"Every sacred mission, every hunt for hidden relics, every pilgrimage from one end of the earth to the other … I was looking for you."

~Dianna Hardy

"Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things."

~Pablo Picasso

Jinx gazed at the image, lips parted, entire face slack. He was perfect. Warm blue eyes, clear as the sky without clouds, a smattering of freckles against his nose and cheeks, a smooth, cocky grin settled against his well defined yet still boyish face.

She had done it.

He was her masterpiece, gazing back at her from canvas, charcoal and ink, oil paint and watercolor. He was everything.

Except, of course, real.

She sighed and shook her head. She wasn't crazy, damnit, there was no way she was thinking this way. No way he was flickering through her mind as if he was someone she had met before. A piece of her really couldn't believe she had made something like this out of just her imagination and some art supplies. She lifted a single, pale hand to set against his chest. Her fingertips brushing against him, the folds she drew of his simple orange t-shirt, the shadows of the sleeves against his torso.

He wasn't real.

But it felt so very, very familiar.

God, she thought. She was insane. There was no way she was about to become Pygmalion, falling in love with a creation. He was ink, colored water. He was a mixture of her creativity and her want.

She tries to tell herself that it is completely normal to be enamored by your creation. After all, she spent hours, days, WEEKS working on him, making him perfect. She drew him in pencil, erased all that she felt was not "him". She covered him in plush oil paints, sealed him in watercolor. She shaded him with charcoal, made him with her hands.

It wasn't easy, nor was it cheap. Finding ways to make him the way he was had proved challenging enough. After all, canvas that was 6 feet tall in height didn't simply fall from the sky. In the end, she had to enlist the help of her friend Billy, who had a weird habit of being able to make anything work. It was like he just divided himself and bounced ideas around until it was perfect. When she dumped close to 12 pieces of canvas in front of him and told him to make it six feet in height and at least 4 in width, he had given her a look as if she was crazy.

She supposed she very well may be.

She turned her gaze to her fingers, flecked with paint, the remnants that wouldn't stand to be scrubbed off or flaked. She swallowed as she lifted the line of her sight up to his own. Something about him felt so very personal, as if he wasn't just a three dimensional illusion in 2D. Still, there was something incredibly off-putting about the fact that his gaze seemed to settle right into her very own.

He wasn't real, she chanted. Over and over in her mind like it was a stone tumbling against a river current. It scraped against the insides of her brain, shuddering and thrumming as if alive. Not real, no pulse, no beat, nothing at all.

And really, she didn't know why that made her so sad. Her fingernails gently scratched against his neck as she reached up, stretching her tiny, 5 foot 4 body to reach. She turned her hand so that her palm faced her and traced his jaw with her knuckles before she turned, breathing deeply.

There was no way she was going to be able to stay in that room, his clear, guiltless eyes drilling into her face as if they had a mind of her own. She couldn't remain there, newspaper crunching against her feet as she swayed, examining him at every angle possible. She collected herself, zipping out of the place.

Before she left, she turned, looking back at him. He seemed so pleased and happy, so content with anything she could possibly do.

She wondered if he would be afraid of the dark. She bit down upon the soft meat of her lower lip before she flicked the light switch.

"I'm sorry" she whispered.

The silence answered her as she stepped out.

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.

The next morning provided no comfort. Jinx had woken up with frizzy, half nested hair. Her eyes felt too dry since she used her contacts for far too long the day before, and her bones felt tired. She rubbed against her cheek as she threw her legs out of bed. Pulling her hands away, she grimaced when she saw the peach, blue and orange-red flakes against her nails and skin.

In a rush, the details of her project ran through her mind again. She swallowed down her shudder as she remembered his visage, something that only seemed to affect her at that moment, and her moment of oddity when she turned the lights off. Calming herself, she was reminded of when she had stuffed animals she was particularly fond of.

She didn't want to turn the lights off on them either.

She ignores the fact that she was only 8 at the time and is now a full grown woman, with goals, and taxes to pay, and a job she had the week off from. Speaking of which, she looks over at the time and groans as she falls back against the soft, plush mattress.

Fuck her internal alarm clock. Waking up early was NOT her cup of tea when didn't have to do so. She lets out a yawn and tries to curl back up, but regardless of how cozy her blankets were, she couldn't get comfortable enough to fall back asleep. Scowling, she tries to drill it into her skull that it had NOTHING to do with a certain redhead taking up base in her tiny closet turned studio. She ran her hand through her nest of hair, grimacing when she hit a snag and looked at her palm in contempt, strands of pink looped through the spaces of her fingers, palm completely clean.

She got up, ready to walk into the shower so she could condition her hair into submission before she completely froze, staring at her palm again. Her eyes went wide, the cold air of her apartment seeming to dry them out even more, but she was positive that the shakes weren't coming from any breeze.

Swiftly, she threw her door open and ran into the closet studio where the redhead was housed. She was breathing heavily, her entire body shuddering and on edge, like a violin string tuned too high. She remembered, in perfect detail, how she had set her hand upon the image. Not only would it have smudged, but the seemingly never drying oil paint she had set upon him would have left large blots of orange and peach against her flesh. And yet, the bits remaining after she had washed her hands upon the completion of the man was all that was left upon her skin. She swallowed thickly as she wrenched his door open, a gasp being hissed in through her teeth.

There were no smudges.

She slams the door shut again, staring at it for only a beat before she kicks into gear, throwing her hair up and tossing on acceptable clothing.

As soon as she was deemed civil enough to be seen by the public, she grabbed her keys, her paint, and her purse full of never thrown away receipts, ready to run over to the Art Supplies' Store off on 7th and Cherry.

The paint had to have been faulty.

No doubt. There was no way she was crazy.

.
.

There was doubt.

She was going crazy.

She had arrived at the store in a hurricane of half flailing limbs, throwing the paint down upon the counter and insisting that it had fully dried in less than an hour. The store keeper had told her, half bewildered and still very much tired, that there was no way that could have happened. He even tested the paint, determining how old it was, and whether watercolor or any other medium would have changed the composition or drying time. He threw out idea after idea, insisting that maybe it was just luck.

Yeah, sure, she thought sarcastically.

Her name was Jinx. Nothing lucky ever happened to her.

When he saw her disbelief, he threw out more logical solutions. Maybe she hadn't washed all the soap off, making the oil reluctant to smudge. Maybe her hands were still wet, repelling the paint.

The trip had proved fruitless. Any suggestion that was half plausible was instantly refuted, and the girl had left the store trying to make her mind less jumbled, her fingers shaking against her purse as she dragged herself home.

She was certain that she had dried her hands after the wash, and she wanted to slap herself. It had to be some kind of fucked up dream, a stress induced trick of her mind.

But it was downright terrifying that she couldn't even trust herself to know that she even touched him in the first place. It was insanity. Pure craziness.

And in terms of craziness, she couldn't even understand why she was referring to her PAINTING as a HIM; as if he was a man, a being. He, -er, it, was an object, a creation.

And yet, she knew that if she had she not been so furious at herself, she would have felt bad about referring to him as some kind of creature. It only proved to make her even more angry, and she threw her coat down, slamming her fist against the door of her studio.

"God damnit, you're driving me insane!" she screamed.

Silence.

"Look at me. Just…just LOOK at this, you stupid painting! You handsome, charming painting! You're driving me MAD. I'm raving like a lunatic at something that can't even respond. Something that can't FEEL! I…I…" she blinked back her tears of frustration, slamming her back against the door and slowly sliding down against it, hugging her knees close to her. There was a hollow cradle in her stomach.

"I wish you were real….god, you're impossible, and not real. NOT REAL." She said, suddenly finding herself exhausted as she laid her head back against the wood. "I wish you were real…I wish I wasn't crazy…" a sigh pressed from her lips, fragile as a flower pressed between pages.

"Hah…real. Yeah, sure, that'll be a treat. As if you could come to life right in front of me. Hell, you don't even have a NAME, do you?" She heard her heart thud in her ears like a drum full of liquid, swishing and tumbling. "I mean…..how can you possibly be real without a name, right?"

She could swear she tasted blood inside her mouth.

"I….I'm not….Don't think I'm doing this because I'm insane. I just….need a name for the painting."

She sucked in a sharp breath, knowing somewhere inside of her that this could change everything in a way she would never expect. And yet, it swamped over her mind, like an ocean tide over sand. The name swimming past her vocal chords as if it were as fluid as water, as light as air.

"Wally West."

Inside her chest, she felt something snap.

.
.

The woman, of course, didn't spend her entire day lying against a wooden door, communicating with Wally. She figured that it would be beyond mental, and after she had gotten over her spell, she had instead called upon her best friend, Argent, so that Jinx could have a distraction.

As she chewed on her slice of cheesecake, Argent peered over at her, concern set against her brows.

"Somethin' wrong, love?" she asked, taking a sip at her tea.

Jinx shook her head, still a bird's nest of hair thrown up in a random ponytail. She couldn't muster up the strength to spend any longer in her apartment than necessary, and that meant that a shower had been entirely out of the question.

"Argent…oh god, I think I'm insane."

"Not seeing me for a week WILL do that" she replied lightheartedly. But when she saw her best friend's frown deepen, she knew that it wasn't a time to be joking. The redhead moved her cup aside and stretched her arm out to pat the pinkette on the hand.

"Hey…Jinx, did something…..happen?"

Jinx allowed a smile to slip through as she shook her head, making up her mind that she wouldn't burden her close friend anymore.

"Nah, Argie. I just didn't get much sleep last night."

The redhead grinned, a spark coming alive in her eyes. "Oh? New, hot, steamy love life?"

Laughter bubbled up her throat.

"Yeah, I wish."

.
.

It felt like burning.

He didn't really understand, but all he knew was that the feeling against his skin wasn't bad, only foreign. When he had gone to Raven about what was happening, the woman did a few tests on him, and found a strange amount of magical residue flitting against him. After many nights crunching numbers, working on science, going to everyone he thought had a decent enough knowledge on anything remotely useful, they had scraped together enough information to determine that there was some kind of portal opening up against him.

When he conducted an experiment, to push against this field, he was met with an incredible amount of resistance.

It was like being in limbo, half there, half not. He teetered along the edge, the crack of allowing himself to be pulled in or fighting to leave.

Last night had been the final straw. Before, there were no images or signs that anything was there, only a strange feeling of having people's eyes on him, even when he had requested to be locked up for a short amount of time.

When he had felt the pressure against him and her voice, HER voice, he knew. It played over in his mind like some sort of recording; her raspy, wispy voice in his ears after three, painful, hollow years. .

It sounded too much like her for him to ignore, and it tugged at him like temptation. All he wanted to do was press forward as far as he possibly could, telling himself it was real.

It was too familiar, the ghosting of her knuckles against his neck, tracing his jaw, the soft "I'm sorry" against his hearing.

Inside his mind, there was always single sliver of doubt that maybe it wasn't her. But that temper tantrum couldn't be faked, and when she had said his name, he realized with a start that it was JINX. It was his Jinx. From the sound of her ranting, she must not remember.

After his epiphany, he had turned to his friends. The speedster had made up his mind that he was going to go ahead and find her, at almost any cost. Raven was off on the side, meditating and focusing her energy on him while Cyborg was working the amplifying machine they had built on short notice. When Robin nodded at him, Wally understood that it was a nod of acceptance as well as a go-ahead.

Whatever happened, happened.

He vibrated his molecules fast enough he thought it was dangerous, but when he felt a strange breeze and a soft cotton T-shirt instead of his spandex, he knew he was succeeding.

.
.

Jinx stepped into her apartment sleepily, having spent the night at her best friend's house may not have been the best of ideas since the woman tended to be a complete insomniac, leading Jinx to be kept awake almost all night. After showering at the redhead's place and throwing her clothes back on, the pinkette settled on going back to her house and catching a swift nap before she went out to get some groceries. It had been a few days since she went, and she knew that she was running low on practically everything.

But she knew she definitely had some cereal and milk, and as she softly shut the door behind her, she rolled her shoulders, deciding that a quick breakfast was due in order for her to sleep more comfortably. She set her hand against her neck and felt it crack, half grimacing at the weird feeling. Her eyes still half closed as she stepped into her kitchen, she failed to notice the man against her counter.

But he certainly couldn't glaze her over. His eyes went wide as he took in her appearance in full. When he had fallen out of a piece of lifesize canvas, he was certainly confused, but not shocked. Seeing her, however, was like a jolt straight to the heart, and all he wanted to do was scoop her up and never let go.

She was almost exactly as he remembered her.

Long pink hair, settling between her shoulder blades, looking soft as cashmere, and skin pale as fresh snow, her sleepy expression, her vacancy, her habit of ignoring everything that wasn't her goal: there was no doubt in his mind that it was her.

He watched as she stepped up to her fridge and peered in, looking for something. The boy gulped down another bite of the scrambled eggs he had made himself as he looked her over. Despite the fact that she was almost exactly the same as he remembered her, she was even smaller than he recalled. It could just be because he grew, getting older, but she looked so miniscule; absolutely waifish.

While previously, they had been similar heights, with only perhaps an inch or two in distinction, she was now at least half a foot smaller than him. She had always been slender, but compared to him now, she seemed so very fragile.

Even if he knew that she was anything but.

He smiled as she furrowed her brows in confusion, no doubt wondering why her fridge was completely and totally bare. He mustered up all the courage he could to break the silence, and swallowed down his giddiness to finally, FINALLY speak to her again.

"You hungry?" he asked, and watched as she sluggishly waved the question away.

"Of course I a-"

She stopped dead, freezing almost literally. She whipped up, her head snapping to settle on him. The world blurred and spun around the edges of her vision.

"Holy…" she muttered, her mouth dropping open.

"I made eggs" he replied cheerfully. "Sorry…I kind of ate everything else. Fast metabolism and all." a chuckle hummed from his throat as he grinned at her, holding out the plate. He carefully stared into her eyes, observing her reactions and watching as she blankly looked back.

Slowly, she reached out and grabbed the plate, careful not to touch him. He almost frowned when he saw it shake.

"You might wanna be careful. You don't wanna drop that. It's…kinda the last edible thing left in the house."

She sucked in another gasp, finding strength enough only to set the plate down next to her as she fell against the wall behind her, eyes wide as the moon. She felt her chest heave as she watched him step toward her, a concerned look on his handsome face.

"Wally…." She muttered, disbelief laced through every lilt of her voice.

He nods, knowing that there are gaps in her memory, but things were surfacing as if she couldn't help them.

"Oh god….I'm…oh…oh god." Jinx said, her throat constricting as she tried to dig her nails into the drywall. "I'm crazy…."

"No! No, no, no!" Wally reassured. "See, the reason I'm HERE is because you aren't crazy."

"You're my painting! What's not crazy about imaging your PAINTING in your KITCHEN!?" she shouted, voice wavering as she swayed on her feet.

He frowned. So that was how she did it. No wonder he had fallen out and was face to flat surface with a 6 foot tall wall of canvas. "Because I'm real. I'm not a painting."

"No, no you are-"

She halted. He had stepped forward, fingers gently forming a circumference around her wrist as he pulled her arm away from her side. She felt it slacken as he set it against his own chest, against an impossibly soft orange t-shirt just like she had done the night before. Just as she had done in the past.

The familiarity of it stung. Back before it all had happened, she would set her hand against him, desperate to feel a beat after they finished a particularly difficult battle. Whenever he was hurt, half asleep, or unconscious, it was always there. The desperation to know he was alive.

Her lip quivered as she felt the thud of a heartbeat beneath her palm.

He was warm, almost unnaturally so, under her touch, and looked down at her as her eyes strayed from where he held her up to his gaze.

"You're real" she whispered, as if it were a secret.

His smile was warm and affectionate as he nodded. His eyes seemed even more blue and deep than when she had drawn him, the freckles against his cheeks and nose granting him an approachable, easy to like appearance. His hair almost looked like a ruddy brown in the dim apartment kitchen, but as he leaned back, it caught the sliver of sunlight, proving to her that it was, in fact, a bright, gingery red.

Jinx felt her knees turn to jelly, her shoulders slump, the impossibility of it all hitting against her.

"I'm real" he said again, his tenor voice reassuring.

She only felt her head nod, glad that she was still pressed against the wall since it was the only thing that really held her up at that point. Had she been standing without that support, no doubt, she'd be a pile of slender limbs against the ground.

"But…how…?"

"Well…." The man started, his mouth scrunching up as he tried to explain. "It's kind of a really long story. You'd probably want to sit down to hear it. And…uh….you should probably eat those eggs."

She stared at him blankly, vaguely registering the sheepishness in his voice.

He was still hungry.

It scared her too much how she wasn't even slightly surprised.

He let go of his grip around her wrist, grinning at the fact that she hesitated to remove the touch. Somewhere, deep, deep inside, she knew him.

He had to remind her.

Carefully, he reached around her, grabbing the plate she had set down. Taking note of her weak knees at the moment, he went ahead and supported her with his other arm. The woman was usually, without doubt, a snarky little thing. She'd completely hate the fact that someone would have to help her to the damn table.

He thanked his lucky stars she was half out of it, or he'd have a hex against his face.

But he had a theory as to why she hadn't.

He set the plate down and pulled the chair out, gently nudging her and watching as she collapsed into it. He almost grimaced when he saw her shock, spelled out against her entire face.

A passionate scream of "Wally!" and a nice kiss would have been a much, MUCH nicer greeting, he determined, but he knew when he decided he would be doing this that it wouldn't be that simple.

"….You gonna eat that?" he asked, and he watched her eyes blaze for a moment, the Jinx he knew coming alive under the skin of the pale woman he spoke with earlier.

"Damnit, Wally! Yes, I am! I'm HUNGRY." She said, her eyes seeming to take on a pink tinge with her mild irritation. However, as soon as it came, it had left, revealing an even more confused and terrified Jinx in its wake. "Holy shit, holy shit….oh god, What the HELL was that!?"

"That's just how you are, Jinxie."

"How do you know my name?" she asked, wanting to throw the plate at his face.

"The same way you knew mine" he replied simply, becoming serious in a flash. "We clearly have met before."

"I drew you…"

He nods. "Yes, but regardless of what you think, I existed BEFORE you set your pencil down. You drew what you remembered of me, except…I guess a bit older. Still pretty damn good." As he looked at her, he laughed at the incredulous look she gave him. "What? You thought that someone this handsome could just come from your imagination?"

"….Cocky little basta-"

"Oh, Jinxie. Same as always."

"Could you please EXPLAIN then, oh wise one!? Since this is so familiar to you!?" she stood up, her temper finally bubbling over along with her chair, hearing squealing as it toppled. "I want answers, Wally West!"

He smiled sadly, infuriating her even more over the fact that he remained seated, seeming to ignore her rage. "You know, if you thought about it hard enough, you could probably have the answers yourself. You used to tell me all the time that you were the smart one."

"This is all just in my head, isn't it? I'm dreaming, or hallucinating. I've become so stressed I've gone absolutely batshit."

"Jinxie-"

"And stop calling me that as if we're close enough to have pet names for each other!"

That one hurt as if it was covered in pink energy. "We ARE!" he cried out, "or…we…we were, at least. God, you don't remember ANYTHING, Jinxie?"

"Remember? You act like I have amnesia, and not like I didn't finish painting you just two days ago!"

"All you painted was a gateway for me to finally find you. Jinx, don't you understand? This was your way of helping yourself."

"I didn't do anything like tha-"

"But you did! Even if it was damn hard to get through. Do you KNOW how much energy I had used up? I'm surprised that when I got here I could crawl to your kitchen to refuel."

"You always did eat too much." She said, not realizing the slip of familiarity as it passed through her lips. She bit down on her lip hard enough to cringe. Squishing her eyes closed, she took in several deep breaths before she went to sit down again.

Wally, taking advantage of being a speedster, had flipped her chair back to normal before her glorious behind connected. She felt a light breeze from the motion, and she looked down at her chair after a beat, wearily setting her fingers to her temples.

"Just….just explain, Wally."

"Promise you'll hear me out?"

She allowed a weak glare and he held his hands up in the universal sign of "Don't hurt me" before he sighed.

The silence was as thick as mercury.

"Listen. When I say we know each other, I kind of mean that we KNOW each other. We're partners. We fought together all the time, and before I lost you, we were fighting against Mirror Master. You were…you were really hurt, and you got thrown into a mirror, his gateway to a different dimension. I dove after you, but by the time I was there, you were already gone. When the rest of the team pulled me out, I had already looked through at least 200 different possibilities and…you weren't in any of them."

"….You're absolutely insane. Which I suppose makes me the same."

He shook his head, floppy red hair landing slightly in his eyes. "No. Jinx, we're superheroes."

"Yeah, sure. What do I do? Throw bad luck at people?"

"Well…yes."

"Maybe I should just turn myself into the local asylum."

"Jinx, come on!"

"No, no. Don't tell me. You're also my love interest and you suffered in your silence while trying to find me, completely distraught and blaming yourself for it?" she let out a snort before she rolled her eyes. "Things like that don't just happ….en." she said, suddenly taking note of his devastated expression.

His blue eyes looked dampened and bleak. He stood up, clenching his teeth. "You're too stubborn, Jinx…you always have been. Even when the evidence was right in front of you! How did you know my name then, Jinx? How did you know about the appetite, and…and wasn't it even a little familiar for you? When you…when..." he stopped, his voice tangling in his throat, his entire expression seeming to crumble as he clenched his t-shirt within his fist, holding the space where she had felt his heartbeat.

"Well…well what did you expect!?" she asked, standing as well for the second time, thanking the anger that was covering her guilt for solidifying her stance. "It's kind of a lot to process!"

"I expected you to try! I thought you would be more flexible. Why can't you just trust me?!" he said, and almost instantaneously, it flashed through her mind like a hurricane.

A boy, with a happy smile and sweet blue eyes. A rose in his hands, light on his feet and faster than anything she had ever seen before. Her reflection, pink hair held up in pigtails turned to horns, shining through the black of his irises.

"What will I do? Where will I go?"

"Trust me"

A yellow communicator with a T, a feeling of heaviness in her stomach.

"They'll never accept me."

"They will."

"How can I believe that?"

"You'll just have to trust me."

Strong, attentive hands against her inner thighs, her leg pressed against his, muscular and built powerful from all his running. She feels frail under his touch. His mouth pulls away from her own, laving over her neck.

"If it hurts, I'm sorry."

"I trust you, Wally."

A shove against her chest, a feeling like her breastplate was snapping along with all her ribs simultaneously. She falls, but there is no ground to catch her. A feeling of flying, her arms stretch out toward him.

"Kid Flash!"

"JINX! Jinx! Hold on! Hold on, I'll come get you!"

Her stomach twists in her throat, she feels like she's about to vomit.

"Trust me."

She faltered on her feet, the grip she had on her table failing her.

"Trust me?"

His arms feel like wood as he catches her, steady, strong, never faltering. Wind whips her hair around, produced from his super speed.

"Trust me!"

The world turns gray before it turns black.

She does.

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.

He's nervous.

Well, perhaps that's an understatement. Having known Jinx for years, he knew for a fact that she was never one for fainting. In fact, when they had watched movies together, she would constantly make fun of the dull, one dimensional women and their "swooning", going so far as to mock them by falling around all day on Valentine's, Wally's arms always there to catch her.

Now, he thanks the fact that she had done it so much.

It was practically absentminded, how he had rushed toward her at the first sign of her going down. It helped her in a few battles as well.

But not the last one.

Body already bruised and bloodied, a shove from that freak of nature had been enough to send her tumbling through the mirror behind her. The push was hard enough that Wally swore he heard a snap sounding off from the bad luck mystic. His blood had rushed through his head, he had stopped thinking. He still remembered the Boy Wonder's call as Wally dove into the mirror, leaving him and Starfire to finish up the battle.

It was stupid. He was lucky he got out at all since there had seemed to be about a million and one different passageways and the boy had tried practically every single one. He was only 17 at the time and god, when you're that young, and reckless, some pretty horrible things can happen. He still remembered the flare, no doubt sent from Robin that got him out of the multi passageway. It was the only sign that sent him back, and even though returning was a win in of itself, coming back without her was a hollow victory, and a crushing loss.

It had been three years.

He had never given up.

Now, looking at the pink haired woman in his hold as he set her down upon the couch, he realized that it was all worth it, even if three years was a long, LONG time. Especially for a boy who could skim through the world in under 30 seconds.

He told her once that he'd search the globe for her if she ever went missing. She had only shaken her head, amused and flattered, but reluctant.

"Don't do that, Wally. It would drive you mad."

And yet, he still looked. Still circled the world over, and over again. Asked Hector and Raven for favors so he could look through different worlds, had gone to the villain who had condemned her in the first place, willing to be lost forever in hopes that he could just FIND her.

And it still hadn't been enough. Nothing had been enough in his need to find her, sense flying aside. He questioned Mirror Master until the teen was blue in the face, his knuckles sore from using the villain as a punching bag. He refused passage into the dimensions, goaded the yellow and red clad man that there was no way he would ever find her. And, in truth, Kid Flash was not a lunatic. Kid Flash was hyper, overly enthusiastic sometimes, a wiseass, full of jokes and could make threats that would send men in corners, but he almost always unwilling to use brutality.

But she was gone.

Gone, that is, until he had a feeling that something was off. As if someone was LOOKING at him, remaking him. Leave it to Jinx not to be the damsel in distress. She wouldn't be able to wait for someone to come save her, so no wonder she found her own way, even if she wasn't aware of it.

He smiled, brushing strands of her cotton candy pink hair out of the way. In this world, her eyes were brown, and from his quick run through of the apartment, she was still partial to pink from the contacts he had found on her bathroom sink.

Same old Jinx, even if she didn't know it.

He frowned.

Getting her to open up to the possibility was almost too difficult. He wondered what in the world had happened to her when she fell into the dimension they were in now. From the looks of things, there were no powers at all. Newspapers had no columns about superhuman heroes or impossible to catch villains. It was a world strife with violence and crime, but there were no powers to back them up.

Something in the air in this dimension was strange, choking off his super speed, and putting a cap on how fast he could go. Even flipping her chair up took more effort than usual. No doubt her powers had been sapped at until they were under such a small ceiling, they might as well not have existed at all, likely making her eyes lose their color, and forcing her natural pink hair to revert to blond, fitting her albino theme and explaining the various containers of hair dye.

Good thing Jinx's magic would bubble up under her skin sometimes without her permission, or there would be no way for her to form the gateway. But even only being in the dimension for less than a day, he could already feel any connection he had to his own dimming. It worried him incredibly.

When she awakened, if she didn't understand or fought or…didn't remember, even after her fainting spell, he didn't know what he would do. She had been in the power sucking air for too long to do something like this again, and he knew that they would both be trapped if they took too long to escape.

He didn't know if he could overthrow his super speed, his family, his friends, his responsibilities all for her. He always told himself that when he is Kid Flash, his selfishness has to take a backseat. He has to become the second, or third, or even the least important thing, and he stuck to that.

She, of course, didn't.

Jinx made it overtly clear that sometimes, she just didn't care about civilians or crime fighting and she believed in brutality when it was needed. Her wellbeing and the wellbeing of those who she cared for always came first. And though it sparked many, many fights between them, he wouldn't deny that he was flattered by it. Someone in the world made him a top priority, and it was a wonderful thing.

Even if they didn't see eye to eye sometimes, the contrast between them made them a good pair.

In battle, in strategy, in theory, and in romance.

He didn't know if he would have the strength or the will to choose between her or his world, THEIR world. All he could do was wait for her to wake, wait for her to make the decision.

But he knew that she would never make him choose.

.
.

Later, after close to a week and a half, the police would come to her door, slamming it down after the testimony from her boss that she hadn't shown up to work. She had been fired, of course after the third day that she had played hooky, but no one thought anything of it. Everyone knew that she didn't really like the place and that the 20 year old was only working there to pay off her bills from Art School.

However, when her teacher from the university and Argent, the best friend had called in, there was no doubt that something was wrong. Her instructor had been distraught, telling the officers that the girl was incredibly dedicated, and that she was enlisted in a contest for a full payoff of any college dues she would have accumulated, along with an enamored spot in an art gallery. There was no way that she would simply vanish, not of her own accord. Not when she had been seemingly obsessed with her painting. Argent had said that there wasn't a single phone call, and when she had visited the apartment, no one had answered the door at all. After hearing all the testimonies, the police men had knocked her door down, searching through the entire apartment.

It was eerie.

Nothing was out of place in any of the rooms. All the plates were clean, and there was no food at all to be found. All garbage was disposed of, all clothing still in the proper places. None of the bath products seemed to have been used, according to Argent from when she last visited.

The only thing that was out of place was the large, fully dried, life sized painting in the closet.

In it, a redheaded man, with happy blue eyes focusing downward stood, taking up almost the entire canvas. In the only space remaining, as if it were an afterthought, he held to his side the albino girl, her bright pink hair looped between his fingers. He had a relieved grin on that stretched across his entire face, freckles glowing against his pale complexion and eyes narrowed in affection. The woman was in a similar state, seeming to lean into his touch. Both of her hands pressed against his shoulders, her mouth open in an excited looking expression, pink eyes sparkling.

Aside from that, the entire place was void of any other evidence and the investigation had closed when her teacher verified that it was Jinx's art. Unwilling to let such a beautiful painting go to waste, she still submitted it into the contest. All the prize money that was gathered up went into a scholarship fund named after the pink haired protegee. But Jinx would never know.

Because she was finally home.

And she wasn't leaving again.

"I could be blindfolded and dropped into the deepest ocean and I would know where to find you. I could be buried a hundred miles underground and I would know where you are."

~Neil Gaiman

Whew! That was one long one shot. What can I say, I recently got my love of Flinx rekindled. This thought kind of popped into my mind and became something tangible. I kind of found it difficult to pull away from the very idea of it.

Originally, it was meant to be a chapter fic, but anybody who knows me will know that I have never and probably WILL never finish a chapter fic. Instead, a made it a long one shot with a lot of skipping around and a crapload of linebreaks that FF decided to delete that I had to manually put back in.

Regardless, I hope you enjoy this super long fic!