Tempest: Chapter Ninety-Three: The Secrets We Keep

AN: I got a very nice message about Amy being demi helping the reader, and can I just say that I'm glad, if nothing else, you guys get to see a character with your sexuality as the main character of a fic? By an ace writer? Like, that's the best thing.

But unfortunately we're heading into trigger warning area this chapter: mentions of previous rape (in the comics, we won't delve into it, but it is mentioned), and genocide


"So, he's mentioned me, then?"

Amara bared her teeth, balling her fists. Roy was the one who had to tell her the story, especially since he was rarely around to keep an eye on things anymore. He and Ollie had been rough around the edges for years before they'd figured out the whole 'cysts around metal in brain' thing, but there'd always been one thing he'd been painfully clear on.

Never let Shado, the woman who'd once raped Ollie in the throes of a fever who thought she was Dinah, into the house or near Ollie.

She knew Ollie could handle himself, but he was her favorite uncle and finding out that someone had done something like to that him had been horrifying and Amara had been immediately down to fight.

"No," she said, full of ice, noticing Artemis had crept back, a metallic click behind her telling Amara that she'd grabbed Amara's batons. "Because you don't matter…now get the hell off the property before I call the cops."

Apparently that just amused her.

Artemis slid her bo-staff into her hand and Amara snapped it up to point it under Shado's chin, hearing the tell-tale sound of an arrow being strung behind her. "I'm not playing, lady."

"I'm just here to get child support from Oliver."

Artemis made a startled sound behind Amara, but Amara didn't budge. "You had a miscarriage a month after you assaulted him, he owes you nothing, I checked. Leave and don't come back."

She slammed the door shut in her face, furious and breathing hard.

"What was that about?" Artemis demanded behind her, but Amara didn't answer her at first, breathing hard and waiting for Shado's footsteps to leave.

"That is Roy's rule to not let a fucking rapist into his father's house," Amara said still as furious as she'd been moments before and it only took a few seconds to connect the dots. "There's nothing consensual about having sex with someone who's out of it from a fever and thinks you're his fucking girlfriend."

Being out late was something that had always worried her mother, Artemis knew, and there was a reason she had mace and a pocket knife on her key ring. And if she was ever really worried about it, she knew that she could call Wally and he would walk her home, tired as he was.

"That's fucked up," Artemis said finally.

Amara made an agreeable grunting sort of sound.

"Think she was really here for child support?" Artemis asked.

"Shado's an assassin, more likely she was here to try to kill Ollie, again," Amara frowned, pulling out her phone and calling Dinah. "Dinah, is Ollie at the office? No, don't worry about it, Artemis and I've got it covered."

She ended the call and turned to her partner. "Ready to suit up?"

Artemis arched an eyebrow. "I should be asking you that, you're the one who's been off field duty for two months."

"Not totally." Amara bared her teeth and they raced to where their uniforms were held. "Though if you're expecting any atmokinetic assistance you'll be SOL."

Artemis shot Amara a look that the girl missed completed as she began to pull on the Storm Chaser uniform, unclipping her earring, the red bleeding from her hair, leaving it its signature grey with those amusing and tasteless streaks of green that were fading out.

Surprising Artemis further, she grabbed Roy's collapsible bow, clipping it to the small of her back and shouldering his quiver. Somehow, Artemis wasn't sure that was the best idea, but there wasn't exactly time to convey that.


M'gann had arrived in Qurac the previous night and Garfield had been overjoyed to see her while Marie just quietly understanding, thankfully Marie had been kind enough to steer Garfield from asking too many questions, and it was only when he'd gone up to bed the second night that she started to ask her questions.

"Something happened back in the states," Marie surmised, looking at the face that was so like her own, the basis for her appearance on Earth. "Something bad, to have you running back here."

M'gann's grip around her mug was tight, her eyes downcast. "A lot's happened…Conner and I broke up, first of all."

"You don't sound to cut up about it." Marie took a swig from her own mug.

M'gann's lips twitched faintly. She had been at the start, it had been Artemis that was the one that pulled her aside to explain that not everything was like it was on shows like 'Hello, Megan' and that sometimes relationships didn't work out. It had taken a lot of work to even go on missions together and being friends again. "I'm not really his type, if you know what I mean."

"…ah," Marie bobbed her head in understanding. "I'm guessing that's not all that happened?"

M'gann's mouth thinned into a hard line. "One of our friends, Storm Chaser, she was dating someone else on our team, a magician…they'd been together five months and for the last two she'd been possessed by an Egyptian god." M'gann sighed heavily. "I guess things weren't going well, because A—Storm Chaser was going to break up with her but…she figured out something was wrong and it attacked her right when Conner was coming over to give her something she'd left with him, and he got involved and-and its such a mess." She buried her face in her hands.

Marie was quiet for the longest time. "Is Conner going to be all right?"

"He'll survive," M'gann hiccupped, "but he could be in a coma for years and Zatanna's going to be in Atlantis and-and Storm Chaser she's…god, she was so distraught, worse than when she found out Flash hadn't told her that Poison Ivy was her mom."

Marie blinked and decided to take that in stride.

"I just couldn't stay there," M'gann whispered. "It was…too much."

"I understand," Marie said simply, "it's a lot for anyone to deal with." Especially kids like those. She'd never met Storm Chaser, she hadn't come on the mission with the others to Qurac. She was Garfield's favorite and he'd been so disappointed when Kid Flash had smiled thinly and said 'family problems', but she knew that Storm Chaser was at most fourteen and so very small.

"There was-there was all this blood," M'gann looked down on her hands in horror, "and all I could think of was Mars."

"Mars?" Marie asked. "Why Mars?"

M'gann sighed heavily. "I guess…because of the genocide." She felt so empty now, talking about Mars and what happened there, to her family, to her entire culture.

Marie paused, setting her mug back down on the table. "Genocide?" she repeated the word carefully.

She received a small nod. "I lied when I told the Team that I'd competed in a championship across Mars to determine who would become Martian Manhunter's protégé, my uncle knew that…but he hadn't really told anyone the truth about Mars either or how we were reunited." Her shoulders fell slightly. "Those lies, I think, made us feel like Mars was still alive for us…but its not…its completely dead."

Marie stood quietly to grab her kettle from the stove and refill their mugs. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to…I know some things can be pretty painful to talk about."

M'gann thought about Amy's general reluctance to talk about her issues with Dinah, even if she thought it would help, preferring to suffer in silence. And she remembered the grief on her face as she sobbed, needing to cling to Batman to stay upright. But M'gann wasn't like that at all.

"No, its okay." M'gann tapped her fingers nervously against the cup. "I guess I better start with my uncle…and his twin brother."

"Wherever you like," Marie smiled sadly with understanding.

"I told you about the discrimination between White Martians and Green Martians, right?" She'd just never mentioned that she was one of the White and discriminated, but she figured it might've been obvious with how terribly she'd described her childhood. Marie nodded. "Well, my uncle J'onn J'onzz, he was born first, a Green Martian with clear psychic abilities, so of course his parents named him 'light to the light'…but his twin brother was a White Martian without any ability to communicate telepathically, so they named him Ma'alefa'ak, 'darkness in the heart'."

"Well, that's a bit…cold-hearted," Marie grimaced.

"Martians aren't known for their warmth," M'gann admitted. She had been an outsider there for more than just her skin color. "But they both grew up, their parents had more kids, who had kids, somewhere along the line I was born…I was barely old enough to understand when it all happened. When Ma'alefa'ak created H'ronmeer's Plague, it was something designed to kill Martians when they used their telepathic abilities by creating a mental fire in their brains. It was contagious and deadly and every Martian used telepathy so you can see how easily it could destroy a planet."

"Oh, God," Marie murmured, horrified. "How old were you when this happened?"

M'gann had to do a bit of quick mental math. "I think about seven of so, in your years."

That didn't alleviate her horror.

"It was pretty much impossible to stop once it started…I had to watch my little brother M'comm succumb to the fire before my eyes." She closed her own quickly, feeling a rush of pain at the fear she could see but forced herself not to sense. "Ma'alefa'ak was killed but so was everyone else…it was years before I found out my uncle had survived after crash-landing on Earth and spent the past few years without any memory of me or my family or what had happened to our planet…I had to cut myself off psychically for years to survive what happened…it was only when my uncle came looking for me that I finally began using them again…but I couldn't tell my friends."

"Why not?" Marie asked curiously. "Surely they would understand why you didn't say anything?"

"Of course, they would," M'gann agreed, "but Kid Flash's parents were killed by Storm Chaser's -um- sperm donor—" Marie's eyebrow twitched. "—Robin's parents were killed when he was nine, Storm Chaser's brother Red Arrow has been missing for months and she's been running herself ragged trying to find him and she hasn't even used her atmokinesis since she was crushed under the Cave, and Artemis' dad Sportsmaster is always trying to manipulate her—"

"Those all sound pretty bad," Marie said over M'gann before reaching out and squeezing her hand. "But sweetheart…your problems and your history are no less important than theirs. Comparing your struggles to others won't help anyone, least of all you. You suffered, no buts, admitting that is the first step."

M'gann looked down into the tea.

"How long can I stay here?" she asked in a small voice.

"As long as you need."


Ollie's heart was racing. He was finding it hard to breath and she was just standing there, about as natural as the fake fern in the corner of the office that always made Amy give him an unimpressed look because he didn't have a real one.

"Hello, lover," Shado purred, her strung arrow leveled at his chest.

He was the Green Arrow but in that moment, he could do little more than shake. He felt so weak. It had been years since that incident and years since Dinah had held him through a panic attack and then quietly suggest that he needed to see someone and report what happened. He'd agreed with the former but not the latter.

Retrospectively, it kind of made sense why Dinah still didn't like Cheshire even when she'd been dating Roy months before they were introduced and long after she'd proven just how much she cared about him.

"Any last words?" she hummed and Ollie's mind went completely blank.

He didn't even notice the grappler lodging into the wall outside his window, but he did wince when it shattered and two figures shot through. Apparently, it startled Shado enough that she missed his head, her arrow lodging next to his neck, a few inches from his carotid.

"Back off!" a snarl came and Ollie blinked a few times to realize that both Amy and Artemis were wearing their uniforms and both were holding bows. He shook his head, blinking a few times, no, Amy definitely was holding a bow, a red one to match the quiver full of arrows.

Roy's.

"Reinforcements?" Shado presumed. "You two dress fast."

"Thanks," Amy said dryly, "now leave before I blow your head off."

It wasn't her usual threats. True, Amy had grown more violent over the years, no longer recognizable as the 'bright storm cloud' Dinah had once introduced her as, but she rarely used murder as a threat.

A glance from Artemis out of the corner of her eye told him she was surprised too.

The arrow she had strung in Roy's bow was an explosive one. She had to make up for the lack of aim with the explosion on impact.

Oliver dived to the side just as she released the arrow, blowing apart the wall. He must've blacked out for a few seconds because then Amy was leaning over him, slapping his face lightly. "Hey, can you hear me?"

Oliver sat up, startled. "I passed out?" That was…really sad. It usually took a lot to knock him out.

"More likely you panicked yourself into passing out," Amy muttered with a sigh, "you okay, otherwise?"

Oliver stared at the wall, gaping and open. "Did you just blow a hole in my office?"

Amy wriggled her eyebrows. "Those weren't my arrows, those were Red Arrow's." Oliver might've been a little out of it, but he was pretty sure she did double finger guns at him. "C'mon, Mr. Queen, you let us heroes worry about the assassins…want me to call your wife?"

"Girlfriend," Oliver corrected automatically and Amy bared her teeth widely. He turned red. Oh, that sly—! She'd found the ring he'd bought for Dinah!

"Whatever you say mistah!" She drawled out in a tone that sounded an awful lot like Harley when you really got her going. "I'm gonna go help Goddess wrangle that assassin!" And then she was off and Oliver was leaning his head against the floor wondering how much things had really changed.

Either way, it was somewhat gratifying to see Shado in chains and Dinah glaring daggers at her as she rushed up to Ollie as they wheeled him out on a stretcher, concern bleeding through her eyes.


Wally pulled off his shirt, trying not to stare at the scarring across his back as he did so. The fractal scarring was practically a family trait at this point. Barry had it from his lightning strike, Amy had it from Mardon, and so did Wally.

He was just a bit less open about having them. Of course, Dick and Roy had known about them, they'd known him the longest, after all, but he tended not to call attention to them. Amy didn't really either, about her own, unless someone pointed them out and she had to explain a watered-down version of how she'd gotten them.

Another thing that came with being a speedster, unfortunately was epilepsy. Barry had talked about how lucky he was that that aspect had missed Wally and Wally had never wanted to prove him wrong…but come on…running around generating so much electricity? How could that not affect his brain?

He could feel another seizure coming on as he lay down on the bed, on his side so he couldn't choke on anything. He just hoped no one came in and saw him when his convulsions started. He'd been so good about keeping it a secret, he didn't want anyone to find out about it now.


"Want to tell me what's on your mind?"

"Not particularly." Amara sank further into the couch, avoiding looking at her mentor.

Dinah gave her an unimpressed look. "I don't think I need to tell you that you you're on a self-destructive spiral."

"Does it count if the destruction is around me, not actually affecting me?" Amara asked sourly, crossing her arms.

"Amara." Dinah gave her a look. "I'm worried about you, your parents are worried about you—"

"My parents are always worried about me," Amara stared up at the ceiling. Pain was bubbling at her spine, trailing down her legs, but considering her pain spells, this one was pretty mild.

"I think there's something you're not telling us, something that's been bothering you for months now," Dinah continued and Amara stiffened. "And I don't think it had anything to do with Zatanna."

"I'd like to leave this conversation," Amara said loudly, trying not to remember how Apep had played Zatanna so well.

"I think it mostly had nothing to do with Zatanna," Dinah corrected. It was better to figure out what Amara needed little by little and maybe her time would be better served focusing the issue currently plaguing Amara. "Why don't you want to go back to Pamela and Harley's?"

Amara shut her eyes quickly, trying not to think of the blood on her floor, leaking from Conner's fallen form or how Apep in Zatanna had pushed her against her desk, kissing her like it was trying to devour her. She rubbed at her neck over where a bandage still lay; it had to've healed by now, but she hadn't taken it off.

She wrapped her arms around herself. "Maybe I should be talking to Ollie," she muttered, which made Dinah stiffen immediately with concern.

She removed herself from her chair to sit on the coffee table next to Amara's head. "Amy, I'm being completely serious right now…was Apep inappropriate with you?"

Amara scoffed, rolling back onto her back, but then she saw the look in Dinah's eyes. "It wasn't like with Ollie," she sighed, "I was kissing my girlfriend."

"But it wasn't actually your girlfriend," Dinah pointed out, "and for you, the unwitting participant, that counts as assault."

Amara pressed a hand into her eyes. "I didn't need to think about it like that," she said finally, hollowly.

"I know," Dinah said simply, "but being ignorant of it doesn't lessen the pain."

"It kinda does."

Dinah sighed heavily. "Amy…tell me how you feel knowing all that now?"

Amara could still feel the breath on her neck and the faint trickle of blood from marks where the fangs had gone in. "Does wanting to rip my skin off count?"

Dinah didn't smile. "It does, but, if it helps, you shed skin daily and its completely replaced in three months. In three months, there will be nothing left that Apep touched."

It did help, actually. Amara sucked in a long breath. "It almost killed Conner, I'm not exactly high priority."

Dinah shook her head fondly and so very sadly. "Have you ever put yourself high on the priority list, Amy? Conner's wounds will heal, not as fast as we'd all like them to, but they will heal, and one day he'll wake up, the same as he ever was."

"He won't be the same," Amara was certain of that. "We're all going to grow up without him…how is that fair?"

"It isn't," Dinah agreed, "but you all get the chance to grow up. Not everyone does…but you should take the time you need to heal, like Ollie did."

Amara scoffed. "I've already been out of the game for two months, I'm not sure more time will help."

"It will," Dinah promised, offering her her hands, like she always did when she could see Amara struggling with her touch sensitivity. This time, Amara didn't take them, but Dinah respected her boundaries and returned them to her lap. "You need to understand that. Yes, what Apep did wasn't as bad as what others have experienced, but you still ended up kissing someone who you thought was your girlfriend, that would throw anyone off. I want you to take some time to look after yourself…two months, no active duty, just…Oracleing."

Amara's lips curved upwards. "Oracleing?"

"Oh, you know what I mean." Dinah rolled her eyes. "Take your time. I know you have a great many projects that require your attention."

There was an apology ringing there about Roy, Amara could tell.

"Can you do something for me?" Amara asked suddenly.

"Of course," Dinah said quickly; Amara rarely asked for anything.

"Can you call my mother and ask her to put -I don't know- a sheet or something over my desk…and a rug over the…um…" Over the spot where Conner had fallen.

She couldn't meet Dinah's sympathetic eyes. "I'll let her know…apparently you also mentioned to your father about wanting to dye your hair and now Ariel wants join in."

Amara cracked a grin, making peace signs with her fingers. "We're solidarity sisters."

Dinah rolled her eyes.


The past few nights had been…rough, to say the least, but Bruce couldn't help but be grateful of what he had as he turned the volume on the TV down until it was little more than a pleasant hum of background noise, looking down at Dick where he was snuggled against his shoulder, fast asleep, breathing in and out easily, the skin under his eyes just faintly red from crying.

Bruce craned his head slightly so that he could gently brush a hand through his son's hair, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. Dick didn't even stir, just burrowed more tightly into Bruce's side.

It reminded him of when Dick had first come to live with him. He'd been so quiet and tentative, not quite knowing what to do in this new situation he'd found himself in. After a while, the issue then became that Bruce could barely keep Dick on the ground for more than ten seconds.

Bruce smiled just faintly at the memory of all the times he had to fling himself forward to catch Dick only for Dick to beam and say "Can we go again?". Having a former circus performer as a son had been an enlightening experience.

And one day soon they'd have to broach the topic about leaving Robin behind and becoming something completely new, but Dick was still young, there would be more time for that later.

He leaned down to lean his cheek against Dick's head and sighed, his eyes sliding shut. He barely felt it when Alfred came along with a fond look on his face, tucking a blanket around the pair of them.


Nabu rarely had visitors to his quarters in the Watchtower, yet somehow he couldn't bring himself to be truly surprised by the dull and angry knock on his door, pulling him out of the meditative trance he'd placed himself in, storing energy, directing it, focusing it.

A hum of a spell told him who was behind the door. Storm Chaser looking positively stormy and Artemis with a deep scowl.

That didn't bode well.

Nabu stood up to slowly open the door to reveal his visitors.

"Nabu," Storm Chaser said shortly, "son of Savage. We had questions for you."

Nabu could safely say that of all the reasons they could have sought him out, he hadn't quite predicted that being anywhere close to the top of the list. But he couldn't truly bring himself to be surprised that the member of the League who dealt entirely in secrets had figured his out.

"Come in," his voice echoed behind the helmet as he stepped to the side to permit them to enter. There was much to discuss.


AN: Shado's assault is something in the comics, but there's a lot of sexual assault in the comics (ick), this was more to showcase the similar situations between Amy and Ollie, both thinking they were with someone who actually wasn't that person. Its a suckish time for Amy, but it'll get better; healing takes time.

In other news, the Savage leads are progressing but Roy is still a long ways out :(

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