stayed to hear you out. Three words aren't hard. You never had any intention of telling me, much less Jinx herself." Wally scoffed glaring at Dick.
"I couldn't find her to tell her." Dick said dismissively.
"You couldn't find me? I wasn't THAT well hidden you know, I changed my last name to West for crying out loud!" Jinx snarled clenching her fists, Dick nervously eyed the pink crackling lightning sparking from them and the rest of Jinx's body.
"Dick, what's going on here? Why… tell me this isn't true." Starfire said her green eyes wide.
"I was just trying to do what was best for you Wally, and you've no right to complain either Jinx, you didn't exactly end up bad did you? I gave you a second chance!" Dick said glaring at Jinx accusatorially.
"You think THIS matters to me?! That this is good enough? I would have given up ANYTHING to be with Wally! I'd give up being a doctor, I'd give money, for the love of god I already faked my death for him! Nothing else matters! You RUINED my life!" Jinx snarled throwing a hex at him Dick yelped and ducked.
"You absolutely honestly never knew?" Wally asked stepping closer to Jinx.
"Of course not!" Jinx said choking on her words.
"Get the hell out of here Dick before I throw you out." Wally growled taking Jinx's hand in his own and pulling her close to him, somewhere in the back of his mind noted that Jinx was shaking and he wondered if it was out of fear, shock or… something else.
"You can't just get rid of me! You need to listen to me, I'm sorry for what I did but you don't need to throw your life away for… for HER!" Dick shot back frustratedly gesturing at Jinx.
"Maybe he can't get rid of you, but I can. SECURITY! GET IN HERE!" Jinx shouted, cautiously two uniformed men stuck their heads around the edges of what used to be the door.
"Take these two away." Jinx ordered glaring at Dick.
"Of course Dr. West." The first guard nodded walking towards Starfire.
"I'll leave on my own." Starfire said holding her hands up, she turned in the air and looked sorrowfully at Jinx. "I didn't know, he said you wanted nothing to do with Wally… I… I'm sorry." Starfire said clutching Jinx's free hand before flying out of the room unescorted.
"Don't do this!" Dick snapped pulling away from the guard.
"Come on sir, you have to leave now." The second guard said grabbing Dick's arm and dragging him protesting out of the room. Wally stood still in the sudden silence of the room as Jinx whimpered and crouched down on the floor.
"I am so fired." She moaned unhappily.
"What? Why? For getting those two thrown out?" Wally blinked surprised.
"No, because I'm a wanted criminal living on a fake ID, because I got my qualifications under a fake name, the list goes on." Jinx said rolling her eyes at Wally.
"Hardly Dr. West. You didn't think I suspected something about you before? Someone doesn't get to become an expert in meta-humans without something unusual in their past. Now I believe your patient needs some bones setting, so back to work." Jinx's boss smirked from by the door.
"I- y-yes sir." Jinx stammered in shock as she looked up at her boss.
"And you're paying for the new door." Her boss added regarding the charred remains of the door.
"Yes boss." Jinx grinned, this was more like the boss that she knew. Her boss nodded curtly at her and left the doorway leaving her and Wally alone.
"See, that wasn't so bad- wait, I need bones setting?" Wally blinked as his brain caught up with what had just happened.
"Yeah, you broke a rib running through that wall." Jinx replied poking Wally in the torso.
"So… does that mean I'm still your patient?" Wally asked with a cheeky grin and a suggestive eyebrow waggle that Jinx didn't even want to think about as she pushed him to sit on the table.
"Yes, now hold still." Jinx ordered softly as she gently felt around the rib, she swore under her breath, it'd already started setting.
"Wait, I thought I needed an ultrasound or something." Wally said remembering Jinx's argument with the lab technitians that had reminded him so much of her interactions with the HIVE five.
"I was stalling, I've dealt with loads of injuries like this." Jinx laughed flatly, still feeling shaken from her encounter with Dick, or rather, Robin.
"So, how'd you get to be a doctor?" Wally hissed as Jinx poked an especially sore spot.
"I am qualified to be doing this if that's what you're asking." Jinx replied flatly.
"Not what I meant but- ARGH!" Wally screamed as his rib snapped back into its proper place.
"There we go, don't move, let me just get a stronger bandage." Jinx smirked walking over to one of the cupboards and rummaging around inside.
"Jesus, aren't you supposed to give me some warning before you do that?" He whimpered touching his side.
"Why? You'd only tense up and make it hurt more." Jinx shrugged returning to him and wrapping his torso in tight bandages.
"What happened to that oath you doctors are meant to take?" He whined as his rib thrummed with pain.
"Don't be such a baby." Jinx smirked as she reached around behind his back to do the bandages, her hair brushed his nose and all the memories of sleeping in bed with Jinx came flooding back to him. The smell of her skin as he curled up to her, the way her hair curled and rebelled in every possible way, the little noises she made when she was concentrating. He felt something in the pit of his stomach move and he realised that he was getting butterflies, he gasped slightly in surprise, Jinx muttered an apology apparently taking his gasp as one of pain. Jinx bit her lip and he had the urge to kiss her, he felt like a teenage boy again in love for the first time and… it was wonderful.
"You should be okay in… however long you usually take to heal." Jinx trailed off realising that she had no idea how Wally's powers actually worked. She stared at the bandages on his chest, she really had no idea about anything about him now, she didn't know if he was in love with someone else, what he had done with the rest of his life, she at least knew he wasn't married as he didn't have a ring on when he came on or any tan lines to show that he'd been wearing one recently. But he seemed to be a mess, he'd been drinking, smoking, fighting, was he some different person now? He certainly didn't seem it at the moment, they'd been talking just now in the same way they would have eight years ago.
"Jinx?" Wally asked for the third time, waving his hand in front of Jinx's face.
"Sorry." Jinx blinked snapping out of her depressive reverie.
"It's okay." Wally smiled up at her from the table.
"I can discharge you now, you're free to go." Jinx muttered cutting off the last of the bandage and pinning it closed, she folded what remained of it in her hands and turned away from him to put it away in the cupboard.
"Cool." Wally shrugged watching her intently, he was trying to find out new things about her; she held herself the same as before –confident and in charge. She was graceful in the same practiced way that she had always been but now she seemed more… relaxed, more at ease than she had as a teenager, Wally thought it kind of suited her.
"So you can go back home now." Jinx added taking more time in the cupboard than she really needed to.
"That'll be a little hard to do, what with me not having a home and all." Wally chuckled quietly.
"What do you mean?" Jinx frowned looking at him.
"I've been wandering about the world for the last eight years Jinx, my home has been wherever I was when I decided to go to sleep. Park benches, trees, motels when I could afford them. It's a lot easier to avoid people you don't want to see when you've nowhere permanent that they can find you." Wally sighed softly.
"You're homeless? But… where were you planning to go after this before you realised who I was?" Jinx asked shocked as she looked at the rapidly spreading bruise sneaking out from under the bandages where she'd re-set his rib.
"I didn't have a plan, I don't plan- or… I didn't." He shrugged wincing at the movement and rubbing his side as the edges of the bruise began to change colour.
"What happened to you?" Jinx asked sitting down next to him.
"You happened to me my dear. After you died… or… after I thought you had, I just couldn't go on like I had been. I couldn't be a hero, I couldn't live a normal life, I couldn't see any of the people I'd called my friends and I certainly couldn't love again… so I just… ran." Wally muttered bitterly.
"I never thought you'd give up being a hero, the thought just never occurred, I thought it was just such a fundamental part of who you were." Jinx murmured tugging at her hair and cursing herself for how little she clearly knew him.
"It was, I changed an awful lot that day. I couldn't continue helping people in a world that'd taken the only woman I'd ever loved from me, in a world where your best friend thinks it's okay to do what he did, where the good guys conspire with them to lock you in a room with the guy whose fault the whole mess was." Wally growled tensing his fists.
"I'm… the only one?" Jinx blinked having barely heard the rest of what Wally had said.
"Of course you are, this heart only beats for all things Jinx." Wally smirked his playful and cheerful nature reappearing like the sun from a quickly passing dark cloud.
"What about you then Dr. West? Did you change your name or just marry a guy with the same last name as me?" Wally asked in a teasing tone but Jinx noticed that the smile didn't reach his eyes.
"There's no wedding ring… but hospitals can be funny about jewellery." Wally said hopping off of the table and taking Jinx's ring less hands in his own.
"Ours has a no jewellery policy yeah." Jinx replied numbly.
"So… you're married." Wally said quietly staring at the floor.
"What? No." Jinx said shaking her head.
"Divorced?" He asked again with a heavy heart.
"No." Jinx replied exasperated.
"Boyfriend?" He questioned.
"No!" Jinx sighed feeling fed up.
"Girlfriend?" Wally asked desperately.
"Wally!" Jinx snapped shoving him away from her.
"Okay, okay, so you're single then. So why the name change?" Wally laughed happily as he stepped back closer to her.
"Because I needed a new secret identity of course." Jinx said dismissively and fiddled with her name tag instead of looking at the red head.
"Jiiiiiinx." He whined poking her in the side knowing full well she wouldn't do the same back to him with his injury.
"Because I LOVED you okay?! And I thought I'd given you up so that you could live an un-brainwashed life. I wanted to become someone you'd have been proud of, and I needed a new name so… I took yours." Jinx muttered staring at her feet.
"I am proud of you, you certainly did better without me than I did without you." Wally smirked and leant in and left a quick kiss on Jinx's neck that made her gasp in surprise.
"So… how do you feel like taking pity on a poor homeless ex-hero and letting me sleep on your couch?" Wally asked doing his best to look adorable.
"Fine, I'll go get my keys but I've got to stay here until I finish my shift." Jinx said shaking her head and laughing as she got off of the examination table and headed for the door.
"Oh, and Wally…" Jinx said with a smirk as she stopped at the door.
"Yeah?" Wally replied curiously.
"I don't have a couch, just the one bed." Jinx said shooting him a look that went beyond devious as she left the room.
"I think I'm gonna like it here…" Wally murmured to himself realising that he was blushing now.
A/N: gah, the end. It took me so long to make a final chapter that I was anywhere close to happy with, anyway, I hope you all enjoyed it and I'm sure I'll be starting yet more KFxJinx stories in no time (I'm clearly addicted!)