Tempest: Chapter Forty-Three: Fall Into Place


"Living in a shack in the middle of nowhere, yes, I can see the appeal."

Roy glowered at the speaker as she sat down beside him without so much as an invitation, though, there wasn't much to sit on, after all, it was, as she said, a shack. "Do you need something, Cheshire?"

"Aw, what's the matter, Red?" Jade purred with a smirk. "Still sour about that kiss I got from your partner?"

Roy could feel the flush creeping up his throat and the broadening of her smirk told him that she noticed it to. "You mean the one she got from you," he countered.

Jade threw her head back with a laugh. "It wasn't a bad kiss, I'll admit, she's lucky she's cute."

"She's thirteen," Roy pointed out and Jade shrugged.

"She knew it wasn't serious," Jade said, unconcerned as she leaned back, propping her elbows on the half-broken step behind her. "I think she liked telling her parents that she'd kissed an assassin a bit more than the kiss itself."

Roy grunted. Somehow, that really didn't surprise him.

"Besides," Jade released a sigh, grey eyes glittering in the sunlight, "atmo-kinetic meta-humans aren't really my type."

"And I am?" Roy asked dryly, shooting a look her way, but she caught his gaze and held it.

"Oh, definitely," she said and Roy turned his attention back to sharpening one of his arrows, not bothering to take her seriously.

"Harper, this is me flirting with you," she said when he didn't respond.

"You flirt with everyone," Roy replied. "I'm pretty sure that's where Amy picked up that bad habit."

Jade hummed in a conceding manner. "I do," she agreed, "but you're the only one I care about flirting with, Red."

Roy looked towards her, his blue eyes startled at the rather blunt admission. "I thought you'd be a bit more subtle than that."

"I considered it," she laughed and he marveled how her smile made her whole face light up, "but Storm thought I should be a bit more forward since you were dragging your heels."

"I'm going to kill her," Roy muttered more to himself as she grasped his cheeks in her hands, pulling him towards her.

"You can do that later," she breathed against his lips, their breath mingling as Roy wound an arm around her waist automatically as their lips finally met.

Jade knotted her fingers into his hair, pulling at his scalp as her lips moved over his, catching and releasing his lips as she moved until she was resting in his lap, but then she drew back sharply.

"See you around, Harper," she said with a wide grin before standing and sauntering off to her motorcycle, leaving Roy flustered and flushed.

"Tease," he muttered, brushing a thumb across his lips.

"I hope you're not doing anything on Saturday," she threw over her shoulder.

He started in surprise. "Are you asking me on a date?"

Jade only laughed as she pulled the helmet over her head and revved the engine, wheeling off in the direction of civilization.


"Where'd the flowers come from?" Barry asked when he came home to find Amara and Iris working on dinner, one of Iris' attempt to teach her daughter to cook a bit more than packaged goods, but it was a work in progress.

He was nodding towards the bouquet of Chrysanthemums sitting on the table.

"Not sure, but I'm guessing its Cheshire," Amara hummed, stirring the penne pasta in the pot, "because Roy was pretty dazed when we had lunch."

Barry arched an eyebrow. "Should I be having a conversation with Ollie?"

"Not if you don't want Roy to shoot you with a tranquilizer arrow," Amara snorted and Iris laughed at the affront look on her husband's face.


Amara was breathing hard as she flipped back, cart-wheeling out of the way of one of Dinah's solid kicks before leaping forward to wrap her legs around her mentor's waist, tightening her thighs and manipulating the air around Dinah's feet just enough that when Amara threw her weight back, Dinah came with her.

It was a trick she'd learned from Jade, but Jade could manage to throw her without any atmo-kinetic, so their abilities couldn't really compare.

"Not bad," Dinah grinned, leaping to her feet quickly, but it took Amara a few seconds longer to stumble upright. Training had been going on for several hours as Dinah had declared when Amara had shown up to do some BlackNet work that she'd been neglecting her protégé and that the morning would be spent training.

It had been such a roundabout that it had given Amara whiplash and she'd barely had an opportunity to protest before Dinah had dragged her off towards the monitor womb, evidently capitalizing on the absence of Superboy –who had taken the name Conner Kent and hadn't managed to figure out that the name 'Kent' had nothing to do with Kent Nelson and everything to do with Superman's civilian name– and M'gann who were currently undercover in Belle Reve acting the parts of Tommy and Tuppence Terror, the Terror Twins, in order to discover why a startling number of villains specializing in ice attacks had sued or complied to being sent to Belle Reve.

Amara didn't see the point of it, after all, the inhibitor collars stopped them from being able to use their ice powers.

"It's all right," Amara wheezed, "I don't need my lungs, I can manage just fine without them."

"Oh, come on," Dinah scoffed, "I didn't hit you that hard."

"I don't know how to tell you this, Dinah," Amara groaned as her legs gave out under her and she flopped back onto the ground, her arms flopping beside her head, "but you've been sparring with someone who's half-Kryptonian. Conner's more durable than I am."

Dinah moved forward so that she was leaning over Amara. "Don't sell yourself too short, Amy. You've got more experience and you're a bit more pliable than Conner."

"Aw, thanks so much, that's the best compliment I could've ever received," Amara threw back sarcastically, but it only made Dinah laugh.

"Come on, Amy, training's not over yet," Dinah said, holding her hands out to Amara who took them grudgingly. "It's not even lunchtime yet."

"You are a demon from depths of hell," Amara muttered under her breath.

"What was that?"

"Nothing," Amara sang, taking the bottle that Dinah tossed towards her head, almost like her mentor was intending to brain her with the water bottle. "I bet Ollie isn't like this with Artemis," she added petulantly.

"Ollie's a softie," Dinah replied, unimpressed.

"I can tell you're a loving girlfriend, pretty bird," Amara puckered her lips, using the endearment that Oliver reserved for her his girlfriend alone, but whatever she'd been hoping to gain from that comment hadn't occurred, because all that occurred was Dinah slowly arching an eyebrow.

There was a moment of silence between the two of them. "It only really works with him, doesn't it?"

"Yeah," Dinah snorted.

Amara downed her water rather sulkily before throwing it aside and launching herself forward without much preamble, but, generally, that was the best way to attack Dinah, given her experience over Amara's.

Unfortunately, it did little towards giving her an advantage, because Dinah caught her easily and threw her so that she collided with the wall with a loud "Omph!" and crumpled to the floor.

"I hate you," Amara grumbled.

"I've heard that one before."

"Well, yeah," Amara complained as she used the wall to hoist herself upright, "its 'cause you kick my ass all the time."

Whatever response Dinah managed in return was drowned out by the blood rushing through Amara's ears.

"Come on, kiddo, only another half hour and you can collapse, all right?"

Amara's groan grew in volume. "Fine," she bemoaned, "so long as I'm not bothered for the rest of the day…'cause I think I'm going to need an ice bath to recover from what you've done to me."

"Oh, stop being so melodramatic," Dinah responded, "you're not that bruised up."

"Yet," Amara muttered bitingly before brushing her hair out of her eyes, sweat clinging to the strands. "All right, I'm ready, let's do this."

Dinah gave her a feral grin and ran forward, twisting in the air and Amara almost ducked out of the way. Cutting and running had been something she'd gotten far too used to doing, but she stood her ground and dug her heels in, throwing all her weight forward.


It was decided, Pamela would be leaving within two weeks and heading back towards Gotham City, back to Harley and their home. But she wasn't leaving without telling Amara the truth, and not even Barry could stop her from doing that.

Harley's face was clear on Pamela's laptop, where it was propped on the coffee table while Pamela packed things away. "Daffedoll, you're taking this all rather well."

"What d'you mean?" Pamela asked, without looking up from packing away her kitchen supplies.

"I mean," Harley stressed the words, leaning forward so she was a bit closer to her laptop's camera, "you literally up and moved to Central City for more than a year to see her and you're just going to leave her?"

"I can't make her love me if she doesn't want to," Pamela said, running a hand through her hair. "I'm not going to make that choice for her."

Harley sighed on the other end. "How could she not love you, Red?"

Pamela's cheeks turned pink at the fond note that was present in her girlfriend's voice. "I don't know…but…" she shrugged helplessly.

"Working with the Injustice League is a bad idea," Harley added.

"I know," Pamela agreed, "but it's the best way I know to get close to her."

"You're going to kidnap your daughter in the middle of a battle?" Harley asked her, her mouth gaping just slightly. "Tell me you're joking."

Pamela grimaced.

"Pam, that's a really bad idea," Harley reiterated, "I'm not sure Storm Chaser is going to be too happy about being kidnapped by Poison Ivy."

"Well, Barry's been very firm about keeping Amy as far away from me as possible," Pamela grumbled, "it's not like I can just go up to her and be all like 'Hi, Amy, my name is actually Pamela Isley, but you might know me better as Poison Ivy, and, by the way, I'm your mother!' yeah, that'll go over real well."

"Maybe she'll take it in stride," Harley considered and Pamela gave her girlfriend a dubious look. "All I'm saying is that this is a girl that is on first-name basis with an assassin with the League of Shadows and spends a lot of time in the online criminal underworld. She's not exactly your ordinary kind of kid."

Pamela chewed on the inside of her cheek.

"Besides, remember when she was on the run from Mardon? She went to you for help instead of the Allens."

Amara hadn't wanted to put her parents in danger by going to them for help, but Pamela was still flattered that she'd trusted her enough to come to her for help.

"You might be right," she finally conceded as she pulled some duct tape towards her in order to keep the items within rather secure and keeping the flaps together.

"All right," she said, before Harley could say anything else, "I think I'm going to leave most of the furniture here before we really don't need anything."

The house that Harley and Pamela had picked was rather large and had several guest rooms, but that had some bit to do with the pair not liking enclosed spaces too much after being locked up at Arkham Asylum for a time. But all the rooms were furnished, so there was hardly any need for any of the furniture in the apartment.

"The TV's pretty nice, I'd just keep that if I was you."

And then their conversation devolved back to Pamela moving back to Gotham and not a word further was mentioned regarding Amara Allen.


Oracle had a number of individuals that did work for her, though they switched out often. Still, Oracle was becoming a bit of an underground phenomenon to the people that she'd helped since her career on BlackNet had begun. Oracle was fairly amused when someone had made a t-shirt with a green face with blank eyes, mostly because she had no idea where the creator had even come up with that image because it wasn't like anything she'd seen before. Though it had become her icon of sorts.

Runners never looked the same, they were different ages, different nationalities, from different countries, with different backgrounds. And though Oracle focused most of her efforts in the United States, it wasn't the only country she worked as Oracle in.

Artemis had lost count of the number of times that Amara had dragged her off towards a hidden nook or cranny to swipe a scrap of paper or a hidden envelope.

"How do you get so many people to help you?" Artemis asked one day when she came to the Cave to find Amara holed up in the med-lab, tapping away at the number of computer monitors set up around her.

"Oracle helps a lot of people," Amara shrugged, glancing back to her before grinning, "she's got a bit of a reputation, and some people need money fast to keep their homes, for their children, that kind of thing…ever think about doing some runs for me?"

"I'm considering it," Artemis said dryly. Money was still a bit tight for her and her mother. "But exactly how many runners do you have?"

"Right now…thirty-three," Amara said, nodding towards the left screen which was dominated by a list of aliases and the corresponding names they belonged to. "Each runner gets a codename and no runner knows another runner's birth name. Runners names are scrubbed when they drop off BlackNet and their codenames get recycled."

Artemis' eyes flicked over the codenames on the list. "These are all Greek gods and goddesses," she pointed out. "Got a thing for Greek myths?"

"I'm more of a Slavic myths kind of girl," Amara laughed as she leaned back in her chair, "but Oracle's kind of a Greek thing, so I figured I'd stick to a common theme."

"And what would you name me?" Artemis arched an eyebrow questioningly, noticing that the name Artemis was already taken, though that would have been a bit more on the nose, given Artemis' real name and her hero name were the same.

"Nemesis," Amara decided after a moment before throwing a wink her way, "because you always get even."

And Artemis merely shook her head in exasperation.


"Oh, no you don't!"

"Haha! Sucker!"

Amara groaned loudly as her character was swiftly defeated by Wally's and her cousin threw up his arms in triumph. "Why can't you ever not be good at video games? Its only making your ego worse!"

"Hey!" Wally complained before puffing out his chest. "I don't have an ego!"

Both of them could clearly hear Barry's cough in the kitchen as he looked over some police files and Iris smiled behind her laptop as she looked into a new story that her boss wanted her to report on.

"Oh, yeah? This coming from the guy that's so hung up on M'gann that he's tripping over his own feet?" Amara laughed and Wally turned pink from his cheeks all the way to the tips of his ears.

"What? She's cute!" Wally defended himself.

Amara gave him a dry stare.

"You're the one with a mad crush on Wonder Woman," Wally pointed out, nodding to Amara's Justice League shirt of the day, which happened to be Wonder Woman's symbol.

Barry had to stifle his snort at that and Iris smirked.

"Okay, but, to be fair," Amara said, talking over her cousin, "Wonder Woman is a seriously beautiful lady, and she can kick serious ass."

"You are unreal," Wally decided.

"We can't all be perfect."

That made him scoff loudly.


The picture of Storm Chaser and Cheshire lip-locked was apparently big news when the pictures from the conference in Taipei finally circled back to the US and Amara wasn't surprised that G. Gordon Godfrey had managed to twist the whole scene to suit his views, as he was well-known by now as being incredibly anti-Justice League and anti-alien.

Personally, Amara had nothing against aliens, but she was also on the same team as one.

Still, Amara had had to deal with a number of unflattering things said about her on TV, but that was the way it was. She'd been the first female sidekick and then rumors had flown about her possible relation to Weather Wizard based on their similar abilities, though that knowledge was still restricted to the Justice League only, civilians could speculate all they wanted. And then that whole kiss with Jade…

But Amara was proud of who she was, she was proud to consider herself demisexual. It wasn't something she really hid, as most people that knew her also knew that she definitely didn't identify was straight.

"You look annoyed," Conner said one day, noticing the scowl on her face as she flicked through several comments regarding a broadcast G. Gordon Godfrey had done on her and Jade's 'moment' in Taipei.

"Well, some people are very opinionated about a thirteen year old meta-human identifying as something other than straight…evidently I'm 'confused'." Amara's expression soured.

Conner regarded her curiously. "What exactly does demisexual mean?"

"It means," Amara started with a sigh, pinching at the bridge of her nose, "that a person needs an emotional bond with someone in order to have a sexual attraction to them…for me, I'm not really particular about gender."

"Why would anyone care about who you love?" Conner asked in a bit of confusion and Amara looked at him fondly.

"Oh, Conner Kent, I love you," she laughed.

M'gann came by when Amara had gathered her things up and left to start patrol. "What was that all about?" she asked.

"I have no idea," Conner muttered to himself.

M'gann shook her head, before turning towards him with gleaming eyes. "Want to go on a walk?" she asked and Conner thought briefly of the kiss that they'd shared within Belle Reve while under cover and he smiled, taking her hand.


Amara chewed on the inside of her cheek as she considered the information before her, switching from considering the data on the laptop to the papers that Jade had left her with some time ago.

The Russian on the pages was still hard to read, but what she couldn't she could guess the meaning of, and the images scrawled on the pages.

She didn't even blink as the window was drawn up slowly and someone crept inside. "How was your date?" she asked.

"I enjoyed it," Jade said, dropping into the moon chair in the corner and Amara glanced over towards her friend. She was dressed casually, but the date had been to a movie theater, so she was dressed appropriately, and with dark eyeliner delicately winged, which Amara couldn't help but be jealous of.

"I really enjoyed the making out through the credits," she added with a smirk and Amara rolled her eyes. "Do you have any idea how sinful your partner's mouth is?"

"It never really dawned on me to find out," Amara retorted dryly. "Roy's not really my type…so, one date in and you're already making out through movie credits? It must be going very well."

"It's all that pent up sexual frustration," Jade mused. "But we've decided to take things slow…but not too slow."

"Let the pieces fall into place?" Amara presumed and Jade threw a grin her way.

"Exactly," she said.

"I'm glad," Amara said, and she meant it. "I think you're good for each other."

Jade smiled and it was genuine. "So, how's Artemis doing?"

"Pretty well," Amara hummed as she flipped through the delicate papers, tracing fingers carefully over the Russian lettering. "I think money's a bit tight for her and her mom; she's going to do some running for Oracle to help out."

Jade's smile grew strained and Amara glanced towards her again. Jade's relationship with her sister and her mother and her father was difficult to describe, but Amara knew that she loved her sister and mother very much, even if she didn't know quite how to show it.

"She's tough, don't worry, she decked three thugs yesterday and was ready to go in for seconds before Green Arrow pulled her off them."

Jade's eyes glittered. "That's my girl."

Amara shook her head fondly as Jade moved to grab the sleeping bag that was rolled up in her closet, spreading it out on the floor beside her bed where she'd be hidden from view from the door if it ever did open, though that was unlikely since her parents left early and Amara was homeschooled.

"Where did you ever get all this on the Priests of Perun?" Amara asked her after a long silence.

"Really interests you, doesn't it?" Jade said from the hidden side of the bed and Amara didn't have to look at her to know that she was smirking. "The Shadows have a whole file on them, they're a relatively quiet organization, not a lot of members, but they're all like you, you know, atmo-kinetic."

"All of them?" Amara appeared startled at the prospect.

"Well, they've got acolytes who aren't," Jade conceded, "not a lot since not that many people know about their organization."

"You say that like they're some kind of secret society," Amara remarked blandly.

"Almost," Jade snorted, "I think it's more that they don't really advertise themselves and keep to themselves. The Priests of Perun aren't the type to get involved in others' affairs."

So, it was more like they'd cut themselves off from the world. Amara couldn't really imagine doing that, but going off the map that was within the papers that Jade had left her, it was located high in the mountains. It was the kind of location that would deter most people from making the climb, which Amara presumed was the idea to begin with. But it wouldn't be that difficult for someone with atmo-kinesis.

"Go to bed, Storm." Jade's voice rose up from the sleeping bag and Amara scowled down on her.

"Hey, you're the one crashing at my place, remember?"

Jade offered no reply to that, so Amara shut down her laptop with a sigh and collected the papers back into her folder before pulling out the lower-most drawer of her desk and replacing the folder within.

Then she shut off the light and climbed back into bed, pulling her blankets up and shutting her eyes, her thoughts still plagued by the Priests of Perun.