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There’s a light on in his kitchen.
Dick lands on his fire escape, praying nobody’s awake and looking out the window. Usually, he’d be more careful and sneak in another way, but he can see Wally there at the table, muttering to himself about god knows what, and even with the surge of anger that rushes through his veins… Dick can’t turn down a friend in need, and clearly Wally needs it. He’ll humor him… just for a minute.
“She put a spell on me,” Wally mumbles as Dick climbs in the window. He ignores the statement; he’s sore enough from patrolling the streets of Bludhaven and having that conversation again isn’t going to help.
“What are you doing here?” Dick accuses, shutting the window behind him. He rips Nightwing’s mask off and takes in the sight of the mop of red hair flopped against his sorry excuse for a dinner table.
“M’drinking,” Wally slurs, barely lifting his head.
Well, no shit. The table is littered with empty beer bottles, which is odd for a speedster, because they physically can’t get drunk. But tonight, there’s something glowing on Wally’s arm, and Dick stomach twists at the sight. He walks forward, pushes Wally’s sleeve up, and sure enough, there it is: a metal band secured tightly around his wrist, with a blue light fading in and out. It blinks so slowly that Dick thinks Wally would be driven insane by it, if it wasn’t currently cutting off his powers and likely his circulation in one go.
Wally hates power dampeners more than anyone Dick’s ever met. He claims being disconnected from his powers is like having a part of his soul ripped away. He doesn’t even like seeing them used on the bad guys, but here he is, using it to drown his sorrows in Dick’s shitty apartment. Dick pushes down the feeling of guilt that creeps into his throat that somehow, this is his fault. He reminds himself it isn’t—that Wally did this to himself. He told Dick he was the only one he loved, but then that wasn’t true, was it?
“A power dampener? Where did you even get this?”
“Barry says… not to, y’know, run under the influ-fluence.”
“That’s not even how it… Look, if this is about the other night, I really think I’m the last person you should be coming to.”
Wally just groans and lazily tries to pull his arm away, to no avail. Dick’s still got his utility belt on, so he keeps a tight but gentle grip on Wally’s arm with one hand and starts digging around for some tools with the other, to get this thing off—or at least loosened.
“How’d you even get alcohol? We’re all underage, and I know you’re not sneaking it from home.”
“Roy got me a fake ID.”
“Of course he did,” Dick pinches his nose. “Wal, Roy is not the person to go to for dealing with relationship issues. I mean, I’m pretty sure he’s dating—or at least been sleeping with—an assassin. He’s got his own issues to deal with, and you have other friends.”
Wally stares at him for a second. Dick keeps his eyes locked on the power dampener. He’s close to getting it turned off, and luckily, Wally’s not even fighting it. He hasn’t said where he got it, and Dick doesn’t really want to know. If he’s so upset he’s willing to subject himself to wearing one just to be able to get drunk, then he’s desperate enough to do all kinds of things.
Probably.
“It’s… it’s not about you .”
“Yeah, see, I have a hard time believing that when you’re drunk off your ass in my kitchen less than a week after I dumped you.”
The power dampener doesn’t loosen up, but Dick manages to get it turned off. Wally’s eyes start to get less hazy, his cheeks a little less pink as his powers come back to him and his hypermetabolism sobers him up. Good. Dick gets up and goes to look in the junk drawer for the metal cutters.
“I told you,” Wally mutters, “she put a spell on me.”
“Who? None of your villains have actual magic.”
“I told you who it was.”
Dick sighs, grabs at the countertop with both hands until his knuckles are white. They’ve been through this already. It didn’t end well before, and it won’t now, either.
“Raven wouldn’t do that.”
“Why not? Her dad’s fucking Satan, isn’t he? Actually,” Wally snickers, and Dick isn’t sure if it’s that Wally hasn’t fully sobered up yet or he’s just been spending too much time around Hal when he follows up with: “her mom did.”
“Stop it. That’s not funny. You know better than anybody that you don’t pick the family you’re born into. And again: Why would Raven do that to you? She wouldn’t hurt any of us. She’s our friend.”
Wally shakes his head. “She’s your friend, Dick. She’s my teammate. There’s a difference.”
Dick turns to glare at him. “The Titans are all our friends, Wally. That’s how this works.”
“Roy, Donna, and Garth are my friends. You—I don’t know what we are anymore, I’m not even going to try. The others are my teammates on a team I don’t even want to be on!”
The only sound in the room is the clock ticking on the wall. Dick can’t tell if Wally’s hands are vibrating or if they’re just shaking with anger… or with something else.
“Like hell you didn’t want to be a Titan.”
“I wanted a break,” Wally corrects. He’s standing now, starting to pace like speedsters always do when they’re thinking too hard. In Dick’s cramped kitchen, Wally looks like a zoo animal doing laps in a much-too-small enclosure to try to work out his stress.
“I didn’t want to come back yet. I wanted to focus on—on school, I wanted to take a break. Hang up the Kid Flash suit until I knew who I was without it and could come back when I was ready. You asked me if I wanted to work with you when you built up your new team in California and I said no.”
“But you changed your mind!” Dick argues.
“She changed my mind!”
“This is bullshit. Raven wouldn’t—”
“She admitted to it, Dick!”
“What?”
Ice floods Dick’s veins. He’s never coped well with betrayal.
“You went back to Gotham for the weekend,” Wally starts, his gaze distant. “Something came up, some big, magical whatever, and we ran into some other heroes. Zatanna was there, and I guess maybe it’s the Trigon thing or there’s some other bad blood between them, because she asked why we trusted Raven to begin with. And then she said all this stuff about traces of magic on me, and I just—I told you, it was like I was under a spell whenever she was around. She said she only did it because fate demanded I be on the team, or something, and I’d told her I wouldn’t go. She needed me there. I guess she never meant for it to get this out of hand, for me to be so obsessed with her, but she can’t undo it…and I can’t undo your broken heart.”
Wally hangs his head in defeat.
It explains a lot. Hell, it’s a great excuse for the way Wally’s been acting pretty much the entire time they were together; but it doesn’t change the fact that Dick is sick and tired of the boy he loves chasing after someone else right in front of him. It doesn’t change that he can’t do this anymore, especially if there’s no way to undo the spell.
“She’s not sorry. She admitted it was wrong not to tell me, but she’s not sorry that she did it. But I am, Dick. I’m sorry. You know why? ‘Cause I was stupid enough to trust her. I trusted her, and because of that I hurt you, and I’ll hurt everyone else I’ll ever love too, since she can’t fix it. I have to live with that.”
“Wally, come on,” Dick says, but he knows the truth just as well as Wally does.
“My future is ruined, don’t you get it? I knew we weren’t meant to be—I’m at peace with that, always have been. But whoever I was supposed to find, they won’t… they won’t get it. If you can’t, how would they?”
“Who said we aren’t meant to be?”
“Don’t kid yourself, Grayson. There’s a reason we never really put a label on whatever this has been.”
It’s not like it isn’t true. They can talk all they want about a breakup, but the fact of the matter is that the last few months have been no different than the rest of their lives, albeit with a little more kissing, and Dick knows as well as Wally does that commitment isn’t easy for him. That he’s always going to be distracted, and whatever Wally wants out of life is nowhere close to what Dick assumes his own future will be (assuming he lives long enough to see it). It’s been fun, it has. But they were never the endgame.
“I think you're still a little drunk, Wal,” Dick says, and he’s not even sure why he bothers. A speedster’s true power is spiraling into oblivion. Must be a side effect of all that time they have to think.
“No, no—you turned the dampener off, I’m sobering up. But that’s—my head is clear, Dick. Clearer than it’s been in months.”
“Whatever’s going on with Raven—none of it erases the way you treated me. That’s why I told you we’re done. I love you, but I couldn’t watch you running after her like I wasn’t there. You’re my best friend, Wally. When it was just us… I was happy.”
“I know you were. I was too. But god, Dick, what I’m saying is—I think all of this, it’s a sign. I’m cursed to always be a little bit in love with Raven, and that’s something I have to live with now—something I have to figure out. But that’s not all there is, right?”
Wally’s eyes trail towards a picture pinned to the fridge with a magnet. It’s from a few months ago, when he and Barbara went ice skating. Just a regular day, back before, well.
Just thinking about it hurts, and from the look on Wally’s face, he can tell.
“You’re my best friend, too. That’s why I know you’re a little in love with Barbara, even if you two refuse to address it. And that’s also why I know you still miss Kori, and whatever you two had, it’s not dead and buried yet. You’re a part of me, Dick. I can just feel it, like… like a soulmate, but not like that. You keep me grounded, like a lightning rod. But there’s someone else out there I need to find… if I can.”
Wally’s eyes sparkle, literally. Like lightning flashes through them. He’s quiet for a second, and his lips move like he’s trying to find a name for something that won’t quite come to him. Dick reaches into the drawer and grabs the metal cutters.
“Do love spells change fate?” Wally asks, but it’s rhetorical. He looks at Dick, who just shrugs. He raises his arm, and Dick takes his hand.
“I don't know, Wal,” Dick mutters, “It seems to me that if there’s anything stronger, love would be it.”
“Love wasn’t strong enough for us,” Wally says.
Dick cuts the power dampener off his best friend’s wrist. Wally smiles softly at him.
“…But maybe our friendship is.”
“Love spells really aren’t a joke, are they?” Superman says.
His hand is on Flash’s shoulder, hesitant, but firm. It’s a nice reminder that some things are real. That she’s just in his head.
“Dick told you?” Flash asks as his mind starts to clear. They’re far away enough from the group now that the effects of the spell are wearing off.
“Barry told me,” Superman corrects, “back before… everything. I don’t feel good about it, but we had a bit of a gossip circle going on.”
“Huh.”
“If you need a minute, take it; we have time.”
“Yeah… yeah, okay.”
Flash sits and pulls his mask off. He rubs at his face, and tries not to let the adrenaline crash overwhelm him. The League’s first-ever team up with the Titans should’ve been exciting, it should be the most fun he’s ever had—these are his best friends he’s working with! It should feel like the best day of his life.
(Third best, actually, after the day he got his powers, and after the day when he found out his parents were getting divorced and they were going to let him live with Barry and Iris full time. But who’s counting?)
It’s not the best day, though, because he can’t be around Raven without losing his mind, and now they need Superman to babysit him just to keep him focused. Clark watches Wally carefully.
“If you want to talk…” he offers, and Wally doesn’t meet his eyes. But he doesn’t stay silent, either. Part of him needs to talk—to get it out.
“...It was back before the skies turned red,” Wally starts. He wrings his hands together, trying to work out the anxious energy.
“She said she only did it to get me back on the team because they needed my help. I was taking a break, though. I told them, it was a break. I’d be back if they really needed me. I mean, god, Kid Flash was— was the best thing that ever happened to me. I wasn’t throwing it all away, I just wanted to take some time off to focus on college. My entire life was centered around the Flash; I wanted a taste of normalcy, to figure out who Wally West was without the mask. I told the Titans I was done for good, but I don’t think I meant it. I don’t know; I guess I must’ve assumed they all knew what I was doing. Maybe she did. Maybe she didn’t care.”
He kicks some dirt around, hangs his head.
“And then she took matters into her own hands, and now she says she can’t undo it. None of it even mattered in the end, either, because— because—” Wally gestures down at his suit.
“Look where I ended up anyway.”
“I’m sorry, Wally.”
“I’m sorry, too. But it’s weird. Looking back, part of me is glad Raven dragged me back in when she did. I got a little more time working with Barry, before… you know. I treasure that. But every time I come down from this high of seeing her, it starts to sting. Like I can’t stop myself from loving her even if it hurts. And I don’t—I don’t trust her. I know she’s a hero and she’s good deep down, but I can’t trust her, and I really don’t know how Dick still does. He was the one who got hurt the most by it. And now… there’s this girl I’ve been seeing.”
“That, you’ve mentioned,” Clark teases.
“Yeah, Linda,” Wally says, and his cheeks flush. “I told you about her. I think I’m in love, for real. But she’s so… she’s everything to me. I look at her and I’m home.”
“But?”
“But I’m cursed,” Wally says. “I will always love—however artificially—someone else, and if that drives Linda away, I don’t know what I’ll do.”
“In my experience,” Clark offers, “these things tend to work out.”
“You just say that because you got the girl.”
“Actually, I say that because I’ve never met a Flash who didn’t. Love is powerful, Wally. If anyone’s going to figure it out, it’ll be you.”