Hope you like the chapter, please review.
Mallory beat her fists against the walls closing in around her.
"You can fight this! You must fight this. Come back to us."
She heard Kaldur's voice, knew she had to get to him, but all she could see were the four red walls surrounding her. She slammed her shoulders against them until her arm broke from its socket, kicked and burned until exhaustion pulled at her vision. She couldn't do it. She couldn't break out.
"Mallory!"
Kaldur sounded worried. She sprang back to her feet. Kaldur didn't get worried. He was in danger, failure wasn't an option anymore. She reached into herself, tapping into the very core of her power, and threw open the floodgates. Energy surged through her, erupting from her pores like lava from a volcano. Her fire, her power filled the small space, pulsing against the walls in waves, weakening the structure. Then, with flames leaping from her red eyes, she tapped into her strength and threw one last punch.
The wall shattered beneath her fist, and suddenly she was back in her body, every nerve screaming, her fire dying down, and Kaldur was in front of her on the ground, her fist raised to make a fatal blow. Her eyes widened, and she landed and looked around, taking in her environment. They were in Gretchen's house, Kaldur and V'lana were there, and Dick…was fighting Nautica, not holding back. She looked back at Kaldur, and he nodded to her, glad to have her back. "Time to go."
She returned the nod and made a dive for Gretchen. She had to take her control off of Dick. "Let him go!" she demanded, fighting through the pain to build a fire big enough to be intimidating.
The woman just studied the fire with interest. "Well, my little lady, it seems your correction was not as complete as I would have thought. We can fix that, though." She lifted her eyes and opened her mouth.
Fear of going back to the pit clouded Mallory's vision, and she was already flaming up to fly away from the floor when the window suddenly shattered and a missile exploded between her and the old woman, throwing them apart from each other. Dick went limp again, and Kaldur grabbed their friend, V'lana opening a boomtube with the box.
"Mallory, come, now!" the Leaguer yelled.
She nodded and turned to follow, but movement at the window caught her eye. A small drone was flying away. She narrowed her eyes, trying to get a better glimpse of it in the dark, but it was gone.
"Mallory!"
She shook her head and ran after her friends, jumping into the light with Gretchen Good's threats chasing her. She landed hard on tile floor, and as soon as the adrenaline started to wear off, the pain came back. She curled up against the cool surface, her muscles tensing and relaxing over and over again, tears streaking down her face.
"Get them to medbay, now!" she heard Kaldur order, and then someone was lifting her up, every step they took sent pain pulsing through her body, but she couldn't tell them that. She couldn't say anything through the gurgling screams ripping out her throat. She felt something sharp prick her arm, something cold seeped into her veins, and the last thing she thought before the sweet release of unconsciousness was, "yeah, definitely not invulnerable."
She woke up some time later, the agony replaced with a gentle, manageable throbbing. She was in a bed, still in her black gear, and there was someone standing beside her. She blinked, clearing her vision, and saw Alex looking down at her.
"Morning, Sunshine," he greeted, his smile not quite chasing the worry out of his eyes.
"No," she croaked through a hoarse throat. "What happened?"
"Kaldur apparently rescued you from something close to Hell, and you were in so much pain, they had to sedate you. You've been asleep for four hours."
She looked out the window. The sun was just coming up, which meant they were in a different time zone now. "Where are we?"
"Gotham. They brought you to a facility, brought some of the team here, too."
"And you?"
"Well, duh. I'm the only actual doctor in the bunch." He took a breath, detaching her from the IV drip. "You were gone for over a day. I thought you were just on a mission, but..."
She nodded, then a grunt brought her attention to the other side of the room, where Dick was in another bed, sweat covering his body. He was groaning, tossing and turning, and clenching his teeth. Barbara was beside his bed, brushing his hair out of his face.
"You're all right, Dick," she told him, but there was a tremble in her voice that made Mallory doubt her words. He thrashed against her touch, and she looked up, eyes widening with fear. "Alex…!"
He was at his patient's side in a second, and Mallory pushed herself to her feet, ignoring the stiffness in her limbs as she went to be at her friend's side.
"His temperature's spiking. Help me strap him down so he doesn't hurt himself." The girls helped hold him down while Alex strapped him to the bed, then he adjusted the fluids going to his IV and pushed some medicine into the bag. "That'll help him sleep, hopefully," he said, more to himself than the girls.
The door flew open, and Bruce, Alfred, Damian, and Tim were there. "What happened?" Bruce demanded after one look at his son.
Mallory walked out the door, not needing to hear another recap of the night. Or, the last two nights she guessed, since apparently they were in the pit for twenty-four hours. When she left the medbay, she was met with the team, Kaldur, and Roy. They stood quietly for a moment, then she went to Kaldur and hugged him, fighting tears of relief and exhaustion. "Thank you," she said quietly.
"Always," he replied.
She shook her head, wiping the tears off her face with irritation. "I don't understand," she murmured, glancing back at the closed door. "The pit was pure torture, but I recovered fine. Why is Dick taking it so hard?"
"I wish I knew," the Atlantean replied.
The zeta tube came to life across the room, and Jason, Jess, and Arsenal appeared, the two former bats running to the medbay just as Bruce was coming out to give the team an update. "His brain is swelling, Alex says we need ice to bring his fever down."
Cameron hurried into the room, and Mallory got a glimpse of him coating Dick's body in ice before the door closed again. She hugged herself, regretting that she went on that mission, that she let Dick talk her into going into the house when she knew it didn't feel right. But she hadn't thought…she couldn't have imagined this.
The door stayed closed for close to an hour, then Alex emerged, exhaustion dimming the light in his eyes. "His temperature's down," he reported, leaning against the wall. "He's stable for the moment."
The group heaved a collective sigh of relief, and Mallory offered her boyfriend the coffee she'd been holding for the last ten minutes without ever taking a sip.
"Thanks, you're a lifesaver," he said, accepting it with a small smile.
"No," she said, resting her head on his shoulder, "I think that's your job." She didn't like the sigh that escaped him. "I'm trying, but I'm in way over my head here."
She closed her eyes, focusing only on Alex's breathing, his heartbeat against her ear. The door opened again, and everyone in the room tensed, looking at Bruce, Tim, and Barbara. "There's no change," Barbara said quickly. "The others are with him."
Bruce looked around the room, stopping when he saw Conner, Megan, and Kaldur standing together. "Megan, Kaldur, a word?"
The three bats, Megan and Kaldur walked across the room, and Mallory watched their progress intently, her eyes narrowing when they came to a stop behind the glass doors of the kitchen. Suddenly, pieces of the past seemed to click together in her mind, like finishing a puzzle that you didn't have a picture for. Batman leading the walkout, Dick bringing them along on 'unauthorized' missions, always having the intel they needed but could never find. Megan not wanting to tell them how she'd found the meta manufacturing plant. The drone out the window. She stiffened, stepping away from Alex.
"You," she said, stalking towards the kitchen. The doors opened and she blocked the group's path, her hands in fists at her sides. "You're all working together!" she yelled, capturing the attention of everyone in the room, but she didn't care. "Dick takes me on a rogue mission to Granny's house, where we're rescued by a member of the Justice League and a Bat drone?!" They started to speak all at once, all but Bruce, but she didn't let them finish. "It doesn't stop there. Or start there, for that matter. Dick 'I don't do teams' Grayson asking us to go on a solo mission to Markovia to stop the meta trafficking, then bailing as soon as we got back? He explained it all so logically, too. It was intel Donna provided to him from the UN, but it was really just the six of you coordinating, wasn't it? Or, no," her voice went quiet as she thought back even further. "You weren't alone, were you? You couldn't have pulled this off without someone else. Someone else in the League, someone in a different role. Clark never would have gone along with this, so…it was Diana, wasn't it? Of course. She was leading the space missions, Megan the team, Kaldur the League, Bruce the walkouts, Tim the team that left, and Dick, oh Dick. He had the Quitters under his thumb, and when that washed out, he made a new club." She looked back at Conner and Artemis, their faces going hard as they were realizing the same thing. "That's when he got us together. Think about it. We never saw any of the intel he based the missions on, he disappeared for days at a time. This was all them working together, Batman Incorporated at its finest." She shook her head, forcing herself to take a breath, so angry that she was genuinely scared of what she might do.
"Mallory."
She whipped around at the voice, her eyes widening slightly at Dick, nearly completely supported by Alfred and Jason, staring at her. He looked exhausted, and there was real regret in his eyes.
"I think the person you're really angry with, is me."
The love she still felt for him burned to ash in her chest, and she stormed over to him. "You know what, you're right. I thought you learned your lesson with 'dead' Artemis. How could you do this to us again? How could you betray us a second time? Or is this the third?"
"Mallory, you don't understand," Megan tried, stepping forward, trying to reach out to the redhead.
Mallory narrowed her eyes, stepping back and out of her reach. "No, I understand perfectly," she said calmly, her voice cool and low, looking back at Dick. "You lied to me, manipulated me, used me, for over a year, and for what? To follow up on my lead?"
"We did it to protect you," Kaldur said, but even he didn't believe that anymore.
She shook her head. "You did it to protect yourselves from having to explain what you were doing." She shook her head again, taking a step back. Her eyes found the zeta tube and she started for it.
"Wait," Kaldur said, starting to follow her, "this is not what we wanted, trust me–"
She spun around on her heel and he nearly ran into her at the sudden stop. "No!" she snapped, "Don't. There was a time I thought there was no one I trusted more than you, but I guess those days are over."
Her words stunned the group enough that they did not try to follow her again, and she didn't waste time punching in her coordinates. She didn't look back as the light sucked her away from the conflict, and the people she once counted as family.
