Gotham City
August 22, 2017
22:34
The two teens sat on the couch in the warehouse's living room, cuddling with one another as they waited for the return of Jason, Noah's adopted father. It had become tradition, for some unknown reason, for the three to watch horror movies while eating dinner, and tonight was no exception as the duo waited on the man's return from his pizza run. Because who in their right mind would deliver a pizza to an 'unoccupied' warehouse near the docks, Noah thought humorously as he leaned closer into Charlotte's touch.
Noah wrapped a tender arm around his girlfriend's shoulders, bringing the young empath closer into the smaller boy's chest. He mused happily as their breathing synchronized as she lay against him, but the happiness was short lived when she looked up at him with a glare. "What aren't you telling me?" She questioned him, breaking out of his grip.
The boy would normally smile at the girl's antics, but he decided, for once, that coming clean about his troubled mind would be better for the both of them. "Lotte," Noah began as he adjusted himself on the couch, "I don't know how I'm supposed to go back to the team after that fear simulation." His confession caused Charlotte's eyes to soften in sympathy, and she laid back against him for his comfort. When he had first returned to Gotham, he had confided in her about the planned scenario, but not to any extent besides his own hellish nightmare.
"You have to go back at some point. It's been a week," Charlotte pointed out, her tone caring. "Of course, I don't mind seeing you around Gotham, but we both know that until you confront your team about your fear you won't ever truly recover." Charlotte's advice was sound, yet that wasn't what Noah was dreading. He had made peace with what had happened to him nearly twenty minutes after it occurred; he was a bat after all, but it was what he witnessed with the others that still shocked him.
Noah played with Charlotte's black locks of hair as he spoke, "It isn't my fear that's holding me back from the team. I-" The necromancer took another awkward pause, "I don't know how to react to seeing my team mates' fears. I don't think I could ever forget seeing the broken and insecure being of Victoria," Noah muttered. At the point, the boy had broken away from his girlfriend, and was now leaning on the edge of the couch, his head in his hands.
Charlotte took a hold of her smaller boyfriend's fore arm, her touch kind. "You don't have to forget it. You have to learn to grow from it, and help her into a better mind set of herself," Charlotte advised. The room remained silent for a while, the clock ticking in the background quietly.
"What about McKenzie's and Yessenia's fears about them being the cause of someone's death?" Noah continued, almost flustered at this point as he recollected what happened, "Or the fact that Logan killed his dad after being sexually abused for years?" Noah wasn't sure if he was angry or distraught, and he settled on believing it was a mixture of the two raw emotions. The young empath felt the gross combination, bile rising in her throat at her boyfriend's pain.
Charlotte listened intently as he continued pouring out his confusion. "I live by a strict 'no killing' rule, but there isn't anything I hate more than abuse. I'm at a crossroads on how to feel and how to react," Noah's admittance was tough for Charlotte, as she had felt as if she too were experiencing his current frustrations.
She pulled him into a side hug, her hand cradling the back of his head as his face fell into her shoulder. "You can have your morals, Noah, but at the end of the day what does your heart believe?" Noah groaned, half at the fact he knew she was correct and half at how cliché and sappy she sounded. Before she could continue her soap box monologue, Jason entered through the warehouse's side door.
"You little shits better come get your slices now, I already ate half of one box on my way back," Jason called into the 'home', dropping the delivery in the kitchenette. The two teens offered each other one last look, before standing up to start their tradition. Jason, with another pizza slice in his mouth, grumbled, "And no more Friday the 13th you assholes."
Noah gathered up his food and drinks, a teasing tone laced in his voice, "It's not our fault your shticks already been done." Charlotte cackled, the ever-long joke of the brought-back-to-life Jason from the horror movies still providing her with laughs.
Jason glared towards his ward's direction, the look menacing to every non-bat to receive it; however, Noah simply chuckled once more, making his way towards the living room again to start their movie. As they sipped on their sodas and ate their pizzas somewhat greedily, their horrifying film begun, opening up to the iconic 'Nightmare on Elm Street' scene.
Mount Justice
August 22, 2017
23:15
"I fucking hate you," Yessenia snapped, her grip on the Xbox controller tightening. Victoria's grin only spread further across her face, her expression being both triumphed and thrilled for yet another victory in the two's video game session. Victoria dropped her controller on the table in front of them, similar in the fashion of 'dropping the mic'.
Victoria turned to her friend, her grin widening even further when the Amazonian tackled her against the couch, her fists aimed high to execute playful blows against the Italian. Their cackling disrupted McKenzie, who had been reading in the arm chair near them. "Guys, be careful," McKenzie warned, half concerned that their roughhousing would soon become too rough. The two girls separated, each wheezing out their own chuckles of glee.
In reality though, McKenzie couldn't be more thrilled that the two seemed to be recovering from their simulation experiences, the base becoming a happier place to reside in once more. Before today, the base had been cold, awkward, and stiff, as members struggled to meet the eyes of one another; each embarrassed in the own ways. After a session with Black Canary, much to Yessenia's joy, the team seemed to be doing much better.
Yessenia, normally ecstatic to be spending time with her Aunt Dinah, had recoiled into herself at the sight of the woman, who sat across from her in her make shift room at the base. The two were close, as the Amazonian princess kept close ties with her aunt and her second mentor, but it was awkward to talk to Dinah about what had happened. "Remember when I was first teaching you how to control your canary scream?" Dinah had asked her, her leather jacket draping over her legs. "You demanded that I stopped helping you; that you were able to do it on your own. You told me that because you were an Amazon, you could do anything," the older woman smirked at the fond memory.
Yessenia chewed on the inside of her cheek, before continuing the tale. "And after I exclaimed that, you said to me 'it's okay to need help, you aren't exempt from difficult situations just because of who you are.'" Yessenia looked at the blonde with a small grin, opening up her position slightly.
"And then you allowed me to teach you how to harness your cry. My point is, Yes, is that it's still okay to need help, even if it's for a different thing," the older woman stood up, pushing her arms through the sleeves of her jacket before straightening it out. "You don't have to confide in me, but it's okay to open up to your team mates about how you feel," with her final addition to the speech, Dinah had kissed Yessenia on her forehead, before leaving the small space, leaving the Amazon to her thoughts.
Yessenia was almost guilty that the others did not get to experience Dinah's words of advice, knowing that each of the team members would greatly benefit from them. But after offering herself as a listening ear and being declined by the team, Dinah had left them to themselves until she was sure her services would be dire.
The Amazonian princess knew that Victoria's denial of help was unavoidable, as the team leader had a habit of bottling herself up and taking her frustrations out on the punching bag in the gym; however, she was surprised when McKenzie declined Dinah's aid as well, a short and simple answer of 'I'm okay' silencing the Justice League member.
Her eyes slid off of Victoria, the Amazon wiping at her eyes from the excessive laughter, and towards McKenzie, her nose still into her book. "How is it?" Yessenia asked politely, sitting back up into a more comfortable position. After seeing herself be mauled to death in McKenzie's nightmare, Yessenia had taken it upon herself to be even kinder to the girl, trying to include her into discuss now more than ever.
"It's a book about my dad," the demigod confessed, showing the cover towards the other two, the name 'Asclepius' written across it in gold lettering. "More specifically about the medical portion of his existence," the girl added, somewhat unsure if bringing up the topic of the medical profession would be a good idea.
Without batting an eyelash, Yessenia answered quickly, a smile on her face, "Are you studying to be a medic or something?" She chuckled at her own thought for a moment, before announcing it to the group, "God, the last thing we need are two of you worrywarts," Yessenia joked lightly, bringing the other two girls to sigh in relief that the topic wasn't still raw and touchy.
McKenzie giggled for a moment, shaking her head as she laughed. "No, I'm really only trying to learn about my dad, I've never met him," McKenzie admitted the reasoning for her interest. The half serpent wasn't bitter as most people would believe, as her love for her stepfather often filled the absent biological father's void.
Victoria, who had been previously occupied in her video game, chuckled. "Yeah, tell me about it. It wasn't until I was a teen that I found out that my real parents were Huntress and Question. Learning about your family is fun though," Victoria said earnestly, pausing her game to join the two's conversation.
Somewhere throughout their conversation, the Zeta-Tubes flared up, announcing the arrival of their team mate. The EMT had entered the living room quietly, a smile stretching across his face as he noticed the stiffness from the younger members had minimized greatly.
Victoria spotted him almost instantly, her smile increasing in size at the appearance of the eldest, who had been gone for the past three days. After the simulation, he had left the base to visit his younger sister and mother, something he hadn't done in the past two years. "How was Russia?" Victoria asked the half eastern Slavic. "Did you get-" Before she could finish her sentence, the boy had tossed her a DVD.
"You don't speak Russian so I don't know why you wanted a movie," Logan said, confusion laced within his accented voice, which was slightly more adenoidal from the disregard of English for his time away.
Victoria mused happily, popping in the disc into the video player. "I don't need to know how to speak Russian to know it's a cool mobster movie," Victoria talked, before sitting back down in her seat, her excitement dwindling slightly at the eeriness in the room. The silence that followed her was thick and awkward as the others avoided speaking of the simulation or of Russia. Both, she figured, would be bad topics to truly discuss with the only adult on the team.
Yessenia wasn't sure who felt more awkward in the room, the girls, or the lone boy, who probably now realized his mistake of returning to the states. Before he could leave the girls to themselves, Yessenia had stopped him, her hand out stretched to grab onto his bag. "Victoria might not care what they are saying, but I do. Mind translating?" She decided that ignoring what had happened would be in everyone's best interest, as she trusted that if Logan wanted to talk about his father he would.
The entire group knew that if she really cared about understanding the movie's dialogue, they could put on subtitles; the real reason she asked the medic to stay with them was that she had felt guilty. After the simulation, Noah had abandoned the group to return to Gotham while the others stayed to support one another.
That's to be expected though, Yessenia thought inwardly, he just joined the team and hasn't had the time to really know us and trust us. However, the 'support one another' had easily turned into a game of 'ignore each other', Logan delegating and helping out the younger team members to somewhat communicate with one another as they avoided the topic of the boy himself, which he was probably grateful for. Logan sat down next to Victoria, who eagerly awaited the movie's title screen.
The first scene opened up to show the teens the inside of a Slavic bar, which was empty save two occupants. The actor on screen aimed his gun at a tied-up victim, who shouted an angered, "Вам не избежать убийства!" before being shot, the blood splattering in the back ground almost comically. "He said 'you won't get away with killing me'," Logan translated to the girls, who were already engrossed into the movie.
Mount Justice
August 23, 2017
07:12
Noah entered the base, his book bag slung across his back as he ventured in further. It was uncommon for someone to not greet him when he entered, the necromancer growing accustomed to the action. He stopped in his place for a moment, debating whether or not he should leave. Charlotte's voice nagged his thoughts, listen to your heart, it repeated. With a deep exhale through his nose, Noah continued walking forward. When he made it into the living room, he saw his fellow team members all sleeping peacefully on the couches.
Yessenia and Victoria, unsurprisingly, had fallen asleep pressed against each other, Victoria's head resting on Yessenia's arm as the Amazon leaned against the arm rest almost uncomfortably. McKenzie had taken up the space on the arm chair, her body displayed neatly and comfortable, whereas Logan had fallen asleep sitting on the floor, his head resting back against the couch. The necromancer shook his head fondly at the sight.
Listen to your heart, Noah repeated to himself, finding comfort in his girlfriend's voice echoing throughout his head. Noah placed his bag on the floor quietly, before sitting down in an empty arm chair himself. He closed his eyes gingerly, the thoughts repetition assuring Noah that he made the right choice of joining his team once again.
After all, that what doesn't kill you simply makes you stronger. That mantra helped Noah decide that even though his beginning on the team didn't start out as smoothly as he would have wanted it to, it was still his beginning.
A/N: I know this chapter was short, but I felt that the shortness would be better than really going into detail right away. I'm trying to pace out the story so it would last longer. In case you haven't noticed yet on the blog, I have posted a challenge for you all as well as a gift! I hope you enjoy it! But, as always, I have some questions that I want to ask you guys:
1. Now that you have found out more about the characters, who do you feel your character would get along best with? (And it doesn't have to be a relationship I already established, such as Victoria and Yessenia.)
2. Do you like the idea of flash backs occurring in the story?
3. What do you think your character's theme song would be? (This is mainly so I can listen to it while writing about them.)