Try to Remember

Chapter 21: Acquainted.

—?M?—?M?—?M?—

"This is great mission prep, guys. Real good work. Way to impress the new guy." Artemis, arms folded indignantly in front of her, stared down the majority of the Team. Miss Martian, Robin, Kaldur and Kid Flash were arrayed in the kitchen, standing around the central table and leaning away from the smouldering tray of solidified carbon discs that sat upon it.

"If it's any consolation, I'm not easily impressed." Mysterion stood behind her to the right, surupticiously glancing around the interior of this more homely part of the Team's headquarters. It was a strange design, like someone had cut and pasted an ikea kitchen and lounge onto the inside of a subterranean cave. It fit, but for the most part the stalactites didn't mesh well with the plush carpet and wide-screen TV.

Miss Martian, her hands clad in bright red oven gloves, dejectedly pushed the tray of smoking former-food. "Would you like a cookie?"

To everyone's surprise, he stepped up to the tray, snatched up a 'cookies' and took a bite. Followed by several quicker ones and before any of them could blink, the 'cookie' was gone. Mysterion wiped his mouth and said. "I don't think I'd call these cookies exactly. But I've eaten worse." Cod pop tarts for Christmas dinner leapt to mind.

Her face breaking into a broad smile, Miss Martian beamed back at him. "That's one of the nicest things anyones ever said about my cooking!"

Swiping flecks of charred cookie from his gloves, Mysterion cautioned her. "Don't let it go to your head."

As Kid Flash set about scooping up the remaining cookies and shovelling them into his mouth, Kaldur tried his best to fill the awkward silence. "We don't usually have this much time to prepare for a mission… I believe Batman has given us this time to get to know you."

Smiling wryly, Mysterion replied. "So you don't prep for every mission by eating cookies and…" Casting a long and perplexed gaze over at the couch, where Superboy and Raven were sat, engrossed with the television as it played the static of a dead channel. "Connecting to the mainframe or whatever the hell it is they're doing."

"Well, sometimes we do. Mostly it's stretching, checking our gear, running through a plan, that sort of thing. Professional stuff, man." The words would've been more reassuring, if they didn't come from Kid Flashes mouth, and thus come via half eaten cookies.

"Right." Extracting himself, Mysterion left them to clean up the baked disaster, and went to stand behind the couch. Overlooking Superbly and Raven who had their eyes transfixed on the electro-static screen, he quipped. "You know I think I've seen this show before… You know they got renewed for a third season?"

"… It calms me." Was the rather ominous response from Superboy.

"It does have a soothing effect." Raven, for her part, seemed to agree.

"Okay." Was really all the reply Mysterion could muster. So without much else to do he stood there, looking at the static.

Five long minutes later he threw his hands up suddenly and yelled. "What the fuck am I doing! I just watched static for five minutes!?"

Raven's turned her placid face up to him from the couch, and replied peacefully. "It's calming isn't it?"

"Now you just sound creepy. Where's Robin, I need to speak to him. Robin!?" Frustrated at being so confusedly lulled into peace, Mysterion cast his eyes around searching for the boy wonder.

A short exploration later and he had found the youngest superhero, working away at some gadgets contained in his forearm bracers.

Striding up to him, Mysterion began. "So what was it you wanted to ask me?"

"Huh?"

"You said you had something important to ask. When you called?"

"Oh yeah." In the process of answering, Mysterion could see Robin's countenance change as he remember whatever it was he had to ask. His demeanour went slowly from his usual buoyant self, to a more self-conscious almost nervous one. "It's about when we saved Raven. I wanna know about the people who had her captive. What happened to them. Batman hasn't said much about it ever since and it's been… it's been a while so… anything?"

Letting out a sigh, Kenny obliged by answering. Of course Batman hadn't told the kid anything. Batman didn't know anything. Just another example of the Bat's social engineering. Don't let anyone know what you know, know what you're thiknking. Let them fill in the blanks, so your enemies will pour in their fear to fill the gaps, and your allies will pour in their confidence. Of course, Kenny didn't know much either. But since Robin had been involved with the situation, he deserved some assurance. "Nothing. If we're lucky, they were wiped out or have upped sticks and left Gotham. If we're unlucky, then there's not much we can do other than keep our eyes open. These…" Mysterion fished for the right word, but in the end came up with nothing more specific than. "People… They're good at hiding. They've been doing it for…" Again he vetted his speech, how much information was he going to give this kid? This kid who had helped him, but who was nevertheless as much of an outsider to his world as Kenny was to his. "Years… Unless you want to go trawling through every sewer and warehouse looking for clues that might not even be there, then your best bet is to hope they slip up."

"What were they doing though, what was the thing they 'summoned'." That was the key question, and one Mysterion did not feel comfortable answering. At least not answering well.

"Big nasty monster." Was his admittedly lacklustre response.

"Oh come on, don't pull that on me! At least Batman is cryptic when he's not telling me stuff. Now I know you're just messing with me." Robin threw his hands up in exasperation, and his face told as much as his words did. He was annoyed, perhaps rightly so.

Through no fault of Robins, Kenny found himself getting just as irritated. The frustration of holding secrets weighing down on him. "Look, as far as I'm concerned, that's all it was they were summoning… You want me to get into occult shit? Fucking end of the world prophecy junk? Secrets that dwell beyond, that kind of thing…? Then you're barking up the wrong fuckin' tree. I don't play that game, that's their game. Those people were chasing their 'God'. But that's what they see. What I see is just a big nasty monster that needs to be stopped. In the end Robin, it's really only about the end result. Whatever it is, it was bad news. So we stopped it. You don't need more explanation than that. Too many secrets is bad for your health."

His shoulders slumped, Robin seemed to realise he wasn't getting any details out of Mysterion, at least not now. "If secrets are bad for your health then we probably need to see a doctor."

"Speaking of pulling the wool over peoples eyes, what the fuck?" The sudden pivot into accusation caught the boy wonder off guard, as Mysterion glared down at him. "I thought you said he just wanted me to observe."

Realisation hit Robin like a wave, and he shrugged trying to delegate the situation. "You are."

"Then why do I feel more like a babysitter?"

"You're not a very good one if you are." Robin quirked a grin, before darting past Mysterion and back towards the main area of the HQ.

"Hey, I'm a great babysitter!" Kenny shot after him, unable to stop himself smiling a little.

Left in what looked to be some sort of locker room, Mysterion went for a further walk, getting to grips with the layout of this underground structure. He'd gone a short way down the room, leaning around a doorway to get a glimpse into the next room, when someone's voice caught him by surprise.

"We don't need a babysitter."

He stopped himself from overreacting, but years of bad surprises couldn't stop his muscles tensing up, even as he turned to see Artemis surveying him from the doorway at the other end of the room. "You might not need a babysitter… Not so sure about them."

His joke melted some of the tension, but left a good amount hanging in the air. Everything from her stance leant against the wall, to the cascade of her blonde ponytail down to her side, had Kenny asking himself one question. 'What did she want from him?'

"Don't go through that door by the way."" She remarked, flicking her gaze at the door he had been about to go through.

"Why not?"

"It leads to the girls locker room."

"… Right. Sorry. I didn't notice." The echoes of his words in her silence made Kenny a little uncomfortable. Not in a bad way. More in an electric way, with little dancing shivers up his arms.

"Yeah. I'm just going there to restring my bow."

"Alright then. Catch you back in the-" Her interruption stilled him as he passed her in the doorframe.

"Can i ask you something?" Her expression was not unreadable, but behind her mask nothing more than pursuant curiosity and perhaps confusion were presenting themselves.

Meeting her gaze and leaning back against the doorframe across from her, nearly mirroring her stance Kenny acquiesced. "Shoot."

"How did you get out?" Her brow furrowed under her green mask, and that curiosity sharpened to concern. "Of the car wreck… Back outside the school, when we first met, you got into Ivo's car. Then it flipped and, and exploded! But you were nowhere after it happened. I tried to stick around, but the Batman and Green Arrow showed up and, I didn't mean to leave. But the paramedics… there was no one in the car so, when you showed up again… How the hell did you get out?"

Her confession had bowled his thoughts over, the possibilities that her words offered. He assuaged his own shock by stumbling into an answer. "Heh… I'm, not as, normal as I look."

She seemed tickled at his uncharacteristic apprehension. "Side note; you don't look normal. None of us do. But carry on."

He smiled back at her as they fell into conversation. "You know what I mean. It's nothing, major. I'm not like Superman or anything. I'm just harder to hurt is all."

"You've got suerpowers?" Something marred her tone then, a hint of disappointment perhaps, or what could've been realisation. She was harder to read than the rest of the Team, that was for sure.

"No. Not really… I get hurt just like anyone else but…" Staring into her eyes, Kenny found himself yearning to explain it all, to tell her what he was. But that way lay a whole can of worms he did not want Artemis to deal with. Least of all before a mission. He let out a burdensome sigh. "I hate explaining this shit…"

"I didn't mean to-"

"No it's okay." He prompted her unnecessary apology. Really if anyone should apologies it was him, he had left her in the lurch, unsure if he had died. Then when they'd met again he'd not addressed it.

"I was just… curious."

"Yeah, no, I get it… I…"

Their silences pressed up against one another, empty bodies wrestling in the short space between them in the doorway. The light played across her olive skin, just as it shunned his pale complexion shrouded beneath his hood.

"It's okay, if you don't wanna talk that's fine." She reached out and touched him, her hand resting against his arm. In doing so he felt the connection, felt again the need to tell someone. Artemis having remembered something like this. It wa s a loophole, she had noticed the lack of something, not witnessed the immediate action. Maybe it had been in how she observed that death, or maybe it was something else entirely, but either way she had retained a little bit of information. He owed her something of an explaination, if not the whole truth.

"I'm trying not to be dramatic here but… I have a way of cheating death… If things look really bad, I can… get out. It's not convenient, it's not painless, it's…" He searched for the right words in her eyes, green and shining across from him. He found no words. And his own thoughts were lost, fathomless and indecipherable to Artemis. Blue eyes like the deep.

"Is it magic?" She asked, leaning in conspiratorially.

He smiled, almost laughed, and said. "Yeah… It's magic."

His chuckling set her off, and she replied through the light sound of her laughter. "So you're an actual wizard, like Zatara?"

He shocked his head. "Definitely not. More like David Blaine. Except I'm not a douchebag and I haven't started any cults."

"Jury's out on you being a douchebag." He hand still resting on his arm formed a light fist, and she punched him playfully where she had grasped him, before folding her arms back in front of her.

"Oh no, they pronounced me guilty a long time ago. I'm just not on David Blaines level."

"So you do magic to escape death." She tossed her hair to the side and rest her head back against the doorframe, pondering. "That's more like Houdini."

"That's a good way of putting it actually. I'm like Houdini, if Houdini could take a punch." He smirked, knowing the full extent of the punches he could take.

"Ow, bad taste." She remarked, laughing only slightly.

"Yeah, sorry." He apologised again, unsure as to why he felt such a need to do so with Artemis. "Sorry I can't be more specific either. It's - I'm a bit complicated, when it comes to what I do."

"Everyone's a little complicated."

"Yeah…" That's when he broke their gaze, looking out into the hall and back towards the main area of the HQ. He needed to leave, otherwise who knows what he might end up saying about his power. "I'll let you get back to restringing your bow though. I better go check on the others."

"What was that you said to Robin about not being a babysitter?" His laughter sounded out from beneath the mantle of his hood, and as he moved to leave her the tail of his cloak tumbled over itself in the sudden movement, as Artemis watched him walk away.

"It's complicated!" He threw the remark over his shoulder and left her in the locker room. Where she waited for him to leave, before proceeding to prepare her gear for the upcoming mission.

—?M?—?M?—?M?—

A/N: Surprise! i'm not dead. Perhaps it's appropriate that this fic cannot die, but that's only because I do love it so much. I've been very busy, as the lack of updates might suggest. Busy with other writing projects, with graduating, with trying to get a job that lets me create, all that sort of IRL nonsense. So I've had no time to write this, which I'm not happy about, but which is unfortunately inevitable. I'll note that I don't intend to just abandon this fic, despite what I've done with my other three fan fiction stories. This one has just always captivated me, and sort of written itself. So I couldn't let it die.

This chapter is a tad short, maybe a bit rushed, but I felt the span of time between the last update yawning and just had to get something out there. Plus it doesn't help that due to computers being computers, i lost the first draft of this chapter completely and had to rewrite it. Hopefully it satisfies.

Thanks for bearing with the story! Please leave a review to let me know what your thoughts are, and don't be afraid to PM me if you want a chat or to suggest story ideas and that sort of thing. Also, try not to spoil Young Justice: Outsiders for me please. Even though I don't really care too much about spoilers in general. But being in the UK I haven't been able to watch it yet!

Thanks again for bearing with me though. And if you're new, hey how's it going? Much love!

- Faff!