The aftermath of Selina letting Kat go and a reward for you guys being so patient with me! I hope those of you who already reviewed the last chapter are happy with this one!


Arms:

Lian was finally asleep, Bart curled next to her while Raven floated nearby, repeating her mantra over and over again in a voice so soft that the words faded into the background noise of the station. Lian was pale, more sickly looking than she'd been after she'd been stabbed. She'd been hysterical when they'd found her kneeling next to Kat. For a terrible moment, Red had thought that Kat was dead because of her unnatural stillness and the small pool of blood under her head. She'd been breathing though, and his fear at Lian's heartbreaking cries drew his attention away.

He'd never seen his daughter like that before, never felt her fight so hard to get away from everyone trying to help her. In those few minutes before the telepaths arrived, Lian had scared him to death. Kat was sleeping in her room, having received a zap of Lian's power and cracking her head on the floor as she fell. J'onn had already assured him that she'd be fine. She'd have a nice knot on her temple underneath a shallow cut, but she would be awake and okay in a matter of hours.

They weren't so sure about Lian.

J'onn had explained it to him as best he could, but the Martian didn't quite have the knack for simplifying things for simpler minds that his niece did. From what he'd gotten out of it, Lian and Kat had been psychically connected since Lian's birth, hence the nightmares of Kat's torture that Lian had been subjected to when she'd been injured. Basically, Lian and Kat were two ends of a power-line, sharing things without realizing it. They'd both been upset, according to the surveillance tapes, and Lian had fought back after Kat had attacked her, physically and mentally.

Lian had inadvertently drained herself the same way. Raven said her power had never been weaker, and it was taking a toll on her physical body that had been exhausted by her own panic. That was why Bart was next to her. According to Raven, Bart had served as Lian's focus point since the day they'd met, and his physical closeness would quicken her recovery. Otherwise, Red would have been holding his baby girl instead of the time traveling little bastard.

Red was still fuming, especially since Selina had already shooed him out of Kat's room, saying that when she woke up she'd probably do better if a new, nonthreatening face was there to greet her. Grudgingly, he'd agreed.

Oliver tipped his head towards the doorway and Red reluctantly followed. Snapping, "What?" when they got into the hallway and the door closed behind them.

Oliver glared at his tone, "Excuse me?"

Red sighed, he was almost forty, but Oliver insisted on attempting to teach him manners. There was a reason he and Roy never went to any Queen functions. Well that and Roy had an on again off again love affair with Oliver's baby sister, Thea. They were currently on again, so the younger Harper had been conspicuously absent. Oliver had been in a bad mood for weeks. Even after almost twenty years, Oliver and Roy still didn't get along. Red was just lucky that Oliver seemed to like him. He had Lian to thank for that though, Oliver and Dinah adored her so Oliver had been forced by his better half to mend the fences between them. Dating Oliver's much younger sister hadn't done Roy any favors. Queen family dinners were tense.

Red sighed, "Sorry. Didn't mean that to come out like that. Stressed. What's up, Ollie?"

Oliver clapped him on the shoulder, "Relax, Red. The kid'll be fine. She's a fighter, just like her parents." He cleared his throat, "Speaking of, um... Kat's gone."

"Excuse me?" Red growled, echoing his former mentor.

Oliver chuckled anxiously, "Uh, Selina let her sneak out right after she woke up. And when I say let her sneak out, I mean Selina pretty much drew her a map and held the door open. Bruce is still screaming at her. I'm not even sure the woman is hearing a word he's saying though, she's in villainess mode. Not sure how he sleeps at night with her next to him. She's more frightening than Dinah."

"There's never a Batarang too far away." Red said honestly, wracking his brain to comprehend everything. Unlike his daughter, he wasn't a veritable genius. Why on Earth would Selina have let her go?

Oliver tried to stop him, but he headed to the room that Kat had been kept in, unsurprised to find Selina and Bruce still inside, the man growling at his headstrong and defiant wife who couldn't have looked less perturbed if she'd tried.

"Why did you let her go?" Red demanded.

Selina drug her eyes to him, the slight movement slow and calculated to have the greatest intimidating impact. "Because it's what's best for her."

"How the hell would you know that?" Red snapped, angrier at the woman than he'd ever been before. Judging by the mottling on Bruce's face, he'd never been angrier at her either.

She seemed totally unconcerned, examining her nails as she said simply, "I'm her mother."

If he wasn't certain Bruce would kill him, Red would have strangled the woman. He sat down instead, "Oh, come on, Selina. You were a crap mother to Kat, so how the hell could you possibly know what was best for her when she's stuck calling herself Mina?"

"Mina is more what a daughter of mine would have been like. More me than Bruce. Selfish, deadly. I don't like killing, it's messy, but I am capable. I've done it before. When she was Kat, she'd never have even thought of killing, too much like her father. They stripped her of that moral compass. The woman we were holding in that room was a killer being confronted with the fact that almost every memory she has is a lie. She thinks like a villain now, not a hero. The only way she'll figure this all out is if she has time alone to breathe." Selina said all of it firmly, and Red knew she'd already said it all to Bruce before.

Red couldn't help but disagree with the most fundamental point the woman was trying to make. "Kat never did well alone. You always thought she did, but she didn't. She needs someone to talk to. Where is she?"

Selina looked hurt, "You think I'd put a tracker on my daughter?"

"You didn't?" Bruce whispered, surprised.

"No, she'd have found it. My goal is for her not to go back to hating me." Selina quipped, and Isis stretched at her side before wandering out of the room, heading for Lian. Red was silent for a few minutes, ignoring the conversation going on between his in-laws and adoptive father, at least until he heard Selina admit, "She said she remembered some things, what Lian did must have triggered some memories."

Red stood suddenly, "I know where she'd go."

Their protests rang in his ears as he stalked away, taking a Telepad to just outside Metropolis. He could hear his blood pounding in his ears as he approached the house he and Kat had made a home.

He was right.

She was there, sitting on the stoop of the house they'd owned together, her chin resting on leather clad knees while her hands were clutched on her head.

"Hey." He said softly, approaching her like she was a frightened cat that might bolt away at any moment. She made a noise of acknowledgment, but didn't look up, just staring at the still air in front of her.

Red sat next to her, about a foot of space between them, and for a long time, they just sat in silence. She was eerily still, the only thing separating her from a statue was the steady movement of her breathing. Red on the other hand was constantly shifting positions, easing some ache here and there or itching some phantom itch. He'd almost forgotten she was there when she put a hand on top of his, ever so gently. Red stared at the touch, a shiver running up his spine.

"I remember you." She said softly, her thin fingers trailing over the veins in the back of his hand and then on to his knuckles, calloused from years of abuse. He'd hit her father with those knuckles more times than either would care to admit, but he'd never won. The man may look old and frail, but he could still kick ass when he needed to. And Red had needed his ass kicked a lot while Lian was growing up.

Three words, and his heart was pounding harder, afraid that he'd scare her away if he spoke or let his flesh tremble under her questing fingers. Red gathered the courage to speak anyway, trying to mirror Selina's favorite disinterested tone, "Really?"

"Red." She whispered, making him shiver again. "I gave you that name." Her fingers hovered over a mark halfway up his forearm, "I gave you that scar."

Red felt all the air leave his lungs. She really had remembered, even if they were just little things. They'd been working with the Bo staff one night after Damian had gone to sleep, and she'd whacked him so hard on the arm with the rounded end of the staff that the skin had broken in a crescent and bled all over the floor. She'd panicked and apologized for days after. Lian expressed guilt the same way, copiously and adorably.

"Yeah, you did." He said, voice just as soft as hers had been.

She pulled on her hair a little, finally shifting from her statue pose so one leg was stretched out in front of her, her bent knee pointing ever so slightly in his direction. She sighed heavily, "I was half hoping I was just hallucinating."

"Only half hoping?" Red asked before he could kill the words in his throat.

She smiled slightly, as if she was amused by his tone, before her face fell into deep concern again, "My life as Mina has been hell. It's attractive to think that I've lived a life that hasn't been so awful." Another sigh, punctuated by her fingers leaving his skin, "My head is spinning. Is this how you felt..." She trailed off.

"What?" He asked, trying look at her face, but a curtain of dark hair kept her hidden.

A few minutes later, she finally spoke, the words coming out all at once, in a rush like she was afraid to say them. "Is this how you felt when you found out you were a clone?"

Red's gut clenched. Of all the things she could have remembered, why did that have to be one of them, that night when he'd been tossed into a spiral that had taken him five years to escape? "I-I guess so." He said finally. They were essentially the same issue, discovering that you aren't who you thought you were. "You aren't a clone."

"I know." She said flatly, turning her own hand over. The silvery scars caught his attention instantly. He hadn't seen them on her before because after more than twenty years, the scars had lightened to the point where only moonlight appropriately outlined the difference in the skin. She spoke before he could attempt to soothe her, "Scars tell a lot about a person. They can't be faked, and, apparently, not even the best technology can completely get rid of them. They tried. They tried so hard to get rid of Kat, but she was always there." She finally looked up at him, her crystal blue eyes shimmering with unshed tears, "No, that's not right. Kat was gone. You were always there."

"Me?" Red gasped out, resisting the urge to take her face in his hands and kiss her.

She nodded, "Even when Kat was long gone and your name was too, your face was always in my head. Eventually I forced myself to ignore you, it made life easier." She took his hand in both of hers, trailing her fingers over the gold band still in place after all those years. "I remember that I loved you, I remember Lian, feeling her, holding her, loving everything she did, but I don't think I'm capable of those things anymore." She tore away from him, halfway down the street before he got the nerve to stop her.

"Kat!" She stumbled, barely staying upright, frozen in the middle of the street.

Red walked up behind her, slowly so he didn't scare her away, "I have faith in you."

Kat looked up at his face, "Why?"

He almost laughed, it was such a silly question in his mind, and he couldn't think of any way to convince her. There weren't any words to describe what he felt for her, and how amazing he'd felt since he'd found out she was alive. For a few days, he'd though about how terrible it was going to be to live in a world where she was alive but didn't know him, looked at him with hate in her eyes. She wasn't looking at him like that now. She looked scared, like a bird that would bolt if he made the wrong move.

He'd never seen Mina with that expression on her face.

No, the woman in front of him was Kat. He'd seen that look on her face before, right after Klarion-Damian had injected her with that syringe. She'd been terrified, and the look hadn't gone away until they'd been assured that, despite whatever drugs had been in that Auto-injector, Lian was fine.

He did the only thing he could think to do, and wrapped his arms around her.

Kat gasped softly, but after a few seconds, she relaxed against him, clenching her fists in his shirt. After a few minutes, he realized she was crying. He kissed the top of her head and held her tighter, rocking side to side slowly, "Hey, it's okay. Don't cry. We'll figure this all out together."

Her hands slid around his back and she held him just as tight as she was holding him, "I don't know what together means."

"If you give me tonight, I can show you." Red blurted, kicking himself for being so brash. He had no idea what she'd been through all those years, no idea how she would react to such a brash statement.

She tipped her chin up, cheeks still stained with tears, but the fear was gone. "Okay." Red led her back to the house, sensing her surprised hesitation until he slid a key into the lock, "You kept the house?"

Red nodded, "Well, your dad kept it. Property values in this area have soared in the last eighteen years, but I've never even had to defend keeping it to your father. Your mother comes by every so often to make sure the house is clean. Everything is pretty much exactly how it was the day we left it."

Kat hovered in the doorway, "You and Lian haven't lived here?"

He shook his head, "No, it upset Lian too much. She could feel you in the house, but you weren't there. She screamed for two days, and then I couldn't take it anymore. She hasn't been back since. I offered it to her when she got married, said I'd have it emptied out, but she refused pretty much before I finished my sentence."

"She's married?" Kat asked, wracking her brain, trying to remember if she'd heard anyone talking about it.

"Yeah, to the time traveller..." Red said before Kat cut him off.

"Bart Allen." She finished, looking a little bit pleased that she remembered the name. "She could feel me in the house?"

Red nudged her gently inside, not wanting to draw more attention than they already had to the usually empty house. He closed the door before he responded, "She's an empath, a very strong one. J'onn says she's got the strongest empathic ability of any human he's come in contact with. It was terrible when she was a baby, and a hundred times worse after you died. We couldn't touch her without flooding her head with our own grief. She was colicky when we weren't touching her too, getting it even from a distance. Actually, for a few weeks after...you left, Bart was the only person who could hold Lian. He'd known her in his future, and he knew how to keep his emotions from her. He taught those closest to her before he put himself in a cryotube. Lian found him three years ago, and they've been inseparable since."

"They find each other like we do?"

"What?" Red stuttered, staring at the woman looking around at everything like a small child.

"I remember finding you the day I told you I was pregnant." Kat said softly, not looking at him, but trailing her fingers across one of the framed pictures on the wall. "I wasn't tracking you, I just woke up from a nap and knew you were in the city. I got dressed, armed, told Damian I was going out, and just started driving. I don't exactly remember, but I remember knowing that it wasn't the first time I'd done that."

"You never told me that." Red whispered.

Kat hummed softly, "From what I remember, Kat Harper spent a lot of time pretending to be normal. I wouldn't have mentioned anything like that." She paused again, fingers hovering in front of Damian's diploma, "How did Lian get such a powerful Metagene? I was totally incapacitated in seconds. You don't have a Metagene, and all I have is the gift of being a lab rat for different ways to kill someone."

Red took her hand, drawing her attention to his face, "I don't know. No one does, she's just special."

The tiniest hint of a smile flickered onto her face, and it was enough to send his heart hammering in his chest, "She is, isn't she? Do you think she hates me?"

"No." He answered instantly, but he wasn't an empath or a telepath, he really had no clue what their daughter was feeling or thinking. He backpedaled as delicately as possible, "Lian's angry, but she's got a good heart, your heart."

The echo of a smile turned sad. "That heart was bled out of me a long time ago."

"No it wasn't." Red insisted, "If it was, you would have killed Lian the moment she got in your way."

She stared open mouthed at him, finally smiling fully, "You're insane."

"Maybe." Red said, grinning at her.

Kat rolled her eyes, rubbing her face with her hands, "I'm the one that's insane. I can only half remember a life that was real, and half of a life that was a lie." She bit her lip, "I don't remember ever feeling as safe as I do right now. Isn't that crazy? I don't understand it, but I feel like I'm home, like this is my home." Kat moved her hand in his, linking their fingers, and whispered, "You are my home. That's such an odd feeling."

"Am I still a psycho?" Red asked her, drifting closer to her.

She nodded, grinning, "You did track me down and kidnap me because you were so sure I was your dead wife. Pretty crazy. I mean, turns out you were right, but still, pretty psycho." She finally brought her other hand to him, tracing it along his jawline, " When Crane would touch me, I'd see you in my head, for the longest time. It was like he knew though, every time I imagined he was you, he'd beat me after." He stood perfectly still, keeping his anger and disgust off his face as she touched a finger to his lips, her intent obvious to him. "You're older than I remember you being, but you're still such a beautiful man. Would it be completely insane of me to want to make one memory that's mine?"

"Not at all." Red whispered, lips just inches over hers, closing the distance in seconds.


"How many times will you let me change my mind and turn around?
I can't decide if I'll let you save my life or if I'll drown

I hope that you see right through my walls
I hope that you catch me 'cause I'm already falling
I'll never let a love get so close
You put your arms around me and I'm home

The world is coming down on me and I can't find a reason to be loved
I never wanna leave you but I can't make you bleed if I'm alone

You put your arms around me
And I believe that it's easier for you to let me go...

I hope that you see right through my walls
I hope that you catch me, 'cause I'm already falling
I'll never let a love get so close
You put your arms around me and I'm home

I tried my best to never let you in to see the truth
And I've never opened up
I've never truly loved 'til you put your arms around me
And I believe that it's easier for you to let me go"

Arms
By: Christina Perri


Next chapter is probably gonna be more sexy-graphic than any of my previous chapters, so let me know what you think of that!

-Jenn