#he just reads off a slideshow and expects you to memorize a command after reading it once

[crowcryptid]

i honestly have 0 clue what is going on in my linux class i think im gonna fail this shit unless i cheat. Like. sure if i didnt work i could do it but i simply do not have the time to memorize every single goddamn command being thrown at me

[lizartgurl]

“Back To You” (Aqualad x OC)

Kaldur is bi. Fite me. Allow me to shove a multi-chapter fic of him and my oc in your face because almost no one else seems to want to write about him because it’s “too hard”

Shout-out to @sand-son for your excellent beta-reading input. Comment if you’d like me to tag you in future updates.

PART ONE

Word Count: 2100

The smooth floors of the Watchtower reflected her frown back up at her as her boots thudded rhythmically. Emma couldn’t tell if it was some very well-polished granite, or if it was some alien material from far, far away.

Right now, she'd rather be in a galaxy far, far away than stuck here.

The Reach were defeated. The Lanterns were escorting them to trial on Rimbor, and she wished she’d bullied Bruce into letting her go with them. Like that would have worked out, but it would be better than what she’d faced every day since the summit.

“Emma!” Wally waved super-fast as she walked past the med-wing. Since he helped his uncle and cousin-from-the-future stop the last of the Reach’s chrysalises, his powers were fading in and out, giving him random burst of hyper-speed at some inopportune moments. When his arm wouldn’t stop waving, Artemis grabbed it to steady him. She fell over from his momentum, and they laughed before kissing.

They were so lucky.

Not breaking her stride, Nightingale managed a smile at two of her oldest friends, and waved. She finally arrived at the conference room, far away from prying eyes and ears in the garden, the cafetorium, or the mission room. She squared her shoulders and knocked.

Bruce opened the door.

“Come in, Nightingale.”

Emma nodded, and softly stepped around her mentor, hugging herself nervously.

The four other Leaguers clustered at one spot at the U-shaped table stood up to greet her.

“Thank you for coming, Nightingale,” Canary smiled warmly, setting a few of Emma’s nerves at ease.

“You’re not in trouble, don’t worry,” She joked. Emma almost laughed, taking the empty seat between Batman and Black Canary.

“Then what is this about?” She asked. The others sat down in silence, and Emma tried to do what Bruce did his best to teacher and analyzed what else they could be asking of her.

Black Canary’s day job was a psychologist, and Emma and her other team members were very open with her about their thoughts and problems. Aside from that, she was also the new chairman of the League. Everything went through her now.

The android Red Tornado used to be her team’s “Den Mother”, she got to know him very well while she lived at the cave that was now blown up. He was usually present whenever the League held counsel with team members, as he provided insight that didn’t typically occur to human minds.

Batman, Bruce, was like her father. Even if he wasn’t her mentor, he was almost always included in top-secret meetings. He was Batman.

Between Red Tornado and Black Canary sat Wildcat, her mentor, and a semi-retired superhero who used to work in the Justice Society with Red Tornado, a precursor to the Justice League. Emma wondered if it had anything to do with the JSA, but she only knew Red Tornado, Doctor Fate somewhat, and now Wildcat.

Aquaman, sitting gravely next to Bruce, was what worried her. Aqualad wasn’t present, but if his King was there, it had to be something to do with him.

Bruce saw her bite her lip, and squeezed her shoulder. Dinah took her hand.

“Aquaman and the League have received a few...disturbing messages in the past couple of weeks,” She said carefully.

“And another two since you entered this room,” Red Tornado updated. Wildcat made a grunt that sounded somewhat like a chuckle.

“What kind of messages?” Emma encouraged, though by Canary’s tone, she took it that they weren’t the most pleasant of memos.

“Threats,” Aquaman sad simply.

Emma blew a bit of hair out of her eyes, “I thought we got those all the time. Isn’t that part of the job? Dealing with ‘threats?”

“Ones directed at the League or at the Earth as a whole, yes, but these were directed towards a specific individual,” Batman said.

“One you seem hesitant to state. Is it me?” Nightingale asked.

Batman raised a brow in her direction.

Aquaman activated his personal screen, projecting an image onto the shared screen for all to see.

The image wasn’t best quality. The lighting and blur suggested it was taken deep underwater. Graffiti was marked on the side of a white stone building in dark black that looked red, striking Emma with a sickening similarity to blood. Where did they get that much?

“I-I’m sorry, I can’t read Atlantean,” She apologized to the King of Atlantis. Her stomach churned as she stared down at polished gray table.

Aquaman stood up, bracing himself against the table.

“Well, editing it very mildly, it says ‘Kill the kama traitor’.”

“And kama means...?” They were dancing around it.

“Emma,” Bruce turned her towards him, his voice gravely serious, “They’re threatening Aqualad.”

Emma swallowed that, as Red Tornado silently played a slideshow of similar threats for her illumination. She stopped counting at fifty-seven, holding her head in her hands as she tried to focus on memorizing the grain of the table. This could not be happening.

“It’s about his undercover mission,” Black Canary explained, as if Emma couldn’t guess.

“Contrary to popular belief, I was aware of Kaldur’s plan. Captain Atom was not very pleased to find out when he did, and neither were my people. Many, specifically the purist sect of Atlantis, refuse to believe that is the case.”

“They want to kill him, Emma,” Canary said. That much was obvious.

“We run into people who want to kill us all the time!” Emma snapped. She tried to even her breathing, and Bruce patted her back calmly.

“Nightingale, they have already tried to assassinate him when he returned home to visit his parents.”

Emma’s breath caught in her throat. Sha’lain’a and Calvin were more than willing to die for their son, they had proved that by raising him for the past twenty years. But they shouldn’t have to, Kaldur wouldn’t want them to.

“I assume you’ve already spoken to Aqualad about this?”

“Yes. And he suggested he take a leave of absence.” Canary said. “Depending on whether this cools down or not, he’d return eventually, or completely drop off the map.”

“Because he always has the best ideas,” Emma leaned back in her chair with a sigh that made her resemble a deflating balloon. She realized that wasn’t the most mature move, but she didn’t particularly care at this point.

“I assume he wants to give me lead of the team, since Nightwing was so eager to give up command after this past year?”

Batman and Canary shared a look. “He actually suggested Batgirl.”

Emma was barely surprised. She wasn’t the most capable of leaders, but she was used to everyone just automatically assuming that she was a good leader because she was trained by Batman and was almost joined at the hip with her little brother. She forgot that Kaldur knew her better than that.

“He volunteered to go alone, but we suggested taking backup.”

“Like pretending to kill Artemis so she could go undercover?” Nightingale couldn’t keep the bitter tone out of her voice.

“Yes,” Canary smoothly continued onward as Aquaman looked around awkwardly.

“Except, this time, we believe Artemis and Wally would like to spend more time together, especially after his near-death experience. We’d ask Miss Martian, but she is on probation until she figures out how to get a handle on her powers again, and Superboy is trying to help us help her with that.”

“And Nightwing?” Emma was afraid of the answer.

“Richard is going step back from the team. Take time to ‘find himself as a hero’.” Bruce spoke up at last.

Of course she was the last to know.

“Any other team members?”

“Kaldur’ahm requested this stay with the senior team members. Rocket has her son to raise, and she and Zatanna both have their cities to protect.” Aquaman stood, his arms folded.

“Just like last time,” Emma grit her teeth, squeezing her arm to keep from lashing out.

Canary squeezed her shoulder. “You can say no, Emma.”

She was very tempted to say no.

But something kept her from saying no. She knew Kaldur as well has he knew her, and Kaldur was too selfless for his own good. Someone had to be there to watch his back.

“I’ll need to think on it.” She said.

“How long would you like?” Canary seemed hopeful about that. This was definitely farther than she expected to get.

“How long can you give me?”

“The JSA has a cabin up in Canada, a very remote area,” Wildcat spoke up at last. So that was why he was here, “We wanted to leave tomorrow.”

Emma held back a groan. “Give me an hour then.”

Without waiting for their okay, she stood and turned, leaving her chair spinning as she all but ran for the door. Out in the hall, with no windows to let you know that you were in space at all, she felt like she could finally breathe,

“Emma,” She didn’t look up at Bruce.

“When did Rick resign?” She asked.

“When we asked him to take on this mission. He’d finally made up his mind, and he planned to formally resign when we called him in.”

Emma was still upset that he’d kept that from her. He was keeping a lot from her lately. She knew full well that he wasn’t required to tell her everything, even though they were siblings. A lot of people didn’t seem to trust her these days. Artemis, Wally, Conner, M’gann, Kaldur. She felt left out of the loop with everyone she used to know so well.

“We didn’t want to ask you, Emma,” Bruce insisted.

“Then why did you?”

“You and Kaldur were very close-”

“Until he betrayed everyone and made us think that he’d killed our friend! Artemis is like my sister, and Kaldur knew that. Richard knew that. Why didn’t they tell us?”

“Sometimes secrets have to be kept,” Bruce said, stepping up to her side.

“Yeah, that was exactly what Rick said when he told us about the whole undercover thing. He really is turning out more like you every day,”

Bruce sighed. “That’s what I was afraid of.”

“Emma.”

Before she could think, she spun to face the voice. Her baby brother took off his mask under a look of disapproval from their mentor to talk face-to-face.

“I told Kaldur not to tell you.”

“About what, your little espionage setup?”

“Yes,” Rick said, completely serious, “I didn’t even want to tell Wally about it, if it wasn’t pulling them out of retirement...” He trailed off and shook his head.

“I didn’t know it would take the toll it did.”

“Going undercover at all takes a pretty big toll,” Emma snorted.

“Emma,” Rick interrupted, “He’s sorry. He loves you so much and he’s too nice a guy to tell you.”

Emma scrambled for something to throw back at him. “Well just because he likes me doesn’t mean I like him back!”

Rick’s face deadpanned. “You did for almost six years.”

Emma’s face burned red, and she took a few steps away from the men to think.

“I know you don’t owe him anything, but just let him apologize,” Rick begged.

Aquaman came out of the room next and dashed up the hall, where Kaldur himself came around the corner. Emma tried to avoid looking at him, but she couldn’t help it. He was too wrapped up in talking with his King, anyway.

His dark skin was noticeably paler, illustrating the dark circles beneath his eyes. How long had he been like that?

She had loved him, once. She owed him nothing after all that he did, but Shayera once said that both their hearts were too big for each other, for the world. Emma knew she would feel terrible if something happened to Kaldur that she could have prevented, and she did nothing about it.

She spun on her heel back into the mission room, interrupting Wildcat’s reminiscence with Canary.

“I’ll do it.

“I’ll go with Aqualad.”

The moment she said the words, she knew that Aqualad and his King, along with her brother and her mentor, were watching from the doorway.

Canary smiled in relief. She knew, just as Emma did, that Kaldur would be better off with someone to watch his back.

“Thank you, Nightingale,” She stood up and hugged her tightly.

Wildcat patted her soundly on the back, and pointed to Kaldur, “Now you two kids better get packed. We leave at five am sharp, Eastern Standard Time.”

For the first time in a week, Emma met eyes with Kaldur.

What had she gotten herself into?