The Descendant

The next day, I met Justine at Saks when it opened, and we had fun looking through dresses. We didn't find anything there that we loved, so we had lunch and moved on. There were a ton of other girls out too, and sometimes things started to get a little snippy around the racks. We got down to business, and at the third store, we both found dresses we liked. Justine was going with Richmond Haley, a guy she didn't really know very well but who was on the basketball team and debate, and he was much taller than she was, so she was able to get really high heels with the teal satin short dress she found. It had a geometric lace yoke and came with a matching shawl. The flirty skirt was flared, and it looked beautiful on her. My dress also had a satin body, a pretty blue strapless dress, fitted bodice, with a full skirt, but mine had a chiffon overdress thing with embroidered lace at the bottom hem and bodice, and it had elbow-length bell sleeves that also had lace on the edge. It was really pretty and I could wear the silver sandals (with a modest inch heel because I didn't want to freak out my ankle just yet) that I'd gotten for the strapless dress Uncle Steve was making for me. The color looked great with my hair but not too matchy.

"I asked Imogen if she wanted to come with us, she's going with Ari, but she said no," Justine said as we took the bags with our dresses and gratefully exited the crowded department. "She said she was doing something with her family." She shrugged. We looked at the sky suspiciously; it was heavy and overcast but not yet raining. "I know it's only been since the last few days of December that her life was turned upside down, but... I wish things would go back to the way they were, when she had more time for us. And it's selfish, because she seems happy with her dad and all, but... there it is."

"I think she's still kind of mad at me," I said.

"And she's got to get past that too," she said firmly. "I think it's because you're new to our group and you don't have ties that go way back."

"How did you guys all meet, anyway?" I asked curiously.

"Nix's dad, actually. He's always monitored the underworld, information is really important to him and his enterprises. So he saw that there were other ones like him who wanted to keep their kids out of the life." I was amused by how she downplayed the supervillain aspect of things. "And because he knew the dads--and mom, in Jinx and Imogen's cases--he helped them get settled as much out of the reach of their partners as possible. Started setting up playdates for us when we were old enough for that sort of thing, and the rest is history."

"Who knew he had such a soft spot," I said, marveling a little.

"Just because he is who he is doesn't mean that he's evil all the way through. He's done a lot of evil, but he really does love Nix," she chided me. "He's even got a monitoring thing where he watches out for our fathers, helps to keep us off their radar. Keeps an eye on Harley, too, even though she's done the best she can for Jinx."

"That really humanizes him," I said thoughtfully. "I'm not used to the nuances."

"Nobody's completely evil," she said. "Well, some of our fathers come close, but Nix's dad is better than most." Then she changed the subject. "I gotta say that it's pretty weird to be going out with somebody who isn't in the group. We've always gone to these things as a group, and this is the first time that anybody's gone with somebody else. But I guess that's the way it's going to be. I love the guys, don't get me wrong, but I'm not interested in them romantically, so we'll all be dating outside. Imogen doesn't like Ari that way either, but it's comfortable and familiar. And I don't think you have sparks with anybody either." I shook my head. "So we'll have to get used to splitting our time when we start dating more. Well, I say that nobody's got sparks, but who knows down the line?"

"Maybe," I said, a little dubiously. "Grandma Alex thought Grandpa Damian was a complete tool when they first met, then things took off when they were done with grad school."

"I'm not counting on it, but I also dread having to explain to some guy about my dad. They all know." I shrugged. There were things I couldn't casually divulge about my family so I got it, but at least we had a really good cover story. "Well, that's a problem for another day." We did some window shopping, then called it a day when it started to rain.

When I got home, I had emails agreeing to potential interviews with Aunt Emma and also Uncles Steve and Tony. Uncle Bucky also suggested that I ask Grandpa Damian. He'd been younger than I was now but had helped out anyway. I trotted down the path through the woods to Grandma and Grandpa's. Luck was with me and Grandpa Damian was home.

"I haven't thought about the invasion for years," he said, bringing me a cup of coffee. "I was what, eleven? It wasn't long after Talia dumped me on Dad's doorstep, and I was settling into being Robin. Insufferable, or so I've been told." His eyes twinkled. From what Uncle Richard had said, 'insufferable' was pretty kind. "But with the invasion, all hands were needed, and everybody with a sidekick used them. We were runners, mostly, there was Aqualad, Speedy, Kid Flash, Artemis, Superboy, the X-men kids, others. We still did engage with the aliens, and that was really freaky, but mostly we were kept around the tower, helping out with the defenses. The flyers, like Superman, the Hawkpeople, Supergirl, Iron Man, War Machine, made supply runs out to heroes throughout the city, we worked on the ground. What I remember most was the snow. It was cold and snowing, and the snow mixed with the soot from the fires as the night wore on. The Skrulls weren't too hard to kill, but the Kree were something else. Dad threw everything he had at them and it didn't make a dent, really. At some point in the early morning hours, the order was given by Superman to fall back to the tower. We were losing. There weren't many people who didn't have some kind of damage. Spiderman's webshooters clogged and he fell, badly hurt, but there's that clinic in the tower and they got him immediate attention. The resources at the tower were why they chose it for our last stand; the medical facilities as well as the armory. And it was a lot easier to keep people hydrated and those with severe calorie needs fed so that they could continue to function. Speedsters in particular are just energy sinks.

"I particularly remember windows in the tower getting smashed and being sprinkled with shards of glass. Some of them were pretty massive, actually. Zatanna had her arm sliced to the bone from a long shard. There was so much chatter on our earbuds that I couldn't keep track of who was out of the fight and who was still in. The noise at the tower was deafening, and we had spotlights to help with targeting their fighter planes; there were columns of light piercing the dark now and then; they targeted the spotlights. Screams and the sounds of guns and antiaircraft... The smells of blood and fire and cordite. A real sensory nightmare, all around." He shook his head. "And I lost track of Dad after awhile. And Nightwing. I saw Jason once. And I saw Bucky ripping apart the canopy of that jet. He was... primal, an elemental destructive force that just happened to have a human form." He stared at the ceiling, reliving it. "He wrenched off his artificial arm when it was too badly damaged to function, then used it as a club. That broke the transparent material they used for windows. The ship went down and then I saw Steve emerge, carrying him over his shoulder and getting him to the medics. The medical personnel were the bravest people I've ever seen. They kept coming out for casualties, unarmed, unprotected. Time and time again." His voice was soft.

"Frankly, I thought we were going to be slaughtered, but all of a sudden the Bifrost opened and the Asgardian army came to the rescue. They had weapons we didn't, they're all bigger than we are, tougher. It still took them a lot of really determined work to force the aliens into retreat, those that were left. And they pulled back, out of orbit, and it took quite some time to recover their losses and try again. But that was good enough for that night."

"What did you think when it was over, when you knew you'd won the battle?"

"I saw my dad, and all I felt was overwhelming relief. Being an utter shit at the time, I tried to cover it up with my usual attitude, but I couldn't quite pull it off." He smiled slightly. "And Dad was just as relieved to see me, that he hadn't gotten me killed. It was at that time that I had a faint feeling that it was going to work out between us. It had been touch and go up til then, and it was for a few years after that, pretty much everybody wanted to kill me more than once, but it did work out." We talked about it some more; it was really interesting to hear what had been like for a kid to witness. Even now he downplayed a lot, I felt, the terror of fighting aliens in a quasi-military action when you're just ten. Or eleven, not like there's much difference, even to an assassin kid. Too bad I couldn't use any of it, since nobody knew about Batman's identity, much less any of the Robins. Well, it wasn't in the public record, anyway. But I could use it as background and a guide to questions for the heroes who I could legitimately identify. Then we talked about other things; the prom, my upcoming summer plans at school in London, other stuff.

"Heads up, your parents are hosting another Avengers/Justice League summit in a bit," he said. "Looks like you'll have a full house."

I groaned. "That means a face-to-face therapy session," I said. For some reason they tended to me more grueling than our distance ones.

"How's that going, honey?"

"It's going," I said, feeling weary. "It's a lot of work, but right now a lot of good things are happening for me, so it's easier."

"How are your parents doing?"

"Making a sustained effort," I acknowledged. "We'll probably have a family session too. Deri's doing a lot better."

"That's good, cupcake. I'm proud that you're taking advantage of the help that's offered to you. Dinah's top shelf at what she does. It's exciting that you'll be going to London to study this summer." So we talked about that for a bit and how I was going to help Iris with her new apartment, and he sighed. "My chicks are leaving the nest. Miles is making noise about moving out too, but he's quite attached to Alfred and his cookies and is more reluctant than Iris. But it's hard to watch my kids grow up and move on. It's what you hope for, or course, you want to raise strong kids who are capable of meeting all of life's challenges, but selfishly, it's hard on their old pop. I thought it might be a little easier this go around, having experienced it with Martha and Xander, but no." That provided me with something to think about. I was certainly looking forward to moving out on my own, but it never occurred to me that Mom and Dad wouldn't be looking forward to that day too. Until recently, their parenting hadn't been awful, just... rather remote and I hadn't thought that Deri and I were in their thoughts much away from home.

That night, the parents told Deri and me about the upcoming conference, and Deri shrugged. The conferences didn't affect us much; we saw the visitors at dinner and that was usually it. Some of them didn't have a lot to say to us kids, while others liked to talk to us, and that was fine too. Some of them didn't have a lot of experience with kids, like J'onn J'onzz, who always seemed to look at us like long-term lab experiments. The Flash, though, liked everybody and liked to talk. It was too bad he wasn't stationed in New York, he'd be fun to see more. I had to admit, part of his charm was that he got under Grandpa Bruce's skin a lot, always fun to see.

We had parent-teacher conferences that week, and on my day off, I went into the city for my living history interviews. Uncle Bucky hadn't wanted to revisit it, being firmly focused forward rather than looking back at a troubled past, and that was fine. Uncle Steve had been at the tower for the whole thing, working with Superman, coordinating activity between their teams while taking out maurading aliens. It had been their first team-up and he spoke about the benefits and drawbacks, a very precise after-action account, as well as the run-up to the invasion, how crime in the city had changed, the installation of the guardposts and evacuation of the city. His analysis was better than anything I'd read in history books, and he shrugged; it was the way he'd reported when he was in the military. He'd paid attention to the details because it wasn't like you could stop to take notes, and recording devices hadn't been really portable.

Aunt Emma gave me the perspective of a street-level hero, how much Sigurd and Torburn had helped, the terror and despair she'd felt from what felt like unending waves of alien invaders. She also mentioned the snow. "For a couple years after, I expected snow to be streaked with soot and ash," she said, shaking her head. "It took a long time to get past that, partly because I love snow, and the battle changed that." She tucked some hair behind my ear. "And like you, I did therapy to help me cope with the trauma. It helped a lot, but it was certainly no quick fix. Mostly what I felt was the isolation on that rooftop. Flash was with me for a bit, then he got hurt, and the cops and National Guardsmen were all down on the street. It was just me and the pups. I thought that night was never going to end. For years after, I had flashbacks; if I was walking home at night, if it was snowing, and I smelled smoke from somebody's fireplace, I had a little panic attack. My hands and arms would actually ache, the way they did that night from firing my gun so much." She shook her head. "I'm so glad Chris and you and Deri aren't feeling the pull toward that kind of life. It takes more than it gives to you. You have to be content knowing that you've helped others, but sometimes that's not a lot of compensation, when you're older and injuries don't heal as well or the effects accumulate."

And Uncle Tony had talked about fighting the aerial battle. Even his Iron Man suits could only do so much, so he had to take breaks to resupply heroes around the city. He'd gone through three iterations of his suits during the battle due to the damage that the Kree weapons inflicted. "They're tough bastards," he said, shaking his head. "And fortunately I had my suits at the tower, or I'd have been out of the fight early on. But I really hate the Skrulls. If they were invading again, I'd come off emeritus status, rejoin the team, just so I could get as many of them as I could. I could go through several lifetimes and still hold a grudge against them for capturing me, taking me hostage, torturing me for information." I totally believed him. "The thing about the Avengers, I think, is that we all had different starting points and priorities. When push came to shove, we were all on the same side, but when we weren't on the battlefield, those differences became divisions. Rogers is always on the side of what he feels is right. During WWII, that was with the Allied cause against fascism, but after that... he saw the government as not the white hat he wanted it to be. Clint and Natasha owed everything to SHIELD. Thor... well, he was involved at the beginning because of Loki and because he felt protective toward Earth, but he was definitely a free agent. Bruce was saddled with the Hulk and was incredibly conflicted because of that. If you could get us all pointed toward a present, common enemy, we were unbeatable. But if you could exploit the divisions between us, it was pretty easy to fracture our unity. Me, I came out of self interest and being a company man, which meant that I was accustomed to compromise, the sometimes morally cloudy realities of governments. And guilt," he admitted. "And I don't always think through the consequences of my action. That's what led to the split over Ultron and the Sokovia Accords. Steve can be hard-headed in his own right. We both were playing a zero sum game over the Accords when we should have been working on compromises." He shook his head. "And I'm getting a little nervous. I'm seeing a creep in restrictions on heroes that I think will make it difficult in the future to attract them to teams. And more stringent laws on vigilantism might actually shut that back door too. People want peace and safety but they don't want to deal with how that's achieved. They don't want to pay higher insurance premiums or have heroes in their backyard, but what they don't seem to realize is that the supervillains aren't going to go away if the heroes do. Too much oversight, from people who don't appreciate the difficulties of heroing, also is burdensome. Well, that's a problem for another time. Did you get enough for your paper, Lys?" He eyed me casually.

"Yeah, lots. And a lot of things I'd never considered," I said. "Thanks a lot, Uncle Tony." He gave me a hug and walked me out to my pod. All I'd hoped for were eye-witness accounts of the battle, which I'd gotten, but his analysis of the gold-standard Avengers team and the trouble keeping heroes on a team was an unexpected bonus. Uncle Steve had given me a new appreciation for issues of leadership I'd never considered before too. Now I was concerned that I didn't have enough room in the report or the skill to discuss what I'd learned. Living history is interesting, but what's really valuable from interviewing people is their perspectives and what they thought then versus what they think now, how the event has shaped them.

"But aren't you worried about your teachers knowing who you are?" Deri asked when she came home from school, wanting to know how I'd spent my day.

"They already know," I pointed out. "Parent-teacher conferences. It's not a secret that the Waynes know Emma Harrington and Steve Rogers and Tony Stark. I won't use what Grandpa Damian said because his identity as Robin isn't known to the public, but it was interesting to hear. I couldn't do what he did now, and I'm like, six years older than he was at the time." We talked about that a bit, then she went out to change and I got ready to go down early, hear what the teachers said to Mom.