⌖━━━⌖

ROBIN SHOT OUT of the elevator first, the three other heroes stayed back to mull over what was about to come.

The argument about whether or not they should alert the Justice League had already been put to an end—Juniper scared shitless about the looming threat of taking up an English major if the mission were to fail, Wally whose loyalty to his friends knew no end, and Robin who had Batman as his mentor so that kind of explained itself.

It was three against one and looking like Kaldur was just going to have to stick it with his friends.

"We are already here. . ." Before Aqualad could decide if Wally's defence was appealing enough, the speedster was already kicking up dust to follow in the direction Robin went.

With every moment Aqualad spent with this new little team of his, it was becoming clearer by the second that the teenagers brought out the best and the worst in him. His sigh was the only audible answer he could deliver.

Juniper, who still lurked in the corner of the elevator, watched as Kid Flash and Robin disappeared behind some corner in the strange underground cave, Aqualad soon to follow on his fast Atlantian legs.

"Wait!" She shouted, grabbing the older boy's arm like it was reflex.

Kaldur turned around, almost forgetting that Myseera was a part of their little sidekick group now. "Still feeling unsteady?" He asked with a raised brow, looking the much smaller girl up and down.

"No, I. . ." Juniper swallowed, looking over his shoulder at the wide expanse of unknown. "I just don't like being alone."

The boy took a hold of the hand that was grasped onto his forearm and gave it a reassuring squeeze before dropping it. "I understand, believe me," a friendly smile was shared between the two. "We'll run together—come on, lets catch up,"

As the newfound pair took off after the two boys, Juniper could clearly tell the boy next to her was slowing down his pace to keep her company. She was grateful for Aqualad because now she knew that she had people who could keep her company when Wally wasn't around. Juniper had been lonely for four long years and now things were beginning to look up.

Myseera and Aqualad found their two other companions in no time, both boys stopped at the cave passageway splitting off into two.

"Which way?" The darker skin boy alerted Wally and Robin of his and Juniper's presence. However, even knowing Robin for a brief amount of time, Juniper was willing to bet he already sensed they were there.

'Maybe he did have super powers,' Juniper thought. 'Bat hearing powers. . . wait, Robin hearing powers?'

With a slight scoff of a laugh, Juniper had thought for a split second that she said her thoughts aloud. To her relief, Batman's protege was only prompting to explain their options. "Yeah, bizarre-looking hallway one or bizarre-looking hallway two?"

Maybe coming down there was a bad idea. It sucked because Juniper hated admitting when other people were right.

The auburn haired girl did have a few tricks up her sleeve, though. There was this new trick Raven had only recently taught her where Juniper would lay her hands flat against the ground and let her magic flow across every rock and fill in every crack in the earth—almost like a flowing river—letting her feel where structures started and ended. Maybe that could help the team locate whatever it was they were looking for.

Wait, what were they looking for?

The question only made it as far as a thought because with the loop of reoccurring sounds passed between the four of them for the past 3 and a half hours, there was suddenly a new voice added to the mix.

"Halt!" The being shouted, obviously spotted the group of teenage heroes.

His skin was a powdered blue with horns and eyes that began to glow red as he raised his arm and sent a telekinetic wave of explosive barrels into their direction.

Juniper really hated telekinetic's. Besides herself, that is.

Three out of the four of them ducked before the barrels could hit them, meanwhile the fourth hero—Robin—merely side-stepped the attack and threw an explosive blade-edged-disk towards the extraterrestrial being with far more accuracy than the usual thirteen year old boy harbored.

Unfortunately for them, telekinetic's really sucked—and not in the way that meant they were bad at what they do, no, they sucked because they were massive pains in their asses. With that being said, the horned being stopped Robin's attack before it could make contact and raised his hand again with more explosive barrels following suit.

"Seriously?" Adrenaline pumped through the female hero's blood—along with whatever other concoctions Wally cooked up the day of the explosion to give her powers. Aqualad was quick to tug his teammates down one of the unknown hallways, all of them taking off into a sprint, not bothering to look behind them as they heard the whirring of the metal hurdling through the air and into their direction. Maybe if they didn't look the barrels would just. . . go away?

There Juniper was, her thought process making complete sense in her erratic brain when Aqualad just had to go and jinx it. It was just a small head turn to check the barrels weren't going to hit them but to no avail, the girl could easily track where her new friend's eyes were looking right before they settled onto her with a scared expression.

Great. Now she'd have to pause in her running and she hated doing that. What was worse than running altogether was running and stopping and then continuing to run again. Eugh, disgusting. So before the tall brown skinned boy could call her into action, Juniper was already skidding to a stop and spinning around with her arms raised in the air.

She nearly jumped in her skin when coming within a hair width between the explosive barrels and herself. When talking about telekinetic's and how much they. . . well, they suck, Juniper was not shy of excluding herself from that equation. She was pretty fucking awesome.

Red swirls of magic licked at her face as they wrapped around the two explosive barrels before her—stopping them before they could hit her. Yes, that was how close they were to delivering her to an early grave. How many times is that now? Three . . . four times she's talked about being sent into the ground before her time? Doesn't matter. What matters is what she does next.

She was really off her game today.

Not much thought was put into thrusting her hands forwards and sending the explosives to detonate only a few feet away from herself. She regretted the choice of distance when the gust of air emitted from said explosion sent her flying backwards with the force of ten horses.

Even with the brilliant amount of volume Juniper's youthful scarlet hair carried, it did absolutely nothing to cushion her fragile skull from smacking against the foreign material of the tunnel.

And her last thought before she succumbed to the overbearing darkness of what she already knew was a vision about to be, was the hopefulness that her new Walkman—gifted to her by the very same boy hauling her up into his arms and sprinting off with the rest of their group—would survive her clumsy attempt to block the barrels.

⌖━━━⌖

Her pain settled into a dull ache, the telltale goose egg forming on her forehead.

"Ah, shit, not again," Juniper groaned, squeezing her eyes shut as she rubbed a soothing hand over her injury.

She must not have been close enough to anyone to break her fall this time. That explained the throbbing ache.

Then—oh, wow. Something cold pressed against her forehead, easing the pain slightly. A bag of frozen peas, maybe? The hand holding it in place was small but firm.

"Don't move too quickly," came the calm, soft voice of a boy.

Juniper cracked an eye open to see a dark-haired child staring back at her with bright, serious green eyes. He couldn't have been more than twelve, but his expression held a warmth she hadn't expected. He adjusted the peas carefully, making sure they stayed in place.

"Hold here," he directed her hand upwards to hold the bag in place herself before moving to grip onto her bicep, reminding her of the time she desperately held onto her own ill mother's hand in a hospital bed watching on while she could do nothing to stop her pain— no, no, no, no, that's not what was happening here. Juniper had zero maternal relations to the boy whatsoever, hell, she had no clue how old she was!—

A breath left Juniper's throat in a silent exhale of startled confusion.

"Who..." Her voice trailed off as her gaze swept past him to take in the room.

She was seated at a large, polished dining table, the kind that belonged in a mansion straight out of a movie. The walls screamed old money, with their intricate molding and high arches. Through one of the doorways, she spotted a massive kitchen that looked bigger than the apartment she shared with Raven.

Her gaze swept over the people at the table. There were eight of them, and every face was unfamiliar.

To her right, a blonde girl bit her lip, clearly trying not to laugh. Beside her sat a girl with short, jet-black hair, a scar slicing across her face. Her expression was sharp and calculating, her dark eyes watching Juniper with concern.

Directly across the table, a young man stood with his hands gripping the edge so tightly his knuckles went white. His hair was a deep brown, not quite black, and his face was a mix of panic and worry, his boyish features frozen in place.

Juniper swallowed hard. Who are these people?

She shifted her gaze again, landing on a boy with a buzz cut of dark brown hair. He leaned slightly forward, his curious eyes darting over her as though he were trying to solve a puzzle.

Then she noticed the scar. A "J," carved into the cheek of another boy sitting farther down the table. His body language radiated indifference, but his eyes betrayed something else. Concern, maybe?

Juniper's attention snagged on a flash of orange hair. Relief flooded her chest. 'Wally! Oh thank God!' she thought. But the hope crumbled as she got a better look.

The orange-haired woman wore glasses perched on a slightly crooked nose. She moved herself in a wheelchair into place at the table, rolling up to a spot where no chair had been placed.

Juniper turned to her right, drawn by the movement of another figure. A woman with short red hair—red like Juniper's—watched her intently, seated near the orange-haired woman. Farther down, the man at the head of the table had sharp features and piercing eyes, his expression unreadable but strangely fatherly.

"Stop staring like an idiot," the boy holding onto her muttered, jokingly or not it was hard to tell with his young monotonous tone of voice.

Juniper exhaled shakily, her gaze flicking back to him. "Uh. . ."

Her mind raced.

She was so far out of her element that this didn't feel like a future situation, but an alternate universe all on its own. Where the hell was Raven? Where was Wally? Why were there just a bunch of strangers surrounding her?

How had any single decision of hers led her to a future filled with complete strangers?

It was a simple realization, really. It only took a moment for her thoughts to separate from her spiraling headache, to realize that the man sitting directly across from her—standing and bracing the edge of the table in a futile struggle to not rush over and make sure she was all right—was none other than her future husband. Technically speaking he was her current husband, but whatever.

Of course, it was him. He seemed to be the entire root and foundation of her future.

He was young—older than he had been in her traumatizing vision of waking up naked next to him, but still young.

It made her wonder... How old were they when they decided to tie the knot? Mentally, she was fifteen, but right now, it was impossible to tell how old she was.
Juniper did, however, feel very. . . Mature? In whatever getup she was dressed in—a silk, red, spaghetti-strapped dress where she could feel the ends of her fluffy red hair draped over her shoulders. She must've married into fucking royalty.

"Juni," the man across from her grabbed her attention once more. "Show Dami your CORA," he spoke slowly as if any word would set her off to explode like some kind of time-bomb. Frankly, it only sounded like gibberish to the woman he called wife.

Okay, sure thing. Juniper thought. She would get right to that as soon as someone told her who Dami was, what a CORA was, and why the hell she had one.

"The fuck is a CORA?" The boy with the J-shaped scar on his cheek clearly just as confused as she was.

The younger boy at Juniper's side spoke up in a monotone, his voice oddly familiar—like a certain mentor of hers. "Chronal—Origin—Recognition—neural-Analyzer." He explained, as if the acronym was the most normal thing in the world.

So like a consciousness tracer? Her scientific knowledge only went so far, but from her understanding a CORA supposedly tracked her consciousness to whatever year it was from. . . If that makes sense.

At the feeling of small fingertips brushing her hair aside from her back, the young woman jolted in surprise.

"So. . . What? She's having one of her voodoo visions of the future?" The same boy with the scar continued to pester.

Throughout the entire strange confrontation, Juniper remained silent, though her limbs and face were frozen in confusion, stiff with the crazed panic building within her.

Another intimate gesture brushed across her back, causing her to recoil in defense. "W-wait," she stammered, her body suddenly alert. One of her legs shot out from under the table, twisting her body as she stood with such force that the chair almost toppled over, the handsy twelve-year-old narrowly jumping out of her path.

She didn't have time to notice the quick footwork of her future husband who decided to come her aid. He seemed hesitant to approach, even more so when he gently moved to grasp her shoulders. It made sense, given how her whole demeanor screamed 'get back! I don't know who you are!'

Imagine her surprise when she relaxed into his touch, the moment her skin met the cool metal of a wedding ring pressed into her shoulder—the very same wedding ring that adorned her own finger.

She was safe.

There was no hesitation when he turned her around, her back now facing him with her front free to be stared at by the audience. Her eyes drifted to the floor, avoiding the gaze of the frozen onlookers—strangers of all ages, seemingly caught mid-meal.

One of the thin straps of her dress was gently removed from her shoulder, and everything suddenly felt far too private—too intimate to be standing before these strangers who didn't know her, didn't understand her. Hell, she didn't even understand herself.

Juniper decided it would be best to shut her eyes, maybe tune out the rest of the room until it was just her and her mystery man.

It worked. For a few seconds. She felt his fingertips glide over her shoulder blade, smooth and soothing. . . until they were gone. It was as though he skipped over a patch of skin. One second, the warmth of his hand and the tingling that followed, then it was gone, only to return as though nothing had happened.

The man lifted his hand, pressing down on the same numb patch of skin. There was a subtle pressure—and then a beep. An electronic beep.

What. The. Fuck.

A gasp escaped her lips as the realization hit her: the skin wasn't numb, it was a piece of machinery embedded into her skin. She spun around in shock, quickly pulling her dress strap back over her shoulder, her red hair fanning out like a bloody halo—a sign of her damnation.

She didn't think. How could she? For all she knew, these people were holding her here against her will, controlling her through the machinery in her body. Shit, was she a clone?!

With no time to rationalize, survival instincts kicked in. Her hand shot out, and a flash of magic brought a steak knife to her side, its blade then directed to point toward the throat of a stranger she thought she could trust.

Behind her, dishes clinked, and chairs scraped across the floor as the family rose in a panic.

"What's the year." It was more of a command than a question, coming from the man at the head of the table.

"Twenty-ten." The mystery man raised his hands in surrender, his chin tilted upward, avoiding the sharp tip of the knife. The rubies on his wedding band glittered in the light as he stood, eerily calm.

Too calm. It unsettled her, and her grip on the knife wavered, her magic flickering.

Why should she worry? She wielded magic far too powerful for any mere man to even comprehend, versus a room full of nobodies.

"She's confused. Give her a second," a feminine voice from the back of the room called out.

"We don't have a second; she'll slit his throat," another voice—was it a man or a boy?—said, but she couldn't focus on that.

They spoke about her as if she weren't even in the room—as if she was just an object to be controlled and manipulated. These people weren't good. Not for her. No, no, she wasn't safe here. How did she get here? Why was she even in this strange place?

A sharp stab in her side jostled her from her panic. Her throat tightened with fear, and her hand instinctively pressed down on the pain, finding a needle pierced though the silk of the dress and stuck into her skin.

It was the young boy—Dami? Maybe? He looked up at her, his eyes wide with regret, the first sign of vulnerability she'd seen from him. His lips mouthed an apology. "I'm sorry, Ooni."

Ooni? Was that what he called her?

The moment she relaxed her grip on the knife, her husband—or whatever she was supposed to call him now—leaned forward, his body moving with such precision that it was too late for her to react. Their wedding bands clicked together as he grabbed her arm and used the momentum to spin her around, pressing her back to his chest, locking both her arms across her body in an 'X.'

Slowly and gently he maneuvered them to the floor, some kind of haze of drowsiness drowning her senses so with every blink her eyes got a little heavier and her consciousness slipped a little more into her past-present body.

"What'd you give her?" The man she seemed to be tangled with in more ways than physically asked the needle-wielding twelve year old.

He sighed. "Super low dose of propofol," an eye roll at his older brother's dismay. "She'll wake right back up like nothing happened to we can get back to eating."

To Juniper their voices sounded like they were underwater.

But her mind didn't want to go back to her fifteen year old body. She hadn't gotten what she had come her for.

But like a saving grace in every point in time, her husband leaned down to whisper in her ear, "Give Superboy a chance. Y'know. . . He likes 80's music, too,"

Apparently her spouse was also a mind reader. Strange how he only knows the year of her consciousness but could tell exactly what scenario sent her mind reeling throughout time.

Safe or not safe, her mind was finally shutting down. She'd deal with her future husband and his band of lunatics when the time came.

⌖━━━⌖

Now back into her correct time, two version of Juniper Evans—although one going by a different last name—woke with a headache. "Shit." They both mumbled in irritation. Looks like some things never really did change.

CHIP SPEAKS !!

not edited

*runs into the room, slams the chapter down on the table in front of you and runs away before you can say anything*

Me bringing up Juniper's trauma vision of her 12yrold self waking up in her adult body after sexy time with hubby  :

imma leave this here even tho I cut half the chapter and this shit is short as hell...