Tempest: Chapter Seventy-Seven: Healing Wounds
AN: People losing their shit over Zamara is great, for more than one reason.
The first month was hard, really hard for Wally and he didn't know how he would've been able to manage it without Artemis or Uncle B or Aunt I or Amy or the Team…everyone had been so great. Some days were better than others, but they were beside him every step of the way.
Aunt Iris would occasionally slip up and ask when her brother was coming to pick Wally up and they'd both stand still for a moment, processing it before crumpling into misery.
Uncle Barry was learning to be exceptionally quiet because loud noises sent Amy for cover, hands rising to protect her throat from unseen hands.
"Tell me how you're feeling right now," Artemis' fingers raked through his hair, gently carding through the red. They were holed up in Wally's room, his new room in the West-Allen's new house. Everything in his room Amy had personally went and gotten from his house -his parents' house- but it didn't really feel like home yet.
"Empty," Wally finally decided on. He hadn't cried since the funeral; he didn't know if he had anymore tears left in him. "Not sad, not angry, just…empty." He opened his eyes to look at her. "Do you think that makes me a bad person?"
"What? Of course not!" Artemis' vehement refusal made Wally smile. "It's okay to be…" Artemis struggled to find the right word. "…emotionally numb."
"Better that than robbing people blind by night, I guess," he conceded, thinking of Amy, who he'd caught sneaking back into the house at two in the morning when he was on the way to the bathroom. He'd had to blink a few times to take in the golden masquerade mask and the flowy red outfit she wore as the thief Masquerade. Her lipstick had been a little smudged and she'd made a shushing sign towards Wally.
He wished he could bounce back as quickly as Amy, but Amy had only been adopted four years ago and she'd seen Wally far more than she'd seen his parents. She'd liked them and she'd been upset that they'd died, particularly since Mardon had caused the crash, but she wasn't as emotionally invested and she had her own trauma to deal with from the Cave's collapse.
Amy slept with a dim bedside lamp on so she wouldn't feel the crushing darkness and without blankets, afraid that they'd trap her in place. More likely she'd get sleep paralysis and wake up unable to move, but Wally had never voiced that thought.
His mom, he would miss everything about her, her smile, how excited she would get when he told her about the things he was doing in biology and how well he was doing, how she'd listen when he regaled tales of what he and Uncle B had done on patrol…but his dad was a different story, and one Wally didn't feel like getting into, but his father had always seemed like he was putting on a show in public while making it painfully clear that he didn't approve of Wally's interest in forensic science like Barry or him heroing at all. His father never seemed to be pleased, no matter what Wally had done.
"Hey," Artemis said, before moving to kiss him lightly, "it's going to get better, I promise…besides, you can come to training today, you know, vent your feelings."
"Amy has been being weird about training," Wally considered.
"So, you've noticed," Artemis said dryly, flopping onto her back and pulling out the phone that had been in her pocket, reading a text. "I haven't seen her shoot anything with lightning for weeks. No levitating on a cloud, no creating fog…nothing atmokinetic…just her fists and her bo-staff. I think BC would be more worried if she wasn't being more cautious."
Which Wally was sure that Barry and Iris were grateful for; even Dick called Amy an adrenaline junkie.
"But it'll be good for us to get out and see our friends," Artemis said 'us' not 'you' which helped. Now that school had started up again, it was back to splitting their time between school, the Team, patrol, and their respective girlfriends. They hadn't done much with the Team lately since they'd been helping out with repairing their cities and making sure they didn't fall behind in school. "C'mon, you know you want to."
Her smile was a bit coy and Wally kissed her again. "I guess it couldn't hurt."
Artemis laughed into his mouth before pushing him off his own bed and laughing some more at his expression.
"Your mom is going to kill you."
"Which one?" Amara cheeked. "Harley'll get a kick out of it, I promise."
Zatanna rolled her eyes with a snort, holding Amara's jacket as her girlfriend sat in the chair at the barber shop, the hairstylist mixing a deep green color to paint over an assortment of locks of Amara's hair which now fell easily to her shoulders, one side now cut so short it was almost like a buzzcut. The hairstyle had been okayed by Amara's various parental units (with Harley bumping her fist approvingly) but getting permission to highlight it dark green was another story all together.
"Why green?" Zatanna asked curiously as the hairstylist began painting the color into Amara's hair and tucking them into foil.
"I like green," Amara grinned widely, "it's a very me color."
"You look good in a lot of colors," Zatanna said, making Amara's cheeks pink. "Like black, red, blue…"
"So, my entire wardrobe," Amara quirked an eyebrow.
"How long have you two been dating?" the hairstylist asked with a vein of amusement.
"A month," they said together, both pink-cheeked.
"Got anything special planned for Valentine's Day?"
Truthfully, Amara thought the holiday was a bit overdone and hadn't wanted to do anything for it, but at least Zatanna hadn't wanted to do too much, just hang out in Zatanna's room at Cave 2.0, watch movies, eat over-hyped holiday candy, the usual.
"Movie night," Zatanna told her with a smile.
"Sounds fun." She placed the last lock of dyed hair in the foil before directing Amara to sit with her head under the dryer for fifteen minutes.
A buzzing phone had Amara pause in order to pull her phone out of her pocket. "It's the girls," she told Zatanna as she sat down to flick aimlessly through a random magazine. "They want us all the get some lunch sometime…they want to meet my girlfriend, especially Sabine."
It gave her a new kind of thrill to be able to say girlfriend with ease. Relationships took work for Amara, well, everyone, but Amara had to work at them particularly hard because she still had the mindset that cutting and running was the safest option for her and Amara wasn't sure she'd ever get rid of that.
"I've met them, though." Zatanna remembered the ballerinas that Amara was friends with, though she'd only had the chance to meet them when Amara was passed out from various injuries and so far the only thing she was really certain of was that a girl named Nadira had a very big crush on Kaldur.
"Sabine is calling you my 'witch girlfriend'," Amara said dryly. "Besides, I wasn't even conscious when you all met, so it doesn't count, and they were meeting you as a friend, not a girlfriend."
"Am I getting the shovel talk from them?" Zatanna asked with arch amusement and Amara blinked in surprise.
"Is that the whole 'threaten SO into submission' thing I've been hearing about?" Amara shook her head slightly under the hair dryer. "Nah, I'd keep an eye out for wayward assassin's, though. Jade doesn't know where you live yet, which is good, but she might find out at some point and threaten to carve out your spleen."
"Uh…you're kidding, right?" Zatanna asked, pausing to look at Amara. Everyone had already revealed all their secrets within the group -M'gann's true White Martian form, Artemis' family being made entirely of criminals, Amara's BlackNet partner in crime was Cheshire- but it was still hard to get over the idea that Amara and Jade were so close.
"Well, you can live without your spleen…so she probably wouldn't go for that," Amara admitted before sparing Zatanna a grin. "Don't worry about it, she's gonna be out of the country for a while."
"Thanks, I'm so relieved," Zatanna said dryly, making Amara laugh.
A few minutes later Amara was back in the chair, the foil coming off and the green locks getting blow-dried with the rest of her hair.
The hairstylist swung her around to face the mirror. "So, what's the verdict?"
The dark green went very well with her charmed black hair, though Amara had to admit that she wasn't sure how good it would look with the grey, but she had another earring to hide the dye job while on patrol, so it wouldn't be an issue.
"Nice," Amara grinned widely, pulling out money to pay for the cut and dye job. "Keep the change," she told her, hopping off the chair to pull the jacket up over her shoulders and the hairstylist snorted at what was on the back.
"So?" Amara asked as Zatanna took her hand, them walking down the street, fingers interlocked.
"So?" Zatanna responded, a slight smile on her lips.
"The green? What d'you think?" Amara slid her reflective sunglasses into place, cheeks pink from the cold. She used their interlocked fingers to pull Zatanna's arm up so she could do a little twirl that made Zatanna laugh.
"It's nice…I'm not sure what Mrs. West-Allen is going to say…"
"Actually, it might be Dad that flips out more," Amara laughed loudly before pulling up her camera and handing the phone to Zatanna. "Hey get a picture of my front and back, yeah?"
Zatanna complied and then watched as Amara took the pictures up to twitter. They were good pictures, the back one highlighting the rainbow spread across the back with the words 'I'm Gay' across it.
AmyIsley-Allen StarWarsGirl
Walking into GBS hoping GGGodfrey sees how utterly gay I am as I take Mom out to lunch with my gf
"You're terrible," Zatanna told her with utmost fondness.
"I know." Amara kissed her cheek. "It's great."
Amy passed out halfway through Love Actually, which wasn't too surprising for Zatanna, if a bit exasperating. Amy had a tendency to doze off during most things during the day, given how awake she was during the night, which was annoying, but it was kind of her job.
"Don't be too surprised if she nods off," Mrs. West-Allen had told Zatanna fondly after getting over the strange color her daughter had decided to color her hair with and after Mr. Allen had stopped having a heart attack, "she's never been very good about staying awake during movies…unless its with Wally, then they're debating it the entire time."
"Mom!" Amy had complained loudly.
"Make sure she's back before curfew or I'm sending Flash to pick her up," Mrs. West-Allen had added to Zatanna.
"Mom!"
But hours later she wasn't wrong, Amy was snoozing gently on Zatanna's bed, her head resting on Zatanna's shoulder, curved closer to her, the bowl of cheap holiday candy between them, half-eaten.
Still, it was nice to not have to worry about any villainous societies or any potentially devastating cataclysmic events.
She leaned her head against Amy's and closed her eyes.
The fact that Amara was able to tell that something was wrong and was now in denial that it was anything serious would probably concern a lot of her friends, which is why she didn't say anything about it.
Amara had been thrown around a lot over the years and had been injured a lot as a result, any one of those injuries could've caused her fluctuating back and leg pain.
She'd been unable to use her legs for months before, so it wasn't actually that new of a feeling for Amara as she sat up in the middle of her bed one night, sharp pain burning at her lower back.
"I need to be medicated," she muttered to herself with a wince. It had started as such a small thing, but she had a feeling that it was only going to get worse. And Amara wasn't in the habit of informing her parents about her injuries unless they got too bad (Amara was recalling a time when she passed out during dinner because she'd gone without sleep several nights in a row) or, really telling them what she was up to at all; Kaldur hadn't agreed at all with her refusal to tell anyone about the tranq dart in her shoulder after the funeral.
She winced but rolled herself out of bed, caught somewhere slight pain and manageable pain, opening the door to peer out onto the landing, seeing a warm glow from the downstairs living room. She peeked over the stairs, walking down them silently, to see Barry passed out on the couch surrounded by case files.
He'd been hard at work when Amara had come back from her date with Zatanna, closely followed by a very harried and disheveled Wally who'd just barely made it back before curfew, cheeks flushed and the beginning of a hickey forming on his neck, which led Amara to assume he'd had a nice time with Artemis. Iris had shaken her head fondly before telling Barry not to stay up too late.
Amara was not surprised that he'd disregarded that suggestion.
She walked past him to grab some ibuprofen from the cupboard and then found a tea bag and started to heat some water.
And it was only when she held the steaming cup under Barry's nose that he finally stirred, blinking blearily before taking note of the cup.
"Shouldn't you be asleep?" he asked with a yawn, taking a sip and Amara arched an eyebrow, resting a hand on her hip.
"Like you're one to talk," she muttered, sitting down beside him, taking note of all the files around him as he flicked off the TV to flip on the lamp at its dimmest beside the couch. "What are you even doing?"
"There's been some discrepancies in the lab," he yawned before pausing and narrowing his eyes at her as she looked at the various files. "You wouldn't use your pheromones on your dear old dad, would you?"
Amara snorted. "Depends on how I was feeling that day…why?"
"You smell like flowers," he told her frankly.
"Yeah, I think Richard mentioned that a few times, too," Amara said a bit absently, looking from one file to the next.
Barry's eyes sharpened. "Did he?"
Amara hummed. "So, did Zee…so did most of the Team, actually…" She'd actually forgotten who knew about her pheromones and who didn't. She was sure everyone in the Team from the start had seen her use them…but Raquel and Zatanna probably hadn't.
"How's it going with Zatanna?" Barry asked her.
Amara shrugged, a smile curving onto her lips. "It's…nice and fun. She makes me laugh and gets me to come out of the Oracle Cave when I get too focused on things. She's sweet and I like her."
"I'm glad," he said and she lifted her eyes to give him an actual smile.
Telling her parents that she was dating someone hadn't been as hard as she'd thought. Harley had blurted out "Oh, it's a girl this time?" which had prompted the embarrassing explanation about Soothsayer, her ex-boyfriend (-ish). But neither Barry nor Iris had minded too much that Amara was dating a girl, especially since her first kiss had been with a girl.
"All these cases have missing pieces of evidence," Amara noticed.
"Yeah," Barry sighed, taking another sip of the tea and rubbing at his eyes. "We're trying to figure out where it leads back to, not the lab, that's for sure, but there's a rumor going around that there's a dirty cop in CCPD."
"Great," Amara drawled out. That was just everyone really needed, another corrupt cop on top of a city that was trying to rebuild itself.
"Did finally get assigned a new detective partner, though," Barry added, "August Heart."
"Heart?" Amara blinked. "Like Jorge?" She remembered Jorge, he'd died during one of her disappearance spells, but he'd always been kind to her.
"His younger brother," Barry grimaced. Jorge's case was…difficult. He'd been killed by a career criminal and had managed to walk free because of insubstantial evidence. They had recently found some evidence attaching the criminal in question to a strange symbol. "Actually, there was something I might need to pick your brain about."
"Ooh, fun."
Barry flipped through one of the files to find the picture in question. "Here it is…I thought I'd ask you, because, unfortunately, you're the most in-tune with the criminal underground."
His disdain towards that truth made Amara snort. "We've finally moved off of BlackNet, if that makes you feel any better." Of course, she kept her access to it, if she ever needed information or jobs for Masquerade that didn't come through TempleOfDelphi.
"It does." Barry wondered what on earth he'd done to deserve a daughter that had one foot in crime and the other in making Barry's life as difficult as possible.
Amara took the picture, only to blink in surprise. It was a white swirl, a familiar one to Amara. "You've never seen this before?" she stared at her father. "I thought you would've heard a lot about them by now."
Barry arched an eyebrow.
"They're the Black Hole, it's a terrorist group whose goal is to research and exploit the Speed Force."
Now that was startling. Barry considered him somewhat of an expert on the Speed Force, having learned everything that Max Mercury and Jay Garrick had to offer, even in their retirement.
"Hang on!" Amara took off upstairs and her father watched her go in utter bemusement only to return less than a minute later, her laptop in tow. "Okay, I've got a file on the Black Hole, and they're shady as f—"
"Amy," Barry warned.
"—fudge," Amara corrected smoothly. "Anyways, the Black Hole, super shady and they've been around for a really long time, like probably as long as Jay was heroing, they go back really far."
"Don't let Jay catch you calling him old," Barry's lips curved upwards and Amara actually laughed.
"So, they've got their fingers in a lot of criminal organizations across the world like Medusa, Leviathan, Intergang, the Veil before it became defunct, HIVE, Black Glove -a lot of fingers, a lot of different pies." Amara's fingers typed out against the keyboard. "You know it would be more concerning that there's so many criminal organizations, especially ones that hate the Justice League, if I wasn't in the neutral category as it was."
Barry sighed loudly. "Many things about you concern me."
Amara grinned widely. "Anyways, they're pretty involved with a lot of different organizations, but obsession with the Speed Force is kinda their thing…you'd probably get along, until they found out you were the Flash."
Barry gave her a look and she sniggered.
"They spend a lot of time looking into lightning strike victims," Amara barreled on, "they've actually looked at my medical records, and yours after you had that accident in CCPD."
Barry still remembered that day with painful clarity. He'd torn his lab apart; it was the first time he'd really lost control of his temper. His father had finally admitted, on his death bed, in jail for the murder of his mother, that he'd killed her all along, after Barry had spent years trying to prove his innocence. It was painful, in ways that Barry couldn't have considered. So, he'd torn his lab apart, ripping all the articles he'd taken notes on trying to figure out who the killer could've been.
That was the last thing he remembered before being told that he'd been struck by a bolt of lightning. Jorge Heart had been the one to find him, crashed into a table, completely doused in chemicals.
"Luckily, they didn't find anything, which is impressive since I sussed you out within like five minutes of meeting you." Amara's teeth were bared and her eyes glowed with mirth.
"Ha-ha," Barry locked her head under his arm, ruffling her hair until she wiggled free.
"But I had heard a rumor about them," Amara added, pulling up another document and showing it to him.
It looked like a chemical of some kind and Barry lifted his eyes. "The Black Hole is developing a drug, one that, supposedly, can give people super-speed."
"Really?" Now that surprised Barry. A drug that could give you super-speed? That was…he was almost impressed, but then came the doubt. "I don't suppose you have any details on it?"
"Only for my favorite superhero."
"I'll have to call up Wonder Woman."
Amara swallowed down her laughter. "The drug's called Velocity 9 and it's a real killer. I'd rather be addicted to cocaine than this stuff. So far, all anyone knows in the criminal underground is that the fatality rate is one hundred percent, so its not really an effective drug; who wants to pay money for a product that will kill you?"
"No one," Barry had to agree. "Anything else on it?"
"Some rumors about the guy backing the project being someone named 'Godspeed'."
"Sounds like a speedster name," Barry hummed thoughtfully.
"Yeah, sounds like you've got a new speedster on your hands, and it sounds like they're bad news."
When Iris came down the stairs the next morning it was to see her husband and daughter slumped on the couch together amidst files and papers. It looked like a total mess, and they were completely passed out from whatever they'd been working on that night.
But they both did look rather cute. Iris couldn't resist pulling out her phone and snapping a quick picture of the two of them and then sending it off to Pamela and Harley, not surprised to get a quick response.
Pamela: Aw, that's adorable :)
Harley: that's soooo cute! They're so like each other its not even funny 3
Iris chuckled faintly to herself as she watched Amara roll slightly against Barry, tucking her head a bit more firmly into his shoulder, relaxing slightly.
She took a moment to pause and just look over them. It seemed like so long ago when Amy had had her violent explosion against Barry and taken off. Things were different now, harder some days, easier others. Even with Rudy and Mary's deaths, they were moving forward, slowly but surely, and Amy and Barry seemed to be the only ones keeping them afloat some days, but one day the ache of Rudy and Mary's sudden deaths wouldn't hurt so much.
And the sting of knowing that her last words to her brother were made in anger, that would sit with her for a long time.
"This isn't what I agreed to!"
"You agreed to marriage, Rudy, I'm pretty sure you had to be of sound mind about it."
"And what have I gotten out of it? A son that's more brainy than brawny? Who thinks he can make a career out of science? Tch." Rudy had scoffed in disdain.
"How can you say that about him?" Iris demanded. "Wally is one of the kindest, most giving people I have ever met, he doesn't need to be a bully for people to like him!"
It had been a poor choice of words, but not inaccurate. Rudy had been a bully in high school, but Iris had thought he'd mellowed out, but clearly anger management was still an issue for him, expecting a certain amount of love and attention from his wife and son when he didn't give them enough from the start.
Barry had become rather leery of Rudy in the last few months and Iris knew he'd never hurt Wally, or at least, that's what she'd thought, but Barry was more cautious. His father had manipulated him for years into believing he was innocent of killing his mother and he'd been blunt about it.
One night when Wally had run over to their house with sleeping bag and pillow in hand -something that had become even more frequent in the past year than in previous years-, he had sat Wally down and been very straightforward as he asked "Wally, are you being abused?"
But Wally had been clear in his denial of it, more startled by the question than anything else, but the yelling, the yelling he couldn't stand, listening to his parents fall further and further apart.
Wally descended the stairs, dressed for school, took one look at his uncle and cousin, then poked Amy's cheek harshly with one finger.
"Imma bite you," Amy slurred out, still fast asleep, and Wally snorted, moving past their sprawled forms to grab a muffin from the kitchen.
"See ya, Aunt I," Wally said with a faint smile, giving her a swift kiss to the cheek before he was out the door.
Iris smiled watching him go, wounds healing slowly but surely, which was all they could ask for.
AN: Amy and Barry bonding over solving crimes is what I live for. Rudy was very shady in the comics and even dead, he's still shady. The upside is I now have the next year of Tempest planned out, the downside is you guys should be very concerned.
As always: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REVIEW!
