Fic: Family Ties, Part 5 (DCU)
"What do you think?" Hal handed Ollie a beer. The blonde man on his sofa looked positively morose.
"I think I'm screwed," replied Ollie as he stared with a decided lack of interest at the can of brew.
"Ollie, you heard Roy."
"Yeah and I know he still has issues about me and him. Hell, the kid's got *subscriptions* and rightfully so." Ollie took a deep draw on the beer. "I can't say as I blame him either. I was a crap father figure."
"He's past that," Hal told his best friend loyally if not truthfully.
"Is he?" Ollie's expression turned thoughtful. "He was hiding being 'past it' pretty damned good then."
Hal sighed, rubbing a hand down his face. "He loves you, you know that. He's just stubborn, pig-headed, and vain." Hal forced a teasing smile. "Kind of like his old man." Ollie only shook his head. Obviously teasing wasn't going to pull Ollie out of this funk. It was time for the hardball play. "Okay, say you're right. You were absolute shit as a father and he would have been better off abandoned in the middle of the desert or with some family that beat the crap out of him or something. He's still a good father to Lian."
Ollie's expression turned mulish, a somewhat better sign of an imminent explosion. "You sayin' that I was so bad he was better off the other way?"
"No, that's what *you* are sayin'," Hal countered. "Stop being an ass about the whole thing. It's done. It's past. Roy's moved on and so have you. The two of you are better now, which is how it should be."
Ollie snorted and took another swig. "I just can't help..." He let the sentence trail off, reaching up to twist a tuft of his blonde goatee in his agitation.
"Second guessing is only going to get Roy angry with you again, Dinah ready to toss you over the nearest cliff and me 'accidentally' miss catching you when you hit the bottom." Hal made air quotes with his fingers around the word "accidentally", causing Ollie to roll his eyes in disgust.
"Okay okay, I get the point," groused Ollie, staring idly up at his best friend. "So why are you asking me what I think?"
"I was angling for whether you think seerhaywire or whatever is actually going to blow up the Hall of Justice?" Hal grimaced when he attempted the Irish group's name.
Ollie snorted. "Yes. These people are nuts. The kind of nuts that even though it's obviously a lost cause they are still going to go ahead because they didn't get the looked for results their way."
"So Dinah beefing up surveillance was a good idea? I would have closed the damned place down," mumbled Hal, flopping his long frame into a nearby chair.
"We want to catch them. Close it down or limit access means they can't get in and won't get the targets they want. They *want* a body count, Hal, preferably innocents. That gets them the publicity. So we let them in, stay alert and catch the bastards red handed." Ollie took a drink.
"And if that woman *is* Roy's mother?"
"Follow his lead."
"That's it?" Hal looked skeptical.
"What would you do?" Ollie's tone and expression turned belligerent. "It's not like I can make her NOT be his mother, fer Crissake's!"
Hal raised up his hands in a placating gesture. "I know, I know, but I mean do we go easy on her, still stomp her into the ground like the rest of her nutso friends, what?"
"Take her down. Worry about consequences later, I suppose. I'm hoping I get the crack at her," Ollie said fervently. "Dinah's liable to smash her face into a wall a bit harder than necessary and, as much as I love Roy, I've never been able to predict what he'll do in any given situation. He may hug her, hit her, or walk away from her. Just take the bitch down and we'll deal with the family fall out later once the danger has passed."
Hal considered the plan a moment and then nodded. "Sounds like a solid plan to me." The two of them toasted it with another swig of beer.
* * *
"Daddy?" Roy looked up to see his precocious six year old rubbing her eyes sleepily in the dim light from his desk lamp. "What're you doin' up?" she yawned. She padded over and clambered into his lap without so much as a by-your-leave, so certain was she of her reception and the hug that did inevitably come.
Roy rested his cheek on the top of her head, rubbing his late night stubble through the silky softness and causing Lian to giggle. "Just thinking, baby."
Lian tipped her head back and frowned at him, her brown eyes reflecting what Connor once told Roy was "an old soul". "You sit in the dark and think too much, Daddy," she informed him almost primly.
Roy laughed. "I know. I'm pretending I'm Uncle Dick."
Lian shook her head. "Uncle Batman." Roy inwardly twitched at that. "You know, Daddy," Lian said consideringly after a moment of thoughtful silence, "I think you need to talk to her."
Roy leaned back and puzzledly stared at his daughter. "Talk to who, Lian?"
Lian pointed to the photo lying on Roy's desk of his mother from the Hall of Justice. "The lady that Gran'pa Ollie thinks is your mommy."
Roy's jaw unhinged. "How-" He shook his head. "Old soul," he muttered to himself.
"I heard everyone talking when they was here," Lian reported with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes that had nothing to do with her mother's genetics and everything to do with her father's. "If she really is your mommy, she'll want to be found like my mommy does sometimes just to see me, right?"
"Lian, it's not like..." Roy began but he let his sentence trail off. Maybe it *was* just like that. He looked down at his daughter, who now sported a very smug expression. "You are a minx and a trickster. Coyote is your friend, isn't he?"
"He is not!" Lian retorted indignantly, crossing her arms and giving her father a nasty look.
Roy laughed and hugged her, tickling her ribs and making her shriek with laughter. "Enough of you, Coyote Princess. To bed. If you are well enough to think smarter than Uncle Dick then you are obviously feeling better than you have in a couple of days."
"Uncle Dick is just a boy," Lian informed her father scornfully. "Boys don't think right."
Roy raised an eyebrow. "I'm a boy."
"And I told you how to think right, see?" Lian's tone left no doubt that she thought Roy was lucky she was around to keep him on the straight and narrow. Privately Roy had to agree. Who knew where he'd be without her.