Chapter Text
Lian is infuriatingly unapologetic.
“Cheshire?!” Damian rages in her recovery room as Mari wrings her hands worriedly in the chair next to Lian’s bed and Colin leans with a disapproving frown against the wall by the door. “You broke from the team to chase Cheshire?!”
Lian shrugs. “You said not to let anyone go,” she says.
“Oh, bullshit,” snarls Damian.
Colin scowls at the floor and reminds his best friend, “You did say that.”
“My point is that she obviously went beyond the directive for personal reasons!” Damian exclaims.
Lian only shrugs again. “If you say so, sir.”
Before he can shout at her some more, the door opens, and Milagro steps in, just as dourly serious as everyone else in the room. “Wayne, come out here, please,” she orders in a voice that makes it clear that using “please” doesn’t mean the request is actually optional.
Grumbling, Damian steps out of the room, closes the door, and follows her a short distance down the hallway, until she stops, turns around, and smacks him hard in the chest. “Ow! What the hell?” he demands.
“You’re a fucking idiot,” she tells him. She pulls her tablet out of her bright green leather jacket and hands it to him. “I’ve been looking over Lian’s past thirty-six hours to see what lead to her being so uncharacteristically stupid, and guess what - it was you,” she says, and she points to footage of Damian telling off Lian in the gym. “If you had read her report for anything besides mistakes, if you had let her talk when she quite obviously attempted to tell you what was going on, we would have found out that she had spotted her mother out there.”
Damian blinks at her. “You read the reports?”
Milagro throws up her hands in frustration. “Of course, I read the reports, Damian!” she cries. “I just tell you I don’t to piss you off. Unlike some people, my job is actually super important to me, which is why I tried to get Abuse placed as leader, but as per usual, you convinced him that you were naturally better suited－”
“That’s not what－”
“But you’re a shitty fucking leader, Damian,” Milagro snarls. “I tried to give you a chance because you are extremely well-trained and honestly amazing at tactics, but you suck at people. You don’t even try. I mean, that’s the only explanation I can think of, considering that you have literally been trained by Batman himself in reading people and have used that to your advantage so many times against enemies, but you can’t even bother listening to your own mentees for five seconds! Looking back through your records, I have found a total of four incidents where your advice to the girls was anything other than an elaborate version of ‘stop sucking’. Meanwhile, their trainer is giving them emotional support, tactics advice, and even teaching them how to write a damn report! And the only conclusion I can see to draw from this is that you must simply not care. How else could you be so amazingly bad at this? I mean of all people who should be able to empathize with someone facing a villainous mother, it should be you! But you don’t! You won’t! And if you have absolutely no intention of actually looking after them and mentoring them, I have to ask: Why the hell are you here?”
Damian crosses his arms, bows his head, and doesn’t answer, scowling at the floor instead.
“If anything even half as bad as what happened tonight ever happens again, I will replace you, am I understood?” Milagro demands.
Damian nods quietly. “Yes.”
“Good.” She starts to leave, but then turns back to him. She hesitates, then tells him, “You know what really fucking sucks, Damian? I think you actually could be really good at this if you tried. I wish I knew why you won’t.”
Damian waits a few minutes before he finally returns to the recovery room. Lian frowns up at him. “Look,” she says. “I know I could have done better, and I－”
“I could have done better,” he corrects.
The room falls silent, confused. “... Sir?” Lian asks at last.
Damian swallows his pride, looks her in the eyes, and tells her, “I should have been looking out for you. I wasn’t. And I’m sorry.” He is intensely aware of the fact that Mari’s mouth has dropped open, and he can’t imagine what Colin is doing behind him. “If we encounter Cheshire again, we will face her as a team. Is that clear?”
“... yes, sir?” she guesses uncertainly.
When Damian turns to leave, he sees that Colin is grinning at him. He glares back. Colin grins wider. “Oh, shut up,” Damian tells him and leaves before Colin can tease him any further.
A few days later, Mariand’r follows Lian into the library while Lian hobbles on crutches to the front desk. Theodore Dyer, a volunteer from the high school, looks up from where he was logging returns and gasps. “Oh my gosh, Ms. Harper!” he cries. “What happened?!”
“I was mugged,” Lian says casually, as though muggings were a normal every day occurrence. “Now I have an awesome bullet wound to go with all the tattoos. And I’ve told you to call me Lian; I’m only a few years older than you.”
Teddy laughs. “Right, you have tattoos,” he says, with an eyeroll. Mari casts Lian a curious look at that, and Lian gestures to her outfit; since she normally dresses conservatively, most people aren’t aware of her tattoos, not to mention they're all done in white ink. “Here, let me get you a chair,” he says, ducking into the adjoining office.
Lian watches him go, then turns to Mari with a raised eyebrow. “You sure about this?” she asks.
Mari hesitates, but nods. “Yeah. I… I really should,” she says.
Lian shrugs. When Teddy comes back out with a chair, Lian says, “Hey, Teddy, I think my roommate is here, and I need to get her to come down. Would you mind summoning her on the intercom? Name is Johanna Lane-Kent.”
Teddy nods and turns back to the office, saying, “Yeah, no prob－” He interrupts himself to spin back toward her, eyes wide. “Wait, Lane-Kent? Like as in Lois Lane and her husband? That Lane-Kent?”
Lian grins. “I forgot what a nerd you are,” she says. “Yes, that Lane-Kent. Lois Lane’s kid is my roomie, and I need her summoned.” She claps at him. “Hop to it, slave!”
Teddy rolls his eyes at her again but disappears back into the office. While Lian gets the chair pulled up to the desk (and then sets a phone book in it so that she’ll be adequately taller than the desk), Teddy’s distorted voice comes on over the intercom, “Johanna Lane-Kent to the front desk, please. Could Johanna Lane-Kent please come to the front desk?”
Several minutes later, Jo appears in the lobby and then hesitates when she sees her “roommates,” saying, “Oh, um, hi guys?” Her body language is obviously wary, and it makes Mari feel even more guilty. Aside from occasionally checking in on Lian, Jo has been avoiding anywhere she had reason to believe Mari might be.
“Um…” Mari tries, then hesitates. Then, she steps forward again and tries again, blurting, “Imsorryforbeingabuttface!”
Jo blinks at her in surprise. “Um…?”
“I’ve only been mean to you since you got here,” says Mari, “and then you not only saved Lian, but you’ve been so helpful ever since, and I never even gave you a chance!”
Jo just tilts her head, genuinely confused. “Of course, I did?” she says. “She’s my teammate?”
“Ohmygoshyouresonice,” Mari rambles into her hand, just confusing Jo further.
“Oh, Ms. Anders-Grayson!” says a voice from the desk, and the girls turn to see that Lian’s boss, Mrs. Saenz, has replaced Lian, probably moving Lian into the office so she could sit without a phone book. “Your hold is in; did you come to pick it up?” Mrs. Saenz asks.
“Oh, um, yes,” Mari answers politely, returning to the desk as Ms. Saenz goes to fetch the book. Mari glances back to realize that Jo is staring at her. “What?” she asks.
“Your name is Grayson?” asks Jo, puzzle pieces finally starting to slide together.
“Mary Anders-Grayson is my legal name,” Mari tells her. “Mariand’r is my traditional name. I’m named after Dad’s mom, Mary.”
“Oh my gosh, I’m so dumb!” Jo exclaims, burying her face in her hands. “Of course, I remember you! Mary Grayson was my best friend when I was little! We used to play in the doghouse for some reason? I just－ I’m sorry, I didn’t know the other name, and I thought you were older than me, not younger, and you look, um, very different.”
Mari blinks at her. “Doghouse?” she says. “I thought that was your playhouse?”
“What? No, I didn’t have a playhouse,” Jo laughs. “Conner’s dog was just huge. That thing was so cramped and smelly!”
Mari shrugs. “I, uh, thought that was because you’re poor,” she says. Behind her, Mrs. Saenz stops waiting for Mari to hand over her card and goes to fetch Lian back again, smelling trouble.
Jo gapes at her. “Poor?!” she cries.
“N-not that there’s anything wrong with that!” Mari says quickly, hands up to gesture innocence.
“Of course not, but we have a five bedroom house in the suburbs?” says Jo. “How did you think we were poor?”
Mari shrugs. “Dad says Pop’s house only has two rooms because Grampa Bow was poor.”
“Oh my god, Mary, shut your face!” Lian says, emerging from the office blushing bright red.
“What?” Mari demands, still not understanding what she’d said wrong.
“You’re such a brat!” says Lian. “Not everyone was raised by a billionaire’s heir and a supermodel!”
“Yeah, poor people,” says Mari.
“No, Mary. There’s many different socio-economic tiers besides just ‘rich as hell’ and ‘poor people’,” Lian insists.
Mari shrugs but is clearly embarrassed. “Okay, whatever.”
“Not whatever! Don’t call random people poor,” says Lian. “Even if they are, it’s still rude, usually.”
“Ugh, English is too complicated!” Mari whines, collapsing over the counter in an attempt to look as sad and pathetic as possible.
Lian wasn’t falling for it. “Don’t blame English for you being a brat,” she teases.
Behind Mari, Jo is laughing so hard she’s wheezing a bit. Mari looks back over her shoulder at the girl, then back to her sister. “Do you think that means I’m forgiven?” she asks her sister earnestly.
Lian smirks and roughs up Mari’s curls before moving to check out her book for her. “Please, Princess, you know no one can resist you.”
Mari grins brightly. And once her book is obtained, she quickly pulls Jo out the door to go for ice cream with her.