Fic: Change My World 4/8 (Batman)
Feb. 21st, 2008 09:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficTitle: Change My World 4/8
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Dick/Babs, Supergirl, Huntress, Misfit, Zinda
Word Count: 5,746
Series: Change My World
Summary: A little thing like losing his memories isn’t going to stop Dick Grayson’s war on crime.
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Superman knew he was closest to Metropolis in the public’s eye, but although he made it his base of operations, he responded to distress calls from all around the world. Barbara Gordon had written a full program just to route him to the most serious disasters. But on some nights, when that program wasn’t buzzing on a frequency only he could hear, he liked to fly the skies of Metropolis and foil the occasional street crime. It was stuff that could best be left to the police and local vigilantes like Steel, but he liked to do his part to keep the crime rate low.
And apparently, so did someone else. Hearing the sounds of violence… gunplay, flesh on flesh hits, and the distinctive whoosh of a Nomex/Kevlar-weaved cape… Clark soared down for a closer look. By the time he got there, the fight was done… which meant it was over almost before it began. Four car thieves were handcuffed together and to a bicycle rack, the car they tried to steal idling on the street. Their defeater was dressed at least as oddly as anyone Superman had seen since the last time the Creeper had come to town.
From the waist up, he was vintage Robin with a few modifications. The chest was pure red and armored, from the bulky look of it, with long sleeves up to the green gloves. The cape was canary-yellow on both sides, with a heavy leathern quality that spoke to it being armored as well. At the waist was a similarly yellow utility belt cinching green trunks, with yellow leggings under that leading to green boots.
Superman didn’t like to critique others’ costumes (not since Bruce’s jibe about his mother dressing him), but those garish colors looked really out of place on a vigilante. The yellow alone made Clark want to gouge his eyes out.
“Hey, Supes,” the hero greeted. “Got everything under control here. How’s Lois?”
Superman set down, then quickly lifted back up as the would-be Robin scaled the side of a building. He landed on the ledge that the newcomer threw himself over.
“Lois Lane is a… trusted and valued colleague… I’m sorry, do I know you?”
“Big Blue, it’s me. Robin?”
Superman X-rayed him. The distinctive domino mask was more of a green cowl in this incarnation, leaving the lower face and scalp bare, but it didn’t have any lead in it. He easily saw through.
“You!” Superman said in surprise. “Shouldn’t you be in New York?”
“I don’t know, should I be? I’ve been a little out of sorts lately. But now I’m back and raring to go.” His face brightened with an idea. “Hey, we could have a team-up! You got some case that needs a little Robin on it?” He punched one hand into the other’s open palm.
“No, everything’s kosher at the moment. Could you excuse me?”
“Sure thing.”
Superman lifted himself up a good hundred meters, then took a headset from his pocket and triggered it to Oracle’s line.
“Go for Oracle,” came the familiarly gargled electronica.
“This is Superman. Do you know anything about a new Robin? Or Dick Grayson’s whereabouts?”
“Oh no… tell me, is he in any trouble?”
“No, nothing like that. Just… patrolling, looks like.” Far below, Grayson had swung into motion to deal with a mugging. Superman had to admire his initiative.
“Listen, Kal-El… Dick’s in a slight fix. He has amnesia, thinks he’s still Robin… well, thought he was, now he knows he has amnesia but he doesn’t remember what he’s forgotten… it’s complicated.”
“It always is. You want me to keep an eye on him?”
“That would be… ah hell, tsunami headed toward India. Can you handle it?”
“Sure. I’ll call in someone else to watch our wayward friend.”
***
“I am Red Robin, scourge of darkest night!”
“Is the ‘scourge of darkest night’ part a part of your name or is that just hype?” Kara belatedly stuck out her hand. “Oh, I’m Supergirl, by the way. You could probably tell because I’m a girl and I have a nice S.”
Great Rao, I have the combined sum of Krypton’s knowledge and history at my command and that’s the best line I can come up with?
“Enchanté!” Dick kissed her hand.
“Oh, nice. No one’s ever done that, and I hang out with lots of sophisticated, eligible guys.”
“Are they all blind?”
Kara giggled and hovered up another few feet, then lowered herself back down to the rooftop before Red Robin could see up her skirt. Suddenly she was very shy about that. Her panties were very conservative, but she’d skipped her last shaving… down there. What with the mirror and the stirrups and the heatvision, it could be very uncomfortable. Gynecological, really. But she wished she’d gone through the trouble because, hello, Nightwing interested in her without the squicky jailbait thing, since he was mental jailbait. Or something. Except in hot, fully-developed older man body. It was like having an entire week of birthdays! She’d have to tell Cassie about it next time they had a slumber party.
Okay, keep cool, Kara, play coquettish. What does he like? Batgirl? He liked Batgirl… so, speak tersely and occasionally flip out and kill people? No, wrong Batgirl. Umm… have red hair? Frell! What does he like… what do all guys like?
She flipped her hair and put a hand on his bicep. “My, you’re so strong. I bet your penis is really long and thick.”
Way to go, virgin. Next, tell him you have low self-esteem and daddy issues, he’ll really go for that.
“As it turns out, yeah, it is. That’s a relief. I remember thinking that it would never…” He bit his lip. “You wanna fight crime?”
”Oh, Rao, yes.” Supergirl landed next to him. He was still taller than her in that really hot way where they would have to kinda crane their heads a little to kiss, or she could just jump up and wrap her legs around him, or he could wrap his legs around her, or they could both be horizontal and it really wouldn’t be an issue…
Kara shook those thoughts right outta her head. “With my superhearing, I can detect crime for miles around!”
“Groovy!”
Supergirl listened carefully. “…nope, nothing. You wanna get some donuts?”
***
“Where have you been all my life?” Dick was asking lovingly not fifteen minutes later. He dunked the rest of his Krispy Kreme in milk and ate it, licking the frosting from his fingers.
Great Rao, Supergirl thought, watching him lick the frosting from his fingers. It left his gloves all shiny and… guh.
Red Robin grabbed another donut to continue his joke. “So then I knocked out the suicide bomber and said ‘Holy terror, Batman!’”
Supergirl laughed, dutifully. Apparently, in Gotham City the only form of humor was puns. “You’re so funny! You should go on Leno.”
“Is he anything like Carson?”
“Bigger chin.”
Red Robin smiled at her. “You know, even if we haven’t managed to foil any crime or save any days, it’s nice spending time with you. You’re the only one who doesn’t treat me like an invalid. I’ve been fighting crime since I was nine years old… just because I lost a few years of experience doesn’t mean I’m some schlub.”
“I know, right? We still totally have powers, we should get to use them.”
“Yeah! I bet you do fine without Superman’s supervision. Whoa, that sounded weird, like supervision is a power of his…”
“Feels like it, sometimes. It’s like he’s got every hero on Earth comparing me to him and reporting to him and…” Kara sipped her coffee. “Okay, I bought this to make me look more mature, but it tastes like mud. Can I have some of your milk?”
Red Robin produced a straw, bent it at a 90 degree angle, and stuck the longer end into his tall glass of milk. They both contentedly sucked on their straws, faces inches apart.
“Kara, who in the pits of Armaghetto is this loser!?”
Kara slapped her forehead. Dick wiped his mouth off with a napkin.
“Kara,” Red Robin said to her. “That’s a pretty name.” Then he smiled: “Supergirl is quite a mouthful.”
She blushed and forgot about Power Boy until he pounded on the donut case, spilling pastries and glass all over the floor.
“Hey, I’m talking to you! We have one little blow-up and you go hook up with some man-slut!?”
“I am not a man-slut,” Red Robin said as he got to his feet. “Kara” --he said the name like he was breaking into song, still flirting even when accosted by a metahuman-- “who is this guy?”
“Ex-boyfriend. He’s psycho-obsessed with me.”
“Oh?”
“Has a little shrine and everything. And he hit me.”
Dick’s face soured with offense. “He hit you?”
“I’ll handle him, he’s a pushover in a real fight.”
“No, no, I’ve got this. Besides, gotta work off those donuts if I’m gonna maintain my girlish figure.”
Red Robin cracked his neck and looked at Power Boy. ”I realize I should cut you some slack since you’re from out of town, himbo, but around here, we don’t hit women… we hit the men who hit women.”
Power Boy laughed derisively and poked him in the chest. “I asked you a question, man! Who the hell are you?”
In rapid succession too quick for the eye to follow, Red Robin struck him in the throat, groin, mid-thigh, and ribs. Power Boy crumbled and Dick lit a flare in his eyes, blinding him. Then he chopped at a series of pressure points on Power Boy’s neck until the Apokoliptian lost consciousness. Dragging him out by the hair, Dick tossed Power Boy out the backdoor and into a pile of garbage. Stale, crusty donuts cushioned his fall.
“I'm Kara’s new boyfriend and I'm out of my mind,” Red Robin said, standing in the doorway. “If you so much as talk to her or even think her name, I'll cut you in ways that'll make you useless to a woman.”
He closed the door behind him. Took a bill from his utility belt and tossed it onto the counter. “That should cover the damages.”
Kara was suddenly next to him, her arms around his chest. “That was so cool! I mean, you just… he just… and you…!”
“Surprise and overwhelming force can be the deciding factors in a battle, when employed correctly,” Dick said like a preacher reading a passage.
“That was so cool!” Supergirl finally gushed. She kissed him on the cheek. A moment later, on the lips. Then she turned to the donut guy while Dick was still recovering from that. “Call the police. Ask for the Special Crimes Unit, Detective Mulligan. He’ll handle Mr. Fatal Attraction out there.” She turned back to Red Robin. “You wanna get out of here?”
***
“When you said we could go to your place, I had no idea you meant…” Red Robin paused. “His place.”
Technically speaking, Kara didn’t live in the Fortress of Solitude, but her apartment was a pig-sty (she really had to hassle Batman to send room service by more often) and the FoS was a lot more impressive.
“Greetings, Mistress Kara,” the AI said. “Bringing home strays, are we?”
“Fortress, this is Red Robin. He’s a guest.” She looked… gandered at him. “He might be coming here quite often.”
“Gosh, I hope so.”
She blushed again. Stop blushing! Idiot! He’s not even touching y… oh, there he goes. There was a hand at the small of her back, pinky slanted down toward her belt leather.
“So, uh…” she looked around the high, polygonal-vaulted ceiling of the Fortress. “We’ve got this Kryptonian version of what you’d call feng shui so that everything is set up real easy to memorize. The architecture is designed to stimulate memory.”
His hand scanted downward, counting her vertebrae. “Stimulate?”
She let herself be turned to face him and his other hand was at her tapered waist.
“You move pretty fast for a human.”
“Life’s too short to go slow. I just lost a decade of my life. I want to make some new memories.”
He pulled her close against him and their heads were just doing the craning thing in anticipation of a kiss Kara knew she would feel in her toes when a door opened, a shower was heard running, and both of them turned.
Lois Lane, ace reporter, was in a bathrobe with a turban around her head, exfoliating her face with a buzzing crystal. Behind her, the shower automatically shut off.
“Lois!” Supergirl cried, face on fire. “What’re you doing here?”
Lois unfurled her towel turban and mopped at her damp face with it. “The water main in our apartment busted, so I have to use the warm water here. Imagine, going to the Arctic for warm water… what’re you doing here?”
“We came to… watch some movies!” Kara answered.
“Yeah… movies…” Red Robin confirmed. “Hey, did you know they came out with new Star Wars movies? Off the hook!”
“Yes, very… off.”
She looked askew from Dick to Kara and back again. There was an uncomfortable silence.
“I have amnesia,” Red Robin said.
“Oh! Okay, yeah.”
And so they ended up watching Star Wars, with Lois wedged firmly in between them and not in the sexy way Dick would’ve preferred. Not that the hairless Chewbecca… thing was at all arousing. It kinda reminded Dick of G’nort, which was impressive, considering he didn’t remember G’nort.
“When does Captain Spock show up?” Lois asked.
“He’s not in this!” Kara replied. “I’ve been on Earth for two years and I know how to tell Star Wars apart from Star Trek!”
Then the AI started talking about how Battlestar Galactica was better than both of them, and Dick thought it meant the version with Lorne Green. After clarification, Lois had to go and say that Kara Thrace was a big fat whore and Supergirl thought she was talking about her and they got so wrapped up in their argument that they missed almost all of Jake Lloyd’s performance, which factored heavily into Dick’s like for the movie.
Lois teleported back to Metropolis after advising both of them that the AI was particular about “relations” within its sterile environment. Dick and Kara walked to a balcony overlooking the vast ice and watched the aurora borealis.
“There’s so much I don’t know about you,” she said, hovering just a little so that Dick had to hold her down by the hand. “Red Robin… what is that, Robin of the future?”
“Something like that.”
“So, Batman’s your mentor?”
“Yeah.” Dick smiled a little. “Taught me everything I know.”
Kara did a tiny circuit around Dick, switching hands like they were dancing. “Well, thank Rao you didn’t inherit the stick he has up his ass.”
“That would be unsanitary.” Dick’s suddenly humorless voice left little doubt how he felt about criticism of his foster father.
“I just can’t stand all those moralizing prigs. Always making a big show of sacrificing themselves for everyone else. Well, I didn’t ask anyone to save me.” Kara floated down into him like a hawk diving for a mouse and Dick fell back onto a divan the Fortress had grown, Kara coiled on his lap, thumb brushing near the corner of her lip in growing anxiety. “You’ve gotta live for yourself or people’ll walk all over you. Use you for their own fun and games. Hurt you.”
Dick cradled her a little, surprised and intimidated by the sudden shift in mood. “I have a mission. It’s hard for me to ignore… impossible, really.”
“If it’s not your fight, maybe it’s best to cut and run.”
“And do what? Lead a normal life?”
“They do make it sound tempting in all the brochures.” She laughed at her own joke, so hard that Dick was sure if she wasn’t laughing she’d be crying, but like a fake cough turning real, her smile became genuine. She was high on life and damnit if he couldn’t remember the last person who laughed like that. At him. At life. At them.
They shuffled around, Dick guiding Kara’s body with his hands and Kara pressing herself into his touch, turning the whole arrangement into an formless act of groping, until finally she was sitting in his lap, facing forward. He kissed her lips over her shoulder, then caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger and gently oriented her head back toward the light in the sky. Kara relaxed against him, like she could melt and soak into him.
It was a perfectly sweet moment, that made Dick ache with nostalgia for another memory he didn’t have. But he could guess. She reminded him of Barbara… his Barbara, not the somewhat masochistic variant he’d been living with for the past week. She had the same zest for life, but for some reason he just wasn’t responding to her as he should have. Somewhat was missing.
“Oh my, these mini-skirts are so hard to sit right on…”
She fleeced hers so that her buttocks were on Dick’s lap. In the gap over his waistline where he could feel her backed into him, his skin was touching the cool satin of her panties.
“That’s so much better,” Kara moaned.
“On this end too.”
She coiled an arm back around his neck and closed her eyes as she turned her head to kiss him again, pressing him by the back of his head into her deep kiss.
“Dick?” she asked after it was over, her head settling down on his shoulder.
“Yes, Kara?”
“Have you done this a lot?”
“Oh yeah, lots of time.”
“Oh. Because I haven’t. Ever.”
“Me neither,” Dick said, a weight off his chest.
She cuddled against him and something sexual went out of the equation, while still lurking beneath the surface. Dick found it disturbingly easy to suppress his arousal.
Kara looked up at him, made eye contact, her eyes too wide and luminous to have Clark’s startlingly blue irises resting in them. “If I hadn’t taken charge of my own life, I would still be in Kandor, fighting to save some aliens I never even heard of. Instead of here, with you…”
“What happened to Kandor, though?”
As quickly as it began, Kara broke their eye contact.. “I think they’ll be fine, as soon as they man up and fight their own battles. Yeah, they’ll be just fine.”
Dick bit his lip. “Roy told me I used to protect Bludhaven like Batman does Gotham. It… it burned.”
“I heard about that.” Kara almost sighed in relief, she was so grateful the conversation wasn’t on her anymore.
“I’m not sure how I feel about that. I literally don’t remember. But I think they’re beyond my help, one way or the other. I mean, it’s not like Gotham and the earthquake…” His eyes went wide. “Oh my God, I remembered! The earthquake, No Man’s Land, me and Babs… I remember!”
***
By the time he was teleported back to Dalton Tower via Boomtube, Dick was happily conducting Duel of the Fates with his lips. His movements were supple, less showy, but more graceful. Naturally, Barbara was waiting for him with arms crossed.
“Do you know what time it is?”
“Yes, I do, as a matter of fact.” Dick checked his watch. “7:22 AM. You’re welcome.”
“I wasn’t asking, dick.”
“Then who were you asking?”
“No, I mean I—“ She gritted her teeth. “You’ve been out all night, playing patty cake with Supergirl.”
“We were not playing patty cake, what do you think I am, a child?” He paused. “Oh wait, you mean—“
“All I get is some vague notion that Supergirl is watching out for you before Superman goes to stop some earthquake, and God knows I’m not going to get in the way with that.” Emotion steadily started to flood Barbara’s voice. “And then you disappear from Metropolis and I have no idea where you are until you come back here and you arrive via Boomtube so that my entire system is in disarray!”
Dick opened his mouth to make a smart-aleck remark, but Barbara’s fists were clenched so tightly at her side that she could only be upset. He padded over to her, quickening his step when she tried to wave him off, and knelt down beside her. Then he reached behind her ear and, like magic, brought back the solvent for the spirit gum that held his mask on.
“You really should wash back there more often.”
She laughed. Actually managed a smile. “Don’t tell anyone that worked on me.”
“Tell you the truth? Alfred taught it to me. Got me every time.”
Dick uncapped the tube of solvent. Barbara gently took the solvent from his hand. Then she ran the end along the edges of his domino mask, letting it react with the adhesive. Dick felt the familiar warmth of the chemical reaction against his skin, and the even more familiar warmth of her fingers against his flesh. A memory was jarred loose, a powerful one, but he couldn’t quite get it off the tip of his tongue.
But Barbara was in it, her touch just as supple as it was now. He closed his eyes as her fingers probed further under his mask, gently ripping the Kevlar away from his skin. He felt her fingertips, so different without calluses, ghost over his shut eyelids. Then the mask came away and he opened his eyes. Barbara was smiling at him. The sun was rising.
“So, ‘Red Robin’?”
“Yeah!” He planted his fists at his waist and struck an iconic pose. “Pretty cunning, don’t you think?”
She stifled a giggle. “Well, it is a surprise.”
An IM popped up on Barbara’s computer screen. She craned her neck to see it. It was from Lois.
Dick squinted his eyes. “What is that, some kind of secret code?”
“No, it’s chatspeak and why did you go with Kara to the Fortress of Solitude?”
“To be alone. Fortress of Solitude seemed to be synonymous with that.” He shrugged. “Anyway, all we did was watch Star Wars, and what was Lucas thinking when he put Jar-Jar Binks in there? I gotta tell you, that is not doing anything for my hopes for Howard The Duck.”
Barbara had just known that as soon as she found him, Dick would make her want to throttle him. “So when’s the honeymoon, man wonder?”
“It’s boy wond—“ Dick almost corrected her, before shaking his head. “We broke it off. It just felt wrong somehow. I think all either of us expected of it was a short-term relationship, some fun, a few laughs, then call it off before things get too serious.” Smugly, Dick parked himself in a nearby chair. “I am liking the 21st century, even if no one ever did get around to inventing hover-cars and food that comes in pills…”
“You? In a relationship? Without forming a lingering attachment?”
“Why not?” Dick spun in his chair. “It’s not like I ask every woman I date to marry me.”
***
“Helena, did Dick ever ask you to marry him?”
Helena sighed. This was why she hated coming by the Clocktower when the minute-hand of the Dick And Barbara Clock was pointed to “on-again” (and not just because it made her mix metaphors). For days, Barbara hadn’t put together a real big assignment where she would get to be team lead; instead the Oracle was falling into a support role for various heroes’ independent missions. Meanwhile, the Huntress got to stay home in Metropolis, trying to find street crime to fight. Which was impossible. You had to go ten blocks to find a decent shadow to lurk in. Helena must’ve cleaned her apartment three times since Dick had come back into Barbara’s life; she’d even started planning pop quizzes for her students. So it was inevitable: When Dick and Barbara got together, people suffered.
Not that she was jealous.
But having to deal with anguished, neurotic, love-struck, emotional, somewhat whiny Barbara Gordon was not money. At all. Even when Dick was making a supply run (although Helena had her doubts that he could buy everything on a shopping list without coming back mewling like a wounded puppy about how Batman didn’t love him), Barbara remained indecisive. Hell, she wasn’t even stoic any more. She was just kinda… glazed over.
The HQ was looking nice though. Had Barbara hired a maid? Oh, she would do that for Dick. Place doesn’t have to look nice for the team, but when a man who doesn’t even put the cap back on his toothpaste spends the night, pull out all the stops.
And now Barbara was looking at her like her silence was some sort of confirmation, so Helena quickly said “No… well, a few months after we… had sex… I mentioned off-handedly that I’d missed my period and he started talking about doing the honorable thing and giving our child a father… nearly got down on his knees right in the Batcave, which why am I reporting like that’s unusual?
“Helena!”
“Anyway, it turned out it was just stress brought on by my estranged relationship with…” Suddenly, Helena stopped flat. If she were a cat, her ears would’ve flattened. “Oh my god, did he propose to you? He did, didn’t he? Okay, Barbara, I know Dinah has called dibs on maid of honor for-freakin’-ever, but I deserve to be a bridesmaid.”
“I’m not getting married! Don’t say that or you’ll cause…”
Misfit teleported in. “Flower girl!”
And Zinda practically kicked down the door. “And I get to plan the bachelorette party!”
“There’s not going to be a bachelorette party!” Barbara said quickly.
Zinda winked at her. “Gotcha. You hear that, Dick? There’s not going to be any bachelorette party. And there especially won’t be beer and strippers.” She winked again.
Helena raised her hand. “Can we have a bachelorette party without anyone getting married?”
Dick, plastic bags dangling from seemingly every inch of his body, poked his head in. “Who’s getting married?”
“You are,” Helena said.
“To who? I mean, Alfred always threatened to sell me to a sultan for an ample dowry, but I never thought he’d go and do it!” A sudden realization hit him and he turned to Barbara, who was quietly thunking her head against her desk. “I’m engaged and you didn’t tell me? Who to?”
“Koriand’r,” Helena said. “Yes, she is an alien. You would’ve been married already, but the priest blew up.”
”Blew up! How do priests just blow up?”
Misfit fielded that one. “I read a story where these explosive communion wafers…”
“Dick, you’re not getting married,” Barbara said at last, trying her best and succeeding as easily as usual at sounding like the most rational person in the room.
“Then who’s Koriand’r?”
“An evil villain you fought once. Best to forget… him.”
“Okay. I’ll be in the kitchen, putting groceries away and snitching anything that looks sweet. Have fun planning your imaginary wedding.”
He left. The Birds of Prey, not sure what had just happened, pulled up chairs in a semi-circle around Barbara. Barbara looked intently at the graphical display at her monitor, as if she were discerning some deep meaning from it, when in actuality she was just hoping that no one called her on it being her screensaver.
“Barbara, stop staring at your screensaver and turn around.”
Angrily, Barbara did.
“You’re modifying his memories for your own personal gain,” Helena said.
“I am not doing that at all. I’m just simplifying things for him. If he knew he had an alien princess ex-girlfriend out there, he’d want to meet her, and the next thing you know, she’d be taking advantage of his condition to make ridiculously-haired babies with him.”
“Yes, well done in preventing him from entering into a hasty relationship with an alien bimbo,” Helena said. “Mission a-fucking-ccomplished.”
“Don’t snipe, okay? One night stands don’t count and oh God did I just say he had a one night stand?” Barbara rested her head in her hands, feeling the beginnings of a Dick Grayson headache knotting behind her eyes. “He deserves a second chance. And he needs someone to watch out for him. I’m the best person for the job.”
“Sounds to me like you just want to be the best person for the job,” Zinda said.
“If that means she wants to have sex with Dick, yes, totally,” Misfit chimed in.
“Dick and I are a dead issue. This is purely business.”
“And you can keep it business… playing den mother to him… without it getting personal?” Helena said dubiously.
“Did he not get over his infatuation with me?”
“And under Supergirl,” Misfit snickered.
“Shoot, if he wanted a go at a flying blonde in a skirt, I could’ve given him a ride.” Zinda smacked her lips.
“Okay,” Barbara said, “female bonding over, anyone with an opinion on the love life of either myself or Dick Grayson should leave the room.”
Helena stayed behind, awkwardly fiddling her hands and looking askew before making her decision. She slammed herself down in a chair and rolled it next to Barbara, who was resolutely typing.
“I believe that included you,” Barbara said.
“I don’t care, I’m just perpetually horny and easily amused.” She pursed her hands together and brought them to her face, breathing into them, before folding them in her lap in the manner of a teacher giving a lesson. “You ever wonder why it is that whenever Nightwing gets hurt, you’re always there?”
“If you’re trying to imply that I care about him, yes. It’s not a state secret.”
“You treat it like one,” Helena retorted. “I just thought one day you might get tired of that, want to talk to him without the excuse of a bullet wound or head trauma. Personally, I can’t stand to look at the guy half the time, but if he makes you happy…”
Barbara glared at her.
“Yeah, I’m not afraid of the Batman version of that, what makes you think ex-librarian would work on me?” Helena leaned back, crossing her arms. “I know I’m not Dinah and we’re not exactly BFF. But we all care about you. And we all worry, too.”
“What, that I’m going to die an old maid?” Barbara laughed, once. “It’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
“You realize you’re wearing contacts all the time now?”
Barbara bit her lip.
“His second chance, you not needing glasses… it’s not real. Between the two of you, I’m not sure what is.”
“Perpetually horny and easily amused,” Barbara repeated to herself.
Helena crossed her legs, smiling. “Yeah. But you two are… you’ve been good to me. And if you could just be truthful with each other…”
“He is truthful, with me. Maybe. I don’t know.” Barbara pushed her keyboard away. “I can’t trust myself with him. I don’t know if he’s just telling me what I want to hear or… you know we have boundaries, when I play nursemaid? He never takes more than I’m offering.”
“Must be comfortable,” Helena said acidly.
“It’s very comfortable. He’s just so eager to please and he cares about me… so much…” Barbara choked with emotion. “What if he fell in love with me just to make me happy? What then? Should he be shackled to a cripple for the rest of his life just because I can’t hack it on my own?” She shook her head. “Do you think he loves me? Truthfully?”
“Barbara, you may run to play nursemaid whenever he’s hurt… but you can’t deny he’s always there for you too. After all these years, I can’t even believe you’re doubting that he’s crazy about you. And that you’re in love with him.”
“Crazy about me…” Barbara nodded grimly, still trying to hold the reins on her emotions. “Good word choice.”
“Why does it always have to be you he comes to when he’s licking his wounds?” Helena persisted. “Why do you volunteer?”
“Because the one time I didn’t, I lost something… truly special.” Barbara took a deep breath and let it out. “To say nothing of how he got hurt, having that… woman in his life.” She paused for breath again, but this time the floodgates broke. She wheeled on Helena viciously. “Do you know how fast he fell in love with someone new? Someone he came to hate? It’s always real to him, it always feels real, but it’s not! And I’m just as guilty as getting swept along for the ride but… but at the end, I have to be the one who says that we’re not right for each other. I have to be the responsible one. Because he can’t be. He’ll sacrifice and he’ll sacrifice and he’ll give and he’ll give until there’s nothing left to take. And I can’t be that woman. I can’t just be blissfully ignorant about how much it will hurt him in five years or ten years or twenty years when he wants to be free and I’m holding him back. And he won’t say a word. He’ll just keep giving. Because he thinks that makes him a good man. And maybe it does, maybe I’m a horrible person, but I’m just trying to make the best of a bad situation. And that is him finding someone else and me…” She sucked in breath. “Me being alone.”
Helena hugged her. It came as more of a surprise than a comfort, but pretty soon Barbara had her arms wrapped around the brunette regardless. When she finally let go, Helena was wiping her eyes.
“I don’t know how Dinah put up with this,” Helena said.
Barbara cracked a smile. “She dated Ollie. After that bundle of issues, I must’ve been a peach.”
“I know you can’t talk to me. We’re more business associates than friends, and I’m comfortable with that. But talk to someone, alright? Someone who really cares?”
“I’ll try.”
“You know whatever happens, we’re all behind you?”
“I know. But it’s nice to hear anyways. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I really need to make a call.”
Helena nodded and walked away, feeling drained and battered by the confrontation. Barbara waited until she was gone. Then she pressed the keystrokes necessary to summon up her most trusted ally.
“Dinah? It’s Babs. I need you.”
Chapter 5
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Dick/Babs, Supergirl, Huntress, Misfit, Zinda
Word Count: 5,746
Series: Change My World
Summary: A little thing like losing his memories isn’t going to stop Dick Grayson’s war on crime.
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Superman knew he was closest to Metropolis in the public’s eye, but although he made it his base of operations, he responded to distress calls from all around the world. Barbara Gordon had written a full program just to route him to the most serious disasters. But on some nights, when that program wasn’t buzzing on a frequency only he could hear, he liked to fly the skies of Metropolis and foil the occasional street crime. It was stuff that could best be left to the police and local vigilantes like Steel, but he liked to do his part to keep the crime rate low.
And apparently, so did someone else. Hearing the sounds of violence… gunplay, flesh on flesh hits, and the distinctive whoosh of a Nomex/Kevlar-weaved cape… Clark soared down for a closer look. By the time he got there, the fight was done… which meant it was over almost before it began. Four car thieves were handcuffed together and to a bicycle rack, the car they tried to steal idling on the street. Their defeater was dressed at least as oddly as anyone Superman had seen since the last time the Creeper had come to town.
From the waist up, he was vintage Robin with a few modifications. The chest was pure red and armored, from the bulky look of it, with long sleeves up to the green gloves. The cape was canary-yellow on both sides, with a heavy leathern quality that spoke to it being armored as well. At the waist was a similarly yellow utility belt cinching green trunks, with yellow leggings under that leading to green boots.
Superman didn’t like to critique others’ costumes (not since Bruce’s jibe about his mother dressing him), but those garish colors looked really out of place on a vigilante. The yellow alone made Clark want to gouge his eyes out.
“Hey, Supes,” the hero greeted. “Got everything under control here. How’s Lois?”
Superman set down, then quickly lifted back up as the would-be Robin scaled the side of a building. He landed on the ledge that the newcomer threw himself over.
“Lois Lane is a… trusted and valued colleague… I’m sorry, do I know you?”
“Big Blue, it’s me. Robin?”
Superman X-rayed him. The distinctive domino mask was more of a green cowl in this incarnation, leaving the lower face and scalp bare, but it didn’t have any lead in it. He easily saw through.
“You!” Superman said in surprise. “Shouldn’t you be in New York?”
“I don’t know, should I be? I’ve been a little out of sorts lately. But now I’m back and raring to go.” His face brightened with an idea. “Hey, we could have a team-up! You got some case that needs a little Robin on it?” He punched one hand into the other’s open palm.
“No, everything’s kosher at the moment. Could you excuse me?”
“Sure thing.”
Superman lifted himself up a good hundred meters, then took a headset from his pocket and triggered it to Oracle’s line.
“Go for Oracle,” came the familiarly gargled electronica.
“This is Superman. Do you know anything about a new Robin? Or Dick Grayson’s whereabouts?”
“Oh no… tell me, is he in any trouble?”
“No, nothing like that. Just… patrolling, looks like.” Far below, Grayson had swung into motion to deal with a mugging. Superman had to admire his initiative.
“Listen, Kal-El… Dick’s in a slight fix. He has amnesia, thinks he’s still Robin… well, thought he was, now he knows he has amnesia but he doesn’t remember what he’s forgotten… it’s complicated.”
“It always is. You want me to keep an eye on him?”
“That would be… ah hell, tsunami headed toward India. Can you handle it?”
“Sure. I’ll call in someone else to watch our wayward friend.”
***
“I am Red Robin, scourge of darkest night!”
“Is the ‘scourge of darkest night’ part a part of your name or is that just hype?” Kara belatedly stuck out her hand. “Oh, I’m Supergirl, by the way. You could probably tell because I’m a girl and I have a nice S.”
Great Rao, I have the combined sum of Krypton’s knowledge and history at my command and that’s the best line I can come up with?
“Enchanté!” Dick kissed her hand.
“Oh, nice. No one’s ever done that, and I hang out with lots of sophisticated, eligible guys.”
“Are they all blind?”
Kara giggled and hovered up another few feet, then lowered herself back down to the rooftop before Red Robin could see up her skirt. Suddenly she was very shy about that. Her panties were very conservative, but she’d skipped her last shaving… down there. What with the mirror and the stirrups and the heatvision, it could be very uncomfortable. Gynecological, really. But she wished she’d gone through the trouble because, hello, Nightwing interested in her without the squicky jailbait thing, since he was mental jailbait. Or something. Except in hot, fully-developed older man body. It was like having an entire week of birthdays! She’d have to tell Cassie about it next time they had a slumber party.
Okay, keep cool, Kara, play coquettish. What does he like? Batgirl? He liked Batgirl… so, speak tersely and occasionally flip out and kill people? No, wrong Batgirl. Umm… have red hair? Frell! What does he like… what do all guys like?
She flipped her hair and put a hand on his bicep. “My, you’re so strong. I bet your penis is really long and thick.”
Way to go, virgin. Next, tell him you have low self-esteem and daddy issues, he’ll really go for that.
“As it turns out, yeah, it is. That’s a relief. I remember thinking that it would never…” He bit his lip. “You wanna fight crime?”
”Oh, Rao, yes.” Supergirl landed next to him. He was still taller than her in that really hot way where they would have to kinda crane their heads a little to kiss, or she could just jump up and wrap her legs around him, or he could wrap his legs around her, or they could both be horizontal and it really wouldn’t be an issue…
Kara shook those thoughts right outta her head. “With my superhearing, I can detect crime for miles around!”
“Groovy!”
Supergirl listened carefully. “…nope, nothing. You wanna get some donuts?”
***
“Where have you been all my life?” Dick was asking lovingly not fifteen minutes later. He dunked the rest of his Krispy Kreme in milk and ate it, licking the frosting from his fingers.
Great Rao, Supergirl thought, watching him lick the frosting from his fingers. It left his gloves all shiny and… guh.
Red Robin grabbed another donut to continue his joke. “So then I knocked out the suicide bomber and said ‘Holy terror, Batman!’”
Supergirl laughed, dutifully. Apparently, in Gotham City the only form of humor was puns. “You’re so funny! You should go on Leno.”
“Is he anything like Carson?”
“Bigger chin.”
Red Robin smiled at her. “You know, even if we haven’t managed to foil any crime or save any days, it’s nice spending time with you. You’re the only one who doesn’t treat me like an invalid. I’ve been fighting crime since I was nine years old… just because I lost a few years of experience doesn’t mean I’m some schlub.”
“I know, right? We still totally have powers, we should get to use them.”
“Yeah! I bet you do fine without Superman’s supervision. Whoa, that sounded weird, like supervision is a power of his…”
“Feels like it, sometimes. It’s like he’s got every hero on Earth comparing me to him and reporting to him and…” Kara sipped her coffee. “Okay, I bought this to make me look more mature, but it tastes like mud. Can I have some of your milk?”
Red Robin produced a straw, bent it at a 90 degree angle, and stuck the longer end into his tall glass of milk. They both contentedly sucked on their straws, faces inches apart.
“Kara, who in the pits of Armaghetto is this loser!?”
Kara slapped her forehead. Dick wiped his mouth off with a napkin.
“Kara,” Red Robin said to her. “That’s a pretty name.” Then he smiled: “Supergirl is quite a mouthful.”
She blushed and forgot about Power Boy until he pounded on the donut case, spilling pastries and glass all over the floor.
“Hey, I’m talking to you! We have one little blow-up and you go hook up with some man-slut!?”
“I am not a man-slut,” Red Robin said as he got to his feet. “Kara” --he said the name like he was breaking into song, still flirting even when accosted by a metahuman-- “who is this guy?”
“Ex-boyfriend. He’s psycho-obsessed with me.”
“Oh?”
“Has a little shrine and everything. And he hit me.”
Dick’s face soured with offense. “He hit you?”
“I’ll handle him, he’s a pushover in a real fight.”
“No, no, I’ve got this. Besides, gotta work off those donuts if I’m gonna maintain my girlish figure.”
Red Robin cracked his neck and looked at Power Boy. ”I realize I should cut you some slack since you’re from out of town, himbo, but around here, we don’t hit women… we hit the men who hit women.”
Power Boy laughed derisively and poked him in the chest. “I asked you a question, man! Who the hell are you?”
In rapid succession too quick for the eye to follow, Red Robin struck him in the throat, groin, mid-thigh, and ribs. Power Boy crumbled and Dick lit a flare in his eyes, blinding him. Then he chopped at a series of pressure points on Power Boy’s neck until the Apokoliptian lost consciousness. Dragging him out by the hair, Dick tossed Power Boy out the backdoor and into a pile of garbage. Stale, crusty donuts cushioned his fall.
“I'm Kara’s new boyfriend and I'm out of my mind,” Red Robin said, standing in the doorway. “If you so much as talk to her or even think her name, I'll cut you in ways that'll make you useless to a woman.”
He closed the door behind him. Took a bill from his utility belt and tossed it onto the counter. “That should cover the damages.”
Kara was suddenly next to him, her arms around his chest. “That was so cool! I mean, you just… he just… and you…!”
“Surprise and overwhelming force can be the deciding factors in a battle, when employed correctly,” Dick said like a preacher reading a passage.
“That was so cool!” Supergirl finally gushed. She kissed him on the cheek. A moment later, on the lips. Then she turned to the donut guy while Dick was still recovering from that. “Call the police. Ask for the Special Crimes Unit, Detective Mulligan. He’ll handle Mr. Fatal Attraction out there.” She turned back to Red Robin. “You wanna get out of here?”
***
“When you said we could go to your place, I had no idea you meant…” Red Robin paused. “His place.”
Technically speaking, Kara didn’t live in the Fortress of Solitude, but her apartment was a pig-sty (she really had to hassle Batman to send room service by more often) and the FoS was a lot more impressive.
“Greetings, Mistress Kara,” the AI said. “Bringing home strays, are we?”
“Fortress, this is Red Robin. He’s a guest.” She looked… gandered at him. “He might be coming here quite often.”
“Gosh, I hope so.”
She blushed again. Stop blushing! Idiot! He’s not even touching y… oh, there he goes. There was a hand at the small of her back, pinky slanted down toward her belt leather.
“So, uh…” she looked around the high, polygonal-vaulted ceiling of the Fortress. “We’ve got this Kryptonian version of what you’d call feng shui so that everything is set up real easy to memorize. The architecture is designed to stimulate memory.”
His hand scanted downward, counting her vertebrae. “Stimulate?”
She let herself be turned to face him and his other hand was at her tapered waist.
“You move pretty fast for a human.”
“Life’s too short to go slow. I just lost a decade of my life. I want to make some new memories.”
He pulled her close against him and their heads were just doing the craning thing in anticipation of a kiss Kara knew she would feel in her toes when a door opened, a shower was heard running, and both of them turned.
Lois Lane, ace reporter, was in a bathrobe with a turban around her head, exfoliating her face with a buzzing crystal. Behind her, the shower automatically shut off.
“Lois!” Supergirl cried, face on fire. “What’re you doing here?”
Lois unfurled her towel turban and mopped at her damp face with it. “The water main in our apartment busted, so I have to use the warm water here. Imagine, going to the Arctic for warm water… what’re you doing here?”
“We came to… watch some movies!” Kara answered.
“Yeah… movies…” Red Robin confirmed. “Hey, did you know they came out with new Star Wars movies? Off the hook!”
“Yes, very… off.”
She looked askew from Dick to Kara and back again. There was an uncomfortable silence.
“I have amnesia,” Red Robin said.
“Oh! Okay, yeah.”
And so they ended up watching Star Wars, with Lois wedged firmly in between them and not in the sexy way Dick would’ve preferred. Not that the hairless Chewbecca… thing was at all arousing. It kinda reminded Dick of G’nort, which was impressive, considering he didn’t remember G’nort.
“When does Captain Spock show up?” Lois asked.
“He’s not in this!” Kara replied. “I’ve been on Earth for two years and I know how to tell Star Wars apart from Star Trek!”
Then the AI started talking about how Battlestar Galactica was better than both of them, and Dick thought it meant the version with Lorne Green. After clarification, Lois had to go and say that Kara Thrace was a big fat whore and Supergirl thought she was talking about her and they got so wrapped up in their argument that they missed almost all of Jake Lloyd’s performance, which factored heavily into Dick’s like for the movie.
Lois teleported back to Metropolis after advising both of them that the AI was particular about “relations” within its sterile environment. Dick and Kara walked to a balcony overlooking the vast ice and watched the aurora borealis.
“There’s so much I don’t know about you,” she said, hovering just a little so that Dick had to hold her down by the hand. “Red Robin… what is that, Robin of the future?”
“Something like that.”
“So, Batman’s your mentor?”
“Yeah.” Dick smiled a little. “Taught me everything I know.”
Kara did a tiny circuit around Dick, switching hands like they were dancing. “Well, thank Rao you didn’t inherit the stick he has up his ass.”
“That would be unsanitary.” Dick’s suddenly humorless voice left little doubt how he felt about criticism of his foster father.
“I just can’t stand all those moralizing prigs. Always making a big show of sacrificing themselves for everyone else. Well, I didn’t ask anyone to save me.” Kara floated down into him like a hawk diving for a mouse and Dick fell back onto a divan the Fortress had grown, Kara coiled on his lap, thumb brushing near the corner of her lip in growing anxiety. “You’ve gotta live for yourself or people’ll walk all over you. Use you for their own fun and games. Hurt you.”
Dick cradled her a little, surprised and intimidated by the sudden shift in mood. “I have a mission. It’s hard for me to ignore… impossible, really.”
“If it’s not your fight, maybe it’s best to cut and run.”
“And do what? Lead a normal life?”
“They do make it sound tempting in all the brochures.” She laughed at her own joke, so hard that Dick was sure if she wasn’t laughing she’d be crying, but like a fake cough turning real, her smile became genuine. She was high on life and damnit if he couldn’t remember the last person who laughed like that. At him. At life. At them.
They shuffled around, Dick guiding Kara’s body with his hands and Kara pressing herself into his touch, turning the whole arrangement into an formless act of groping, until finally she was sitting in his lap, facing forward. He kissed her lips over her shoulder, then caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger and gently oriented her head back toward the light in the sky. Kara relaxed against him, like she could melt and soak into him.
It was a perfectly sweet moment, that made Dick ache with nostalgia for another memory he didn’t have. But he could guess. She reminded him of Barbara… his Barbara, not the somewhat masochistic variant he’d been living with for the past week. She had the same zest for life, but for some reason he just wasn’t responding to her as he should have. Somewhat was missing.
“Oh my, these mini-skirts are so hard to sit right on…”
She fleeced hers so that her buttocks were on Dick’s lap. In the gap over his waistline where he could feel her backed into him, his skin was touching the cool satin of her panties.
“That’s so much better,” Kara moaned.
“On this end too.”
She coiled an arm back around his neck and closed her eyes as she turned her head to kiss him again, pressing him by the back of his head into her deep kiss.
“Dick?” she asked after it was over, her head settling down on his shoulder.
“Yes, Kara?”
“Have you done this a lot?”
“Oh yeah, lots of time.”
“Oh. Because I haven’t. Ever.”
“Me neither,” Dick said, a weight off his chest.
She cuddled against him and something sexual went out of the equation, while still lurking beneath the surface. Dick found it disturbingly easy to suppress his arousal.
Kara looked up at him, made eye contact, her eyes too wide and luminous to have Clark’s startlingly blue irises resting in them. “If I hadn’t taken charge of my own life, I would still be in Kandor, fighting to save some aliens I never even heard of. Instead of here, with you…”
“What happened to Kandor, though?”
As quickly as it began, Kara broke their eye contact.. “I think they’ll be fine, as soon as they man up and fight their own battles. Yeah, they’ll be just fine.”
Dick bit his lip. “Roy told me I used to protect Bludhaven like Batman does Gotham. It… it burned.”
“I heard about that.” Kara almost sighed in relief, she was so grateful the conversation wasn’t on her anymore.
“I’m not sure how I feel about that. I literally don’t remember. But I think they’re beyond my help, one way or the other. I mean, it’s not like Gotham and the earthquake…” His eyes went wide. “Oh my God, I remembered! The earthquake, No Man’s Land, me and Babs… I remember!”
***
By the time he was teleported back to Dalton Tower via Boomtube, Dick was happily conducting Duel of the Fates with his lips. His movements were supple, less showy, but more graceful. Naturally, Barbara was waiting for him with arms crossed.
“Do you know what time it is?”
“Yes, I do, as a matter of fact.” Dick checked his watch. “7:22 AM. You’re welcome.”
“I wasn’t asking, dick.”
“Then who were you asking?”
“No, I mean I—“ She gritted her teeth. “You’ve been out all night, playing patty cake with Supergirl.”
“We were not playing patty cake, what do you think I am, a child?” He paused. “Oh wait, you mean—“
“All I get is some vague notion that Supergirl is watching out for you before Superman goes to stop some earthquake, and God knows I’m not going to get in the way with that.” Emotion steadily started to flood Barbara’s voice. “And then you disappear from Metropolis and I have no idea where you are until you come back here and you arrive via Boomtube so that my entire system is in disarray!”
Dick opened his mouth to make a smart-aleck remark, but Barbara’s fists were clenched so tightly at her side that she could only be upset. He padded over to her, quickening his step when she tried to wave him off, and knelt down beside her. Then he reached behind her ear and, like magic, brought back the solvent for the spirit gum that held his mask on.
“You really should wash back there more often.”
She laughed. Actually managed a smile. “Don’t tell anyone that worked on me.”
“Tell you the truth? Alfred taught it to me. Got me every time.”
Dick uncapped the tube of solvent. Barbara gently took the solvent from his hand. Then she ran the end along the edges of his domino mask, letting it react with the adhesive. Dick felt the familiar warmth of the chemical reaction against his skin, and the even more familiar warmth of her fingers against his flesh. A memory was jarred loose, a powerful one, but he couldn’t quite get it off the tip of his tongue.
But Barbara was in it, her touch just as supple as it was now. He closed his eyes as her fingers probed further under his mask, gently ripping the Kevlar away from his skin. He felt her fingertips, so different without calluses, ghost over his shut eyelids. Then the mask came away and he opened his eyes. Barbara was smiling at him. The sun was rising.
“So, ‘Red Robin’?”
“Yeah!” He planted his fists at his waist and struck an iconic pose. “Pretty cunning, don’t you think?”
She stifled a giggle. “Well, it is a surprise.”
An IM popped up on Barbara’s computer screen. She craned her neck to see it. It was from Lois.
Dick squinted his eyes. “What is that, some kind of secret code?”
“No, it’s chatspeak and why did you go with Kara to the Fortress of Solitude?”
“To be alone. Fortress of Solitude seemed to be synonymous with that.” He shrugged. “Anyway, all we did was watch Star Wars, and what was Lucas thinking when he put Jar-Jar Binks in there? I gotta tell you, that is not doing anything for my hopes for Howard The Duck.”
Barbara had just known that as soon as she found him, Dick would make her want to throttle him. “So when’s the honeymoon, man wonder?”
“It’s boy wond—“ Dick almost corrected her, before shaking his head. “We broke it off. It just felt wrong somehow. I think all either of us expected of it was a short-term relationship, some fun, a few laughs, then call it off before things get too serious.” Smugly, Dick parked himself in a nearby chair. “I am liking the 21st century, even if no one ever did get around to inventing hover-cars and food that comes in pills…”
“You? In a relationship? Without forming a lingering attachment?”
“Why not?” Dick spun in his chair. “It’s not like I ask every woman I date to marry me.”
***
“Helena, did Dick ever ask you to marry him?”
Helena sighed. This was why she hated coming by the Clocktower when the minute-hand of the Dick And Barbara Clock was pointed to “on-again” (and not just because it made her mix metaphors). For days, Barbara hadn’t put together a real big assignment where she would get to be team lead; instead the Oracle was falling into a support role for various heroes’ independent missions. Meanwhile, the Huntress got to stay home in Metropolis, trying to find street crime to fight. Which was impossible. You had to go ten blocks to find a decent shadow to lurk in. Helena must’ve cleaned her apartment three times since Dick had come back into Barbara’s life; she’d even started planning pop quizzes for her students. So it was inevitable: When Dick and Barbara got together, people suffered.
Not that she was jealous.
But having to deal with anguished, neurotic, love-struck, emotional, somewhat whiny Barbara Gordon was not money. At all. Even when Dick was making a supply run (although Helena had her doubts that he could buy everything on a shopping list without coming back mewling like a wounded puppy about how Batman didn’t love him), Barbara remained indecisive. Hell, she wasn’t even stoic any more. She was just kinda… glazed over.
The HQ was looking nice though. Had Barbara hired a maid? Oh, she would do that for Dick. Place doesn’t have to look nice for the team, but when a man who doesn’t even put the cap back on his toothpaste spends the night, pull out all the stops.
And now Barbara was looking at her like her silence was some sort of confirmation, so Helena quickly said “No… well, a few months after we… had sex… I mentioned off-handedly that I’d missed my period and he started talking about doing the honorable thing and giving our child a father… nearly got down on his knees right in the Batcave, which why am I reporting like that’s unusual?
“Helena!”
“Anyway, it turned out it was just stress brought on by my estranged relationship with…” Suddenly, Helena stopped flat. If she were a cat, her ears would’ve flattened. “Oh my god, did he propose to you? He did, didn’t he? Okay, Barbara, I know Dinah has called dibs on maid of honor for-freakin’-ever, but I deserve to be a bridesmaid.”
“I’m not getting married! Don’t say that or you’ll cause…”
Misfit teleported in. “Flower girl!”
And Zinda practically kicked down the door. “And I get to plan the bachelorette party!”
“There’s not going to be a bachelorette party!” Barbara said quickly.
Zinda winked at her. “Gotcha. You hear that, Dick? There’s not going to be any bachelorette party. And there especially won’t be beer and strippers.” She winked again.
Helena raised her hand. “Can we have a bachelorette party without anyone getting married?”
Dick, plastic bags dangling from seemingly every inch of his body, poked his head in. “Who’s getting married?”
“You are,” Helena said.
“To who? I mean, Alfred always threatened to sell me to a sultan for an ample dowry, but I never thought he’d go and do it!” A sudden realization hit him and he turned to Barbara, who was quietly thunking her head against her desk. “I’m engaged and you didn’t tell me? Who to?”
“Koriand’r,” Helena said. “Yes, she is an alien. You would’ve been married already, but the priest blew up.”
”Blew up! How do priests just blow up?”
Misfit fielded that one. “I read a story where these explosive communion wafers…”
“Dick, you’re not getting married,” Barbara said at last, trying her best and succeeding as easily as usual at sounding like the most rational person in the room.
“Then who’s Koriand’r?”
“An evil villain you fought once. Best to forget… him.”
“Okay. I’ll be in the kitchen, putting groceries away and snitching anything that looks sweet. Have fun planning your imaginary wedding.”
He left. The Birds of Prey, not sure what had just happened, pulled up chairs in a semi-circle around Barbara. Barbara looked intently at the graphical display at her monitor, as if she were discerning some deep meaning from it, when in actuality she was just hoping that no one called her on it being her screensaver.
“Barbara, stop staring at your screensaver and turn around.”
Angrily, Barbara did.
“You’re modifying his memories for your own personal gain,” Helena said.
“I am not doing that at all. I’m just simplifying things for him. If he knew he had an alien princess ex-girlfriend out there, he’d want to meet her, and the next thing you know, she’d be taking advantage of his condition to make ridiculously-haired babies with him.”
“Yes, well done in preventing him from entering into a hasty relationship with an alien bimbo,” Helena said. “Mission a-fucking-ccomplished.”
“Don’t snipe, okay? One night stands don’t count and oh God did I just say he had a one night stand?” Barbara rested her head in her hands, feeling the beginnings of a Dick Grayson headache knotting behind her eyes. “He deserves a second chance. And he needs someone to watch out for him. I’m the best person for the job.”
“Sounds to me like you just want to be the best person for the job,” Zinda said.
“If that means she wants to have sex with Dick, yes, totally,” Misfit chimed in.
“Dick and I are a dead issue. This is purely business.”
“And you can keep it business… playing den mother to him… without it getting personal?” Helena said dubiously.
“Did he not get over his infatuation with me?”
“And under Supergirl,” Misfit snickered.
“Shoot, if he wanted a go at a flying blonde in a skirt, I could’ve given him a ride.” Zinda smacked her lips.
“Okay,” Barbara said, “female bonding over, anyone with an opinion on the love life of either myself or Dick Grayson should leave the room.”
Helena stayed behind, awkwardly fiddling her hands and looking askew before making her decision. She slammed herself down in a chair and rolled it next to Barbara, who was resolutely typing.
“I believe that included you,” Barbara said.
“I don’t care, I’m just perpetually horny and easily amused.” She pursed her hands together and brought them to her face, breathing into them, before folding them in her lap in the manner of a teacher giving a lesson. “You ever wonder why it is that whenever Nightwing gets hurt, you’re always there?”
“If you’re trying to imply that I care about him, yes. It’s not a state secret.”
“You treat it like one,” Helena retorted. “I just thought one day you might get tired of that, want to talk to him without the excuse of a bullet wound or head trauma. Personally, I can’t stand to look at the guy half the time, but if he makes you happy…”
Barbara glared at her.
“Yeah, I’m not afraid of the Batman version of that, what makes you think ex-librarian would work on me?” Helena leaned back, crossing her arms. “I know I’m not Dinah and we’re not exactly BFF. But we all care about you. And we all worry, too.”
“What, that I’m going to die an old maid?” Barbara laughed, once. “It’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
“You realize you’re wearing contacts all the time now?”
Barbara bit her lip.
“His second chance, you not needing glasses… it’s not real. Between the two of you, I’m not sure what is.”
“Perpetually horny and easily amused,” Barbara repeated to herself.
Helena crossed her legs, smiling. “Yeah. But you two are… you’ve been good to me. And if you could just be truthful with each other…”
“He is truthful, with me. Maybe. I don’t know.” Barbara pushed her keyboard away. “I can’t trust myself with him. I don’t know if he’s just telling me what I want to hear or… you know we have boundaries, when I play nursemaid? He never takes more than I’m offering.”
“Must be comfortable,” Helena said acidly.
“It’s very comfortable. He’s just so eager to please and he cares about me… so much…” Barbara choked with emotion. “What if he fell in love with me just to make me happy? What then? Should he be shackled to a cripple for the rest of his life just because I can’t hack it on my own?” She shook her head. “Do you think he loves me? Truthfully?”
“Barbara, you may run to play nursemaid whenever he’s hurt… but you can’t deny he’s always there for you too. After all these years, I can’t even believe you’re doubting that he’s crazy about you. And that you’re in love with him.”
“Crazy about me…” Barbara nodded grimly, still trying to hold the reins on her emotions. “Good word choice.”
“Why does it always have to be you he comes to when he’s licking his wounds?” Helena persisted. “Why do you volunteer?”
“Because the one time I didn’t, I lost something… truly special.” Barbara took a deep breath and let it out. “To say nothing of how he got hurt, having that… woman in his life.” She paused for breath again, but this time the floodgates broke. She wheeled on Helena viciously. “Do you know how fast he fell in love with someone new? Someone he came to hate? It’s always real to him, it always feels real, but it’s not! And I’m just as guilty as getting swept along for the ride but… but at the end, I have to be the one who says that we’re not right for each other. I have to be the responsible one. Because he can’t be. He’ll sacrifice and he’ll sacrifice and he’ll give and he’ll give until there’s nothing left to take. And I can’t be that woman. I can’t just be blissfully ignorant about how much it will hurt him in five years or ten years or twenty years when he wants to be free and I’m holding him back. And he won’t say a word. He’ll just keep giving. Because he thinks that makes him a good man. And maybe it does, maybe I’m a horrible person, but I’m just trying to make the best of a bad situation. And that is him finding someone else and me…” She sucked in breath. “Me being alone.”
Helena hugged her. It came as more of a surprise than a comfort, but pretty soon Barbara had her arms wrapped around the brunette regardless. When she finally let go, Helena was wiping her eyes.
“I don’t know how Dinah put up with this,” Helena said.
Barbara cracked a smile. “She dated Ollie. After that bundle of issues, I must’ve been a peach.”
“I know you can’t talk to me. We’re more business associates than friends, and I’m comfortable with that. But talk to someone, alright? Someone who really cares?”
“I’ll try.”
“You know whatever happens, we’re all behind you?”
“I know. But it’s nice to hear anyways. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I really need to make a call.”
Helena nodded and walked away, feeling drained and battered by the confrontation. Barbara waited until she was gone. Then she pressed the keystrokes necessary to summon up her most trusted ally.
“Dinah? It’s Babs. I need you.”
Chapter 5
