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Mallory came out of the medbay in a rush, her forehead taped up, arms treated for the cuts and wrapped in bandages, and hair flying in every direction. She'd thrown on clothes borrowed from Zatanna's locker, and she was on her way to meet the rest of the OG team by the zeta tubes when she ran right into Razor coming around a corner.
"Oh, I'm sorry," she apologized, not really looking to see who it was as she moved around him, trying to get going again.
"Inferno... Mallory, I have been waiting for you to return. I would like to speak with you."
She shifted her weight, looking down the hall. "Can it keep until tomorrow? I'm really in a hurry," she said.
"No, I will be brief. I just wanted to tell you that I am going to be going back to my search. I thought it would be offensive to just leave without telling you goodbye, and thank you."
She paused, looking at the Lantern. "Razor, you don't have to go. Look, just, don't do anything tonight, and we can talk about this tomorrow, ok? Or, better yet, come with us. We're going to the hospital. We can talk on the road."
"I do not think that would be appropriate," he replied.
"No, it's fine, it's Raquel, you know her, Rocket. She's in labor, that's why I'm trying to hurry. Come on, please? I really don't want you to go without talking to you, I just really don't have the time right now."
He sighed heavily. "Very well."
"Great, let's go." She practically dragged him all the way to the tube. "Hey, Razor's coming, if it's ok with you guys," she announced.
"Yes, of course," Megan replied. Mallory glanced at Conner, but he wasn't looking at her. He was pulling off his jacket.
"Here," he said, handing it to Razor. "This'll help hide the clothes. Not exactly the height of fashion on Earth." He looked at Mallory and nodded, and she smiled, their argument from earlier resolved without a single word between them.
"Tell me she's not alone up there," Artemis said, bringing the attention back to the matter at hand while Megan typed in their coordinates.
"No, Darius was home with her when her water broke, and Zatanna and Kaldur are already there, and Dick's on his way."
The light sucked them in and to Dakota City, and they jogged down the street to the hospital, spilling into the waiting room only to be stopped dead in their tracks by Zatanna, Dick, and Kaldur just standing around.
"Why aren't you with her?" Artemis asked.
"They will not let us in," Kaldur replied.
"What? Why not?" Megan asked.
"We're not family," Zatanna explained.
Mallory laughed, shaking her head. "Oh, no. I did not just go through everything I did tonight just to be told that we're not family. Move."
"Uh, Mal, maybe we should just–" Megan started, but Mallory raised an eyebrow at the Martian and she dropped her hand back to her side, allowing the pyrokinetic to walk over to the desk.
"Can I help you?" he receptionist asked, barely even looking up from her phone.
"Yeah, my friends and I are here for Raquel Ervin, her husband brought her a little over an hour ago."
"And who are you?" the girl asked.
"Does it matter?" Mallory asked, trying hard to keep her voice even.
"Yeah, actually, it does. If you're not family, you can't go in. Hospital policy."
"Ok, well, we are family."
At this, the receptionist took her eyes off the screen in her hand long enough to look Mallory up and down. "Oh, yeah? What side are you on, Ginger?" Mallory shook her head, sucking in a breath and twisting her lips together to keep from blowing fire into the girl's face. "You look like you belong in another ward, anyway. What you been doing tonight? Street fighting? Or is one of those people kicking you around? Cause there's numbers you can call." She said it in such a demeaning way, Mallory felt a new wave of hatred for this stranger.
"Ok, first, I was in a motorcycle accident, second, you better—"
Dick grabbed her shoulders gently from behind and moved her to the side a little. "Ok, sorry about that. She was in a," He leaned closer to Mallory's ear. "Motorcycle accident?" he asked under his breath.
"Motorcycle accident," she confirmed with a slight nod.
"Motorcycle accident," Dick said, louder this time for the receptionist, "and her moods haven't stabilized yet with the meds she's on."
"Right," the girl said, rolling her eyes. "Well, that doesn't change anything. None of y'all are going in the room, now go sit down before I kick you out for being a nuisance."
"All right, yeah, we'll do that," Dick replied nicely, and he brought Mallory to the farthest side of the waiting room and sat her down so her back was to the receptionist.
"Why did you do that? She was about to," Mallory started, but Zatanna finished, "call security to escort you out. Relax, Mal. We'll just have to wait out here and if they need something they'll call."
"Well, we should at least let them know that we're here," Megan said, pulling out her phone. A few minutes later, she came back to the group. "Neither one of them is answering," she told them.
"I hope everything's ok," Zatanna mentioned, looking at the door worriedly.
"I'll try to find them and set up a link," Mallory offered, but before her eyes turned white, the door to the rooms opened and Darius walked out, coming straight over to them.
"Hey, thank you so much for coming," he said.
"Of course. They wouldn't let us go to the room," Megan said.
"Yeah, the rules here are ridiculous. They barely let me in the room, and her dad was only allowed to stay for ten minutes."
"You didn't answer your phones, either, though. We were starting to get worried that there were complications or something," Dick said.
Darius shook his head. "No, no, Raq's fine. They don't allow phones in the delivery rooms until after the birth."
Artemis raised an eyebrow. "What? Why? That's stupid."
"Same reason they don't want a lot of people in the room. They've had problems in the past with the mother getting upset and choosing violence. Honestly, knowing Raquel, she would be one of them."
The group chuckled, nodding in agreement. "Well, is there anything you need? Seriously, anything at all," Mallory asked.
Darius shrugged. "I mean, if you wouldn't mind playing secretary? We've probably got fifty missed calls already about the baby, everyone's probably getting worried by now."
"How do they even know about it if you haven't had your phones?" Conner asked.
Darius sighed. "Aunt Nessie was at the apartment when Raq's water broke," he explained.
"Oh, great. I'll bet that went well," Zatanna muttered.
"Yes, of course, we will call them back and let them know what is happening," Kaldur assured him. "Where are your phones?"
"The lady at the desk has them."
Mallory winced, and Dick and Zatanna glared at her. "You might want to go get them for us," Dick said. "We've already had an incident with her since we've been here."
The father-to-be laughed. "Yeah, I know. I heard some nurses talking about it, that's how I knew you guys were here." He went to the counter and got the phones and handed them to Zatanna when he came back. "I'd better get back in there. Raq only gave me two minutes to be out of the room, and I'm pretty sure they ran out a while ago."
They nodded and he went back through the door, and they settled around the room, passing the phones around to get numbers off of them to call the people back.
"We could have finished the mission naturally and still had plenty of time to get here," Artemis pointed out three hours later from where she was leaning on Kaldur, her legs stretched out on the sofa.
Mallory and Conner huffed a tired laugh, but they didn't have the energy to do much else. There was some activity in the baby room, and Dick got up to stretch and wandered over to see the latest in the parade of newborns they'd seen in the last few hours.
"Guys, come see!" he said excitedly a moment later.
The group rolled to their feet, expecting to see another baby that he thought looked like John Jones or Lex Luthor. Instead, there was a little boy asleep in a crib towards the front with a sign on the front that read 'Amistad Augustus Ervin-Williams'. They sucked in a collective breath, smiles taking over their faces.
"That's him," Megan murmured.
"He's so cute," Zatanna cooed.
"Wow. Raquel's a mom," Dick said, shaking his head and chuckling.
"What did you expect? She's been complaining about the little guy sitting on her bladder for nine months. She was going to kick him out eventually," Artemis joked, but even she had a soft look on her face as she gazed down at the new life in front of them.
A nurse walked over and cleared her throat, and they looked at her expectantly. "Mr. Williams asked me to collect his and his wife's phones for him."
"Oh, right, here," Conner handed them over, and they all pulled their phones out expectantly. Sure enough, a moment later Zatanna got a facetime call from Raquel, and she answered it and held her phone up so they could all get in the shot.
"Hey, guys. I'm so glad you came," Raquel said weakly. She looked exhausted, but happy.
"Raq, he's perfect," Megan said, and Zatanna panned the camera so the new mother could see her baby through the glass.
She grinned. "Thanks. They barely let me see him before they took him away to clean him up."
"Do you want anything? Can you eat yet?" Kaldur asked.
She shook her head. "No, thanks, I just want to see my son. Look, why don't you guys go on home? You can't come back here until I get cleared for visitors anyway. Might as well go get some sleep."
"You sure? One of us can stay in case you need something," Mallory offered.
Their friend smiled and shook her head. "No, thanks. If I want something, I'll get a nurse to get it for me, or Darius. I'll call y'all when you can visit."
"Well, all right," Zatanna said hesitantly.
"Congratulations, Raq," Dick said, and they told her goodbye and hung up. "Well, I had to go anyway," Dick told the others. "I have work in a little bit. I'm glad she had the kid before I had to leave."
"We're gonna have to stop calling him 'the kid'," Conner pointed out, looking back at the sign in front of the crib.
"Amistad," Megan read.
Dick smiled and nodded. "Yeah."
They group started to go to the door, but Mallory paused when she realized that Razor wasn't with them. When she looked back, he was standing at the window, just staring at Amistad with a strange look on his face. She went back over and stood next to him.
"We never really talked," she mentioned.
"No, we did not," he replied, but he didn't sound like he was thinking about that.
She let a beat go by to see if he would say more, but he just stared at Amistad like he couldn't tear himself away. She smiled and nudged him with her shoulder. "Come on, I'll walk you home," she offered.
They walked down the street to the zeta tube in comfortable silence, letting the chaos and stress of the last few hours finally melt away. When they got to the Watchtower, however, Razor cleared his throat and faced her.
"Thank you for tonight. For including me. And, I am…sorry, for earlier."
She bit back a smile and tilted her head, letting him continue. She knew how big it was to get an apology from him, so she didn't want to interrupt the flow and make him put his walls back up.
"I understand now that you wanted to show me what it is like to be part of something like you are, what it is like to have something like your team has. I saw a glimpse of that with the Greens, and Aya, but even with them I did not think I could feel the way I did before the war on my planet destroyed my life. Today, I regained that hope. Thank you for that."
He didn't say anything else, and she finally let the smile show. "Yeah, you're welcome. So, when are you leaving?"
He tilted his head, looking surprised for a second, then he allowed a small smile to come to his face. "I think that I will stay a bit longer, if it is alright with you."
She shrugged. "Sure. As long as it isn't inconveniencing you." He sighed and didn't say anything, so she shook her head. "It's fine. You want something to eat? I'm going to grab something quick before I go back to Metropolis."
"Very well."
They started towards the lounge, but Mallory paused when they got to the monitor room. "Hal?" she asked, her eyebrows coming together in confusion. He and Oliver turned to the doorway when they heard her.
"Inferno," Hal said.
"What are you doing back? Where are John and Guy?" Mallory asked.
"They did not accompany me back. I am only staying long enough to collect a few things, then I will rejoin them."
"What could you possibly need that you couldn't get on a planet closer to the battle?" Razor asked. "By the time you get back, the fighting will be long over, if it isn't already."
"It's nothing you need to be concerned about," Hal snapped.
Mallory tilted her head, exchanging a glance with Razor. "Ok, yeah, you're right," she said, adjusting her tone to be less accusing. "Did you hear about Rocket?"
"I do not have time to catch up," he said, and he pushed between the younger heroes, shoving them to the sides on his way to the airlock. The three heroes left in the room looked at each other.
"That was…weird, right?" Green Arrow asked.
"Yes. I do not think I have ever seen him like that before," Razor mentioned.
Mallory nodded in agreement. "He probably had a fight with Carol or Barry or something. A few weeks in Space will do him good," she said optimistically, shaking off the lingering feeling that something was wrong.
"Yeah, you're probably right," the Leaguer said, and he turned to an incoming call.
"Well, I'll see you tomorrow," Mallory told Razor.
He nodded and they headed out in separate directions, Razor to go to his room, and Mallory to go to the zeta tubes. She punched in her coordinates out of habit, her mind flooded with thoughts of the day, and what she was going to bring Amistad when she met him for the first time.