MINE

The day he leaves them – calls them all to the Cave and stands before them in plainclothes and a defeated stance – they know that nothing will ever be quite the same.

It's not that Dick won't be a capable leader (far from it – they've always known he'll be brilliant). Rather, it's that Kaldur's guidance has been one of the only constants in several years of rapid and occasionally violent change. No matter who joined the team, who left it, what absurd challenges they were given and what terrible burdens they were forced to bear, he was always the one to pick back up, push forward, quietly oblige them to reassemble themselves into a functional whole. Kaldur had become a given of their missions and of their lives, and the first five of them in particular had come to depend on him as less of a friend and more of a watchful older brother, never too busy or too tired to hear out a problem or tend to an injury.

And so, on the day he tells them in a perfectly level voice that he will be taking an indefinite leave of absence, it's as if they've turned a page in a beloved book, only to discover it was the last one: the story is coming to an end.

Dick, of course, knows this is not really the case, but it will be some months before he shares this with any of the others, and then only by necessity. Besides, knowing it doesn't change the fact that even as he steps up to shake Kaldur's hand and accept the torch that's being passed, his stomach is twisting into a thousand uncertain knots. These lives – the lives of some of the best (only) friends he's ever known – now they're in his hands.

He used to think that leadership was a privilege, an honor one earned and then used to accumulate further glory. But he's older now, and (he hopes) wiser, and he knows from his own missteps and from watching the stoop gradually accumulate in Kaldur's shoulders that the older hero was right to call it a burden down in that red-lit cave in Santa Prisca. Leadership is a responsibility, and a heavy one at that. He knows there are a thousand and one things Kaldur has done for him, shielded him from, in advance of this day. Whatever innocence Dick had left at thirteen he knows he owes to Kaldur. He also knows Kaldur would never, ever ask to have that debt repaired.

Now, watching his friend turn his back on them to face the zeta tubes, Dick isn't sure he'll ever even have a chance.

Conner's mind is elsewhere. He's a little numb, to be honest; he had noticed that Kaldur had been distant for the past few weeks, but that was to be expected – Aquagirl's death had been tough on everyone, but no one more than Kaldur and Garth. He also happens to have overheard Kaldur's conversation with Aquaman some weeks back, the one about his biological father (he didn't mean to, but he can't just turn off his superhearing). Still, he hadn't thought it would come to this.

He wishes now that he'd said something. He's no stranger to uncomfortable paternal genetics, after all, and maybe for once he could have offered some sort of comfort or support, instead of the other way around. But Kaldur has never been one to approach anyone with his troubles, and Conner has never been the one to start a conversation of any variety. They never talked a lot. Usually, they didn't need to.

It's an odd memory, but as Kaldur shoulders his bag (his effects from the Cave, presumably), Conner remembers the month leading up to his first day of high school, that long August when the team was new and his own life had just begun. Cadmus had taught him much, but as it had turned out, knowing how to write in the abstract was not the same as actually being able to form the letters on paper. Confronted by this fact in truly awkward fashion at a team gathering, Conner's first instinct had been to be ashamed, but Kaldur had smoothly suggested a new game (one that didn't require writing), then later in the evening, pulled him aside and offered to teach him before school began.

They had begun with large letters in the sand, out on the shores of Mt. Justice. Conner had been a quick study, so they moved on to pen and paper, an hour each night, painstakingly copying out each letter, each word, each sentence and paragraph, until the muscles of his hand had finally been able to recall and imitate Kaldur's clean, stark penmanship, and he'd gone off to school with one less thing to worry about.

He's worried now, though. As he hears the little unsteady lurch of Kaldur's heartbeat from across the room, Conner has a bad feeling about this whole business.

He hopes he comes home soon.

M'gann, too, is worried. She can't hear his heartbeat, but she can sense things leaking from his psyche, feelings she's not used to associating with Kaldur. He's afraid – of what, she doesn't know, but fear is at the core of the many things he seems to be feeling, clearer than the others, more pronounced.

She's tempted to open up a mind-link and ask if he needs to talk. She doesn't, though, because there's something oddly final about the way he sets his shoulders before his first step toward the zeta tubes, like he's bracing himself for something he doesn't dare name. It's an awful moment, really, a heavy silence hanging over all of them as they watch him go.

It shouldn't be like this, M'gann thinks. He shouldn't just turn his back and walk off. They should be reacting somehow, giving him hugs or shaking his hand or patting him on the back or doing something to acknowledge that this is, at least for now, a goodbye. But then again, maybe he wouldn't like that. He's never really been the most sentimental of them, at least not on the outside, and with all that's happened recently, maybe a proper goodbye would be too much. Maybe he needs to be left alone to confront what's within.

Still, M'gann can't help but remember that in the most literal of ways, Kaldur never shrank from her inner demons. Far from it – in the weeks of insecurity that had followed her decision to out her true form to the team, he had begun to catch her Hello, Megan! references, acknowledging them with a quiet, knowing smile and occasionally even slipping quotes of his own into their conversations. He'd found and watched the whole thing, just to understand her better, and to make it clear he felt she belonged with the team.

But now, for all her psychic powers and empathic abilities, M'gann has no idea how to return the favor.

Wally's watching Dick out of the corner of his eye, waiting to hear the catch. This is Kaldurthey're talking about. He doesn't just turn his back on duty when things get rough. Most of his life is duty – what will he have without it? But Dick is just watching Kaldur go through his sunglasses, jaw set, arms folded uneasily across his chest. Apparently, this is no joke.

Wally's brow furrows. He and Kaldur have never been the closest of friends – different cultures, different priorities, different dispositions – but he's long since learned not to think that with the older boy, what you see is what you get. Maybe it's Atlantis, maybe it's the military background, maybe it's just the way he's always been, but Wally knows that for all the cold practicality of Kaldur's demeanor, he cares deeply about all of them. He may be walking away, but there's no way he's walking away lightly.

He recalls a mission, some years ago, maybe ten months after the team first formed. They'd all been dropped at different radial points around their target, and everyone was supposed to work their way from their respective drop sites to the middle, where they'd pool their reconnaissance. Unfortunately for him, his uniform had an easier time with stealth mode than he did, and he'd found himself ambushed in the first half hour, driven off course and over a hidden cliff. His last conscious thought, lying in the shallows at the bottom with a dislocated hip, had been that Aqualad was going to kill him.

Instead, he'd woken in the Cave medbay a day later to find Kaldur asleep sitting up in a chair at the foot of his bed, the dirt and blood and rips on his uniform testifying that he'd been there since they'd gotten back. According to M'gann, he had veered off his own course to find Wally, injected him with field anesthesia and reset his hip on the spot, then personally carried him through the rest of the mission until their objective was secured and he could be tended to in the Bioship. At no point did he mention Wally's carelessness. At no point did he issue a rebuke. At no point did he complain about trekking through two and a half miles of underbrush with 150 pounds of dead weight on his back.

Any misconceptions Wally had had about Kaldur's underlying attachments had been dispelled that day.

Which is why now, as he watches the Atlantean cross the room to the zeta tubes, back straight and head erect, he knows that whatever is beginning in this moment is bigger than he can possibly imagine.

Artemis isn't surprised. Kaldur hides it decently, but he's been gone for weeks now, hiding behind mission briefs and extra training and League-mandated "talks" with Black Canary where he just sits there for hours, meeting questions with monosyllabic words or with nothing at all. (She shouldn't know about that last part, but she accidentally walked in on the tail end of a conversation between Dinah and Ollie a week ago, and she's been waiting for this day ever since. It was only a matter of time.)

Still, it hurts to watch him go. Kaldur can be an easy person to take for granted, and when Artemis first joined the team she had found him inscrutable, even bland at times, but then one night she'd caught him on patrol in Star City with Red Arrow, loose and relaxed and joking, a side of him the team rarely got to see, and her whole perception of him had changed.

That had been one of those nights she would have given anything not to go home, when all the memories of the apartment were sneaking up from the cracks in the floorboards like so many malevolent ghosts. And she hadn't meant to say anything about it, but somehow Kaldur had picked up on her restlessness and invited her to come back with him and Roy after patrol, much to the older boy's obvious annoyance. It hadn't been much – greasy takeout from some 24-hour Chinese joint and a lot of shots fired between the two archers – but it had gotten her through another night, and when the sun had come up and she'd made to leave the two of them to sleep, Kaldur had pressed a piece of paper into her palm with his own address scrawled on it.

"If you ever are unsure where to go," he'd said simply, closing her fingers over it with his own.

She'd known then that he was more than a solemn look and a strong build.

Roy's been gone for nearly two years now, though. His appearances are unannounced and brief, his moods volatile and violent. Kaldur's been graver, quieter, even distracted sometimes. Honestly, Artemis isn't sure she's heard him laugh in two years.

She wonders if he'll try to find Roy, to say goodbye. Somehow, she suspects he won't.

As the zeta tube whirrs to life, she hopes that wherever he's going, he finds what he's looking for.

Then the computer murmurs, the light flashes, and he's gone.

It's a long, long time before the six of them are back in that room again, when all the knots of secrecy and betrayal are untangled and set aside. Kaldur and Artemis have been to hell and back. Conner and M'gann have learned more about each other than perhaps they wanted to know. Dick's been off soul-searching (and isn't sure he's found anything). Wally's been hopping from dimension to dimension, but found his way eventually.

They're older. They've changed. They were right about that day – nothing is the same, now.

But when Kaldur takes the reins back, scarred and bent and damaged as he might be, they follow without question. After all, he is their leader, and they are his team. They would follow him to the end of any galaxy.

And when they do, Kaldur at last knows where and with and to whom he belongs.