++++++ Please be easy on me. I'm breaking in a new laptop and it's weird.

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Eleven

Scarlet arrived home on Monday afternoon with Bart and Jessie in tow to find Starla cooking madly away in the kitchen and Barry zooming around the house madly cleaning. "What the hell is going on?" Scarlet muttered, looking around the house-it was spotless.

"Bags in rooms, now," Barry told them all.

Bart bit his bottom lip. "Is Grandma coming over again?"

Scarlet frowned. "Grandma?"

"The devil," Barry joked.

"Barry!" Starla yelled from the kitchen. "If I have to ask you one more time not to call my mother the devil we're gonna have some serious couch sleeping issues."

Barry sniggered but pointed to the stairs. "Star put clothes out on everyone's beds, change. Scarlet go have a shower."

Scarlet raised an eyebrow and went upstairs with the kids. After three months in the Lee-Allen household it was almost like a routine now but this was new. She'd never met Starla's mother before. She didn't even think she had a mother, more like she grew from a pod or something. She headed up the stairs and found a sky blue rockabilly dress on her bed with roses and unicorns on it and a sky blue pair of flats. Scarlet was beginning to like Barry's sense of style for a guy…that or he was helped by that assistant lady again.

Scarlet showered as Barry had asked, dressed and as she was unpacking her books from her bag to do some homework later, the doorbell rang. She headed over to her bedroom window and looked out. There was an old beat up Ford out the front parked behind Starla's car.

Just as she did that, her communicator went off.

The teenager answered it, an image of Suki was projected above the device. "Hey Psi. Just checking in to let you know that you and me are on duty this weekend."

Scarlet's eyes lit up. "Really? But I've only been training for two and a half months!"

Suki shrugged. "I'm just reading off the roster. It's you and me and the glorious National City all night. SB was supposed to be with you but he got his ass handed to him and then some. He's not up to it."

Scarlet paused. "Is he okay?"

"He's brooding classic SB style," Suki chuckled. "Anyway, see you here Friday at 5:45. BW out." The com went silent.

Scarlet frowned and left her room, closing her bedroom door behind her before she went to find Bart and Jessie.

"Bart are you okay?" Scarlet asked the boy.

"Grandma doesn't like me," he frowned. "She doesn't want a meta-human grandson."

Scarlet frowned.

"Mr and Mrs Lee raised Starla protected and loved," Barry spoke from behind her, "they just didn't want it to run in the family anymore. Come on you three."

"Thanks for the dress, Barry," Scarlet smiled.

Barry winked. "That same girl again," he told her. "I think she's my go to girl for you from now on. Up front, superhero."

Bart walked in front of his father whilst Jessie took Scarlet's hand to follow them.

"I have patrol on Friday night," Scarlet told Barry win a whisper.

Barry nodded. "I know. I got the roster. We'll deal with that later."

The man and woman downstairs with Starla were in their late forties, early fifties. The male had greying black hair with a university professor look about him and the woman looked like Starla in twenty-six years' time.

"So these are the street children you're fostering?" the woman frowned, giving Scarlet and Jessie the look over.

Jessie hid behind Scarlet's leg.

"Scarlet Lords, ma'am," Scarlet spoke, "and this is Jessie Jackson. Nice to meet you."

"Mary Lee," she replied. "And this is my husband David." She quickly turned her attention away from Scarlet and Jessie and to Bart and Barry.

Scarlet breathed a sigh of relief.

"Dinner is ready," Starla smiled, "I think you'll be surprised at the courses I've prepared." She showed everyone into dining room where there were already started meals on the plates. "It's an Aubergine and pomegranate salad," she announced. "For our mains we have a shellfish and cider stew followed by a desert of chocolate and caramel tart with hazelnuts."

Mary sighed. "Should have been a chef."

Scarlet sat down beside Jessie, as much as she wanted a mother who wouldn't have sold her out the first chance she got-no way did she want this kind of mother. She felt sorry for Starla-well only a little. She poked at the salad in front of her, it was a sweet tasting salad but she at it anyway. It was a habit she'd picked up on the street-eat what you can when you get it.

"So, Barry how is your sister?" Mary questioned, digging into her salad. "And her…children?"

"Charlie's good," Barry answered. "And the twins are good. They're spending some time with their father this weekend."

That's one family that Scarlet didn't understand. Charlie Allen was madly in love with a criminal genius who on occasion would assist the Justice League when it took his fancy. Out of that crazy love was born two crazy kids who had the same personality as their father but their mother's powers.

"Such a bad influence," Mary noted.

"Well everyone," Starla spoke, cutting into the dinner talk. "I have an announcement to make."

Mary put her fork down and elbowed David to do the same. "Has Barry finally asked you to marry him?"

"Leave it be mum," Starla sighed. "And no, that's not the news…Barry and I are having another baby."

"We are?" Barry asked her, brown eyes sparkling. He jumped up and kissed her.

"Mummy where to babies come from?" Bart suddenly asked.

"The stalk," Scarlet lied, eating her corn one by one.

"Well I think that's fantastic!" David declared standing up. He kissed his daughter on the head before he hugged her. "Congratulations, both of you. How far along are you?"

"Almost three months," Starla declared. "The baby is due in the middle of next year."

"And what about a marriage proposal?" Mary inquired.

"Mary, leave it alone," David sighed. "Just congratulations them and smile."

"In my day men and women didn't live together let alone have children without marriage," Mary huffed.

"I'm curious if that makes him a fast lover or a slow lover?" Scarlet wondered without realising she'd said it out loud and not in her head.

Barry spat out the wine he was drinking and started coughing.

"Mummy what's a lover?" Bart asked his mother.

-XXX-

Everyone was asleep in the Lee-Allen household when Scarlet snuck out at midnight. She caught a bus out to STAR Labs and used the zeta-beam to get to Mount Justice. Scarlet had never been here at this time of night, she was usually here on an afternoon or during the day where it was busy.

In the middle of the night it was like a ghost town. As far as she knew it was only Connor and Megan living here but Megan was on duty tonight. Scarlet made her way to Connor's room and sat down by the door, opening a book up. Connor was her sponsor, her teacher and her partner and she didn't even know he had been hurt. She pulled out a book she was supposed to be reading for English and started reading it, answering the questions in her textbook as she went.

The girl wasn't sure what time she'd even fallen asleep but she woke up the following morning, she wasn't outside in the corridor but lying in someone's bed. Scarlet yawned and pulled herself out of bed, almost tripping over a pile of mess belonging to a teenage boy.

"You project when you sleep," Connor noted, watching her from across the room.

Scarlet jumped. "Sorry?"

"You project when you sleep," he repeated. "It was like watching a movie right in my head."

Scarlet's eyes grew wide.

Connor rolled his eyes. "Don't worry. I won't tell anyone what I saw. I figured when you woke up the two of us could go let off some steam-there's a factory that's a trade-off point for meta-humans. Wanna come hit something?"

"But, aren't you hurt?" Scarlet objected.

Connor waved her off. "You wanna hit something or not?"

She nodded and followed Connor to the locker room. She knew she was in trouble for sneaking out but right now she was too excited to care.