A/N: This is just my theory about why her hair is short, why they live in Palo Alto, probably why they hate heroing so much. It will all be proven wrong in the episode today, I'm sure. There will be a chap 5 if anyone is interested. It won't be long, just a drabble but tell me if you want it. Oh and the name 'Nelson' comes from Brella (Satellites On Parade). I'm not cool enough to come up with a name like that.

Disclaimer: Don't own YJ but I do own these feels and they are very nervous about this episode premiering this morning.

Chapter 4:

Artemis knows Wally's got something planned for Valentine's Day. The boy is not subtle and even if he was Artemis knows him. She knows he feels guilty for not once celebrating a proper Valentine's with her – especially since they've been dating for four years – she knows he's bound and determined to make tomorrow as cheesy and cliché as possible and she knows that he's hiding her present in his closet because it whimpers every time she sets foot in his dorm.

"You are dismissed," her teacher announces in sync with the ring tone of Artemis' phone. She digs around in her bag for a moment before she unearths it and slips it up to an ear. As her classmates and teacher filter from the room Artemis whispers, "Where are you Wall-man?"

"Hey babe," Wally gasps into his cell-phone and she can tell he's running because there's this godawful air tunnel noise coming from his end and she barely hear his voice. "I'm almost there. Meet me at your dorm okay? In five minutes."

"Y'know Wally," Artemis says, leaning back against her lab bench. "If I didn't know any better I'd say you actually remembered this year."

"Remembered?" Wally says, feigning innocence, "Remembered what? Can't a guy take his girlfriend to his place for the weekend without provoking suspicion?"

Artemis chuckles, shoving her notebook into her bag as she balances her cell between her cheek and her shoulder, "Of course he can. If only he hadn't been planning this 'weekend' for the past two months, asking me every other day I had if I had taken the time off from work and finished my lab report. Real smooth, West."

"Alright, alright, you caught me," Wally says, "just meet me in five okay? It's hard running and talking at the same- dammit!"

"What is it?" Artemis asks, gripping the strap of her bag as the sound of glass shattering echoes over the line.

"I just ran into a Porsche and the windows- Augh! Arty I'll see you in five there's an angry middle-aged guy chasing me," Wally practically shouts into the phone before Artemis hears the call disconnect.

She shakes her head, chuckling at her boyfriend's inherent stupidity, before walking toward the door. She takes perhaps one step into the hallway before her knees buckle, and everything fades.

Wally comes to a halt in front of Artemis' dormitory in his civilian clothes. His shirt is sparkling, covered in infinitesimal pieces of shattered glass, and when he shakes his head dozens of sharp projectiles are flung from his hair.

"Babe you are not going to believe-" Wally begins to croak before looking up to find that he is alone.

Normally Artemis is freakishly early, an aspect of her personality that contrasts with Wally's innate lateness so sharply that he often wonders how they will ever live with each other in the future. Not that they've discussed living together anytime soon, because that would be particularly difficult, seeing as Artemis attends college in Gotham and Wally attends Central University, nearly half a country away from her. Zeta tubes aside, that would be a long commute for the one of them that chooses to reside with the other. But that decision can wait. The point is that Artemis is always on time, if not twenty minutes early. A habit that had been beaten into her from her father's ruthless training.

So the fact that she is not where she said she would be sends a thrum of nervousness racing through Wally's veins. He knows it is irrational. She could just be caught up talking to her teacher or a friend but Wally is so used to Artemis by now, so in tune with her, that he is almost positive something is wrong.

He digs his cell out of his pocket and calls her, once, twice, three times, until he is pulling at his hair and digging his nails into his phone so fiercely that it threatens to snap in half.

On the third failed attempt, when Artemis' husky voice echoes monotonously: "You've reached Artemis, you know what to do…" Wally shoves his phone into his pocket and dashes around Gotham University campus so quickly that all the students can make out is a red blur.

Nightwing is reaching for his cell-phone, just about to call Wally and ask him to head over to the cave, when suddenly the computer is announcing: Kid Flash – B03 and Wally is standing before him, shaking so badly that he's practically vibrating through the floor.

"Wall-"

"She's gone, Artemis is- gone. I can't find her anywhere. I tried her school, her dorm, her mom's place- hell I even checked with Cheshire! She's just…gone," Wally says helplessly, "I talked to her an hour ago and she was fine. She was-" Wally's breath hitches in his throat and he looks up at Nightwing through a fringe of messy red hair, "I need your help."

Nightwing locks gazes with Wally. The other boy's eyes are red, tinged with tears from running without his goggles, and swollen. His entire body is shaking with anxiety, causing an incandescent yellow glow to hang around the edges of his frame. Nightwing places a hand on his shoulder and he goes still, his feet hitting the floor with a sodden thump and Nightwing realizes that he had never actually stopped running until that moment.

"This was sent to Bruce a few minutes ago," Nightwing says, activating the vid feed without turning around. Wally's eyes stare over Nightwing's shoulder and he knows what his friend is witnessing even if he doesn't have the courage to re-watch it himself.

He's watching Artemis as she sits, bound to a chair. He's watching her eyes flicker open and glance up to see a man standing over her. He's watching Sportsmaster, her supposed father, grab her by her ponytail and lift her, chair and all, into the air. He's watching the man shake her, demand why she betrayed their family, why she betrayed who she is. And he's watching him swing his javelin toward her head, cut off her entire ponytail and, while her chair clatters to the floor and topples sideways, swing her cut locks over his head like a trophy.

Wally watches Sportsmaster lean toward the camera and whisper: "You have an hour. Or I'll trim her neck next."

It's a long moment after the video ends before Wally says anything at all. The first word he says is, "Where-" and he doesn't even have to finish before Nightwing is typing the coordinates into the computer gesturing to the warehouse Sportsmaster is holding her captive.

"I'll get the team," Nightwing says as Wally takes the proffered goggles from his friend's hands.

"No," Wally says tightly, "you and me are going."

"Wally but-"

"Dick," Wally says, and he hasn't used Nightwing's real name outside the comfort of one of their homes in so long that Nightwing takes an instinctual glance around the room, almost to make sure no one is listening - not that he's as paranoid about his identity as Batman but the gesture is habit at this point - and when he is done he looks back over at Wally. Wally who is still wearing crumpled civilian clothes. Wally, who is pushing his hair back from his face with one hand and pulling his goggles over his head with the other, "This is personal," he says, "This is something we have to do quickly. If we get the others involved there might not be enough time."

Dick pauses for only a moment before nodding, "right let's go."

Artemis thinks they gave her chloroform, or something close to it, because she's barely lucid as her father cut her hair from her head. Funny, she thinks, he was always the one who wanted my hair long. And now it's lying at her feet, tickling her bare legs like a fur carpet.

Her father kicks her once, meekly, and then rights her chair. She can barely make out his face, it's so blurry and distorted, most likely from whatever drug he fed her too much of.

"Your idiot boyfriend will be here soon," he growls, right in her ear, before digging his knuckles into her ribs. She gasps because, as much as she hates to admit it, she's lost muscle mass since she gave up the superhero gig, and once thick layers of muscular abdominals are now thin and weak and vulnerable and his fist cuts through her middle like a knife. "Give him my blessing. He's deserves a person as pathetic as you've become."

"W-why," Artemis stutters, and a bit of blood dribbles from her lips as she speaks but she merely licks it away with the tip of her tongue and asks again, "why?"

"Because you're no daughter of mine, consider yourself disinherited," Sportsmaster says, stomping toward the doorway. He pauses before he leaves and says jeeringly, "I guess I can tell you that this was an act. A way of showing my…superiors, that I have cut all ties with you. Literally. They may take this opportunity to kill you themselves, mind your training."

Artemis scoffs as he slams the door shut behind himself. Everything always goes back to her training. He can never just say: "Hey, be careful." She laughs at his audacity, the action sending even more red spittle trickling from her lips.

She blinks once, twice and the third time she swears she hears Wally's voice echoing from a distance, his shouts distorted by the buzzing that is filling her ears and the thick noxious sleep that is gripping her mind. Just before her eyes slip shut she imagines the door slams open and Wally's rushing to her side and his arms are encasing her, lifting her, taking her home.

When she finally awakes it is to a muffled beeping and the smell of lilies and the feel of clean sheets under her fingertips. She opens her eyes and she's alone. She's in the med bay, or at least she assumes she is, because she hasn't been in the cave's med bay in years, but it looks the same, same white walls and clean cots and machines dotting the walls.

She looks around the room groggily and realizes that it's empty so she carefully turns off her heart monitor and slips the IV from her vein. She grabs a bandage and some sterile wipes and wraps up the puncture as she'd been taught, years ago, by her father, before she tosses her feet over the edge of her bed and goes to stand.

Instantly Wally is by her side.

"And where do you think you're going?" he says sternly, pushing her back down, "Jeesh Artemis! You even undid the IV. Why must you be impossible?"

Artemis ignores him and lifts a hand to fix her hair, out of habit, whenever she feels uncomfortable she's always tightening the elastic and the feel of her hair being pulled all the way to the nape of her neck is calming somehow, but her fingers meet air as she gropes for her ponytail. She pulls the short strands away from her eyes and she remembers the swing of a javelin and her hair falling to her feet.

"Hey," Wally says, pulling her hand away from her hair and encasing it in both of his, "it's gonna be okay."

"How?" Artemis challenges, and she doesn't mean the hair, or the bruises dotting her ribs but the mere fact that her father's 'superiors' may well be after her. How is that fine? How is she supposed to have a normal life and graduate pre-med and become a doctor someday if she has an entire league of assassins hunting her down. "Just, how Wally?"

"Batman," Wally says almost giddily, "he submitted our applications to Stanford. We're transferring in the fall, together. It's gonna be okay Artemis."

Artemis has never been very emotional. When her mother was paralyzed she'd gone to her room and sat quietly for a few hours, barely speaking. When her sister had left she'd simply slumped to the floor and sat immovable until her father returned home. But at the very thought of being safe with Wally, safe at Stanford, together, running toward a future that she had been scared would never come to fruition she feels the barest of tears rim her eyes and she throws her arms around Wally's neck, burying her face in his t-shirt to hide the fact that she might cry for the first time in years.

Wally wraps his arms around her waist and whispers things into her ear that she can't be sure she hears correctly.

She smiles though, in remembrance, as he whispers, "I love you."

"Happy Valentine's day, Wally," she says softly and she smiles again as he groans in defeat and lowers his head into his hands.

"This year, it is definitely your fault that I forgot," he insists.

"Mmhmm," she says, pressing her lips to his, tracing her fingers around the frame of his face as he pulls away, "What?"

"I got you something, so it's not like I forgot completely," he smiles, brilliantly, and in a blur he's gone. She stares at the spot where he once sat and waits impatiently her mouth tingling with the ghost of his lips.

"Here," Wally says, and she's barely noticed that he is back before he is shoving a squirming ball of fur toward her.

"Whoa," she says, hefting the thing into her lap. It's a dog, a small gray dog with big black eyes and he's looking up at her expectantly, searching her face for a moment before leaping forward and swiping his tongue across her cheek. Artemis tries to appear surprised as she whispers, "What's his name?"

"I've been thinking about that," Wally says, sitting beside her on the cot and rubbing behind one of the puppy's ears, "how about…Spitfire?"

Artemis grimaces, Wally appears far too excited about that christening than he should. "Spitfire? No. What is he, a My Little Pony?" Artemis scoffs.

"Right," Wally says, blushing almost dejectedly before saying, "How about Alice? You love that book, Alice in Wonderland. Right?"

"He's a boy, Wally," Artemis drawls, running her right hand up and down the puppies back.

"Oh yeah," Wally says, groaning and scrubbing his hands over his face as if to prompt less idiotic thoughts. Finally, as if a lightbulb has popped above his head Wally lights up, "Alright then, Nelson. Final offer."

Artemis looks from Wally to the dog, from her boyfriend's excited green eyes to the dog's expectant black ones. They both seem to demand an answer from her and honestly she does see a bit of Kent Nelson in those deep ochre orbs. She'd only met the man for a few moments, years ago, but the dog has Kent's silent wisdom, his calm presence and his wrinkles. They even both have gray hair, it seems too fitting.

"Nelson," Artemis smiles down at the puppy in her lap, "…I like it," she looks back up at Wally, a smile alighting her face as he leans toward her, just before their lips meet she whispers, "thanks babe."

Nelson barely squirms in her arms, only adjusting his position in order to press his tiny head against her stomach as Wally presses heated kisses against her mouth and says, "Happy Valentine's day, Artemis."

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