Woo! Chapter Four!

What's gonna happen?!

Well, before we go there, let's go here! Thank you, reviewers, readers, and Hellcat fans! He actually has some stuff to say to you.

As does Douglas.

(They're holding a gun to my head, so just roll with it!)

DisneyXDGirl: "Scale of one to ten - ten being more than necessary - how many feathers am I gonna lose since I missed your review last time?"

Gg180000: "Ugh...I don't know why, but Hellcat's really getting on my nerves..."

"Good. Remember: I don't fucking live to please you!"

"Hey!"

"And neither does Douglas!"

AllAmericanSlurp: "It's Zara's world. You're just visiting. :3"

"Zara's been laying claim to my world again?!"

You don't own jack shit, Douglas.

RissA15: "Please don't fangirl-eat me. ._."

Mia-Teresa-Davenport: "...You...just to ask..." *takes away Mia's awesome card*

Anyways, while you're cursing Zara's name, read this. :P Yahn?

"Zara doesn't own Lab Rats or anything you recognize. If you don't recognize it, it's probably hers."

"Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real."

Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, #1)

"You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present."

John Green, Looking for Alaska

Douglas

Where was it?

Douglas dug through his unorganized stack of legal documents. He had found his home owner contracts, three car titles from vehicles he no longer owned, the custody papers for Bree and Chase, and various warrants that he had outrun over the years. However, he couldn't find the one form he was looking for, the one form he wanted to reassure himself with: The certificate of abandonment.

He wanted to look at it. He knew it was foolish, but he wanted physical evidence to hold. He wanted to see that Sandra could never come back and take Adam away.

But the certificate was gone.

Where the hell was it?

What if someone demanded to see it? If he couldn't produce it, they could take Adam!

Reaching the bottom of his pile again, he let out an involuntary snarl of frustration and smacked the desk loudly with the palm of his hand only to yelp a bit and shake his hand as it started to sting. Okay, maybe that was a bad move. He needed to find that form, though, if only to calm his nerves. He didn't know why, but seeing Sandra had shaken him to the core.

You're overreacting, he chastised himself firmly. She's not going to take Adam away.

Then why did he have such a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach?

A rustling sound caught his attention. He glanced up only to find Oly curling up on his bed, watching him. "What the hell are you doing? You're making a mess."

Douglas stared at her for a moment. She was right; papers were scattered everywhere, since he had casually tossed them away when he found that they weren't what he was after. Finally, after failing to think of a snippy response, he just sighed. "Why do you even care, Oly?"

She shrugged, the small rhinestones on her wings shimmering. "You might make me clean it up."

He smiled slightly. Oly being worried about something like that was so familiar that it was calming. He walked to his bed - avoiding various legal papers on the floor - and picked Oly up. She climbed up his arm and spread out across his shoulders, her tail hanging down one side of him and her head resting on his shoulder on the other side of his neck, like she was a living scarf. He rubbed her chin for a second before he started scooping papers off of the floor. He examined each one carefully - maybe he has missed it - and placed them all in a pile carefully when he found out that they weren't what he wanted. It took him about thirty minutes to find all the forms and get them back in his messy pile, but he still couldn't find the certificate.

Maybe it had gotten lost in the many times he had to evacuate a building. It wasn't the end of the world. It was a legal document; a copy existed somewhere in the multitude of files the government kept.

Douglas ran his hand through his hair, taking a deep breath. Everything will be fine, he assured himself as Oly's breathing evened out in his ear, a testimony that she had fallen asleep. Sandra hadn't bothered him at the convention, so she probably wouldn't bother him at all. She had abandoned Adam eighteen years ago, after all. What were the odds that she wanted to know him now?

Wait! Adam was eighteen. Even if she did come back, she legally couldn't take custody of an adult.

Douglas leaned against his desk, relieved at this thought. Why the hell hadn't he remembered that earlier? It would have saved him a lot of panicking. Sandra couldn't do a damned thing.

A relieved laugh bubbled up from his chest. Thank the Gods!

A knock on his bedroom door caught his attention. Douglas - still smiling - straightened up and went to the door, opening it just to find a frowning, human-appearing Chase. "What's up?" he asked.

Chase's response, though, made Douglas' face fall with horror. "Someone named Sandra is here. She said she wants to see you."

Fuck!

"Most gods throw dice, but Fate plays chess, and you don't find out 'til too late that he's been playing with two queens all along."

Terry Pratchett

"I shouldn't have eavesdropped, but sometimes, that's the only way to find out the truth."

Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care

Chase

Leo stared at the chess pieces sprawled out haphazardly on the board, his brow furrowed in concentration. He had been a bit skeptical about playing chess to learn strategy, but he quickly figured out that learning to think ahead and anticipate enemy movements would be most beneficial to him. Honestly, I wasn't all that focused on the game. I had only made three moves, and I was going to kick his ass with a fourth when he finally got around to moving his own piece. No, the conversation going on outside between Douglas and that Sandra lady that he glared at during the presentation yesterday - so quiet that even I couldn't hear it - was far more interesting to me. Whoever Sandra was, Douglas was pissed.

Which meant that I wanted to know who she was to him.

I'd have to ask Oly later. She was sitting on his shoulder as a spider small enough to blend into his shirt.

Leo moved one of his knights, wearing a triumphant grin. "Beat that!" he challenged.

I sighed and moved my bishop forward, capturing one of his pawns and threatening his king. In the background, my queen was guarding the bishop, meaning that the king would be captured either way. I casually thumped his king over. "Check mate."

Leo gaped at the board. "What? How?"

I shrugged. "Scholar's Mate. It's a chess strategy."

His eyes darted around the board, trying to decipher exactly what moves I had made when Douglas's raised voice caught both of our attentions. Ysthry - who had been sitting in Leo's lap as a cat - jumped a bit and glanced at the door. I couldn't understand what he was saying, but he wasn't happy about it. This was followed by the woman's voice, raised but calm.

I glanced at Leo for confirmation as to what we were listening to. His wide eyes suggested that he had heard it, too.

Sandra was standing up to an enraged Douglas.

She was the bravest - or stupidest - woman I'd ever heard of.

Adam trotted down the stairs with a folded paper, Yahn on his shoulder. He paused about halfway up the stairs, frowning at us as we stared at the door. When more yelling came from outside, Adam's attention turned to the confrontation. "What's going on?"

"Douglas is talking to some woman named Sandra," Leo supplied while I nodded like an idiot, suddenly feeling very helpful.

You should cut out his Charming tongue!

Adam suddenly gasped for some reason, paling a bit. Yahn patted his shoulder gently.

Now, I was focused on Adam. Why? Because what kind of reaction was that? "You all right?" I asked.

Adam nodded, running a shaking hand through his hair. He didn't look all right. In fact, he looked like he was so nervous that he would become physically sick.

Leo leaned forward, our chess game forgotten. "You want to sit down, Adam?"

Adam shook his head and started backing up the stairs. "I'm just...going to go..." And, without further explanation, he turned around and bolted back upstairs.

"What's Adam's problem?" Leo asked.

I shrugged. Honestly, I couldn't understand Adam half the time, anyways.

Douglas' yelling was suddenly very clear as the door opened. He stepped inside before turning around and snarling at Sandra. "You had your chance! Now leave!"

In the background, I could hear Sandra yelling her response. "He's old enough to decide for himself!"

Apparently, that only made Douglas' temper worse. "He can barely dress himself! You stay away from him, and you stay the hell away from this family!" Whatever her response was, we didn't hear it. Douglas slammed the door and spun on his heel. "Get her out of here now, Eddy," he growled, looking ready to kill. Without a word to Leo and me, he stormed up the stairs. He didn't even wait for Eddy to say something.

Eddy frowned on his screen. "What's his problem?"

"Who knows?" I responded. Honestly, Douglas would likely be drunk within the hour, so asking him wouldn't work.

Leo tilted his head. "I wonder who Sandra was," he mused.

I grinned. "We're going to spy, aren't we?"

When Leo nodded, we high-fived. Screw strategy: We found something far more interesting to mess with.

"Hit the bottom and get back up; or hit the bottle and stay down."

Anthony Liccione

"Drunkenness is temporary suicide: the happiness that it brings is merely negative, a momentary cessation of unhappiness."

Bertrand Russell

Douglas

How in the hell did she find them?

Well, anyone could find anything on the internet. He took another long drink from his beer bottle - he tended not to keep whiskey around ever since the kids got into it - and wished it was a bit stronger. Sure, he was drunk as hell at the moment, but it had taken him longer than usual. Quite a few more drinks, too.

And he was still thinking about Sandra, even when hours had passed and he was wasted!

Where was that bubbling joy that usually accompanied his buzzing mind? The one that made him forget everything, even if it was just for a few hours?

He glared at the bottle in his hand. Stupid beer.

Oly tilted her head, watching him from the bed. "You could just kill her," she pointed out.

Yeah, he thought excitedly. I could do that! Let's see that bitch come around here again! However, even in his drunken state, he still had that annoying sense of reason. "We can't kill 'er," he mumbled. "If Adam foun' out, he'd hate me forever...maybe." It depended on what Adam would think if he ever found out that his mother had left him.

Not that Douglas ever planned on telling him.

"Then maybe we could blow something up," Oly suggested.

Douglas smiled halfway. It had been a while. Maybe he could join the group who was targeting a police station later that night. "How close is Atlanta?" he asked.

"Across the country," Oly answered.

Damn. "Going to have to build my own bomb, then." He stood up from his chair only to stumble backwards and collapse back into it. His eyes widened. "My legs stopped working!"

"Maybe you're too drunk to build a bomb," Oly snickered. "And your legs are fine. You're just a clumsy motherfucker at the moment."

Douglas scowled at her. "Shut up."

Oly winced a bit, but her smirk didn't fade.

Feeling challenged by her expression, Douglas started to stand up again. He was just fine! He could walk! Something strange just happened, and it wouldn't happen a second time!

Because he was Douglas fucking Davenport. It took more than a few beers to take him out!

Before he could fully stand, though, the door to his room opened, causing white light to cut through his twilight haven with its fluorescent sword.

Wait, was light sharp? It could pierce darkness. So it had to be sharp, right? Douglas resolved to test the theory later as Adam took a cautious step into the room, Yahn perched on his shoulders. "Douglas?"

"What?" Douglas huffed, wanting to be left alone to his misery, alcohol and half-formed scientific experiment.

Adam raised a paper and waved it a bit. "That woman you were talking to earlier today? Sandra?" Adam trailed off, looking sheepish.

Douglas felt himself tense up. Damned woman. "What about 'er?"

Adam shuffled his feet a bit and took a deep breath. "It's just...I stole this from you earlier -"

"You what?" Douglas interrupted angrily.

"I'm giving it back!" Adam protested, walking into the room and sitting next to Oly on the bed, holding out the paper.

Douglas snatched it back. How dare anyone steal from him! He gave it a cursory glance to see how important it was when something stirred in the back of his mind. He was looking at the certificate of abandonment that gave him custody over Adam.

And Adam had given it to him.

Wait a second.

Douglas let his eyes settle on Adam as he laid the paper on the desk. "You read it, I guess?"

Adam nodded. "That Sandra woman...was she my mother?"

Douglas wanted to lie, to tell Adam that he never had to worry about Sandra again.

But alcohol was a funny thing.

Without a second to even register what was going on, Douglas' mouth was working with no input from his brain. "Yes."

Aaaaaaaaaaand you have to wait!

Mua ha ha ha ha!

"...Zara? People drink a lot in your stories..."

Shut up, Hellcat. Besides, it's mainly just Douglas.

"But he's an alcoholic now."

Borderline alcoholic, and don't blame this on me. No one can help him if he doesn't want help.

"But-"

If I go somewhere with this, will you quit bothering me?!

"About this one thing, sure."

Fine.

This cast is so fucking needy.

Anyways, feel free to review. Or don't. I don't give a crap. :3

And enjoy.

*Bows and exits*