Young, Just Us

For: __marcelo

Max Mercury calls Impulse "easily distracted". Cissie calls him a "space cadet", which makes Bart think of playing Astrowars VI (The asteroid monster in level 16 had taken him a whole twenty one and a half seconds to beat, not counting the annoying lag time. Bart hates lag time). Kon just calls him "spaz". Impulse always seems to arrive at Young Justice's meetings later than anyone else, no matter how soon he leaves. It doesn't seem to make any difference that he can outrun sound and light. Sometimes, Bart wonders if anyone ever told his Grampa Barry off when he was late. Bart figures they probably never had to; he can't imagine The Flash being late. And when Impulse finally arrives, smiling sheepishly, Cassie is tapping her foot impatiently, Kon looks ready to strangle him, and Robin gives him a glare that makes Bart want to vibrate right through the floor. Cassie tells Bart that he needs to learn to focus.

Bart tries. He really does. It's just that there is so much to focus on. When he runs, the world is like a big blur of color and light and sensation enveloping him. When he slows down, that doesn't get any less true. Bart has seen a lot more of the world than most people would see in a lifetime, but there is so much left to see, and it is always changing. Sitting still chafes at Bart. Max warns him that he will miss important things if he doesn't learn to slow down and focus. Bart doesn't see how slowing down could possibly help him miss less stuff. A lot of the time, his secret identity feels like a lead weight around Impulse's neck, except that wouldn't slow him down nearly as much. Bart hates waiting for the rest of the world to catch up with him.

For all these reasons, Impulse isn't generally the one on monitor duty, and regards it as no great loss. It's no different this Saturday evening. It had been a long day, and even Impulse can feel the dull ache of it in his muscles. They had been called in to stop a robbery at an ice skating competition, and were met by the unlikely combination of Mr. Freeze and Harley Quinn. In the end, the villains had been as much undone by their inability to cooperate or agree on what exactly the aim of the robbery was (Freeze had been interested in a series of ice sculptures by an acclaimed artist; Harley was more focused on the zamboni) as they were by Young Justice. Young Justice had returned to their cave soaking wet, shivering, and in Cassie's case, covered in the motor oil of the dismembered zamboni. The girls were still changing and putting away their equipment. Arowette had complained as the Supercycle took them back to Happy Harbor about the number of arrows she had broken on Freeze's metal suit. Robin had been binding up a shoulder wound with careful precision when Impulse had last seen him. He'd been talking to the air again, checking that Freeze and Harley Quinn were securely on their way back to Gotham City and Arkham Asylum. Superboy had managed to come out of the confrontation mostly unscathed, protected by his TTK when Harley had attempted to mow him down with the zamboni, his flight keeping him well above the ice that Impulse had found himself slipping and sliding across at dangerously high speeds. Bart had several colorful bruises decorating bits of his anatomy. Superboy was just as worn out as the rest of them by the time the Supercycle had settled itself in the garage, though, so when Impulse darted into the meeting room juggling a kettle of hot water, a dozen packets of hot cocoa mix and a package of marshmallow Peeps, he was greeted by a what sounded like several buzz saws, but was in fact Kon, slumped over in the computer chair, drooling on the keyboard and snoring uproariously.

***

There is dust on the meeting room table. The faces of the first Justice League stare out over it and through Kon, implacably but distantly benevolent. Bart had been known to stare up at that portrait for whole minutes at a time, which, for Bart, was an impressive amount of time. Kon tries to wipe the dust off the surface of the table, but there is more of it than he had realized. It coats his fingers with gray smudges, stirred up into the air, making Kon's nose wrinkle. He frowns. The cave was a mess more often than not, but it wasn't like Rob to let things go this long without setting them all to cleaning. The paper with the R on it that had been taped over the bat on the back of Robin's chair was lying on the floor, discarded carelessly. Kon picked it up, but the tape was too dust-coated to stick. The monitors were silent and dark, unmanned. Cassie's poster of Xema the Warrior Princess was gone. Instead, a second portrait stood opposite the picture of the Justice League, mirroring it. It was just a Polaroid pinned up with a thumbtack, a small, blurry image of a cluster of figures standing together. Kon threw himself down in the computer chair, kicking up his feet, since Robin wasn't around to toss Looks at him for it, and promptly sneezes. Muttering to himself, he tugs the chair over to the photo. Wonder Woman, Batman and the Flash stood next to a tall blonde woman in a hooded cloak carrying a bow and a figure Kon recognized as himself in costume. Wonder Woman was blonde. Kon was also pretty certain Batman was supposed to be taller than that. Superboy was the only kid in the picture.

"They wouldn't just ditch me," Kon told himself firmly. "So what if I'm still sixteen. I'm Superboy. No way would they not need me." He nodded to himself, puffing out his chest to display the 'S' more prominently. "They're probably ready to signal to me to come help save their butts right now!" Kon flipped on the monitor system and waited. And waited.

"Kon? Is that you?" Flash stepped into the monitor's view, along with Wonder Woman. Flash shook his head, his sympathetic golden eyes looking out at Kon. "I know you're tired of waiting," he said, "But soon enough we'll be sending the rest of the kids out there to you, and you'll have a team again. You just need to be patient."

Flash's voice was calm and gentle, and should have been soothing, but Kon felt like his stomach was trying to tie itself into knots. "Team? Kids? But... You guys are my team." Kon winced as his voiced cracked a bit. "I should be out there with you."