Back to Lian and the present!
Human:
Lian stretched slowly, basically a hodgepodge of yoga and every other warm up she'd ever been taught. Muscles screamed in protest all along her side, but the pain didn't race through her and she could still breathe, so she took those as good signs and kept moving. Bart was glaring at her from where she'd tied him down. He could get out if he wanted, but they both knew he wouldn't, as long as she didn't wince too much. Lian cast a glance over to him, amused by his glare, "Babe, stop looking at me like that. You just had to try to stop me."
"You just got released from bed rest an hour ago." He growled out.
"I know." She said, still weakened by the fever that had only just left her.
"Why do you have to be so stubborn?" Bart moaned.
Lian settled herself astride his lap, eyes as fiery as her hair, "Oh stop it, you love that about me. One of my best qualities." She kissed his jaw, "That and I'm a great kisser."
He chuckled, far too pleased by the sudden turn of events, "Very true."
She kissed behind one of his ears, rendering him a pile of red and yellow goo, "Good. I'm done with all that for today, but I want to get some target practice in. You game?"
Bart let out a half strangled laugh, "Oh, babe, at this point, I'm game for anything you want to do."
Lian smiled at her easy victory, "So if I untie you are you going to stop driving me up the wall in all the wrong ways?" He nodded into another kiss, "Alright, Gearhead. Let's go make sure I'm still one of the best sharpshooters in this place. Grandpa be damned."
Bart followed her closely, "When are we going back to the Titans?"
Lian frowned at his question, "I don't know. You're based out of the Watchtower anyway, and they haven't needed me down there at all so far. What's the hurry?"
"No hurry, just miss playing Vid-games with the guys." He said.
She nodded, "Yeah, I've missed Rae, but I'm not leaving until my Grams does. She never spends so much time up here, and Isis has been following me everywhere."
Bart was amazed that she had focused on her grandmother and not on his blatant lie. "I haven't noticed Isis."
Lian gestured to the ceiling, and he blanched. Isis was walking along the exposed pipes of the sprinkler system, perfectly balanced on one inch pipe. "Was settled on the lip of an air vent in the gym." She whistled and the cat dropped into her arms. Lian stroked behind the cat's ears, "What are you up to, you crazy thing? Is my Grams having you follow me again? Where is she anyway?" Cat propped on her uninjured side, Lian checked her phone, "Raven said she'd be up here to see me again today."
"Must be busy." Bart commented, sharing a far too cognizant look with the cat. Really, the cat was freaky, and he knew at least thirty years old. Way freaky, but then again, Selina could be her own brand of freaky. It lurked right behind the overtly mothering affect she often had, but if you looked close enough, it was there. She, Damian, Bruce, and Red had been gone all afternoon. He'd been trying to keep Lian from noticing.
Lian shrugged, "Raven's never let me go so long without meditating with her. It's just odd."
"Maybe she's happy with your progress?" Bart offered.
Lian glared at him skeptically, "Progress? I'm virtually a crippled empath, Bart. It's all I can do to stay in my own head. Raven's just the empath that doesn't have better things to do than to mind me. Except for taking care of her own issues that is."
"Issues?" Bart asked, slipping Lian's phone back into the pocket of her shorts and taking her freed hand in his, waving at Virgil as they walked past him.
Lian's anxiety played across her face at the close quarter contact, but she shook it off, focusing on Bart and his hand in hers, "Yeah, Raven's got a serious case of genophobia."
Bart frowned, "Geno-what?"
Lian shook her head, pulling him to a stop outside the door to the practice range. "Nothing, never mind. It's girl-talk anyway. Do you hear that?"
He listened carefully, but didn't hear anything, "No, I don't."
Frowning, she pulled him into the range and picked out her favorite gun, handing him his. "Just try to outshoot me, Gearhead."
He laughed, "You're on, Princess." They shot for an hour, until Bart noticed her complexion paling. He took the gun from her, clicking on the safety, "Alright, Princess, it's time for you to get back to bed."
She groaned, "I'm not sleepy, I'm just...tired. If that makes any sense."
"Yup, know the feeling. Like if I don't eat enough and run too much." He said, picking her up. Lian leaned into his chest, for once not protesting to him treating her like the princess she was. He curled up in bed next to her, "You get some rest, I'll wake you up when it's time for dinner."
Her eyes were already fluttering shut as she mumbled, "Okay."
When she woke up, the clock beside their bed read that it was eleven-thirty at night. Bart snored peacefully next to her, so when she got up to satisfy her growling stomach, she brushed a kiss to the side of his head. On her way back from the mess-hall, Lian's empathy picked up a concentrated surge of distress.
Lian followed the pulling emotions to an observation room, the door cracked open ever so slightly.
It was enough for her to hear inside.
"The coffin was empty, Bruce. The DNA says it's her. Why are you being so stubborn about this?" She heard her grandmother say, voice far more harsh than usual.
"Because, Selina, our daughter is dead!" Her grandfather yelled back.
She heard her Uncle Damian next, "Would you both please stop! J'onn or M'gann just need to find out where she's been these last seventeen years. We can figure out what to do after."
Her grandfather spoke again, "We know what she's been doing, Damian. She's been stealing. But not only has she been stealing, she's been killing."
"So?" Selina protested, "You've killed before! Hell, I've killed before!"
"Not like that. She doesn't even give those people a fighting chance. Lian's the only one who's lived to tell about it." Bruce snapped back.
Lian shivered as her father spoke, "Exactly. She could have killed Lian like all the others, but she didn't. I have to believe that even though she doesn't remember who she is, deep down, she remembers Lian."
Her grandfather didn't like that. "You're all so naive! That's a cold blooded killer in there, that's not Kat!"
Lian lost her composure as her suspicions on the topic of conversation was confirmed. "Kat?"
The four in the room froze at her whispered word.
She saw her father turn to face the door, horror on his face, "Lian, wait!"
Lian moved too fast for the four of them though, closing the mechanical door and sealing it shut from the outside with a program key that would take even her Uncle Damian and grandfather working together at least fifteen minutes to crack. She might be a faulty empath, but she was one of the brightest computer oriented minds in the world. They couldn't open the door, and she'd crashed communications inside it. Their personal cellphones wouldn't even work. She'd written the code to protect the Watchtower from an internal attack, but now she was using it to keep her family in one room without any connections to the outside world. She couldn't let them stop her.
She walked with purpose to the holding cell down the hall that the screen in that room was linked to. Cracking the code on the door was a joke. She only burned two of her fifteen minutes getting past the protections someone had obviously put up to keep her out. They underestimated her though. Her family always did.
The door slid open, and she kept herself calm as the motion detecting lights flicked on. The woman chained to the wall gasped when she saw her, shock on her face for an instant before a well trained mask slid over, "Hello, little one." She smiled, "I'm not sure it's been long enough. The fact that you're upright with that injury I gave you is a testament to your strength, but you're less of a match for me right now than you were five days ago."
"I'm not here to fight you." Lian said, amazed that she was keeping her voice so steady. "Do you recognize me?"
She felt guilt on the other end of the bond she'd sent out, and just a flash of fear. "No."
"You're lying." Lian said, stepping closer. She was petite, not tall like her mother had been, but with the woman sitting, she was in the dominant position. She'd learned interrogation techniques from the best after all.
"I don't recognize you."
"You're lying."
"I don't know who you are."
"Truth." Lian determined, "But not the same thing as recognizing me." She held out her phone, a picture on the screen, "Now tell me, do you recognize yourself?"
Kat stared at the photo. It was of the red haired man who had captured her, only younger, a woman, and a baby girl with a head of fiery red curls. The same curls the girl staring down at her had, "That's you?"
"Yes." Lian answered, "And the woman, that's you."
Kat recognized herself, she did, but she was younger too. Younger than Kat could remember being, "I don't understand."
"This is the only picture anyone ever took of all three of us." Lian told her, "The only picture anyone took of me, Lian, and my parents, Red and Kat Harper."
"Your parents?" Kat asked, frowning, "Sorry, little one, but you all have the wrong woman. My name is Mina, I was married to a man named Jonathan, and my daughter's name was Elise."
The words didn't ring as lies, but there was a small twinge of uncertainty. "The first time we met, why didn't you kill me?"
"Didn't feel like it."
Lian shook her head, "You killed every other person in that building. Apparently I'm the only person you've left alive."
Kat scoffed, "That means nothing. So I didn't feel like ending your short life. Most people would be grateful."
"Not me. I want you to tell me why." Lian demanded.
"I don't know!" Kat yelled, "I don't know! I just didn't want to kill you! It doesn't matter, little girl, it doesn't matter at all. I'm not that woman! I'm not your mother! Leave me alone!"
Lian severed the connection, the influx of emotions startling her from both sides. "Okay." She whispered, hurt racing through her. She heard the door open and felt arms wrap around her. She ignored them, "You are her, I know it. I can feel you in my soul."
"You're all crazy!" Kat screamed as the arms pulled Lian out of the room.
Red turned his daughter around in his arms, "Lian, why the hell would you do that?"
Lian glared up at him, blue eyes cold, "I had to do something. You guys were just going to keep lying to me. How long has she been here? Hours, days?"
"We were trying to protect you." Red said, hoping she would understand.
Lian jerked away from him. "I don't need you to protect me."
"You're my daughter, that's all I know to do." He said lamely, hands reaching towards her again.
Lian surged forward, shoving him, "Well learn to do something else! I'm not a little girl anymore! I HATE you!"
The words were out before she could stop them, fear and confusion bringing them to life as her pride and guilt urged her feet into running away.
Bart was standing outside their room, a knowing expression on his face. "You okay?"
"How much did you hear?" Lian asked, not liking the expression on his face at all.
"Enough." He said, brushing her hair out of her eyes.
Lian pushed his hand away. With her emotions so raw, even the briefest touch of his bare hand seared through her. "Did you know?"
He shrugged, "Yesterday I overheard them talking, but I had no idea about what. M'gann threatened to lobotomize me if I so much as mentioned the incident to you. I didn't know anything, so I didn't say anything."
She sighed, leaning into his chest. "You were trying to protect me."
Bart kissed the top of her head, "Not really, I was just saving my own ass. M'gann's one scary lady."
"She likes you."
"No, Conner likes me. There's a difference, a very, very big difference." He rebuffed playfully. "Conner doesn't lobotomize people when he gets upset, he just beats the snot out of them."
"You're terrible." Lian said, although she knew he was telling the truth, M'gann and Conner were on very different levels.
"I know."
"I want to go to bed." She said softly.
Bart pulled her into a real kiss, ignoring her weak protest. "I love you, Li."
She smiled weakly, her eyes red with the tears she was trying to keep back, "I love you too." When he popped The Little Mermaid onto the screen in their room, she said the words again.
Red stared after his daughter in shock. "I- what?"
Selina put a hand on his shoulder, "Red, she didn't mean it."
"Yes, she did. Lian never says anything she doesn't mean." He spat.
Selina resisted the urge to slap him, "She's upset, rightfully so. We should have told her from the start."
"Oh really, and when did you decide that?"
Selina shrugged, "It's what I've said from the start."
Red rolled his eyes, "You didn't say a damned thing."
"Well I thought it. Lian's not a child, and she's not ignorant." Selina said easily.
"She is a child, and it's my job to protect her!" Red yelled at her.
Selina slapped him. "Lian is not a child."
"Yes, she is, she's nineteen years old!"
"You forget, she's married and has done a whole hell of a lot more growing up than any normal nineteen year old." Selina hissed back.
Red opened his mouth, but Bruce slammed his cane onto the ground. "Enough."
They both looked to the man. Selina cooed, "Oh, Bruce, relax."
He chuckled darkly, looking through the glass at where Kat was sitting, "She may not be a full League member, but she knows damned well what she's doing. Lian is my granddaughter after all."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Red asked.
"Look." Bruce ordered, gesturing to the glass with his cane. "She did more in five minutes than we've done in three days."
The woman in the room was rocking back and forth in her chair, lips moving silently. Had her hands been free, it looked like she'd be pulling on her hair, "What's she saying?" Red asked. They'd never gotten any sort of reaction out of her like that before.
"I don't know." Bruce said, but Selina pressed the screen to turn the sound on.
Kat's soft voice filled the small observation room, "I am nothing, I have nothing, I am no better than dirt."
Red felt sick, and swayed slightly, "What the hell did they do to her?"
Bruce's eyes were dark, "I don't know, but we're going to find out. And Lian's going to help. You're both wrong. Lian is Lian. She'll always be different. Like a flickering flame."
"I can fake a smile
I can force a laugh
I can dance and play the part
If that's what you ask
Give you all I am
I can do it
I can do it
I can do it
But I'm only human
And I bleed when I fall down
I'm only human
And I crash and I break down
Your words in my head, knives in my heart
You build me up and then I fall apart
'Cause I'm only human"
Human
By: Christina Perri
Yet again, the next chapter is almost done! Let me know how you guys like this one!
-Jenn0509
