No one said anything to that, but Kat flushed and left in nearly as much of a huff as Janus had. The rest of us sat there for a minute more in eerie silence, while I wondered if Reed was right.
Chapter 9
Scott lingered as the meeting broke up. So did Reed and Zollers, but they hung back. I sat in my chair, the smell of leather thick in my nose. My fingers danced over the surface of the leather covering the arms, soft, pliable material slick with the sweat on my fingertips. Just nerves, I hoped.
Nervous for the weakling? Wolfe asked.
I appreciate your assistance, I told him, but unsolicited opinions aren’t my favorite things ever.
Since the Little Doll asked so nicely, he said, and I caught a glimpse of his fearsome smile in my mind’s eye before he sauntered off to the back of my head. I could feel the press of the others in my head, too, now that I had let them out of their prisons. They seemed reticent to say anything, though, and that was just fine by me.
Reed and Zollers remained at the other end of the table, watching me with careful eyes. They didn’t bother to pretend they weren’t paying attention to everything I was doing, and I respected them for it. False discretion wasn’t going to convince me they weren’t eavesdropping; they were metas, and they’d have to at least leave the room in order to avoid hearing a conversation between Scott and me.
Scott shuffled up, hands in his pockets. He took a moment to meet my eyes, but when he did, I could see the emotion in them. “I just wanted to tell you … I’m in. All in. Whatever it takes to stop these bastards.”
“Good,” I said, a little more choked up than I would have thought I’d be. I looked up and saw Reed hide a wry smile by turning away from me. “That’s … it’s good to have you on the team.” I wanted to smack myself for the excessive formality I was lapsing into, but let’s face it, I didn’t want to have a deeper, more private conversation with my brother and my therapist in the room. That’s practically family counseling, and it was not something I was up for.
“Way to come off the bench at the buzzer, Arthur Curry,” Reed said, and he turned back for just a second to smirk.
“Who the hell is Arthur Curry?” Scott asked, confusion stitching a downward line across his brow.
“Aquaman,” I said with faint amusement. He looked at me and his forehead puckered further. “Arthur Curry is Aquaman.”
“What the hell, Reed?” Scott gave him an insulted look, to which my brother just shrugged. He turned back to me. “And, uh … I’m sorry about your mom.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll, uh … deal with it later,” I said and meant it. “No time for mourning at the moment.”
“Can you and I talk later?” he asked. The annoyance on his face at Reed’s jibe had faded, replaced with something else, something closer to concern.
I took a breath before answering. “Yeah. Though we might want to do what we’d talked about before everything hit the fan and just … wait until things settle out with Sovereign.”
“Sure,” he said, and I watched him swallow heavily. “Sure, we can do that. Wait until everything is, uh … over … before …”
“Thanks.” I smiled faintly. Part of me didn’t want to put it off. Part of me wanted to dig into it right now and get it out of the way. This wasn’t the sort of thing I really wanted to leave open, like a wound, while I was heading into battle, but I wasn’t sure it was the sort of thing that could be fixed with a couple stitches, like … a smaller wound, I suppose.
The truth was I didn’t have any idea what to say. My feelings regarding Scott were immensely complicated, and I was still feeling exhausted from all the garbage that had been dumped on us in the last few days.
“Well, okay, then,” Scott said, and he swung toward the door almost as though he were on a string, being pulled toward it. His movements were mechanical, shuffling, and reminded me a little of how he’d acted after Kat had lost all memory of him. He disappeared through the door without another word.
“You know that keeping him at a distance is going to come back to bite you in the ass sometime between now and the final battle, right?” Reed asked, and I turned my head to find him standing there, leaning on the back of one of the chairs, watching me.
“Everything comes back to bite me eventually,” I said. “Leave my house, get drawn into a war. Kill Wolfe, piss off his brothers. Fail to kill Weissman when I had a chance, he comes back and kills my mom.” I said it grimly, but I didn’t feel sorry for myself about it. I didn’t know many people who’d been left with the shitty choices I’d been given in the last year and a half. Any people, actually. All I had were shitty choices. And I didn’t feel sorry for myself about it, not anymore. This was just reality. “I’ll deal with Scott when I figure out how to deal with Scott,” I said. To me, it had the ring of bracing honesty. I didn’t know how my brother or Dr. Zollers took it, but their facial reactions didn’t indicate they took it well. I looked to Reed. “Are we still in lockdown?”