Pantheon - Chapter Nine
As promised, a few days later, the next chapter! ^_^
Title: Pantheon
Author: That'd be me. *grins* Andrew, Obsidian, call me what you want. But only if it's nice. ;)
Rating: R, or MA, whichever you understand better. ^_^
Comments: Obviously, this is an AU, but it'll be a bit more alternate then most, as this fic's Amy has something of a hidden past, which is in the process of shaking quite a number of worlds as it surfaces. And if you thought there was angst in my last fic... *evil chuckle*
After taking a chapter off to rest, the badass master criminal is back. 8) And I'm surprised no one said anything about Amy pulling a Lucy last chapter and vanishing into thin air. ;)
Legal Disclaimer: I do not own 'D.E.B.S.' That belongs to the fabulously talented Angela Robinson. 'The Pretender' was created by Steven Long Mitchell and Craig W. Van Sickle. (No idea who owns it now, as I don't think it's TNT anymore...)
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Chapter Nine
"So, Bobby's just, like, all over me, and I just... I feel like he doesn't get me, you know?" The calm, rational part of Amy's mind pointed out that she should NOT be sitting there, pouring her heart out to the D.E.B.S. Most Wanted, but for once the rest of her was winning. Her Handlers back at The Centre probably would have been appalled.
The thought very nearly made her grin.
"Do you ever feel like that? Like nobody understands you."
"Yes, all the time," Lucy replied honestly. From what she'd picked up, the closest Lucy had to someone that really GOT her was Scud, and there were no doubt a good number of things that even he couldn't understand.
Amy simply shook her head in silent amazement at the way the night was going. It would be painfully obvious to anyone watching that there was nothing holding her there with her "kidnapper" at all, but she didn't want to go. Lucy was just...
Well, it was hard to tell, since they'd only just met, but she nevertheless got the feeling that Lucy was everything she'd ever been looking for, all wrapped up into one sexy, badass package.
If it wasn't for that whole 'internationally-wanted super villain' thing, she'd probably be dragging Lucy back to meet her friends, even the Bradshaws. They'd all just have to get used to the fact that their precious little Amy, poster child of the D.E.B.S., was gay. "I am really glad I met you."
"I'm really glad I met you, too." What was Lucy thinking, she wondered. Here she sat, flirting with a D.E.B., one of her arch-enemies. Did that bother her? Did she find it exciting? Did she simply not even care? How could she not care? She might get some credit for seducing a D.E.B., but if it went any farther then that... Well, she'd probably never live it down.
The coldly rational part of her mind chose that moment to start screaming at her. This was a mistake, it said. She should leave now and forget she'd ever been there. "I should go," she said uncomfortably.
Lucy couldn't quite hide a huff of annoyance. "Okay," she said, drawing the word out into two or three syllables. Amy could wholly understand her irritation, but it wasn't that easy to just stop being 'Amy the DEB'.
Even so, she heard herself asking "Am I gonna see you again?" before she could think better of it.
Judging by the look on Lucy's face, it was definitely the right thing to say. "Do you wanna see me again?"
'Amy the DEB' wasn't giving up that easily, though. "I mean, I'm breaking, like, eight federal statutes being here with you right now," she said, brushing aside a stray strand of hair.
"Yes, I know," Lucy said in an annoyed 'must you keep bringing THAT up?' tone of voice.
"I could get kicked out of the D.E.B.S. for this," Amy added. Really, that was her biggest fear about the entire bewildering situation she'd somehow found herself in.
"For what?" Lucy's eyes flickered briefly down to Amy's lips, all but telegraphing her intentions to someone as trained in reading body language as she was. Amy allowed herself exactly two seconds of internal freakout time over what she knew was coming if she didn't stop it, then gave in. Her body and her heart had been shouting at her to do this, and she couldn't remember the two agreeing so strongly on anything since...
Well, since Amaterasu.
This wasn't even the same as that, though. This was... Well, she wasn't sure, yet. But she wanted to find out.
Lucy leaned in to kiss her, and Amy made absolutely no move to stop her. Almost...
"Oh, my God!"
Janet.
"She almost kissed you!" No, no, why was this happening now? A quick, hopefully apologetic look at Lucy, and she was on her feet. "You almost let her!" She tried to ignore the vaguely accusatory tone to Janet's voice, but that same coldly rational part of her decided to launch a sneak attack on the emotional one just then, and all she knew was she couldn't be there anymore. She needed to be moving, she needed to get away! She brushed past Janet without a word, actually getting a good part of the way across the club before Lucy stopped her. "Amy..."
"Take me home!" She was going to lose her spot in the D.E.B.S. They'd have to kick her out for this, whether they wanted to or not. But of course they would. Everything she'd been working for, all these years...
"It's okay."
"Take me home," she gritted out. How could she have been so stupid? Risking everything she had, everything she wanted, for one stupid kiss?
God, she'd go so far as to get back together with Bobby if that was what it took to prevent it, but she was never going to do something that stupid again.
Amy nearly ran out of the club, not even stopping as she raised her communicator to her lips. "We're done here," she said tersely.
"You've got the-" Max started to ask, but Amy cut her off.
"We're done!" she repeated, nearly shouting the second word. She took a deep breath to try and center herself. "Delivery completed," she said, more calmly, but it was still a fight not to start shaking. She needed to put some distance between herself and that club, get some quiet time alone to think.
Such a thing was never quite that easy to find, though, in the D.E.B.S.
"Are you okay?" Janet asked the second they were all in the car. "What happened?"
"She couldn't come alone, and they almost saw me," Amy said, eyes locked on the road as Max drove towards the airport. She retrieved the discs from her pocket and held them up for all to see. "This is only the first batch, of course, but it should give us a better idea of where to go from here."
"That should help," Max said carefully, studying Amy out of the corner of her eye as she drove. Something had really rattled the Perfect Score back there, and she rather doubted that it was just almost being seen by people from The Centre. If that bothered her so much, she wouldn't have been taking such a front lines role in the whole thing.
The ride back to the airport was mostly silent, Janet's few attempts at starting a conversation falling flat until she finally gave up. No one really said anything else until the plane was in the air. "So, how was Dominique?" Janet asked. "Did she look all right?"
There were times that Amy wondered if maybe Janet didn't bring up the subjects she most didn't want to discuss deliberately. "She was fine. She looked... like she hadn't gotten any in a couple of days."
"Uh-oh," Max snickered.
"I guess that was why she was all over you?"
Max's laughter instantly stopped.
"What?" she and Amy demanded in unison. At least she wasn't blushing this time, Amy decided. Even with the dimmed lighting of the plane, her complexion was far too fair to hide that.
Janet, to her credit, didn't even flinch at the simultaneous question. "I only saw a little of it, but she was all over you! I'm surprised she didn't drag you off to the bathroom to have her way with you."
"...if I hadn't spotted Sydney at the door, I'm not sure she would have bothered dragging me anywhere," Amy admitted reluctantly.
"Why didn't you stop her?" Max looked like she was gritting her teeth.
"What?"
"We've seen you fight, Amy. You could have stopped her if you wanted to."
Amy didn't understand the smoldering anger she saw in Max's eyes. "I didn't wanna hurt Dom!" she said, sounding almost shocked. "And she needed an excuse to have her hands inside my jacket, I suppose, didn't she?"
"Only she didn't stop there," Janet added understandingly. She did, after all, know what was probably really bothering Amy about the kiss... and everything else Dom had done.
"No." Amy took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I think she has a problem, Max."
"What do you mean?" Max asked warily.
"We joke about it, sometimes, you know? Her being a sex addict? But I think... I think she really may be. And after this mess with The Centre is over, we might wanna get her some help."
For a long moment, the plane was silent except for the sound of the air filtration system humming.
"In any event," Amy said finally, making Max and Janet jump a little at the sudden sound, "I'll do it if there's no one else available, but I would rather avoid being the one she meets with next time."
"I'll do it," Max said immediately, then almost seemed embarrassed by the sudden attention she got.
"Are you sure?" Amy asked. "I mean, she'll probably find someone to screw between now and then, but she still might-"
"Let me worry about that," Max interrupted. She fidgeted a little, then got to her feet and headed down the narrow aisle between the seats to the bathroom.
And unless Amy was imagining things, she was blushing a bit. Well, I'll be damned... A smile formed on her lips as she shook her head in a mixture of surprise and amusement. How had she not caught that? So much for the infallible Pretender, she thought self-deprecatingly.
Janet had been watching uncertainly as Amy smiled, seeming to watch Max's backside as the team leader retreated to the bathroom. "You know," she began archly, "when I called you a gay slut, I didn't think it was literally true."
That got Amy's attention. "Wha- Janet!" She huffed. "It is not my fault that Dominique overreacted to that kiss!"
Janet blinked in shock. "You kissed her?"
Amy leaned over the back of her seat to whisper to Janet. "Look, I don't know how much you heard about me and Amaterasu back at The Centre, but I have some transference issues with attractive Asian girls, sometimes. And Dom... I just needed to do it once, to get it out of my system. And that would have been it, too! If she hadn't..."
Janet really didn't have any idea how to deal with all that, having heard next to nothing about Amaterasu aside from the fact that she'd once existed and had died before Amy escaped, so she just tried to accept it and move on. "So, what are you going to do, now?"
Amy bit her lower lip in thought. "I- I need to go see Lucy," she said finally.
Janet's eyes widened. "I'm glad I'm not going to be there for that conversation," she muttered, sneaking a peek out the window.
"I'm glad you won't be, too."
Janet's attention snapped back to Amy, but the blond had already turned back around and sat back in her seat. "I'm glad you won't be, too," Janet mimicked mockingly under her breath, then swallowed an "eep!" at Amy's "I heard that."
**********************************************
Getting away from the Academy proved to be a lot easier then Amy'd been expecting. She'd merely pled fatigue before the debriefing with Mr. Phipps and retreated to her room, Max and Janet guessing that she simply didn't want to think about what had happened with Dominique any more then she needed to.
And they were right, she acknowledged as she opened her window and climbed out. Unfortunately, she did need to at least once more. Once she was a few blocks away, she hailed a cab and headed down to Lucy's lair.
After paying the cabbie and sending him on his way, she hesitated at the door. Was she certain this was the right thing to do? It had been just one kiss, after all, and that had been in the line of duty. (Well, one kiss on her part, anyway...) She didn't even want to do anything more with Dom...
Her hormones abruptly spoke up, informing her in no uncertain terms that this was not so, but when she thought about trying to tell Lucy that, the Lucy-lusting hormones beat up the Dominique-lusting hormones and locked them in a closet.
Okay, decision made. Besides, she wanted to be honest - completely honest, for maybe the first time ever - with Lucy, which meant that she had to tell her about things she'd rather not, as well. And this was certainly one of those things.
She realized, with some amusement, that Lucy's henchmen were actually getting used to her. No one so much as blinked when she walked in this time. "She upstairs?" she asked the closest one, and got a grunt and a nod in return. "Thank you." Her mother had always told her to be polite, after all... Or she thought she remembered that, anyway. Diane Bradshaw agreed, at any rate, so she was doubly convinced it was a good idea.
There was some activity in the breakroom - or what had probably been the breakroom when the building had been an active warehouse - and she poked her head in to find Scud leading a bingo game. She caught his attention, gave him a wave, and inquisitively jerked her head in the direction of Lucy's bedroom. He nodded back briefly. As she headed off, she could hear him exclaim, "And bingo. I am the god of bingo."
She shook her head, grinning. He really was adorable. He and Janet would do well together, she decided.
Sure enough, Lucy was in her room, seated at her desk, laptop open, focusing intently at something on the screen. Amy crept up behind her silently, stole a quick peek at the screen, and blinked in surprise as she read the website header.
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
She could only think of one reason Lucy would be looking at that, and she was so touched that she just wanted to gather Lucy up in her arms and never let her go. She was also hit with more guilt over her behavior at the club that made her want to flee the lair. The two conflicting impulses warred for dominance, and she compromised by planting a kiss on Lucy's head.
Fortunately, she pulled away immediately, or she would have been cracked a good one when Lucy jerked her head up in surprise. "Amy! What are- When did you-?"
"I just got back," Amy informed her, grinning at the cuteness that was Lucy. She could feel all of her doubts and hesitations flowing away. Yes, this was right. "I had to see you," she continued as she straddled Lucy's legs, wrapped her arms around the criminal's neck, and kissed her soundly.
"Wh-" was all Lucy managed to get out before Amy found a much better use for her lips. Well. Maybe being surprised like this wasn't such a bad thing. The part of her mind that kept protesting that this was a D.E.B. she was making out with had long been silenced, and merely sighed in resignation in the back of her brain. Her right hand reached over and fumbled blindly at the desk, trying to hit something on her computer that would change the screen before-
"You don't need to bother, you know," Amy said during one of their rare breaks for oxygen. "I already saw it."
Damn. "It was supposed to be a surprise," she lamented.
"And I love y- that you would try to do this for me," Amy told her, stumbling briefly in figuring out what she wanted to say. "But I have tried that site before. And a few others. And while I couldn't do anything too specific for fear of someone from The Centre noticing..."
"Speaking of specifics, do you remember any about wherever you're originally from?" It would certainly help narrow things down, especially if the more standard searches were useless.
Amy sighed and rested her forehead against Lucy's as she thought. "It was cold," she said at last. "Especially in the winter. We... got a lot of snow. I used to like that." At least until the few times they were allowed outside back at The Centre for training during the winter months, and her memories of winter became snow stained red with blood. Oh, Mercury...
Okay, between that and what had happened to Amy's parents, that would give her a good place to start. "Are you okay?" she said, almost going cross-eyed as she tried to study the face mere centimeters away from her own.
Suddenly not feeling like she deserved to be where she was, Amy got up and paced a little around the room. "Yeah, I guess. It's just... This last mission..."
"What happened?" Lucy asked, her face the picture of concern.
Amy flinched internally. She was being so understanding it was actually starting to hurt. "Nothing on the mission itself. Just a bank robbery. Nothing out of the ordinary." Well, not out of the ordinary for the D.E.B.S. at any rate, sad to say. "It was after. We were at this club, and Dominique..." Oh, this was hard to say. "Really, it was the Centre people..." Oh, make sense, will you, Bradshaw?!
"What did they do to her?" Dominique, Dominique... She knew full well who Janet was, of course, and Amy had said enough about Max for Lucy to know which one she was, so by process of elimination, Dominique must have been the chain-smoker.
"Nothing, for now. She's holding her own." Amy stopped pacing in the middle of the room, looking down at the rug. "She's there. I mean-" She sighed. "I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but part of the plan called for a D.E.B. to infiltrate The Centre, and..."
"And that D.E.B. was Dominique," Lucy finished for her.
"Yeah." She still couldn't meet Lucy's eyes. "Anyway, she had some information to give us, but she couldn't come alone..."
"...because The Centre doesn't trust her enough, yet."
"Right."
Amy opened her mouth to say something more, but Lucy cut her off. "I'm sorry you have to deal with those bastards as much as you do."
Amy waved that off, chancing a look at Lucy's face. "It's really not-"
"But don't worry, I think I can help."
"...that big of... what are you talking about?"
Lucy grinned at her, which did absolutely nothing to help settle her stomach. "You just go back to your academy and get some sleep. You look like you could use it. I'll be back before TOO long." She already had everything she needed packed, after all, and the jet was pretty much prepped and ready to go. She'd only been looking at the M&EC website to keep herself occupied until it was time to go, after all.
"What are you...?" Lucy gave her a quick peck on the lips and headed for the door, pausing only long enough to scoop up a backpack. "Wait! I wanted to tell you something!" Well, not wanted... Lucy wasn't stopping, though. "At the club, I-" She was gone. "-kissed Dominique," Amy said to the empty room. She sighed and sat down on the edge of Lucy's bed.
"Dominique? That would be... the French one, right?" a new voice asked from the doorway.
She looked up to see Scud standing there, an unreadable expression on his face. "Yeah, that's her." She sighed again. "It was supposed to just be a quick kiss, as much to give her an excuse to be close enough to slip the discs she had for us in my pocket as anything else. I just wanted to do it once, get it out of my system."
"But she didn't quite see it that way?" Scud guessed, sitting down at Lucy's desk and facing her.
"No. Dom... has issues." Which was putting it mildly, really, but he didn't really need to know any of that just yet. "Lucy..." Amy sighed one more time. "She's going to do something stupid, isn't she?"
"...probably."
She shook her head fondly. "Think she'll understand?"
Scud considered that carefully. "Knowing Lucy... yeah, I'd say she will. Besides, she knows you better then I do."
"She knows me better then anyone does," Amy said with a distant smile. Refocusing on the here and now, she asked, "How much has she told you about me?" She appreciated that Lucy respected her enough to mostly keep it to herself, but Scud was practically Lucy's family - which, by extension, made him very nearly part of Amy's family, she decided firmly - and he deserved to know.
"Only a little, actually."
She sighed. She really hated having to repeat her life story again and again, but hopefully this would be the last time... until or unless she decided to tell the Bradshaws, too. Though that seemed a bit unlikely. "Okay, then. It all started when I was four..."
**********************************************
"Get out."
They were words she'd uttered countless times before, and no doubt would say countless more. Unlike some of the others, though, the young Sweeper she'd bedded this time, after a moment of initial confusion upon waking, didn't object in the slightest, being still too scared of her to even consider it. "And take your clothes with you! I don't do laundry!" Nodding in a very nearly frantic manner, he scooped them up and headed for the door, getting dressed as he went. Before too long, she was rewarded with the sound of a car starting up and pulling out of the driveway of the house that the D.E.B.S. had rented for her.
She wasn't satisfied.
Oh, she was sated, true enough. Despite his fear of 'Diabolique', the young man had performed quite admirably. It was really no fault of his that, the night before, her mind had kept conjuring up images of blonde hair, that she'd wanted slender fingers to be giving her the pleasure he was providing, that she'd craved tender lips on her skin.
She wasn't used to this. Wanting something, and not being able to have it, was a new experience for her. Even if she literally threw herself at Amy, she wasn't sure that Amy would respond favorably. Not if what she'd implied about Lucy Diamond was true. Even though she would be far better for Amy then an internationally wanted super-villain.
No, she told herself. You cannot control matters of the heart. It is madness to try.
At least she'd gotten something out of last night. She now knew exactly where to find the remaining files from the Pantheon project.
She quickly showered and dressed, then headed out to her own car. She wanted to get there and actually get her hands on the files before someone found out she knew where they were and moved them - or destroyed them. She was a little amazed they hadn't just been destroyed long ago, but she wasn't going to question it.
She gave a silent thanks to the departed Sweeper as she drove to The Centre. Hopefully, she'd at least be able to make it through the day, now.
Hopefully.
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I hate it when the muse gets distracted by other things and I have to fight with it to get some writing done. But at least it didn't resist TOO strongly. ;)
Next time - Still smarting over Lucy's effortless infiltration, The Centre decides to get rid of her... permanently. And there's cake! :)
Title: Pantheon
Author: That'd be me. *grins* Andrew, Obsidian, call me what you want. But only if it's nice. ;)
Rating: R, or MA, whichever you understand better. ^_^
Comments: Obviously, this is an AU, but it'll be a bit more alternate then most, as this fic's Amy has something of a hidden past, which is in the process of shaking quite a number of worlds as it surfaces. And if you thought there was angst in my last fic... *evil chuckle*
After taking a chapter off to rest, the badass master criminal is back. 8) And I'm surprised no one said anything about Amy pulling a Lucy last chapter and vanishing into thin air. ;)
Legal Disclaimer: I do not own 'D.E.B.S.' That belongs to the fabulously talented Angela Robinson. 'The Pretender' was created by Steven Long Mitchell and Craig W. Van Sickle. (No idea who owns it now, as I don't think it's TNT anymore...)
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Chapter Nine
"So, Bobby's just, like, all over me, and I just... I feel like he doesn't get me, you know?" The calm, rational part of Amy's mind pointed out that she should NOT be sitting there, pouring her heart out to the D.E.B.S. Most Wanted, but for once the rest of her was winning. Her Handlers back at The Centre probably would have been appalled.
The thought very nearly made her grin.
"Do you ever feel like that? Like nobody understands you."
"Yes, all the time," Lucy replied honestly. From what she'd picked up, the closest Lucy had to someone that really GOT her was Scud, and there were no doubt a good number of things that even he couldn't understand.
Amy simply shook her head in silent amazement at the way the night was going. It would be painfully obvious to anyone watching that there was nothing holding her there with her "kidnapper" at all, but she didn't want to go. Lucy was just...
Well, it was hard to tell, since they'd only just met, but she nevertheless got the feeling that Lucy was everything she'd ever been looking for, all wrapped up into one sexy, badass package.
If it wasn't for that whole 'internationally-wanted super villain' thing, she'd probably be dragging Lucy back to meet her friends, even the Bradshaws. They'd all just have to get used to the fact that their precious little Amy, poster child of the D.E.B.S., was gay. "I am really glad I met you."
"I'm really glad I met you, too." What was Lucy thinking, she wondered. Here she sat, flirting with a D.E.B., one of her arch-enemies. Did that bother her? Did she find it exciting? Did she simply not even care? How could she not care? She might get some credit for seducing a D.E.B., but if it went any farther then that... Well, she'd probably never live it down.
The coldly rational part of her mind chose that moment to start screaming at her. This was a mistake, it said. She should leave now and forget she'd ever been there. "I should go," she said uncomfortably.
Lucy couldn't quite hide a huff of annoyance. "Okay," she said, drawing the word out into two or three syllables. Amy could wholly understand her irritation, but it wasn't that easy to just stop being 'Amy the DEB'.
Even so, she heard herself asking "Am I gonna see you again?" before she could think better of it.
Judging by the look on Lucy's face, it was definitely the right thing to say. "Do you wanna see me again?"
'Amy the DEB' wasn't giving up that easily, though. "I mean, I'm breaking, like, eight federal statutes being here with you right now," she said, brushing aside a stray strand of hair.
"Yes, I know," Lucy said in an annoyed 'must you keep bringing THAT up?' tone of voice.
"I could get kicked out of the D.E.B.S. for this," Amy added. Really, that was her biggest fear about the entire bewildering situation she'd somehow found herself in.
"For what?" Lucy's eyes flickered briefly down to Amy's lips, all but telegraphing her intentions to someone as trained in reading body language as she was. Amy allowed herself exactly two seconds of internal freakout time over what she knew was coming if she didn't stop it, then gave in. Her body and her heart had been shouting at her to do this, and she couldn't remember the two agreeing so strongly on anything since...
Well, since Amaterasu.
This wasn't even the same as that, though. This was... Well, she wasn't sure, yet. But she wanted to find out.
Lucy leaned in to kiss her, and Amy made absolutely no move to stop her. Almost...
"Oh, my God!"
Janet.
"She almost kissed you!" No, no, why was this happening now? A quick, hopefully apologetic look at Lucy, and she was on her feet. "You almost let her!" She tried to ignore the vaguely accusatory tone to Janet's voice, but that same coldly rational part of her decided to launch a sneak attack on the emotional one just then, and all she knew was she couldn't be there anymore. She needed to be moving, she needed to get away! She brushed past Janet without a word, actually getting a good part of the way across the club before Lucy stopped her. "Amy..."
"Take me home!" She was going to lose her spot in the D.E.B.S. They'd have to kick her out for this, whether they wanted to or not. But of course they would. Everything she'd been working for, all these years...
"It's okay."
"Take me home," she gritted out. How could she have been so stupid? Risking everything she had, everything she wanted, for one stupid kiss?
God, she'd go so far as to get back together with Bobby if that was what it took to prevent it, but she was never going to do something that stupid again.
Amy nearly ran out of the club, not even stopping as she raised her communicator to her lips. "We're done here," she said tersely.
"You've got the-" Max started to ask, but Amy cut her off.
"We're done!" she repeated, nearly shouting the second word. She took a deep breath to try and center herself. "Delivery completed," she said, more calmly, but it was still a fight not to start shaking. She needed to put some distance between herself and that club, get some quiet time alone to think.
Such a thing was never quite that easy to find, though, in the D.E.B.S.
"Are you okay?" Janet asked the second they were all in the car. "What happened?"
"She couldn't come alone, and they almost saw me," Amy said, eyes locked on the road as Max drove towards the airport. She retrieved the discs from her pocket and held them up for all to see. "This is only the first batch, of course, but it should give us a better idea of where to go from here."
"That should help," Max said carefully, studying Amy out of the corner of her eye as she drove. Something had really rattled the Perfect Score back there, and she rather doubted that it was just almost being seen by people from The Centre. If that bothered her so much, she wouldn't have been taking such a front lines role in the whole thing.
The ride back to the airport was mostly silent, Janet's few attempts at starting a conversation falling flat until she finally gave up. No one really said anything else until the plane was in the air. "So, how was Dominique?" Janet asked. "Did she look all right?"
There were times that Amy wondered if maybe Janet didn't bring up the subjects she most didn't want to discuss deliberately. "She was fine. She looked... like she hadn't gotten any in a couple of days."
"Uh-oh," Max snickered.
"I guess that was why she was all over you?"
Max's laughter instantly stopped.
"What?" she and Amy demanded in unison. At least she wasn't blushing this time, Amy decided. Even with the dimmed lighting of the plane, her complexion was far too fair to hide that.
Janet, to her credit, didn't even flinch at the simultaneous question. "I only saw a little of it, but she was all over you! I'm surprised she didn't drag you off to the bathroom to have her way with you."
"...if I hadn't spotted Sydney at the door, I'm not sure she would have bothered dragging me anywhere," Amy admitted reluctantly.
"Why didn't you stop her?" Max looked like she was gritting her teeth.
"What?"
"We've seen you fight, Amy. You could have stopped her if you wanted to."
Amy didn't understand the smoldering anger she saw in Max's eyes. "I didn't wanna hurt Dom!" she said, sounding almost shocked. "And she needed an excuse to have her hands inside my jacket, I suppose, didn't she?"
"Only she didn't stop there," Janet added understandingly. She did, after all, know what was probably really bothering Amy about the kiss... and everything else Dom had done.
"No." Amy took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I think she has a problem, Max."
"What do you mean?" Max asked warily.
"We joke about it, sometimes, you know? Her being a sex addict? But I think... I think she really may be. And after this mess with The Centre is over, we might wanna get her some help."
For a long moment, the plane was silent except for the sound of the air filtration system humming.
"In any event," Amy said finally, making Max and Janet jump a little at the sudden sound, "I'll do it if there's no one else available, but I would rather avoid being the one she meets with next time."
"I'll do it," Max said immediately, then almost seemed embarrassed by the sudden attention she got.
"Are you sure?" Amy asked. "I mean, she'll probably find someone to screw between now and then, but she still might-"
"Let me worry about that," Max interrupted. She fidgeted a little, then got to her feet and headed down the narrow aisle between the seats to the bathroom.
And unless Amy was imagining things, she was blushing a bit. Well, I'll be damned... A smile formed on her lips as she shook her head in a mixture of surprise and amusement. How had she not caught that? So much for the infallible Pretender, she thought self-deprecatingly.
Janet had been watching uncertainly as Amy smiled, seeming to watch Max's backside as the team leader retreated to the bathroom. "You know," she began archly, "when I called you a gay slut, I didn't think it was literally true."
That got Amy's attention. "Wha- Janet!" She huffed. "It is not my fault that Dominique overreacted to that kiss!"
Janet blinked in shock. "You kissed her?"
Amy leaned over the back of her seat to whisper to Janet. "Look, I don't know how much you heard about me and Amaterasu back at The Centre, but I have some transference issues with attractive Asian girls, sometimes. And Dom... I just needed to do it once, to get it out of my system. And that would have been it, too! If she hadn't..."
Janet really didn't have any idea how to deal with all that, having heard next to nothing about Amaterasu aside from the fact that she'd once existed and had died before Amy escaped, so she just tried to accept it and move on. "So, what are you going to do, now?"
Amy bit her lower lip in thought. "I- I need to go see Lucy," she said finally.
Janet's eyes widened. "I'm glad I'm not going to be there for that conversation," she muttered, sneaking a peek out the window.
"I'm glad you won't be, too."
Janet's attention snapped back to Amy, but the blond had already turned back around and sat back in her seat. "I'm glad you won't be, too," Janet mimicked mockingly under her breath, then swallowed an "eep!" at Amy's "I heard that."
**********************************************
Getting away from the Academy proved to be a lot easier then Amy'd been expecting. She'd merely pled fatigue before the debriefing with Mr. Phipps and retreated to her room, Max and Janet guessing that she simply didn't want to think about what had happened with Dominique any more then she needed to.
And they were right, she acknowledged as she opened her window and climbed out. Unfortunately, she did need to at least once more. Once she was a few blocks away, she hailed a cab and headed down to Lucy's lair.
After paying the cabbie and sending him on his way, she hesitated at the door. Was she certain this was the right thing to do? It had been just one kiss, after all, and that had been in the line of duty. (Well, one kiss on her part, anyway...) She didn't even want to do anything more with Dom...
Her hormones abruptly spoke up, informing her in no uncertain terms that this was not so, but when she thought about trying to tell Lucy that, the Lucy-lusting hormones beat up the Dominique-lusting hormones and locked them in a closet.
Okay, decision made. Besides, she wanted to be honest - completely honest, for maybe the first time ever - with Lucy, which meant that she had to tell her about things she'd rather not, as well. And this was certainly one of those things.
She realized, with some amusement, that Lucy's henchmen were actually getting used to her. No one so much as blinked when she walked in this time. "She upstairs?" she asked the closest one, and got a grunt and a nod in return. "Thank you." Her mother had always told her to be polite, after all... Or she thought she remembered that, anyway. Diane Bradshaw agreed, at any rate, so she was doubly convinced it was a good idea.
There was some activity in the breakroom - or what had probably been the breakroom when the building had been an active warehouse - and she poked her head in to find Scud leading a bingo game. She caught his attention, gave him a wave, and inquisitively jerked her head in the direction of Lucy's bedroom. He nodded back briefly. As she headed off, she could hear him exclaim, "And bingo. I am the god of bingo."
She shook her head, grinning. He really was adorable. He and Janet would do well together, she decided.
Sure enough, Lucy was in her room, seated at her desk, laptop open, focusing intently at something on the screen. Amy crept up behind her silently, stole a quick peek at the screen, and blinked in surprise as she read the website header.
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
She could only think of one reason Lucy would be looking at that, and she was so touched that she just wanted to gather Lucy up in her arms and never let her go. She was also hit with more guilt over her behavior at the club that made her want to flee the lair. The two conflicting impulses warred for dominance, and she compromised by planting a kiss on Lucy's head.
Fortunately, she pulled away immediately, or she would have been cracked a good one when Lucy jerked her head up in surprise. "Amy! What are- When did you-?"
"I just got back," Amy informed her, grinning at the cuteness that was Lucy. She could feel all of her doubts and hesitations flowing away. Yes, this was right. "I had to see you," she continued as she straddled Lucy's legs, wrapped her arms around the criminal's neck, and kissed her soundly.
"Wh-" was all Lucy managed to get out before Amy found a much better use for her lips. Well. Maybe being surprised like this wasn't such a bad thing. The part of her mind that kept protesting that this was a D.E.B. she was making out with had long been silenced, and merely sighed in resignation in the back of her brain. Her right hand reached over and fumbled blindly at the desk, trying to hit something on her computer that would change the screen before-
"You don't need to bother, you know," Amy said during one of their rare breaks for oxygen. "I already saw it."
Damn. "It was supposed to be a surprise," she lamented.
"And I love y- that you would try to do this for me," Amy told her, stumbling briefly in figuring out what she wanted to say. "But I have tried that site before. And a few others. And while I couldn't do anything too specific for fear of someone from The Centre noticing..."
"Speaking of specifics, do you remember any about wherever you're originally from?" It would certainly help narrow things down, especially if the more standard searches were useless.
Amy sighed and rested her forehead against Lucy's as she thought. "It was cold," she said at last. "Especially in the winter. We... got a lot of snow. I used to like that." At least until the few times they were allowed outside back at The Centre for training during the winter months, and her memories of winter became snow stained red with blood. Oh, Mercury...
Okay, between that and what had happened to Amy's parents, that would give her a good place to start. "Are you okay?" she said, almost going cross-eyed as she tried to study the face mere centimeters away from her own.
Suddenly not feeling like she deserved to be where she was, Amy got up and paced a little around the room. "Yeah, I guess. It's just... This last mission..."
"What happened?" Lucy asked, her face the picture of concern.
Amy flinched internally. She was being so understanding it was actually starting to hurt. "Nothing on the mission itself. Just a bank robbery. Nothing out of the ordinary." Well, not out of the ordinary for the D.E.B.S. at any rate, sad to say. "It was after. We were at this club, and Dominique..." Oh, this was hard to say. "Really, it was the Centre people..." Oh, make sense, will you, Bradshaw?!
"What did they do to her?" Dominique, Dominique... She knew full well who Janet was, of course, and Amy had said enough about Max for Lucy to know which one she was, so by process of elimination, Dominique must have been the chain-smoker.
"Nothing, for now. She's holding her own." Amy stopped pacing in the middle of the room, looking down at the rug. "She's there. I mean-" She sighed. "I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but part of the plan called for a D.E.B. to infiltrate The Centre, and..."
"And that D.E.B. was Dominique," Lucy finished for her.
"Yeah." She still couldn't meet Lucy's eyes. "Anyway, she had some information to give us, but she couldn't come alone..."
"...because The Centre doesn't trust her enough, yet."
"Right."
Amy opened her mouth to say something more, but Lucy cut her off. "I'm sorry you have to deal with those bastards as much as you do."
Amy waved that off, chancing a look at Lucy's face. "It's really not-"
"But don't worry, I think I can help."
"...that big of... what are you talking about?"
Lucy grinned at her, which did absolutely nothing to help settle her stomach. "You just go back to your academy and get some sleep. You look like you could use it. I'll be back before TOO long." She already had everything she needed packed, after all, and the jet was pretty much prepped and ready to go. She'd only been looking at the M&EC website to keep herself occupied until it was time to go, after all.
"What are you...?" Lucy gave her a quick peck on the lips and headed for the door, pausing only long enough to scoop up a backpack. "Wait! I wanted to tell you something!" Well, not wanted... Lucy wasn't stopping, though. "At the club, I-" She was gone. "-kissed Dominique," Amy said to the empty room. She sighed and sat down on the edge of Lucy's bed.
"Dominique? That would be... the French one, right?" a new voice asked from the doorway.
She looked up to see Scud standing there, an unreadable expression on his face. "Yeah, that's her." She sighed again. "It was supposed to just be a quick kiss, as much to give her an excuse to be close enough to slip the discs she had for us in my pocket as anything else. I just wanted to do it once, get it out of my system."
"But she didn't quite see it that way?" Scud guessed, sitting down at Lucy's desk and facing her.
"No. Dom... has issues." Which was putting it mildly, really, but he didn't really need to know any of that just yet. "Lucy..." Amy sighed one more time. "She's going to do something stupid, isn't she?"
"...probably."
She shook her head fondly. "Think she'll understand?"
Scud considered that carefully. "Knowing Lucy... yeah, I'd say she will. Besides, she knows you better then I do."
"She knows me better then anyone does," Amy said with a distant smile. Refocusing on the here and now, she asked, "How much has she told you about me?" She appreciated that Lucy respected her enough to mostly keep it to herself, but Scud was practically Lucy's family - which, by extension, made him very nearly part of Amy's family, she decided firmly - and he deserved to know.
"Only a little, actually."
She sighed. She really hated having to repeat her life story again and again, but hopefully this would be the last time... until or unless she decided to tell the Bradshaws, too. Though that seemed a bit unlikely. "Okay, then. It all started when I was four..."
**********************************************
"Get out."
They were words she'd uttered countless times before, and no doubt would say countless more. Unlike some of the others, though, the young Sweeper she'd bedded this time, after a moment of initial confusion upon waking, didn't object in the slightest, being still too scared of her to even consider it. "And take your clothes with you! I don't do laundry!" Nodding in a very nearly frantic manner, he scooped them up and headed for the door, getting dressed as he went. Before too long, she was rewarded with the sound of a car starting up and pulling out of the driveway of the house that the D.E.B.S. had rented for her.
She wasn't satisfied.
Oh, she was sated, true enough. Despite his fear of 'Diabolique', the young man had performed quite admirably. It was really no fault of his that, the night before, her mind had kept conjuring up images of blonde hair, that she'd wanted slender fingers to be giving her the pleasure he was providing, that she'd craved tender lips on her skin.
She wasn't used to this. Wanting something, and not being able to have it, was a new experience for her. Even if she literally threw herself at Amy, she wasn't sure that Amy would respond favorably. Not if what she'd implied about Lucy Diamond was true. Even though she would be far better for Amy then an internationally wanted super-villain.
No, she told herself. You cannot control matters of the heart. It is madness to try.
At least she'd gotten something out of last night. She now knew exactly where to find the remaining files from the Pantheon project.
She quickly showered and dressed, then headed out to her own car. She wanted to get there and actually get her hands on the files before someone found out she knew where they were and moved them - or destroyed them. She was a little amazed they hadn't just been destroyed long ago, but she wasn't going to question it.
She gave a silent thanks to the departed Sweeper as she drove to The Centre. Hopefully, she'd at least be able to make it through the day, now.
Hopefully.
________________________________________________________________________
I hate it when the muse gets distracted by other things and I have to fight with it to get some writing done. But at least it didn't resist TOO strongly. ;)
Next time - Still smarting over Lucy's effortless infiltration, The Centre decides to get rid of her... permanently. And there's cake! :)