Tempest: Chapter Sixty-Four: Of Tumors and Uncertainties
AN: I love how the last chapter broke you all so much! Poor Roy, he deserves so much better!
And its asexual awareness week, so I felt the need to update one of my fics with ace spectrum main characters :) Hope everyone enjoys the chapter, but I will admit I am only a nursing student and am taking some creative liberties with the medical parts of this chapter.
Roy was still looking out of the window, his face rather close to despondent, watching the cars drive past at their leisure, somehow feeling that time should've stopped with the probable diagnosis that the doctor had given Roy. But time went on, it was just him feeling that he was cut off from the world. He wondered if this was how Amy had felt when she'd been stuck in that wheelchair for so many months.
The door gave a sudden creak as it came open. Amy would've never moved the door so slow with a creak, she would've opened it quick and fast, and already Roy knew who it was.
"I didn't want you to come."
"Amy mentioned that." Oliver shifted uncomfortably on his feet, eyes roving over his adoptive son, cataloguing his condition. There was a bruise on his cheek from where he'd fallen before the ambulance had come and his hair was wild, like he'd been grabbing at it, yanking it in different directions. "She's been really worried about you."
Roy heaved a heavy sigh, looking to the door and out of the small rectangular window on it to see Amy speaking with Dinah, making gestures with her hands and blinking furiously like she was about to burst into tears. Amara wasn't a big crier, Roy knew her well enough to know that; she was more prone to explosions than crying. "She's always worried about me."
Oliver sat down the seat that Amara had been sitting in earlier, giving him a slight smile. "And you're always worried about her…and I'm always worried about you."
Roy groaned and rolled his eyes, a scoff echoing low in his throat.
"Hey, I want you to listen to this, it's important," Oliver said seriously, leaning his elbows onto the bed to stare into Roy's eyes. People always used to tell Roy that he had Oliver's eyes, both of them having blue, even though they weren't related. "I've never been very good with children…but then I saw you pick up that play-bow at the orphanage and challenge me to an arrow competition," he chuckled suddenly and Roy allowed himself a private smile. He remembered the day clearly, and regardless of how he felt about Ollie, that day was still one of his best. "And you beat me at my own trade…I was proud and impressed, and then we talked for a good hour, do you remember that?"
Roy nodded.
"I went home and the first thing I did was send a request to adopt you and that was the best decision I ever made." That admission made Roy blink, looking up from the white sheets to stare at Oliver's face and Roy knew that face well enough to know that he wasn't joking.
"You," Roy paused and swallowed, his throat too dry to force the words out, "you never told me that."
Oliver's smile softened. "I should've," he agreed, "I just didn't think it needed saying, but…I want you to know that you are my kid, regardless of blood relation, you're my son, and I love you and I have never thought of you as replaceable or weak or—" Oliver was fumbling with coming up with anything else Roy might've thought about himself when two arms wrapped around him suddenly and Oliver was momentarily stunned, because he couldn't for the life of him remember the last time Roy had willingly hugged him, but then he brought his arms up and around his back.
"I'm sorry I left," could barely be heard, muffled into Oliver's shoulder.
"Had to get away from me somehow, right?" Oliver chuckled, smiling when he could feel Roy's own before leaning back to grasp Roy's shoulder. "I know sometimes we clash, but I do want what's best for you, and I am proud that you've made a name for yourself on your own."
There was a sudden knock on the door and Amara ducked her head inside, green eyes fixing on Roy. "Hey, babe, your girlfriend's downstairs."
Roy started in surprise. "She's here?" he said blankly. "I thought she was in Cuba?"
"She was." Amara shrugged carelessly. "I called her to let her know you were in the hospital and she high-tailed out of there on the first flight." She gave him a wink before ducking out, no doubt to grab the mysterious girlfriend in question.
"Girlfriend?" Oliver quirked an eyebrow. "Must be serious if Amy knows her."
"Well, she kind of knew Amy first," Roy muttered, rubbing at the back of his head, right over where the pain from his headache was centralized. The pain medications were helping but not much and if it was a brain tumor, he didn't really have any idea what he was going to do; he couldn't exactly fight a brain tumor. But Amy and Jade, they were his constants, even though nothing was constant about what Jade did and Amy was sporadic at best. "I was waiting until she got back to ask her to move in with me."
Oliver's eyebrows rose high on his forehead. "Definitely serious. How long have you been dating?"
"A few months," Roy admitted, twisting his fingers into the sheets. "Amy told me to slow down, wait until after Christmas since we're still a bit…new to everything." Maybe it was just the tumor talking, wanting to move in with Jade so soon. "You won't like her," he added, thinking of just how many times Cheshire had clashed with the Star City Heroes. Now that he thought about it, she'd preferred sparring with him and Amy more than Ollie and Dinah, always pulling out at the last moment, still flirting. Amy had picked up all of Jade's bad habits.
"Are you sure about that?" Oliver chuckled, but the next second the door had been blown open and Roy and Oliver stared as Jade Nguyen was thrown against the wall by Dinah, who held her there with a vicious look on her face as Amy tried to get between them, looking positively fiery.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Dinah seethed. Cheshire had done nothing to earn her trust like she had for Amy and Roy, to Dinah and Oliver she was still a villain and an assassin, which was rather apt, but she wasn't as bad of a person as they thought.
"Well, I was the one Storm called first, so that should give you some idea," Jade responded just as coldly.
"Both of you, break it up before the hospital security throws us all out," Amy hissed, putting her arms between the pair and forcing them to separate.
Dinah's eyes fixed on her protégée's. "You want to tell me why you called an assassin to tell her Roy was in the hospital?"
"She's his girlfriend," Amy said flatly and almost tiredly, like the whole interaction was emotionally exhausting her.
"She's what?" Dinah shared a rather dumbfounded look with Oliver and Jade gave her own jacket a jerk, leaning off the wall and maneuvering carefully past Dinah and brushing her knuckles against Amy's hand as she came to settle on Roy's opposite side.
"You doing all right?" Jade asked quietly, one hand rising to rest against his cheek. Amy had come to notice that she was at her softest when she was with Roy; they brought out the best in each other.
"So far," Roy grumbled, "and as long as they keep me on pain meds." He gave her a tender smile that Amy would've never seen before if she hadn't ever been in the same room as the pair of them alone.
Jade turned to look at Amy and demanding frown on her lips, studiously ignoring the other two in the room, one of which was wearing an expression of complete incomprehension.
"He's been complaining of headaches for awhile now," Amy said and Jade nodded, that part she was familiar with; she'd often seen him rub at his head, but he'd always said that it was nothing. "Yesterday he collapsed because the pain got too bad…they think it might be a tumor in his brain."
Amy liked to think that she knew Jade fairly well, and she could say with certainty that the stony expression her face now wore was nothing like anything she'd seen before.
"Everyone doing all right?" came a deep voice and all the heads turned to see a security guard lumbering into the room. He gave off a rather intimidating aura, or, he would have if he wasn't in the same room as several heroes and an assassin.
"There was a minor disagreement," Oliver smoothed over, eyes flitting between Dinah and Amy and to where Jade was perched on the edge of the hospital bed, keeping her hand tight over his. "But I think we can step out and cool our heads…and give these two a few moments."
He pressed firmly at both Amy and Dinah's backs, prodding them gently out of the room once the security guard had ascertained there was no immediate threat and left them to it.
"You sure you're all right?" Jade asked, her eyes now gleaming in concern, capitalizing on the absence of the other three. "A brain tumor…that's serious."
"I know," Roy sighed quietly, "but they still aren't sure if that's really what I have."
"Storm looked worried," Jade pointed out.
Roy rolled his eyes. "Amy's always worried, it's what she does."
That earned him a dry stare. "What she does is throw herself into danger constantly and live on the wild side—" Roy's sudden cough forced her to clarify. "—which I might've nurtured, but minor details…I think you're the one that she worries about the most."
She ran her fingers through his hair and he tried to remember the last time she'd done that. It must've been right before she left for Cuba, wrapped up in his arms and kissing him as senselessly as she possibly could.
"You look beautiful," he told her and she cracked a smile.
"I don't know if I trust that," she said in a wicked tone, leaning forward with gleaming eyes. "You are on a lot of pain meds right now…"
Roy made a scoffing sound in the back of his throat, only to be silenced abruptly by her lips on his and he brought up one hand to knot in her wild hair.
"Mm," he said when he could finally speak, "I should be taken to the hospital more often."
Jade punched him in the arm.
"Hey, ow! What's wrong with you?" he complained.
"It's not funny to joke about that," Jade said, still leaning over him, hands in his hair like she was using him to physically ground herself.
"I'm sorry," Roy murmured. To be fair, it was a rather tactless statement, one that he could've done without.
"Your step-mom didn't seem very pleased to see me," Jade mentioned, dark eyes flitting away from him to the door that Dinah had passed through previously.
The retort was on the tip of his tongue, like it always was when people called Oliver his dad and Dinah his step-mom. It was even more awkward given that Dinah was only six years older than him, so he wasn't really sure she had any authority to tell him what to do, not that he ever listened to Oliver either –who was eight years Dinah's senior.
"Well, she's pretty anti-villain since they keep trying to kill her protégée." Weather Wizard, Merlyn, and everyone else Amy had picked up along the way. For some reason villains liked going after Amy, Roy had no idea why; if they were hoping the smallest of the Star City Heroes was the weakest link, they'd been very much mistaken. She was still terrible with the bow, but her electrokinesis had merit.
"Touché," Jade had to concede.
"You trusted an assassin? Amy!"
Amara could feel a headache building behind her eyes and she was starting to wonder if she wasn't the one that had the potential tumor.
"Of course I trust her, she's my friend," Amara responded sourly. "And she trusts me too." There would be no other reason for her to crash in Amara's room when she could easily find a safe house to use for the night. There would be no reason for Jade to have meticulously trained her on Starfish Island when she wasn't paid to do so. There would be no reason for her to randomly drop by unannounced.
"Amy…" Dinah sighed and Oliver's fingers smoothed over his mustache.
Amara's teeth gritted together behind her lips. It was the same tone of voice that Barry used when he thought Amara was being particularly trying, and she was starting to really hate it.
"She saved my life," Amara forced out finally. The only person she'd ever told about Jade helping her was Roy, and Roy had certainly never bothered to inform anyone else of that fact. "She's the one that told me that Weather Wizard was looking for me back in May, and she's the one that helped me run away and trained me."
The realization that Amara had put her faith in an assassin over anyone in the League was clear across their faces and for the first time Amara felt a flicker of shame, that she had disappointed the pair of them.
"I couldn't—" Amara blinked furiously, her words catching in her throat. "I couldn't involve any of you, I was afraid what he'd do." The sting of the lightning bolt hitting her chest wasn't something she'd ever forget, or his rage whenever she did something wrong. She rubbed at her chest, feeling the searing pain like it was yesterday. "She saved my life," Amara reiterated, "and I saved hers."
"Still," Oliver spoke with a patience that could've only been gained from years of being Roy's adoptive father, "you could've told us."
"I told Roy," Amara said shortly, crossing her arms as if the statement settled it.
"Roy doesn't count, you tell Roy everything," Oliver pointed out and Amara scowled.
"You're just bitter because the two of you haven't had a good talk in months, in fact you've probably been fighting since we found Roy after he got kidnapped!"
Oliver recoiled sharply and Amara felt bad, especially when Dinah snapped: "Amy! That's uncalled for!"
A sigh parted from Amara's lips and she ran a hand through her hair. "He loves her, and she loves him, and you can't really tell him what he can't do, he's eighteen."
A sudden buzz in her pocket had her pulling out the untraceable phone she used as Oracle. "This is Oracle."
"Hello, Oracle, how's your day going?" came the familiar voice now and Amara's teeth gritted.
"Soothsayer," the name hissed from between her teeth.
"Had a good hospital visit?" he asked before Amara hung up, removed the sim card and dropped the phone to the ground. She slammed down her heel onto the cell phone, breaking it easily, before she chucked it into the nearest bin and stormed off.
"What was that about?" Oliver asked Dinah, completely befuddled.
"No idea."
"Mr. Harper—"
"Roy's fine," Roy gave a small cough.
"Roy," the doctor spared him a smile. There was a rather small gathering in the MRI room, but enough that they knew they'd be relocating soon, "just to warn you, you're going to hear a lot of noise during the MRI. It's due to pulses of electricity going through the metal coils inside the machine. Most people prefer earplugs or headphones, do you want either?"
"Um, earplugs, I guess," Roy gave a shrug, his head aching, and he took the small orange earplugs that the doctor pulled out for him.
"This is going to take awhile," the doctor continued kindly, "so you'll have to stay still for around forty-five minutes to an hour."
"Okay," Roy said flatly.
"It's going to get a bit crowded in that back room, so Storm and I're gonna wait for you in the waiting room, all right?" Jade said quietly, leaning down to brush her lips against his cheekbone and he gave her a small smile. It wasn't as though he was oblivious to the clear separation between Oliver and Dinah, and Amara and Jade.
Oliver squeezed his shoulder and Dinah gave him an encouraging smile before the doctor helped him lean back and led Oliver and Dinah back behind the glass while Jade and Amara left through the doors.
"You all right?" Jade asked Amara once they sat in the waiting room, the sky darkening through the glass windows. It had taken hours to get Roy into the MRI room, but somehow that had done little to ease the nerves of either girl.
Amara had said nothing since she'd plopped herself down into the most secluded corner and pulled out her laptop. "Oh, yeah, I'm great. My partner might have a tumor in his head and I'm going to murder Soothsayer for using my own code to hack me and somehow find a way to track me."
Jade arched an eyebrow at the second part. "I'd heard something about him being able to track Oracle."
Amara's head whipped around so fast that she could've sworn that something had cracked. "What?" she demanded. "And you didn't tell me?"
"Well, I'd only just heard about it yesterday."
Amara slid deeper into her seat, pressing a hand over her eyes. "I'm never trusting a boy with my code again, I'm never trusting Soothsayer again."
"Was he at least a good kisser?" Jade asked, her lips twisting in amusement and Amara turned pink.
"Unfortunately," she growled. "The problem now is that he knows my face and he might still have some way to track me." Her initial thought was that destroying the phone would've cleared up that issue, but Soothsayer was too clever for that; he had contingency after contingency, the phone was a smokescreen to lull her into a false sense of security, that much she was sure of.
"You can probably have Poison Ivy help you with that one," Jade pointed out absently, rifling through the magazines beside her and lowering her voice every time someone got too close to where she and Amara were sitting.
"Huh?" Amara stared at her blankly.
"You do know what your mom can do, right?" Jade asked archly. "She can use her pheromones to—"
"To make people suggestive to whatever you want, yeah, I'm familiar with that one." Amara rolled her eyes. It was the one ability of hers that Barry and Pamela agreed needed to be monitored closely, because they both thought it was likely that she'd subconsciously tap into it more as she went through puberty and there were so many ways that could go wrong.
"Yeah, but pheromone manipulation affects the senses and the brain," Jade explained. "You can effectively hypnotize someone with it, and if you're as good at it as Poison Ivy is, you can someone forget another person."
Amara released a puff of air from her lips. "I don't like involving any of my parents with my Oracle work."
"Well, you might need to this time," Jade said. "Which do you care more about: keeping your parents out or keeping yourself alive and unknown?"
Amara frowned before going back to typing furiously on her laptop. "How was Cuba?"
"Some people die pathetically easy," Jade pouted. "No challenge at all."
Amara shook her head in exasperation. "See, this is probably why Roy didn't tell Ollie and Dinah about you."
"What, my abrasive personality or my murderous tendencies?" Jade's eyes positively gleamed.
"Guess, please guess," Amara said dryly without even a change in inflection.
She felt like she had so much on her plate right now, like she was being constantly overwhelmed. She was still finalizing her plans for TempleofDelphi, the BlackNet adjacent site for Oracle alone and the code puzzle for prospective Oracles to take, then she'd hit another dead end on Wonder Woman's job of finding where Steve Trevor was, and she needed to come up with a plan for getting Sofia out of her stalker situation.
There was just a lot going on, on top of Roy being admitted into the hospital.
"Let me worry about Roy, you worry about everything else, okay?" Jade said suddenly and Amara looked up at her. "Go, do what you have to do. It beats sitting around doing nothing for an hour. If you're not back in time, I'll call you and tell you how it went, okay?"
Amara swallowed. "Okay," she said, ducking forward to kiss Jade's cheek. "Thanks, Jade."
Then she was turning off her laptop and tucking it into her bag before pulling out her regular phone and hit a name in her contacts. "Hey, Sofia, it's me, I'm going to need you to pack a bag, I'm taking you to a safe house. I'll explain everything later, I promise."
The cracked window made him an easy target, but that's what he got for hanging around the apartment Sofia shared with Nadira and Adara. She crouched as she held a small cloth ball, the same one she'd used on the guards on Infinity Island with Roy, covering her mouth as her fingers sparked, the sweet smell filling the air before she tucked it in through the window. By the time he'd realized that it was there, it was too late; he was already out.
And Amara broke one tail-light just because she felt like it before loping over past where she'd parked her motorcycle moments before, making for the apartment complex, pulling out her phone to figure out which buzzer to hit.
"Its Amy," she said into the intercom, and a second later the door buzzed open and Amara took the steps two at a time to the fourth floor, catching sight of Nadira's head peering out of door, gesturing for her to approach, and Amara did, rushing forward, the door shutting behind her.
"We don't have a lot of time, he's going to wake up sooner or later," she informed Nadira. "Is Sofia ready?"
"Wake up?" Dark eyebrows rose high on Nadira's brow as she stared at Amara. "What happened?"
"Some things are better off unknown," Amara offered sagely before looking over Nadira's shoulder to see Sofia and Adara scrambling to get her things into a bag. "Just necessities, guys, we'll get the other stuff later."
"Why do you even have a safe house?" Adara demanded, not in anger, but confusion. There was so much about Amara that none of these girls knew, let alone understood.
"Later," Amara said curtly as Sofia zipped her backpack shut and looped it onto her back. "C'mon, Sofia." She held out a hand and Sofia took it, allowing herself to be practically dragged out of the apartment and down the stairs, but then Sofia halted.
"You're –you're sure he's not awake, he's not going to see me leave?" Sofia asked, worry making her voice tremble.
Amara held up a finger and opened the door, narrowing her eyes. "Still out cold, Sofia, let's get you out of here, all right? Somewhere you can actually spend a night knowing he's not out there watching you."
Sofia's spine straightened in resolution and she followed Amara out and onto the back of her motorcycle, gripping her waist tight as they shot off into the night.
The MRI had taken a multitude of pictures of Roy's brain, some foggy and out of focus, but the last one was the best image, and it was the one that the doctor focused on, eyes shifting over the structures of the brain, focusing on the brainstem and then the frontal lobe, the temporal lobe, and the amygdala where small distortions could be seen, with the larger one evident on the brainstem.
"Is it a brain tumor?" Oliver asked, his heart in his throat.
"No," the doctor said and he and Dinah breathed a sigh of relief, only to falter at her next words, "that's the problem. I've never seen anything like this before; I have no idea what it is."
AN: And a question for next time: what is actually going on with Roy's brain?
You might see more of the Team next chapter, but we'll have to wait and see how that goes, especially since it's probably going to be awhile until the next update.
As always: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REVIEW!
