The Descendant

Dad popped in, his expression clearing. "There you are, honey. I'd like you to come back downstairs for a bit. Bruce would like to apologize." I snorted. Dad rolled his eyes. "You deserve an apology, Lys. He was out of line saying that."

So Dad thought he was rude to say it, not that he was wrong to think that. Well, just because I have a hard time memorizing lists of things doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with me, it's just that my brain doesn't work the same way as everybody else's. I wondered if anybody besides Grandpa Mark had stood up for me. I kind of doubted it.

Dad took me down to the library. Mom was there along with Grandpas Bruce and Mark. Grandpa Bruce looked at me and huffed a breath out. "I'm sorry I hurt your feelings with my comment," he said. I waited for more, but that was it.

"I accept your apology in the spirit it was given," I said carefully. Grudgingly, reluctantly, in other words. Mom looked at me sharply. Grandpa Bruce nodded acceptance, immediately understanding my meaning, and disappeared from the room. He may be a middle-aged asshole, but he's still one heck of a good Batman. Grandpa Mark scowled after him and followed.

"Lysippe, you need to toughen up," Mom said sternly. "Bruce is tactless, but he means well."

"Why are you always doing this to me?" I asked in disbelief. "Why do you always expect me to take whatever rude and hurtful things people say to me without complaining or commenting on it?"

"Lys," Dad said. "You know your mom's philosophy."

"Yeah, truth, love, justice. It's just too bad that she doesn't treat me with the same consideration," I shot back. "I get it, she's functionally immortal, she has a long view that I'll never have, Wonder Woman is loved by all, Diana Prince-Wayne keeps her head down, a smile on her face, and nobody says boo to the noted conservator of ancient Greek artifacts at the Met. Well, she has no idea how hard high school is. She never went. She grew up millennia ago on an invisible island where her big act of disobedience was getting her aunt to teach her how to fight. She has no understanding of the subculture of rich teenagers in this particular society because she thinks it shouldn't matter. But she's wrong. It does matter. A lot. To me, at least, it's my life. I'm the one who has to deal with it on a daily basis, and it's bad enough without my own family telling me I'm defective. Neither of you even cut me as much slack as Deri, even."

Dad looked surprised. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"Before Halloween, when that Ming vase was broken and the company had been upgrading the security network so that there wasn't any recording to look at?" I asked, too wound up to stop. "The vase the insurance adjuster said was literally priceless and kept asking you to at least put it in a wall alcove instead of just a pedestal?" Dad nodded warily. "Deri and Van were tearing around, letting off steam, they ran by and it toppled off. You asked her what had happened and she said that she didn't know. I said the same thing, but you acted as if you didn't believe me." He flushed. "Deri told you the truth, she didn't quite know how it happened, but she knew it had happened when she and Van were running through the rooms, which she knows she's not supposed to do. So she used her gift a little to be more lovable and get out of trouble. You guys know that she's got a gift that influences people, but you never think to check if she uses it. She's not supposed to, but she can't turn it off entirely, and she's a kid, she doesn't want to get into trouble, so what's the harm in using just a little? She never gets into trouble for it, so why not?"

"This isn't about Deri," Mom said, a frown in her voice. "This is about you. We expect more from you because you have so many advantages that others lack."

"Grandpa Bruce has a lot more advantages than I have, but nobody's yelling at him for telling his teenage granddaughter that there's something wrong with her," I said resentfully. "Nobody's calling him a bully, even though that's what he is. And rude, for causing a scene at a family dinner where there are outside guests."

"I am not responsible for the manners of Bruce," Mom said sternly. "I am responsible for raising you, which involves teaching you to turn the other cheek, being gracious, and forgiving when others slight you."

"That's what I'm talking about. I'm expected to eat insults and rudeness without complaint. I can't. I'm not a saint. I do my best but it's never enough for you."

"You're an Amazon and more is expected from you."

"I am not an Amazon," I said curtly, and my parents looked surprised. Well, my dad did, I was just assuming that my mom did too.

"You are," Mom said sternly.

"I am not, at least according to the Amazons themselves. You are, but I'm not. Last summer, when I was in the temple helping Menalippe" the high priestess "she and Kasia" one of Mom's closest friends "were talking and they said I wasn't. I'm there on sufferance, like those women the Nereids pull out of the ocean, heal, and toss back. Speaking of the island, I don't want to go back next summer."

"What?" Mom asked sharply. "Why not?"

"Because it's just more months of being blown off. We don't practice swordwork here, so the General Aunt Antiope thinks its a waste of time for us to drill there and ignores me, I don't have any skills that are useful there, so I clean and help in the fields, I have to tend the horses." I shuddered. "There aren't any people my age, nobody there understands anything about me and they don't want to because they're convinced of the superiority of the Amazon way of life. The manacles suck, they rub my skin raw. My grandmother, the Queen Hippolyta, only sees a disappointment. Which is weird, because I thought Amazons were supposed to love kids. Iris loves remembering her visit, which was more fun than I've ever had there."

I wished I could see Mom's face through the glow of the god-touch. "When are you going to get past your fear of horses?" she asked, irrelevantly. "You must let it go. The horse had been abused and was not responsible for its actions."

"I was five years old," I said, staring at her in disbelief. "Nobody told me to stay away from it or that it was dangerous. It kicked me, broke two ribs, cracked another. It scared the crap out of me. I thought it was going to kill me, the way it acted."

"Let's not go into this now," Dad said, shaking his head. "Diana, we've got a ballroom of guests. Lys, you can be excused. People will be leaving after dessert anyway." And just like that, they stopped hearing me. I went up to my room, dessertless. I was too upset to eat anyway. I'd go down later and get something. This time when I got upstairs, I changed, put on a warm coat and sneakers, and went out the window again. I was leaning against the chimney when I saw a couple of vehicles flash down the extremely private, secret road that led out of the bat cave. The roof was one of the few places you could see the road from the house, and then only for a few seconds. The forces of evil must be at work on the holiday. I wondered if they gave their minions overtime pay or at least a nice dinner.

I stayed put until it started to get dark and the rest of the guests left. I pulled up my biology homework, wanting to give it another push to see if I couldn't do better with the taxonomy chart the teacher expected us to memorize. I mean, I understood what taxonomy was, why a system of classification for organisms was needed, and how it was done, and I remembered the broad classifications of domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. The three domains were easy enough, as were the kingdoms, and I was aware that they were shifting, I started to get shaky around phylum and class, and where it really started to get specific with order, family, genus and species, is where I really fell apart with the chart and its examples and their Latin names. My teacher wasn't a complete monster (which would be outside official taxonomy completely) and did give partial credit on quizzes and tests, knew I was struggling ( I went in for help often) and was sympathetic, telling me that we'd be done with taxonomy in a couple of weeks. I freaking hated Carl Linnaeus. Why did I have to memorize this, anyway? I could always look it up in the extremely unlikely event I ever needed to know.

Deri burst in without knocking. "Thanks for telling Dad about the vase," she said hotly. Then we got into an argument, she was defensive about having broken the rules about using her gift and angry about getting caught in a falsehood and didn't react well to being told that if you do the crime, you do the time. It turned out that Mom had gone out with the Justice League and left Dad with the discipline, which was a grounding for three weeks. It seemed fair to me, the insurance adjustor had practically cried when he'd seen the pieces, and the insurance rates had jumped. Yeah, I'm nosy, so what? Plus she'd tried to shift the blame to me and knowingly tried to skive out of trouble. I'd been coming down the hall after spending some time in the fitness center and heard the whole thing. Yeah, I eavesdropped, but when something that big happens, anybody would have done the same, which is how I'd heard Deri instruct Van to say they didn't know how it had broken, because neither was sure if the vase had been bumped or jarred or what. But she was mad because now she'd miss a few after-school activities, Aslyn and Alan would be notified of Van's role in the event and Van would get into trouble, and she wasn't allowed to hang out with any friends after school, including Van. It could be worse; she was still allowed to dance in the recital because that was a commitment that had been made before the grounding and others were relying on her. In a tactical error, Dad hadn't said anything about texts or communicator privileges, so the grounding wouldn't do more than sting.

"Grandpa Bruce was right, there is something wrong with you," she said spitefully, and flounced out, slamming the door behind her. I wanted to go drop kick her out the window, but I'd get in trouble if I did and I'd had enough for one day. I skulked down the back stairs and into the dark kitchen, where I found some leftover cookies and cupcakes. I put some treats in a paper towel and went back up to my room, where I drew a nice hot bubble bath and started a new book, one that didn't look like it would mention school once. It was one of the YA dystopian books where kids have to save the world from the idiotic/corrupt/evil/uncaring adults. My mother didn't understand why they were so popular, but the appeal was that they showed kids my age doing something important despite their age and lack of mastery of skills. They at least had some control over their lives.

The next day I slept in. Our recital was that night and I wanted to be well-rested and ready to perform. I went through the bat cave tunnels to Miles' studio later, and we ran the choreography. It looked funny, I didn't have a partner to do the lifts, neither did Miles, so we just marked those places, laughed, and danced on. Finally it was time, and we got our stuff and went to one of the performing arts high schools, not mine, that had rented us their theater. There were dressing rooms backstage where we could do our hair and makeup and get into our costumes. I loved this part of the whole thing; it didn't matter how you performed, getting ready was always fun.

The performances started out with the youngest dancers whose music was only a couple of minutes, to the final performance, our seventeen minute dance. My partner wasn't even rude for once and I felt like I'd done a great job at the end. The expensive shoes had done wonders for my confidence. Being on pointe wasn't ever painless, you've got your weight squashing down your toes and it produces pain, but the dancing is satisfying. The shoes' extra support minimized the pain until my feet just ached a bit and allowed me to focus on feeling the floor and my movement, and at the end I realized I'd never had to remind myself to smile. At the end, the class curtsied and bowed at the applause, which wasn't just polite, and the rest of the classes joined us for another round of applause. Backstage, Miles congratulated me; he hadn't seen much of my performance, of course, but there were a couple of places where the corps got to shine and he'd watched that. He, naturally, had been splendid. Then I reluctantly changed out of the beautiful tutu, carefully placed my shoes in their bag--I noticed with a pang that they were already showing signs of wear, but I'd been warned about their durability issues--and went to the front of the house. Dad wasn't there, Mom said that a problem had come up at work, but she'd recorded our performances. "I got all of Deri's dance, but I was off to the side and the curtain cut off some of yours, Lys," Mom told us. My sister smirked at me. I felt disappointed.

"That's ok, Diana," Grandpa Damian said jovially, coming up to congratulate us. He kissed my cheek. "Alex and I got seats in the center; we saw that you'd let other parents have the better seats so I recorded Lys specifically." He tapped his communicator and mine chimed; he'd sent it to both Dad and me. I smiled at him gratefully. "You really shone up there, Lys," he said. Deri pouted. "You looked cute, Deri," he said to her. It was my turn to smirk, but I hid it. Deri thought she was a lock for getting the teachers to approve her going en pointe soon, but she goofed off too much with Van and her ankles and feet weren't strong enough.