In this chapter I was just trying to give a little more insight into Mallory's world without the team, since all she's ever doing in previous scenes is paperwork. Also introducing a new character that I hope y'all are excited about. Hope you like the chapter, please review!
Mallory covered a wince as she walked back through the small, dingy hallway, her eyes catching on every fist-level dent in the wall, her hands tightening on her pen and clipboard and her mind focusing on keeping the smooth, emotionless expression on her face. After what she'd just seen in what was supposed to be the kids' bedroom, it was taking all of her training not to take this case into her own burning hands. The two beds that had been shoved together in the closet-sized room last time she visited were gone, pallets of old blankets replacing them. The lock of the closet door was on the outside, and the door was worn in specific places, the only evidence of the pounding of small hands through countless turbulent nights.
The girls' mom continued to lead the way to the kitchen, seemingly oblivious to the waves of anger prickling at the social worker's skin, to the war going on behind her eyes to keep the coal black irises from igniting. "I haven't been shopping this month…"
It was meant to be an excuse, but the second Mallory started looking through the cabinets and found enough alcohol to cater an event, yet only a half a stale loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter growing mold, the words lost all validity. She pressed her lips together, her thumb pressing down on her pen so hard a crack formed in the plastic.
"So, the kids are fine, you can go now." The comment from the woman's boyfriend seemed innocent on the surface, but the underlying threat wasn't hard to read. She'd been in the same situation countless times, just waiting for one of these underlying threats to manifest into more, willing one of these meatbags who beat on their families and used their kids for their own gains to actually make a move and give her an excuse to hospitalize them, but they never did. They were cowards, every single one of them.
A buzzing in her pocket interrupted her thoughts just in time to keep her from snapping her pen in half, a flash of annoyance showing in her face. Whoever it was had been texting every minute since she got to this run down apartment, but she couldn't have her personal phone out when she was in the house, it had to be the company phone that she took the documentation pictures on or called in the police, so that everything was documented and there was no chance of lawsuits against individual employees. And honestly, she was irritated that they weren't moving on to someone else.
"You gonna get that or what?" the mom asked, scratching at her oily blond hair and slamming the cabinets shut.
Mallory shook her head. "No, it's not important. What is important is ensuring that Tay and Miley are given the most stable and caring environment possible. You haven't shown me a single scrap of evidence indicating that this is the best situation for them."
The mother's face went from boredom to rage with a speed to rival the Joker's swinging moods and she practically bared her teeth, snarling, "you ain't taking my kids. Tell her, Tray."
Her boyfriend stalked to the kitchen in two strides, his bald head seeming to absorb all of the light as he towered over her at almost six inches taller. "You want to leave, I'd think about it before you decide to be taking the brats."
Mallory didn't even bother to look at the man threatening her. Instead, her eyes trailed behind him, to the two little girls cowering together behind the couch. She calmly stuck her pen onto her clipboard and tilted her head up to look the man in the eye. "There's one last part of the pop in that I haven't completed," she said. When he didn't move out of the opening of the counter that separated the entrance room from the kitchenette, she tilted her head expectantly. "Excuse me," she said, her voice firm enough to convey that she wasn't intimidated by the cheap power play. He stared at her for another few seconds, then grudgingly took a step back, allowing just enough space for her to walk through without having to squeeze. She went straight to the girls, kneeling in front of them. Her gut and common sense were telling her that they were getting hit, but she couldn't put either of those things on the 'grounds for removal' form.
"Are you scared because of what happens to your mom?" she asked, her voice dropping to a practiced hush, ensuring that the only ones who could hear her were the girls in front of her. The older of the two, Tay, hesitated and tried to look at her mom's boyfriend, but Mallory subtly shifted, blocking the line of sight, and the girl nodded slowly, tears pooling in her eyes. Mallory returned the nod. "And, what he does to you?" This time, the nod came faster, the tears harder, making a protectiveness well in Mallory's chest. "Can I see?"
Miley was the one who obliged her request. The five year old rolled onto her other side, lifting the hem of her shirt to the bottom of her ribcage. It took all of Mallory's training not to wince at the green and yellow bruise covering the toddler's side, and she didn't let herself think about what would leave a mark like that. Her lips were pressed into a tight line, a storm brewing in her chest, and she nodded again. "Why don't you two go wait for me by the door?" she suggested. "I'm going to take you to meet some friends of mine, ok?"
At eight, Tay understood more of what was happening than her little sister, understood the implications, and fear took over her eyes, but Mallory locked onto the blue-green irises, willing her calm energy to be passed onto the kids. "Everything's going to be ok. I promise. Just go wait by the door." She stood and calmly went back to the mom and boyfriend, leaving two feet between them. The adults were staring her down, not having heard any of the conversation, but knowing what was coming.
"Unfortunately, you have not fulfilled the basic needs of the girls, so I am going to have to bring them to the firm with me," she informed them, her tone nothing but professional.
An actual growl came out of the mother. "You ain't taking my babies!" she screamed, and her boyfriend once again tried to intimidate the social worker into backing down on her decision. "If you think I'm just gonna let you take them out of here, then—"
"I would be absolutely correct," she interrupted curtly. "Ordinarily I would wait for a police officer to arrive to escort us out, but in this case, I am not comfortable with the children staying here that long, so I will bring them to the group home myself."
The boyfriend lifted a hand, reaching for her, but before it could grab onto her arm, she had sidestepped, refusing to put herself in a position to have to defend herself. At this point, she was scared of what she would do. She was herding the girls out the door before the man realized that she was moving, her fingertip sending a shot of heat through the knob just as she heard the footsteps clunking after them. She tried not to enjoy the hissed curse after the knob rattled, but she did allow herself to feel the relief of the apartment's owner blaming it on a broken heater.
"Ma's the only family we have," Tay murmured besides her, her voice no more than a hushed whisper.
That tugged at the hero's heartstrings, and she let out a breath. "Listen to me," she said, her tone demanding their attention. "That isn't your family. You are each other's family, and someday you'll meet people who can be trusted to join that family, people who love you and support you. Family may look different for everyone, but it should never look like that." Cameron's scars, both physical and emotional, came to her mind, and the fire in her chest burned hotter. "It should never hurt you." Her phone buzzed again, this time a call instead of a text. She shook her head, silencing her phone and giving her full attention to the girls. "Come on, let's get you out of here."
"Why haven't you been checking your phone? I've been trying to get in touch with you for two hours!" Dick snapped as soon as she returned his calls back at the office. She'd dropped the girls at a group home and submitted their paperwork before checking the texts and seeing that they were all SOSs from the former boy wonder.
"Sorry, but I was working, I didn't have my phone with me." Technically a lie, but that wasn't important now. "What's wrong?"
"I need you to look up the records of your firm in Gotham, check for runaways or losses between six and eight."
"Ok…" she said, her fingers already flying over the keys, "why?"
"There's a girl here."
"And 'here' is…?"
"The precinct." So he was at work, too. "I found her today while I was out on patrol. The day kind," he added quietly, letting her know that this didn't have anything to do with suits. "She was lost, and scared, and…" She waited for him to finish the sentence, her eyes scanning the Gotham reports. There were so, so many. "She killed someone."
That snapped her attention back to the conversation. "What?"
"Yeah. Like, bad. Z bad. Or, more like John bad."
Magic. Dark magic. She twisted her lips, the reports forgotten. "Where did she come from? Whose is she?"
"I don't know, I haven't been able to get anything out of her. She came with me, but she won't let anyone else in the room, and she hasn't said a word. I can't let them take her to the group home, not like this. I only got a glimpse of what she can do, and…things could get ugly fast."
Mallory nodded, checking the time. There were still four hours before she would be getting off work, but this…situation wouldn't last that long. "I don't see anything in the system about a girl with those abilities, but she may not have always had them. Still…why am I checking Gotham if she's in Bludhaven?"
"It's the only thing I've gotten out of her, where she's from," he explained.
She nodded thoughtfully, looking at the Gotham reports again. "Let me go talk to Veritas, maybe she'll let me take a field trip."
An hour later, Mallory was getting off the train in Bludhaven, her satchel held close, her eyes facing forward, and her senses on high alert as she hurried through the dark streets. Dick's precinct was on the worse side of the city, and there were so many security measures just to get into the building, she thought she'd never get inside. They took her phone first thing, so she couldn't call him to speed things up. Even once they decided that she wasn't a threat, she still wasn't allowed to come into the working area, instead she was brought to a waiting room. Ten minutes went by before Dick finally showed up to claim her, handing her phone and bag bag to her and leading her up some stairs to his floor.
"Has she said anything else?" she asked, taking in her friend's workplace as they continued to walk. There were sloppy desks all over the place, not in any kind of line or design, a lot of rough looking people with guns strapped to hips and shoulders, curses flying freely in the space. Looking between the rest of the detectives, then back to Dick, his pale face still soft and carrying a deceiving innocence, his heart visible on his sleeve, it was jarring how much he clashed with them.
"A little, her name's Rachel, she doesn't have a mom and she's running away from her dad. She didn't mean to kill the man, but that's almost worse." She nodded in agreement. They were at the interrogation room now, and they went in, Mallory hanging back a step, letting Dick take the lead. "Hey, Rachel. You hungry?" he put the chips and soda he'd been carrying on the table in front of her. She didn't take it, her eyes shifting suspiciously to the stranger. "This is my friend, Mallory. I asked her to come talk to you. She wanted to help you with your dad, can you tell us his name?"
"You can't help," the girl told them, tilting her head down.
Mallory studied the girl for a moment, deciding how to play her hand. She had long hair, so dark purple it almost looked black until it caught the light. Her skin was gray, her eyes a lighter shade of purple. She seemed to be trying to fold into herself, her hands pressed against her arms tightly, trying to contain the darkness. The hero glanced at Dick and took the seat opposite the kid. "You know," she said, moving her hands so they wouldn't be visible by the camera in the corner, just in case it was on, "I'm better at protection than most people think." She lit a small fire in her hand, and Rachel's eyes widened when she saw it. Her forehead creased slightly, and her hand came out hesitantly, reaching slowly across the table. Mallory ended the fire, thinking that was why she was reaching, to see it it was real, but instead, the girl brushed her fingers over her hand, and a strange sensation crept into the pyrokinetic's body. It was like a strange mind touch, less direct but just as intrusive, a sledgehammer to her emotional walls. She gasped at the unfamiliar feeling, the rawness that followed, but the girl's face opened.
"You're like me," she said, her voice no more than a hush.
Mallory tilted her head, hesitating to ask what she meant, but Dick nodded, putting a hand on his friend's shoulder. "Yep, that's what I was telling you. You can trust her."
Rachel looked between them once more. "I will go with you," she decided.
"Great! We'll just step outside and make the arrangements." He practically had to pull Mallory out of the room to break the focus she had on the girl. "So?" he asked as soon as the door was closed.
She shook herself out of the fog. "I can put her in a group home overnight, but…" they both knew that wasn't a good idea. She twisted her lips, going over solutions in her mind. "Maybe…I might be able to pull some strings and put her in your care temporarily. There are enough unusual circumstances to make the decision reasonable."
He nodded. "Do it," he replied without hesitation.
"Ok, just give me an hour to get everything settled, then we can get her out of here and start figuring out what's going on."
Once Rachel got back to Dick's apartment, she relaxed a bit more, accepting the food he offered and making herself comfortable on the couch. She seemed so much older than seven. It reminded Mallory of Damian, which only made her heart hurt more to think of what both kids must have endured in their short lives to make them grow up so fast.
She and Dick were in the kitchen, keeping their tones low as they discussed what to do from here. A scraping on the fire escape put an end to the conversation mid word, though, both heroes coming around the counter. Mallory tossed Dick his sticks from the coffee table and they took up defensive stances, bodies positioned between Rachel and the window, expecting the threat to coming for her. When the window slide open, though, a black-haired ponytail poked through first, the angular features on the attached face making Dick relax and Mallory wary, the hairs on the back of her neck bristling.
"Easy, magic girl, just me," Tarantula said with a smirk, otherwise ignoring the pyrokinetic's presence.
The wrong term left Mallory confused for a second until she remembered that she was Mallory, not inferno, and the antihero must have mistaken her for Zatanna because of it. She decided not to correct her, not yet, and Dick played along, not even batting his eyes at the mistake.
"Hey, Catherine," he said, tossing the escrima sticks on the couch. "What are you doing here?"
"Looking for you," she replied, still ignoring the other two people in the room. Mallory leaned on the back of the couch, her eyes tracking the other woman's every micromovement. "You stood me up, I thought I'd come make you pay for it. Just didn't count on an audience."
Mallory twisted her lips, and Dick's face flickered for a moment, reading her expression like a book. He chuckled uncomfortably. "Uh, I had to bring work home with me, actually. Cat, this is Rachel. She's going to be staying with me for a while."
Tarantula's nose wrinkled slightly, not trying to cover her annoyance. "Why?"
Rachel stood, not giving any indication that she'd heard the conversation, though there was no way to miss it when it was a foot away, and walked through the short hall to the bedroom and bathroom, and Dick took the opportunity to briefly explain why the girl was with him and not on her way to a group home. Mallory watched the woman's face throughout the story, noting the boredom, disinterest, then the gleam in her eye and the slight smirk on her lip when she heard about the killing. The look sent a shiver down her spine, but Dick barely even seemed to notice it.
She pressed her lips together, not moving a muscle until Catherine finally decided to leave, since Mallory was making no move to. Even once she was out the window and down the fire escape, the hero stayed completely still, her eyes now focused on her friend as he pointedly ignored the black eyes boring into him. Finally, though, he couldn't ignore her anymore and he looked up.
"I know what you're thinking."
She raised her eyebrows slightly, nodding slowly but still not saying anything.
"I have it under control."
A slight tilt of her head.
"I do. I know what I'm doing, I'm not too invested."
She huffed at that, finally breaking the silence. "And, what would you two be doing right now if there wasn't an 'audience'?"
He looked away for half a second. "It's not like I'm cheating on anyone, Babs and I broke it off months ago. Is that what you have against her? You don't want me to get involved with her?"
She rolled her eyes. "You know better than that."
"Then what is it?"
He wasn't angry, wasn't even upset. His tone was soft, curious. He really wanted to understand. Still, though, she hesitated, debating where the line between concern and control was. She sighed. "It's just a feeling," she replied, her voice just as soft and sincere as his. "I don't think this one can be turned." A heavy silence settled at the end of the statement, and Mallory didn't rush to add, "You saw the look in her eye when you told her that a kid accidentally killed someone. She craves the violence, the pain. I don't think she'll be willing to give that up." She didn't say 'for you', but the unspoken words rang in the room just the same. An entire conversation passed between them in the silence, every twitch of muscle, every blink carrying meaning.
Finally, Dick cocked a smile, shaking his head. "What, you trying to keep your success rate up compared to the rest of us."
"That's not–"
"I know," he interrupted gently, and she let the denial die out on her lips. "But, you know," he continued, the familiar smile still playing on his face, "I trusted you when you started with Cameron."
She chuckled, shaking her head slightly. "You didn't know about him until I told you he wasn't a bad guy."
"Sure," he said, his patronizing tone making her roll her eyes.
She sobered, locking onto his blue eyes. "I do trust you, and your judgement," she assured him. "I just don't want to see you get hurt."