Tempest: Chapter Fifty-Three: Long Overdue Chat


Amara stirred to feeling of fingers probing at her side and when she blinked her eyes open to see Dinah sitting beside her on a rolling stool, carefully sewing Amara's broken skin back together.

It should have hurt a bit more, but Amara felt a little like she was floating, so they must've given her pain killers.

"I love pain killers," Amara murmured and Dinah glanced up to smile at her.

"You should with a bullet wound in your abdomen," her old mentor said dryly. "Joker, huh?"

Amara grimaced. "Not one of my finest moments."

"You were trying to protect someone else, it doesn't have to be your finest moment," Dinah corrected as she pasted a bandage over the stitches and washed the blood off her hands. "Roy's had a couple of words with me about you."

Amara groaned loudly. No wonder she wasn't too surprised about Amara despite not seeing her for several weeks. "I told him I was fine," she grumbled, trying to sit up before Dinah pushed her back down gently once more.

"Roy's smart enough not to believe you," Dinah smiled, brushing a few strands of Amara's hair from her face. "And he worries about you."

"He's always worried about me," Amara sighed, staring at the ceiling. "He didn't really like the idea of leaving me with Mom and Harley."

Dinah's movements stilled. "Ah," she said carefully, "'Mom'."

Amara shot her a look that told Dinah she didn't much like how she'd said the word, and this time she sat up a bit more carefully, keeping a careful hand at her abdomen where her stitches were.

"I don't need to listen to someone else who doesn't agree with my life choices," she said shortly, "or anyone has anything bad to say about my mother."

She looked more like Poison Ivy than Dinah would've thought possible, it was almost hard not to notice it and sometimes she felt foolish for not seeing it. Her hair wasn't as wild as it had been in her youth, and her eyes were more like Poison Ivy's in shape; she'd grown into her features.

"I don't want to start a fight with you," Dinah said, raising her hands in surrender, but she still positioned herself in front of the door. "I just want to make sure you're all right."

"I'm retired," Amara muttered, but the words sounded weak even to her ears.

"I heard Robin convinced you to come back." Dinah cast her a knowing look and Amara frowned.

"It was just a favor," Amara said, wondering if she said it enough if she would begin to believe it, but it hadn't worked yet.

Dinah smiled and Amara hated how all-knowing she appeared to be in reference towards her old protégé, but Dinah had known her far too long and far too well. "If that makes you feel better," she said.

Amara ignored her, moving slowly past her to the doorway, and even though she knew Dinah had more to say, more to ask, she didn't, but she did mention to her before she could make it out of the hallway: "You do know that you can call me, right? If you need anything?"

Amara's fingers rubbed together where they weren't protecting her side.

"Yeah," she said quietly, "I know."

And then she stepped out into the hallway.

It was almost painfully silent and she was almost sure that nearly the whole Team –if not the whole Team– was still there, and she would've loved to explain everything that had happened in the past few weeks in great detail but she was so drained; she'd never made a lightning storm like the one she had before especially not ripping stitches open in the process.

All she wanted to do was go home and take some pain meds and pass out on the couch before her mother could come up with a sufficient punishment for her and Amara was only half-sure she deserved.

"Want me to take you home?"

Amara blinked blearily, looking up to see Wally had been waiting outside the med lab for her to exit, his arms crossed and wearing his usual clothes in the stead of his uniform. He held out his hand to her, an automatic impulse that she was grateful for.

She took his hand. "Even though Mom scares you?"

Wally gave a small shiver at the mention of Poison Ivy. It hurt a little that her mother incited so much fear. Pamela Isley was the woman who would eat mushrooms in everything if she could get away with it, who could watch a marathon of Lord of Rings, love it, and still complain –rightly– of the lack of female and racial diversity in it, who would dance and sing in the kitchen while she cooked, who didn't say anything about Harley hiding guns around the house, who used her pheromones for the sake of choosing a movie for movie night…that was the kind of woman Amara's mother was.

Amara couldn't deny the truth that her mother had killed people before, but so had a lot of people, Amara included. You weren't somehow better because you hadn't taken a life, you just hadn't been in the kind of circumstance where something like that had been required of you.

"Maybe I'll stay the night," he considered and Amara's eyebrows furrowed as she looked at him.

"To make sure that, you know, your stomach is all right," Wally added quickly once he saw her expression. "Not because I don't trust Miss Isley—"

"But you don't," Amara pointed out.

"I'm trying to be a good cousin!" Wally almost whined and Amara's eyes glittered.

"You are," she said, "but I'll be fine…besides, your parents would get worried."

He squeezed her hand before scratching his cheek nervously. "There's, um, something you should probably know…"

Then they came out into the monitor womb and Amara froze at the sight of the Flash with his cowl drawn back to expose his face. Amara's blood turned to ice and she was grateful that there was a barricade between her and Barry, because she didn't think she'd be able to handle it, otherwise.

"Amy," Barry said, taking a step forward, but Conner was directly in front of him, glowering and ready to charge. He and Amy had so much in common, being products of Cadmus.

"Sorry," Wally said regretfully to his cousin, "we were supposed to be on patrol but—"

Amara gave Wally a crooked smile. "It's all right," she said, steeling her nerves as she looked towards Barry.

"I don't want to talk to you," Amara said shortly, restraining her anger as best as she could.

"I know you don't," Barry said quickly, his hands extended much like Dinah had, in a way to placate her, but Amara wasn't, "but—"

"You're a liar who told me time and again that you had no idea who my mother was," Amara snapped, her fingers sparking with electricity.

Wally winced and the Team shared a look, contemplating whether or not they should leave Amara and Barry alone to work things out themselves.

Barry took a deep, controlling breath and Robin couldn't help but wonder how many times Amara had gotten that expression from Barry.

"I lied," Barry agreed and Amara drew up short, surprised that he'd actually admitted, "I did, and it felt awful but I thought you'd be better off not knowing that your biological mother was an eco-terrorist."

Amara ground her teeth together and M'gann, Artemis, Kaldur, Dick, and Conner carefully made their way out of monitor womb, casting backwards glances to where the Flash and Storm Chaser were struggling to keep their voices below a dull roar (it seemed to be going well, but there was no telling if it was going to stay that way).

Wally made to follow after, but Amara's grip on his hand was too tight, so Wally stayed where he was, feeling vaguely uncomfortable, caught between his cousin and his uncle (but he'd been at odds with Barry since Amara walked out of the Cave, running all the way to Russia).

He glanced to his cousin, trying to catch her eye, but it was impossible and he found himself struck by her face itself because she'd gained a light green tint that Poison Ivy was known for having.

"She was my mother," Amara seethed, "I had a right to know!"

"You did," Barry agreed and Amara didn't think she'd ever seen his eyes look quite so sad. Another time it would have turned her around in seconds flat, but not after everything that had happened. She was too angry, too bitter to take notice of it. "But I was so worried—"

"I'd end up like her?" Amara gritted her teeth together, her anger simmering just under her skin. "Maybe I should've been a bit more worried about ending up like you."

Barry took a step back, stung by her words and Amara grimaced, her hand still over her side.

"I want to go home," she said shortly to Wally and he bent wordlessly in order to lift her into his arms, casting a frown towards his uncle before disappearing in a flash.


Wally accepted the cup of hot chocolate that Harley offered him as Pamela pulled a few blankets over Amara as she fell asleep on the couch.

"How'd the chat with her dad go?" Harley asked quietly.

Wally shrugged. "She wasn't ready to listen to him."

Harley smiled softly. "Stubborn, that one…but she misses him, I know she does, him and his wife."

Wally's fingers tapped around his mug as he considered his cousin as Pamela smoothed the hair away from her face as she slept on. Amara was so bitter about what Barry had done, and Wally couldn't really blame her for that, but she had to put a foot forward if she wanted things to go back to being anything like they'd been before.

He wished she'd think about forgiving Barry if only that he and the Team could see her more, which was selfish, he knew, but she was his cousin.

"She's not going to be in trouble…is she?" Wally asked quietly as Pamela stood to rejoin them and he couldn't quite stop the unconscious stiffening of his spine as she came close.

"I think the day has been stressful enough as it is," Pamela murmured, "and I think Amy's learned her lesson about going out with still-healing bullet wound."

"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" Wally snorted into his cup, taking a small swallow. It wasn't like today had been the first time that Amara had gone out into the field when she wasn't completely healed. Being without Roy increased Amara's risk for ending up with injuries on patrol, and that had hardly changed, even with patrolling with Artemis.

"Do you want to stay the night, Wally?" Pamela asked him, and Wally blinked in surprise, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand quickly.

Wally almost said yes, but he remembered what Amara had said earlier.

"No," he sighed. "I should go back home. Mom and Dad will be getting worried…did she tell Roy what happened?"

"No," Pamela said, sharing a glance with Harley, "but I did. He's going to drop by tomorrow to check up on her."

"She'll be annoyed about that," Wally grinned.

Harley snorted. "That's what she gets for having a temperamental red-haired archer for a partner."

The expression of affront that morphed onto Wally's face was rather amusing, to say the least, but, Pamela, being the only other red-head in the room, simply rolled her eyes; she was far too used to Harley's antics to be very fazed.


"I didn't want them to call you," Amara grated the next morning as she glowered at Roy.

"Tough luck," Roy snorted as he plopped himself down on the couch beside her, setting the tin of raspberry muffins down on the coffee table in front of them before glancing at the movie playing on the television, allowing himself another snort. "Star Wars again? Don't you and Wally ever get sick of it?"

Amara stuck out her tongue for good measure. "This is part of the prequel trilogy; I haven't watched it as much as the original trilogy."

Of course, Roy's knowledge of Star Wars was negligible at best.

"Got a favorite character yet?"

"Padmé Amidala," Amara said without thinking, "we need more badass ladies around and she can fire a blaster and is a senator at the same time."

From the way she said it, Roy assumed that that was something impressive or at least something to be marveled at.

She leaned her head against his shoulder and he curled his arm around hers, glancing over where he could see her bandage slightly exposed by her shirt riding up.

"How's your wound?" he asked her.

"Better than yesterday," Amara grumbled, clearly very annoyed about the idea of her wound, "it should be healed in a couple of days."

"Exactly how much pain meds are you on?" Roy chuckled.

"I'll never say," Amara declared.

Roy smiled.

"How are things in Star City?" Amara asked, only half paying attention to the movie, but she'd seen it before, so it wasn't that big of a deal.

"Same old, same old," Roy said with a half-shrug. "I patrol in a different side of town that Ollie and the rest of them, so our paths don't cross a lot."

"Still fighting with Ollie?" Amara asked with a frown, tilting her head back to look him in the eye. "Maybe you guys should bury the hatchet."

"I doubt that'll ever happen." Roy rolled his eyes. "We've got too many issues."

Amara's frown deepened. She'd always liked Ollie, he was always fun to hang out with when Dinah wasn't around for patrol. "Well, you've always got me."

"Unfortunately," Roy smirked and Amara narrowed her eyes.

"Don't make me punch you," she warned him.

"I don't think you'll be punching anyone with how you are now," Roy pointed out, which didn't sway Amara very much.

She only huffed in annoyance.

"Where's your moms?" Roy added, casting his eyes around the room for any sign of Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn, but neither appeared.

"Mom's at work and Harley's doing a grocery run, they'll be back at some point." Amara didn't appear too concerned about them not being around, but that might've also been the drugs talking.

"Heard from Wally that you had a run-in with Barry that didn't go very well." Roy looked to her out of the corner of his eye in order to see his partner's expression sour.

"I don't want to talk about it," Amara muttered, buffeting her weak side with a pillow.

"That bad?"

"Worse," Amara complained, rubbing at her eyes with one hand. "I wasn't even expecting it and then he tried to apologize and I just didn't want to hear it."

She was rather miserable about the whole thing, that much was clear. Roy's relationship with his adoptive father was complicated, but that was nothing compared to the whole mess that was Amara's family.

It was difficult when there were two sides of the family to worry about: adoptive and biological. Barry and Iris might have been Amara's adoptive parents, but they still knew the most about her, knowing her the longest, though Barry had several points against him for lying. Pamela –since Weather Wizard had long since lost his parental rights to his daughter– had known her less, but she'd been very open about what she had kept from Amara.

Roy didn't know who he should be siding with in that kind of conflict, especially since Poison Ivy and the Flash operated (generally) on opposite sides of the justice scale, so he opted to just stick with Amara's side, which was probably the best course of action.

"Things get worse before they get better," Roy said and Amara rolled her eyes.

"Why can't my life be simple?" she muttered in complaint and Roy squeezed her shoulder.

"Well, this is you we're talking about."

Amara threw a scowl towards him and Roy smirked.

"So how was your first mission in, what? A month?" he asked her instead.

"It could've gone better," Amara conceded, "I've gotten a bit out of practice."

"Thinking about coming back?"

Green eyes narrowed. "Did Richard set you up to this?" she asked suspiciously.

"He might've mentioned something," Roy acquiesced and Amara sighed, shaking her head. "Why? Did he already try his hand at convincing you?"

"Well, Richard and I got cider—"

"Is that supposed to be a euphemism?" Roy's eyebrows rose high on his forehead, his surprise palpable, though Amara wasn't quite sure why; it wasn't as though she hadn't hung out with Dick before on her own.

"Um…no?" Amara was so befuddled that it was almost amusing. "Why?"

He gave a polite cough. "Oh, no reason," he said faintly and his partner gave him a rather confused look.

"You're acting weird," she decided.

"You're one to talk," Roy retorted and she stuck out her tongue for emphasis.

"I picked Rickard up from school on my motorcycle and we drove to this orchard and had cider and he tried to convince me to come back," Amara explained.

"And did it work?"

Amara shrugged, her eyes a bit distant as she thought hard. "If I go back," she said, taking in a deep breath, "he'll be there and I can't do that…the Team deserves better than me making things awkward with Barry."

"Not to mention Bats," Roy pointed out.

"You're not being helpful," Amara complained.

"You're the one that's putting all the blame on Barry when Bats is just as much to blame for what happened." Roy didn't really like playing devil's advocate, but in this instance, it was necessary.

"You have a right to be mad," he added when her brow creased and her frown deepened, "but who does Barry answer to?"

"Batman," Amara grumbled.

"You can't blame Barry completely if Batman was the one who had the idea to keep it from you."

And sometimes Amara really hated when Roy was right.


It was three days before Pamela and Harley agreed that Amara could take out her stitches. Amara rolled her eyes for good measure, but she was sure that was just them being overprotective, given how the last stitches had gone.

"Killed anyone important recently?" she asked over the speaker of her phone where it was resting on the counter of her bathroom as she worked on removing the stitches.

"I'd never say," Jade's sly voice responded over the speaker. "What about you?"

"Killing people was never my style," Amara retorted with a snort. "Back in Star City?"

"Not right now," Jade said, "but I'm sure I'll head back there at some point, see your boy."

Amara rolled her eyes. "I think at this point he's your boy, Jade, because I'm not the one that goes around sucking his face."

"I can't help it if he's a great kisser!"

Amara mimed gagging, even though Jade couldn't see her face. "Because I really needed to know that about Roy."

Jade's laughter turned into static.

"So how're things in Gotham City?" Jade asked once her laughter had faded, "things okay with your real mom?"

She knew that Jade didn't mean anything by it, but it stung a little bit, because Amara had more than one mother, and Pamela was as much of her mother as Iris was or even Harley.

"She's great," Amara said, grimacing as she pulled the last stitch free, dropping the medical scissors onto the counter in order to pat at the spot on her abdomen with a wet paper towel to wipe away the blood where the stitches had previously been. "Harley still thinks it's her fault that her crazy ex shot me."

"Well, you can't have it all," Jade said. "How's your side doing?"

"Practically healed," Amara responded, frowning down at her stomach as she put on a much lighter bandage over the small area where her stitches had previously been. "It could've been worse."

Lucky she was a fast healer. If Harley had gotten hit, she didn't think the woman would've been nearly as lucky as Amara.


"Do you think I made a mistake? Leaving?"

Robin didn't look up from the binoculars he was using for surveillance, but he didn't need to. Masquerade had dropped out of the sky to land lightly on the roof beside him.

"I think…you made the right choice," he said after a long moment.

"Really?" Masquerade's modulated voice sounded doubtful. "You?"

That was when he tore his eyes from his binoculars, despite the fact that they were hidden behind a domino mask in order to look his friend as much in the eye as possible.

She was in her usual red getup, the gold mask in place over a good portion of her face, the golden whip bracelet wound around her wrist, but there was a ring on her finger that he didn't recognize but he was sure she'd stolen. He'd stopped being surprised about her thefts.

"If I'd found out my dad had lied to me, I'd be pretty angry about it too," Robin admitted. "And I'd probably want to leave too."

Her red-painted lips curved downwards. "I went away and when I came back I was different…I don't think I fit with the Team anymore."

"That's a load of crap," Robin said shortly, scowling at her. "Being Poison Ivy's daughter doesn't change anything—"

"Yes, it does," Masquerade insisted.

"No, it doesn't," Robin countered with growing annoyance. "You're still the same adrenaline-junkie meta-human that you always were, you just a bit, you know, earthy."

That amused her. "Earthy?"

"You know what I mean," he muttered, just a bit flustered when Masquerade released a short laugh. "But seriously, Amy…if you don't want to come back, you don't have to."

"Coming from the boy that kept pressuring me?" Masquerade asked dryly.

Robin sighed. "I miss having you around," he admitted, hoping she didn't see the color on his face in the darkness, "and so does everyone else, I know they do…but you shouldn't come back if you're just doing it to make us happy."

Masquerade considered him and then she did something that surprised him; she darted forward to press a kiss against his cheek.

"Thanks for the advice, little bird," she said, leaping up into the air through a subtle manipulation, leaving Robin with red cheeks that he really hoped she hadn't noticed and a lipstick stain on his cheek that he wasn't going to be able to explain away to Batman.


"Mom?"

"Yeah, baby?" Pamela looked up from her laptop, Harley fast asleep beside her, breathing in and out evenly.

Amara twisted her fingers together. "I think I want to try to work things out with Barry."

She didn't know what she expected, but all Pamela did was nod and say: "All right, then we'll do that."


Artemis thought the day was rather ordinary as they all sparred together in the monitor womb when the zeta-tube fired up rather unexpectedly.

"Recognize: Storm Chaser –B00."

Several heads twisted in the direction of zeta-tube in surprise, but the announcement wasn't finished.

"Authorized guests: Poison Ivy –A04, Harley Quinn –A05."

Kaldur stiffened his spine and Conner bent forward slightly into a crouch, while M'gann lifted from the ground to hover in the air. The three that chose not to prepare for a fight –Dick, Artemis, and Wally– were the three that knew the most about Amy's situation and had met Pamela and Harley before (though for Dick, it had been before when both were steadfast in their evil ways).

When the light had faded, there were three standing in the Cave.

"Hi," Amara said, her voice wavering before she cleared her throat and gathered herself visibly. "I'm here to see Flash."

"Well, that'll end well," Wally muttered to Artemis.