[fic] Zeno's Elegy (DCU, Bart/Roy, PG-13)
I started this the afternoon that Infinite Crisis #7 came out. It was supposed to be a fun little ficlet about Bart dealing with the new universe. It...grew. With Flash #1 due the day after tomorrow, I realized it was time to put up or shut up.
Title: Zeno's Elegy
Author: gloss
Summary: "Bullshit, kid. I know burnout when I see it, believe you me."
Media: DCU (New Titans, Teen Titans v.3, Outsiders)
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers/notes: Picks up at the end of IC #7; some spoilers for 52 #1. Green Arrow's condition is based on those titles, not his own. Thanks to thenotoriousg for Bart-love and beta'ing action. This is for her.
When the heroes take to the sky, Bart watches them go. His head is tipped back, the sun's in his eyes. They recede to dots, down to specks, as the last of his speed tingles almost *sweetly* through his body.
"Jesus goatblowing *Christ*," Roy shouts as he lifts himself out of a pile of stinking rubble. He pauses at the top, wiping dirt and sweat off his forehead, then shakes his head. "Guy's named *Doomsday*, guess I should've suspected he'd stink like hell. But still."
Bart scrambles up the pile. He offers Roy a hand, then reels back, pebbles and rocks flying, when Roy hocks and spits.
Roy swipes the back of his hand across his mouth. Tilting his head, squinting, he says, "You're not Wally. Wrong suit."
"No." Bart wipes his hand on his thigh, then makes himself stop fingering the rip in Grampa's suit.
Green Arrow drops down from another rubble-pile and tackles Roy in a bear hug. They rock back and forth, clasped tightly, so Bart takes a step back. He skids a little, the speed jangling up his shins. He tries to look awayback up into the sky, across the debris of battle, *anywhere*but he can't.
Speed tingles down his calves, up his arms, and he flexes his hands against it. Open, closed. Open, closed.
The scabs on his knuckles prickle. A few break open, blood welling up, bright against the smears of darker, older blood. Superboy's blood. No, *Superboys's*, plural, blood.
He's been fighting for years now. According to any calendar, according to his *body*, it's been years.
But his memory is just a blur, a stream of images and effort, running with his grampa and Max, always forward.
Now the speed is dimming. Fading out, just like it did the day before yesterday back in Tokyo. Hopefully, though, he won't pass out this time.
They're still hugging. Roy's hair is short, but Green Arrow's is whipping around in the wind; he's got that pointy hat in his hand, wrapped around Roy's back.
A hot gust, heavy with the smell of creosote and burning things, rocks Bart. He stumbles on his too-long legsyears, right? But he's still not used to the differenceas he's pulled between Roy and Green Arrow. Into the hug.
So it's actually only been a few seconds since they first touched. This might be the last subjective time Bart ever feels, long and drawn-out and *golden*, squished here and held tight.
"Bats and his boys're over there," Green Arrow tells Roy as he pulls back. "Nightwing's down."
Bart trips as he scrambles up to the top of the highest pile. He scans the devastation, looking for anything. Tim.
Tim's the smallest one of them all now. He and Batman have Nightwing draped between them, slumping, dragging his feet.
Family. Arrows and bats, but Bart is the last Allen for a thousand years.
Next to him, Roy slings his arm around Bart's shoulder and yells, "Yo! Shortpants!"
The trio stops and, slowly, half-turns. Nightwing's trying to raise his head, Batman's still as a pillar, and Tim's.... This far away, Bart shouldn't be able to make out Tim's expression, but Tim's *surprised*. Just a lift of one brow, a quicksilver tilt to his mouth, but it's *Tim*. You're not his friend if you can't look closely and read the hints.
Bart waves at him. At first, Tim doesn't react, so Bart waves harder, only Roy's arm keeping him on the top of the slippery pile. Finally, Tim nods.
"You're gonna be okay, Boy Wonder!" Roy says after them as the trio trudges away.
It's really more to himself than anyone else, and he means Nightwing, not Tim, but Bart nods and says, "Yeah."
They slide the rest of the way down, Roy ending up on one knee. He squints at Bart as Bart offers him a hand up. "You're not Barry, either."
"No," Bart says and he has to grin. "Bart."
Roy's mouth opens, shock sharpening his features, and then Green Arrow knocks the back of Roy's head as he joins them. "Good Lord, boy, you denser than usual? Take a blow to the head? Does he *look* like Barry to you?" He winks at Bart. "No offense, kid."
"None taken." Bart takes a step back. Speed and its time are dwindling *fast*. A few golden threads, frayed at the ends and down their length, are all that hold him to the force, and he's pretty sure that's just due to his grandfather's suit.
"Bart?" Roy asks, shaking his head. "Motherfucking *Im*pulse?" He grabs Bart by the neck and hauls him close, studying his face. "I don't fucking believe it. It is you."
"Hey, fearless leader," Bart says while Arrow tips that weird hat off his brow and laughs his guts out.
Roy swats Bart and says, just like he always did the *first* time Bart was a Titan, "Don't call me that."
The fraying speed whines down the back of Bart's legs, throbs in time with his heartbeat across his knuckles. It really is disappearing; any other time, his knuckles would have been healed by now, the scabs getting ready to flake off.
The three of them head for the triage tent, back past Doomsday's corpse. Ambulances and fire trucks are swarming there, EMTs shouting out contradictory instructions, reporters jostling each other for the story. Bart pitches in, ferrying the injured to the tents. He wants to lose himself in *doing*, but all the while, the speed-lightning crackles a little more softly, dimly, across his skin.
He's sure it must be hours, even days, later when Roy claps him on the shoulder again. The sky, however, is just as blue, just as bright, as it was when the heroes left. It's just empty now.
"Looks like they've got a handle on things," Roy says. "How're you doing?"
Though he's tired, bone-deep *exhausted*, Bart jogs in place, just to feel the speed sparking and guttering in his legs. He's superstitious enough that he's convinced if he stops, it won't be there any more. "I should " he says to Roy, "get going, I guess."
Somewhere, slowly.
"You?" Roy asks Green Arrow.
"Home, I s'pose," he says, twisting the points of his mustache back together. "Little princess for you?"
"Man, with all that's been going on, I haven't even *talked* to her in four days." Roy grins, white teeth in a red, streaked face. "I get home, it's gonna be just me, my girl, a hot shower, and as much beer as I can pour down my throat."
Green Arrow hugs Roy, one-armed this time. "Taught you well, didn't I?"
Speed twangs in Bart's calves, a tight and desperate almost-sound. Swan song, he thinks, speed is music is light.
"I could run you home," he says. Roy looks at him, startled, then grinning even more widely. Bart rolls his shoulders. "Just a little speed left. Might not make it, but "
"Nah, buddy, that'd be cool." Roy tips his head, his sunglasses sliding down his nose. His eyes match Green Arrow's vest. "I'd appreciate it."
*
Bart isn't a kid any more. He hasn't been a kid since he ran out of Keystone, dragging the other Superboy with him. It's been years since then, or months, or maybe, for someone elsewhere, just moments, but as he pushes forward, Arsenal slung across his back, Bart is pretty sure this is what he's supposed to do.
He chases the last of the speed, its dwindling echoes, searches out the final notes, and brings a dad home to *his* kid.
Heroes don't kill. Even back in Manchester, *centuries* ago, Bart knew that. No one ever had to drill *that* into his head.
The speed's swan was shrieking as Bart pummeled a red-eyed Superboy, but it sings now as he heads up the Atlantic coast, into Jersey. His body aching, his muscles almost ready to tear as he chases down the last sparks, he skirts Gotham and the remains of what was Bludhaven. He doesn't want to chance losing all speed in the middle of the Hudson, so he runs them down the meridian on the top deck of the George Washington Bridge, then heads down Manhattan's west side.
Heroes don't kill and Bart runs. For Kon crumpled up on the ground, and Tim's little nod, and Cassie's tearstained fury, and for *Roy*, the first superhero who ever smiled at him.
*
They walk across Houston Street. His grampa's suit is in tatters and Roy buys him a tourist t-shirt to cover up with. The noise of the city roars around Bart; inside, he hears a pounding, ominous *emptiness*. He can barely walk, but he refuses Roy's arm. He can do this, even if it feels like falling down through Secret, spiraling into the loud absence of *everything*.
"C'mon in," Roy says as he unlocks the door. Six deadbolts and a JSA-issue alarm system.
"I " Bart says. He's so out of it, the words aren't coming. "I should go."
"Bullshit, kid. I know burnout when I see it, believe you me." Roy hustles him inside. He goes to call Lian's sitter and points Bart down the hall.
There is a shower, Bart's aware of that much. The water stings as it sluices through the grime and sweat and blood of years spent running. He rests his forehead against the wall and lets the water run until Roy bangs on the door.
Then there are clothes, jeans and a soft, well-washed t-shirt, that Bart tries to tell Roy won't fit. But he is Roy's height now and Roy just knocks his arm, calls him an idiot, and the doorbell rings. There is Chinese delivery, too much of it, hundreds of little white cartons, and somehow they eat all of it.
"Lian?" Bart asks around the last of the scallion pancakes.
"In bed," Roy says. "You were in the shower."
"Oh, right."
Roy pulls a beer out of the six-pack and starts to hand it to Bart. He stops, his arm extended, and says, "You're not a minor, right?"
Bart shakes his head, then knuckles his eyes. "I'm...seven. Or sixteen. Maybe 23?"
"Happy birthday, then," Roy says and hands the beer over.
*
Then there is sleep. On Roy's couch, Bart dreams of speed. He dreams of Max, his grampa, Johnny. The twins. He dreams of speed as it really is, down in its essence, going so fast it's just a golden blur across tableaus and panoramas of the world at rest. Speed was a single wall of song, a cascade of notes, frozen in motion.
*
"Hey, hotshot," Roy says when Bart wakes up. Early morning silver light creeps through the room. "There *is* a bed for you, you know."
Bart rubs his eyes. "Time is it?"
Roy glances at the muted television. "Six-thirty? Thereabouts. Should have Arthur's biggest fan running in here in four-three-two--"
Lian dashes into the room, skidding on bare feet, chanting "Arthur! Arthur!", knocking past empty beer cans as she wrestles Roy for the remote.
When she sees Bart on the couch, she freezes. Her eyes widen and she pulls herself a little behind her dad.
"Remember Bart?" Roy's down on one knee, nudging Lian forward. "He looks a little different now."
Lian's face scrunches up as she tips her head side to side. Bart shakes out his hair and smiles at her. Maybe it's the hair that makes the difference, because she's suddenly breaking out into a grin and running toward him.
"Zip, zoom!" she crows, barreling into Bart, tugging on his shirt. "Zipzip*zoom*, c'mon!"
He used to swing her under his arm and run at quarter-speed around the headquarters while she screeched and pummeled him with fists and feet, urging him to go faster.
"Can't " he starts to say, imploring Roy over Lian's butting head. "I "
But Lian squirms against him, pulling his shirt, so Bart grabs her in both hands and spins. She shrieks and he turns .
He turns as fast as he can, which is pretty close to motionless. His legs are cramped up, tight like they've never been. The room swoops around, Lian grows heavier, and Bart struggles to keep this up.
When he drops backwards onto the couch, Lian kisses his nose and says "thanks, Zip!" before she scrambles off his lap and weaves, almost drunkenly she's so dizzy, toward the television. She turns up the volume by poking the button with a Nerf arrow until it's satisfactorily blaring.
Roy's looking at him. Kind of funny, almost suspiciously, his eyes narrowed. After Bart blinks several times to clear the dizziness, though, Roy's watching the tv.
"Breakfast?" Bart asks a little later, when Roy pads back into the room, a giant mug of coffee in both hands.
"Caffeine, fuel of parents everywhere," Roy says over the mug, then slurps up a long sip. "Sorry, what? Breakfast. Right. Gimme a couple minutes."
Bart stands up. "I got it."
Roy has his arm around Lian, who's on her side, cheek on her dad's thigh, staring at the television. "Really? I was going to send you back to bed, but --"
"I got it," Bart says again.
Roy's grins come in about seventy different versions; Bart remembers that now. This one is gentler, not the standard sarcastic or self-mocking one. "You don't have to, but that'd be *great*. Nanny numero whatever left a couple weeks ago and me in the kitchen?" He snorts and holds the coffee out of Lian's reach. "About as comfortable as Batman at an Adam Sandler movie."
"He'd like _Little Nicky_. Demons, lotta dark. Just his thing," Bart says.
Roy guffaws, biting it off when Lian shushes him crossly. While Roy makes his apologies to her, Bart makes his way to the kitchen.
Breakfast. He can do breakfast. He's read everything by Julia Child, James Beard, *and* Martha Stewart, and Aunt Joan taught him crepes and blintzes once.
Or he could try to replicate Interlac scones. Lian might like those.
The last time he tried to do Interlac cuisine with 21st century ingredients, though, he screwed up pretty spectacularly. And the Legion took Kon right after and .
*Damn it*. He washes his hands, watching the suds run off his ring, as he tries to breathe normally. Maybe he's not allowed to wear a Flash ring anymore. Maybe he should take it off? He doesn't know who to ask.
Half a box of Bisquick, chocolate chips, a couple brown bananas. He can do this. It's just breakfast.
Even if he had his speed, it's not like it would help with pancakes.
*
The world has become a much bigger place. Everything is so much farther away from everything else now that contemplating distance nauseates him.
Dox is back in Manchester with Helen, after Joan's allergies starting acting up. His clothes are in Keystone -- but he wouldn't fit them anyway, so that doesn't matter. Carol's in *Cambodia*, of all places, doing some kind of semester abroad for honors students. His sketchbooks are in San Francisco, up in the Tower.
And Bart is in New York.
He lost his Titans-comm somewhere behind the red sun, probably when his own suit ripped to shreds and flew away. There's no Bludhaven *to* call, even if he knew Tim's number.
He tries Cassie's mom, and her school, even the Themysciran embassy; Mrs. Sandsmark sounds like she has a cold and tells him, hoarsely, that she hasn't heard from Cassie. The school won't release any information about students and the embassy's number is out of service.
One afternoon, he comes into the kitchen for a Zesti and finds Roy on the phone. He's got his chair tipped back on two legs, his feet up on the table, and he's saying, "You know, just kicking back, hanging with Kid Flash. It'd be totally old-school, except I've got a kid with an ear infection and it's a completely different Kid Flash."
Bart turns back around, deciding to go check Lian's temperature, when Roy breaks out in a loud barking laugh. "Shit, Wingie. Not like *that*. Wally never went for "
Bart waves his hand, trying to get Roy's attention. "Are you talking to Nightwing?"
"Hold on." Roy covers the receiver with one hand. "It's the Wing himself. Why?"
"Can you ask him to ask Robin to call me? If he wants, I mean, if he's not too busy or anything, I need to talk to him and it'd be really cool if he could "
Roy nods slowly, smiling. "Yeah, Bart, no problem." He uncovers the receiver and tips even farther back. "Hey. Bart wants to talk to mini-Bats. Let him know?" He rolls his eyes. "I can call him anything I want, man. He *is* mini-Bats "
Bart grabs a bottle of apple juice and goes to check on Lian.
Tim always strove to be an urban legend, something rustling in the shadows. Bart never *got* that, not really. It never made much sense to him, how important the anonymity was to Tim. Usually, he just chalked it up to Batman being extremely paranoid. Also, crazy.
But after Apokolips, after Max disappeared, after Stephanie died and then Tim's dad, after *Kon*, Bart's not so sure that anonymity is quite so crazy.
Maybe if you stay secret, people don't get so hurt.
*
Greta is in Manhattan for an internship over spring break. They meet at a weird restaurant off Union Square that Roy recommended. She's taller and even prettier than he remembers and she talks about her roommates, her internship supervisor, an ex-boyfriend who might not be ex much longer. Bart eats.
"Haven't lost your appetite, huh?"
"Nope," he says, but pushes away his plate. "So, boyfriend? What's his name? Where'd you meet him?"
He's Vernon, she met him during a college tour, he's a freshman poli-sci major. He plays lacrosse and rugby and likes alt-country music.
" and I had *no* idea what to tell him about you," she finishes. "Like, who are you? You know?"
"I'm Bart." He steals a radish from her salad. Greta shakes her head a little sadly, just like she and the other girls used to do when he got hyper. More hyper. Hyperer? "What?"
"It's just, like " Greta puts her hands flat on the table and leans in, lowering her voice. "How do I know you? That kind of thing."
"Oh, that's easy. We rescued from the DEO and helped break open that lab-jail-place and you "
"Bart." She smiles at him and smoothes back her hair. "I don't have amnesia. It's just that I can't tell *him* all of that, see?"
"Oh." Bart chews and swallows the radish. "Why not?"
"Hi, your girlfriend used to be a fog-cloud interfacing between life and death? I don't *think* so."
"Oh, yeah. I get it," Bart says. He really *doesn't*, but Greta sounds kind of annoyed.
"Being normal, it's " She breaks off as her cell-phone rings.
The waitress clears the plates and Bart orders a fudge brownie with chocolate ice-cream. It's half-finished when Greta finally hangs up.
"Sorry," she says, then shakes her head when Bart offers her a bite, sauce dripping off the fork.
"It's what?" he asks.
Greta looks blank. She blinks. "What's what?"
"You were saying, being normal is something. It's what?"
Greta takes her time about answering, snapping shut her phone, going through her purse, fiddling with her bracelets. Finally, she pushes the hair out of her eyes and smiles at him. "It's wonderful."
Even if you lie about who you are? Bart doesn't ask that. Instead, he finishes his brownie and every bit of sauce he can scrape up. He also doesn't ask her if she misses being a fog-cloud. He's pretty sure he knows the answer to that.
"What about you?" Greta asks and claps her hands together. "God, I've talked about myself this whole time. Tell me about *you*. What's up?"
"Do you know where Cassie is?" Bart blurts out.
Greta presses her mouth closed and looks down. "We're not that close, not anymore," she says, then looks back up. "I asked about *you*. Anything good? Anyone special?"
Being normal seems to boil down to dating. Greta's got a boyfriend; even Tim had Stephanie in his other life. The thick sweetness of chocolate goes a little sour at the back of his throat when he thinks of Kon and Cassie.
He tells her 'no', there's nobody special, and Greta looks sympathetic. So why is he thinking about Arsenal's knowing smirk and the sound of his laughter?
He pays the check with cash Roy pushed on himBart reminds himself that he really does have to do something about money and everything elseand out on the sidewalk, Greta hugs him. She kisses his cheek, tells him not to be a stranger, and he's walked all the way to 2nd and B when he realizes they never talked about Kon or Tim or *anyone*.
"How was your date?" Roy asks later.
Bart rolls his head against the back of the couch. "Being normal *sucks*."
"Fuck you. *I'm* normal," Roy says and punches him.
Dodging the blow, Bart tucks and rolls off the couch, getting his arms hooked around Roy's legs. "You know what I mean. You're not a meta, but you're --"
"Normal, little man," Roy says, tugging at Bart's left arm. He almost manages to get Bart into a headlock, but Bart's still quicker than most people, however *silent* the speed has gone, and he wriggles free. Roy is *heavy*, but Bart pins him and straddles his waist.
"You're cool, so it doesn't count," he says, looking down. It'd be really easy to kiss Roy right now. Roy grins at the compliment and bats his lashes outrageously. If Bart had his speed, he could do it before thinking it over, just lean down and .
Roy bucks once, brings his left knee up, and flips Bart to the floor. Bart's head thumps against the hardwood and he closes his eyes.
"No roughhousing!" Lian calls from her room. "Daddy, don't hurt Zip!"
"That's what I get for trying to be mature," Roy says and leans over to offer Bart his hand. "Nice try, kiddo. Better luck next time."
Bart takes Roy's hand in both of his own and pulls himself to his feet. For a moment, he's lightheaded and the room tilts vertiginously; he blinks and clears his head.
*
Two days later, in the middle of the day, Bart has just gotten back from picking up Lian from a playdate. The phone is ringing as he wrestles with the security system and he rushes to answer.
"Harper residence," he says, waving Lian into the kitchen for her snack.
"It's me," Tim says. He doesn't ask if the line is secure, but Bart can hear the hesitation in his tone. "You asked that I call."
"Yeah, yeah, thanks, I " Bart drops his backpack to the floor and follows Lian to make sure she's not trying to cook ramen by herself again. He leans in the kitchen doorway and realizes that he's smiling. "Hi."
"What can I do for you?" Tim asks.
Bart tips his head against the wall and closes his eyes. He *knows* you can't just call Tim up and, like, shoot the shit, but it'd be nice if that had somehow changed.
"Bart?"
"I'm here," Bart says and shakes his head when Lian holds up a bag of Chips Ahoy, her face alight with hope. "No way. Not you, Rob. Um. How are you doing?"
"Call me Tim."
"Sorry. How *are* you doing?"
Tim exhales, the sound a slow, steady deflation in Bart's ear. "Trying to keep the glass half-full. You?"
Lian pouts and puts the bag back, taking an apple from the bowl instead. "Better," Bart tells her and Tim starts to say something. Bart interrupts him. "Listen, I'll make this quick. How do you make a secret identity?"
He *hears* himself and winces. Apparently, he doesn't need the speed-force to start blurting out moronic stuff around Robin. That kind of thing is *all* Bart, no Impulse. Kid Flash, whoever.
"Well " Tim starts, then pauses. Anyone else would probably ask Bart what's wrong. Tim clears his throat softly; he sounds very far away, even though the line is clear. "You lie. You lie *a lot*."
Bart swallows and picks at the seam on hisRoy'sjeans. "I'm not really good at that. At lying."
"No," Tim says. "You're not."
He doesn't say it like that's a criticism. He says it almost *gently*, and Bart has to close his eyes again. Everything got so bad so *fast*and you'd think Bart, being *Kid Flash*, could deal with the speed of everything going downhill but he couldn't, not at all. Then he was away for so long besides that he feels like Robinno, *Tim*is a stranger.
"Sorry for bothering you," Bart says. Lian's pulling on his hand, half-eaten apple hanging out of her mouth. "I should let you go. Um. Have fun, whatever you're doing."
"Thanks," Tim says.
"Be safe," Bart tells him, but he's not sure if Tim's already gone.
*
He isn't crippled or anything. Bart tries to remember that. He's still healthy and all in one piece; it's just that it feels like he's been shifted to a different world. A different world with different (slower, stiller) laws and rules. Things have so much more texture than they used to; without his aura, moving at the same speed as everyone else, he's noticing for the first time what jeans feel like on his legs, how *scratchy* terrycloth is.
Smells last longer, too, than they used to, and noises are somehow louder *and* bigger than before.
Everything's different here, now; it's sharper and scarier.
No wonder babies scream their heads off, Kon said once. Bart still has to squeeze shut his eyes and swallow very carefully whenever he thinks about Kon, hears his voice.
But the point's still true. They were babysitting Anita's parents, eating caramel popcorn and talking about babies. About being born, about how much it *hurt*, coming into a new world.
Of course, Kon claimed that he'd *laughed* when the Newsboys broke him out of his tube, but he admitted, eventually, that it was a frightened kind of laughter.
Bart still remembers screaming when the VR shut off and the treadmill slowed down, screaming as his grandmother caught him. When he landed back in the 20th century, he'd run three times around the world.
Cissie said both Fites cried when they were freed.
"It totally makes sense," Kon had said. "You pop out of something that feels *perfect* into what?" He gestured so expansively that a table lamp started to fall. It almost broke before his TK caught it at the last second. "Into *this*? This world kind of blows."
He hadn't really meant the last part. Not seriously, anyway; Kon loved the world as much as *Superman* did. Does.
Anyway, a lot.
*
Roy has a date tonight. Roy, it turns out, has *seven* accounts at nerve.com and other places. He appears in the hallway when Bart's coming down from his room, and he's wearing...something purple. And black. And a little glittery.
"Don't look at me in that tone of voice," Roy says as he straightens his skinny, glittery tie. "This is a good look."
Funny, Bart never would have figured Roy for a Sayers fan. Does this make him Bunter? "I didn't say anything."
"You thought it."
"I really didn't."
Roy smoothes down his clingy shirt, a frown wrinkling his forehead. "It's a good look."
"According to who?"
Roy glances up, smirk curving one side of his mouth. "_Esquire_, motherfucker. Or _Men's Health_."
Bart takes a theatrical step back and holds up his hands. "I thought you got that for the pictures. All those sweaty, hard abs..."
Roy flicks up his collar, checks the mirror, then flips it back down again. "I'm an ass man. You know that."
No, Bart didn't know. It makes *sense*Grace Choi is built like a really beautiful *tank*, after all.
Nightwing has a great ass, too. Nicer even than Donna Troy's.
Come to think of it, so does (did?) Wally, but Bart *really* doesn't want to finish that thought.
Too late.
Bart gulps air like a goldfish, covering his mouth too late to muffle the half-squeak, half-cough that escapes at the image of Wally, naked, twined around Roy.
Roy's still admiring himself in the mirror, but he glances over his shoulder, eyebrow cocked. "You okay there, Zippy?"
Bart nods rapidly, hysterically, waving Roy away. "I'm good," he says when he stops laughing in horror. "You, um. You should go. Don't want to be late."
"Owe you. Owe you *big*," Roy tells him as he shrugs on his jacket. "After dinner, just pop in a DVD and she'll be cool."
But that doesn't feel right. Bart grew up inside a movie, but real kids, normal ones, good kids like Lian have way more options. After he cooks dinner to her specificationsravioli, frozen peas she won't let him defrost, and chocolate milkthey hang out in her room. Lian has *everything*, and they start with Legos, turn to a session of school for her stuffed animals, then play some Nerf basketball (her aim's almost as good as her dad's), before ending with ballet. Bart gets to wear the tutu.
He has *fun*. When Roy comes home, it's after three and Bart's asleep on Lian's floor, head pillowed on the tutu.
*
Bart never gave much thought to geography. Even when he was pulling *C*s and *D*s and Max was on his case to concentrate and learn to retain information, he aced geography *because he'd been there*, whether 'there' was the Eiffel Tower or the Gobi Desert. When an interstate was like a city block to him, he just *knew* geography. He didn't have to think about it.
Now, though, geography is what teachers always said it was, back in school. It's a 'system of land masses and oceans on the world's surface'. It's vast and abstract. It isn't his backyard.
The world has turned into geography. You can run through the world; you can only study geography. It's not a place any more; it's a system.
To get back to Metropolis for Kon's memorial, he and Roy have to take a train. That's geography right therespace carved up onto tracks, time sliced into schedules and the price of tickets.
Lian claims the window seat, kneeling on it sideways, pressing her face and hands on the window well before the train pulls out of Penn Station.
Bart wonders what she'll see in the landscape as it streaks past.
When he ran, the sky blurred into a river, foaming, eddying, *blue* pouring past him, breaking over his skin. He rarely ever looked down, but when he did, the groundlawns, deserts, asphalt, seawas another stream, running in tandem with the sky. The horizon melted and wavered between the two like a line of smoke.
He is riding now, sitting down, wearing a blue suit of Roy's that's too big in the shoulders and too bright for anyone not Nightwing.
The world is different. Bigger, a lot emptier, *quieter*. Without Kon, without speed.
He beats Roy at three hands of poker.
"Photographic memory can *bite* me," Roy says after the fourth hand, eyeing Bart. "Genius *fucker*."
"I'm not " Bart starts to say but Roy's grinning at him and shuffling the cards ostentatiously.
"Your deal," he says and hands over the pack as he stands up. "I need to stretch. Shake off the bad luck. Keep on eye on the monkey?"
"Yeah, of course," Bart says. He's been taking care of Lian all week, but every time, Roy asks like it's an imposition or something.
The real imposition, Bart knows, is the fact that Roy's got a depowered, slowed-down ex-Flash moping in his guest room and eating his food. But he hasn't said a thing about it.
And it's not like this can go on forever. Bart needs to, as Jay said on the phone yesterday, 'make some decisions'.
Dr. Mid-Nite said the same thing a couple days ago when he gave Bart a physical.
"Any thoughts on what you're going to do next?" His sunglasses were nothing like Kon's old, dorky shades, but Bart still had to look away.
"Have some lunch, probably." Bart rubbed his stomach through the scritchy hospital gown. "Feeling pretty growly."
He suspected that even without the sunglasses, Dr. Mid-Nite would be freaky and unsettling. The guy was *intense*. Robin-level intense.
"Want to play Go-Fish?" Bart asks Lian now. "Or War? Your choice."
She has taken Roy's seat, her legs crossed and tenting her dress. The blue-flowered sundress had been a compromise; Roy wanted her in the white party thing, while Lian wanted to wear her eerily-accurate Batgirl costume.
"No," she says with a firm shake of the head. "I want pictures." Bonelessly, she slides off the seat and drags herself into Bart's lap. Once settled, she grabs his wrist and moves his fingers. "Make me some pictures? Please."
"Right, okay." Bart leans over to get the drawing tablet from Lian's backpackwhat Roy calls "The Anti-Boredom and Tantrums-Vaccine Fun-Time Kit"which comes fully stocked with crayons, puzzles, some spare action figures, a floppy red bunny, and picture books.
"*Draw* me some pictures," Lian insists.
"Yeah, yeah, need the " Bart holds Lian around the waist to keep her from falling as he roots through the bag. Finally, he gets the drawing pad. "I needed the pad first."
Lian smoothes her skirt over her knees. "Do Daddy first, then Uncle Ollie with Mia and Connor, and then do, um. Um. Wonder Woman! But don't put Aunt Donna in because that makes Daddy sad, and then! Then do *you* but " She blows a raspberry, drawing the sound out into a *vroom-vroom*.
"Daddy, Ollie and the kids, Wonder Woman," Bart says, flipping open the pad. "All together?"
"And you!" Lian kicks her feet against his legs. "You, too."
Him, too, but speeding. The paper is wide and blank, cheap stuff that's the color of an old banana and really porous.
He holds the black pen in his free hand for a moment. There's no subjective time, not as he watches the ink bleed into the paper.
"Stop and *think*," everyone used to tell him. *Implore* him.
He's pretty sure this isn't what they meant. There's thinking and then there's...*this*. Hesitation. Freezing. Cramping up.
Lian pokes his hand. "Pictures, Zip," she says, reproachfully but not exactly impatiently. "Draw *pictures*."
"Magic word," Roy says, pretending to swat her. He slides back into his seat and narrows his eyes at Bart. "She bugging you?"
"Nah," Bart says. It's true. He's drawing now, hand moving, the blot of ink turning into Green Arrow's quiver. He finishes the walrus mustache before he adds, "Everyone always said I'd understand. About, like, them getting frustrated with me. Said I'd understand when *I* had kids." He adds the curl of Mia's smile. "Then they usually added, God forbid I ever reproduce, butwhatever."
"Yeah?" Roy drinks down half a bottle of water, then gives it to Lian. "And? So do you?"
"I don't," Bart says, squinting down so he gets Wonder Woman's flaring hips just right. "Not frustrated."
"Cool," Roy says. His tone's a little quiet, not at all sarcastic, and Bart glances up to catch Roy looking at him. Consideringly, almost.
Roy doesn't ask him what he's going to do, when he's leaving, what the hell is wrong with him, how he *feels*. Roy just kicks Bart's foot and says, "Make sure I'm taller than Ollie."
*
When they do get to the park, Roy's got seven kinds of ID and all Bart has is the Flash ring he's not sure he's supposed to wear. The security guard grunts at him and holds him back with his night-stick to let Lian and Roy through.
"Are you *shitting* me?" Roy shoves his sunglasses up into his hair. "Dude, Rent-a-Cop, do you know who this is? This is *Kid Flash*, man, you gotta "
"So where's his costume?" the security guy asks.
Bart looks away; Black Canary's striding up to the gate. Her legs are about a zillion miles long. "Problem, hon?"
Roy gestures at Bart and curses.
Lian squeezes Bart's hand before running over. "Aunt Canary!" she screeches and the guard goes to stop her. Black Canary sweeps her up to her hip with one hand and holds the other up to the guard. "She's my guest. Now why don't you let Arsenal and his..." She eyes Bart speculatively. "His guest come on in."
At the memorial, a couple people ask about his burnout. Booster, Clark Kent, some random girl in a Batman tank-top. Most don't mention it, though Jay keeps *looking* at Bart, like he wants to say something.
"I'm doing okay," Bart tells them. Booster just shakes his head, like Bart lost all his limbs, and offers him a Boysenberry-Vanilla Soder. Clark Kent squeezes Bart's shoulder and nods, not even bothering to write down the answer. For a second, Bart sees Kon somewhere in the man's face, which is just *weird*. For one thing, Kon was always laughing (until, that is, he stopped), while Mr. Kent seems a lot quieter than that. Like he's a chuckling kind of a guy, not a guffawer.
When she sees him, Anita holds Bart in a long, side-to-side rocking hug and *doesn't* ask how he's doing or what happened to his speed. "Like a beanpole, mon," she says and ruffles his hair; she's *still* taller than he is, which is really cool.
He doesn't see anyone else he knows. Nightwing's there, but there's no sign of Robin, nor of Wonder Woman and Cassie.
Maybe the big guns are holding the real memorial somewhere else.
No, he's pretty sure they would have invited Jay, at the very least. J'onn, too.
Bart never pretended to understand the speed force, so he lets Jay answer all those questions. After Anita lets him go, he finds himself standing under one of the awnings at the side of the park, Lian on his hip, watching the crowd. There are so many *colors* and the day is so sunny that the effect of all the costumes and alien skintones is almost hallucinatory.
"So you're the new nanny?" a womanBlack Canary, with Mia in towasks.
"This is *Zip*," Lian says, shaking herself awake and holding out her arms. "Hi, Mia!"
Mia smiles at him over Lian's head and Bart tugs the suit jacket smooth.
"Me?" he says to Black Canary. "Not really. I'm just helping out."
She nods, her hands on her hips, then looks away into the crowd. "Stick close. Roy's got a good heart, whatever you might think."
And *that* is the strangest thing anyone's said to him all day, but he doesn't get a chance to ask what she means, because a Green Lanternnot Kyle, who's always going to hate him, but Hal Jordanis approaching, and Black Canary shrieks as she jumps into his arms.
"She's kind of a mom," Mia says softly, then covers Lian's ears and winces. "Just don't let her hear you saying that."
"Right," Bart says, "okay."
*
Because Lian's exhausted and they're all sunburned, they spend the night in Metropolis. The hotels are booked solid for the memorial, so they end up with a double. Lian crashes on one of the beds as soon as dinner's finished, spread out like a starfish, her red bunny grasped loosely in one hand. After Roy covers her with the quilt, he cracks open the mini-bar.
"You could use one," he says when Bart just holds the tiny bottle of whiskey. "Trust me."
Bart's never had a problem with trusting people. That is, in itself, kind of a problem right there. But it explains how, somehow, it becomes hours later and there are eleven-fourteen-*something* bottles lined up on the arm of the couch.
"You're drunk, man," Roy says. "Can you get drunk?"
Bart laughs. "'mgood."
"Dude." Roy's standing over him, hands on Bart's shoulders. "Stand up."
Bart thinks about it. He'd have to put his feet on the floor. That would be first. Then he'd lean forward. The muscles of his gluteal regionapparently, he can get drunk but never forget the anatomy books he memorizedwould then have to contract as he pushed himself up.
It sounds like a lot of effort. Plus, *gluteal* sounds funny, so he laughs again.
Roy looms up there, shaking his head at him.
"I'm *good*," Bart insists.
Roy's still gripping his shoulders.
"Didja notice how that statue was wrong?" Bart asks, then rolls his head so his cheeks rub against the back of Roy's hands. "It looked wrong. Didja see that? It didn't look like, like. Kon."
"Yeah, buddy," Roy says hoarsely. "I saw."
Bart can't stop laughing. He presses his head back into the couch cushion, looking up at Roy. His arms are...*strong*. Over the bones, the bundle of three muscles in his forearms are like steel ribbons. Bart mouths the names to himselfflexor carpi radialis, flexor carpi ulnaris, and extensor carpi ulnarisand wants to touch them.
There is no space at all between Bart andbetween Bart and the rest of the world. There is Roy's neck, pink from the day's sun, and his arms, blurred with ginger hair, a Navajo tattoo circling the biceps brachii like something dancing, and his eyes, dark green and narrowing.
And his mouth, opening, but Bart is *there* in the space of a second, kissing him.
Bart's palms tingle as they slide up Roy's arms, grasp his biceps, thumb tracing the dancing tattoo. He falls in place, down and forward, all at once, under the warm, slick pressure of Roy's mouth.
Then, he's...gone. Back on the couch, breathless, his hands empty. Roy sits back on his knees, rubbing his face.
"Dude, you just "
"Sorry," Bart says immediately. The air on his lips, across his tongue, tastes like metal. "Sorry, so sorry, I'm sorry."
"No " Roy starts, but when Bart lurches forward again, taking that as an invitation, he stops him, hand on Bart's chest, fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt. "No. Ornot now. Something."
"Okay?" Bart says; when he hears his voice curl up into a question, he looks down into his lap.
"Yeah, it's okay. In that way where it might not be okay but we don't know yet." Roy sounds husky, and he tugs at Bart's shirt, pulls him onto his feet. He laughs a little, not like anything's funny, more like he's uncomfortable, and pushes Bart toward the empty bed. "Sleep, Bart. It'll be okay."
*
Bart is bleary and hungover the next morning. Lian shares her orange juice with him and lets him borrow Red Bunny for the train ride home.
Roy's not acting any differently, though. Not hungover and not...whatever a guy's supposed to act like when someone, maybe his nanny, macked on him the night before. He just challenges Bart to a new round of poker and grins like always.
Lian's patience with Bart's sleepiness wears thin when they're an hour out of Metropolis and she starts poking him with a marker.
"Leave him be, mija," Roy whispers.
Lian squats down on the floor, her face level with Bart's. "*You* were playing with him." She grins, wide as her dad, when Bart sits up. "Pictures, please!"
The drawing pad is almost full, which could pose a problem. But the corners of most of the pages are still blank, so Bart plucks the marker from her hand and curls over his lap, shielding the pad.
"What're you *doing*?" Lian pulls on his arm, but Bart won't move.
"It's a surprise," he tells her.
In each corner, he draws a little manit could be Roy, or Connor, even Mia or Cissie, there's no real costumewith a bow and quiver. The figure stays the same, knees slightly bent, back perfectly straight; only its arms shift. The arrow's taken from the quiver, fitted to the bow, the cord draws back, and then he draws the flight. Moment by moment, page by page, every position in the air a static one. Unbridgeable.
He knows Greek and he read the 180s until he got bored and moved on. So he knows about Zeno's third paradox: the arrow will never reach its target, speed is impossible.
When he's finished, the arrow is embedded in the sun and he closes the pad.
Lian is sulking on the seat across from him, curled up against the window, ignoring even her dad.
Bart squeezes in between them. "Here," he says, "wanna see?"
Lian nods, still not looking at him, and Roy stretches so his arm settles around Bart's shoulder.
Bart pinches the corner of the pad and shows them the first picture. Just a person with a bow and quiver. When he has their attentionLian warm against his leg, Roy warmer against his neckhe lets the pages riffle past his thumb. Like Roy shuffling cards, like the speed force sweeping him up, and the archer draws the arrow, sights it, and lets it fly. The arrow rises higher and higher, past clouds, through storms, until it pierces the heart of the sun and waves back and forth, caught.
"Coooool," Lian breathes. "Do it again!"
Roy's hand settles in Bart's hair, fingers scratching idly over his scalp. "Really cool."
Bart lets Lian try the riffling and closes his eyes. Roy's thumb works slow circles down the nape of his neck, dragging warmth back into his skin.
*
Bart's going to get a tattoo. Roy takes him to his artist, a five-foot-nothing metaguy named Guy-like-the-noun with vines inked up his neck and face. He offers to wait, but Bart waves him off.
"I've done this before," he says, which is true, but this time, the ink's going to last. "I want it to be a surprise."
"Gotcha, Zip," Roy says and chuckles, low in his throat, when Bart kisses him goodbye. He's never going to get sick of kissing Roy, even when Guy clears his throat and says something about time being money.
The Titans' logo, low on his hip, lined up with his iliac crest. It's the simplest of all the designs he has made and rejectedRoy deemed his Superman *S* crest bisected by the Flash lightning-bolt and sprouting little batwings "really fugly". It's going to last forever.
[end]
Title: Zeno's Elegy
Author: gloss
Summary: "Bullshit, kid. I know burnout when I see it, believe you me."
Media: DCU (New Titans, Teen Titans v.3, Outsiders)
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers/notes: Picks up at the end of IC #7; some spoilers for 52 #1. Green Arrow's condition is based on those titles, not his own. Thanks to thenotoriousg for Bart-love and beta'ing action. This is for her.
When the heroes take to the sky, Bart watches them go. His head is tipped back, the sun's in his eyes. They recede to dots, down to specks, as the last of his speed tingles almost *sweetly* through his body.
"Jesus goatblowing *Christ*," Roy shouts as he lifts himself out of a pile of stinking rubble. He pauses at the top, wiping dirt and sweat off his forehead, then shakes his head. "Guy's named *Doomsday*, guess I should've suspected he'd stink like hell. But still."
Bart scrambles up the pile. He offers Roy a hand, then reels back, pebbles and rocks flying, when Roy hocks and spits.
Roy swipes the back of his hand across his mouth. Tilting his head, squinting, he says, "You're not Wally. Wrong suit."
"No." Bart wipes his hand on his thigh, then makes himself stop fingering the rip in Grampa's suit.
Green Arrow drops down from another rubble-pile and tackles Roy in a bear hug. They rock back and forth, clasped tightly, so Bart takes a step back. He skids a little, the speed jangling up his shins. He tries to look awayback up into the sky, across the debris of battle, *anywhere*but he can't.
Speed tingles down his calves, up his arms, and he flexes his hands against it. Open, closed. Open, closed.
The scabs on his knuckles prickle. A few break open, blood welling up, bright against the smears of darker, older blood. Superboy's blood. No, *Superboys's*, plural, blood.
He's been fighting for years now. According to any calendar, according to his *body*, it's been years.
But his memory is just a blur, a stream of images and effort, running with his grampa and Max, always forward.
Now the speed is dimming. Fading out, just like it did the day before yesterday back in Tokyo. Hopefully, though, he won't pass out this time.
They're still hugging. Roy's hair is short, but Green Arrow's is whipping around in the wind; he's got that pointy hat in his hand, wrapped around Roy's back.
A hot gust, heavy with the smell of creosote and burning things, rocks Bart. He stumbles on his too-long legsyears, right? But he's still not used to the differenceas he's pulled between Roy and Green Arrow. Into the hug.
So it's actually only been a few seconds since they first touched. This might be the last subjective time Bart ever feels, long and drawn-out and *golden*, squished here and held tight.
"Bats and his boys're over there," Green Arrow tells Roy as he pulls back. "Nightwing's down."
Bart trips as he scrambles up to the top of the highest pile. He scans the devastation, looking for anything. Tim.
Tim's the smallest one of them all now. He and Batman have Nightwing draped between them, slumping, dragging his feet.
Family. Arrows and bats, but Bart is the last Allen for a thousand years.
Next to him, Roy slings his arm around Bart's shoulder and yells, "Yo! Shortpants!"
The trio stops and, slowly, half-turns. Nightwing's trying to raise his head, Batman's still as a pillar, and Tim's.... This far away, Bart shouldn't be able to make out Tim's expression, but Tim's *surprised*. Just a lift of one brow, a quicksilver tilt to his mouth, but it's *Tim*. You're not his friend if you can't look closely and read the hints.
Bart waves at him. At first, Tim doesn't react, so Bart waves harder, only Roy's arm keeping him on the top of the slippery pile. Finally, Tim nods.
"You're gonna be okay, Boy Wonder!" Roy says after them as the trio trudges away.
It's really more to himself than anyone else, and he means Nightwing, not Tim, but Bart nods and says, "Yeah."
They slide the rest of the way down, Roy ending up on one knee. He squints at Bart as Bart offers him a hand up. "You're not Barry, either."
"No," Bart says and he has to grin. "Bart."
Roy's mouth opens, shock sharpening his features, and then Green Arrow knocks the back of Roy's head as he joins them. "Good Lord, boy, you denser than usual? Take a blow to the head? Does he *look* like Barry to you?" He winks at Bart. "No offense, kid."
"None taken." Bart takes a step back. Speed and its time are dwindling *fast*. A few golden threads, frayed at the ends and down their length, are all that hold him to the force, and he's pretty sure that's just due to his grandfather's suit.
"Bart?" Roy asks, shaking his head. "Motherfucking *Im*pulse?" He grabs Bart by the neck and hauls him close, studying his face. "I don't fucking believe it. It is you."
"Hey, fearless leader," Bart says while Arrow tips that weird hat off his brow and laughs his guts out.
Roy swats Bart and says, just like he always did the *first* time Bart was a Titan, "Don't call me that."
The fraying speed whines down the back of Bart's legs, throbs in time with his heartbeat across his knuckles. It really is disappearing; any other time, his knuckles would have been healed by now, the scabs getting ready to flake off.
The three of them head for the triage tent, back past Doomsday's corpse. Ambulances and fire trucks are swarming there, EMTs shouting out contradictory instructions, reporters jostling each other for the story. Bart pitches in, ferrying the injured to the tents. He wants to lose himself in *doing*, but all the while, the speed-lightning crackles a little more softly, dimly, across his skin.
He's sure it must be hours, even days, later when Roy claps him on the shoulder again. The sky, however, is just as blue, just as bright, as it was when the heroes left. It's just empty now.
"Looks like they've got a handle on things," Roy says. "How're you doing?"
Though he's tired, bone-deep *exhausted*, Bart jogs in place, just to feel the speed sparking and guttering in his legs. He's superstitious enough that he's convinced if he stops, it won't be there any more. "I should " he says to Roy, "get going, I guess."
Somewhere, slowly.
"You?" Roy asks Green Arrow.
"Home, I s'pose," he says, twisting the points of his mustache back together. "Little princess for you?"
"Man, with all that's been going on, I haven't even *talked* to her in four days." Roy grins, white teeth in a red, streaked face. "I get home, it's gonna be just me, my girl, a hot shower, and as much beer as I can pour down my throat."
Green Arrow hugs Roy, one-armed this time. "Taught you well, didn't I?"
Speed twangs in Bart's calves, a tight and desperate almost-sound. Swan song, he thinks, speed is music is light.
"I could run you home," he says. Roy looks at him, startled, then grinning even more widely. Bart rolls his shoulders. "Just a little speed left. Might not make it, but "
"Nah, buddy, that'd be cool." Roy tips his head, his sunglasses sliding down his nose. His eyes match Green Arrow's vest. "I'd appreciate it."
*
Bart isn't a kid any more. He hasn't been a kid since he ran out of Keystone, dragging the other Superboy with him. It's been years since then, or months, or maybe, for someone elsewhere, just moments, but as he pushes forward, Arsenal slung across his back, Bart is pretty sure this is what he's supposed to do.
He chases the last of the speed, its dwindling echoes, searches out the final notes, and brings a dad home to *his* kid.
Heroes don't kill. Even back in Manchester, *centuries* ago, Bart knew that. No one ever had to drill *that* into his head.
The speed's swan was shrieking as Bart pummeled a red-eyed Superboy, but it sings now as he heads up the Atlantic coast, into Jersey. His body aching, his muscles almost ready to tear as he chases down the last sparks, he skirts Gotham and the remains of what was Bludhaven. He doesn't want to chance losing all speed in the middle of the Hudson, so he runs them down the meridian on the top deck of the George Washington Bridge, then heads down Manhattan's west side.
Heroes don't kill and Bart runs. For Kon crumpled up on the ground, and Tim's little nod, and Cassie's tearstained fury, and for *Roy*, the first superhero who ever smiled at him.
*
They walk across Houston Street. His grampa's suit is in tatters and Roy buys him a tourist t-shirt to cover up with. The noise of the city roars around Bart; inside, he hears a pounding, ominous *emptiness*. He can barely walk, but he refuses Roy's arm. He can do this, even if it feels like falling down through Secret, spiraling into the loud absence of *everything*.
"C'mon in," Roy says as he unlocks the door. Six deadbolts and a JSA-issue alarm system.
"I " Bart says. He's so out of it, the words aren't coming. "I should go."
"Bullshit, kid. I know burnout when I see it, believe you me." Roy hustles him inside. He goes to call Lian's sitter and points Bart down the hall.
There is a shower, Bart's aware of that much. The water stings as it sluices through the grime and sweat and blood of years spent running. He rests his forehead against the wall and lets the water run until Roy bangs on the door.
Then there are clothes, jeans and a soft, well-washed t-shirt, that Bart tries to tell Roy won't fit. But he is Roy's height now and Roy just knocks his arm, calls him an idiot, and the doorbell rings. There is Chinese delivery, too much of it, hundreds of little white cartons, and somehow they eat all of it.
"Lian?" Bart asks around the last of the scallion pancakes.
"In bed," Roy says. "You were in the shower."
"Oh, right."
Roy pulls a beer out of the six-pack and starts to hand it to Bart. He stops, his arm extended, and says, "You're not a minor, right?"
Bart shakes his head, then knuckles his eyes. "I'm...seven. Or sixteen. Maybe 23?"
"Happy birthday, then," Roy says and hands the beer over.
*
Then there is sleep. On Roy's couch, Bart dreams of speed. He dreams of Max, his grampa, Johnny. The twins. He dreams of speed as it really is, down in its essence, going so fast it's just a golden blur across tableaus and panoramas of the world at rest. Speed was a single wall of song, a cascade of notes, frozen in motion.
*
"Hey, hotshot," Roy says when Bart wakes up. Early morning silver light creeps through the room. "There *is* a bed for you, you know."
Bart rubs his eyes. "Time is it?"
Roy glances at the muted television. "Six-thirty? Thereabouts. Should have Arthur's biggest fan running in here in four-three-two--"
Lian dashes into the room, skidding on bare feet, chanting "Arthur! Arthur!", knocking past empty beer cans as she wrestles Roy for the remote.
When she sees Bart on the couch, she freezes. Her eyes widen and she pulls herself a little behind her dad.
"Remember Bart?" Roy's down on one knee, nudging Lian forward. "He looks a little different now."
Lian's face scrunches up as she tips her head side to side. Bart shakes out his hair and smiles at her. Maybe it's the hair that makes the difference, because she's suddenly breaking out into a grin and running toward him.
"Zip, zoom!" she crows, barreling into Bart, tugging on his shirt. "Zipzip*zoom*, c'mon!"
He used to swing her under his arm and run at quarter-speed around the headquarters while she screeched and pummeled him with fists and feet, urging him to go faster.
"Can't " he starts to say, imploring Roy over Lian's butting head. "I "
But Lian squirms against him, pulling his shirt, so Bart grabs her in both hands and spins. She shrieks and he turns .
He turns as fast as he can, which is pretty close to motionless. His legs are cramped up, tight like they've never been. The room swoops around, Lian grows heavier, and Bart struggles to keep this up.
When he drops backwards onto the couch, Lian kisses his nose and says "thanks, Zip!" before she scrambles off his lap and weaves, almost drunkenly she's so dizzy, toward the television. She turns up the volume by poking the button with a Nerf arrow until it's satisfactorily blaring.
Roy's looking at him. Kind of funny, almost suspiciously, his eyes narrowed. After Bart blinks several times to clear the dizziness, though, Roy's watching the tv.
"Breakfast?" Bart asks a little later, when Roy pads back into the room, a giant mug of coffee in both hands.
"Caffeine, fuel of parents everywhere," Roy says over the mug, then slurps up a long sip. "Sorry, what? Breakfast. Right. Gimme a couple minutes."
Bart stands up. "I got it."
Roy has his arm around Lian, who's on her side, cheek on her dad's thigh, staring at the television. "Really? I was going to send you back to bed, but --"
"I got it," Bart says again.
Roy's grins come in about seventy different versions; Bart remembers that now. This one is gentler, not the standard sarcastic or self-mocking one. "You don't have to, but that'd be *great*. Nanny numero whatever left a couple weeks ago and me in the kitchen?" He snorts and holds the coffee out of Lian's reach. "About as comfortable as Batman at an Adam Sandler movie."
"He'd like _Little Nicky_. Demons, lotta dark. Just his thing," Bart says.
Roy guffaws, biting it off when Lian shushes him crossly. While Roy makes his apologies to her, Bart makes his way to the kitchen.
Breakfast. He can do breakfast. He's read everything by Julia Child, James Beard, *and* Martha Stewart, and Aunt Joan taught him crepes and blintzes once.
Or he could try to replicate Interlac scones. Lian might like those.
The last time he tried to do Interlac cuisine with 21st century ingredients, though, he screwed up pretty spectacularly. And the Legion took Kon right after and .
*Damn it*. He washes his hands, watching the suds run off his ring, as he tries to breathe normally. Maybe he's not allowed to wear a Flash ring anymore. Maybe he should take it off? He doesn't know who to ask.
Half a box of Bisquick, chocolate chips, a couple brown bananas. He can do this. It's just breakfast.
Even if he had his speed, it's not like it would help with pancakes.
*
The world has become a much bigger place. Everything is so much farther away from everything else now that contemplating distance nauseates him.
Dox is back in Manchester with Helen, after Joan's allergies starting acting up. His clothes are in Keystone -- but he wouldn't fit them anyway, so that doesn't matter. Carol's in *Cambodia*, of all places, doing some kind of semester abroad for honors students. His sketchbooks are in San Francisco, up in the Tower.
And Bart is in New York.
He lost his Titans-comm somewhere behind the red sun, probably when his own suit ripped to shreds and flew away. There's no Bludhaven *to* call, even if he knew Tim's number.
He tries Cassie's mom, and her school, even the Themysciran embassy; Mrs. Sandsmark sounds like she has a cold and tells him, hoarsely, that she hasn't heard from Cassie. The school won't release any information about students and the embassy's number is out of service.
One afternoon, he comes into the kitchen for a Zesti and finds Roy on the phone. He's got his chair tipped back on two legs, his feet up on the table, and he's saying, "You know, just kicking back, hanging with Kid Flash. It'd be totally old-school, except I've got a kid with an ear infection and it's a completely different Kid Flash."
Bart turns back around, deciding to go check Lian's temperature, when Roy breaks out in a loud barking laugh. "Shit, Wingie. Not like *that*. Wally never went for "
Bart waves his hand, trying to get Roy's attention. "Are you talking to Nightwing?"
"Hold on." Roy covers the receiver with one hand. "It's the Wing himself. Why?"
"Can you ask him to ask Robin to call me? If he wants, I mean, if he's not too busy or anything, I need to talk to him and it'd be really cool if he could "
Roy nods slowly, smiling. "Yeah, Bart, no problem." He uncovers the receiver and tips even farther back. "Hey. Bart wants to talk to mini-Bats. Let him know?" He rolls his eyes. "I can call him anything I want, man. He *is* mini-Bats "
Bart grabs a bottle of apple juice and goes to check on Lian.
Tim always strove to be an urban legend, something rustling in the shadows. Bart never *got* that, not really. It never made much sense to him, how important the anonymity was to Tim. Usually, he just chalked it up to Batman being extremely paranoid. Also, crazy.
But after Apokolips, after Max disappeared, after Stephanie died and then Tim's dad, after *Kon*, Bart's not so sure that anonymity is quite so crazy.
Maybe if you stay secret, people don't get so hurt.
*
Greta is in Manhattan for an internship over spring break. They meet at a weird restaurant off Union Square that Roy recommended. She's taller and even prettier than he remembers and she talks about her roommates, her internship supervisor, an ex-boyfriend who might not be ex much longer. Bart eats.
"Haven't lost your appetite, huh?"
"Nope," he says, but pushes away his plate. "So, boyfriend? What's his name? Where'd you meet him?"
He's Vernon, she met him during a college tour, he's a freshman poli-sci major. He plays lacrosse and rugby and likes alt-country music.
" and I had *no* idea what to tell him about you," she finishes. "Like, who are you? You know?"
"I'm Bart." He steals a radish from her salad. Greta shakes her head a little sadly, just like she and the other girls used to do when he got hyper. More hyper. Hyperer? "What?"
"It's just, like " Greta puts her hands flat on the table and leans in, lowering her voice. "How do I know you? That kind of thing."
"Oh, that's easy. We rescued from the DEO and helped break open that lab-jail-place and you "
"Bart." She smiles at him and smoothes back her hair. "I don't have amnesia. It's just that I can't tell *him* all of that, see?"
"Oh." Bart chews and swallows the radish. "Why not?"
"Hi, your girlfriend used to be a fog-cloud interfacing between life and death? I don't *think* so."
"Oh, yeah. I get it," Bart says. He really *doesn't*, but Greta sounds kind of annoyed.
"Being normal, it's " She breaks off as her cell-phone rings.
The waitress clears the plates and Bart orders a fudge brownie with chocolate ice-cream. It's half-finished when Greta finally hangs up.
"Sorry," she says, then shakes her head when Bart offers her a bite, sauce dripping off the fork.
"It's what?" he asks.
Greta looks blank. She blinks. "What's what?"
"You were saying, being normal is something. It's what?"
Greta takes her time about answering, snapping shut her phone, going through her purse, fiddling with her bracelets. Finally, she pushes the hair out of her eyes and smiles at him. "It's wonderful."
Even if you lie about who you are? Bart doesn't ask that. Instead, he finishes his brownie and every bit of sauce he can scrape up. He also doesn't ask her if she misses being a fog-cloud. He's pretty sure he knows the answer to that.
"What about you?" Greta asks and claps her hands together. "God, I've talked about myself this whole time. Tell me about *you*. What's up?"
"Do you know where Cassie is?" Bart blurts out.
Greta presses her mouth closed and looks down. "We're not that close, not anymore," she says, then looks back up. "I asked about *you*. Anything good? Anyone special?"
Being normal seems to boil down to dating. Greta's got a boyfriend; even Tim had Stephanie in his other life. The thick sweetness of chocolate goes a little sour at the back of his throat when he thinks of Kon and Cassie.
He tells her 'no', there's nobody special, and Greta looks sympathetic. So why is he thinking about Arsenal's knowing smirk and the sound of his laughter?
He pays the check with cash Roy pushed on himBart reminds himself that he really does have to do something about money and everything elseand out on the sidewalk, Greta hugs him. She kisses his cheek, tells him not to be a stranger, and he's walked all the way to 2nd and B when he realizes they never talked about Kon or Tim or *anyone*.
"How was your date?" Roy asks later.
Bart rolls his head against the back of the couch. "Being normal *sucks*."
"Fuck you. *I'm* normal," Roy says and punches him.
Dodging the blow, Bart tucks and rolls off the couch, getting his arms hooked around Roy's legs. "You know what I mean. You're not a meta, but you're --"
"Normal, little man," Roy says, tugging at Bart's left arm. He almost manages to get Bart into a headlock, but Bart's still quicker than most people, however *silent* the speed has gone, and he wriggles free. Roy is *heavy*, but Bart pins him and straddles his waist.
"You're cool, so it doesn't count," he says, looking down. It'd be really easy to kiss Roy right now. Roy grins at the compliment and bats his lashes outrageously. If Bart had his speed, he could do it before thinking it over, just lean down and .
Roy bucks once, brings his left knee up, and flips Bart to the floor. Bart's head thumps against the hardwood and he closes his eyes.
"No roughhousing!" Lian calls from her room. "Daddy, don't hurt Zip!"
"That's what I get for trying to be mature," Roy says and leans over to offer Bart his hand. "Nice try, kiddo. Better luck next time."
Bart takes Roy's hand in both of his own and pulls himself to his feet. For a moment, he's lightheaded and the room tilts vertiginously; he blinks and clears his head.
*
Two days later, in the middle of the day, Bart has just gotten back from picking up Lian from a playdate. The phone is ringing as he wrestles with the security system and he rushes to answer.
"Harper residence," he says, waving Lian into the kitchen for her snack.
"It's me," Tim says. He doesn't ask if the line is secure, but Bart can hear the hesitation in his tone. "You asked that I call."
"Yeah, yeah, thanks, I " Bart drops his backpack to the floor and follows Lian to make sure she's not trying to cook ramen by herself again. He leans in the kitchen doorway and realizes that he's smiling. "Hi."
"What can I do for you?" Tim asks.
Bart tips his head against the wall and closes his eyes. He *knows* you can't just call Tim up and, like, shoot the shit, but it'd be nice if that had somehow changed.
"Bart?"
"I'm here," Bart says and shakes his head when Lian holds up a bag of Chips Ahoy, her face alight with hope. "No way. Not you, Rob. Um. How are you doing?"
"Call me Tim."
"Sorry. How *are* you doing?"
Tim exhales, the sound a slow, steady deflation in Bart's ear. "Trying to keep the glass half-full. You?"
Lian pouts and puts the bag back, taking an apple from the bowl instead. "Better," Bart tells her and Tim starts to say something. Bart interrupts him. "Listen, I'll make this quick. How do you make a secret identity?"
He *hears* himself and winces. Apparently, he doesn't need the speed-force to start blurting out moronic stuff around Robin. That kind of thing is *all* Bart, no Impulse. Kid Flash, whoever.
"Well " Tim starts, then pauses. Anyone else would probably ask Bart what's wrong. Tim clears his throat softly; he sounds very far away, even though the line is clear. "You lie. You lie *a lot*."
Bart swallows and picks at the seam on hisRoy'sjeans. "I'm not really good at that. At lying."
"No," Tim says. "You're not."
He doesn't say it like that's a criticism. He says it almost *gently*, and Bart has to close his eyes again. Everything got so bad so *fast*and you'd think Bart, being *Kid Flash*, could deal with the speed of everything going downhill but he couldn't, not at all. Then he was away for so long besides that he feels like Robinno, *Tim*is a stranger.
"Sorry for bothering you," Bart says. Lian's pulling on his hand, half-eaten apple hanging out of her mouth. "I should let you go. Um. Have fun, whatever you're doing."
"Thanks," Tim says.
"Be safe," Bart tells him, but he's not sure if Tim's already gone.
*
He isn't crippled or anything. Bart tries to remember that. He's still healthy and all in one piece; it's just that it feels like he's been shifted to a different world. A different world with different (slower, stiller) laws and rules. Things have so much more texture than they used to; without his aura, moving at the same speed as everyone else, he's noticing for the first time what jeans feel like on his legs, how *scratchy* terrycloth is.
Smells last longer, too, than they used to, and noises are somehow louder *and* bigger than before.
Everything's different here, now; it's sharper and scarier.
No wonder babies scream their heads off, Kon said once. Bart still has to squeeze shut his eyes and swallow very carefully whenever he thinks about Kon, hears his voice.
But the point's still true. They were babysitting Anita's parents, eating caramel popcorn and talking about babies. About being born, about how much it *hurt*, coming into a new world.
Of course, Kon claimed that he'd *laughed* when the Newsboys broke him out of his tube, but he admitted, eventually, that it was a frightened kind of laughter.
Bart still remembers screaming when the VR shut off and the treadmill slowed down, screaming as his grandmother caught him. When he landed back in the 20th century, he'd run three times around the world.
Cissie said both Fites cried when they were freed.
"It totally makes sense," Kon had said. "You pop out of something that feels *perfect* into what?" He gestured so expansively that a table lamp started to fall. It almost broke before his TK caught it at the last second. "Into *this*? This world kind of blows."
He hadn't really meant the last part. Not seriously, anyway; Kon loved the world as much as *Superman* did. Does.
Anyway, a lot.
*
Roy has a date tonight. Roy, it turns out, has *seven* accounts at nerve.com and other places. He appears in the hallway when Bart's coming down from his room, and he's wearing...something purple. And black. And a little glittery.
"Don't look at me in that tone of voice," Roy says as he straightens his skinny, glittery tie. "This is a good look."
Funny, Bart never would have figured Roy for a Sayers fan. Does this make him Bunter? "I didn't say anything."
"You thought it."
"I really didn't."
Roy smoothes down his clingy shirt, a frown wrinkling his forehead. "It's a good look."
"According to who?"
Roy glances up, smirk curving one side of his mouth. "_Esquire_, motherfucker. Or _Men's Health_."
Bart takes a theatrical step back and holds up his hands. "I thought you got that for the pictures. All those sweaty, hard abs..."
Roy flicks up his collar, checks the mirror, then flips it back down again. "I'm an ass man. You know that."
No, Bart didn't know. It makes *sense*Grace Choi is built like a really beautiful *tank*, after all.
Nightwing has a great ass, too. Nicer even than Donna Troy's.
Come to think of it, so does (did?) Wally, but Bart *really* doesn't want to finish that thought.
Too late.
Bart gulps air like a goldfish, covering his mouth too late to muffle the half-squeak, half-cough that escapes at the image of Wally, naked, twined around Roy.
Roy's still admiring himself in the mirror, but he glances over his shoulder, eyebrow cocked. "You okay there, Zippy?"
Bart nods rapidly, hysterically, waving Roy away. "I'm good," he says when he stops laughing in horror. "You, um. You should go. Don't want to be late."
"Owe you. Owe you *big*," Roy tells him as he shrugs on his jacket. "After dinner, just pop in a DVD and she'll be cool."
But that doesn't feel right. Bart grew up inside a movie, but real kids, normal ones, good kids like Lian have way more options. After he cooks dinner to her specificationsravioli, frozen peas she won't let him defrost, and chocolate milkthey hang out in her room. Lian has *everything*, and they start with Legos, turn to a session of school for her stuffed animals, then play some Nerf basketball (her aim's almost as good as her dad's), before ending with ballet. Bart gets to wear the tutu.
He has *fun*. When Roy comes home, it's after three and Bart's asleep on Lian's floor, head pillowed on the tutu.
*
Bart never gave much thought to geography. Even when he was pulling *C*s and *D*s and Max was on his case to concentrate and learn to retain information, he aced geography *because he'd been there*, whether 'there' was the Eiffel Tower or the Gobi Desert. When an interstate was like a city block to him, he just *knew* geography. He didn't have to think about it.
Now, though, geography is what teachers always said it was, back in school. It's a 'system of land masses and oceans on the world's surface'. It's vast and abstract. It isn't his backyard.
The world has turned into geography. You can run through the world; you can only study geography. It's not a place any more; it's a system.
To get back to Metropolis for Kon's memorial, he and Roy have to take a train. That's geography right therespace carved up onto tracks, time sliced into schedules and the price of tickets.
Lian claims the window seat, kneeling on it sideways, pressing her face and hands on the window well before the train pulls out of Penn Station.
Bart wonders what she'll see in the landscape as it streaks past.
When he ran, the sky blurred into a river, foaming, eddying, *blue* pouring past him, breaking over his skin. He rarely ever looked down, but when he did, the groundlawns, deserts, asphalt, seawas another stream, running in tandem with the sky. The horizon melted and wavered between the two like a line of smoke.
He is riding now, sitting down, wearing a blue suit of Roy's that's too big in the shoulders and too bright for anyone not Nightwing.
The world is different. Bigger, a lot emptier, *quieter*. Without Kon, without speed.
He beats Roy at three hands of poker.
"Photographic memory can *bite* me," Roy says after the fourth hand, eyeing Bart. "Genius *fucker*."
"I'm not " Bart starts to say but Roy's grinning at him and shuffling the cards ostentatiously.
"Your deal," he says and hands over the pack as he stands up. "I need to stretch. Shake off the bad luck. Keep on eye on the monkey?"
"Yeah, of course," Bart says. He's been taking care of Lian all week, but every time, Roy asks like it's an imposition or something.
The real imposition, Bart knows, is the fact that Roy's got a depowered, slowed-down ex-Flash moping in his guest room and eating his food. But he hasn't said a thing about it.
And it's not like this can go on forever. Bart needs to, as Jay said on the phone yesterday, 'make some decisions'.
Dr. Mid-Nite said the same thing a couple days ago when he gave Bart a physical.
"Any thoughts on what you're going to do next?" His sunglasses were nothing like Kon's old, dorky shades, but Bart still had to look away.
"Have some lunch, probably." Bart rubbed his stomach through the scritchy hospital gown. "Feeling pretty growly."
He suspected that even without the sunglasses, Dr. Mid-Nite would be freaky and unsettling. The guy was *intense*. Robin-level intense.
"Want to play Go-Fish?" Bart asks Lian now. "Or War? Your choice."
She has taken Roy's seat, her legs crossed and tenting her dress. The blue-flowered sundress had been a compromise; Roy wanted her in the white party thing, while Lian wanted to wear her eerily-accurate Batgirl costume.
"No," she says with a firm shake of the head. "I want pictures." Bonelessly, she slides off the seat and drags herself into Bart's lap. Once settled, she grabs his wrist and moves his fingers. "Make me some pictures? Please."
"Right, okay." Bart leans over to get the drawing tablet from Lian's backpackwhat Roy calls "The Anti-Boredom and Tantrums-Vaccine Fun-Time Kit"which comes fully stocked with crayons, puzzles, some spare action figures, a floppy red bunny, and picture books.
"*Draw* me some pictures," Lian insists.
"Yeah, yeah, need the " Bart holds Lian around the waist to keep her from falling as he roots through the bag. Finally, he gets the drawing pad. "I needed the pad first."
Lian smoothes her skirt over her knees. "Do Daddy first, then Uncle Ollie with Mia and Connor, and then do, um. Um. Wonder Woman! But don't put Aunt Donna in because that makes Daddy sad, and then! Then do *you* but " She blows a raspberry, drawing the sound out into a *vroom-vroom*.
"Daddy, Ollie and the kids, Wonder Woman," Bart says, flipping open the pad. "All together?"
"And you!" Lian kicks her feet against his legs. "You, too."
Him, too, but speeding. The paper is wide and blank, cheap stuff that's the color of an old banana and really porous.
He holds the black pen in his free hand for a moment. There's no subjective time, not as he watches the ink bleed into the paper.
"Stop and *think*," everyone used to tell him. *Implore* him.
He's pretty sure this isn't what they meant. There's thinking and then there's...*this*. Hesitation. Freezing. Cramping up.
Lian pokes his hand. "Pictures, Zip," she says, reproachfully but not exactly impatiently. "Draw *pictures*."
"Magic word," Roy says, pretending to swat her. He slides back into his seat and narrows his eyes at Bart. "She bugging you?"
"Nah," Bart says. It's true. He's drawing now, hand moving, the blot of ink turning into Green Arrow's quiver. He finishes the walrus mustache before he adds, "Everyone always said I'd understand. About, like, them getting frustrated with me. Said I'd understand when *I* had kids." He adds the curl of Mia's smile. "Then they usually added, God forbid I ever reproduce, butwhatever."
"Yeah?" Roy drinks down half a bottle of water, then gives it to Lian. "And? So do you?"
"I don't," Bart says, squinting down so he gets Wonder Woman's flaring hips just right. "Not frustrated."
"Cool," Roy says. His tone's a little quiet, not at all sarcastic, and Bart glances up to catch Roy looking at him. Consideringly, almost.
Roy doesn't ask him what he's going to do, when he's leaving, what the hell is wrong with him, how he *feels*. Roy just kicks Bart's foot and says, "Make sure I'm taller than Ollie."
*
When they do get to the park, Roy's got seven kinds of ID and all Bart has is the Flash ring he's not sure he's supposed to wear. The security guard grunts at him and holds him back with his night-stick to let Lian and Roy through.
"Are you *shitting* me?" Roy shoves his sunglasses up into his hair. "Dude, Rent-a-Cop, do you know who this is? This is *Kid Flash*, man, you gotta "
"So where's his costume?" the security guy asks.
Bart looks away; Black Canary's striding up to the gate. Her legs are about a zillion miles long. "Problem, hon?"
Roy gestures at Bart and curses.
Lian squeezes Bart's hand before running over. "Aunt Canary!" she screeches and the guard goes to stop her. Black Canary sweeps her up to her hip with one hand and holds the other up to the guard. "She's my guest. Now why don't you let Arsenal and his..." She eyes Bart speculatively. "His guest come on in."
At the memorial, a couple people ask about his burnout. Booster, Clark Kent, some random girl in a Batman tank-top. Most don't mention it, though Jay keeps *looking* at Bart, like he wants to say something.
"I'm doing okay," Bart tells them. Booster just shakes his head, like Bart lost all his limbs, and offers him a Boysenberry-Vanilla Soder. Clark Kent squeezes Bart's shoulder and nods, not even bothering to write down the answer. For a second, Bart sees Kon somewhere in the man's face, which is just *weird*. For one thing, Kon was always laughing (until, that is, he stopped), while Mr. Kent seems a lot quieter than that. Like he's a chuckling kind of a guy, not a guffawer.
When she sees him, Anita holds Bart in a long, side-to-side rocking hug and *doesn't* ask how he's doing or what happened to his speed. "Like a beanpole, mon," she says and ruffles his hair; she's *still* taller than he is, which is really cool.
He doesn't see anyone else he knows. Nightwing's there, but there's no sign of Robin, nor of Wonder Woman and Cassie.
Maybe the big guns are holding the real memorial somewhere else.
No, he's pretty sure they would have invited Jay, at the very least. J'onn, too.
Bart never pretended to understand the speed force, so he lets Jay answer all those questions. After Anita lets him go, he finds himself standing under one of the awnings at the side of the park, Lian on his hip, watching the crowd. There are so many *colors* and the day is so sunny that the effect of all the costumes and alien skintones is almost hallucinatory.
"So you're the new nanny?" a womanBlack Canary, with Mia in towasks.
"This is *Zip*," Lian says, shaking herself awake and holding out her arms. "Hi, Mia!"
Mia smiles at him over Lian's head and Bart tugs the suit jacket smooth.
"Me?" he says to Black Canary. "Not really. I'm just helping out."
She nods, her hands on her hips, then looks away into the crowd. "Stick close. Roy's got a good heart, whatever you might think."
And *that* is the strangest thing anyone's said to him all day, but he doesn't get a chance to ask what she means, because a Green Lanternnot Kyle, who's always going to hate him, but Hal Jordanis approaching, and Black Canary shrieks as she jumps into his arms.
"She's kind of a mom," Mia says softly, then covers Lian's ears and winces. "Just don't let her hear you saying that."
"Right," Bart says, "okay."
*
Because Lian's exhausted and they're all sunburned, they spend the night in Metropolis. The hotels are booked solid for the memorial, so they end up with a double. Lian crashes on one of the beds as soon as dinner's finished, spread out like a starfish, her red bunny grasped loosely in one hand. After Roy covers her with the quilt, he cracks open the mini-bar.
"You could use one," he says when Bart just holds the tiny bottle of whiskey. "Trust me."
Bart's never had a problem with trusting people. That is, in itself, kind of a problem right there. But it explains how, somehow, it becomes hours later and there are eleven-fourteen-*something* bottles lined up on the arm of the couch.
"You're drunk, man," Roy says. "Can you get drunk?"
Bart laughs. "'mgood."
"Dude." Roy's standing over him, hands on Bart's shoulders. "Stand up."
Bart thinks about it. He'd have to put his feet on the floor. That would be first. Then he'd lean forward. The muscles of his gluteal regionapparently, he can get drunk but never forget the anatomy books he memorizedwould then have to contract as he pushed himself up.
It sounds like a lot of effort. Plus, *gluteal* sounds funny, so he laughs again.
Roy looms up there, shaking his head at him.
"I'm *good*," Bart insists.
Roy's still gripping his shoulders.
"Didja notice how that statue was wrong?" Bart asks, then rolls his head so his cheeks rub against the back of Roy's hands. "It looked wrong. Didja see that? It didn't look like, like. Kon."
"Yeah, buddy," Roy says hoarsely. "I saw."
Bart can't stop laughing. He presses his head back into the couch cushion, looking up at Roy. His arms are...*strong*. Over the bones, the bundle of three muscles in his forearms are like steel ribbons. Bart mouths the names to himselfflexor carpi radialis, flexor carpi ulnaris, and extensor carpi ulnarisand wants to touch them.
There is no space at all between Bart andbetween Bart and the rest of the world. There is Roy's neck, pink from the day's sun, and his arms, blurred with ginger hair, a Navajo tattoo circling the biceps brachii like something dancing, and his eyes, dark green and narrowing.
And his mouth, opening, but Bart is *there* in the space of a second, kissing him.
Bart's palms tingle as they slide up Roy's arms, grasp his biceps, thumb tracing the dancing tattoo. He falls in place, down and forward, all at once, under the warm, slick pressure of Roy's mouth.
Then, he's...gone. Back on the couch, breathless, his hands empty. Roy sits back on his knees, rubbing his face.
"Dude, you just "
"Sorry," Bart says immediately. The air on his lips, across his tongue, tastes like metal. "Sorry, so sorry, I'm sorry."
"No " Roy starts, but when Bart lurches forward again, taking that as an invitation, he stops him, hand on Bart's chest, fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt. "No. Ornot now. Something."
"Okay?" Bart says; when he hears his voice curl up into a question, he looks down into his lap.
"Yeah, it's okay. In that way where it might not be okay but we don't know yet." Roy sounds husky, and he tugs at Bart's shirt, pulls him onto his feet. He laughs a little, not like anything's funny, more like he's uncomfortable, and pushes Bart toward the empty bed. "Sleep, Bart. It'll be okay."
*
Bart is bleary and hungover the next morning. Lian shares her orange juice with him and lets him borrow Red Bunny for the train ride home.
Roy's not acting any differently, though. Not hungover and not...whatever a guy's supposed to act like when someone, maybe his nanny, macked on him the night before. He just challenges Bart to a new round of poker and grins like always.
Lian's patience with Bart's sleepiness wears thin when they're an hour out of Metropolis and she starts poking him with a marker.
"Leave him be, mija," Roy whispers.
Lian squats down on the floor, her face level with Bart's. "*You* were playing with him." She grins, wide as her dad, when Bart sits up. "Pictures, please!"
The drawing pad is almost full, which could pose a problem. But the corners of most of the pages are still blank, so Bart plucks the marker from her hand and curls over his lap, shielding the pad.
"What're you *doing*?" Lian pulls on his arm, but Bart won't move.
"It's a surprise," he tells her.
In each corner, he draws a little manit could be Roy, or Connor, even Mia or Cissie, there's no real costumewith a bow and quiver. The figure stays the same, knees slightly bent, back perfectly straight; only its arms shift. The arrow's taken from the quiver, fitted to the bow, the cord draws back, and then he draws the flight. Moment by moment, page by page, every position in the air a static one. Unbridgeable.
He knows Greek and he read the 180s until he got bored and moved on. So he knows about Zeno's third paradox: the arrow will never reach its target, speed is impossible.
When he's finished, the arrow is embedded in the sun and he closes the pad.
Lian is sulking on the seat across from him, curled up against the window, ignoring even her dad.
Bart squeezes in between them. "Here," he says, "wanna see?"
Lian nods, still not looking at him, and Roy stretches so his arm settles around Bart's shoulder.
Bart pinches the corner of the pad and shows them the first picture. Just a person with a bow and quiver. When he has their attentionLian warm against his leg, Roy warmer against his neckhe lets the pages riffle past his thumb. Like Roy shuffling cards, like the speed force sweeping him up, and the archer draws the arrow, sights it, and lets it fly. The arrow rises higher and higher, past clouds, through storms, until it pierces the heart of the sun and waves back and forth, caught.
"Coooool," Lian breathes. "Do it again!"
Roy's hand settles in Bart's hair, fingers scratching idly over his scalp. "Really cool."
Bart lets Lian try the riffling and closes his eyes. Roy's thumb works slow circles down the nape of his neck, dragging warmth back into his skin.
*
Bart's going to get a tattoo. Roy takes him to his artist, a five-foot-nothing metaguy named Guy-like-the-noun with vines inked up his neck and face. He offers to wait, but Bart waves him off.
"I've done this before," he says, which is true, but this time, the ink's going to last. "I want it to be a surprise."
"Gotcha, Zip," Roy says and chuckles, low in his throat, when Bart kisses him goodbye. He's never going to get sick of kissing Roy, even when Guy clears his throat and says something about time being money.
The Titans' logo, low on his hip, lined up with his iliac crest. It's the simplest of all the designs he has made and rejectedRoy deemed his Superman *S* crest bisected by the Flash lightning-bolt and sprouting little batwings "really fugly". It's going to last forever.
[end]