Back at the Fibbs' household...

Storm Fibbs watches his wife draw as he sips Tennessee whiskey from his Number One Dad Mug. The light is low in the dining room, bottles strewn across the table like picnic goodies. Juniper bites her lip and rolls a pencil through her fingers as if it were a twirling stick. Her eyes, redder than the tattoos etched up her shoulders and back, narrow at the sketch pad. She stopped crying hours ago, but Storm knows his wife. Just because it doesn't show on the outside doesn't mean she isn't breaking within.

She shakes her head. "It wasn't supposed to happen like this." Her voice is creaky, as if she has to force it through a closed throat. "You know that, don't you?" But she never lets Storm answer. She lowers her eyes and continues to draw in her pad.

 The whiskey is mellow, almost sweet. Storm sips and peeks over his wife's head, curling a free arm around her shuddering shoulders. Her sweatshirt sleeve cracks at its printed 'ASPCA' letters, smeared with paint. A splotch of red here. A dab of gold there. When Angelos was little she used to buy industrial-sized rolls of white paper. She'd drape them across the floor, carpet and all, and set up a palette of acrylic paint for him. Then she'd stick a brush in his hand and set him free.

Storm stares at the mug, willing his hands to steady and his heart to slow. His wife wanted her adopted little boy to become an artist. She was going to love that kid until she got her biological son back. And now, he's gone.

Juniper scribbles. Her pencil whispers against the coarse paper, eating through the dining room's silence. Its hissing doubles the sound of his thumping heart. Toby snores on the couch, passed-out drunk. He's so quiet Storm would've missed it if he weren't trained to catch sounds others are supposed to miss.

He pulls back into his chair across the table. "We tried," he offers, holding out his cupped hands as if the words are something tangible, like a salve or a bandage or a wet rag to dress her wounds. "We raised them the best we knew how." He doesn't know how to phrase the rest of his sentence in a way that won't hurt her, so he doesn't try. "But we knew he was time-bomb from the—"

"How dare you." Juniper's voice is low and cold. She looks up slowly from the double helixes she drew, her jaw tight and her glare harsh. To him, her eyes look like two chips of pale wood. Hard. Hollow. The scratches from her pencil fade, the gray streak moving slower and slower across the paper. "How dare you talk about him like that."

"He's not our child," Storm says, matching her steely eyes with a steely voice. Her mouth is open, the lines drawn up tight in her face like they're about to split at the seams. "I love him. I do! For the love of God, I raised him! But he has parents, and we said we'd give him back—"

"He's not an adult. It was supposed to happen when he grew up. He should be able to choose where he wants to go and who he wants to be with." Her eyes lock with his, pleading. They don't look wooden anymore, now that they're wide and round and watery at the edges; they look like glass. "Or to stay with us."

Storm stares into his whiskey. The amber liquid sloshes in lazy circles, think and golden like honey to his bleary eyes. The AC unit blows a cool breeze in his face. It's a comfort to the muscles pulled taut like rubber bands, ready to snap at any moment. "He's not our child," he says again. "We have a child." He digs his nails into the mug's ceramic mouth, and suddenly, the 'Number One Dad' strikes him as the world's cruelest joke. Like renouncing his son wasn't enough. Like suffocating on the inside wasn't enough. Juniper just stares on. Then she snaps at him.

"You're drunk," she says. "Go away!" He obeys with painful laughter, turning toward the kitchen without another word. No, he wishes he were drunk. The liquid that shone so crystalline and honey-like at the table burns as he downs it. It feels all wrong somehow, like trying to put out a fire by drenching it in gasoline. He leans against the facet and finds it polished spotless by the damned kid himself. Storm turns around and cups his head in his hands. The kitchen was a bad, bad place to escape to. He slides down against the cabinets and sits on the floor, cross-legged like a child. Children.

We have children.

How long ago was it when his friend sobbed those words on his knees as he faced the long sword? Twelve, thirteen years maybe. To Storm, it feels like he held the man's broken helmet just last night. He draws in a shaky breath, each huff coming in great heaving gasps, and closes his eyes. His hands slide to his knees as they usually do when he meditates.

Someone knocks on the door.

"I'll get it," Juniper says. Her words drip with ice. Storm wants to push through the hall and wrap his arms around her, to take away her pain any way he can. But she wouldn't want that, not after what he's said. So he doesn't. He rises to his feet, tingles racing up his calves and thighs, and creeps to the kitchen door. It feels like the whiskey went down his legs instead of his throat, all wobbly and jelly. New voices fill the apartment and Storm listens, his heart thumping in his laced fingers.

He and Juniper have always hated company. After Angel threw himself out the window, neighbors and staff alike made themselves comfortable in his home, sinking into his couches and chairs, touring his halls like kids on their first trip to Disneyland. Disneyland. He never took Angelos to Disneyland, not because he wasn't willing to, but because the boy didn't want to go. He'd rather sit on the balcony and watch the stars, his crossed arms dangling over the iron bars. Juniper often remarked he was more housecat than son at times. If housecats could cook, then Storm would agree. He looks out.

The blinds have been shut up and living room furniture dragged this way and that, the cushions punched in and wrinkled. The apartment has an air to it now, one of shadows that glide across the floor as if they're ghosts in themselves. The room's filled with a sort of empty static, like the Fibbs' lives unravel behind a TV screen. 

Juniper pulls open the door and a woman strolls in that makes Storm's heart bang against his chest. She whooshes past his wife as if she were only one of the shadows, as if she weren't even human. Juniper's face goes red. So red Storm can watch the shades change all the way across the room. She straightens her collar, her hands trembling with the hyperactiveness she gets when trying not punch something or kill someone. Toby snores still, so peaceful in his sleep one could almost forget the madness that took him when he learned of Heaven and Jaylin's escape, his shouting and pacing and sobbing. But now, he lays motionless even as the visitor snorts at him, her eyes fluttering with disgust.

"I need your help," Liz Curtis says to Storm. As she strides toward the dining room table, her heels somehow click even in the carpet. The mayor of Starlight City slides into a velvet-studded chair, wiping her forehead as if to clear it of sweat. Not that she needs to. A half-empty glass sits beside Juniper's scotch bottle. She raises an eyebrow, but he won't explain. Juniper drinks scotch, Storm drinks Tennessee whiskey. It's always been that way since they met. The mayor grabs the bottle and pours it while she speaks. "Down at the capitol. We're having problems."

Storm nods. If he's surprised that the most powerful woman on the east coast just walked into his apartment, disrespected his wife, and stole her alcohol, then he doesn't show it. It isn't the first time. Won't be the last. He composes himself as if he was a diplomat meeting a representative of a country preparing to wage war with his.

"Hello, Ms. Curtis." He makes a flourish with his hand, matching hers which is still curled as if holding that damned cigarette. "How can I and Juniper be of service to you this morning?" He leans his head to the side and shoots his wife the hardest look he can muster. When dealing with Mayor Curtis, one has to show respect, especially the two of them. She rolls her eyes, a Gatsby move if he's ever seen one. It's as if that boy rubbed off more on her than she on him. She stays silent and combs her hands through the fuzz left of her hair, sitting down at the table just as Storm does.

"Cut the formalities," Liz Curtis says, reading the label on Storm's whiskey bottle. "Why is this happening?"

"What?" Juniper chips at the table with her nails, flakes of white paint fluttering up around her like sawdust. She bats her eyes at Liz Curtis's stare and hushes her voice like she's talking to a small animal. "What are you talking about?"

Liz Curtis finally picks up the Tennessee whiskey bottle, tops off the scotch, and drinks. "Those supervillains led by that woman, the one who names herself after a bird. They're here, and there's no sign of Galaxy." She takes a long swig, her eyes boring into Storm's. "I thought we had a deal here."

"Deals, deals, deals," Toby grunts. He's sitting up on the couch now, clutching his liver is if he can feel the alcohol churning up inside it. The three snap their heads toward him and he collapses back against the pillows, laughing almost maniacally to himself. "You're all the same, aren't you?" He shuts his eyes. Toby is the only Brook in the family who can sleep, and it's his curse. A doctor with no healing powers of his own. An insomniac only because of coffee. "Damned wolves in sheep's clothing, that's what you all are."

He has no idea how right he is.

They all ignore him. Curtis flurries both her hands in another grandiose gesture, and Storm decides that's all she is, grandiose gestures. "I don't recall," he says, impassive as he folds his hands on the table. Her face is thin and long, her cheeks and chin sharp. Storm always thought the skin looked drawn up too tightly around the bones. Her hair, ink black, falls in a straight pixie, and her eyes are as bored and lifeless as a doll's. She's in her late fifties, but one would never know, not with the fake warmth in her smile and the real strength of her handshake. 

Liz Curtis sets her cup down so lightly you'd think the table were the object made of glass, not the cup. And she watches him. Prickles rise on the back of Storm's neck. The non-super has always made him feel like a specimen, smushed beneath a plastic pane and studied through a microscope. Juniper doesn't flinch. She's stopped scratching the table and has settled on glaring at Liz Curtis instead. Her thoughts are unreadable in her tight face and wooden eyes, but Storm guesses they're varying shades of 'outraged' and 'murderous.'

"This is getting out of hand," Liz Curtis says. Storm's heart beats slow and steady rhythms against his ribs, like a drum procession. He swallows, his mouth and throat dry. "We can't have supers attacking our businesses and our citizens. Why, they're lune!"

"What are you suggesting?" Juniper asks. Storm hates the way she talks, the words so cold. It's wrong, the way she's acting. He's known her five decades, six give or take. She's a firestorm, not soft-spoken. Not icy. Not like this.

Liz finally gives Juniper her attention. She draws a finger across her throat, digging at the collar of her blazer with her pale, manicured nails. Juniper looks on with unveiled disgust. "I need your help. You're the only supers I know who aren't villains, though that's debatable, given your histories—"

"Watch your tone."

"You watch yours, butcher." Liz Curtis slams a hand down, lip curled, if only for half a second.

Juniper levels her head, her hands steady, her chest rising and falling with slow, forceful motions. Liz Curtis flicks her eyes to the hanging light fixture, a single bulb encased in a scrunch of white silk. "Cute," she says to it. Storm touches his wife's shoulder and she smacks his hand away, his fingers just tracing the ridges of code tattooed below her shirt collar. He winces.

"What do you want?" Storm asks, laying a stinging palm flat on the table. His voice is low and begs for peace. "You've come at a terrible time for us, and—"

"I need you to come to the capitol with me." 

Storm fights back a snort. 'Capitol' sounds too dignified. But contrary to her title, Liz Curtis is more governor than mayor, as Starlight City functions as its own state. A very screwed-up, over-sized state that runs through four others that refuse to consider it and its population their own. But a state still.

Juniper shakes her head. "No." She raises herself to her feet, dragging her hand across the table. "I don't take orders from you." Her knuckles rap the glass and the mayor's drink falls. The sup bounces on the carpet and rolls, splashing Curtis's stilettos in murky liquid and splattering her painted nails. Juniper strides toward the door and Storm follows. Liz Curtis chuckles behind him, but he doesn't care in the slightest what the mayor thinks.

"June!" She throws the door open, running away in just the way her own goddaughter did that threw them into this mess in the first place. His voice stinging in his throat, he chases with light and springy steps. She won't even look in his direction, her shirt tails bobbing over her hips. The hall is dark and smells of paint and some sort of wilted plant Storm can't name. When he glances up the custard walls are just as saggy and sad as ever, and for once he wants to shout at someone, the maintenance man, will you. Really shout at that landlord to have them painted over.

But the ugly color of the walls shouldn't be the first thing on his mind. That or how the smell of liquor doesn't fit his wife and that he likes the tang of acrylic paint on her better.

He should be thinking of the women and men wearing sunglasses indoors.

There's only three of them all, arranged in a tall, thin circle. They're playing Uno standing up, or at least, they were, telling by the deck at their feet, and it must've been a hell of a game with their assassin glasses and blank expressions. They wear suits, black ones, the fabric so thick their faces shimmer with the type of sweat one can only get from their line of work. Poor fellas. Practically draped in velvet while standing in a sixty-something-degree apartment hall. A square-jawed woman with a short hair points a revolver at Juniper. His wife spits.

"Consider yourselves under arrest," Liz Curtis purrs in Storm's ear, her finger rubbing circles on the back of his neck. He tenses. If she has proof they're, as Angelos would say, 'pretty screwed.' "For treason. And murder."

Storm shrugs. "Sticks and stones." But even he has to admit it's more than sticks and stones to him, it's a man begging for his wife to be spared because they have children. Juniper is dead silent.

"And consider it your punishment to help me save Starlight." She rolls a fold of his sleeve between his fingers. Storm is still and silent. So is Juniper, but for different reasons, he supposes. Then she grunts.

"Fine," she says. "But not for you or your threats or your blackmail. I'd like to see Owl again." June makes a giant flourish with her fingers and grimaces. Storm holds out a hand for her to take, but she presses her fists on her hips instead. Her eyes look blue, somehow, like all the brown in them froze over. He remembers when they were gray, like his, and it cuts him to think about, even if he can't name why. "Besides, I've always wanted to watch you and your city burn, even for one day."

The woman with the revolver shoots. Storm doesn't see where the bullet enters, though he assumes it passes through his wife's stomach from where the gun's aimed. Liz Curtis raises her head, chin tilted in mild interest as her pet super bleeds. The shot isn't even enough to put her on her knees. Juniper laughs, a hand over her mouth to hide all the blood coming up. Storm remembers that trick, shooting or stabbing a super in the stomach so when they spoke, they bled out of their mouths. Quicker than gagging them, anyway, if you didn't mind the gurgling.

Storm laughs, too. He can't help it. He laughs and laughs as the mayor takes him by the elbow and drags him into the elevator. Because the day has finally come, thirteen years late maybe, but it's here.

And unless he or his wife or the kids or any heroes left in Starlight can think of something quick, it's gonna be a lot bloodier than last time. Last time, Starlight City's day of infamy. When the heroes died. More specifically for him, the day he killed Taurus, his best friend and the father of his goddaughter.