Blue Beetle X Reader Chapter 7

My head throbbed as I timidly opened my eyes expecting to be blinded by light, only to find Bart staring down at me with a smile. I realised that we were on the ship and that I was laying on the ground off to the side while the others were sat in their seats, talking to one another about various things. Megan seemed a little off, I noticed that she wasn't even driving the ship, but I decided against questioning it in case it triggered anything.
"You're awake! We thought for sure that you were moded!" He chuckled lightly and offered a hand out to help me sit up, which I gladly accepted as I didn't really have the energy to sit myself up.
"Nice to know that you have confidence in me.." I groaned, my voice dripping with sarcasm. The back of my head was killing me thanks to Black Beetle slamming me against that wall. And not in the fun way.
"You were out for quite some time." Bart shrugged. "I mean, even Blue woke up before you and he was pretty moded himself." He gestured over to Jaime who was sat down in a seat near me in all of his shirtless glory. With help from the young speedster, I stood up, still a little dizzy from the nasty bump to the head that I had received. I slowly made my way over to Jaime, leaning on the desk in front of him when I got there to keep myself steady. He looked up at me and gave me a small, sad smile.
"I'm so glad that you're okay.." He was barely audible. "Well.. As okay as you can be with your head like that.." I let out a small laugh which seemed to brighten his mood just a little bit.
"I'm glad that you're okay too. I was so worried that something would happen to you. I felt so helpless.." I sighed, reaching out to run my hands through his now scruffy hair to try to neaten it out a little. The tension between the two of us was thick enough to be cut by a knife.
Without any warning, Jaime grabbed my hand and pulled me down practically onto his lap and encased me in a tight hug, burying his face into the crook of my neck. I hugged back with a much force as I could in the state that I was in. I was too lost in the moment to notice that the rest of the team were watching us as though we were acting out a scene in a movie. All that was missing was popcorn. It must have been confusing to a large majority of them because as far as they knew, Blue Beetle and (Y/N) weren't even friends. Yet there we were, holding onto one another as though our lives depended on it. I'd be confused too if I were in their situation.
"I'm so sorry.." I whispered to him, my voice cracking slightly as I held back tears. "I should have told you." He shook his head against my neck, his hair tickling me slightly.
"I should be apologising. I broke my promise to you." He choked out, clearly on the verge of tears himself. I pulled away from him slightly. "The promise I made to protect you." I shook my head at him wildly.
"No it's my fault! I should have told you sooner! I should have-" it was then that O noticed the rest of the team staring at the two of us intently, clearly interested in what was happening. Jaime must have noticed them too as he leaned in closer to me.
"We'll talk more about this in private.." He whispered before placing a light kiss on my forehead as I rested my head on his chest, causing butterflies to fly around my stomach. I took one last look at the team who were all in shock at the action- all but Nightwing, Impulse, and Megan who wasn't really paying attention to anything- and then closed my eyes, cuddling up to Jaime and falling back to sleep.

--Time Skip--

"(SH/N)." I was called into the office just as Impulse walked out of it. Both me and Jaime were in shock when we sat down in the hallway to find a very grumpy looking Tye opposite us. I had to suppress the urge to leap up and hug him the moment that he sat down. I was just thankful to see that he was still alive. Realising that The Reach had kidnapped both of my best friends just fuelled my anger towards them and my lust for revenge.
Jaime made it a little more obvious about how excited he was to see Tye. When I say a little more obvious I mean he jumped out of his chair and yelled "TYE!" and the top of his lungs. Fortunately, he realised his mistake and played it off by changing 'Tye' to 'Time to stretch'. He was such a dork but at the same time he was so adorable. He was adorkable.

Impulse gave me a thumbs up as I stood up and walked over to the office. After explaining why he had been keeping Jaime away from me, he had been a complete sweetheart towards me, making sure that I was feeling okay and just generally being kind.
"Please, take a seat (SH/N)." Black Canary smiled encouragingly and gestured to the empty seat on the opposite side of the desk to her own. I awkwardly sat down, painfully aware of the camera recording my every action. I've never liked being filmed or having pictures taken of me and this was no exception. "Do you remember much?" She questioned, obviously referring to my time with The Reach.
"Bits and pieces." I sighed, thinking back to the pod that I had been held in. "I was unconscious a lot of the time." I admitted, ashamed at how weak I was without my powers.
"Why was that?" She questioned, although I'm certain that she already knew the answer. My mind was suddenly full of memories of the pain, it felt almost as though I were reliving it. Black Canary obviously noticed this as she leant over the desk and gently rubbed my arm in a comforting way. "You're safe now (SH/N)." She hushed as I took in a deep breath and nodded.
"(Y/N)." I mumbled, reaching up to take my mask off. "Just call me (Y/N) for now, please." I didn't feel like (SH/N) at the moment. I felt as if I were a regular girl who had only just been thrown into this life of super powers. This must be how the regular people who had been kidnapped, like Tye, must feel.
"(Y/N). Of course." Black Canary smiled softly at me, however that smile soon turned into a frown. "I know that this may be difficult for you, but I need you to tell me exactly what you remember."
"We were like test subjects to them." I whispered, keeping my eyes wide open. I was worried that if I were to close them, I'd be transported back to the pod, back into the hands of The Reach. "They did lots of experiments on us."
"What sort of experiments?" She seemed very hesitant to ask due to the way that I was reacting to the memory, but I knew that she had to, and I knew that I had to give her as much of an answer as I could.
"It was usually to see how much pain we could withstand." I wrapped my arms around myself as I began to shake. "They used various things.. Electricity, sound waves... There were lots of things that they used that I didn't recognise. I assumed that they were alien technology." Black Canary nodded in understanding.
"I guess that's all for-" She started to dismiss me, but I stopped her before she could.
"I found this." I put down the folder that I had managed to take from The Reach. "It was in the lab that they had me and Jaime in." She picked it up and began to flick through it. "It's all in an alien language, I couldn't understand a word of it, but judging by the pictures and X-rays of both me and Jaime, it has something to do with the.. 'Experiments' -for lack of a better word- that they did on us and it may give us more intel on the scarab. Perhaps systems at The Watchtower could translate it?"
"You did good (Y/N). Real good." Black Canary assured me, finally putting down the folder and looking up at me again.
"All I did was steal something." I shook my head with a sigh. "Anyone could have done that. I was completely useless when it came to fighting. I was weak from the experiments and they knocked me out in one blow."
"(Y/N), you've provided us with more information by stealing this folder than anyone else." She replied very sternly. "You did good."

--Meanwhile--

Jaime's POV
"Do we get to contact anyone?" Tye asked seemingly anyone who could give him an answer. There was a long silence which indicated that no one knew.
"You ran away from home, almost of us did, who do you want to contact?" One of the other boys questioned.
"(Y/N). I promised her to stay in touch, even if I ran away. She gets in such a state if she doesn't hear from me or our other friend in a long time." He explained. I felt a little hurt that he would contact (Y/N) and not me, but at the same time I completely understood why. If me or Tye don't talk to (Y/N) in a couple of days, or if she doesn't at least see us in that time, she gets incredibly worried. It's gotten to the point in the past where she's had a panic attack because she hadn't been in contact with one of us in over a week. That's when we realised that we could never give her the silent treatment and ignore her.
"Is (Y/N) your girlfriend?" The other boy smirked and nudged Tye with his arm.
"I wish." He replied with a frown. This comment really bugged me. I knew that he had a small crush on (Y/N), lots of people did. But the idea of her an Tye being together made me.. Jealous? Why would I be jealous over something like that? They were my friends. They could do what they wanted to. Sure, I didn't let (Y/N) date people I didn't trust, but I trusted Tye. Why did the idea of the two of them being together fill me with jealousy like this?

(Y/N)'s POV
I walked out of the office, and went to go sit down between Jaime and Lagoon Boy again.
"(Y/N)?" I heard a voice in front of me gasp. I looked up to see Tye staring at me in total shock. How did he know that it was- my mask. I took my mask off and forgot to put it back on. I'm such an idiot.
"..Surprise?" I whispered timidly, knowing that this could go one of two ways. He would either hug me and tell me how good it is to see me again and make sure that I was safe... Or this would just turn into a total shit fest of yelling.
"But..? You're..? How did..? When..?" Tye was at a complete loss for words, stuttering out empty shells of questions. As he sat there, mouth agape, I stood back up and made my way over to him. I pulled him up and into a hug which he returned after a couple of seconds.
"I'll explain things once this is over.." I whispered before letting go of him. As I turned back around to go to my seat I noticed Jaime glaring at the two of us. I wonder what was wrong with him..

--Time Skip--

Jaime and I sat opposite one another on my bed in complete silence. Bart didn't like the idea of the two of us being alone together due to the almost unbelievable information he had given us regarding our futures. Thankfully, he didn't know where I lived and therefore we were free to go to mine and talk without being intruded.
"You have some explaining to do." Jaime finally broke the heavy silence between us. I took in a deep breath of air before starting my story.
"Three years ago I had an argument with my parents. I don't remember what it was about, no doubt something really quite stupid, but I remember getting so mad that I stormed out of the house. I began walking around to try to clear my mind. I wasn't going anywhere in particular, I was just walking. After what was probably an hour or two, I noticed that it was starting to get dark and knew that I should begin to make my way home. However I soon realised that I had no idea where home was. I had been walking for so long that I had gotten completely lost and I found myself stuck in the middle of a cornfield, unable to see any street signs or lights to guide me. To make matters worse, I hadn't picked my phone up -That reminds me, I need to ask Nightwing for a new phone- and therefore I couldn't contact anyone. So there I was, a young girl in the middle of a corn field, completely lost with no way of contacting anyone. Obviously I started to panic. I ran through the corn, desperate to find a way out, absolutely oblivious to the scorching trail that I was leaving behind. It wasn't too long before The Justice League were notified of the strange pattern being burnt into a corn field and went to go check it out in case it was an alien attempting to communicate." I looked up to check that Jaime was listening. He was and he was quite clearly eager to find out more.
"I believe it was Batman who found me first. The League were in shock when they found out that the cause of all of this commotion was not an alien and was instead a young, crying teenage girl. They soon realised that I must have some sort of power, this was supported by the fact that whenever I hiccuped while they attempted to calm me down and stop my crying, I set something near me on fire. One of these things happened to be Batman. Needless to say, he wasn't too pleased." I smiled a little at the memory, and Jaime smiled at the idea of it. That was the one thing that made me stop crying back then. I remember Batman mumbled something about me being a sadist but soon forgave me. He's always had a soft spot for me.
"And then what happened?" Jaime asked, urging me to continue my story, eager to find out more.
"They took me home to my parents and explained what happened." I cringed at the memory of it and even saw Jaime flinch. My parents had never exactly been The Justice League's number one fans. In fact, it would be safe to say that they absolutely despised them. It's probably due to the fact that my father had been good friends with the insufferable G.Gordon. I thought back on the many times that I had been forced to attend meals and parties with the man. He had even tried to make himself my legal guardian when my parents passed away. I only just about managed to escape that one. I believe one of the Justice League had taken the role of my legal guardian. I'd have to ask them about it.
"Needless to say, they were not happy. They accused The League of making things up, that I wasn't a 'freak' like them. I was sent to my bedroom and told that I wasn't to spout out any more silly nonsense about superpowers or else my friends would think that I was a freak." I teared up at the memory. Of course, I absolutely loved my parents and they were generally quite nice people, however when The Justice League were mentioned or anything else that they didn't understand, they turned pretty nasty.
"(Y/N) I would never call you a freak." Jaime pulled me into a bone crushing hug and we sat there like that for a little while.
"At the time I believed everything that my parents told me." I sighed as he released me from the hug. "Despite that, I still snuck out every night to meet with The League. Eventually I was introduced to the team as (SH/N). Only my brother knew about it, he helped me hide it all from our parents."
"I wish you had told me." Jaime frowned, brushing hair out of my face and kissing my forehead. The gesture was small but once again, it caused butterflies to erupt in my stomach.
"I was going to.." I admitted. "But then something terrible happened and I realised just how dangerous I was." Something must have clicked in his mind.
"The fire.. The one that killed-" He gasped but I threw my hand over his mouth before he could finish what he was about to say.
"P-Please don't say it." I begged, tears now streaming down my face. I didn't need to be reminded of the damage that I had done. "It was an accident, it happened while I was asleep. I thought I had control over my powers but I was wrong. I was so very wrong." I sobbed as he pulled me into another hug, this one lasting a lot longer.

Eventually, I had calmed down and stopped crying. Jaime wiped away my remaining tears and rested his chin on top of my head.
"Why didn't you say anything when I joined the team?" He finally asked, pulling away to look me in the eyes.
"I had kept this secret from you for such a long time. I didn't want you to be angry with me." I frowned as I practically saw his heart sink.
"You know I wouldn't have-" He tried to protest.
"No! I didn't know! I was scared and I was stupid, I didn't know how you would react to finding out that I kept this huge secret from you for years." I shook my head and closed my eyes. "Besides, you were already so overprotective of me, even before you had the scarab to back you up. You never let me make new friends or have relationships because you didn't trust them not to hurt me, you never let me do anything remotely fun like skate or climb trees without you there just in case I fell, you never let ,e stand up for myself!" I hated raising my voice at him in such a way but I couldn't help myself.
"What's so wrong about me caring for you and your safety?!" Jaime demanded, raising his voice to match the level that mine was at.
"Nothing! It's just.." I let out a large huff of air. "If you had known that it was me going on all of those missions you either wouldn't have let me, or at least insisted that you go as well. I'd never get the chance to fight for myself, and you'd be too busy worrying about my safety to care about your own. I would never be able to live with myself if you had gotten hurt- or worse, been killed all because of me. I love you too much to let you go." I whispered the last part, I don't think that he heard it.
"So you would rather you got hurt?! I promised to protect you and I've been breaking that promise without even knowing!" He fumed, standing up as he yelled. "Well sorry for caring about you." He made his way to my door.
"Wait! Jaime please don't-" I jumped up to try to stop him from leaving, however I was too late.
"I'll see you around.. (SH/N)." He scowled before completely storming out of my room and my house.
I had fucked up. I had fucked up real bad.

That was a heavy chapter..  So here's a little lighthearted scene! It's unrelated to this chapter however it takes place in the same little universe as this story, just at a different point in time.

Today was one of the only days that Henry and I decided to eat dinner together. The only reason for this was that I had wildly overestimated just how much pasta I needed to cook for myself and instead ended up with enough to feed about 6 people and still have some to spare. We were eating in silence aside from the occasional scrape of cutlery until Henry suddenly pipes in.
"Hey (Y/N).. I've been meaning to ask this for quite some time now.." I looked up at him in interest. "Who pays the bills?"
Shit. The one question I had been avoiding.
"Mostly Batman." I answered truthfully. "He also gets the food shopping." Henry burst out laughing at this.
"Nice joke little sis. You seemed so serious, you almost had me fooled!" He shook his head with a grin. "Who really does?"
"Batman." I replied once more. "I think Flash does occasionally help out with the food shopping.. I can usually tell when he does it by the sudden increase in the amount of chips that we have."
"Prove it." Henry smirked, thinking that I wouldn't be able to. "Go head and call your Bat-friend over for dinner or something." He leaned back in his chair and waited.
So that's exactly what I did.
That's how I ended up sat at our dining room table between Nightwing and my incredibly shocked older brother, with Batman, Robin, and Batgirl opposite us.
Henry never doubted me again.

I might write more little oneshot type stories like that. Just things that don't directly relate to the main storyline, yet they take place in the same little universe as this story.

Hope you guys liked this chapter! <3