When the giant steel doors open, there's only two choices one can really make. Run for it, or shut your trap, thrust your chest up, and step into the light.
Being stubborn as she was, Claire only really had one choice. The latter.
She sighed deeply, a combined sigh of exhaustion and fury. She was in for it, that much was certain. Soon enough, she would have to face the icy eyes of The Boss. But she could take that, just as she had taken it every day for the last six months. The Boss was just a sideline problem, a minor setback compared to the parasite that was currently gnawing through her frustrated mind.
Sam. What was she going to do about Sam?
As promised, the giant steel doors opened at the sound of her boots against the tile, and she braced herself. A second later and she stepped forward, her figure suddenly and intensely bathed in fluorescent light.
Out of instinct, she glanced across the room, scanning it for anything out of the ordinary. Of course, she was really just scanning to make sure The Boss wasn't around. Which he wasn't, and that was good. She needed to figure this out quickly and listening to him lecture her wasn't going to help.
Claire stepped forward and started making her way across. The room was empty save for the giant vehicle in the corner, something like a tank made into a car. It was a great heap of metal that looked incredibly complex but that she knew wasn't all that difficult to operate. Two giant wheels jutted out the front, coupled with twin machine guns that were tucked into the metal like sardines. It was painted a deep, dark black, the same color as just about everything in the cave.
She ran her left hand over the front wheel, finding that the tank-car had been outfitted with brand new tires. Of course it had.
Good, she thought. There was a strong chance she might have to use this baby…soon.
A light flashed overhead and she knew that The Boss was on his way home. She took her hand away from the Batmobile and started making her way quickly towards the interrogation room. That was where Sam would be, right where The Boss had left him.
She cut a corner and opened another smaller, steel door, and stepped inside a dark room. Dark save for a small lamp light that she could see through the window into the interrogation room.
Her fists clenched as she saw Sam sitting there, his eyes shut and something of a smirk on his face. He had gotten taller, she noticed, since she had seen him last. Taller and thinner. Too thin. His olive skin clung too tightly to his face, and his cheekbones stuck out too prominently, like trash stretching the lining of a garbage bag. His dark hair was a mess, hanging in jagged edges over his forehead. He looked awful.
His eyes remained closed but his smile grew wider, as if he could sense her watching him, even though they were separated by a wall of glass. She placed her hand against the window, furious and heartbroken at the same time.
Who was this boy? She had thought she'd known.
"Claire."
She almost yelped, but a hand clamped over her mouth and pulled her aside. She struggled for a moment, then realized she recognized the pale skin that held her. It was too strong for a boy and too tight for anyone but a man. Yes, yes, The Boss was home. And, naturally, he had snuck in without a sound.
"Jesus, Bruce," she whispered, ripping herself out of his grip, although, if she was honest with herself, she knew that he had simply let go of her.
"We need to talk," he said quietly, as he usually did.
"No, we don't," she snapped disrespectfully, something she knew she'd regret later and already felt a bit guilty for. She liked Bruce. "I need to talk. With Poltergeist."
"You trusted him." This was not a question.
The Boss gazed at her with his eyes like fire and ice and she fought the urge to recoil, to shrink back like a turtle into its shell. Yes, she had trusted Sam. She had trusted him very much.
"It doesn't matter." She looked down, her tone bitter. And sad. "He did what he did, and he will pay for it. It's justice." Her voice slipped ever-so-slightly on this last word.
"You have explaining to do."
Claire's eyes moved back to him. "Yes. But not now," she replied, hoping her face reflected some of his own fire. "First I get to do my first real interrogation. First I act."
Reluctance was highly uncharacteristic of The Boss, but now he sounded hesitant. "You've only just learned—"
"I'm ready." Her voice was like the crack of a whip.
The Boss studied her for a moment, not pleased but not angry either. Finally, he nodded. "Go," he told her, and abruptly turned away, his cape swirling after him as he left.
She stood there for a moment longer, watching him leave. A second and the door closed behind him, and she was once again alone. Other than Sam, of course.
She turned back to the wall of glass and exhaled quietly. Sam was still sitting at the little metal desk in the interrogation room with his eyes closed and his arms crossed. His face was the only thing she could see clearly, illuminated by the small lamp on the right side of the desk. The rest of the room was encased with darkness, a web of shadows. He looked as if he were meditating, watching a scene from behind his eyelids that only he could witness. This wasn't altogether unlikely, now that Claire thought about it. Sam had never been the most classic of characters; rather, he had been like her. Strange past, stranger powers.
She took a deep breath and stepped towards the door to the interrogation room. It gave a loud mechanical BEEP as she pulled the handle and stepped inside.
As soon as Claire did such, Sam's eyes shot open, as if he hadn't been expecting someone to come back for him. But then they relaxed and settled back into the cool realms of his thin face, lined with a cold sweat. He watched as her figure moved through the darkness.
"Evening, Batman," he said coolly. His voice had deepened, Claire noticed. "You got shorter."
"Batgirl," she corrected, not without a trace of malice in her tone. She continued walking towards him. "And just because I'm short doesn't mean I can't kick your sorry ass."
He smirked. "You got feisty too."
She stepped closer until her masked face was illuminated by the lamp light. He took a good long look at her.
"Huh. Not as short as I thought," he commented. "'Bout 5'8'', nice build, strong shoulders—"
"I'm not here for a check-up," Claire snapped. For a moment, the anger in her voice surprised her. She sounded like…like Artemis, she realized suddenly. Like her old teammate, two years her senior, with the biting wit and no-nonsense manner. Her old teammate who had betrayed them and nearly ripped a team apart. "I'm here because of you," she finished after a second, regaining her focus.
"Me?" Sam raised an eyebrow. "Really. I'm flattered."
Who is this boy? Claire wondered yet again. He was nothing like the Sam she remembered.
"Yes, you," she replied coldly nevertheless. "You did something, Poltergeist, and we at the League aren't very happy about it."
"Yo-you," Sam's mouth dropped open, gaping at her for a second. Then he was suddenly convulsing with fits of laughter. "You at the League? Ha!" He grinned, slamming his fist upon the metal desk. "Sweetheart, goodness. If you think the League gives two cents about you, you're wrong. You're a sidekick, and to make it worse you're a sidekick who doesn't have any powers."
Think again, Claire thought bitterly, but didn't say anything. She wasn't ready to tell Sam who she really was. Not yet.
Instead, she leaned in, getting nice and close to his face. "Oh yeah, punk?" She raised an eyebrow at him, returning his awful grin. "We'll see who has the powers when you're in jail and I'm still on the streets with a shiny clean reputation."
"Claire." She heard The Boss's voice through her earpiece, warning. "Stop it with the threats. Coax first. Then threat."
She leaned back, irritated that Bruce had interrupted her but knowing he was right. She watched Sam carefully, then pulled the second metal chair out from underneath the desk and sat opposite him.
This entire time, he merely looked at her with his infuriating smirk.
"You were once a member of the Junior Justice League. Otherwise known as Young Justice," Claire said. It wasn't a question, but she waited for Sam's reply anyway.
"Yes, I was," he replied amusedly.
"You took a vow to protect the earth from harm."
"I suppose I did."
"You promised that you had put away your villainous behaviors. That that was all in the past."
His deep green eyes pierced her and an odd feeling like rock rubbing against rock crawled up her skin. She didn't like it. Not at all.
Claire leaned forward. "Poltergeist, you murdered three men."
He raised an eyebrow. "Really? I didn't know."
She bit back her retort, wanting to scream at him, wanting to ask him who the hell he was and what he had done with Sam, with the Sam she had known. But she couldn't. She couldn't if she ever hoped to truly know the answer to those questions, and she couldn't if she ever hoped to be the Batgirl that she wanted to be.
Finally, she replied the only way she knew she could. "What happened to you?"
He kept her gaze for a moment, and she was glad that her eyes were shielded by the white strips of fabric in her mask. If he saw her eyes, he would certainly recognize her.
He chose not to reply, but instead looked down at his hands, which were bound by a strange, silvery energy that pulsated lightly every few seconds. He looked at them with an odd curiosity, flexing his palms. "Huh," he muttered.
"Manipulating things telepathically isn't going to work, Poltergeist," she told him, rather exasperated. "This room is quarantined, and we've used just about every piece of technology we have to restrain your telepathic abilities."
"So I've noticed," Sam replied, his eyes sweeping across the room, although he probably couldn't see a thing because it was so dark. "I'd like to know what kind of—"
"Good tech. Really good tech," Claire interrupted. "It doesn't matter. You do."
He sighed and leaned back in his chair. "Lord, you sound like Angel. Ever the persistent one."
Her heart skipped a beat. Gooseflesh rippled up and down her arms and legs in a matter of seconds.
Swallowing hard, she fought to keep her cool. No, he hadn't guessed who she was, but he had made a connection between her and her old alter ego. And that in itself wasn't good. She took a deep breath, running her fingers along the length of the cold steel table.
"You mean your old teammate Angel. The one who trusted you, who fought by your side."
His eyebrows furrowed for a second, as if an unpleasant memory had swept past his eyes. Then the moment passed and he nodded. "Yes, that Angel. But she's long gone now."
The utter irony of the situation was almost enough to make Claire laugh. Except that it wasn't funny. It was heart-wrenchingly painful, confusing, and just plain wrong. Things weren't supposed to have turned out this way. Sam was supposed to remain Poltergeist, the loyal if misunderstood telepathic who may not make it to dinner on time but would at least be there to catch you if you fell. And she was supposed to be Angel, apprentice to Hawkgirl, the genuine but tough know-it-all who had lost everything and gained it all back in the hearts of a few friends.
That's what they were supposed to be. Teammates. Friends. Not sitting here in an interrogation room, wondering what in the world had changed to get them to where they were now.
"I want to know why you murdered them," Claire finally said, after a moment of silence. She watched him patiently. "And what you had planned on doing next."
"You don't even know who I murdered, do you?" Sam looked up at her, his eyes twinkling with something that wasn't quite mischief. Almost like a wry regret. "They're still John Doe victims, am I correct?"
"There was a clip," she told him. "It was definitely you who sent-" Here she grimaced, "-whoever they were flying into that pile of rubble."
"Yeah, yeah, it was me," Sam replied, blowing it off as if the feat had been nothing. "But you don't know who they were."
"No, we don't. But does it matter? You murdered them. A member of the Justice League murdered them," she told him, feeling as if she were spelling something out to a young child. A remarkably intelligent, aggravatingly complex little child.
"…I can't believe you don't know who it was," he replied, shaking his head in some sort of weird half-amused, half-angry motion.
"The fact is you did it," Claire said. Then she narrowed her eyes, watching his face carefully for any change of expression. "Why?"
His eyes moved from their fixated place on the ceiling to meet hers. A churn was sent through her stomach as she remembered all the times she had looked into those eyes and seen the calm serenity, teasing playfulness, and brave determination. Now the only thing left was a dark cold. A cold that was not at all empty, but instead made his very irises appear…frozen. Literally frozen.
Finally, he spoke. "Because they deserved it."
The words were almost inaudible. Exhausted. Yet they still sent a horrible shiver up and down her spine.
"No man deserves to be murdered," she told him. But she knew this fact would have no effect on Poltergeist. On Sam. He would just think she was reciting out of "The Hero Handbook." Which, in a way, she was. But this was one of the facts that she had always firmly believed in. Sam? Well…Sam's idea of justice had always been a little more severe.
"These two did," Sam told her. "They deserved to die." There was a raw anger to his voice that made Claire worried.
"Why?" she asked, doing the best way she could to be gentle with her approach. But part of her just wanted to shout at him, force the answers out of him. Why did you break our trust? Why did you turn away? Why were you never like the others? Why, Sam, why?
He looked away, and she was surprised at the sudden change on his face. It was still cold, still stubborn, but now it was sad too. Unbearably sad.
She was about to ask him what had happened when a large BEEP filled the room and the lights flashed on. Claire blinked at the sudden brightness, disoriented, shielding her face with her hand.
"Lunch break," Sam said. His voice was now completely devoid of emotion. He didn't even blink at the light.
Claire stood up, watching him for a second longer. He wouldn't meet her gaze. He just kept staring straight ahead of him, watching something she couldn't see.
She closed her eyes. "I'll be back when you're done eating," she told him. He didn't reply.
She walked out of the interrogation room and back into the main cave, where The Boss was standing next to a long, metal table, facing the supercomputer that made up most of the left side of the cave. He was bent over a selection of blueprints with his cowl drawn back but his costume otherwise on. He didn't look up as she came in.
"You're doing well," he told her, scratching something onto a blueprint with a pen.
"Thanks," Claire replied softly, walking over to him. "But I'm getting nowhere."
"These things take time and patience. You've only been interrogating him for a little while. We can drag this out as long as we need to," Bruce said. He looked up at her, examining her expression. "…But you're worried he won't ever cave."
"I'm worried because something major has happened to him," she sighed, turning around and sitting on one of the smaller rocks that were set in various places along the Batcave.
"You knew him before all of this. How has he changed?"
She bit her tongue, thinking back. "He's darker. He was always dark, but now he's downright cold. And quieter. Plus he gets this weird sort of…sadness to his voice whenever I mention why he killed the men. It's like he regrets something. Which is odd, because Poltergeist was never one to regret his decisions. He was determined and brave, and he did what he could and that was that."
She paused for a moment, then added quietly, "And I don't understand him the way I used to."
"That's normal," Bruce told her, taking a seat as well. Although she wasn't looking at him, she could feel his eyes searing across her face. "It's been three years since you left Young Justice."
Claire winced. Had it really been that long? Had she really been hiding for this long, hoping someday she would be able to go back?
Had things really fallen apart this much in her absence?
"Still, I never thought things would change this much," she told Bruce, her eyes moving upwards. "I left thinking that I would be able to come back and see—"
She froze. Something had caught her attention in the corner of her eye and she turned to see the supercomputer screen. In the top left hand corner was a small section that displayed the local Gotham news. Displayed were the faces of three men.
"Bruce, enlarge that!" she called frantically to the Dark Knight, standing up immediately and running over to the computer. He did as she asked.
The small icon enlarged to fill up the entire screen, and the audio switched on, so that Claire could hear what the announcers were saying. Pictured on the news were the mug shots of three rugged, angry looking men, each with muddy brown hair and frightening hazel eyes. She recognized each of them instantly. The Belkossi brothers.
Con men who had been on the "wanted" list of the Justice League for a good long time now. They had manipulated multiple drug deals and illegal weapon trades, not to mention endangered and taken a good many lives. They were further signs of the spreading sickness that was Gotham's underground.
But it wasn't this fact that had Claire stunned, unable to form words as she watched as the announcer displayed the video clip she and Bruce had watched multiple times, over and over again.
"Warning: The following video is not recommended for underage audiences," the television announcer said, as the clip began to roll. Yet, Claire watched more closely this time, and realized that, yes. The men had been the Belkossi brothers. She watched, her heart sinking with dread, as Sam flew into the fuzzy picture, and laid havoc on the street, throwing objects about with his telekinesis. And those awful iron spheres that were his favorite choice of weapon. The Belkossi brothers hadn't stood a chance, even with all the power they had gained.
"It appears that Poltergeist, who was previously known to be a Junior Justice League hero, has taken a turn for the worst. The clip just shown pictures Poltergeist murdering Tom, Anthony, and Fred Belkossi at approximately 3 AM this morning. The victims were unidentified at first, but further investigation—"
"He killed the Belkossi brothers," Claire repeated to herself, not listening to the announcer anymore.
She hadn't noticed Bruce walk up behind her. "This…changes things," The Boss said, with the same tone of voice he used for nearly every other sentence of his typical conversation. Or at least, a similar tone. But Claire had known Bruce long enough to hear the slight hints of interest, the hints of confusion. The hints of concern.
"It wasn't just an innocent stranger," Claire said slowly. "Poltergeist killed the Belkossi brothers specifically, three of the largest con men in Gotham." She shook her head, her eyes still on her screen. "This isn't a coincidence."
"No. It isn't." Bruce swept around, walking steadily back to the control panel and typing in several commands. "Go back to him, Claire. Now," he said, while still bent over the panel. "Find out what happened. I don't care what you have to do to get it out of him.
"But do it."
She remained frozen for a second, still staring up at the screen. Then Bruce's command registered and she forced herself to look away. She threw her cowl back on over her head, resembling Batgirl once more, and whipped around, already running back towards the interrogation room.
Author's Note:
I know it sounds crazy, but this is actually more of a set-up for what the rest of this story will look like. I only plan on submitting a few more chapters, but it was getting to be too long for a one-shot so I decided to split it up.
Anyway, this is an early/belated (depending on what way you look at it) birthday present for my friend ADarknessInHeaven. Poltergeist/Sam is his character and Angel/Batgirl/Claire is mine. The Boss (Batman) and all related characters belong to DC Comics.
And I know it's confusing as of now. Questions will be answered. ;)
Hope you enjoyed!