Death Wish

Denial

Things went back to normal for the next few weeks. More specifically, I pretended to be a boy and didn't let anyone know while I dressed up in a costume, went on missions with my best friends and took down bad guys effectively saving the world many times. Of course, that had to be my definition of normal. 

At least the team was getting along better than before. After all of the missions we went on, I noticed that Artemis was getting along with everyone a bit better. Well, everyone except me. I often caught her glaring suspiciously at me from across the room and she always hesitated to follow my orders. Other than that, my relationships with the rest of my teammates grew significantly. I had even gotten Superboy to open up more.

Artemis had something against me, though, and at one point, it almost cost us our lives. It was when Rod Tornado's 'siblings' invaded the cave. After we found our friends, I had started on setting up an EMP to shut off the robots, when I noticed I needed a conductor that I didn't have on me. I had asked Artemis to fetch it for me, but she hesitated and when I got sucked away by a wave, I very nearly drowned. Sure, Artemis pulled through and our teammates praised her, but when Red Tornado disappeared, I could tell she blamed me for it. It wasn't even my fault.

Then she acted somewhat hostile to the idea of getting a new 'den mother' to supervise us while in the cave. Sure, Captain Marvel didn't know us all that well and was an actual human being, but he wasn't that bad. It was kind of fun to have a league member around that was human. However, that meant he was able to hold conversations with us a lot more and that lead to us talking a lot. Of course, I diverted every question about anything personal and just talked about things like: "would you rather fight Joker or an alien invasion?" Or, "what was the easiest fight you fought in?"

The worst thing about Artemis's change in behavior was that I began to notice that her insults at Wally weren't as pointed as they had been at first and while she did like to see him suffer, it was clear to me that she was developing feelings for him. That realization alone made me want to punch her, combine that with her obvious distaste for me and the liability she was for the team and I wanted to do much worse. Yeah, it was an immature response, but I couldn't help wanting to do it.  It was probably because  she wasn't the only one with growing feelings for the speedster.

 Despite going for a period of time oblivious to it, my crush on Wally had grown significantly over the weeks. Not only that, but I found myself visiting the gym more often and I blushed whenever I had physical contact with him. This was greatly annoying as I began to realize how much contact I had with him on a regular basis. Most of it was something little, like me pulling him out of harm's way on a mission, or the occasional high-five, but there were bigger things as well. For example, a hug after evading death or him draping his arm on my shoulders when we had a conversation with someone.

As a result, I found myself getting 'ripped' from my added hours in the gym, and a more specific glamour that hid all of my blushing. The glamour thing was no problem really, it helped me hide my gender after all, but the gain of muscle mass was more of a problem. First of all, I had always had the beginnings of a six pack, being a superhero and all, but it had become a lot more defined and was a lot more noticeable in my regular clothes than I had expected. Plus, My progress began to surplus my teammates greatly and they couldn't keep up anymore.

It came to no surprise that Batman noticed my change. By the look he gave me during training one day, I could tell he was suspicious. 

"Robin," He addressed me after training. I looked at his face and watched a bead of sweat run down the side of his face. He wiped his his head with a towel and took a long drink from his water bottle.

"Yeah?" I asked, cupping my hands behind my head and taking a deep breath. I was thoroughly tired, in a good way.

He gave me a suspicious look "Do you know how many reps we did?"