-

Now no one was certain if Roy should watch the kids, especially since he'd spent the weekend fighting with his kid replacement, but they were so tired, and as an eighteen year old, he had enough renewable kinetic energy to deal with them.

It was tough to convince him, but the redhead agreed to come on the condition he was payed in cash. 

"Okay,  Kaldur and M'gann are old enough to kind of follow instructions, but M'gann might forget, so always remind her what she was going to do. Himself  hasn't eaten yet, so make sure he has his lunch. If he gets overwhelmed, we made him a calm-down room a few weeks ago, so he can go there." Black Canary explained, checking the notes on her phone as Wally wove around her legs. "Promise you won't pester Artemis?"

"Hey, she's the one who keeps pestering ME!" Roy objected. "She's the one who can't go ten minutes without being acknowledged!"

"Yeah, like that. She's a toddler, not everything can be her fault. Wally needs to eat every hour, snack bars in the cupboard, you know all that..." She exited out of notes and started setting alarms to check in on them. "I just put Dickie down for a nap, but I left a list for managing him on the kitchen table. Red Tornado is up top if you need him."

"Thank god." He muttered. "And I AM being paid, right?"

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wally was talking to the archer at the speed of light. Roy had know clue what he was saying, but that didn't seem to matter to the speedster, he just wanted to talk. 

"Uh huh..." Roy nodded, pretending to listen, helping Kaldur put his shirt on the right way. "Superboy, can you please eat."

"No." He replied.

"Please?"

"No!"

Roy sighed, they'd been going back and forth like that for fifteen minutes. The kid got more angry the hungrier he got, which caused this issue.

"And- but- an' then-" The Flash kid rambled.

"Come on, will you just-" Roy dragged the boy over to the table. "Eat!" He shouted as Conner fought to pull away.

"NO! NO! NO! I'M NOT HUNGRY!" He shouted. Stomping his foot furiously. Across the room, Wolf dragged himself up, storming over to them, and stepping in front of Conner protectively. Roy froze, not wanting the beast to attack him.

"Okay, stop. You just need to eat your lunch."

"NO!" The boy screamed, tears flicking the corners of his eyes. Wolf barked viciously, baring his teeth at the teen. He continued to produce guttural growls at Roy as Conner continued his fit. 

Roy looked desperately at the kids. Kaldur didn't know what to do, Wally was still rambling, Artemis was no where in sight, and Dick was starting to stir in his sleep. "What? does any one know where his time-out room is?"

"Conner's calm-down room?" M'gann asked, lazily backflipping in the air. "Uh huh."

"How do you get him there?" Roy ordered. How did Dinah manage to drag a 160 lbs teen across the mountain mid-fit?

"I can take 'im." M'gann told him, swooping down closer to the clone. "Conner, come on." She hooked her arms under his and pulled her friend, kicking and crying, off the floor and down the hall.

Roy let out a breath as Wolf stopped snarling, and trailed after the four year olds defensively, shooting glares back at the archer. How frequent was this that everyone was so unfazed by Conner's tantrum.

"and down, whatdoyouthink?"

After a few seconds, Roy realized Wally had stopped talking, and was staring at him expectantly. "Uh... sure."

That seemed to satisfy the kid, because he got back to rambling. Roy found his way back to the couch and flopped down, Wally moved on to repeating everything to Aqualad.

Roy reached behind the couch, searching for his duffle bag. His hand slid from polyester to... hair? He jerked his arm back and whipped around. "Artemis!" The blonde looked up, wide-eyed, from where she was playing in Roy's bag. "Can you quit it?" Roy snapped, yanking his arrows away.

"Ollie said I can!" The blonde protested.

"Ollie's not here!"

"But he said! He said I could! Have old Speedy Stuff!" She shouted around her irregular breath pattern.

"Well I'm still using these!" Roy told the toddler. "And Ollie's lying, you Can't have my old stuff."

"You're not Speedy." Artemis justified. "So they're mine now!"

The shouting must have gotten too much, because Dick's crying sprung from his pack-n-play. Roy groaned. "Don't touch my stuff." He got up and retrieved the baby, hurrying back to the kitchen to find the list of baby care Dinah had left him. 

Dick was uncomfortable from Roy's impatient energy, he was still bawling.

"Hi Robin!" Wally stood on his toes, trying to get the infant's attention.

"Shh! He's crying." Roy replied, frantically reading. He was pretty sure he wasn't even holding Dick properly. He sat the infant on the counter to try and de-code this puzzle.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Roy had no clue what he was doing. Once he'd gone through the struggle of changing the child's diaper, and redressing him, Dick had calmed down a little. He asked Kaldur if he wanted to help by watching the Robin for a few minutes. 

This was quickly overridden by M'gann declaring that she wanted to play with the baby. Roy let her.

Roy returned to the Livingroom to take a breath. Artemis was no where in sight. Roy reached behind where his bag was and heard a squeal.

"I told you not to touch my quiver!" He snapped. "It's mine!"

"I wanna play. Ollie took mine!" She pouted, crossing her arm and throwing herself back on the carpet.

"Good, you couldn't shoot as a teen, let alone a baby."

"I'm a kid, not a baby!" She scowled. 

"Whatever you want to call it. don't touch my things!"

"but I wanna play!" Artemis wasn't happy. She was starting to miss her mom and sister. She even liked staying with Oliver, She wanted affection.

"Go play with Wally."

She frowned. "No." 

Roy heard the baby start whining again, and grin his teeth furiously. "Can you just shut up and stay out of my way!?" He strode off, swearing, to find Dick. Again.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Roy was sat on the floor and watching cartoons with the kids, jiggling Robin on his leg to calm him. Wally was babbling away as always, Kaldur was leaning against him to watch tv and M'gann had perched on Roy's shoulders, playing with his hair.

It had been about an hour, and things were calming down. He was pretty sure he was going to order in for dinner.

Honestly, He was warming up to the kids a little, maybe because these were all the chill kids, and the ones with anger issues were-

SHIT WHERE'S SUPERBOY

M'gann had taken him to his time-out room almost two hours ago! was he still there? where is he? Why was the mountain so quiet when superboy and Artemis were unsupervised?

SHIT, ARTEMIS

Okay, okay, okay, he needed to calm down and find them. He might be enjoying being around the chill kids, but he still needed to find the ornery ones.

"Hey... ms. Martian, where is superboys little room?"

"I can show you."

Roy nodded, passed Dick off to the poor five year old team leader, and let her show him to what looked like a closet door, marked with a quiet sign. M'gann flew back to the livingroom, abandoning him.

Roy cautiously knocked on the door, then opened it. Conner was slumped against the wall, pouting a little, dried tearstreams down his face. "Hey... bud. you ready to eat?" Roy asked. The boy shook his head, he was probably very hungry. "Well... you wanna come out and watch tv with everyone?"

"Five minutes." He said quietly.

"Alright, I'm gonna find Artemis, see you in the livingroom." Roy started to close the door after him."

"Open." Conner said. "I can't open it."

"Why?"

"Kryptonite."

Roy okay-ed, and left the door open a crack. He wandered around the mountain, searching for his not-sister. Passing the bedrooms the league had set up for the little ones, he head what sounded like a child whispering to themselves, which is some real horror-movie shit.

He leaned on one of the bedroom doors, and entered to find a tiny blonde head peaking around a mattress.

Artemis saw him too, and quickly dropped the older archer's bow, backing against the wall, as if that would convince him she hadn't taken it.

"What are you doing?" Roy took in the sight properly, noticing three things: 1) he'd changed hersely into a green shirt, 2) his bow was about twice her height, and 3) there was a clumsily folded peice of green costruction paper on her head.

"I didn't!" She said instinctively.

"what's on your head?"

"Hat." She replied simply.

"Right..." The older archer said."Your shirt's on backwards, by the way."

"No it's not."

"But it is."

"No."

Roy saw there was no point in being correct with her. "What are you doing in here?"

"Playing."

"Playing what?" She muttered something inaudible in reply. "What?"

"...Green Arrow."

"What?" Roy let out a scoff of a laugh before he could help himself. the idea of any young child idealizing Oliver was the funniest shit ever!

Artemis scowled. "Don't laugh!"

the redhead clleared his throat, only to laugh again, sliding out his phone. "Christ, he's going to love this..."

"No!" She protested. "Don't! you can't tell!"

"Why?"

"You CAN'T!" She reiterated. "You're being mean!"

"Okay." He scoffed, sneaking a few photos of her 'costume'.

"You are! you're being a bullly ALL DAY!" She sniffed. "You yelled, and now you're being... mean!" She repeated, frustrated. He couldn't tell if she was crying, or just forcing tears, but the sight was concerning. "you hafta stop." She whimpered, sinking to the floor

"Okay, okay." Roy wanted to get payed for this. "stop."
She didn't.

"Stop." She sniffled, slumped on the floor.

Okay, this wasn't that funny anymore. The teasing was all well and good, but she was clearly still hung up on the yelling. It was easy to write off Roy's discomfort with knowing she'd tell the league he was mean to her, anf he probably wouldn't get payed fot his seven-ish hours of labor, but honestly, he felt weird about it.

He'd been stressed about Dick crying and Kon refusing to eat and had yelling improved either of those? Dick cried more, and Conner got overwhelmed and angry. honestly, Artemis (despite being a pain in the ass) the most tolerant of being yelled at. the went off to play on her own, and then he hunted her down and shit got real again?

I mean Roy knew he shouldn't yell at children, but it didn't usually hiy home like this!

"Okay, look, I'm sorry, can you just come back and sit with the others?" She didn't reply. "C'mon, Arty, I need to get us dinner, and I need everyone in one place." still nothing. "Look, I get it: I'm an asshole. Can you just come?"

"Go away." She told him.

"Come on, what will it take to get you to go to the livingroom?" He ordered.

Artemis sniffuled a little. "Jady's a better sister than you!"

Roy opened his mouth, but didn't know what to say. He was kind of offended.

"Oh, so what would Jade do then?" He conceded defeat grumpily, wanting to go home. Artemis shrugged. They stayed like that for almost a minute while Roy thought everything over. "Look: if I call Jade, and let you talk to her, will you just come with me? I've left the others alone almost twenty minutes!"

Artemis looked up at him. "You can do it?"

Roy know this was a mistake. "Yeah, sure. but lets go back to the living room."

Artemis thought for a second and nodded, drying her face. She stood up and ambled over, grabbing Roy's hand, and letting him lead her out.