Note: I cannot be entirly sure if anyone is keeping up with this story but I would like to hear your opinions. I have been debating making this story a short finish and moving on with either a sequel set entirely within the DC Universe, a Young Justice story with Ellery as the main character, or a DC Universe story with disregard to the plot line of this crossover but still with Ellery as the primary hero. If you have any requests for story types, a mash up of any of the options I have listed ect. please let me know. Yes, I am asking for your prefrences on the future of these characters.

Note: I know where the romantic subplot of this story will be going but I would like to hear your opinions/ideas/guesses on it. Perhaps I may be swayed.

Of Heroes and Hellions

Chapter Six: You may not Remember

Ellery's palm is dry against the receiver, pale skin against dark plastic. But her fingers are warm, almost hot against the blackness of the telephone, and in the mystification of her conversation. The door to her bedroom is closed firmly but beneath the crack between the white paneling and the dark wood she can hear the balanced footsteps of Alfred. She lay, making light indention in the tight pull of her comforter over the mattress, blonde hair drawn to a single side and away from her neck. Her lashes flutter each time she opens her mouth to speak, a rim of flushed pink that releases convoluted words.

Dick's voice sounds breathy, heavy words spoken after a complete workout. He pauses to take a swig of water and Ellery can hear the chug of cold liquid through the lip of the bottle near the receiver. "Is he in another one of his bat-moods again?" This time Dick's voice is breathy with laughter.

She had wanted to speak with Jason, but had ended the call after it rang twice with no answer and instead dialed Dick's number by heart. He picked up.

"No," Ellery says, shifting on her bed, "quite the opposite. He's been happy, Dick, and I don't know why." The preceding of her words comes out coarsely.

The last moments her father had been so inviting towards her were between the times of her hospital visits. The memories of such days are plagued by white: the white of Bruce's smiles; the white of Dick's knuckles as he grips her hand, sitting in a plastic chair by her bed; the white of the hospital sheets that their hands had rested upon; the whites of Jason's eyes that had showed when he rolled them after she had told him to leave before Bruce came back; the white of the espresso cups that Tim would drink from each day he came to visit; the white of the flowers Barbara Gordon had sent before they wilted, petals falling like broken wings; and the white of her mind as her ears buzzed and her eyes went blank before she went under.

She hates that color and the way it contrasts so deeply with the blackness she feels she deserves.

"He's probably just relieved to have you out of Gotham… no more Greyhawk."

There's a pause and then: "Shit, El, where'd you even get a new costume?"

Ellery remembers where her old one had gone, in a blaze of wicked flames and without any of the glory. The match is lit, a flame hanging in the air before it catches on the charcoal fabric. The flare is hungry, taking the costume Kevlar in sharp bloody-red teeth and chewing it inward. Batman releases the cloth, turning away, cape sweeping in a dangerous arc below the licking tongue wrapped about Ellery's own sweltering shawl, and gone before it even touches the ground. It gathers in a rope of blazing memories against cool stone that smothers in the heat and the moment pauses, lasts longer than a single minute even, before time moves onward once more and the smoke curls upward, scattering the bats. That was when her life fell to ashes.

"Seems as though I'm not the only one with a new costume. Does Father know that you're prancing about Gotham playing Batman? And one shouldn't forget your Robin. How'd you get that past Tim?"

She can hear him breathe once into the receiver and then pull it away from his mouth, the sound of the air propelling between his lips lessoning in volume. She imagines him reaching downward towards his toes, stretching the muscles in his calves, before standing to brush the sweat slickened strands of hair away from his forehead.

"I really had to worry about Jason," he says.

Ellery breathes outward heavily, eyes snapping open at the name, "You always have to worry about Jason."

"It's been awhile. I almost forgot."

"And you've got Dami there all clad in yellow, green, and red?" She knows that Damian had wanted it, stolen the costume, and worn it in a city of lies, just as she had. But to him it was not a game, these colors blended upon his body in the form of a flag; they seeped into his blood, and coursed through his very veins. To her it was only a tool, a way to profess her denial without speaking it. That is why she has not worn it since that night. That night when her body quivered and her mind quaked with even more ferocity. That night cloudy fear had swirled around her form, captured it, and held it for ransom. No one has paid up, not yet. It still owns her. That night that is now shrouded with deceit—oh and how it matches her so dearly, all cloaks and masks.

Tim was there. Sometimes she misses him. And she fears that too.

"He threatened me last time I called him that," Tim says, referring to Ellery's shorthand of Damian's name.

And still she can see Dick even though he is not here. It is the only form of insanity she will allow. The subject, breached once, now twice. Two times it is dismissed. She sees him rub the back of his neck. It is an act of discomfort.

"Same."

"Yeah," he says finally, "he wears his own version of the suit. You see—the solo act isn't so great when no one's there to see all your tricks." Dick was born for the center ring. Had lived that life long ago, too. They all had lives once. But that was before the Batman. Now they just have scars.

"You were always one for a show."

Her door opens, a white thing that has no use for a lock. Everyone in her life knows how to pick one. Bruce stands there, tall and swathed in dark clothing. He doesn't wear the tie she had purchased for him years ago; this time there is no tie at all. The collar of his shirt is loose, tugged on and away. He still wears his shoes, though, on feet poised as if to leap, even if his heels sit flat upon the ground. He is always prepared to move. He seems still, calm, but his energy never ceases. She supposes that is how his body allows for such long nights, the moon itself drooping with sleep before his shoulders even begin to sag. She had tried it once, to be like him, to hang in the rafters of the long dark night and be a bat. She couldn't do it. She grows too weary now. She is a mere hawk, born to nest alone and fly empty skies.

She was not expecting him. It is not often that someone does. But all the same, he is always there.

"Speaking of a show—" His intonation is unreadable. It is something she hears often, a voice spoken in only low tones that gives nothing away. It still makes her uneasy—this way she cannot read him—she has merely learned to conceal such discomfort.

"I have to go," she tells Dick; though, she would like to be saying it to her father.

"El, be careful. I mean… Don't let him know," he sounds resigned to the fact of her disobedience, or, merely, as she has to the Batman's demands, grown used to it.

"It doesn't matter, Dick, Batman already knows." She speaks her words to the face of their accusation, a man with eyes that hold something quiet in them, something she does not take the time to read, and something he does not allow her to.

"Doesn't he always?"

The receiver goes dead.

There is a paper. It is white, the letters that head it are thick and yellow, the rest is away from her view, covered by fingers that each night curl into fists and sometimes break bones. At one time they would hold hers, crossing the road, crossing through lives. Each time one must look both ways. "Have you not been paying attention?"

"I'm a vigilante," Ellery says, "vigilant is in the name." Most of it really…

"Then why is it that I'm just now finding out about this?" He holds out the paper, un-creased though it was clutched in harsh fingers. She can see all of it now, the rest of the colors: green and red. It is the art of a woman whom advertises herself as a rose. She has all the thorns, but that's all in fine print.

The blame is smothering; more fault to compress the bones of her spine, they creak downward and bend against the gravity. She almost misses the sickness and how light the drugs they pumped her with made her feel: a selfish weightlessness. And she knows better now.

The mat gives only a little against her feet, gray foam that displeases in its compression. Anne's calves ripple, a cramp that clutches the muscle, twisting it, pinches at the stringy cord below skin. Her knees creak in their bend, rocking, rocking, until one leg snaps upward, foot swinging to the side, the top of her toes skimming against a body that moves too swift. Her toes creek, too. All of her does.

She feels the air shift behind her and hears a whisper on the wind. Hush. That is her only response. The wind, in reply, swirls around her feet and lifts her upward. Her silent attacker stumbles forward, ungraceful for only a moment, a blur of purple and black. Hawkeye twists the upper half of his body, his physique flexing with the cable of his bow. The blunt arrow hits Anne's shoulder, sending her tumbling through the air. Her body settles with her swishing insides a moment later.

"You have to be ready for surprise attack," Black Widow speaks so her voice projects, connecting with the yellow light of the bulbs, "Miss Direction uses her powers to surprise her opponents."

Tony rocks back on his heels, back teeth grinding, "Not after I install the new tech in my suit," he says. His shirt is oil stained to impress the others of his work, the thick musk of metal clinging to his clothes, and the old beat of rock music still pumping through his fingertips.

"You really think you can use technology to detect magic, Tony?" Steve shakes his head, peering at his husband from the corner of blue eyes that do not waver. There is an absentminded affection that he holds towards the other man, a careless, wish-less love, which comes with years of familiarity.

"Not magic," Tony disputes readily, "just unexplained science."

"What's wrong with a little mystery?" Steve asks, those same blue eyes watching as Anne makes her landing. He imagines her in a green cape, her lips forming words meant for people only she can see. He'd once asked her if she could hear Peggy. Anne had just looked at him with those wide brown eyes that are the same color of Tony's but without all the bitter humor—eyes akin his but not his all the same, inherited from a set of DNA that is further withheld from her in all ways but physical expression. She did not answer him at the time, but it was enough, and he never asked again.

The girl sighs, tugging at a loose end of tape that had lost its sticky bond from the slickness of her sweaty palms. "What is it that I do then?"

"Your sixth sense obviously comes from a mutant gene."

"Obviously," another person speaks mockingly, it need not be said who.

"Maybe I'd make better use on the X-men." Anne remembers making protest in Time Square for Mutant rights. She had woven beads in her hair and walk across dirty ground with bare feet. When she got home she smelled of sweet drugs and metallic fire. Her feet were black with the dirt of asphalt and injustice. Tony still does not know that she went.

Tony scoffs, "The X-men have nothing on the Avengers."

"Don't let Xavier hear you think that."

Anne often wonders, different things at different times. But when she was a child she used to ponder upon what a sky full of stars looked like, a nighttime that did not have to compete with the city lights. "Like each one of your freckles," Her daddy—Steve—had once said. Anne's small nose had crinkled, freckles scrunching together in a way that the stars would not, her grin displaying an empty gap where her right front tooth should be.

"Where'd my freckles come from, Daddy," she had asked then, "they sky?" Her tiny hand reached outward, a crooked finger stretching to seemingly poke the distant light.

"They come from your Mom and Dad."

She then asked who they were, her childish mind not seeing the fracture in the azure sky that a sun never set on, a pair of eyes that will never be inherited. He told her she'd find out in time. She still hasn't yet, though. She has a feeling she'll have to find that answer out on her own.

But time runs slow for her. She lives in two worlds, a screen of vapor that only her words may penetrate. And something inside her, too, can feel the mist as it warms and cools, rises and falls. It is a world were time is a concept entirely personal, for some it does not even run at all. She'll find herself lost at times: a single night gone before she even witnesses the sun fall. And there is a certain feeling of nostalgia in it, as if she is never truly alive. Yet, she smiles because others cannot and that has to be enough. A simple hero. It is her own soul that anchors her within this world and if she were to simply slip, a careless flick of the hand, toes dancing across precipitation—a screen of bewilderment and unfinished dreams, promises that could never be kept—she would become one of them. She would be of an empty world, a full heart, and full head, and nowhere to put it—an overflow of fancy delusion that has no place in the mist. And this is what makes her keep her distance; she has never known the sorrow of the dead. Her worries are of distant quandaries. And, oh, what a lucky, lucky, child she has been when so many have not.