Lowkey trigger warning: flashbacks to when Sportsbastard shot Emmy.
Location: Mount Justice
Date: Nov 27th
Time: 18:02
"Our father is still alive, and that's not a good thing." Emmy paused, staring at the wall across from her. She felt like part of her disappeared at the admission. She had been holding the weight of her secrets for so long that she hadn't realized how deeply exhausted her bones were from lugging around the lies. Regardless of whether or not she enjoyed it, hiding had become part of her identity. Maybe one day she could reach a point where the missing lies felt like a welcome relief, but right now she felt like someone scooped out part of her like Wally annihilating a container of ice cream.
She couldn't look at Sage as she spoke, and she couldn't stop until she got it all out. The truth was an avalanche. She hoped her relationship with Sage survived the wreckage.
She gasped for air on the floor. She stared at her bloody hands. "Dad?" She looked up at Sportmaster's hulking form in shock.
"You're entering something called shock, Baby girl," he monotoned. "Finish the course before it sets in."
"You…" She stared at him with unseeing eyes. "You shot me?"
"Finish the course," he barked, eyes narrowing.
"What…" She pressed her hand against the entry wound, trying to stop the bleeding. Burning pain ripped through her, letting her snap out of her daze. "Why the hell-"
"Do not curse at me, Girl," he glared down at her. "Now get up. You have 60 seconds to finish the course until I do something worse than a flesh wound."
She grunted in anguish.
"59." He monotoned.
She stumbled to her feet. His unconcerned counting in the background as she grit her teeth, climbed over the last three barriers, and threw 10 knives at the target he had placed on the opposite wall of the basement.
"3. 2."
The last knife thunk-ed into the bullseye.
"1." He raised an eyebrow while she leaned her back against the wall, hands shaking as they pushed into her wound, eyes unfocused.
He walked closer to the target, tilted his head to the right. "Decent. I'll make sure you do better next time."
She looked up at him as his shadow overtook her, feeling a rage she had never felt. All the trials. All the punches. All the bruises. He had never done anything like this before. "Decent? You shot me! How could you do that?"
He backhanded her. She yelped and fell to the ground.
"You should be thanking me, Halimeda," he frowned down at her. "Your first time being shot is in a safe environment. Now you'll be better prepared when it happens on the job."
She winced as the blood hitting the floor from her bullet wound mixed with the blood from her newly split eyebrow. "Fuck you and fuck that reason."
Another slap.
"Stay away from me, or, or," she tried to crawl away. "Or I'll get Batman to come find you!"
He laughed harshly. "That masked freak doesn't save little girls like you. You're not worth the effort."
He leaned down threateningly, "Now, say 'thank you, Daddy.'"
"Wha-what?" she hissed out.
He leaned toward her. Pushing a thumb into the hands trying to stop the bleeding, he frowned. "I did you a favor. When you go on jobs with me, you'll know how to power through when you get shot. I just saved your life. So, say thank you, Daddy."
He pushed harder with the last sentence. She cried out in pain.
"Stop! Please, stop!" She tried to push him away.
"Not until you thank me for training you."
"Never," she hissed.
"Do it now," he probed her wound until she sobbed. "Or I'll have to see if your sister does better on the course than you did."
"No," her eyes filled with panic. "You said you wouldn't! You-you said-" she gasped in pain again, "you said you wouldn't make her train."
"I said I wouldn't make her train if you did well enough that I didn't need to," he spit back. "You have no control here. So, do what I say."
"Th-thank you," she glowered at him, even as tears fell down her cheeks.
He pushed even harder, "Thank you, what?"
"Thank you, Daddy," she sobbed.
"There, that wasn't so hard, was it?" He stood up and wiped his hand on a nearby towel before throwing it at her. "Now clean yourself up. You look ridiculous covered in blood and crying like that."
"I had never felt like that before. So, angry, and helpless, and-" Emmy bit her lip, blinking back tears even half a decade later. "-and humiliated."
She sobbed uncontrollably as she bandaged her gunshot wound. Because she had one of those now. A gunshot wound. A wound. From a gun. A wound from a gun that her own father had aimed at her. He didn't even hesitate before he pulled the trigger. He just pulled it and kept going like she was the one overreacting.
"You're so dramatic," he had said.
"Just like your mother," he scoffed before he left.
Warning her that he would be back in 6 weeks, and she needed to do the course everyday as she healed to learn how to move when reopening a bullet wound.
She hiccupped as she added more gauze to further staunch the bleeding. She had never once seen her mother be dramatic. Her mother just ghosted her way through life, cycling between apathetic, glassy-eyed highs and shaking, bloodshot withdrawals. She slid the needle into her arm to link herself to an IV bag before throwing up her dinner.
She slumped to the floor away from the pile of vomit. It had never been this bad before. For all the danger and pain he had put her through, she had never once felt as close to death as she had when he pointed a gun at her and pulled the trigger. And she had thanked him for it. Shame burned her stomach even more than the wound.
Batman wasn't coming to help her. So, she had to save her family herself.
They couldn't stay here anymore.
They had to run.
"I didn't have much time to plan things out. Only 6 weeks, you know," she cleared her throat. "I found some of our baby teeth in the, uh, Tooth Fairy box. Our mother had saved 7 of them before she stopped leaving a quarter under our pillows."
She winced as her stitches limited her range of motion. It had been three weeks since the shooting, and she still couldn't reach over her head with her left arm. She had a backpack full of cash she stole from her father's stash, her mother's locket (the only piece of jewelry that hadn't been pawned for drugs yet), and some changes of clothes for her and her siblings. She hadn't figured out what they were going to do about baby formula yet, but – one thing at a time.
She frowned down at the book illuminated by a lantern on the floor and twisted the wires in front of her. Her gloved hands rubbed the mixture of vinegar and salt across the plastic coating, slowly exposing the copper wires beneath. She put the handle of the pliers into her mouth and flipped the page of the book at her feet.
She had to make sure this looked like an accident. She had to make sure that he wouldn't find them. She had to make sure that it didn't even occur to him to look.
She had to make sure the circuit breaker looked dilapidated by old age instead of intentional interference.
She had to make sure that the electrical fire would cause an explosion that destroyed everything.
She did her job a little too well.
"I woke up in the middle of the night a few days later," Emmy frowned at the wall. "Smoke was coming in from the hallway."
She wrenched open the door to the basement, coughing at the wave of smoke that crashed over her head. What happened? She wasn't going to set off the fire for another week. She didn't have all the supplies she needed. They weren't ready to run yet.
She jumped down the stairs. Maybe she could stop it. Maybe she could delay it before the neighbors noticed and called 911. They ignored the screams coming from her house for years. Hopefully, they could ignore some smoke too.
"Of course, they didn't," Emmy snorted harshly. "They stopped ignoring our problems the second those problems started to threaten them."
She swung around the corner and gasped. The walls were on fire. Her mother's body was on the ground; only feet away from the smoking crackpipe that had rolled into the wall and lit the wallpaper she had haphazardly hung for the sole purpose of acting as a fire accelerant atop the concrete walls.
"Mom!" She rushed to the body. Her mother was breathing but unresponsive. She barely registered the two strange men passed out next to her mother.
This wasn't supposed to happen. Her mother never came to the basement, refusing to acknowledge her complacency in allowing her eldest child to experience horrors there.
She had spent every day since she got shot making their house as flammable as possible, and now her controlled chaos was no longer in her control.
She grabbed her mother's limp arms and started yanking her away from the flaming walls. The fire was brighter than any she had ever seen, and it was steadily moving toward the electrical breaker. The very one she had ensured was as dangerous as possible.
"Mom! Wake up," she shrieked, both in desperation to wake her and from the pain of reopening the stitches in her side.
It wasn't supposed to happen like this. She was going to do it on a Thursday. When her mother went out of the house, gone for hours to meet her latest drug dealer, collapsed somewhere unknown for a day or three until she eventually found her way back to the house. She was supposed to be able to take her sister and brother to the Boys and Girls club half a mile away first. She was supposed to have time to set the fire and get away before anyone even realized she was gone.
She was supposed to be in control.
A baby's cry scared her into dropping her mother's arms. She gasped in horror. "The baby's down here!?"
She followed the noise. Her brother was wailing from his spot in an empty suitcase. Her mother either disinterested in or uncapable of finding a suitable place for her brother to sit outside of his hand-me-down crib. She picked him up quickly.
"It's okay, Baby," she patted his back. Hushing him while scrambling away from the growing flames. She only had a minute or two until they would reach the circuit breaker. She only had a minute or two until the whole house erupted.
"I can't-" she paused, coughing, "I can't pull you out, Mom! Wake up."
She kicked one of the men as hard as she could, but he didn't budge either. Had they overdosed? Were they already dead? If one of them woke up, would they even be able to help her get the others out?
"Halimeda," her younger sister called from halfway down the stairs. "What's happening?"
She whirled around in a panic. "Get out! Go up the stairs. We're leaving."
"What?" Her sister squeaked, horrified by the flames. "What about Mommy?"
"Go! Now," She pushed her sister roughly up the stairs, her other arm locked firmly around her brother. "There's no time!"
She glanced at the flames. They were approaching the circuit breaker even faster than she anticipated. The very one she had rigged to spark and explode at the slightest interference.
"Move!"
She shut the door to the basement two seconds before the house shook with a deafening boom.
"I'm not sure how long I was passed out. Only a few seconds, I think, but it could have been a minute," Emmy cracked each of her knuckles individually. "Either way, Hunter's crying woke me up. The whole house was in flames. The basement was all concrete, but the actual house was old and had wood everywhere."
She pinched the bridge of her nose. "I couldn't find you when I woke up. Part of the ceiling had caved in, and, um, you got caught underneath it."
Emmy blinked hard, throat burning in the way it always did when she refused to let herself cry. "I saw your little hand sticking out of the rubble. I didn't know what else to do, so I shoved Hunter inside the backpack with the other supplies, zipped it up enough that he wouldn't fall out, and moved the ceiling pieces until I could drag you free."
Her eyes were flooded with water as though they could put out the memory of flames. "You were so cold, Sage. And you wouldn't wake up- and- and your head was bleeding so much."
Emmy couldn't hold back anymore, pressing her face into her hands. Sobs she had held back for years, finally fleeing her body. "I had to take you to a vet a few streets over. He fixed you up as best he could, but, gosh, Sage, I'm so- I'm so sorry that-"
Unexpectedly strong arms wrapped around Emmy's shoulders. The lantern gasped, head shooting out of her hands to see Sage holding her steady.
"Thank you, Emmy," Sage said, even as tears streamed down her own face. "Thank you for saving us."
"But I didn't," Emmy cried. "I put you all in unnecessary danger, and I- I killed our mother."
"It's okay, Emmy," Sage insisted, albeit gently. "It sounds like you saved us in a way she never did."
Emmy wept harder than she ever had.
Sage held her older sister harder than she ever had.
"So, Sportsmaster, huh?" Sage asked once Emmy had calmed down enough to keep talking.
"Yeah," Emmy croaked, her voice cracking and raw.
"That sucks," Sage pouted. "We couldn't even get one of the cool villains to be our evil secret father?"
Emmy snorted so hard that mucus shot out of her nose and hit Sage's comforter.
"EW, Emmy!" Sage jumped to the opposite side of the bed. She gagged. "That was so gross."
"Sorry, sorry," Emmy wiped her nose on her sleeve, still chuckling. "It's just, you sound like me. I told him that he was just a washed-up gym teacher one time."
Sage guffawed, "I bet he hated that."
Emmy's face hardened, the beating he had given her for that coming to the front of her mind. She had opened Pandora's box within her own mind, facing memories she had denied since she was 11.
Sage's smile dropped instantly. Her bottom lip trembled, "Emmy, I'm so sorry."
"What?" Emmy's head snapped to look at Sage. "Why on earth would you be sorry? I'm the one who lied to you this whole time. You were right. Just because you lost your memories doesn't mean that you aren't entitled to know the truth about-"
Sage burst out crying. Emmy leaned back in surprise before rushing to wrap Sage in her arms.
"I was so mean to you," Sage cried into Emmy's chest. "I knew you were lying, and I didn't understand why, but I should have known-"
She sobbed too hard to speak. Emmy ran her hands through Sage's hair, shushing her the way she used to when Sage was a baby.
"I should have known that you were trying to protect me," Sage hiccupped. "I should have known that you were doing it out of love. You do everything for me, and I'm just so mean to you and-"
"Hey, hey, Sage look at me." Emmy cupped Sage's face and wiped at the tears underneath her eyes. "It's okay. You're just an overachiever who hit the teen angst while still being 12."
Sage chuckled, weakly slapping Emmy's shoulder, before returning to the hug.
"I'm older than you were when all that happened," Sage whispered, as though realizing it for the first time.
"Yeah, I guess," Emmy raised an eyebrow. "Only by like, 5 or 6 months though."
Sage started crying again. Emmy rocked her back and forth, singing softly, her own throat still tight from the tears she had shed.
"I'm sorry I'm such a bad sister," Sage wiped her nose on Emmy's shirt.
"You're not a bad sister. Even if you did just wipe your nose on my shirt," Emmy grimaced, chuckling.
Sage calmed down and climbed out of Emmy's lap, a little embarrassed by her display of emotions. She kept her thigh pressed up against Emmy's though.
"Look, Sage, you were right," Emmy ran a hand down her face. "I was unilaterally making the choice not to tell you the truth. Not to tell you your own truth. And I absolutely understand how infuriating that would be. If our roles were reversed, I probably would have done much worse than steal a car and demand foster parents."
Sage winced and her eyes welled up again, "Oh, gosh. Emmy I, I didn't even think about how you would feel- you were just trying to- and I pushed you away and-"
"Sorry!" Emmy yelped, rubbing Sage's back comfortingly. "I wasn't trying to make you feel bad. I was just saying that I think you've handled our very strange lives with more grace than anyone else could."
Sage wiped her eyes quickly.
"You're a good sister. I promise," Emmy pinched the bridge of her nose. "An infinitely better one than I've been to Artemis at least."
A beat of silence.
"Artemis is our sister!?"
Sage slumped back onto her bed.
"Wow."
"Yep," Emmy nodded, falling back onto the bed as well.
"That is… a lot," Sage muttered.
"Sure is," Emmy nodded again.
"So, Sportsmaster- I mean, Lawrence was there today," Sage frowned. "And told Artemis everything you just told me."
Emmy sighed deeply, "No, just the secretly half-sisters part."
"Damn." Sage muttered.
"Language," Emmy looked at her out of the corner of her eye.
Sage pouted, "Seriously? Can I not get a free pass for today?"
"Fine," Emmy waved her hand, exhausted. "Go for it."
"This shit is fucked up, Em," Sage complained emphatically.
Emmy snorted, "I know. The whole thing is just one huge fucking clusterfuck."
"Oh damn," Sage's eyebrows went up. "Free pass for you too?"
Emmy shrugged, "I think we've earned it."
"Our dad is a bastard," Sage frowned.
"He sure is," Emmy snorted. I've been saying that for years.
They stared at the ceiling in silence for a while.
"Do you think Artemis will tell anyone else?" Sage asked.
"I doubt it," Emmy said. "She can't out me without outing herself. I do think she'll try to hit me again next time I see her one-on-one though."
"Yeah, well, maybe you should block her punches next time," Sage raised an unimpressed eyebrow.
Emmy raised her own eyebrows, impressed by Sage's attention to detail, "How'd you know I didn't block her?"
"You have a lot of sibling martyr guilt going on," Sage waved a hand at Emmy's form lazily. "Plus, you don't usually let people hit you in the face."
"It's my money maker," Emmy stuck out her tongue when Sage started cracking up. "Rude."
"I'm serious, though," Sage frowned. "You need to talk to Artemis. As someone who has a long history of being angry at you for lying, she needs to know the truth."
"She does know the truth," Emmy glared at the ceiling. Her bastard of a father had taken so much from her, and now he had taken away her opportunity to tell Artemis the truth her own way.
"No, she just knows the one sentence he told her," Sage sat up and looked down at Emmy. "She doesn't know your side of things. She's just hurt and angry and taking it out on you."
"Since when did you become wise?" Emmy quirked an eyebrow.
Sage rubbed at her left elbow sheepishly, "Since we had this conversation, and I realized that's what I've been doing to you all this time."
Emmy sighed, "It's different with Artemis. I only met her when she joined the team. Everything she's ever heard from me started from a place of lying." And I left her behind. I abandoned her to go back to being one of the only kids he had left to train.
"Okay, so?" Sage frowned. "She's been doing the same thing."
"That's what I said!" Emmy snapped, feeling vindicated. "You know what? You were right. I should have told you the truth years ago. It is so nice to not have secrets between us anymore. Should we go tell Hunter?"
"No!" Sage shouted. "He is too young and innocent. He deserves to have a real childhood where he doesn't have to worry about anything other than being happy and going to school and making friends and…" Sage trailed off as she noticed Emmy's wicked smirk.
"No, go on, Sage," Emmy's smirk turned into a mischievous grin. "You were making some really excellent points."
Sage harumphed and crossed her arms. "I already said sorry."
Emmy chuckled and ruffled Sage's hair until her younger sister slapped her hands away.
"I know," Emmy overlapped her hands on her stomach. "I'd prefer to tell him in the 16 to 18 range. Or 12 if he turns out to be a total pain in the ass like you."
"Hey!" Sage dug her fingers into Emmy's ribs as the older girl laughed. "Cursing embargo over. No more mean words about Sage."
Emmy chuckled again before sighing, "I would have liked to wait a few more years to tell you too. But I didn't want you to find out like Artemis did."
"I appreciate that," Sage patted Emmy's shoulder. "Artemis will forgive you. Eventually. I know she will."
"How?" Emmy raised an eyebrow.
"Because she got stuck with the kind of older sister who abandoned her with a murderous psychopath father to run off with the Shadows, and you're the kind of older sister who would drag her unconscious body out of a burning building to get her away from a murderous psychopath father," Sage said, determinedly. "Everyone wants a sister like that."
"Oh," Emmy blushed, woefully unprepared for a Sage that wasn't trying to fight and insult her all the time.
They observed the ceiling again, their own thoughts overlapping and merging and separating like wax in a lava lamp.
"I don't, uh, I don't want you to worry about it," Emmy started, haltingly.
"Worry about what?" Sage raised an eyebrow.
Emmy blinked at her sister before deadpanning, "The fact that our murderous psychopath father knows we're alive."
"Why would I worry about that?" Sage scrunched her face, grey eyes alight with confusion.
Emmy sputtered, "Because of the…of the murderous part?"
"Oh, please," Sage scoffed. "What's he going to do? Throw a dodgeball at you?"
Emmy gaped at her.
Sage noticed Emmy's shocked face and rolled her eyes, "Did you forget that you're a Green Lantern again?"
"No," Emmy huffed before muttering. "I haven't done that in, like, a month." Her ring glowed on her finger in confirmation.
"He's like 70-years-old, Em," Sage frowned. "You could kick his ass without the ring. Just steal his reading glasses and punch his brittle bones."
The mantra of Wally's words rang in her head: You're not a 10-year-old kid anymore. You survived. You're a Green Lantern. You can kick Sportsmaster's ass without breaking a sweat.
Emmy snorted, smile widening, "You know, Wally said something similar."
"You told Wally before me?" Sage gasped. "I know you're in love with him but-"
Emmy choked on air, shooting to a sitting position, "I am not in love with Wally."
Sage squinted at her.
"And I haven't told him anything yet," Emmy put her hands up, "We just ran into Sportsmaster on a mission, and Wally gave me a peptalk because it stressed me out a little and-"
Sage grinned at her impishly.
"What?" Emmy frowned.
"You said yet," Sage smiled.
"What?" Emmy raised an eyebrow.
"You said, 'I haven't told him anything yet,'" Sage leaned forward.
Emmy leaned away, "So?"
"Soooo," Sage smirked before singing, "You love him, you want to kiss him, and confess our horrible family secrets to him."
"Sage, shut it," Emmy groaned and rubbed at her eyes. "It's not anywhere near love yet-"
Sage squealed, and Emmy wondered if it were possible to melt into the floor.
"Another yet!?" Sage tried to pull Emmy's hands off her face, but Emmy groaned and refused to move.
"Go away," Emmy groaned.
"This is my room," Sage laughed, "I'm not going anywhere."
Sage rushed, "And you can't leave yet because you said we could get to all of my questions."
Emmy plopped back onto the bed, pulled her hands away from her eyes to frown at Sage, "Dude, I was talking about questions you had regarding all my lying about our messed-up family."
"Did you just call me dude?" Sage chuckled. "You're even starting to talk like him."
"You take that back," Emmy pointed threateningly. "I am eloquent and intelligent."
"And Wally is neither of those things," Sage grinned.
"Hey, he is very intelligent, and he can be eloquent once in a blue moon," Emmy shoved Sage lightly.
"Interesting," Sage looked at Emmy down her nose. "Very interesting."
"Calm down, Sage-mund Freud." Emmy rolled her eyes.
"You're literally wearing the necklace he got you right now, yes, I figured out he gave it to you. And we had our first Thanksgiving dinner with his family," Sage pressed. "And we're going again next year…"
"Okay, we're not going next year, his mom just said that to be polite-"
"And he bribed Hunter to go on the Love Tunnel ride-"
"He did what?" Emmy sat up abruptly.
Sage scooted away in surprise. "Uh, yeah, I thought you saw. Wally's signing isn't exactly subtle."
"When?" Emmy pressed.
"When we were debating what ride to do last. He offered Hunter like 5 bucks to get the team to go on the love tunnel ride, and Hunter bumped it up to 30-"
"Good for him," Emmy muttered absentmindedly.
"-and then Wally's dumb digestion excuse to stay on the ride with you? Please," Sage scoffed. "Half of his personality revolves around how fast he metabolizes food that's not exactly a good excuse. I'm surprised you didn't pick up on it."
"I was pretty busy checking out the vicinity because I thought our evil father was there, which he was, if you'll remember," Emmy frowned indignantly.
"Sure, you have the eyes of a hawk or whatever," Sage rolled her eyes and scooted closer, wiggling her eyebrows. "What happened in the tunnel?"
"Seriously? You're already out of horrible family secret questions?" Emmy threw her hands up.
"I think not talking about your ride in the Love Tunnel with Kid Motorboat counts as keeping a horrible family secret," Sage nudged Emmy again.
Emmy frowned, "That's not the right way to mess up his name."
Sage raised an eyebrow.
Emmy shoved her face gently, laughing when Sage sputtered. "And nothing happened in the tunnel. He was just talking about us getting along better lately and then I saw Lawrence creeping around and followed him out."
"What did you tell Wally to keep him from following you?" Sage asked.
"Uh," Emmy thought back. She had been a little too panicked at the time to focus on reasonable excuses. "I think I just implied the funnel cake gave me diarrhea or something."
"Ew, Emmy, that is not romantic," Sage pouted.
"Okay, and?" Emmy pushed Sage further away. "I wasn't trying to be romantic. I was trying to, y'know, face our father without the whole team being in danger."
"Yeah, you're a hero to us all," Sage rolled her eyes. "I just don't get it. If you two like each other, then what gives?"
"Okay, first of all," Emmy held up a finger, "There has been no confirmation that we like each other. Second of all, even if we did, you are now fully aware of all the chaos I've got going on. Wally doesn't deserve to get anymore mixed up in it than he already is."
"Uh huh," Sage deadpanned. "If he doesn't like you, then why did he want to go in the tunnel with you so badly?"
"We don't know that he wanted to go on the tunnel specifically with me," Emmy countered. "Maybe he just bribed Hunter because he wanted to go on the ride in general and was too embarrassed to say anything."
"Hello Emmy, Wally lives in a constant state of embarrassment," Sage insisted. "There is no way he would be too shy to say that he wanted to go on the ride in general. The only way I could see him being shy is if he specifically wanted to go with you."
"Yeah, well, nothing happened on the ride," Emmy huffed. "Get some actual evidence and then maybe I'll entertain continuing this conversation."
Sage made some kissy noises that had Emmy briefly missing all the times Sage had refused to talk to her.
"Actually, I do have another evil family secret question," Sage scooted closer again, becoming serious once more.
Emmy nodded for her to continue.
"What's your plan?" Sage asked.
"I'm still working on that." Emmy looked at the ceiling again.
"Also, why didn't you just power up and like, trap him in a green prison cell or something at the fair?" Sage frowned, hands moving into signing subconsciously.
Emmy froze. Why hadn't she done that? Because she was a little too focused on shoving down a panic attack to think clearly. She hadn't even activated her ring. How was she supposed to explain that to Sage? Their relationship was barely patched over. It was too soon for Emmy to willingly admit that she was a coward when it came to their father.
Especially since Sage seemed to share Wally's casual opinion that Emmy shouldn't be hung up on it in the way that she is.
"There were so many civilians around, and once he dropped the sister bomb, I had to choose between going after him or staying with Artemis," Emmy shrugged, calculatedly nonchalant.
Sage nodded, "Siblings first."
"Yeah," Emmy sighed, "But I will have a plan before you know it. I'm talking to Batman and the Corps tomorrow. I'll get this figured out."
"I know," Sage nodded. "So, more importantly, what's, like, the full deal with you and Wally? Because there is clearly a lot that I don't know."
"Sage," Emmy groaned.
"Sorry!" Sage giggled. "But what happened in Bialya?"
"What?" Emmy went pale.
"I've heard Megan and Artemis mention it a few times," Sage shrugged.
"I'm going to sleep," Emmy threw her forearm over her eyes. "We've talked for hours already."
"Emmy? What happened in Bialya?" Sage poked her sister's shoulder twice.
"Shh, I'm sleeping."
"Emmy, that's not funny."
"Emmy, stop drooling on my pillow."
"Emmy, wake up and tell me about Bialya."
"Emmy, I have more questions."
See, didn't make you wait another 9 months. Go team.
Thanks for reading what is probably the most dialogue-heavy chapter in this story,
TheDarkAbyss