Tempest: Chapter Eighty-Three: Last Resort
AN: Wow! I was impressed with the love the last chapter got, so I thought I'd be nice and give you guys another chapter :)
"You seem a bit down, sweetheart." Iris was humming softly as she worked on researching for an article she was working on. She spent more time in front of the camera, but that didn't mean that she didn't sometimes flip over to good old-fashioned sleuthing for a story. It probably wasn't the best idea to be doing that in the middle of dinner, but who was going to stop Iris? Barry was working late, again, and both her kids were prone to bringing out their phones to text their girlfriends during meals. "Something to do with Dick?"
Amara caught on immediately and shot a glower towards Wally who was remarkably unrepentant. She turned her attention back to food she was just pushing around her plate. "We had a fight, that's all."
"You tried to claw his eyes out," Wally snorted, "I literally had to lift you off the ground."
Amara scowled even more. "If I'd elbowed you in the gut, you would've gone down," she told him with complete and utter surety, remembering Barry in the fetal position from a harsh elbow.
Wally choked on a piece of chicken.
"It's no good to sleep on it," Iris told her daughter, "the longer you keep it bottled up, the more likely you are to explode."
"I'm a big fan of explosions."
Wally, who had managed to swallow his food -luckily-, burst into laughter at that, because, honestly, there was no truer statement about Amara.
Amara glared further before huffing and standing up from the table, clearing her plate.
"Why don't you bring him his present a few days early?" Iris suggested helpfully. "That might help." Dick's birthday was just around the corner, after all.
Amara stomped up the stairs and Iris arched an eyebrow at her nephew. "Must've been some fight." She'd had a few disagreements with Zatanna over the past few months and sometimes with Dinah, but the only one she'd had a full-on fight with was Barry (well, that wasn't right, she'd had several fights with Roy last year but given his medical condition, Iris had opted to overlook them) and that had taken over a month to resolve.
"Roy's involved," Wally offered helpfully.
"Ah," Iris said sagely, "yeah, that would do it."
Amara must've hung around on the porch for fifteen minutes trying to work up her nerve, which was pretty ridiculous, as ridiculous things went, but she'd never had a legitimate fight with Dick before (sure, they'd had several arguments over the years, but nothing like that).
"This is so stupid," Amara muttered to herself, looking sourly beyond the overhang that shaded the doorstep of Wayne Manor. Personally, Amara had never really liked Wayne Manor…it was so big and so remote and so cold when you looked at it from the outside. The inside was cool, she supposed, but she liked the Cave 2.0 far better. It was warmer and more rustic rather than Bruce Wayne's family home that looked like it had come right out of a mystery novel where the guests of the house mysteriously turned up dead.
The rain was pouring stronger than ever and it was doing nothing to improve Amara's mood. She used to be able to affect the weather in the midst of a nightmare; now she couldn't even do that.
Amara Isley-Allen was, quite ineffectively, a Muggle, and nothing had disappointed her quite so much.
Katya had given her a number to call when she'd been on Mount Elbrus, and you wouldn't have thought a priestess who lived far from society would even deign to get anything as modern as a cell phone, but Amara was continuously surprised. She wasn't yet to the point where she was ready to call though, even being without her powers for almost three months.
Amara sighed, turning to head back home and realizing that she'd taken a taxi and the taxi was long gone and Amara wasn't on the level of willing to walk back to the zeta-tube in the pouring rain.
She'd barely considered it when the door opened suddenly and she jumped at the sight of Alfred Pennyworth.
"Miss Amara," he said simply and Amara got the feeling that he'd seen her vacillating about knocking on the door on some hidden camera -that was so like Bats- "why don't you come in for some tea?"
Indecision warred on her face until finally she sighed and entered silently, looking around the manor for any sign of Dick, but he must've been in his room. Alfred led her into the large kitchen with the stools against the island.
Amara hopped up on one, placing the long cylindrical container that she'd been carrying beside her and if Alfred was confused by that, he didn't mention it, turning his back to her to heat some water as Amara slumped over the counter.
"The bossman here?" she asked, her voice echoing in the silence.
"Not tonight," Alfred said simply, "he's at a company meeting out of town…I believe he was more worried about leaving Master Richard on his own; he nearly missed his flight."
Amara hid her amusement at that. It was hard to imagine someone like Batman as a doting father, but he seemed to be rather good at it as Bruce Wayne. Amara had lost count the number of articles she'd seen, like '50 images of Bruce Wayne and son that show you puppy eyes can work on the billionaire' and '10 reasons why Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson are father-son goals'. He was foreboding as the leader of the Justice League but kind and loving as Dick's dad, a dichotomy that still threw her off to this day.
The silence pressed down and Amara didn't have any inclination to break it, only to blink when a cup of steaming tea was placed in front of her. She blinked at the unusual red color, looking up at Alfred.
"Is this…" she paused briefly. "Is this raspberry?"
"Yes," Alfred replied, "it's perhaps the only tea Master Richard can stomach…he said you had a thing for raspberries."
Amara snorted, blowing a few times on the tea, causing ripples across the surface. "If by 'thing' you mean they're my favorite fruit and I eat them with just about everything—" She had to correct herself quickly "Well, not ice cream or yogurt, because why let raspberries be ruined like that?"
She didn't notice the amused glimmer in Alfred's eyes, too focused on taking a gulp of her tea.
"Miss Amara, might I offer you some advice?"
Amara sighed, bringing her cup forward for some more tea, which he gave her. "I guess so."
"Your friends love you very much and watching you go down a path of self-destruction is hard for them to watch and no doubt harder to experience," Alfred spoke carefully, like talking to a cornered animal. "Don't do everything on your own…I don't believe that Roy Harper—"
Two things happened very quickly. One was that Dick came down the stairs with a "Hey, Alfred—" and the second was that the teacup shattered between Amara's hands.
She barely even noticed and it only really hit her when looked down and saw the red starting to bloom. Amara was no stranger to blood and it never had made her have much of a reaction. Loud noises, sure -well, specific loud noises- but Amara had grown up stitching her wounds closed and bandaging them tightly. It shouldn't have been any different, but all she could think about was her own blood wet and hot against her skin, the air thick and heavy as she tried to breathe.
("Help," she choked on the debris, tears burning in her eyes under the blackness, "help -please." But there was no one to help as Amara slowly succumbed to the weight and the pain)
"Shit, Alfred, can you get the first aid kit?" She could barely hear Dick's voice. "Amy? I'm going to touch your arms, okay? We're going over to the sink."
She could feel the pressure on arms through her jacket, but little else. Her blood was pounding in her ears.
"Turning on the water, it's going to be cold."
Amara flinched suddenly at the chill, wincing her eyes shut and opening them again to stare. Dick was holding her hands under the water, looking at her with more concern than he should've since their fight.
"Back with us?" he asked carefully and Amara shook it off.
"I'm—" The word 'fine' strangled and died in her throat as she looked down at her hands under the sink, washing the crimson away. Her words tremble and quake and she didn't know why, but tears came flooding down like a dam overflowing. "Fuck!" she complained.
To his credit, Dick didn't really comment on the blubbering mess she was turning into, just turning off the water, patting her hands dry and holding pressure before pasting bandages over the fresh cuts, knowing full well that the bleeding would stop much sooner for her than it would for someone else.
"Sorry," she muffled into the tissues Alfred offered her, hovering behind in concern, not as familiar with her episodes as someone like Dick (though, he had absolutely nothing on Roy who had been her rock, her grounding force, up until he'd been forced to try to kill her). "I didn't—"
"Amy," Dick said carefully, like he was choosing his words, taking care so as not to set her off, "have you gotten injured on patrol since, um," he struggled briefly, "since the Cave?"
Amy wanted to say "Of course, I have!" but then she froze. She'd been painfully careful these past few months. Without her atmokinesis, she was more vulnerable than she'd been before. It hadn't affected her healing factor, but it wasn't like she could just float out of the way on a cloud to avoid attacks.
She'd gotten a little scratched up, but nothing like what Roy and Savage had done to her.
"I don't think so," she finally admitted, looking down at her hands before stomping a foot in frustration, alarming Dick.
"What's wrong?"
"I was coming here to apologize for being a complete ass earlier and you're just helping me with my panic attacks like I wasn't a total bitch!" she complained.
"Oh," Dick relaxed quickly. "Is that all?"
She gave him a look, neither noticing as Alfred stepped back slowly once the crisis had been averted.
"I mean," Dick coughed quickly, "I'm pretty sure it wasn't as bad as that Russian screaming match you had, right?"
With Roy, he meant, but Amara appreciated that he didn't say his name; she wasn't really sure if that wouldn't set her off panicking again.
Amara shrugged. She was sure that she'd never tried to claw Roy's eyes out, but she wasn't about to tell Dick that.
"You would've been totally screwed if you'd gone on your own, anyways," Dick said with a wave of his hand and Amara soured.
He was right, but that just made her more annoyed. "Thanks for that," Amara said dryly, "you're really keeping me humble."
Dick did an elaborate bow just to make her laugh, and she did. Then she returned her attention to her hands, pulling back the bandage to look at the healed over cuts.
"Um, sorry about that teacup."
Dick waved her off. "I think Alfred was more worried about being the one to send you into a traumatic episode."
Amara grimaced, pressing her hands to her face. For a long moment she didn't say anything, just stood there with her face hidden. "How," she paused and swallowed thickly, "how long was I down there?"
He didn't need to ask what she meant by that. "Two hours and fifty-one minutes."
Amara drew her hands down, blinking in confusion for a solid minute. "Oh," she said finally, "it felt a lot longer than that."
"You were dying," Dick felt like he was pointing out something obvious, something that Amara probably wouldn't've appreciated if she wasn't in such a post-episode haze.
"I was more preoccupied with breathing," Amara sighed, grateful for the air not filled with debris. She never seemed to get very lucky in that area with either drowning or choking on debris.
She missed the thunderstruck look on his face.
"I don't—" she swallowed her words briefly. She'd been teetering on the edge of a breakdown for months and it was only by some miracle that no one had spotted the signs, or maybe Amara had just gotten really good at hiding them. "I don't think I'm doing well."
"Okay." Dick's patience reminded her of Roy, talking her through a panic attack, and his blue eyes were as pretty as Zatanna's or Diana's or— well, it wasn't helping Amy much. "It's good that you recognize that."
He sounded like Dinah and Amara wondered if he'd ever needed therapy, even casually.
"You can take a break, you know," Dick said, getting some food out of the fridge, which looked like leftover Chinese food, putting it on plate and heating it in the microwave while still talked to Amara. "You've got a lot on your plate right now."
"What? No! I've just got—" Amara started counting off on her fingers.
There was her Oracle stuff, patrolling in Star City, missions with the Team -as rare as they'd been lately-, dates with Zatanna, learning to live with a possible little sister in Gotham with Pam and Harley, on rare occasions robbing some fools blind—
"Okay," Amara said hollowly, dropping her hands, "so I'm a little busy."
Dick coughed into a mug of raspberry tea. "A little?" he choked. "You're making Batman seem lazy!"
Amara was pretty sure that was a gross exaggeration but she wasn't going to be the one to call him out on it; it wasn't like she lived with the guy. She shook herself.
"Sorry," she added, "you know for trying to rip your face off."
Dick's mouth twitched. "I could've taken you."
Amara snorted loudly. "In your dreams, jackass."
"At least I know you can't out-flip me." Dick's smile was a little too sharp, but it made Amara smile all the same.
"Well, I'd never be stupid enough to try that," Amara was vaguely startled at the prospect. He was the one that had been part of a circus act; she'd never be able to top that. He'd offered to teach her a trick or two before but Amara wasn't sure she'd ever be able to pull it off. Maybe she'd have to look into it since her powers were now caput. "That reminds me." She took the cylinder from the counter and offered it to him. "This is for you."
Dick took it, a bit bemused. "What is it?" Of course, he was kind of becoming accustomed with Amara's apology language being gift giving.
"I mean, it's supposed to be your birthday present," Amara admitted, but that wasn't until the weekend. "But might as well open it early, I suppose…well, you don't have to open it early, I can take it back—" She reached out and Dick recoiled with it.
"No, it's mine now!"
Amara's lips twitched, her eyes gleaming in a way that made the green a bit more distracting; Dick had to shake that thought off, pulling the end off the tube so he could pull out what had been rolled inside.
His heart stopped beating in his chest and he swallowed thickly at the bold words 'The Flying Graysons' splashed across the top. There'd been an old poster at Haly's Circus but that one had been far more degraded and Amara must've had it laminated.
"It's not genuine," Amara had to admit, "there's not that many left, but I know a couple artists that tried their best to recreate it based on what they had but I figured—"
Dick grabbed her, pulling her into a tight hug and Amara blinked in surprise. His shoulders were shaking and her eyes softened as she raised her hands up wind around his back, swaying slightly on her feet in a way she hoped was soothing.
When Dick pulled back, his eyes were wet and Amara pretended not to notice when he wiped his face. "It's perfect," he told her, his voice thick and Amara relaxed. "I'm gonna hang it up right now."
"You don't have to—"
"No, I'm gonna," Dick insisted, dragging her upstairs to help him, making her laugh.
Honestly, Wally couldn't even remember what he was looking for in the closet, just that he got sidetracked.
"Aunt Iris?" he called.
"Yeah, sweetheart?"
He took two canvases down from the closet. They were beautiful and imprecise, like someone had splashed paint across them until they got the right color and the end result was what probably was an attempt at painting the sky. "Who did these?"
"Oh, those," Iris smiled sheepishly, "those were some of Amy's. Dinah tried her hand at doing art therapy with her when she first started going to therapy but Amy told her she didn't like it so they went a different route."
Wally furrowed his brow as she went back to working on her article. If Amy hadn't liked it, she wouldn't have kept.
He'd done a lot of research on abuse and abuse victims -he'd said it was for a school project when his parents had asked, which was partially true, but it was mostly because he wanted to understand how he could help his new cousin- and he knew that sometimes, when you were scared of liking things that your abuser could take away, you lied and played it off like you didn't care. And Amy had been very skittish at the start, not fully believing Barry and Iris weren't going to be like Mardon for several weeks after living with them…and Amy had stolen a lot of art pieces and helped out a lot artists, she'd kind of hyper fixated on art for a while, though she'd admitted a lot of the art pieces she'd stolen had been stolen themselves and was slowly working on getting them to the right places.
("I, uh, stole a lot more art pieces than anticipated," she admitted. "Ya think?" Wally snorted.)
Wally wondered if she talked to Roy about it, but then the doorbell rang, distracting him.
"I'll get it!" he called, leaning the small canvases against the wall before zipping down the stairs, opening the door at a normal speed.
"Oh, hey, Zatanna!" He gave her a small smile. "Amy's not actually here right now."
"She's not?" Zatanna's brow furrowed in confusion.
"Nah," Wally shrugged. "She ran off to see Richard about an hour ago." He checked his watch; it was getting late. "She might actually end up sleeping over there at this rate."
"She's sleeping over at a boy's house?" Zatanna seemed somewhere between perplexed and annoyed with just a subtle vein of jealousy. Wally could understand that. If someone told him Artemis was sleeping over at some guy's house, particularly a guy he didn't know, he'd be jealous, but he also trusted Artemis. "Your uncle's okay with that?"
"Barry's chilled out about that stuff lately," Wally had to grudgingly admit. He'd been less thrilled about Amy sleeping over at the Wayne's than at Roy's but since Roy's…disappearance and his acknowledgement of how much Dick did for Amy -like giving her a rebreather when she was drowning-, he'd become more okay with who she spent her nights with. What he wasn't pleased about was that she'd run off without waiting for Iris, so Wally knew she was in some kind of trouble. "Besides, Dick's dad and Barry go way back; she and him basically grown up together."
Zatanna had never heard the name Dick before, unless calling Robin a 'goddamn dick' when he annoyed her counted. "Then why doesn't she talk about him?"
Wally tried not to laugh. "Amy's a private girl; her secrets have secrets."
Zatanna thought that was something they only said about spies.
"She doesn't talk much about her ballerina friends, either," Wally shrugged. "I don't talk much about my school friends…though they still don't believe I've got a super-hot girlfriend, which, what's up with that?"
Zatanna stifled a snort. "Can't think." Wally was a certified nerd, sure he was cute, but who was going to believe that he had a hot athletic girlfriend without proof? "Just tell her I stopped by and I guess…I'll see her tomorrow?"
"Probably," Wally shrugged. Amy hadn't done a lot of hiding out at safehouses the past few months, which he took to be a good sign, because around July she'd done that a lot; Wally chalked that up to being back after her month vanishing act with Cheshire and finding everything a lot more overwhelming. She was staying whelmed, to steal a phrase from Dick. "Barry's picking her up tomorrow because she's still stupid enough to run around on her own instead of calling for a ride."
Wally rolled his eyes but Amy had always been like that. It was only recently that it started being a bigger deal and with metahuman kids -or, at least, prospective metahuman kids- going missing, so all the parents had banded together to agree to make sure that their kids didn't go anywhere alone, and that included everyone on the Team.
(Wally had no idea how Paula Crock, who had, before becoming wheelchair-bound, been the criminal known as Huntress, ended up in a group chat with his aunt and uncle, Poison Ivy, and Harley Quinn, but so far it was going well and she was in agreement about keeping their kids safe. And it wasn't like M'gann and Conner had parents to care about them, and Kaldur's weren't around above water, and Raquel's didn't know anything about her heroing because they were so busy working.)
He would've offered to walk Zatanna back to the zeta-tube -as malfunctioning as it was- but she was already leaving with a "See you tomorrow, Wally!"
Wally gave a careless wave, watching her go with a frown.
Zatanna knew better than to practice spells in the house. It was something that her dad had taught her about when he'd first started teaching her his craft and it was something practically ingrained her in now.
Today had been bad, bad for Zatanna, because if there was one thing she was really had at, it was offensive magic. Which, honestly, she should've looked more into ages ago, but she'd been getting by, so she'd gone with it. But today it had felt like Amy and Artemis had spent more time protecting her than the other way around, and Zatanna hated that feeling.
She needed to get strong and she needed to get strong fast.
And the warning her father had given her about one particular spell, how it was only attempted as a last resort and the words were very specific, escaped her in that moment, a moment that would change her life forever.
She took the book down to the boathouse -because Cave 2.0 had a boathouse, it was that big of a house-, opened it, read the ritual exactly once, and closed her eyes with a murmur of "Retne a ecnart ot eraprep rof eht lautir."
She could feel herself soaking in the power from the world around her, from the earth, the sky, the sea. Zatanna began to float in the air from it, and she opened her eyes, unaware that her eyes had begun to glow.
"Ho yhtgim Sisi fo eht citsym tnepres, evig em ruoy rewop!"
The world rumbled beneath her feet and a voice answered, ancient and powerful, and, above all, dangerous, echoing in her mind like ripples across a lake.
"If power is what you seek, little magician, then power is what you shall gain!"
And that was the last thing that Zatanna remembered before she fell to the blackness.
