Tempest: Chapter Seventy-One: Revelations
AN: Ah, the pain in the reviews gives me life. The GCB ladies knowing about Amy's secret identity has been something I've been planning for awhile and its gonna make their interactions so much more fun!
'I will get you a knife so you can me more easily' is easily the best review off of a cliffhanger that I've gotten so far. As a reminder, Tempest isn't ending anytime soon. Book 2 might be ending in a couple of chapters, though, we'll have to see, but book 3 is still happening within the fic.
Pamela was in shock. How could this happen? After everything that they'd gone through as a family in the past few months…after finally reaching some semblance of normalcy and happiness, she'd expected some hiccups. But this? This was like a house had been dropped on Pamela and she was the Wicked Witch of the East.
Batman hadn't told her much but she could tell from his tone and how nervous Robin had been that whatever had happened had been quite serious.
Whether or not it was 'serious-blood-loss-and-fine-with-a-transfusion' or 'serious-she-might-not-pull-through' remained to be seen and Pamela dearly hoped it was the first; she didn't think that her heart could take the second.
She entered the hospital in a hurry after a rapid voicemail to Harley that she'd get whenever she stopped beating up her ex-allies. Pamela would rather have her girlfriend with her right now -holding her hand, telling her that she wasn't alone- but the city was still in disarray and there were still criminals on the loose, though the number was slowly decreasing.
Pamela had almost reached the main desk when a voice called out "Hey, Amy's mom!"
That made her pause and twist her head and blink a few times. But then she realized the girl waving her arm in the direction of Pamela's line of sight was one of Amy's ballerina friends.
She probably knew more than Pamela did at the moment, so she forsook the desk to rush over to her.
"Amy's in surgery," the girl said helpfully. Pamela thought she was the one called Nadira. She'd seen her once easily lift Amy over her shoulder while her daughter blinked in utter bemusement. "We realized that we didn't know any of your numbers…but we thought the…her other friends would let you guys know."
Her other friends Pamela knew could only mean the other sidekicks…something Nadira shouldn't have known about. Pamela's eyes narrowed.
She opened her mouth to ask something when her phone buzzed suddenly. Barry's name lit up on the screen and she answered it immediately.
"Pamela, there's—"
"I know," Pamela said shortly, "Batman already told me. I'm at the hospital. One of her friends is here—" she glanced towards the tall ballerina who seemed more interested in the fact that Pamela had been exchanging words with the Dark Knight of Gotham (Pamela still thought it was best that she hadn't told Amy that they'd kissed once, that would be awkward, considering Amy's general apathy towards Batman -only just drifting away from outright dislike since her probation began). "Are you on your way?"
She would've thought he would be. Their bond was an easy one, one that Pamela tried hard not to be jealous about. Barry was the one that had brought her home in the first place, that had given her a bed and a roof over her head. He'd given her love and understanding, and though he had initially been so distrustful of her relationship with Pamela, he'd come to understand that as well. Iris easily liked Pamela and Harley more (they did have a group chat called 'Mom Squared' after all, which Amy found to be hilarious), and it was hard to not like Iris.
"Unfortunately, it seems like we're going to be a little late," Barry's voice was uncharacteristically dark. "Weather Wizard is wreaking havoc in Central City…I don't know how he got his wand back, but he took down a bridge."
Pamela's free hand tightened into a fist. She would never forgive Mark Mardon for his actions against her daughter…and he better pray that she never got his hands on him, because he wouldn't be surviving.
"Shit," she muttered, turning away from Nadira and moving back so that she didn't hit any emergency personnel rushing past. It sounded like Gotham was better off than Central City at this point, but Gotham's rogues tended to merely be criminals, Central City's tended to have more superhuman powers.
You saw more metahumans come out of the Central City than anywhere else…but it was almost like the city was being focused on, like it was the primary target.
"Just so long as Superman gets Earthquake locked up again," Barry grumbled. "We don't need him here making everything so much more worse."
Pamela barely knew about Earthquake; he was one of Superman's enemies and though his ability to create earthquakes was disastrous, he wasn't a very strong opponent and was typically defeated with ease.
"You're sure you don't need any help? Because—"
"Don't bother," Barry said with a short sigh, "the zeta-tubes are down anyways. It'll…You staying with Amy will make me feel better, especially with how held up Wally and I are going to be."
Pamela couldn't help but allow the faint smile to spread across her face. Oh, how their relationship had changed over the past few months. The animosity had all but vanished. "I'll give you an update when she's out of surgery, okay? You keep the city from combusting."
"Thanks," Barry said in relief before the line went dead. Pamela's smile faded and she shoved her phone back in her pocket.
She took in a shuddering breath, trying to calm the race of her heart, but Amy was always going to be the reason that she threw caution to the winds.
Then she turned back to Nadira who was watching her with a confused expression plastered on her already worried face. It was clear that regarding the Justice League, her friends didn't know much, which was probably by design. Amy's work as Oracle involved keeping a lot of secrets, she knew and understood the importance of keeping her identity hidden. As far as the girls knew, Amy was simply a very eccentric girl whose dead father had left her a considerable amount of money -hence why she'd been able to sponsor the Transcultural Theatre and its Gothamite Chamber Ballet- and who had a tendency to run off at a moment's notice.
"Tell me everything," Pamela said in a voice that brooked no argument.
Nadira twisted her hands uncomfortably, looking around. There were still a lot of people around, Pamela noted, and if there was one thing that Pamela had actually learned from her daughter, it was to never speak about confidential information where it could be overheard.
The seventh floor was closed off due to renovations…that would be the best place to have a quiet place to talk without prying ears.
Pamela made sure there was no one around to listen in on them before she turned on Nadira who had been looking increasingly uncomfortable.
"Amy was supposed to hang out with us today," she admitted, "we didn't actually realize something was wrong until all those sidekicks showed up…she was, um, she was pretty messed up."
"Define," Pamela just managed to get the word through her teeth, "pretty messed up."
Nadira grimaced and Pamela felt as though ice was filtering through her veins in the stead of blood. "I think Robin said…she had two broken limbs, something about her being shot and a building falling on her…she was a mass of bruises and broken bones."
Pamela ground her teeth together, the bile aching to spill from her lips. Broken limbs, being shot, a building falling on her…Amy might've been her daughter, might've inherited her accelerated growth factor, but she wasn't superhuman, she wasn't like Superman, too much damage could kill her.
She closed her eyes and pressed a hand to her mouth, struggling to calm the race of her heart.
Amy was tough, she'd been through a lot, but this? Pamela wasn't even sure this was something she could handle.
Either way, her daughter had the worst possible luck, and if she survived surgery -which Pamela was hoping against hope- Pamela would count her lucky stars if she didn't find her injuries as traumatizing as they sounded (Amy had certainly broken her leg on multiple occasions, usually courtesy of Cheshire, and she'd been shot before). Amy could rationalize her way through Merlyn shooting her off a building but still had trouble with what she endured from Mark Mardon. Dinah's answer had done nothing to soothe Pamela's mind.
"I don't have all the answers…everyone responds to trauma in different ways. I'm not saying that Merlyn's attack didn't affect her, because it did and occasionally she does have to be reminded that she can walk, but I don't think the impact of it was quite as profound as the abuse she suffered from her biological father."
Why couldn't life be simply, easier? Why couldn't Amy be ordinary, just an average girl whose biggest problem was making sure that both sides of her family played nice during holidays?
But no, Amy's comprised of a retired hero and his wife -along with an extended family of unrelated speedsters-, two speedsters, an investigative journalist, a pair of somewhat ordinary humans that appeared to be a hairpin aware from divorcing, one retired eco-terrorist, and her girlfriend, who was definitely not a retired villain.
Pamela needed a fucking vacation.
Karen Beecher was terrified. She was five feet and four inches of abject terror. Her parents were unconscious in the front seat of the car and all she could see was the deep blue river that their car was teetering over.
'Let's go to Central City to see the museums' her mom had said, 'it'll be fun.' This was very much not fun! This was the exact opposite of fun!
Karen could feel something hot burning in her stomach and she was going to kill Wendy for giving her that energy drink to 'keep her spirits up'.
The lightning struck too close and Karen couldn't silence her scream. The lightning hadn't touched her but she felt like there was something burning through her.
Then a woman with long brown hair appeared wearing a fine suit. Karen relaxed for exactly five seconds before the woman shattered the window, her arm shifting into something mechanical.
Something hit Karen and the world slid out of focus before fading entirely.
Several others disappeared the same way, but it would be some time before anyone would put the dots together.
The doctors were completely puzzled when went to set their patient's broken arm and limb, because there were already signs of remodeling where the break had happened, and from what had been relayed to them, the break had been recent, as in within the hour, there was no way it should've been half-way healed. There wasn't even a need to make an internal splint with screws. The most that needed to be done was stitching the patient up where she appeared to have been shot by something thinner than a bullet.
The good thing, at least, was that although the damage looked quite serious, the chances of recovery were quite high.
But at least one of the doctors had a lot of questions about the clearly accelerated healing…
Central City was complete and utter chaos, and Wally thought he was quite qualified to say that given everything that had been going on. All they needed now was an alien invasion and they'd be set for life (it was also on Wally's bucket list, but that was beside the point).
It was a good thing that Wally's parents had just missed the attacks. They'd decided weeks ago that they were going to try to 'reconcile their differences' one last time via an impromptu trip to Tahiti. Wally would've been more irritated about not being invited along if he wasn't hoping so much that they would stay together instead of divorcing. Besides, Amy straight up offered to fly time to the tropic of his choice without a care.
Thinking about Amy made Wally's heart hurt too much.
He was sure she was fine, totally fine! It wasn't like she hadn't been shot off a building and temporarily paralyzed for eight months, or endured years of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her biological father, or spent some time being homeless searching for that father after his attack left her with fractal scarring on her chest, or—
Really, the fact that Wally could list so much trauma off the top of his head was a sign that karma needed to be shifted to someone else for like…a whole freaking year. That's what Amy needed, a year of criminals and biological fathers (who happened to be the former, so bonus points) and whatever else was in the world that might have it out for her simply existing just taking a freaking break and not bothering her. Exactly three hundred and sixty-five days of blissful peace.
And Wally was gonna buy her the biggest bouquet of Chrysanthemums the florist had to offer and pound whoever'd hurt her into the ground.
"Kid!" Flash warned and Wally had to remind himself that he was running a bit slower than the speed of light, though still fast enough that he could do himself serious damage if he tripped while his brain was focused on other things, like worrying about his cousin. "Keep your head on!"
Amy had been worried about Barry, but she should've been worried about Wally. Wally lost his cool significantly sooner than his uncle, even if Barry never reacted well to Amy being hurt, at least he had a bit more experience with dealing with it. Wally just felt like his head was underwater and he was struggling to breathe.
Kinda hypocritical of his uncle, but Wally wasn't one to judge.
"Was anyone killed when the Kensington Bridge went down?" Wally asked over the rushing of wind over his ears. The air was electrified and it was still storming, but the man that had called up the storm had long-since disappeared. It seemed like Weather Wizard had come to make as much chaos as he could and then vanishing just as fast.
That wasn't like him. Weather Wizard was a gloater, he liked to be the center of attention and that was only appeased by national attention -meanwhile if a camera focused too long on Storm Chaser she'd rush off, oh the irony- which Wally wasn't sure he'd gotten yet.
"Probably," Barry's teeth were gritted together. He didn't like the idea of someone causing that much devastation in his city, but reality was disappointing and at this point -without Weather Wizard to be chained up and returned to Belle Reve- the only thing they could do was damage control. "Save your strength, Kid, you're gonna need it."
Wally grabbed the candy bar that his uncle tossed him. It wasn't the best way to replenish his energy, but Wally's cupboards were bare, and he was running on fumes.
"Martian Manhunter and Miss Martian are heading our way with an assist," Flash spared Wally a grin that he was absolutely certain was forced. "Let's make sure they're barely doing any work, all right?"
Wally fixed his goggles over his eyes and took off without answering.
The sooner they wrapped this up, the better.
The waiting was the worst part. Artemis twisted her fingers together before Wally reached out his hand wordlessly, linking his fingers with hers. Artemis looked up at that, but Wally wasn't looking at her, he was tiredly thumbing through his phone -still trying to get into contact with his parents-, so pale that his freckles stood out, his face shining with sweat; it made his hand clammy but she didn't dare let go.
He must've really overexerted himself in Central City; they were all a bit exhausted after everything that had happened, but Wally was a speedster -a still growing one, at that-, his power was in his very DNA, he couldn't exactly turn it off at will.
The good news was that most of the criminals that had escaped Belle Reve had been recaptured, leaving only a few that escaped amidst the chaos. Amy's dad, for one, was MIA, which Artemis personally thought was for the best, given Amy's general response to him, though she doubted Amy would be happy about the idea of her dad being out. The other Leaguers were doing the official tally.
Robin had his eyes fixed to his laptop, trying to clean up the footage from the Cave before the explosion, trying to find out what really happened. They were all sure Batman had a better idea of what went down, but he was busy, and it wasn't something that needed to be known immediately; there were higher things on the priority list.
Artemis looked over the gathering. Iris wasn't there yet, she turned her phone off during assignments Artemis remembered Amy mentioning that once or twice, so she didn't even know the condition of her daughter. Barry, Pamela, and Harley were all sitting together having a very quiet and very serious conversation. Artemis was more surprised to see that Barry was holding one of their hands, willingly, given his serious aversion to Pamela when Amy had decided to have a 'peace summit' of sorts between her parents. She supposed they'd all come a long way since then.
Only two of the ballerina girls Amy was friends with had stuck around, Nadira and Sabine, and Artemis was sure that Adara had stayed with Sofia because of the whole stalker thing and wanting to keep her company.
Kaldur was pacing in a perfect oval, Conner had his head tilted just slightly, listening intently, while keeping a steady hand across M'gann's shoulders so she didn't start to levitate in her anxiety. Raquelle and Zatanna were both feigning interest with reading the magazines around the cluttered around the waiting room.
"Does anyone know where Roy is?" Wally murmured in her ear, his face pinched and a furrow between his brow that would've looked cuter in any other setting, at any other time. This was the absolute worst way to spend New Years.
Artemis shook her head. That was what had been worrying Green Arrow the most, not being able to get into contact with his former protégé. Artemis would've been more insulted, but Roy and Amy tended to follow each other over the entire freaking planet, so the idea that Roy Harper was missing when his partner was essentially buried under debris from the Cave exploding around her was concerning.
It gave her a very bad feeling.
Luckily, she didn't have too much longer to dwell on it, because a man wearing scrubs, a cap over his hair like Artemis had seen in medical shows, approached the waiting room, calling out a single name "Amara Isley-Allen?"
To his credit, he barely blinked when most of the people seated in the waiting room stood at the name. His eyes roved over the gathering of children before locating the adults.
"We're Amy's parents," Barry gestured from himself to Pamela and Harley. Clearly the doctor thought it best not to ask why Pamela still had a tight grip on both Harley and Barry's hands. "How is she?"
"She's in recovery, we'll keep her in the ICU overnight but when her condition stabilizes, and I do believe it will, we'll move her to the post-surgical floor." He gave them a faint smile and Artemis was almost certain that if Pamela's shoulders had sagged anymore, she would've ended up careening into the floor, but Harley and Barry looked just as relieved. "…were you aware of your daughter's condition when she arrived?"
Barry exchanged a glance with the two ladies at his side. "No," he said, "we were all at work. Her friends had to call us and tell us what was going on."
"Well, she came in with a broken right leg and left arm, a penetrating wound to her abdomen, three broken ribs, burns and contusions…I heard something about part of a building fell on her?"
Barry's mouth thinned. "Yes, that's what we'd heard too—"
"She also had bruising around her neck in the shape of hands."
The silence surrounding those words was rather stilted and oppressive. Artemis knew that Wally was the one that had to tell Barry what happened (well, he didn't have to, but he happened to be there and in the midst of a panic attack so…) but she didn't think her boyfriend could even bear the idea of listing off each and every injury his cousin had sustained probably would've made him violently ill.
(Artemis was going to pretend that she didn't notice that M'gann was in the seat farthest from Wally after his fiery refusal to let her read Amy's mind when she was unconscious and clearly couldn't consent to the intrusion)
"I'm sorry," Barry's voice came off strangely choked, "are you -are you trying to tell me that on top of a building being dropped on my daughter…someone tried to strangle her?"
"That's the way it appears," the doctor's agreeable tone made Artemis wish she still had her bow, so she could shoot him. "But the strangest thing was her bones were showing signs of remodeling when we set them, which is unheard of for recent breaks like hers…do you know anything about that?"
Everyone connected to any metahuman knew to play dumb regarding accelerated healing factors, so there was a cluster of heads shaking.
"Hm." The doctor hummed and Artemis didn't like the calculating glint in his eye; she didn't know that he'd already called someone about the curious case of the self-healing thirteen year old. "Well, you can go up to see her in a few minutes, we just have to get her situated."
The trio of adults breathed a thank you as one.
"All right, guys, time for you all to head home."
"Aw, come on!"
"What? No!"
Barry blinked at the violent refusals in utter bemusement and Harley actually laughed.
Nadira and Sabine were the most agreeable to leaving, saying they had to let their other friends know how Amy was doing, but getting the others to leave was a different story.
Zatanna, Conner, Kaldur, and M'gann didn't have a home anymore, they'd all been living in the Cave as permanent residents before the bombing.
Wally was citing his right as her cousin and Artemis as partner and Robin—
Robin had leapt to his feet, white-faced and in shock as he held out his laptop to Barry. "You need to see this," he insisted, playing the recovered but slightly damaged footage for Barry to see his daughter practicing her electrokinesis before being shot from behind by an arrow that had been drawn back by a familiar figure.
"Roy attacked her," Robin said, his voice hollow and uncomprehending, "and he was working with Vandal Savage."
AN: Ooh, future conflict!
So, by now you know that season2 of YJ isn't happening in Tempest, but there are some aspects of it that I'm still interested in, so even though it isn't happening, you'll still be seeing some of the new members of the Team from there.
There's a lot of interesting stuff coming up…if you guys don't die in the process ;)
As always: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REVIEW!
