Post by C_Miller on Apr 2, 2012 12:52:50 GMT -5
Ultimate Justice Society of America #8
Father’s Day
***
Camelot. Opal City, Maryland
Jack Knight tossed and turned in his sleep as he tried to find a spot where he could get comfortable to no avail. Barbara Gordon had been gone for three weeks and he hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep since. He didn’t realize how much he had missed sleeping next to someone until then. His fiancé left him nearly seven months ago, but that’s not a pain you get over quickly.
With a long sigh, he rolled out of bed and as he left his room, he threw on a heavy robe over his boxers. “I wonder if there’s anything in the kitchen…”
Carefully, he walked down each step in the dark. Until a week ago, he hadn’t slept in that house in close to a decade, so he was still trying to get the feel of it all, to no such luck. He was still stumbling around in the dark.
Suddenly he heard a male’s voice like a whisper in the night. “Jack…”
“Hullo?” He cautiously answered.
“Jack…” he heard call again in the night.
Without thinking, he went passed the Grand Foyer and into the back dining room and out the back door that opened into the backyard where a graveyard for the Justice Society was kept. His father used to call it Valhalla, which Jack always criticized him for mixing his mythologies. “You should have called it Avalon,” he would always tell him.
Looking back at it in this moment, Jack wondered how he never guessed his father’s identity knowing that his father’s graveyard was made specifically for members of the Justice Society.
“Oh, it’s for my clients… their graves need protection,” he would tell him, which worked as a ten year old boy and even an angry twenty year old.
For about twenty minutes, Jack wandered aimlessly through the graves, passing Rex Tyler’s, the Crimson Bolt’s, Curtis Falconer’s, and others. Finally he settled on the one that was most important to him: Ted Knight’s.
“Hello, Jack. It’s good to see you.”
Jack turned around and leaning against a near by oak tree was his father in his full Starman costume. “Dad? Am… am… I… is… um… How is this, uh, how is this happening? Is this a dream? This has to be a dream.”
“No, it’s not.”
Jack furled his brow as he took a step closer to get a closer look at his father. “You… you look… this can’t be real.”
As Jack got with in arms reach of his father, Ted pulled his song into a bone-crushing embrace. “It’s so very wonderful to see you again, Jack… I love you so much.”
Jack pulled away from his father “Dad… are you a ghost?”
Ted shook his head. “I haven’t died yet… I’m about to and I know I am, but a very dear friend allowed me to make peace first…”
“Dad, you’ve been dead for a year,” Jack said as he wiped away the tears that he noticed were forming from his eyes. “Why did you come here?”
Ted nodded. “My friend recommended that I come here. Told me that you became Starman and reformed the Justice Society of America…” he smiled at his son with a look of pride that only a father could have. “What’s that about?”
As he rolled his eyes, he let out a light chuckle. “Yeah… that seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“And now?”
Jack shrugged. “Ask me again in six months.”
A silence fell between them as they walked through the graveyard for a while. They would occasionally stop at a headstone for Ted to admire and then they would move on. With heavy hearts, they gazed at Rex Tyler’s for the longest. “He was a good man…”
“Yeah… he died saving Charlotte. Barbara’s ward.”
Ted looked up and smiled at Jack with tears in his eyes. “That’s just like him.”
After a while, Jack turned to his father and they stopped dead. “Dad, I know this isn’t forever, but I need to ask you about something… Courtney. She’s my sister, isn’t she?
Slowly, Ted nodded in agreement. “Yeah…”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Ted let out a cynical laugh. “Jack, after your mother died you really didn’t want to listen to anything I said. To tell you I had a daughter that you didn’t know about… what good would that have done? Honestly, it was better for everyone involved.”
Jack looked at his father, hoping that he would feel some kind of anger, but deep down, to his surprise, he just felt understanding. “I haven’t spoken to her since the attack… I guess maybe I should do that.”
“Damn right you should. I don’t know why you haven’t yet. Take an example from me… you only live once.”
Jack smiled at the irony of the statement.
“Well, I best be getting back. If I were late to my own murder, Rex would never let me live it down.” He activated the contraption on his wrist that made an approving whirring sound when he pressed it.
Before he could press the last button, Jack pulled him into a tight hug. “I really do miss you, Dad. No matter what I told you before.”
“It’s neither here nor there, Son. I love you.”
Jack pulled away as Ted immediately pressed the button on his wrist and disappeared into the cold December night.
***
Keystone City, Kansas
Jessica Garrick didn’t tell anyone when she stepped out last night and took a run to Keystone. She didn’t think anyone would fully understand and rightfully so. After Wally and Barbara, she tended to keep people at arms length. Wrapped up in a burgundy pea coat, she strolled aimless through the streets that were so familiar to her yet so different. It was if they had changed completely in the last month, since she moved to Opal City exclusively.
But deep down, Keystone City was still her home. Her heart leapt when she walked passed the park where her parents used to take her to play as a little girl, she felt a wave of nostalgia when she crossed the street where her first apartment building was and she felt a pain in her chest when she walked passed Wally’s apartment. While she didn’t want to admit it to herself, she missed him.
After walking around for a while, she made her way into King Keystone’s Pub and Grille and carefully took a seat at a booth in the back corner with tears in the seat. She remembered this booth well from the holes in the seat to the uneven table legs. Despite its flaws, she was home.
“Can I help you, Hun?”
Jessie looked up at the waitress with watery eyes. “Um… yeah, two Keystone Hots, an order of onion rings and a… Keystone Lager.”
The waitress walked away and after a few moments brought her a pint of an amber colored beer, which she graciously sipped. Suddenly a bit of her fears were numbed at the taste of home. Nothing tasted like a Keystone Lager.
“Penny for your thoughts…”
The blonde Speedster looked up again and saw her father Jay Garrick’s warm smile beaming down at her. “Daddy!” she cried as she jumped up to pull him into a warm embrace.
She hadn’t seen him since he left the headquarters right before the team reformed and she missed him greatly. Prior to joining the Justice Society, she had been avoiding him to hide her drug habit, but after seeing him there, she realized she needed him in her life. “Good to see you, Jess… so what’s wrong?”
Jessie was hurt and her face showed it, causing Jay’s to soften even more. “I just wanted to see you… It’s been a long couple of weeks.”
“Because of Jade?”
Jessie stared into space and bit her lower lip. “Partially… I’ve never been one to… appreciate the past all that much and now I can’t escape it.”
She was about to continue, but the waitress brought her order and she began to munch on her hot dog. Leaning in towards the table, it was as if she was hiding behind her food after spilling that much of what was on her mind.
“How are you holding up?”
Jessie’s eyes slowly shifted around the room, trying to hide from her father’s warm gaze. She wasn’t quite sure how to answer that. On one hand, frequently going on missions, she and Jade couldn’t even think of their history, but on the other hand, they were constantly on top of each other. “I don’t know, Dad. I don’t know.”
“Jess, I know you’ve had some problems in the past, but this is your chance to make amends,” he told her earnestly. “That was always the charm of the Justice Society. We could afford to make mistakes, because there was always someone… to catch us when we fell.”
The young woman smiled at the sentiment, but her heart fell when she thought longer. “But I feel like I’ve run out of mistakes.”
“Jess, honey, you never run out of mistakes.”
Jessie let a tear fall from her eye as she took a bite of an onion ring. “I wish I believed that.”
Her father’s heart instantly split in two. It was the same feeling he felt when he found her strapped to an operating table in John Chambers’ basement. “I want to tell you a story… in 1993, your mother and I had decided against having children… we decided that since I had just retired from being The Flash, we would spend the time with just the two of us. Children were just something we weren’t thinking about…”
Jessie raised her eyebrow and looked up at her father. This was definitely a story that she had never heard before and she wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about it. ‘Was I just a charity case?’ she thought to herself. “Oh?”
“Yeah, but then I saw you in that godforsaken basement and when I unstrapped you from that table, you clung to me for dear life and buried your head into my shoulder. And despite you having different parents and not knowing of your existence until you were six… I knew in that moment that I had met my daughter.”
At that last statement made the tears flow faster. She tried to speak, but she couldn’t find the words. “I… I…”
“I know, sweetie. I don’t care what anyone says. You’re special.”
“I love you, Daddy.”
Jay moved over to Jessie’s side of the table and wiped the tears from her eyes. He beamed down at his daughter lovingly and kissed her on the temple. “I brought something for you.”
He reached his hand under the table and pulled out a simple paper clothing shop bag with cardboard handles. She took the bag and gave him a questioning look. Without a word, she pulled out the contents and her heart stopped. “Dad…?”
It was her old costume; the one that she wore as The Flash. Even though she felt as a failure with it on, for the first time in her career, she had her father’s blessing to take up the mantle. “Are you serious? This is… I can wear this? But what about…?”
“Jessie, I know you’re not coming back to Keystone anytime soon. That’s Wally’s now. But he’s carrying Barry’s legacy… I want you to carry mine. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather do that for me.” Jay himself, let tears begin to flow from his eyes. After all the ups and downs, he could safely say that he was proud of his daughter.
She brought the crimson and golden fabric to her chest, hugging it warmly as her father brought her into an embrace of complete and total joy.
***
Camelot. Opal City, Maryland
Sandy Hawkins, Delilah Tyler, and Dr. Charles McNider all sat in relative silence over their dinner as the clock struck seven. Jack had filled them in with what had happened with his father earlier that morning and immediately, they all had the urge to contact their parents. “So, Charlie, did you talk to your parents?” Delilah asked sweetly.
Even under the sunglasses, his friends could tell that his face fell. “Um, no… My father must have been, erm… busy or something. I can always talk to him tomorrow or something. What about you, Dee?”
She shrugged and bit her lower lip. “I talked to his assistant, but he never called me back. He always said that the life of a Senator is a lonely one… I never thought that it included their kids as well.”
Another silence fell over the group as Sand got up to check the chicken casserole that would be the main course of their dinner. “Yeah, I wasn’t sure who to call… the parents who gave in to their perverse paranoia and abandoned me or the parents who wouldn’t love me until I joined the football team and later the marines…”
Delilah dropped her fork into her salad. “I’m really sorry, Sand… that’s really rough.”
He tried to speak, but he only turned it into a curt nod.
After he served up the food, they began to tentatively eat, as if they were nervous about bringing up more small talk that could lead to uncomfortable topics. While they were teammates, they still barely knew each other. In fact, as Delilah thought of it, she didn’t know the next thing about any of her team member outside of her cousin.
“How’s Rick doing?” Sandy asked as he chewed and swallowed a piece of broccoli.
Delilah shrugged. “I don’t know. After the meeting that Jack called earlier, he kind of stormed off. This whole thing with his Dad is really is really getting to him.”
Sandy got up and poured himself another glass of water. One of the downsides to his sand-based powers was that he had a near chronic dry mouth, but that was far from the only reason his mouth was dry tonight. ”Maybe I’m lucky for not knowing my father.”
Phantom Lady reached her hand across the table and lightly began to stroke Sandy’s. “Don’t say that. Maybe you should try to reconnect with Sandman.”
Sand shrugged and there was another lull in the conversation as they finished their dinner. Sand then looked up at Charles McNider with a sly smile on his face. “So, how is it living with the illustrious Michael Holt?”
Dr. McNider flashed an uncharacteristic look of amusement as he let out a cynical chuckle that alarmed Delilah. “It’s a unique experience to say the least. Last night, I caught him hanging off our balcony by his legs trying to measure the barometric pressure with a new tool he invented or something. He’s a rather odd fellow. It’s certainly more ideal than living alone.”
“Don’t know what that feels like. I always been in a house too small for all of us, then I slept in a barracks when I was in the marines and the second I was discharged Wesley Dodds picked me up and brought me here,” Sand lamented. With all that was going on, he clearly felt bad about the sadness he was feeling, but there was nothing he could do about it
Delilah cocked her head towards him. “I didn’t know that. I always assumed that you had been out for a while. Why were you discharged?”
Sand shrugged. “My time was up. I tried to sign on for another tour, but my initial request was denied. Don’t tell anyone, but I think Wes had something to do with it?”
“Why would he do that?” Delilah asked with a child-like naivety.
Sand scoffed. “He needs to have is hand in everything. For someone who spent the Sixties battling Big Government and corruption, he sure has turned somewhat of a hypocritical dictator.”
“I’m sure those prophetic dreams he have a hand in his paranoia,” Dr. McNider spoke up from the fridge where he was filling his glass with more water.
The group made a reluctant tacit agreement to Dr. Mid-Nite’s claim and went about their dinner. When they finished, Charles washed the dishes and Delilah dried the dishes while Sandy put them away. After they finished, they sat in the den in near total silence, sipping on glasses of red wine.
“Well, I think I’m going to try calling my Dad again,” Delilah sighed as she got up and walked towards her room.
Dr. McNider patted Sandy on the knee. “I should be heading home. Michael wanted to play blind folded chess tonight.”
With Dr. Mid-Nite gone, Sandy was left there alone with his thoughts.
***
Earlier…
While Jack liked the idea of joining his fellow teammates for a group dinner, he wasn’t feeling up to it. Deep down, he felt like if he sat in his room alone in the dark, his Dad would call him from the graveyard again. He knew that deep down it was an insane notion, but he wasn’t one who would give up easily.
Just as he was about to drift off to sleep, he heard a light tap on the door. “Come in,” he called as a reflex, without really thinking it through.
He heard the door creek open and he looked up to see who it was. Jennifer Hayden was standing in the doorway in what looked to be her pajamas. As per usual, she was barely wearing anything at all. Just a very light tank top and shorts that were barely existent, but Jack was not aroused at all. He just rolled over on his bed, dismissive of her.
“Weird day, huh?”
Jack didn’t turn around or answer. He just groaned, as if to tell her to leave.
“Jack, you have to talk to someone… want me to get Babs on the phone? I’m sure she’d love to talk to you.”
That was the cassis belli. He instantly turned around and looked at her with the saddest eyes that she had ever seen. Without thinking, she dipped down and kissed him on the forehead. “Please, Jack. Talk to me.”
Jack sighed in submission. “I thought that taking up the Cosmic Rod would help me atone for some of what I put my Dad through. But when I saw him there in the graveyard, it was awful. It was as if everything I felt in the second I learned of his death.”
The woman in green began to lightly rub his back. “Jack, you should go find your sister. I know that this is a horrible time for you and the only people who can help you work this out is family… I wish I could have that sometimes.”
Jack pulled Jen in to a tight embrace. “I apologize… I know this all must sound silly to someone who’s never had what I had. I must seem like a right git.”
She shook her head. “Oh no, Jack. Don’t think like that. Just please, go see your sister, since you have her.”
He got up and looked long and hard at the woman who was sitting with him. ”You’re right, I should…” He got up and walked towards the door, but before leaving his room, he turned and looked at Jade. “Hey, thanks, Jen.”
She nodded and after he was gone, she pulled out her cell phone. With labored reluctance, she dialed the numbers and brought the phone to her ear.
“Hey, Pops… I… I think I want to find out who my father is…”
***
Jack looked down at the clock on his dashboard as he turned the radio up after hearing the opening chords to London Calling by The Clash. It was almost ten at night and he couldn’t imagine that Courtney’s mother and stepfather would be too pleased with him showing up the late or at all really. While they knew that the attack had to do with her parentage, they blamed not-so secretly blamed Jack.
With a long sigh, he pulled into the driveway next to his old house. As he got out of his car, he gazed at the home that he used to live in prior to re-forming the Justice Society nearly a month ago. It’s not as if he sold it, in fact, all of his stuff was still there, but it represented his past. Camelot was his future now.
When he reached the door, he lightly knocked on it and nearly immediately Courtney’s mother Barbara Whitmore answered. “Good evening, Ms. Whitmore. Is Courtney home?”
She looked at him suspiciously, but then stepped out of the way, indicating for him to enter the home. Courtney’s house was your typical middle class home, with some hints that the family was living a bit above their means, but not by too much.
Moving into the living room, he spied Courtney’s stepfather sitting in an easy chair reading the Opal City Post with his feet propped up on the ottoman, smoking a pipe. “Evening, Dr. Sartorius.”
The man looked up from his paper and glared antagonistically at Jack. “Evening, Mr. Knight,” was all he said before going back to his paper.
“Jack, Courtney’s upstairs.”
Jack nodded as he walked up to where he knew Courtney’s room was and lightly knocked. He heard an even lighter “come in” and he entered. Once he entered, his nose was assaulted with the smell of bleach and lemon that were almost certainly due to the cleaning products used to get the blood out of the floor.
“Hey Court. How you holding up?”
She instantly opened her eyes and her face brightened, seeing her former next-door neighbor standing in her doorway. “Jack! What are you doing here?”
Jack smiled as he pulled a chair from her desk and sat it next to her bed. He sat on it backwards and leaned in warmly towards the bed. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. But I thought I should stop by. Keep you company for a little while.”
“That’s sweet of you. John’s been coming by pretty much daily with homework… and ice cream,” She said with a light smile as she scooted herself up into a seated position. Wincing, she grabbed her stomach as she twisted her torso around. She let out a sigh as she regained her composure.
Jack nodded his head towards her stomach. “Still in pain?”
“A little bit… Doctor McNider took me off the painkillers yesterday. He said he didn’t want me getting addicted… Small price to pay,” She laughed.
Jack felt tears begin to form in his eyes that clouded his vision. While he knew that it was only Vandal Savage and Per Degaton, he couldn’t help but feel responsible for what happened to Courtney. “Court… I know Erin Tyler told you…”
“That you’re my brother?” She asked brightly.
Jack nodded with a reluctant smile on his face. “Yeah, something like that.” Jack’s face fell as he looked down at his sister; the sister that he was finally admitting to himself that he had. Deep down, he always had known that their bond could only be explained by blood. “Look, Court… I… uh… I’m gonna take care of you now.”
“You always have.”
Jack shook his head. “But this happened…”
She slowly moved her hand and found his, beginning to lightly caress it. “Jack… don’t worry, I’ll be fine. Hey, for once my family life doesn’t seem so awful now.”
With light trepidation, he leaned down and kissed her lightly on the forehead. The pair sat together for several hours with Jack relaying the story of his time in Kahndaq and playing her a few songs on her guitar.
After several hours, she had fallen asleep and Jack got up to leave. As he left the room, he looked up at the ceiling and nodded. “Thanks Dad…”
The End
Father’s Day
***
Camelot. Opal City, Maryland
Jack Knight tossed and turned in his sleep as he tried to find a spot where he could get comfortable to no avail. Barbara Gordon had been gone for three weeks and he hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep since. He didn’t realize how much he had missed sleeping next to someone until then. His fiancé left him nearly seven months ago, but that’s not a pain you get over quickly.
With a long sigh, he rolled out of bed and as he left his room, he threw on a heavy robe over his boxers. “I wonder if there’s anything in the kitchen…”
Carefully, he walked down each step in the dark. Until a week ago, he hadn’t slept in that house in close to a decade, so he was still trying to get the feel of it all, to no such luck. He was still stumbling around in the dark.
Suddenly he heard a male’s voice like a whisper in the night. “Jack…”
“Hullo?” He cautiously answered.
“Jack…” he heard call again in the night.
Without thinking, he went passed the Grand Foyer and into the back dining room and out the back door that opened into the backyard where a graveyard for the Justice Society was kept. His father used to call it Valhalla, which Jack always criticized him for mixing his mythologies. “You should have called it Avalon,” he would always tell him.
Looking back at it in this moment, Jack wondered how he never guessed his father’s identity knowing that his father’s graveyard was made specifically for members of the Justice Society.
“Oh, it’s for my clients… their graves need protection,” he would tell him, which worked as a ten year old boy and even an angry twenty year old.
For about twenty minutes, Jack wandered aimlessly through the graves, passing Rex Tyler’s, the Crimson Bolt’s, Curtis Falconer’s, and others. Finally he settled on the one that was most important to him: Ted Knight’s.
“Hello, Jack. It’s good to see you.”
Jack turned around and leaning against a near by oak tree was his father in his full Starman costume. “Dad? Am… am… I… is… um… How is this, uh, how is this happening? Is this a dream? This has to be a dream.”
“No, it’s not.”
Jack furled his brow as he took a step closer to get a closer look at his father. “You… you look… this can’t be real.”
As Jack got with in arms reach of his father, Ted pulled his song into a bone-crushing embrace. “It’s so very wonderful to see you again, Jack… I love you so much.”
Jack pulled away from his father “Dad… are you a ghost?”
Ted shook his head. “I haven’t died yet… I’m about to and I know I am, but a very dear friend allowed me to make peace first…”
“Dad, you’ve been dead for a year,” Jack said as he wiped away the tears that he noticed were forming from his eyes. “Why did you come here?”
Ted nodded. “My friend recommended that I come here. Told me that you became Starman and reformed the Justice Society of America…” he smiled at his son with a look of pride that only a father could have. “What’s that about?”
As he rolled his eyes, he let out a light chuckle. “Yeah… that seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“And now?”
Jack shrugged. “Ask me again in six months.”
A silence fell between them as they walked through the graveyard for a while. They would occasionally stop at a headstone for Ted to admire and then they would move on. With heavy hearts, they gazed at Rex Tyler’s for the longest. “He was a good man…”
“Yeah… he died saving Charlotte. Barbara’s ward.”
Ted looked up and smiled at Jack with tears in his eyes. “That’s just like him.”
After a while, Jack turned to his father and they stopped dead. “Dad, I know this isn’t forever, but I need to ask you about something… Courtney. She’s my sister, isn’t she?
Slowly, Ted nodded in agreement. “Yeah…”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Ted let out a cynical laugh. “Jack, after your mother died you really didn’t want to listen to anything I said. To tell you I had a daughter that you didn’t know about… what good would that have done? Honestly, it was better for everyone involved.”
Jack looked at his father, hoping that he would feel some kind of anger, but deep down, to his surprise, he just felt understanding. “I haven’t spoken to her since the attack… I guess maybe I should do that.”
“Damn right you should. I don’t know why you haven’t yet. Take an example from me… you only live once.”
Jack smiled at the irony of the statement.
“Well, I best be getting back. If I were late to my own murder, Rex would never let me live it down.” He activated the contraption on his wrist that made an approving whirring sound when he pressed it.
Before he could press the last button, Jack pulled him into a tight hug. “I really do miss you, Dad. No matter what I told you before.”
“It’s neither here nor there, Son. I love you.”
Jack pulled away as Ted immediately pressed the button on his wrist and disappeared into the cold December night.
***
Keystone City, Kansas
Jessica Garrick didn’t tell anyone when she stepped out last night and took a run to Keystone. She didn’t think anyone would fully understand and rightfully so. After Wally and Barbara, she tended to keep people at arms length. Wrapped up in a burgundy pea coat, she strolled aimless through the streets that were so familiar to her yet so different. It was if they had changed completely in the last month, since she moved to Opal City exclusively.
But deep down, Keystone City was still her home. Her heart leapt when she walked passed the park where her parents used to take her to play as a little girl, she felt a wave of nostalgia when she crossed the street where her first apartment building was and she felt a pain in her chest when she walked passed Wally’s apartment. While she didn’t want to admit it to herself, she missed him.
After walking around for a while, she made her way into King Keystone’s Pub and Grille and carefully took a seat at a booth in the back corner with tears in the seat. She remembered this booth well from the holes in the seat to the uneven table legs. Despite its flaws, she was home.
“Can I help you, Hun?”
Jessie looked up at the waitress with watery eyes. “Um… yeah, two Keystone Hots, an order of onion rings and a… Keystone Lager.”
The waitress walked away and after a few moments brought her a pint of an amber colored beer, which she graciously sipped. Suddenly a bit of her fears were numbed at the taste of home. Nothing tasted like a Keystone Lager.
“Penny for your thoughts…”
The blonde Speedster looked up again and saw her father Jay Garrick’s warm smile beaming down at her. “Daddy!” she cried as she jumped up to pull him into a warm embrace.
She hadn’t seen him since he left the headquarters right before the team reformed and she missed him greatly. Prior to joining the Justice Society, she had been avoiding him to hide her drug habit, but after seeing him there, she realized she needed him in her life. “Good to see you, Jess… so what’s wrong?”
Jessie was hurt and her face showed it, causing Jay’s to soften even more. “I just wanted to see you… It’s been a long couple of weeks.”
“Because of Jade?”
Jessie stared into space and bit her lower lip. “Partially… I’ve never been one to… appreciate the past all that much and now I can’t escape it.”
She was about to continue, but the waitress brought her order and she began to munch on her hot dog. Leaning in towards the table, it was as if she was hiding behind her food after spilling that much of what was on her mind.
“How are you holding up?”
Jessie’s eyes slowly shifted around the room, trying to hide from her father’s warm gaze. She wasn’t quite sure how to answer that. On one hand, frequently going on missions, she and Jade couldn’t even think of their history, but on the other hand, they were constantly on top of each other. “I don’t know, Dad. I don’t know.”
“Jess, I know you’ve had some problems in the past, but this is your chance to make amends,” he told her earnestly. “That was always the charm of the Justice Society. We could afford to make mistakes, because there was always someone… to catch us when we fell.”
The young woman smiled at the sentiment, but her heart fell when she thought longer. “But I feel like I’ve run out of mistakes.”
“Jess, honey, you never run out of mistakes.”
Jessie let a tear fall from her eye as she took a bite of an onion ring. “I wish I believed that.”
Her father’s heart instantly split in two. It was the same feeling he felt when he found her strapped to an operating table in John Chambers’ basement. “I want to tell you a story… in 1993, your mother and I had decided against having children… we decided that since I had just retired from being The Flash, we would spend the time with just the two of us. Children were just something we weren’t thinking about…”
Jessie raised her eyebrow and looked up at her father. This was definitely a story that she had never heard before and she wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about it. ‘Was I just a charity case?’ she thought to herself. “Oh?”
“Yeah, but then I saw you in that godforsaken basement and when I unstrapped you from that table, you clung to me for dear life and buried your head into my shoulder. And despite you having different parents and not knowing of your existence until you were six… I knew in that moment that I had met my daughter.”
At that last statement made the tears flow faster. She tried to speak, but she couldn’t find the words. “I… I…”
“I know, sweetie. I don’t care what anyone says. You’re special.”
“I love you, Daddy.”
Jay moved over to Jessie’s side of the table and wiped the tears from her eyes. He beamed down at his daughter lovingly and kissed her on the temple. “I brought something for you.”
He reached his hand under the table and pulled out a simple paper clothing shop bag with cardboard handles. She took the bag and gave him a questioning look. Without a word, she pulled out the contents and her heart stopped. “Dad…?”
It was her old costume; the one that she wore as The Flash. Even though she felt as a failure with it on, for the first time in her career, she had her father’s blessing to take up the mantle. “Are you serious? This is… I can wear this? But what about…?”
“Jessie, I know you’re not coming back to Keystone anytime soon. That’s Wally’s now. But he’s carrying Barry’s legacy… I want you to carry mine. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather do that for me.” Jay himself, let tears begin to flow from his eyes. After all the ups and downs, he could safely say that he was proud of his daughter.
She brought the crimson and golden fabric to her chest, hugging it warmly as her father brought her into an embrace of complete and total joy.
***
Camelot. Opal City, Maryland
Sandy Hawkins, Delilah Tyler, and Dr. Charles McNider all sat in relative silence over their dinner as the clock struck seven. Jack had filled them in with what had happened with his father earlier that morning and immediately, they all had the urge to contact their parents. “So, Charlie, did you talk to your parents?” Delilah asked sweetly.
Even under the sunglasses, his friends could tell that his face fell. “Um, no… My father must have been, erm… busy or something. I can always talk to him tomorrow or something. What about you, Dee?”
She shrugged and bit her lower lip. “I talked to his assistant, but he never called me back. He always said that the life of a Senator is a lonely one… I never thought that it included their kids as well.”
Another silence fell over the group as Sand got up to check the chicken casserole that would be the main course of their dinner. “Yeah, I wasn’t sure who to call… the parents who gave in to their perverse paranoia and abandoned me or the parents who wouldn’t love me until I joined the football team and later the marines…”
Delilah dropped her fork into her salad. “I’m really sorry, Sand… that’s really rough.”
He tried to speak, but he only turned it into a curt nod.
After he served up the food, they began to tentatively eat, as if they were nervous about bringing up more small talk that could lead to uncomfortable topics. While they were teammates, they still barely knew each other. In fact, as Delilah thought of it, she didn’t know the next thing about any of her team member outside of her cousin.
“How’s Rick doing?” Sandy asked as he chewed and swallowed a piece of broccoli.
Delilah shrugged. “I don’t know. After the meeting that Jack called earlier, he kind of stormed off. This whole thing with his Dad is really is really getting to him.”
Sandy got up and poured himself another glass of water. One of the downsides to his sand-based powers was that he had a near chronic dry mouth, but that was far from the only reason his mouth was dry tonight. ”Maybe I’m lucky for not knowing my father.”
Phantom Lady reached her hand across the table and lightly began to stroke Sandy’s. “Don’t say that. Maybe you should try to reconnect with Sandman.”
Sand shrugged and there was another lull in the conversation as they finished their dinner. Sand then looked up at Charles McNider with a sly smile on his face. “So, how is it living with the illustrious Michael Holt?”
Dr. McNider flashed an uncharacteristic look of amusement as he let out a cynical chuckle that alarmed Delilah. “It’s a unique experience to say the least. Last night, I caught him hanging off our balcony by his legs trying to measure the barometric pressure with a new tool he invented or something. He’s a rather odd fellow. It’s certainly more ideal than living alone.”
“Don’t know what that feels like. I always been in a house too small for all of us, then I slept in a barracks when I was in the marines and the second I was discharged Wesley Dodds picked me up and brought me here,” Sand lamented. With all that was going on, he clearly felt bad about the sadness he was feeling, but there was nothing he could do about it
Delilah cocked her head towards him. “I didn’t know that. I always assumed that you had been out for a while. Why were you discharged?”
Sand shrugged. “My time was up. I tried to sign on for another tour, but my initial request was denied. Don’t tell anyone, but I think Wes had something to do with it?”
“Why would he do that?” Delilah asked with a child-like naivety.
Sand scoffed. “He needs to have is hand in everything. For someone who spent the Sixties battling Big Government and corruption, he sure has turned somewhat of a hypocritical dictator.”
“I’m sure those prophetic dreams he have a hand in his paranoia,” Dr. McNider spoke up from the fridge where he was filling his glass with more water.
The group made a reluctant tacit agreement to Dr. Mid-Nite’s claim and went about their dinner. When they finished, Charles washed the dishes and Delilah dried the dishes while Sandy put them away. After they finished, they sat in the den in near total silence, sipping on glasses of red wine.
“Well, I think I’m going to try calling my Dad again,” Delilah sighed as she got up and walked towards her room.
Dr. McNider patted Sandy on the knee. “I should be heading home. Michael wanted to play blind folded chess tonight.”
With Dr. Mid-Nite gone, Sandy was left there alone with his thoughts.
***
Earlier…
While Jack liked the idea of joining his fellow teammates for a group dinner, he wasn’t feeling up to it. Deep down, he felt like if he sat in his room alone in the dark, his Dad would call him from the graveyard again. He knew that deep down it was an insane notion, but he wasn’t one who would give up easily.
Just as he was about to drift off to sleep, he heard a light tap on the door. “Come in,” he called as a reflex, without really thinking it through.
He heard the door creek open and he looked up to see who it was. Jennifer Hayden was standing in the doorway in what looked to be her pajamas. As per usual, she was barely wearing anything at all. Just a very light tank top and shorts that were barely existent, but Jack was not aroused at all. He just rolled over on his bed, dismissive of her.
“Weird day, huh?”
Jack didn’t turn around or answer. He just groaned, as if to tell her to leave.
“Jack, you have to talk to someone… want me to get Babs on the phone? I’m sure she’d love to talk to you.”
That was the cassis belli. He instantly turned around and looked at her with the saddest eyes that she had ever seen. Without thinking, she dipped down and kissed him on the forehead. “Please, Jack. Talk to me.”
Jack sighed in submission. “I thought that taking up the Cosmic Rod would help me atone for some of what I put my Dad through. But when I saw him there in the graveyard, it was awful. It was as if everything I felt in the second I learned of his death.”
The woman in green began to lightly rub his back. “Jack, you should go find your sister. I know that this is a horrible time for you and the only people who can help you work this out is family… I wish I could have that sometimes.”
Jack pulled Jen in to a tight embrace. “I apologize… I know this all must sound silly to someone who’s never had what I had. I must seem like a right git.”
She shook her head. “Oh no, Jack. Don’t think like that. Just please, go see your sister, since you have her.”
He got up and looked long and hard at the woman who was sitting with him. ”You’re right, I should…” He got up and walked towards the door, but before leaving his room, he turned and looked at Jade. “Hey, thanks, Jen.”
She nodded and after he was gone, she pulled out her cell phone. With labored reluctance, she dialed the numbers and brought the phone to her ear.
“Hey, Pops… I… I think I want to find out who my father is…”
***
Jack looked down at the clock on his dashboard as he turned the radio up after hearing the opening chords to London Calling by The Clash. It was almost ten at night and he couldn’t imagine that Courtney’s mother and stepfather would be too pleased with him showing up the late or at all really. While they knew that the attack had to do with her parentage, they blamed not-so secretly blamed Jack.
With a long sigh, he pulled into the driveway next to his old house. As he got out of his car, he gazed at the home that he used to live in prior to re-forming the Justice Society nearly a month ago. It’s not as if he sold it, in fact, all of his stuff was still there, but it represented his past. Camelot was his future now.
When he reached the door, he lightly knocked on it and nearly immediately Courtney’s mother Barbara Whitmore answered. “Good evening, Ms. Whitmore. Is Courtney home?”
She looked at him suspiciously, but then stepped out of the way, indicating for him to enter the home. Courtney’s house was your typical middle class home, with some hints that the family was living a bit above their means, but not by too much.
Moving into the living room, he spied Courtney’s stepfather sitting in an easy chair reading the Opal City Post with his feet propped up on the ottoman, smoking a pipe. “Evening, Dr. Sartorius.”
The man looked up from his paper and glared antagonistically at Jack. “Evening, Mr. Knight,” was all he said before going back to his paper.
“Jack, Courtney’s upstairs.”
Jack nodded as he walked up to where he knew Courtney’s room was and lightly knocked. He heard an even lighter “come in” and he entered. Once he entered, his nose was assaulted with the smell of bleach and lemon that were almost certainly due to the cleaning products used to get the blood out of the floor.
“Hey Court. How you holding up?”
She instantly opened her eyes and her face brightened, seeing her former next-door neighbor standing in her doorway. “Jack! What are you doing here?”
Jack smiled as he pulled a chair from her desk and sat it next to her bed. He sat on it backwards and leaned in warmly towards the bed. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. But I thought I should stop by. Keep you company for a little while.”
“That’s sweet of you. John’s been coming by pretty much daily with homework… and ice cream,” She said with a light smile as she scooted herself up into a seated position. Wincing, she grabbed her stomach as she twisted her torso around. She let out a sigh as she regained her composure.
Jack nodded his head towards her stomach. “Still in pain?”
“A little bit… Doctor McNider took me off the painkillers yesterday. He said he didn’t want me getting addicted… Small price to pay,” She laughed.
Jack felt tears begin to form in his eyes that clouded his vision. While he knew that it was only Vandal Savage and Per Degaton, he couldn’t help but feel responsible for what happened to Courtney. “Court… I know Erin Tyler told you…”
“That you’re my brother?” She asked brightly.
Jack nodded with a reluctant smile on his face. “Yeah, something like that.” Jack’s face fell as he looked down at his sister; the sister that he was finally admitting to himself that he had. Deep down, he always had known that their bond could only be explained by blood. “Look, Court… I… uh… I’m gonna take care of you now.”
“You always have.”
Jack shook his head. “But this happened…”
She slowly moved her hand and found his, beginning to lightly caress it. “Jack… don’t worry, I’ll be fine. Hey, for once my family life doesn’t seem so awful now.”
With light trepidation, he leaned down and kissed her lightly on the forehead. The pair sat together for several hours with Jack relaying the story of his time in Kahndaq and playing her a few songs on her guitar.
After several hours, she had fallen asleep and Jack got up to leave. As he left the room, he looked up at the ceiling and nodded. “Thanks Dad…”
The End
