Back in Metropolis and Smallville and everywhere in between, they had all expected Bart to be the nice one. Maybe because he was small and young and easy to make happy. It wasn’t the same in Los Angeles and as he grew up, his anger wasn’t so innocent anymore. Bart didn’t get mad a lot, but when he did it could be consuming and dangerous and mean. He never got that way with Virgil. When Bart got upset with Virgil, it was always with that childish irritation that went away as if he hadn’t been there to begin with.
Virgil had tried harder than anyone else. Bart knew that. He would refuse everything and become agitated at the smallest things, and then he would calm down and accept everything that Virgil was trying to do. When he hadn’t wanted to see anybody else, he had wanted to see Virgil. He’d acted like he didn’t want him there sometimes, but really did want him there and would have followed him if he’d gone away.
He didn’t do very well when he was alone. It wasn’t his intention to split them apart. He wouldn’t have gone to Superman after finding Thaddeus, or to Oliver who he still looked up to. Bart always went to Virgil, who understood things about him that the others didn’t or couldn’t. He spent a year being angry with himself for what he’d done. He would have gotten Thaddeus eventually anyway. But he had to prove that he was faster and stronger and better. And it had gotten him pulled away. That was his fault.
Bart liked it that Virgil clung and didn’t pull away. There was a second where he feared that he would. It was driven away and he grew content where he was. It didn’t matter that they were in 2006 or that his eighteen year old self was probably somewhere nearby being a brat. He could forget about that for a little while.