Veronica Grey's pov
Mount Justice
Thursday, January 20th, 2011
Garfield Logan just moved into the Cave. Since everyone else has school, and I can work from wherever I am, I volunteered to hang around and make sure he's okay. Bruce said it would be good for me as well as Garfield. I can help him mourn as well as move past his loss, and he can do the same with mine. So, here I am, in the kitchen, making him a cheeseburger, the fries bakinging in the oven. He looks pretty down, so as soon as his burger and fries are on a plate in front of him, I pull out the blender. With just some ice cream, milk, chocolate sauce, and whipped cream, I manage to make him a chocolate shake.
"Thanks." He smiles at me. Taking a sip. I just sit down across from him and watch him eat as I go through the charts from the patients in my human trials with the nanobots. After a while, I look up to see him staring at my tablet, watching me do my statistics work.
"You curious?" I ask him, snagging one of his leftover fries on his plate.
"What are you doing?" He asks, looking at all the graphs I have set up side by side with each patient's chart to show progress.
"I'm doing human trials for a nanotech cure for cancer. It doesn't work much with bone marrow cancer, but it works really well with tumors and scattered mets. I even have a patient with a satellite colony in her lungs. She's actually getting better by the day. What I'm doing right now, is graphing their charts to show progress and changes in their chemical balances." I explain to him, he's listening intently. For an eight year old, he seems surprisingly interested in this stuff.
"My mom used to do stuff like this, but with vaccinations for the animals on the reserve." He says quietly. I reach across the table and hold his little hand.
"I know you miss her," I start. "I miss mine too." He looks at me with a confused look.
"Your…?" He asks and I nod. His plate and cup are empty, so I get up and take them to the sink.
"End of November. Hit and run accident." I tell him, remembering that his own mother was enthralled by Queen Bee to drive her car off a cliff. He comes into the kitchen and stands next to me as I clean the dishes.
"Mine was last Sunday. I guess M'gann had something with my mom, so now I'm here." He shrugs. I pull out the ice cream and hand him a spoon. He takes it and just starts dragging the spoon around in the ice cream.
"I had something like that. My parents had something set up, so that if anything happened, I would go to someone they trusted." I tell him, scooping some ice cream and taking a bite.
"Well at least we are with family, right?" He looks up at me and give a little half smile, finally taking a bit of the ice cream.
"Right." I give him a smile. "Why don't we take the ice cream to the couch and watch something on the tv? Whatever you want." He nods and we move, the two of us sitting on the sofa and he picks Animal Planet, of all things. He seems to like watching Big Cat Diary, but when it ends and some sort of chimpanzee rescue show comes on, he is completely tuned it. As he leans forward and sits on the edge of his seat, watching the monkeys, I notice his skin is gaining a greenish tint. He notices my worried staring.
"What?" He looks back at me. "Do you not like monkeys?" He gestures to the television, but I notice his skin is returning to normal. I shake my head.
"No, you're fine. Ignore me." I give him a smile and he goes right back to watching. But as soon as he completely tunes back into the monkeys, his skin begins to turn green again. "Garfield, are you feeling okay?" I ask him as he watches.
"I feel fine, why?" He doesn't take his eyes off the screen.
"You look a bit green, that's all." I tell him. He finally looks back at me and he looks completely confused. This time, the green sticks. He gets up and runs. I chase after him, only to find him in the boys' locker room, looking in the mirror.
"I'm turning green." Is all he can say as even his hair tints a dark green. I grab my phone out of my pocket and call M'gann. It's lunch time so she better answer. The first ring, I'm calm. The second ring, I'm nervous. Third ring, I'm about to freak out but she answers just before the fourth ring.
"How's babysitting Garfield?" is what she answers with.
"M'gann, I swear to god. If you know something I don't about Garfield, I'm going to kill you." The line is quiet. "M'gann, he's turning green! We were watching animal planet and his skin, his hair, all started to turn green. Weird part? He's still green!" I shout into the phone. Panicking. I've never babysat a kid in my life and if this is how it goes, I must be a terrible babysitter.
"I'll be home as soon as possible, Connor will stay at school and bring Zatanna home later." She hangs up the phone and I just look at Garfield. He looks just as nervous.
"M'gann has some cookie dough in the fridge, why don't we eat some until she get's back. Will that help you calm down?" I ask and he nods his head. We go in the kitchen and I give him just a spoon of dough and he just takes little bits of it between looking at different areas of skin that are currently green. I'm giving him another spoonful of dough when the cave computer announces the arrival of M'gann as she enters from one of the exterior entrances. The martian flies in as fast as she possible can and she assesses Garfield.
"How long ago did this happen?" M'gann asks me.
"It started maybe ten or fifteen minutes ago. He went completely green maybe five minutes ago." I tell her, Garfield keeps looking at his arms.
"I'm starting to think it looks pretty cool. I look just like you, M'gann." Garfield celebrates. "Hey, maybe it's from that blood transfusion, I mean, my eyes did immediately turn green from that. Maybe the rest was delayed?" He asks. My eyes widen and I stare right at M'gann.
"You gave a human a blood transfusion? That is dangerous on so many levels! He could mutate because of your alien dna!" I begin to freak out.
"He was dying, I just morphed my blood to match his and it worked, he's alive." M'gann tries to calm me down, but I'm just going south.
"M'gann, if you morphed your blood to match his…" I start but am distracted by a tail flitting around behind Garfield. "Hey, Gar," I get his attention, "are you thinking about monkeys right now?" I watch his tail.
"Yeah, my pet monkey from the sanctuary… How did you know?" He asks with an eyebrow raised.
"Garfield, you have a tail." I tell him as I look to M'gann with a smile. "I believe you gave him shapeshifting." I tell her, watching Garfield try and get a glimpse of his new appendage.
"This is so cool!" He turns around to look at his tail, grabbing it so he can see it up close. It has green fur, like his hair. The tail disappears and he is suddenly disappointed.
"What's wrong, Gar?" M'gann asks him. He shakes his head.
"I tried to change into Gojira. It was mom's favorite old film, but I can't." He looks at the floor. M'gann pulls him into a hug to console him.
"Don't worry, your mom would be proud of you anyway. Besides, we can just teach you to control it." M'gann says quietly. I'm starting to feel empty, seeing M'gann being so motherly to Garfield, holding him and stroking his hair. She looks back to me. "Thanks for telling me, by the way."
"No problem." I grab my things and put them back in my bag. "Do you want to get back to school now that you know he's fine or…?" I ask her, making sure all my things are cleaned up just in case.
"I'm gonna stay here with Gar." She says simply. I grab my stuff and get ready to leave. It's proving harder to be around the two of them. It's not like I don't like them, it's just what they have that makes me feel… everything.
"I'm going to head out then." I tell them. M'gann gets a confused look, but I'm sure she is picking up my emotions. I turn and go, heading for the zeta tube. It recognizes me and I head home. It's nice that I can just zeta to the Batcave and just take a short elevator ride to get home. Once in my room, I set up my work on my bed and finish up what I was doing at the cave. When I finally finish, I pull out my bucket of chalk and start messing around with the wall with chalkboard paint. The white, yellow and blue swirls are beginning to remind me of Van Gogh. When I'm halfway done, my phone rings. I silently pick up.
"Ronnie? You there?" It's Roy. He's had his hands full with Speedy.
"Yeah, I'm here." I say as I curl up on my bean bag. I don't really know what to say to him, about the situation I was put in. I know he wants me to open up, let him in, but I'm having trouble doing that. I used to be pretty open with him, but I've gone through a lot that has really backed my into a corner. I don't really even know how to handle myself.
"I haven't seen you in a while, is everything okay?" He asks, his voice nearly bringing me to tears.
"Yeah, everythings fine. Just needed some time, you know?" I get out without letting on my current state.
"Ronnie, I know when you're lying to me. You're not fine." He points out, his voice becoming stern.
"How would you know if I was lying? We're on the phone." I say as I hear someone coming down the hall. No one ever comes close to my room. It's in a completely different part of the manor than everyone elses.
"Because Dick called me, Ronnie." He says as he comes through my door. I quite literally drop my phone. He slowly comes toward me, maybe he thinks he might provoke me. "He said that you haven't been going on missions, when they need you, you just coordinate from home. He said you barely come out of your room, you haven't been eating enough, you aren't sleeping. I was specifically told he saw you sitting on the couch in the main living room, and when he came home early in the morning from patrol, you were in the exact same spot. Didn't move, same position, staring out the window." Everything he says strikes chord after chord. My eyes are watering and it's getting harder to breath. He's now standing right before me, looking down.
"So," I begin bitterly, "what are you going to do?" I say in a low voice, annunciating each word angrily, a single tear finally falling. He leans down and kisses my forehead.
"I'm going to be here for you." He says as he sits down next to me on the rather large bean bag. He pulls me down, so I curl back up. He wraps himself around me, like he's trying to barricade me from the rest of the world, his arm draped over me his hand resting on my stomach. After a few hours, I can't hold back to sobs anymore.
"How could I have not known? It's something I should have known." I finally let out, sobbing and pulling on my hair.
"It's not your fault. We both addressed the thought and disregarded it. It was too early for you to know if you were without getting tested." He consoles me, stroking my hair, holding me tighter.
"I was late, and I ignored it. You heard the obstetrician, I was seven weeks. I should have figure it out." I say between sobs. "And he just went and blocked the only thing that would have kept it alive. I know I'm not ready but it's still hard." I just let it out.
"And it's okay to feel that way." He tells me. After that, we just lay there for a while. When I finally gain control of the sobs, he picks me up off the bean bag and lays me down on my bed. He's about to leave when I stop him.
"Roy, will you stay with me?" I ask, my eyes still red and puffy. He nods and lays down on the bed. We just lie there together, my head on his chest and his arms around me. I just drift to sleep with the steady rise and fall of his chest as he falls asleep with me.