Identity

The snow was coming down heavier as we drove home. This was both pretty and kind of worrisome. I usually love driving in the snow; it feels more private, but in my current state of paranoia, privacy seemed like isolation, and the snow would increase the number of emergency calls, delaying responses. So that was a nice thought to be going home with.

I was grateful to pass through the gates and up the drive. "You can relax," AI Tony said. "Just remember, Lys, you're not helpless. You've learned a lot since the kidnapping attempt, and Barnes will have a few new tricks up his sleeve, I can pretty much guarantee it. Your home and the estate are as secure as we could make it; the defenses and alarm systems have redundancy built in, different power sources, and they're hard to discover. So you can feel secure. Tony's at work finding ways to keep you and your family safe." The little avatar made me smile; a whole lot of very competent people were on it, not just Tony.

When I got in, Mom swooped in for a big hug, holding me tightly. She tucked a lock of hair behind my ear after letting me go, studying me carefully. "Bucky's on his way. He wants to talk to you, possibly teach you a few new moves, so why don't you go up and change, get ready?" I took the opportunity to trudge upstairs, get a grip on myself, then changed into comfortable pants and a nice warm long-sleeved fleece shirt, putting on shoes with grippy soles. I puttered around my room a bit, straightening things, closing the draperies even though I didn't have to. Touching the good fabrics was calming. I took off downstairs to the batcave and warmed up, which was where Uncle Bucky found me.

He took some time to run me through some scenarios where I could show him that I remembered what he'd taught me. "Good, Lys," he said approvingly. "Stark said you dislocated his shoulder. It's good that you didn't hesitate to act, but we need to talk about threat assessment more so you take out only the people who deserve it." He considered this. "Not that Tony's not occasionally irritating, but..." I nodded, smiling slightly, and we did work on that. He also taught me some of what Uncle Steve would probably say were dirty tricks, but he's huge, juiced with superhero serum, with extraordinary combat experience. I'm little and new at this, so I was happy to learn how to punch a kidney. Then there were exercises in threat assessment that I was to use every day; assessing crowds, locating exits and escape routes, determining if anybody looked like they were a real target. The techniques weren't hard or time consuming, and Uncle Bucky said that it was a matter of making it a habit. "Now, there's also time for something new," he said, nodding. "You could learn how to use this" got tangled up with my "Could you teach me how to use this?"

He held out a collapsible metal baton. I held out the knife that Mom had brought me back from Themyscira, the gift of the General Aunt Antiope.

"Well." He stared at the knife. "I was not expecting that."

"Mom brought it back from the island the last time she went back," I said. "Her aunt the general gave it to me, she said it was dangerous here. I thought she was overreacting, but..."

"Do you really think you could kill another human being, Lys?" He cocked his head and studied me.

"I won't know for sure until or unless I get to that point," I said slowly. "But for my continued health and safety, yeah, I think so, against a bad person. I know Grandpa Bruce would disagree, he's said so all my life, but he's not me. I'm not tall and while I'm pretty strong for a girl my age thanks to the sports I play, I'm not stronger than most males. And the Joker is malignant; from the little Jinx said, he's even worse now. I don't want to be in his line of fire at all, but him or me? I can do that math with no trouble." Uncle Bucky smiled very slightly.

"Hopefully you'll never have to find out, honey, but that's a practical attitude to have and it could save your life." So he showed me some real basic knife... skills? The downside is that you have to be close to use a knife, but the upside is that virtually nobody would expect me to have a knife, much less use one. I'm not a batperson, I'm in the Red Cross club and the National Honor Society, for heaven's sake. But there I was, learning where the best targets were, how far in I'd have to push the knife, and how to deal with ribs. From my perspective, it would be optimal if the person I wanted to stab would take his shirt off, but you can't really expect that, so I had to visualize and estimate where bone was. And expanded my threat assessment to minimize the chances of my knife being used against me. He did teach me how to use the collapsible baton too, using one of the practice dummies. That was strangely cathartic. But if I had to use any of these methods, I'd be playing for keeps, not to disarm or keep somebody at bay. He didn't sugarcoat that at all and it gave me a lot to think about.

At dinner, Mom had briefed Deri and reassured us both that steps were being taken for our protection and that of others. Dad wasn't home, still working on the problem with the others. Captain Gordon hadn't been pleased to learn that the Joker wasn't in fact dead, but knowing this before there was some calamity was huge, and he could put the resources of his team on the case. Jinx and his parents were going into protective custody at least until there was more information, so he'd be skipping school. I knew that he could do his classwork remotely, so he wouldn't get behind, and it would keep his agile mind engaged. He'd be given a new communicator and number, but we wouldn't get that until it was safe for him and us. We could still email, though; the data packets sent out by computers would have a dummy IP address on them so his physical location couldn't be traced. He was as safe as he could be. After dinner, I went up and conferenced my friends in a visual meeting. Updating them on the safety issues for Jinx was necessary.

"Your dad got in touch with my mom," Mark told me. "I'm going to go to court tomorrow to change my last name. That way if anybody's looking for something on Scarecrow, it won't be me. It'll be under seal to minimize the paper trail; my stepdad's adopting me so after about noon tomorrow, I'm going to be Mark Light and the school will be updated immediately. My records, ID, and everything will be changed, and after awhile, nobody at school will really remember."

"The Joker worked a lot with Scarecrow," I said soberly. "If the Joker finds out about you, he might tell him about all the kids, which... nobody can predict how he'd react to the news. Kids are leverage, which is why most active heroes don't have them unless they're going into the business as well." They nodded.

"Do you want to be adopted?" Imogen asked curiously, and Mark blushed.

"Yeah, actually. My stepdad has wanted to for awhile, but Mom thought it might be some protection against my dad if I still had his last name. But he doesn't know about me, and from what that detective told me, it probably wouldn't stop him from experimenting on me if he wanted, so why not? And the holidays are coming up; people are always distracted then, we'll be out of class in about a month, so next semester I'll be in the new seating chart with my new name, no adjustment required."

"And people are more likely to respond positively to good news and use your new name without fuss or comment," Ari said, nodding. "Imogen's dad came to talk to my mom. He said that Tommy isn't coming back although he didn't say why--"

"Pocket dimension," I supplied. "Not completely foolproof but highly unlikely that he'll be back."

"Uh, ok," he said. "So she's going to go ahead and get the courts to declare him dead. She actually has a document from him, acknowledging their relationship and giving her a share in his fortune. He did it so she'd be easier to control, not many people would walk away from that much money," he said as an aside. "She's going to confer with some lawyers to see if it would be in my best interests to have me acknowledged as Tommy's son, but the detective also said that there are ways to obscure the money trail if she's worried about old enemies."

"Dad could help her with that," I said. "Or somebody in the family."

He nodded. "But after that, I'll be getting my name changed too. My stepfather's never offered to adopt me, so I think it'll be something nice and innocuous." I felt bad that his stepfather was so different from Mark's. Nix wasn't changing his name; not many people knew that 'Chesterfield' was the Penguin's middle name, and his dad really would act to protect him.

"It's just Mom and me now," Justine said calmly. "She doesn't want me to take her last name just in case Pyg remembers her, but she also got a visit, this one from Captain Gordon. He also offered a sealed name change if I wanted it. Mom and I are considering it; I don't want to take too long, but I don't know what I'd want to change it to."

Imogen shrugged. "I was going to go ahead and do it anyway," she said, and we all looked at her with interest. "Dad and Barbara asked, and I'd like... not to be ashamed. Or to put where I come from behind me. It would be nice to belong to a family," she said softly. Ha. Another cousin brought safely into the fold. Willingly, now.

We talked some more, about innocuous things like Thanksgiving and finals coming up, I think to restore a sense of normalcy. I hated that things felt weird now for my friends, even though it wasn't my fault. We hung up and my next call was to Rob, Arch, and Rain, just letting them know; they'd tell their parents so that Daredevil and Doctor Strange would know about the impending doom. Rain had the idea to spread the word to the sidekicks and OSO (other superhero offspring) we'd met at the social event. The four of us had kind of clicked with different ones, but everybody knew somebody, and word would diffuse. If the Justice League was going to be brought in, then the sidekicks were going to be informed anyway, and an intelligence network of our own suddenly seemed like a good idea. I yawned as we hung up, then called Jon and Wally. Neither of them picked up, not that I'd really expected them to, so I left a message telling them what was coming up, mentioning Rain's idea of passing word along, then hung up. I'd done what I could. Not much, I grant you, but maybe it would help.

I yelled when there was a tap on the door, figuring it was Deri, but it was John. "Wow, this is nice, Lys," he said, stepping in and looking around.

"Haven't you seen it? I thought you had," I said, frowning.

"Oddly, no," he said. It seemed weird; we'd been in and out of each other's rooms all the time until he left for boarding school.

"Huh. Come and sit down," I offered, gesturing to the other chair. I'd lit some candles in the fireplace, not wanting to build a fire when I was planning on going to bed early. I was tired from all the upset.

He flopped into the other chair and sighed. "So what's going on? Ms Alex is freaked out and Mr Damian is worried."

"The Joker's back," I said. "Jinx is his and Harley Quinn's son, which is how I found out. He doesn't want to meet his bio father and told me to tell who I needed to."

"Given his history with your grandma, I'm not surprised you told her," he said. I nodded.

"So everybody's trying to figure out how much concern is warranted."

"Which would by why Mr Bucky was at dinner."

"Yeah, he wanted to talk to me about threat assessment, make sure I remembered what he'd taught me, went over a few new things." I explained, then debated with myself briefly. "I normally wouldn't say, because it's not my story, but all my friends at school who are more than just casual friends have parents who are in the super game," I said, explaining who everybody's parents were. For anyone else, this would be an unacceptable risk, but I trusted John completely. He listened carefully and nodded. "So this whole thing impacts a lot of people."

"I'll be discreet," he promised, and I smiled. Of course he would, he was his parent's son, after all. "But it's good to know. What did Mr Bucky teach you?"

"Bunch of not-sporting hand to hand moves, how to use a collapsible baton to best effect, how to knife somebody."

John's gray eyes popped open. "Jesus, Lys, remind me never to piss you off." I snorted.

"Unless you're playing for the other side, you have nothing to fear. I have no desire to explain to your parents that I folded, spindled, or mutilated you in any way." He laughed and slouched in his chair.

"I don't want to disappoint them either," he said absently. "I think I did, getting sent back here, but at the same time, I missed home. Mum and Dad, life here, my best friend. It's good to be back."

"I told you you were being too impulsive," I reminded him. He'd been so determined not to be left behind Dari and Z that he insisted on going to boarding school too. I didn't think he'd really thought it through, I'd pointed out he'd be on his own if he didn't want to go to New Baghdad with his siblings. He had a really bad case of sibling rivalry and wanted to succeed on his own.

"Don't tell me you told me so," he growled. "Not in the mood, Lys."

"I never predicted that you'd punch out some snot and get expelled," I said mildly. "But I'm glad you're back. I missed you, and you really are terrible with the email writing and all."

"I meant to, but there was always something, the curse of a highly regimented schedule," he apologized. "My friends there say I'm officially a disgrace, unofficially a hero." We talked some more and it was as comfortable as old times.