6856/Wonder Wellness Check

Wonder Wellness Check
Date of Scene:	09 July 2021
Location:	W06 - Irie's Dorm - Titan's Tower
Synopsis:	Donna gives Irie a visit to check up on her and how's she's doing in the present. A heart to heart happens, and Donna tells Irie that she's an official Titan, now. Hooray!
Cast of Characters:	Donna Troy, Irie West

---

Donna Troy has posed:
    *Knock knock*

    "Hey Irie! You busy?" It's Donna's voice. Easy enough to tell. You can't spend a whole lot of time at the Tower without hearing it often enough, and although she's spent a lot of time in America now and speaks the language like a native, she's never shed her smoke-and-honey Themysciran accent. It always /sounds/ like she should be speaking English with less fluency than she does. Had Irie met her a decade ago, she'd have met a Donna with distinctly foreign patterns of speech, but now it's just that accent that gives it away.

    "It's Donna," she calls through the door entirely unnecessary. "You got time for a chat? I just wanted to see how you're settling in and so on."

Irie West has posed:
Irie has come to appreciate doing things slow, in the past couple of months. Sure she could do everything she wants at super speed, but that means there is a /lot/ of downtime in between, and that is frightfully boring for the speedster. So she's taken to reading books at a regular pace.

Tonight, she's in her yellow PJs and is laying half in her bed to read this sci-fi book that she picked up not too long ago. The half that's on the bed is her lower half, but her upper half is draped over the edge of the bed backwards, with her head resting on the floor. Only somebody like Irie would consider that to be comfortable.

The knock on her door grabs her attention and when Donna announces herself she looks around at her messy room and says, "Uhhh.... Gimme a sec!" There's the sound of the Speed Force being used as she picks up all the clothes off the floor and stuffs them into the closet before opening the door. "Hi!" she says brightly. "Come in!"

Donna Troy has posed:
    The door opens a crack and Donna peers around grinning. Her eyes scan quickly over the room, noting the relative tidiness, and she enters the room with a slight smirk. Amazons have good hearing and she's spent enough time at the tower with Wally over the years to be very familiar with the sounds of someone abusing the speed-force to tidy their room.

    "Heya Irie," Donna says, her smirk giving away to a wide, easy smile. "Just wanted to check up on your really. Make sure you've got everything you need, ask if you're feeling settled in at the Tower, all that kind of thing." She enters the room, closing the door behind her, and takes a seat on the edge of the bed.

    "Things are kinda... informal around her," she says. Possibly a subtle reference to Irie's rapid tidying activities of a few moments earlier. "But I don't know. Maybe that's... well. I'm sure you appreciate the freedom, but I wanted to make sure that you're not, you know. Missing anything."

    Donna shifts in her seat, obviously momentarily uncomfortable. "Okay, not the best way to put it. I'm sure you're missing a lot. I know this whole experience has got to be hard on you. So call it... making sure that there's nothing we can't do to make things easier for you."

Irie West has posed:
Irie flumphs into her desk chair and spins it around a couple of times before slowing it down to face Donna. "Things are good," she assures Donna, though her voice betrays that things aren't as good as she may want her to think. "I mean..... it's summer so I've got a lot of downtime which means that everything is kinda boring." She shakes her head, "That makes it sound like I'm looking forward to school opening back up but... yeah... I guess I am."

"Back in the future Dad would take me out to go crime fighting, and go on adventures, because of the super aging thing meant that we didn't know how long we had to be around each other," she says, starting to spin the chair around lazily as she talks. "And I still go out and stop crime, but it's just not the same without him, you know?"

Her face pulls down into a frown. "And the Wally here.... he isn't my dad. At least not yet. It's like I can see bits and pieces of my dad in him but then there's a lot that isn't him." She lets out a sigh, "I try not to bother him too much, really. I think he's still freaked out by the whole thing and I don't want to put too much of a burden on him, you know?"

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna nods her head slowly. "He's twenty-three. It's kind of young to have a daughter, let alone one who's already a teenager." She flashes Irie a quick grin. "I mean he's only three years younger than me, but when we first met... he was fifteen at the time. It's hard for me to picture him as a responsible adult with a family. Though I bet in a few years time he makes a great dad."

    She leans back, hands pressed into the edge of the bed as she watches Irie spin in her chair. "Irie... you've gone to a lot of effort to try not to make people uncomfortable around you. That has not gone unnoticed. But it does worry me that you're taking all that burden on yourself. I meant what I said to you when we first talked... I mean first talked after you came here. Titans is family. You're family. We look out for each other, and that includes you. Wally's trying but... yeah. It's kind of a lot for him. But it's a lot for you. If there's anything you need that... well, that you feel you'd be a burden on him if you asked, then you can come to me, okay? It won't be a burden on me, and I'm here for you."

    She stares down at the bedsheets beneath her fingers for a few moments, then looks up again with a sheepish grin and shrugs slightly. "The hard thing for me? You knew me already. I don't know if you knew me /well/, but you knew me. I can't guess whether if I tell you something it's gonna be new and interesting, or if it's like the five hundredth time I've told you the story and I'm gonna bore you." Her smile growns wider. "If I'm repeating myself for the first time, let me know okay?"

Irie West has posed:
Irie's spinning slows to a stop, with the back towards Donna this time. She can hear a little sniffle coming from the girl. "I miss home," she says quietly. "Don't get me wrong. I /like/ being here, and everybody's been wonderful to me but.... I miss mom and dad and Jai. But here... it's /hard/. I see things happen that I've heard about happening. Sometimes I have to keep myself from doing anything about it because I don't want to mess up the timeline. It's like.... living in a constant state of Deja Vu," she admits. "You don't know what it's like knowing that something bad is going to happen, and people are going to be in pain, but at the end of the day they're going to be better for it."

"It helps that Bart is around, though," she admits. "I can talk to him about these things and he understands, because he experiences them too." She finally spins her chair around to face Donna, after wiping her tears from her eyes. "Thank you for wanting to be... well... a mom to me."

She gives Donna a little lopsided grin. "You don't know how much difference twenty years makes, especially when you're a superhero. The you as you are is different than the you as you will be. I mean, like with dad, there's a lot the same, but people change over time." She shakes her head, "And you don't have to worry about boring me with your stories. Even the ones I've heard a thousand times. You're a great storyteller."

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna smiles a little wider, though it's a smile more for Irie's benefit than a reflection of her own mood, a mirror to Irie's lopsided grin. "Maybe more a big sister than a mom. But that's my experience talking. I guess my own family life was not exactly conventional. To me a mom is someone who is stern and wise beyond comprehension, who you need to be at your absolute sharpest if you ever want to win an argument with. Who however much she loves you is always going to be a little distant and distracted because she has to be mother to a nation, too. But a big sister will always listen to you when you need someone to talk to, who will try her hardest never to tell you what to do because she knows that's not her right, but will always look after you, however far away you are from home and from your mother."

    "I'm sure having Bart around is a huge comfort, but I think I know a little of how it must have felt. I only traveled through space, not time, when I first came to America. But it was so /alien/ to me, so far from home. I came to America convinced everything would be easy, and I would set the world to rights. I was sixteen and I'd never seen a man. Or anyone who as aged or infirm. Or television. Without my sister here, I wouldn't have made it."

    "And I think I even have a little idea about your problem with not being able to tell people. It's not the same - I didn't know what was going to happen. But there was a lot I knew that I couldn't tell people. I made friends here who mean the world to me, and I couldn't even tell them where I came from. Did Wally ever tell you about that? Themyscira was a secret when I arrived here, and for several more years. I had to make up a stupid story about a mystical order called the Knights of Ilium who had granted me mystical powers and trained me to be their champion. It was the closest thing I could think of to the truth, without being able to tell the truth."

    Donna gets up and crosses over to where Irie is seated, kneeling down next to her, to rest her hands gently on Irie's upper arms and look at her with a smile. "Okay. That's not the same in a lot of ways. But there's that same aspect of not being able to tell, however much you want to. And the thing about knowing something bad is going to happen? If you think about it, even if you don't have specific knowledge, well that's kind of a general rule, isn't it? Especially in the business we're in. Bad things are going to happen. We all know that already, if we're honest with ourselves. Every time I go out on a mission, there's always a part of me that worries that today could be that day. That someone I love could be hurt. The only way I can deal with that is to be the best I can, every day, in the hope that I can prevent it."

    Her smile grows a little wider. One thing that surely twenty years couldn't change, Donna smiles a lot. "In one way, you're lucky. You know that at the end of the day things are going to be better for it. The rest of us just have to hope. Though I am sure you're constantly thinking of things that won't be better for it, and wondering if you should do something to change them. I can't believe a daughter of future Wally would think otherwise. You have a big heart, and you want to make the world a better place."

Irie West has posed:
Irie listens to Donna with heartfelt attention, nodding from time to time. "Okay, big sis," she tries out, liking the sound of it. "I've always wanted a sister. I mean, I love Jai and all but he's such a /boy/." Quieter, "And he's all the way in the future." She shakes her head, dismissing that thought.

"I worry constantly about the timeline. There are some things I wish I could fix, but if I do that, what are the consequences? Would I end up making everything unintentionally /worse/? Or maybe just by being here I've already changed everything." She shakes her head. "I'm working with Nadia to help find answers to those questions. If anybody can help me, it's her."

She reaches out and lays her hands on Donna's shoulders. "Really, I couldn't be in a better place. You all have treated me like family and that means a lot to me."

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna's smile grows /even wider/. "That doesn't mean Wally's my dad now," she says, her voice right on the edge of a laugh. "That would just be /weird./" The laugh wins out and Donna lets it have its moment before reaching forwards to give Irie a quick hug that's maybe a touch too firm, but she's trying.

    "We've treated you like family 'cos you /are/ family, Irie. It's a simple as that," she says as she pulls back. "You may be future family, but that doesn't make any difference, and don't you forget it, okay?"

    Donna tilts her head thoughtfully, studying Irie's face. "You know... I don't think timelines work that way. You can travel back in time, but that doesn't break causality. You can't change what has already happened, and your past has already happened to /you/. You can change the your own future and the future of the world your actions take place in, but that is simply a divergence. The future you are heading towards wil not be exactly the same as the future you've left. Not because you've changed that future, but because you are now traveling down a different branch. So I wouldn't worry about that too much. But you come here knowing things that have happened in a time line that is at least very closely /related/ to the one you came back from, and that means you have an insight into things that are going to happen. Not certainty, but something that approximates it. So you're right, you have to be careful. You can't predict the consequences of acting on that knoweldge. But then you can't really predict the consequences of any action you take, can you? In a way... I think that's just life. We have to do the best we can with the information and the uncertainty we have. So long as we try our best, we can't be blamed if we make the wrong decision."

    She sits back on her haunches, still regarding Irie thoughtfully. "Tell me Irie. In your time... were you a member of the Titans?"

Irie West has posed:
Irie lets out a little 'oof' when she's hugged. After all, she's such a small thing and Donna is very strong. Still, she wraps her arms around Donna and returns the hug. The time travel talk causes to close her eyes and she lets out a deep sigh. "Yes. That's one possibility. There's a handful of others that are just as likely." She shakes her head, "If you really want to get into the nitty gritties of it, then we should talk with Nadia. Regardless, it's all complicated and I'm doing my best to understand it all."

She looks up at Donna when she asks her last question. "No," she says. "I was too young. I'm still technically five years old, and I've only been in this body for almost a year now. Dad wasn't a member at the time either. He had moved on to the Justice League because Barry-" she stops herself. "Things happened. When it was clear that we weren't going to be living normal lives, he decided to teach us early about what it meant to be superheroes and started taking us out on missions from time to time." She shakes her head, "Nothing too dangerous at first, but.... you know how it is. Things can escalate quickly."

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna gives a quick nod. "Oh yeah. Things can escalate remarkably quickly in this business. I know how that goes. I mean... I'm sure you've heard the story of how the Titans came to be a thousand times. All it took was a bunch of teenagers deciding they were not going to stand around doing nothing while some ugly aliens tried to steal their planet just cos the old heroes told them they were /too young/ to help out, and next thing you know..." She gestures wide with her arms and lets her eyes look around the room.

    "This!" she declares with a grin. "Titans Tower. All of it. Life is full of surprises, Irie. And I've seen Bart surprised often enough to know that'll hold true for you too. Sometimes the surprises are nasty... but sometimes they're great."

    Donna clambers to her feet and rests her hand on Irie's shoulder. "Irie, it's not my place to give you permission to do anything. That's a fight you'll have to have with Wally, though I'm not sure it's /his/ place yet, either. I'm never going to tell you that you're too young to do something, and if I'm sure you've really given it a lot of consideration first, then I'll support what decisions you make. But as far as I'm concerned, at least, whether you're coming on missions with us or not, you're one of us. You're a Titan too."

Irie West has posed:
Irie looks up at Donna eyes wide. "ReallY? I just thought... I mean I knew we were all friends and everything, and that you were providing me a place because I didn't have anywhere else to go but...." She leaps up to her feet and collides with Donna in a big hug. "It means a lot to me."

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna grins wide at Irie's enthusiasm, meeting her hug with her own arms and lifting Irie of the ground a little with it. "More than friends, Irie. Family! Those aren't just words, I mean it."

    She gives Irie a quick spin and puts her down again, before giving her hair a quick ruffle. "Now, I have a task for you. We don't know how long you're going to be staying here, but that's no excuse for not making sure you're comfortable. Make up a list of anything you need for your room. And if you need more clothes. Some time in the next few days I'm taking you on a shopping trip, okay? We can grab some burgers, maybe. You're a West, I'm sure you can't get enough Big Belly burgers. And ice cream! I know this crazy ice cream place in Manhattan Diana and Cassie showed me. You'll love it!"

Irie West has posed:
Irie giggles as she's spun around. Once she's got her feet firmly planted beneath her she takes a step back and grins up at Donna. "Thank you!" When told she's being given a task her smile fades and her brows furrow as she listens intently. The smile creeps back more and more until it accumulates into an enthusiastic, "YES! ICE CREAM! Best! Task! Ever!"