#it was like pulling teeth to write her. Adeline ily but do you have to be so... direct

[brown-little-robin]

33: Adeline

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Joseph is insane.

Adeline has never claimed to understand him, but she thought she understood him better than this! Joey, her tender-hearted son, the one who rarely speaks of anything negative, who hates the sound of gunfire, is adopting Inertia?!

Adeline knows about Inertia. Information is her business, and she keeps track of the most dangerous metas. A new Inertia has appeared on the news every so often for the last seven years, and Adeline thanks her lucky stars every single time she sees that green blur that she is not involved with any speedsters.

Was. Was not involved.

She pauses a YouTube video of a suspected Inertia spotting and massages her temples. She’s trying to do her research, but it’s hard to concentrate. Her leg itches. She’ll need to elevate it soon. Also, her best information comes from what she already knew about the Inertia that Deathstroke, her ex-husband, recruited.

Inertia was Slade’s mad dog—the most dangerous one on the team, barring Deathstroke. He was a clone of Impulse; Inertia is more well-trained than Impulse, but still has the feral energy of a third-generation speedster. In every image she had of that Inertia, he had the same sneer on his face—except for that one time when she got a security camera view of him begging Slade for something. She couldn’t hear him or see his lips, so she doesn’t know what he wanted, but Slade had to slam him into a brick wall to get him to shut up. He was sullen as a kicked dog afterwards.

Even years later, Adeline wonders why Inertia didn’t dodge. She suspects that Slade had psychological control over him. Fatherless young adults have done weirder things than let a new father figure rough them up.

That Inertia was one of the most dangerous people Adeline has ever had the displeasure of learning about. He nearly blew up San Francisco. He killed Impulse. Deathstroke seemed to have to threaten him repeatedly to keep him in line. Adeline knows he was only one example, but all Inertias are made to kill. All Inertias come with a jealousy streak a mile wide. And Joey wants to let one of them into his life?! It’s like he wants to get hurt!

She argued with Joseph, of course, when he came to her house and announced that he was adopting a son. That he was adopting… Inertia.

She’d said, “I can’t believe you!”

Joseph smiled a little.

“Inertia? Inertia?”

“He’s not Inertia anymore.”

“He says.”

Joseph shook his head. “I trust him.”

Adeline shook her head in despair. “What in the world did the Flash say to you to get you to consider this? You’ve been content with your life for so long now…”

She wondered—and still wonders—if Joseph misses the excitement of the vigilante lifestyle. If maybe that’s why he’s so ready to jump into a dangerous decision.

Joseph signed, “It wasn’t the Flash. It was my decision. I’m keeping him, mother. I’m just here to ask if you want to meet him.”

Adeline’s face flamed, and she felt the danger of reacting irrationally. She took a moment of silence to recover.

“Joseph,” she said, low and serious. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Joseph nodded. His hand went to his heart.

After a moment, Joseph signed, “I want to live with you and help out. But if I have to break that promise, I will. He needs me more than you do.”

Adeline… didn’t know how to react. She was proud of Joey for deciding to settle down. But why did it have to be like this? With a half-insane, traumatized speedster clone? Joseph has been hurt enough in his life.

One last time, Adeline tested him.

“You do realize that the best-case scenario here is that you have to parent a traumatized speedster. A speedster clone. Let alone the health risks—” and her mind fills up with all the information she found today about clone decay— “he’s never been parented before. You are going to have to work through years worth of neglect, Joseph, and that’s exhausting work.”

Joseph gave a single dignified nod. He was looking at her with that gentle, steady look that he gives whenever he has made his mind up.

“Well, I’m proud of you,” Adeline said. “Come here.”

And she gave Joseph a hug.

Adeline shoves her computer across the table. She isn’t getting anything productive done, and Joseph will be here soon with the clone.

Sophos Thaddeus Free, Née Thawne, stands beside and slightly behind Joseph at the front doors. Like a dog at heel, the clone waits for Joseph to wave to his mother and for her to say hello back before speaking to her. He puts his hands behind his back and bows.

“Adeline Kane.”

His voice is raspy.

He looks up at her through his long pale lashes. In person, Adeline is struck by the poisonous yellow of the speedster’s eyes. But they are not what Adeline expected: the eyes of a killer. Instead, he has the wary, serious look of a child in a warzone.

Adeline greets him, “Thad Free.”

She moves aside to let them in. The clone moves forward one step, then stops, because Joseph hasn’t moved. Joseph is looking around, glancing at her leg in its cumbersome cast and boot. He signs: “Why did you get the door yourself?”

“May has Sundays off now,” Adeline sighs. She doesn’t mind the maid getting religion, but what an inconvenient time for her to start being a pious churchgoer. “It’s been a bit of a rough day, but come on in. I just need to elevate my leg a bit.”

Joseph gives her a concerned look.

“I’m fine, Joey,” Adeline says, and fondness slips into her voice.

The clone looks away. To hide what? Jealousy?

Adeline clunks herself through the foyer, then steps awkwardly over the bump into the great room. She clunks over and settles herself into the green rocking chair with an involuntary sigh. She lifts the footrest and elevates her leg.

The clone comes to a halt in the middle of the room and looks at Joseph for guidance.

“Pick a chair and sit down,” Joseph signs gently. He gestures to the plushy armchairs all around and the couch on the foyer-side wall.

“Actually, can I stand for now?”

Again, the clone’s raspy voice unsettles Adeline. Such a damaged voice from such a small body, still with baby fat on his cheeks. It doesn’t seem right.

“If you want to,” Joseph signs, still looking inexpressibly tender.

As Joseph turns to take the creamy chair across from Adeline, her eyes return to the clone standing in front of her.

“Thad,” she says. “Joseph has told me about you, but I want to hear it from you. Can I ask you some questions?”

“Go ahead.”

“Why did you decide to give up being Inertia?”

The clone pauses, then laughs.

“Wow. You don’t pull your punches.”

“No, I do not.” Pulling your punches makes the punch useless and unlikely to even land. Always follow through.

The clone bares his teeth in a flash of a grin. Then his gaze flicks to Joseph, like he’s trying to get this right for Joseph. He’s meeting the parents, Adeline thinks humorlessly. He is just lucky that all he has to deal with is Adeline’s brand of overprotective prying.

Quietly, the clone says, “I gave up Inertia because… I realized that the entire feud between the Thawnes and Allens was pointless, and I didn’t want to be involved. I stopped being Inertia because I wasn’t Inertia anymore.”

Adeline raises her eyebrows. That’s kind of profound. The clone’s smart, she’ll give him that.

“And then you… stayed in the speed force for seven years?”

“Yes. Not by choice.”

He speaks tersely. His time in the speed force—or wherever he really was���must be a touchy subject.

“But you’re back now. Why?”

“I don’t know,” he snaps. “The speed force spat me out.”

“Easy there,” Adeline says firmly, like she’s soothing a horse. It seems to work. The clone visibly regroups.

She asks, “Now that you’re out, what are you planning to do?”

“Go to college.”

Adeline nods. Joseph told her that. She is more interested in why. Education is just a halfway point to a different life.

He adds, “And before you ask, I don’t know what I’ll major in. I’m a clone. I don’t have life figured out. Sue me.”

Adeline laughs. She likes this kid.

“Fair enough. But tell me this, Thad. What are you looking for?”

He sighs.

“You probably won’t believe me, but peace and quiet, mostly,” he says. “I spent most of my life on this stupid one-sided war and I’m sick of the entire concept of heroism. But I’ve got to justify my existence somehow. So… college.”

Wow. If this is a lie, it sucks.

“To justify your existence?”

“Well I’ve got to tell the Flash something to get him off my back.”

“So college is your excuse to get away from the Flash.”

The clone bares his teeth at her.

“Is that such a bad thing?”

“Maybe.”

Joey snaps his fingers for attention. The clone jumps. Joseph gets up, comes over to the clone, and puts his arm out in front of his chest protectively. Okay, sheesh. Adeline gets the picture.

“What?”

Satisfied that he’s made his point, Joseph signs, “Mother, you don’t have the whole picture.”

The clone is looking up at Joseph, watching his hands, and his eyes are very wide. Startled. Adeline does not feel friendly toward people who forget that Joseph still has opinions even if he doesn’t have a voice.

Hands flashing, Joseph signs, “Thad was raised to kill the Flash.”

“I know that.”

“You’re upsetting him.”

“She is not!”

Joey ignores him. “Be gentle,” he signs to Adeline, then gives her an I-mean-it look that’s as good as a scowl from her tender son.

Adeline is a little shocked.

“Joseph,” the clone says, and he sounds just as shocked as she is. “You don’t have to—”

“Yes I do.”

He subsides, but he looks upset. Joseph asks him, “Do you need a break?”

The clone’s voice is surprisingly gentle as he says “No, thank you. I’m fine. You can sit down.”

Joseph smiles and nods at him, and he sits down again.

“Thad,” Adeline says, trying her best to be gentle. She never wants to upset Joseph and she doesn’t actually want to upset the clone, either. She just needs answers. “Why do you need to get away from the Flash?”

His yellow eyes meet hers, wary.

“He stresses me out.”

Could the clone really be as uncomplicated as this? Adeline is used to dealing with people who lie. Her whole business is uncovering the dirty truth. But he might just be telling the truth. His story makes sense.

Again, Adeline looks into those yellow eyes and gets the gut feeling that he is not a killer. And she feels that he’s not a liar, either.

Thad says, “I’ll have you know that I have a semi-official diagnosis of C-PTSD, and wouldn’t you know it, a lot of that trauma was tied to speedsters.”

Joseph signs, “He needs a home.”

Maybe he does. Maybe that’s all he wants. Adeline takes in the speedster’s deadly little body poised like a soldier in the middle of the room and reminds herself that he is a member of the family now, whether she likes it or not.

Adeline says to Thad, “So. You want to stay with us and try to recover?”

He makes a choking noise.

“Sure,” he says, blatantly insincere.

“You don’t expect to recover,” Adeline recognizes.

“Of course not.”

Joey winces. He has always been so empathetic, and this child is a walking minefield of horrors. Why in the world does Joey think this is a good idea?

The clone continues, “Look, you have to know. Medication doesn’t work on me. Therapy can only help a certain amount. PTSD changes the physical structure of the brain. And I’m hyper-decelerated. That means—”

“I know what it means.”

Thad looks unnerved.

“…well then. You know that my body—including my brain—does not change fast. I’m going to be…”

His voice wavers.

“I’m going to be like this for… a very long time. So no, I don’t—I don’t expect to recover.”

Adeline nods slowly. The clone’s cheeks are flushed, she notices. This must be frightening for him. When you’re a tool, you don’t get to be un-fixably broken. If a tool is broken, it gets thrown away.

“I don’t know that you’ll never recover. You may be hyper-decelerated, but you’re a speedster. You could heal from a gunshot to the gut in two minutes.”

“Provided I had enough energy, maybe.” But despite his skepticism, Thad looks thoughtful. Adeline waits.

After a moment, the clone admits, “There… may be a possibility you’re right.”

Adeline raises her eyebrows. She didn’t expect such a civil response.

Thad wrinkles his nose at her knowingly. He comes and flings himself into the armchair to her left, about five feet away. His body bounces a bit off the red leather cushions. He is so small for such a deadly thing.

Joseph is in the seat opposite them, forming a triangle of equals.

Thad says, “You have no guarantee that I’m not lying. You’re just going to have to make a decision on whether to trust me or not. And—”

Joseph snaps his fingers. Thad shuts up immediately, eyes on Joseph like a German Shepherd waiting for a command.

Joseph tells him, “I’m sorry. I need to talk to my mother alone, please. Just for a minute.”

“Yes, sir.”

He gets up and walks straight through the wall to the foyer like a ghost. Joseph watches him go with a fond half-smile.

When he’s gone, Joseph turns his attention back to Adeline and signs, “Please be gentle with him.”

“That’s the second time you’ve said that,” Adeline points out.

“You didn’t really listen the first time.”

“Because I need to know the truth about him,” Adeline says. “You need to know the truth about him. I know you trust him, but you’re making a lifelong commitment here, Joseph. You need to know what you’re working with.”

Joseph spreads his hands in agreement. Then, slowly, he signs: “He’s not Slade.”

Adeline’s eyes widen. Joseph never talks about his father.

“I know he’s not Slade,” she says. “If anything, he’s more like Grant, isn’t he?”

This time it’s Joseph who flinches minutely. Adeline never talks about Grant. Her poor foolish dead son. Joseph’s older brother. He wanted to be like Deathstroke. So he went and got himself killed trying to be a mercenary.

Joseph’s face softens. He signs, “Thad isn’t Grant.”

Quietly, Adeline says: “I know. But you have to admit that he’s like Grant.”

Joseph looks unconvinced. “He just wants peace and quiet.”

Adeline shakes her head.

“Someone like that?” she asks. “He’s never going to be normal. He’s restless. Like Grant. Once he’s been with you for a while, he’s going to start acting up. I can see it. Please tell me you can too.”

Joseph gives his breathy version of a sigh.

“Maybe he is like Grant. But he needs me—”

And, in unison with Joseph’s hands, Adeline says: “He needs us.”

She sighs. How can she say no to that? She is walking into heartbreak with her eyes wide open, but…

“Fine. You can live here. Both of you. I’ll be his damn granny.”

Joseph smiles at her, sweet and incorrigible. Adeline looks at her son’s lovely face, the dimples on his cheeks, the tiredness in his eyes, and she shakes her head at herself. For Joey, she’d walk straight into hell.

Joseph goes out to the foyer to get Thad. It takes longer than Adeline thought it would. Her leg starts itching again.

The door opens, and Joseph, smiling brilliantly, comes in with Thad beside him. Thad is holding Joseph’s hand. Maybe he’s less like Grant than Adeline thought. Grant would never have allowed someone to hold his hand. Too independent.

The clone looks up at Joseph for approval, gets his nod, and then comes and sits in the armchair by Adeline again. He licks his lips and shifts toward her.

“You can stay,” she tells him.

He blinks rapidly.

“Why?”

“Well, I can’t say no to Joey,” Adeline says.

Thad snorts. “Yeah, me neither.”

And then he sits there and stares at her, frowning slightly, like he’s trying to solve a math problem in his head.

Adeline doesn’t want to let him get weird ideas in his head about that. So she gets down to the practicalities.

“What college are you going to go to?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t?” Adeline looks at Joseph, and he shrugs, looking surprised. “It’s August nineteenth! Metropolis U. is starting in two weeks! You’d better make a decision pretty quickly, Thad!”

The clone flinches. His shoulders draw up to his ears. He wraps his arms around his knees.

“I didn’t know,” he says hoarsely. “I—what can I do?”

“Which colleges have you applied to?”

Thad looks like a deer in the headlights. “Um—none—I didn’t know I needed to, I—only took the ACT a little while ago—”

Joseph gives Adeline a desperate look. Right. She can work with this.

“The situation can be salvaged,” she says firmly. “Metropolis U. has a program called the “special circumstances initiative” where you can apply late. It’s a Federal requirement for State colleges. If you get in, you’ll have a sh—a ton of work to do to catch up, but you can handle it, can’t you, Thad?”

His eyes lose that wide, panicked look in the blink of an eye. He’s still pale, but focused.

“Of course.”

“Special Circumstances Application,” Adeline repeats. “It’s a pain for colleges to deal with. Metropolis U., Metro Community College, and New Jersey City University are the only colleges in New Jersey that offer them. But you can probably get in on that.”

“Okay.”

“Come here—”

She isn’t even done with the sentence before Thad is standing at her elbow. Maybe she could get used to working with speedsters after all.

“Online application,” she tells him, and leans painfully over to pull her laptop from the computer case hanging over the arm of the chair. She puts in the password and then hands it to Thad. He can find it faster than she can. Heck, he might even be able to work at his own speed for once, using a computer.

She looks up to see Joey raising his eyebrows at her, laughing silently.

“What?” she mouths.

He signs, “You just trusted him with your computer.”

“Ah, so what,” Adeline says. Thad looks up from the computer, confused. Adeline clocks it as a potential weakness—becomes intensely absorbed in work, could be ambushed—even as she thinks he looks kind of cute.

“What’s my story?” Thad asks them.

Adeline hesitates—and abruptly finds the computer back in her hands. She nearly swears, but manages to stop herself. She doesn’t know much about being a granny but she knows you shouldn’t swear in front of kids.

She’s going to have to clean up a lot of her habits, probably. The way Thad panicked when she snapped at him was—unexpected. Like he thought she was going to hurt him and he couldn’t defend himself.

“Your story?” she asks.

“Essay question.”

She looks at it. In five hundred words or less, describe the circumstances that led to your applying to Metropolis University using this application. Right.

Joseph signs, “You could tell the truth.”

Thad looks at him like he’s gone nuts.

“Why in the world would I do that?”

“It’s confidential. They legally can’t release that essay.” Joseph hesitates, waving his hand in the air uncertainly: I don’t know, though.

“That’s right,” Adeline says. “Searchers has used this application before. It was originally built for rehabilitating aliens and metas. Civil rights and all that.”

“So the information is confidential… still, why go for the truth?”

Does he not have any sense of morality? But Joseph’s expression goes soft and concerned. “People will want to help you.”

“No they won’t.”

Joseph repeats, “Thad, people will want to help you. I promise.”

Thad covers his mouth with his hand. Adeline can see his chest move as he breathes deeply. Overwhelmed—and childish in how he deals with it. So that flinch was about thinking his application would be rejected if he told the truth?

Adeline is about to say something about everyone loving a rehabilitation story when she sees something change about Thad. A slackening in his muscles, a dulling of his eyes. He’s gone. If they were in the field, Adeline would have to carry him out of danger.

Joseph told her about this. It doesn’t make it any less bizarre to see it in person. No warning, no trigger. Just Thad’s mind rejecting reality for a minute.

Adeline looks at Joseph, and he looks back calmly. They wait it out.

Thad comes back without fanfare. He glances around, readjusting, and grimaces at Adeline. He says, “It happens.”

Now there’s a good, solid response for you. Thad may be messed-up, but he’s practical about it.

Adeline says “Sure.” And then she thinks of something. “Okay, rule: don’t go in the pool without someone with you. I don’t need you drowning in my house.”

“There’s a pool?”

Joseph snaps his fingers. He’s grinning.

“Do you mind if I take Thad on the tour?”

“Go for it,” Adeline says. “I’ll call Mr. Crandall about that application.”

Joseph comes over to Thad, grinning, and leads him toward the dining room, already signing animatedly about the house. Adeline gets busy on the computer. She has plenty of time to call Thad’s guardian, and she has some other things she wants to do first. Now that she knows she’ll be hosting him long-term, she has a lot of research to do about speedsters. Dietary needs, exercise needs, metahuman characteristics, the list goes on. Oh, and she should brush up on the current research on psychological trauma, too. The kid is clearly screwed up in the head.