Touch Of The Past

Chapter 22

I finally convince Danny to get into a pair of loose sweats and a t-shirt. He can't get the jumpsuit on until we take off his casts, but he really didn't want to hear that. Before we leave the bathroom, I give him stuff to brush his teeth and shave, and then we go back into the medbay.

His spirits have undeniably lifted with the shower, food and clothes. Jazz had dropped off a backpack full of all kinds of things, including a couple books, a notebook and pens, clothes and a cell phone.

Danny sits back down on the bed, probably tired of standing for so long. Just as he's about to ask me something, my watch beeps, signaling me to the mission room. "Hey, gotta go."

"When will you be back?" he asks.

"Don't know. It's a mission. But here-" I pull out a random book from the bag. It's a heavy book with the title The Cambridge Star Atlas. Huh. Light read. I put it on his bed anyway. "Read this."

He gives me raised eyebrows but pulls it towards him anyway. I jog out of the room and down the hall towards the mission room. The rest of the team is already there, including Tucker and Jazz.

"Late much?" snarks Wally, probably still annoyed about earlier.

"Gay much?" I return. Artemis snickers and Wally just goes red again.

"If I was, I wouldn't date you," he retorts.

"That's fine; if you were gay and wouldn't date me, I'd just date Artemis." Artemis looks startled before going absolutely livid.

"Enough," Kaldur orders, but I catch his humored smile.

I'd been with Batman almost five years. He's been with me the same amount of time. We share a telepathic thought: We're going to laugh about this later. Batman may be all deeply messed up and rock solid and stuff, but even he has to appreciate a good ironic joke about Wally. Not that we have anything against gays; it's just hilarious to think of Wally, who's train of thought is exclusively about girls, like that.

Even though now I know Artemis is probably going to kill me because of it.

Batman starts going over the aspects of the mission he'd found for us: a lab similar to Cadmus that had belonged to the light had opened back up after its shutdown following the attack on the Justice League. He explained that they were unaware that we even knew about the lab, so it was strictly as covert as possible.

"Robin," he calls after the briefing, and I go over to him expectantly, the Team going to either to bioship or the computers. "How is Danny Phantom?"

I send a quick glance back at the Team, seeing that Tucker and Jazz were well enough immersed in a conversation with Kaldur and Zatanna that they wouldn't eavesdrop. "He has accelerated healing. The wounds on his head are almost gone."

"Should his casts be removed?"

"Not right now... He doesn't do well with people yet."

Batman nods once, knowing exactly what I'm getting at. "So when you return?"

"That should work."

"Has he displayed any memories?"

"Some fragmented ones. He remembers a couple impressions, like the meaning of random words. He remembered his hero uniform, and he got this look of nostalgia. Other than that, nothing."

"Nostalgia?"

I shrug. "Wistful. You know... Like he had an impression... If I had to guess, the actual aspect of being a hero is something he remembers the best."

Batman is silent. Of course, the Batman is always silent. But there are different reasons for his silence, and the auras of them are different. The silence he has right now has the ambience (that's a weird word) of deep thinking.