When Worlds Collide

27) Royal Mistresses and Trauma Bonding

A/N: as promised, the art I did for the gang^ I am, as usually, pretty proud 

Nico, despite having his first week of summer spent doing interviews about the whole skirt thing, was still going out as Ghost King. As soon as he got his leg back, he spent his nights shadow traveling around the US, talking to his friends about some plans he had made. He had almost everything lined up, all he needed was some information. Yes, he probably could have gotten Bruce to give him access to the League's documents, but he didn't want to have to depend on them, especially when he could go straight to the source.

Nico stood in the corner of the empty room, bored out of his mind. Honestly, how long does it take for someone to finish shooting a scene so that he can scare the shit out of them.

The door opened and Nico immediately let the shadows wrap around him in case it was anyone but his intended victim.

"Ugh, where does he get off. Stupid fucking Mento," the green skinned kid muttered to himself as he slammed his fist against the door.

Nico let the shadows recede as he leaned against the wall with a smirk. "M'gann would wash your mouth out with soap if she heard you cursing like that."

Garf's head whipped around and it looked like he was about to transform and attack, but he froze as soon as he saw who it was. "Demo?"

Nico gave him a small smile. "Hey Beastie."

Garf stared at him in shock. "You... why are you... you're okay?"

Nico could tell the kid was itching to run at him, so he let out a sigh and opened his arms. "You get 3 seconds."

Garf immediately wrapped him is such a tight hug that Nico was worried his spine would snap. When Garf finally let him go, Nico ruffled his hair and motioned for him to sit down at the table in the trailer.

"What are you doing here dude? What happened after Markovia? I kept checking Gotham News outlets after I moved here, but all I saw was talk about how you were missing. After a while, I just stopped looking— I was scared it would only lead to bad news."

"I came back in early February— though I'm surprised you haven't seen anything about me recently. I've kinda been all over the news— especially in the last month."

Garf let out an annoyed sigh. "My guardian, Steve Dayton, put a ton of restrictions on my phone after a... disagreement we had. Only real news I see is in green rooms between interviews, and Mento tries to make sure I see nothing about any Justice League stuff. My Co-Lead, Paul Sloane, mentioned a Meta Trafficking raid in Texas last month by some lone vigilante, but that's all I've heard since getting my phone restricted."

Nico snorted. "So you have heard about me."

Garf's jaw dropped. "Hold up, that was you?! Paul said the League made a statement about how the vigilante was fully unassociated with them-"

"Yep. I went in without their permission and kinda disowned myself from JL during my disciplinary hearing. I also got banned from all Team missions." Nico watched at Garf stared at him in shock. "I actually went in with Tech. We got all the kids out and a few of them were our kind so we transported them to a safe location; now they're with other descendants."

Garf opened his mouth to speak, but a knock at the door cut him off.

"Garfield," an annoying voice said from the other side of the door.

The green teen groaned, gesturing for Nico to move out of the sight lines of the door as he stood and cracked open the entrance of the trailer. "What do you want Mento?"