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rogueshadeaux · 6 months

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Chapter Twenty-Five — Fallout

It took me way too long to find my voice — I felt more disconnected from my body now than when I was freezing over. “When does it get easier?” I asked, voice croaky and barely there. “When do you stop feeling guilty over it?”

5,555 words [teehee] | 20 min read time | TRIGGER WARNINGS: violence, described spiraling, death, racism, illness

Brent pulled the sleeve of his sweater over the wrapping on his elbow as the phlebotomist, I’d discovered they’re called, filed away his blood samples in this tube holder, each one marked.

“Stress to them that I need the results as soon as they can get them,” Dr. Sims was talking off to the side with some technician. “The full report, in email.”

The tech muttered some agreement, clearly awestruck at who he was talking to, and was gone with the vials the moment they were handed off.

“So what’s a…microray?” Brent asked.

“Microarray,” Dr. Sims corrected. He was dressed differently today; business casual, collar of his dress shirt caught on the neckline of the wool sweater. “It’ll break down the sequencing of each individual chromosome and tell us if there’s any genetic malformations in your DNA,”

“And why would we need to know that?” Brent glanced over at Dad, who was sitting in the now-baren windowsill seats and looking out the window. Everything Dad and Brent had in this room was packed up, ready to go as soon as I got medicine from the in-hospital pharmacy.

Dad sighed hard, staring at the sky like it had all the answers for a moment longer before turning in place to face us. “There’s something I need to explain to you both,”

And then he began to tell us more about how Mom got sick.

She didn’t heal immediately after having us, but the doctors brushed it off; a Conduit has to be in decent shape to heal and she simply wasn’t. She lost a lot of blood in the abruption, and the blood transfusion had to be from someone without the Conduit gene as the enzymes are dangerous to normal people, so she may have been beyond drained out. That’s what they thought, at least. “They told us to give it a week,” Dad said, “That we’d probably see progress by then.”

They didn’t. Instead, Mom was discharged, and then back in the hospital nearly two days later for MRSA.

The Doctors contributed the infection to her weakened system, and brushed it off then as well. “When someone’s pregnant, their immune system is ass,” Dad tried to joke, with no real humor in his voice. “So they reset the healing clock on us. Told us to wait two weeks. Raising two newborns on my own when she was hospitalized was horrible, by the way,”

Two weeks came and went and her scar wasn’t gone. Her and Dad brought it up to her obstetrician, and they simply said to wait till her six week check-up. The amount of time it takes for someone normal to heal. “They did that again and again, a lot. Just told us to be patient and do it the human way,” Dad shook his head.

She began to bruise. She started getting bloody noses again. She had accidentally sliced a knuckle to the bone in a dishwashing accident and had to get stitches, which stuck around instead of dissolving almost immediately. “Healing was the first thing to disappear, and then her powers got weaker.”

Brent looked at me, fear in his eyes. “So does…does that mean Jean’s…”

“We aren’t sure yet.” Dr. Sims said. “That’s what the microarray is for. I was still in school when Fetch died — what was happening to her was what made me go in the first place. But that means we never found out what made her sick, and we’ve gotta rule out that it isn’t something genetic.”

“But didn’t you guys say it might be Augustine’s tar?” Brent asked.

“It might be,” Dad responded. “Which is where the second part of this conversation comes in.”

What the hell did that mean?

Dad took his jacket from his lap and chucked it on to the little backpack he had, hands going to his knees in its place. “Remember that holiday vacation I promised?”

What the hell did that mean? “Yeah?” I asked, glancing over at Brent with a cocked eyebrow. Was this like how people take out their dogs for the day before putting them down? Was I getting a ‘Best Day Ever’ before kicking the bucket? At least Brent seemed to be feeling the canine excitement; he was suddenly sitting perched at the end of my bed like he was waiting for Dad to ask him if he wanted to go for a walk.

Dad smiled slightly — though it looked more like a grimace. “Have either of you ever wanted to visit New Marais?”

Brent immediately cringed, and I couldn’t blame him. New Marais was…bad. Bad enough that Theresa’s mom basically fled from there after her dad was killed. I’m pretty sure it was the world capital for place most likely to get stabbed at. There were literal robbers poised at bridges, shooting the tires of cars on the highway to make them crash so they could pilfer everything from the vehicle. The only people that’d thrive in New Marais were criminals, extortionists, and other sorts of bloodsuckers. It wasn’t a pretty place, hadn’t been in literal decades; after the flood and the fascists, it had no allure. Unless you liked French colonial structures and being assaulted.

Even the architecture couldn’t convince Brent; he looked at me, and I knew we were thinking the same thing. “Why, uh…” I drew off. “Why New Marais?”

Dad wasn’t surprised at our apprehension — in fact, he seemed to agree with it. “There’s someone there that can help us out. Knows a bit about tar powers — but we have to be there to get answers. He’s outside of the city center, from what I understand, but it’s…”

“New Marais,” Brent said distastefully.

Dad nodded. “New Marais.”

“That’s still Louisiana,” I said, “That’s gotta be a couple hour flight, right?”

Dad grimaced. “Actually, it’ll be a…three day drive…”

“I’m not allowed to fly.” Dr. Sims said from his place, yet again, by the sink. “Not in planes, at least. I don’t plan on flying that far with my powers, either.”

“You’re coming with us?” Brent asked, an undertone of astonishment in his voice.

Dr. Sims nodded. “What’s happening to your sister is something I plan to see through. I didn’t get to…to help Fetch in time. I’m going to do it this time. It’s what she’d want.”

The way he talked, you’d think he and Mom were age-old friends. How well did they know each other?

The doctor came up with prescriptions, pain medicine and antibiotics and something else I couldn’t pronounce, giving directions I knew I’d forget the moment I left this room. Dad knew this too, saying, “I’ll put alarms on my phone — oh,” he reached down to the backpack, fiddling with the thing and pulling something out. “Put them on yours too.”

He tossed my phone towards my broken arm, forgetting I couldn’t exactly reach out and catch it with it held against my chest in the sling.

Dr. Sims slipped out at some point on promises that he’d be right back — and he was. Almost within three minutes. He was a bit winded, looking past Brent and I as he helped me figure out how to put on my jacket to look straight at Dad, saying, “We’ve got an issue,”

Dad’s face immediately got steely hard, and he stood, shoulders squared. “What’s up?”

“Not that kind of—” Dr. Sims cut off, “Well, it could be. Protest.”

Dad growled. “How the hell do they know we’re here?”

“Someone probably slipped something to the media,” Dr. Sims crossed the room in a second and was at the window, looking down at the parking lot a few floors below. “Might have seen you. Looks like they’re congesting the main entrance though, so we can probably slip out back. Problem is, none of us can get to the parking garage without them seeing,”

“It’s just a few protestors,” Brent shrugged. “We can get past them.”

“It’s…” Dr. Sims trailed off. “It’s more than a few.”

“One of us could go move the truck—” Dad started.

“They’ll just chase us down.”

“Is there a roof entrance?” Brent asked. “Maybe we can leave a different way, come back for the truck?”

Dad looked at him like he was an idiot. “I’m not letting your sister climb a hundred feet in the air when she can’t make the landing.”

I managed to balance the jacket on my shoulders, saying, “We should just go. Brent’s right, we’ve walked past them dozens of times before. There’s probably cops monitoring, we should be fine.”

Dad looked like he wanted to do anything, literally anything, except that. “If they get violent, Jean…” he warned.

Oh, God. Don’t tell me he’s turning into this sort of parent. “I can still defend myself, Dad.” I insisted. He wasn’t going to start keeping me in bubble wrap, right?

Dr. Sims actually came to my rescue. “We’ll all be there, she should be fine.”

“We can even escort her,” Brent added, amused. “Like some c-list celebrity.”

Dad bit at his cheek, unsure — but also entirely out of options. “Fine, okay,” He said. “We’ll move quick. Eugene, think you can guard Jean while she gets in the truck? I’ll cover Brent.”

Well, at least I wasn’t the only one he was being overprotective of. “Sure,” Dr. Sims said.

They found a formation when we stood in the elevators, just in case some people made it into the lobby of the hospital; Brent and Dr. Sims stood in front of me, flanking each side for space while Dad stayed behind me. A full cover of large, powerful bodyguards to make up for the fact that I was now weak. It felt so demeaning. I was some weak spot in the family now, a risk that they’d have to mind at all times.

As the elevator doors opened up into a hallway, I could hear them, a dozen voices, maybe even bordering on a hundred, all chanting angrily — although I couldn’t make out what. Brent cast an unsure look over his shoulder, asking, “Maybe we should stay a while?”

Dad’s face was steeled. “There’s no point.” he said plainly, a sudden shift from his hesitancy before. “The sooner we get out of here, the better.”

Still, as we passed an electronic map in the hall, Dad’s hand came out and drained it of all imagery, matching Dr. Sims in power.

The lobby was huge and fancy and white, with some big fountain fixture in the middle, its white noise barely doing anything to silence the voices. The windows, though, were big enough to show how many people there were. There were at least a hundred, all being forced to the sides by police so that the actual entrance to the hospital would be clear for patients and visitors, with three separate news vans recording the tension. “Fucking hell,” Dad muttered behind me.

“At least there’s cops?” I offered, not entirely sure that was a good thing. Rarely was.

“Stay looking forward, stay walking, don’t engage,” Dad listed off behind me. “You hear me, Brent? Don’t engage—”

“Yeah, yeah, I heard you,” Brent muttered, going a bit red.

The foyer of the hospital had a line of police whose eyes I avoided; just gotta stay in step and keep moving forward. Easy enough.

All of that assurance disappeared when we stepped outside to what was moments away from becoming an angry mob. But what I wasn’t prepared for was to be confronted with images of me; a grainy picture of me trying to get the huge concrete rock to not hit the helicopter, my Linus Pauling yearbook picture. The signs were all littered with words, accusations: Shot out of the sky on the ones with the footage, a sign with just the number 137 on it, the 7 written on a sticky note. An update on the death count.

Me. They were protesting me.

And as we stepped further into the light, the protestors zeroed in on me, and the general yelling became targeted insults that somehow melted into white noise and also stood out to me all at once. “Dirty Bio-terrorist!” one person yelled.

“There’s over fifteen thousand unemployed, I hope you’re happy!”

“You killed my brother!”

“We’re homeless now!”

“Someone oughta hold your head underwater!”

I didn’t realize I was frozen in place until Dad’s arm wrapped around me, and he began to roughly steer me through the slight divot in the crowd Dr. Sims and Brent’s bodies had made. “C’mon, Jean,” he muttered, voice as stiff as could be.

There was no getting through the crowd here; the flow of the protestors followed us like what I imagine wolves hunting elk did. But was it fair to paint them as the predators when they were the real victims here? If the Big Bad Wolf was on trial for the murder of those pigs, could you blame other swine for wanting to swallow him whole?

And that wasn’t an exaggeration; the crowd seemed to push closer in until they were claustrophobically close, until the heat of their insults warmed my skin. There was a shout, louder than the rest, and suddenly Brent was slamming himself into my side, arm steeled and shield up and I stumbled and yelled in pain. Something crashed against it with a musical ping, and a rather large decorative rock from the piles in the medians fell between his feet.

“The fuck, dude?” Brent shouted, swiping the rock up from his feet. He looked about ready to chuck it back, trying to get a good eye on whoever threw it.

“Things are getting out of hand,” Dr. Sims warned.

Dad tucked me closer into his side and walked faster, repeating under his breath again and again, “Stay looking forward, keep walking,” as if he was moments away from also going after people.

Brent stayed posted on my other side with his shield up all the way until we got to the entrance of the parking garage, people filtering around the entrance that was currently occupied by a few cars trying to either find parking or pay for it. Only protestors, though — all of those cops that had congregated the entrance? They were nowhere to be seen. The one running interference now was Dr. Sims, who stepped to the side, pushed us all into the stairwell, and then lifted his hands, blue light beginning to swirl around them.

“Eugene, what the hell are you doing?” Dad asked, pushing me up a step.

“Buying us some time. Go!” He demanded. “I’ll catch up.”

He waved those arms, and the air in front of him began to turn blue and solidify. Parts of it went silver like Brent, other parts stayed blue, and it began to take on a humanoid form when Dad pushed me again, forcing me up the stairwell.

Brent was in the lead, taking two at a time and looking back to watch me struggle to climb. God, the cut in my side was throbbing with each rough breath. Dad stayed behind me chanting encouraging reassurances, like “You’ve got this, Jeanie,” and “Last flight of stairs, c’mon.”

Thank god — I didn’t think I could go much farther.

Dad rushed us to his truck, opening the back door on the drivers’ side and forcing us both in there. “Brent, cover your sister for me. I’ll get us out of here,”

“Shouldn’t we wait for Dr. Sims?” Brent asked, crawling in awkwardly after me.

“He’ll catch up,” he reassured us.

Wasn’t sure how someone was supposed to catch up to a moving vehicle, but okay.

Brent’s shield was gone, but both arms were steeled now, covering my head and neck as he practically forced me to duck into his lap. I couldn’t see anything that was going on besides the shifts in light, but God, I could hear those protestors, louder than before and seemingly arguing with something. Did Dr. Sims…start a fight?

I peeked up from Brent’s lap just as the light shifted to see the protestors trying to fight their way into the parking garage against…eight tall, armored, blushed-blue winged angels.

“What the fuck?” I whispered, watching these angels levitate a mere ten inches off of the ground, refusing to part for the protestors — and cars — trying to come in.

“Get ready,” Dad warned us. Brent forced my head back down.

Dad honked the horn twice and there was a sudden collection of shouts from the protestors before Dad revved the engine and peeled out of there, throwing the truck so roughly right that I left Brent’s lap and nearly flew into the floorboard. There were more shouts, insults and curse words thrown our way that were drowned out by the truck’s roar and distance as Dad sped out of the area.

I stayed down for three minutes before Dad sighed hard and called back, “You’re good now, Jeanie.”

I could barely move. Those people, nearly a hundred people, came to the hospital to protest because I was there. Because of what I did.

“You okay?” Brent asked me.

I just stayed staring at the rock on the floorboard, the one aimed for me. How could I be okay?

We were well on the highway and nearly to the connection bridge that crossed to the other side of the Sound when the truck suddenly lurched as something slammed into the truck bed. Dad cursed as we both yelped, swerving in his lane so hard that the people beside us honked furiously as Brent and I spun around to see what happened.

Dr. Sims was in the bed face down, the groan audible from where we were despite the ambiance of rolling down the highway at 65 miles an hour.

“What the fuck was that?” Dad demanded, head whipping back to look at us and looking straight just as quickly as he moved to the right lane, slowing down.

“It’s uh,” Brent cocked his head. “It’s Dr. Sims? But he isn’t looking too good…”

He wasn’t looking anything. He hadn’t moved, face plastered in the lateral grooving of the truck bed.

Dad moved over until he was on the shoulder of the highway, putting the car in park and hopping out to check on Dr. Sims. “You good, Eugene?” he asked.

“Had to…couldn’t find you. Made an angel…fly me around. Out,” I could hear him groan through the window. “You’d think…I’d know how to land by now,”

“Well if your powers gave out, you couldn’t exactly stop it.” Dad shook his head. “C’mon, get in the truck,”

This was met by a loud groan that lasted for at least thirty seconds before Dr. Sims even tried to move a muscle.

Dr. Sims was now comfortably in the passenger's side seat of Dad’s truck, thanking him like a man parched when Dad sacrificed his phone for draining. “Does that not break it?” Brent asked.

Dad shook his head, glancing at us in the rearview mirror as Dr. Sims recovered. “Nah. Kinda just makes it short circuit for a while, but it’ll work again soon.”

Dr. Sims leaned his head back on the headrest, gasping out at the relief of the drain. “Thanks Del,”

“Sure. At least you have good aim,”

We were returning to Salmon Bay, but only for a moment; we were going to pack, maybe eat, and then start the thirty-nine hour drive to Louisiana. A multi-state trip that Dr. Sims and Dad began trying to plan as soon as Dad’s phone turned back on. “So it’s only a ten mile difference if we go right at Salt Lake City and take the highway to Denver,” Dr. Sims hummed. “Cuts through Wyoming,”

“We could make it a road trip?” Brent offered. “Yellowstone – could go to a Broncos game—”

“We’re…crunched for time, bud,” Dad said, casting a quick glance at me in his rearview mirror.

Right — I was the ticking time bomb now, the arsenal no one wanted around ‘cause it’d ruin days and maybe lives. I was holding the cool rock in my hand now that was aimed for my head, if what Brent chattered off at some point was true. I couldn’t even blame whoever threw it, not if they were impacted by what I did.

I was the cause of their discontent. They weren’t there to picket Dad or Dr. Sims, or Conduits in general with its two biggest leaders in the same place — but me. Not only for the deaths — people were screaming about losing their homes, their jobs. I may have killed one hundred and thirty-four — no, one hundred and thirty-seven, now — but I ruined the lives of so many more.

How many people were homeless now? How many people would have to scramble to live, to make money?

Salmon Bay wasn’t hurt, at least. That’s really all I could cling on to, was that they seemed relatively untouched. The Longhouse was roped off, and there were spots in the concrete that had been ripped up, but the wood chips and body were all wiped away.

Betty’s baby blue Beetle was in the house’s driveway, and it seemed the moment we turned down the street she was already racing out of the house, at Dad’s driver’s side in an instant and nearly yanking me out of the truck. “Oh, Regina!” She cooed, missing how I winced in pain as she gripped me tight around the abdomen. “You’re alright!”

Dad caught the grimace, gently peeling Betty off of me like you would a bandaid off of a toddler. “Okay, give her some room,” he chuckled under his breath.

Betty stepped back, shifting her hands to my shoulders and looking me over. She glanced over my shoulder at Dad with that look, that pathetically sad one that people reserved for children’s graves and oil-slick ducklings before wiping it clear off of her face and saying, “You need to eat! Come on, I made lunch.”

There was no convincing Betty I wasn’t hungry; she actually hovered near me until I took a bite of the grilled chicken she made before finally sauntering off, satisfied. The house was different; there was a new side table shoved in beside the couch, a television on the floor next to a propped-up mounting system. The kitchen had been entirely unpacked and had a bunch of unopened bulk cleaning supplies on the counters.

“Your family was meant to be the stars of the Potlatch,” Betty chimed in at some point. “A Potlatch is to share fortune among the tribe, and that’s what we planned to do for you all so that moving in would be more comfortable. Furniture, linens, the like — there were so many in the reservation that found something in good quality to donate. While you were…” She drew off, hesitating before going with, “In the hospital, I called in some favors and had everything moved in. In fact, I want to show you your room when you’re done!”

“We’re practically all moved in, now,” Dad added. “‘Course there’s probably a bunch of little things we’re forgetting, but for now, this is gonna be home.”

Yet another big change.

“Speaking of moving, though.” Dad added, taking a moment to chew on his food before continuing, “I found something when I was going through your stuff, Brent.”

Brent froze, fork midway to his mouth, and the blush from the cold outside almost immediately left his face as he paled. “Oh, really?” He tried to play cool.

Dad snorted, not ignorant to what he was doing. “Relax, you’re not in trouble. Not big trouble, anyways. But c’mon, man, why did you think having weed in a lawyer's house was a good idea? You know how deep of shit you would have gotten into if I found it before all of this?”

Brent blinked. “You’re…not mad?”

Dad barked out a laugh. “You really think I wasn’t smoking weed at your age? But Brent, son — it’s legal. You couldn’t wait till you were eighteen?”

Brent was still absolutely baffled at how this conversation was going, and I’m sure if we could hear the cogs in his brain, they’d be grinding so hard against each other that the sound would make us all cringe. “I’m…sorry?” he asked, not sure where he was supposed to go with this.

Dad shrugged. “Well, it doesn’t matter much, now. You have a higher metabolism, so getting high off of…regular stuff won’t be easy. That does not mean to try anything harder.” He stressed. “But if you plan on using dab pens, get ready to have to pull that fucker for a good eight minutes—”

“Delsin!” Betty chastised, Dr. Sims stifling a laugh from the couch.

Once they wound down and Dad mumbled his apologies, I spoke up, asking, “When do we leave?”

Dad hummed, thinking. “Tonight, probably. Less traffic, less people. We can all take turns too, since you two have your permit — well, you probably can’t Jean, but you could,” he directed towards Brent. “Eugene and I are gonna finish deciding which route we’re taking, and we’ll go after everyone packs.” He looked over his shoulder at Dr. Sims. “You’re sure you have everything you need?”

Dr. Sims shrugged. “For the most part. My laptops are still in your truck, and my go bag has enough supplies for a week without access to, say, washers or something. I don’t need much more.”

“I think I’m done,” I said, standing and abandoning the meal that was barely dug into. “I’m gonna go down to my room, start packing.”

“Oh! Let me show you where everything is—” Betty began, but I shook my head.

“It’s okay,” I assured her. “I can find it all. Kinda wanna lay down, too.”

Betty hesitated mid-step, shooting a look over to Dad, who seemed just as concerned. “You sure, Jeanie?” he asked.

I hated how they all were looking at me. “Yeah, Dad. I’m sure,” I said as lightly as I could, trying not to let my annoyance come through.

Dad slowly nodded, eyes not leaving mine. He was trying to analyze my poker face for something. “Alright. I’ll come check on you after we finalize a plan,”

Check on me. Like I couldn’t be left alone for too long without fear that I’d drop dead. “Yeah, sure,” I muttered, already turning around and heading down the hall. I ran away from their concern as quickly as I could, disappearing down into the basement and closing the door behind me, a small barrier between us all.

Betty really had put work into making the room feel less like squatting underneath a bridge and like an actual room; the mattress was now on one of those beds with storage cabinets underneath, my art chest sitting at its foot on the ground. There was a short, whitish dresser on one wall and a desk on the other, which I walked towards while pulling the rock from the protest out of my pocket, setting it on top of a bunch of random unopened school supplies.

Right! On top of everything, I was still in high school. Because things couldn’t get worse.

Well, no, they could. I knew exactly how they could, and how I could avoid it — but I didn’t. Why should I? I plopped down on the bed, threw off my arm sling, wrapped myself up in that woven blanket with Salmon in the middle and pulled out my phone.

Was it responsibility, curiosity, or just self-loathing that led me to wanting to look up more about the flood in Seattle? Probably all three. I needed to see what I did, how it impacted everyone because…didn’t I have a duty of care here? Didn’t I have a responsibility to care?

It would have been so much easier if I didn’t.

There was some footage from the fight from that helicopter, and that was really the only place I found anyone in my defense; the reporter, cameraman and pilot all lived, thank God, and it seemed like there were people in agreement that that was my initial plan. That’s where it ended, though.

There was a tag specifically for the tsunami everywhere, littered with people asking for donations to online fundraisers and if anyone knew which amnesty hotels still had rooms available. I hadn’t considered there would still be people missing too, unaccounted for in the chaos of recovery; .pdfs with faces and names and case numbers all littered the tag with family and friends begging them to come home. And the vitriol.

Another Rowe, ruining lives, one said.

There was a picture of my mom with a 289 above her, the image beside it of me at that art expo I won last year, side by side with the judges and Dad, 134 over it. The entire thing was titled apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree.

There were already politicians using what happened as their campaign fodder, speaking of how Conduits cannot be trusted to keep civilization safe if they’re able to live in it. “One Conduit has a bad day, and the body count is in the hundreds. A juvenile Conduit just killed over a hundred people in Seattle, injured thousands, and disrupted the lives of over seven hundred thousand people. This is a child who goes to school with your children, who doesn’t have control over their powers yet — what are we supposed to do when the next Conduit with absolutely no control over their abilities messes up? How can we trust we’re safe when these people don’t even seem to have control over themselves?”

Gotta get a new car because Tiger Lily flooded my brand new Mazda, one complained.

It’s gonna take more than identification, another tweeted. Pocahontas was stuck on a reservation and still managed to attack a big city. Biterrorists need to be carted off to some island.

He didn’t even spell Bio-terrorist right.

I could barely find the energy to get angry at the racism — how could I when the next post would be one for a funeral, or a wake, or just begging for someone, anyone, to tell the poster if their family member was alive?

And God, the obituaries. There was something bleak and horrifying about seeing one for a child that knocked the wind out of me so hard I began to hyperventilate to get it back. This was worse than the seven year old at COLE. There were dozens of children, old people and middle aged ones and people my age, barely adults. So many people died.

Waves began roaring in my ears as my breathing picked up, and while I was still looking straight at my phone screen, none of it made sense anymore. The words looked like nothing more than scribbles a child would do. That a child should be doing, not being lowered six feet into the ground or cremated or…

Oh, God, I couldn’t breathe.

I drew my legs into my chest and squeezed my eyes shut until they felt welded together, struggling to get in enough oxygen to feel like it was reaching my lungs. Fuck. A hundred and thirty seven people. All of this, all of this, was my fault. If I didn’t get caught by that Akuran, none of this would have happened. No one would be dead, our lives wouldn’t have been upended, maybe I’d even be able to heal without worrying why it was wrong — because if I didn’t know I was Conduit, I wouldn’t even feel like anything was wrong! My cast pressing into my chest wouldn’t feel like the squeeze of an anvil threatening to crush me whole. None of this would be happening, but it was, and it was my fault. My fault. My—

The bed moved, and someone settled in behind me, hands wrapping around the wrist dug into my hair and forcing it down to my chest, crossing it and grabbing my other arm the same way. I was gently leaned back, straightened from my curled form and pulled into a chest, and could barely hear Dad through the tinnitus in my ears. “You’re having a panic attack, Jean. I need you to breathe,” he commanded softly. “Use your stomach, not your chest.”

I tried to follow his instructions but it seemed to take two minutes just to get a neuron in my brain to spark hard enough to adjust how I breathed. Dad stayed there holding me, enveloping my little form, keeping me from doing anything else but concentrate on breathing.

My ears stopped ringing but began to sound like they were stuffed full of cotton balls, everything far away. Even as Dad’s soothing voice broke through my harsh hiccups, it felt like I was listening to him from underwater. His arms slackened their hold on mine, one leaving to pick up my phone as he whispered, “Oh, Jean,” before closing out the picture of a 10 year old’s obituary.

He shifted to my side, pulling me in so my ear was just over his heart. “I’m not sure,” he sighed. “It hasn’t gotten better for me.”

#infamous erosion #infamous second son #infamous #delsin rowe #Fetch Walker #sucker punch productions #eugene sims #who's busy being on the verge of passing out #We love him for it tho #YOU KNOW WHAT'S FUNNY #I WROTE THIS CHAPTER BEFORE MUSKS X BULLSHIT SO IDEK IF TWITTER WOULD BE AROUND IN 2037 #pretend it was bought out by Yahoo and abandoned or smthn idk

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hailsatanacab · 5 months

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Family Dinners - dpxdc

"Holy shit, you're Bruce Wayne!" Danny gaped, jabbing a finger at the man sitting at the head of the table.

The bustling dining room goes silent as everyone turns to look at him.

"Danny, who did you think was going to be here?" Tim asks, disbelief plain in his voice and Danny feels his face flush red.

"Sorry, I, uh, I guess I just never put it together. Tim Drake-Wayne. Wayne Manor. It, uh, makes sense now." He laughs sheepishly and scrubs at his neck before slumping back down into his chair.

"Well," Tim says with an indulgent sigh, "at least I know you're not just friends with me for my connections."

"Yeah, I'm really sorry, I just never thought about it, I guess."

Danny sinks lower as everyone around him laughs. Come to dinner, he said, the food is the best, he said, ignore the family, he said. Danny really wishes he'd listened to Tim and just ignored them—almost as much as he's regretting accepting the offer in the first place—but... he's having dinner with Batman.

Ancients, that's so weird!

The last time he saw Batman was in the future and, suffice it to say, it was not going well. There hadn't really been time for family dinners there.

Wait. Family dinners?

He peers around the table, openly gawking at everyone as it all clicks into place.

"Everything alright, Danny? Now realising who everyone else is?" Tim asks with a roll of his eyes.

"Uh... something like that..." Danny mumbles as everyone laughs again.

From further down the table, the smallest Wayne scoffs and clicks his tongue.

"I thought you said he was smart, Drake?"

"So, you all do it, too, then?" he asks, ignoring the jibe. Danny's only a little bit jealous as he thinks of how much easier they must have it, how much easier it'd be if his family had been on his side, too. "You all work together?"

"Nah," Dick says from across the table with a brilliant grin. "Tim's the only one that works with Bruce, we all have different jobs. I'm a police officer in Bludhaven."

"Disgusting." Danny blurts out without thinking—because seriously, what kind of self-respecting vigilante would also be a police officer?—before clapping a hand over his mouth. "Sorry."

The whole table laughs again, the loudest being the blonde girl a few spaces down from Dick. Look, Danny wasn't really paying attention to names when they were all paraded in front of him. Dick only gets remembered because his name is a joke.

Come on, Danny, recover!

"That's, uh, not what I meant, though."

"Oh?" Dick asks, cocking his head slightly to the side. Is it Danny's imagination or does his smile tense slightly?

"Yeah, I mean like, you know, in costume. It must make it so much easier to have everyone together like this."

"Costume? What do you mean?"

Yeah, Danny's not imagining it, everyone tenses up at that. It's really only now that he's realising that this probably isn't how he should bring up that he knows about their... night time activities. In fact, he probably shouldn't be bringing it up at all.

"Uuhhh..." Danny looks wildly around the table as he continues making his stupid noise. Think, think, think! There must be a way out of this!

"Danny?" Tim asks, looking concerned.

"Oh, Ancients, this isn't how I wanted it to go at all," he mutters, slipping even further into his chair. He's almost on the floor now and he so, so wishes it could just swallow him up.

His real first meeting with Batman was meant to be cool! He had planned to be Phantom, maybe save them from a tight spot, prove his worth as a mysterious and powerful ally as thanks for the help Batman gave him in the future.

"Danny, what are you talking about?" Tim starts tugging on his sleeve in an attempt to pull him back up from his pit of despair.

Eventually, Danny relents and sits up straighter, hiding his face in his hands and whining all the while.

"I'm sorry, I just didn't expect him to be here and it threw me off so now I look stupid and it's so embarrassing!" he wails, flailing his arms wide. "Why wouldn't you warn me that Batman was your adopted dad, Tim? Couldn't you have let me know?"

"I'm sorry, what? Danny are you alright? There's no way Bruce can be Batman, look at him!"

"Yeah," the blonde girl laughs from the bottom of the table, "look at him! That's a wet noodle of a man! Batman can actually do things, B is incapable of pretty much everything."

"Thank you, Stephanie," Bruce sighs, massaging his forehead.

It's... Those are the first words Danny's heard Batman say since everything went down and it's enough to knock him out of his embarrassment.

It's really good to hear his voice again. Especially now, when it's strong and healthy and full of personality—even if that personality is little more than a tired father right now—far better than how it had been, at the end.

Danny sits up, back straight, and grins. He's got this. He remembers it perfectly. Some people count sheep to fall asleep, Danny repeats his mantra to be certain that he'll never forget it.

"Gamma alpha upsilon tau iota mu epsilon, 42, 63, 28, 1 colon 65 dash 9."

Once again, the whole table falls into silence.

"Holy shit..." breathes the other D name (Duke? Danny's pretty sure he's Signal) from opposite Stephanie. "Isn't that...?"

"The time travelling code." The littlest Wayne says stiffly. "We have met in the future?"

"That's not just the time travelling code, Dami." Dick says, looking between Danny and Bruce. "That's the family time travelling code."

Danny's grin freezes in place.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"1 colon 65 dash 9." Dick explains, still flicking between him and Bruce. "It means you've been adopted into the family and we should all treat you as such, no questions asked."

"Tell you what, I'm about to ask a question." Danny says, dumbstruck. "You just told me it was a code to identify time travellers, not anything about being adopted! What the hell, B?"

Bruce looks about as shellshocked as Danny feels.

"We must have been close," he says finally, after opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water a few times.

"No! Not that close!" Danny reels back, taking a deep breath ready to refute it all, but... "Well, I mean, you found me when I first got stuck, and you helped me get better despite being... And then we fought together against the, uh, bad guy, before he, um, he... before you couldn't."

An uncomfortable beat passes while they all pick up on what Danny tried so hard not to say.

"So, you're not from the future, then, you travelled there and came back?" Tim asks, breaking the tension and leaning forward with a glint in his eye.

"Yeah, it was a whole end of the world thing, but don't worry about it," Danny says with a hand wave, "It's all kosher now, won't ever happen."

"What did happen?"

"Seriously, don't worry about it, we cool."

"How long in the future was it?"

"About ten years? You were pretty spry for an old man, B," Danny laughs, wishing they'd get off the topic of what happened and get back to the adoption bit.

Everyone shares degrees of a cautious smile as they relax out of the shock, and Dick—whose grin is the biggest—says, "No wonder you got the family code, you're already riffing on him like one of us. How long were you there for?"

"A week, before I managed to get back to my present and stop him then."

"A week? Jeez, B, that has to set some kind of record, seriously."

"Oh!" Danny says, sitting bolt upright and blinking in surprise before pointing at Dick and bouncing in his seat. "You're Nightwing!"

"What?"

"That's exactly what Nightwing said when Batman told me the code! Makes so much more sense now."

Dick laughs and claps his hands, delighted.

"You were not formally adopted?" The grumpy small one—Dami?—asks, his face pinched.

"I didn't even know I was informally adopted."

"And your parents? Are they alive or dead?"

"Damian, stop—"

"They were dead in the future, but they're alive now." Danny says, looking down. He fiddles with the tablecloth, twisting the fabric around his fingers as he fights down the pang of sadness that he always feels when he thinks of them now. He forces a bright smile on his face and hopes it doesn’t look too strained. "I just, uh, can't talk to them much, anymore."

"Damian," Dick warns, "1 colon 65 dash 9. Treat them as family, no questions asked."

"This is Damian treating him as family, the little turd has no manners." Tim scoffs, rolling his eyes, but he gently bumps shoulders with Danny to knock him out of his funk. Danny can't help but send him a watery smile.

"I have the most exemplary manners, Drake, unlike some people." Damian spits, crossing his arms with a pout. "I was merely ascertaining his status to see how he could possibly fit into the family."

"I know this is all a bit sudden, Danny," Bruce smiles, ignoring Damian and reaching out to lay a warm hand on his arm, "for all of us. But if I felt strongly enough to give you that code after spending a week with you in the future, then you are more than welcome in this family, if you so choose it. I think I can speak for all of us when I say we'd like to get to know you a bit more."

"I know a threat when I hear it, Bruce." Danny snorts. "But, yeah, I get it. I'm sorry this is all so weird, it really wasn't how I wanted to find you again, but... I'm glad I did."

"So are we, Danny." Dick says, with a warm smile. "And formally or not, 1 colon 65 dash 9 means you're family. Welcome to the fun house! No take backs or refunds, sorry. You're stuck with us."

#dpxdc #dcxdp #dc x dp #dp x dc crossover #batpham #hailsatanacrab🦀🦀writes #look. this has been in my mind for so long guys so long - and idk if its canon that the batfam have codes for time travel situations or what #but i feel like ive seen it before and if its not canon it should be #so here - how i think that would be funny to go down #i have so many thoughts about TUE and its place in a dpxdc crossover like holy shit there's so many ways it can go!!#i have another wip in the works thats kinda similar to this but with superman and i cannot wait to work on it again #there are so many ways i wanted this to go but i just couldnt get there - i wanted to keep it on the shorter side but like #perhaps ill have to expand #i just love the idea that like. theres a stranger at your table who knows you and knows you well. who knows the secret that youd die to keep #there's a stranger at your table and he says something and you know he's family. you know you're strangers but now...#now you have to be something more #oh man theres so many juicy ways it can go and I KNOW I DID NONE OF THEM #i want to write this whole plot again and make it angstier #(me with everything)#anyway! sorry love you all hope you enjoy it!!

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