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“Hey, love- take some deep breaths for me alright?”
Jason’s voice filtered through the phone still sounded far calmer than Roy felt in that moment. He tried his best to do as Jason said, but it was difficult to calm himself down enough to take in a full breath.
“Spencer’s gone to call his team, we’re going to get this sorted out. I can’t promise you everything is ok- but we’re all going to do our best to make sure we get Lian home safe.”
Roy wiped at his face while he continued to pace up and down the hall, he shouldn’t have gotten all caught up in meeting Spencer, should have hit the gas when he saw the yellow light instead of stopping. If he’d made it home just a few minutes earlier, maybe Lian would still be there. But she was missing, and it was all his fault. He’d gone and ruined one of the best things to ever happen to him and-
“Hey Roy, while we get things sorted here and get to you, do you have anyone you can go stay with? I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be alone right now” This time it was Spencer’s voice that came through the phone. Roy hadn’t realized Jason had left him on speaker.
“I- yeah. Ollie and I might not get along most of the time, but he and Dinah will let me crash with them. I won’t be alone.”
“Good, thank you Roy. Now, I’ve got my team on the case. We deal with a lot of kidnappings and missing children. We’re heading to the airstrip now and we’ll be headed your way within the next hour. Don’t touch anything in the house, we’ll be there as soon as we can.”
A sense of weight fell off Roy’s shoulders. Not all of it, the fear and guilt of having no idea where Lian was still pressed down on him with the force of a hydraulic press, but it felt a little less like he was trying to hold up the weight of the world all on his own.
“And Roy, we’re going to do our best to find her. After all, I still need to meet the young girl who has my soulmate’s heart.”
In any other circumstance, Jason would have been impressed at the level of efficiency his soulmate’s team was able to achieve considering they were federal employees and beholden to a significantly larger amount of judicial oversight than any vigilante team he’d been a part of in the past. However, Lian was missing, this wasn’t any other circumstance, and everything would feel too slow until the child, he’d long since come to see as his own was back in her father’s arms.
Jason knew first-hand the importance of time in situations with missing children. Even if Lian had chosen to leave on her own, which was doubtful, she still needed to be found and fast.
He drummed his finger on the armrest of his seat on the plane, trying his best to stave off flashes of a warehouse, the sound of maniacal laughter. This would be different, Lian would be ok. Unlike Bruce back then they would make it in time. Spencer was to his left, looking out the window. His soulmate had started the flight on the other side of the jet (and a part of Jason was itching to figure out where on earth that fit into the team’s budget, though if it got them to the west coast faster, he wasn’t complaining) debriefing the situation with his team. Jason had made use of that time to start his own coordination efforts on the vigilante side of thing, getting as many friendlies on board to help the search while also giving them a heads up that Lian’s disappearance was also on the FBI’s radar.
“Hey,” Spencer’s soft voice cut through the loud thoughts bouncing through Jason’s head, “I know the statistics don’t look great, but most of those averages don’t account for BAU involvement.”
Jason snorted a soft laugh, no they did not. And the statistics didn’t account for vigilantes either. He’d tried his best to keep from running the statistics in his head, had nearly snapped at Spencer when he’d tried to soften the situation with facts right after they’d gotten off the phone with Roy, while the other man was throwing a few items into a go bag and Jason had been shoving as many of his baked goods into the tiny freezer as possible (he hadn’t fit everything, and what hadn’t fit had been unceremoniously stuffed into another bag along with some clothes to tide him over until Roy’s house was cleared and he could grab some of the spare items he had over there- though every part of Jason’s being was begging this case would be over far before that became necessary).
“Sorry. It’s just, I remember when Roy introduced me to Lian for the first time. You know, he was my brother’s friend and then my life when to shit for a bit. Everyone thought I was dead for a while and Roy- he didn’t handle it well. Made some stupid and reckless fucking decisions. When I came back, he’d only just gotten custody of her, and he was so scared I’d turn her away.” It was hard, telling all of this to Spencer. Jason had to make sure he took the time to word things right, so he could tell Spencer the truth without blurting out everything on a plane full of feds. “As if I ever would. And now she’s missing and there’s fuck all I can do about it.”
“We’re going to do our best Jason. Time is on our side, as much as it can be considering kidnappings are a race against the clock. Roy did the right thing; he immediately alerted authorities and that’s giving us the best possible chance of getting her back alive.” Spencer, Jason noticed, didn’t make mention of getting Lian back unharmed. Even in the short time they’d known each other, he had learned Spencer wasn’t one to be careless in his word choices. He might believe they’d get her back, but there was no way of knowing what state they’d find her in.
Spencer nudged his knee against Jason’s, before going back to looking through files. Files that Jason knew were incomplete, that didn’t account for the dangers brought into her life through the number of vigilante ties she had. Ties he couldn’t tell Spencer about without giving him the last pieces to solve a puzzle that would open up a whole other can of worms he had no energy for right now. Jason knew that the chances that they’d get through this will both his and Roy’s vigilante identities intact were slim, but he was going to try.
Spencer had been stressed by cases before. He had made it through cases with direct personal connections before. But this case was hollowing him out in a way he’d never experienced before. He’d not even had the chance to meet Lian yet. Roy had stepped out of the room most of the time when he’d call to wish her a good night- not because he didn’t trust Spencer, the man had explained, but because he didn’t want to rush things. Lian was his number one priority and on the off chance something went wrong he wanted to make sure she didn’t suffer for it. So, Spencer had only spoken to the five-year-old on the phone once, a video call only a few days before Roy had headed back to Star City. She’d been energetic and vibrant in a way Spencer didn’t usually know how to handle. She hadn’t trusted him immediately, hadn’t magically taken to him, but by the end of that conversation Spencer could see little hints of who she was behind her caution poking out.
Hearing Roy, who up until then had seemed so solid to Spencer, sound like he was breaking apart at the seams was heart wrenching. He wasn’t sure what he would do if he couldn’t make things ok for his soulmate, if this became a situation that couldn’t be fixed.
Thoughts of inadequacy bounced through his head as he collapsed into a chair in the Queens’ residence (and hadn’t that been a surprise, that his soulmates came from money). Spencer was exhausted. It had been late when they got in, just after midnight local time the night before, and they had immediately thrown themselves into the case. They were closing in on the end of that 24-hour window now, and while the team had made progress, it kept feeling like there was more they should be doing. The feelings of inadequacy weren’t helped by the somewhat regular tips the team had been receiving from an individual who claimed the moniker of Oracle and had identified themselves as Justice League Adjacent (though it had taken Garcia to confirm those tips were trustworthy before they could do anything more with them). What did they have that the team kept missing?
Though frustration aside, Spencer was grateful it seemed Lian was getting all the help Roy could muster- it felt a little like everyone in the caped community was also looking out for this one little girl. Which led Spencer to conclusions he wasn’t willing to confront or even consider until he was back in DC, and the case had been fully wrapped up.
He tried settling in with a book, something to give his mind a break even if he was certain he wouldn’t sleep until Lian had been found, but he kept spacing out and staring off into the middle distance.
He was unsure how long he sat there, lost in thought and self-loathing before Jason found him.
“Hey,” Jason ran his hand over Spencer’s arm, seeking a small bit of comfort “just convinced Roy to take a nap. How are you holdin’ up?”
Spencer shrugged, “saw you hid all the alcohol.”
It wasn’t a question per-se, but Jason responded anyways.
“Roy has his own history with substances. The last thing either he or Lian needs is for him to relapse before we find her.”
“I wish there was more I -”
“The only thing you can do right now Spencer is use your big brain to work on finding who took Lian, and where. You’re doing your best and that’s all either of us is asking of you.”
“I hate feeling this helpless. I’ve not even met Lian yet, and now I might never get the chance.” Spencer ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know how you’re holding it together so well, how you’re so calm even though the clock just keeps ticking down”
Jason sat next to him in silence for a few moments before he started to speak.
“You know how I’ve mentioned in the past that Lian was conceived when Roy and everyone else I knew thought I was dead?”
Spencer nodded. Jason had briefly explained it once, the first time Lian came up in conversation, and he’d brought it up again on their flight out.
“I’d run away. Bruce, my adoptive dad, and I had gotten into an argument and right around the same time I got in contact with my bio-mom, someone I hadn’t even known existed up until right around that time. It was supposed to be great. She’d promised me all these things.” Jason pulled in a quick breath, Spencer could read the tension in his body, “Honestly, I was just so angry, and I wanted to do anything I could to hurt Bruce. So, I went to her, didn’t tell anyone I was leaving either. Except, she had sold me out to a very bad man.”
Spencer knew the ways a story like this could go, none of them pleasant.
“I don’t want to get into specifics about everything that happened, if I’m honest, I’m still pretty fucked up from it, and this was years ago now. But he blew up the building with me still inside- right as Bruce had figured out where I had gone and come to get me. He was minutes too late and I got pulled into a pretty dark situation for a good few years after that. So sure, I don’t know this exact situation or the timelines here. I left of my own accord, Lian didn’t. But I do know how wrong it can go when it takes too much time.”
A part of Spencer crumpled, why couldn’t he do more. Where was the missing piece that would solve this puzzle.
“I’m not saying this to make you feel guilty. You are doing what you can. I’m only saying this to explain why I’m so calm. I trust your team, I trust you. I trust the other people Roy and I have looking into the other angles your team isn’t equipped to handle. And because I trust you all enough to do your bests, I can stay calm. If I didn’t have such faith that you were all doing everything in your power to help, I’d have spiraled off into panic attacks a long ass time ago. I’m only calm because right now, Lian can’t afford for me not to be.”
Jason placed a kiss to Spencer’s temple. The movement gentle and light but carrying with it all the weight of Jason’s words.
In the end, it took a total of 27 hours to locate Lian and facilitate her (relatively) safe return. The girl was shaken and had been brought straight from the dockside warehouse she’d been found in, to Star City Hospital for a broken collar bone, sprained ankle and bruised ribs. Spencer had gone with her, refusing to leave her in the care of strangers. Roy and Jason had rushed over to greet them the moment Spencer knew what hospital they were being shipped to, and Roy had refused to let go of Lian’s hand since arriving to her room, and Jason had set himself to detangling her hair gently with his hands.
Watching the three of them curled together on the hospital bed, Spencer could feel his heart swell. There would certainly be growing pains, and there were a lot of things he’d stubbornly been ignoring that couldn’t stay unspoken forever (like what connection his soulmates had with the caped community), but for now Spencer would hold onto a thin veil of plausible deniability.
Lian had made it back to them safe and sound, and in that moment that’s all that mattered.