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seriousficTitle: The Moment's Worth It
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
seriousfic
Recipient:mazily
Fandom: Birds of Prey
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,982
Notes: This story takes place during the "missing year" depicted in 52, but departs from canon because canon killed Big Barda, c'mon! Betaed byaxolotl_lan.
Characters/Pairings: Renee/Barbara, Helena Bertinelli, Vic Sage
Summary: Renee's partner is dead. Her girlfriend's left her. Maybe a new job can turn things around.
Renee hated being bothered while she was drunk. The only time she wasn't drunk was when she was hungover, and the best cure for that was getting drunk. And she was fine with all of Gotham leaving her alone. Her apartment was clean, though. She'd pawned the junk to go toward her tab, and the place was paid up from back when she'd been a cop. So she was set from now until her liver self-destructed.
"A hard-drinking ex-cop with angst? When does the Philip Marlowe narration start?"
The detective in Renee must've still been rattling around, because she immediately pegged the voice. Female, early thirties, Italian accent light enough to have been educated at, so probably Mafia. But what a Mob chick was doing in the field was a mystery. The Godfather wasn't an equal-opportunity employer.
Still, Renee was going to throw something at her. She grabbed a bottle and turned on the voice, only to have her weapon shot out of her hand. By a crossbow.
A cape. Wonderful. Purplish bodysuit, crucifix, literally a cape… Jesus. Not even a Bat. One of the Bat groupies.
"You are wearing way too much clothes to have been invited here."
The woman—Huntswoman, Huntress, Cunning Hunt—reloaded her crossbow with no regret. "You wouldn't answer your phone. You gonna offer me a drink? You've got enough."
"Touch my beer and I'll kill you."
Huntress picked up a bottle at the end of her arrow. "Heineken. Maybe you could just piss in my mouth and call it even." She tossed it in the recycle bin. "My team has a vacancy. We've got this 'no dudes' rule and Onyx is busy. Job's yours if you want it."
Renee got up, letting the sheets fall off her naked body. Huntress looked unimpressed. Damn. She had fun-looking fingers. "You want me to be a superhero? I don't have the tits for one of those outfits."
"Dress code is casual. One of us just has a miniskirt. I'm sure we could accept jeans and a Xena shirt."
Renee wandered into the bathroom. Time for her biannual shower. "I'll pass. I've already got an exciting career as a wino lined up."
Huntress followed her in, sitting on the sink. "Thought you'd say that. Honestly, I don't need a sidekick. But my boss would still like a word."
She took out an annoyingly high-tech phone and set it on speaker. A moment later, a voice (digitalized, gender hidden, cadence was Gotham native) addressed Renee. "Jim Corrigan. I can give him to you. Legally."
It hit Renee harder than expected, the hate. She turned the water on hot enough to scald. "If you could, you'd get him whether or not I signed on."
"I have big fish to fry. I can take this smallfry and empty his bank account, put him on a sex offender registry, and make him the IRS's bitch. But I don't like footprints. If you want me to leave one, make it worth my while."
Renee pushed her head against the cool tile. A moment later, she turned off the water. Almost instantly, she was shivering. Corrigan. God, Crispus. "So what's your while worth?"
"You work for me. On call 24/7."
Huntress smirked. "No time off for good behavior."
"You're in AA, starting now. Training too. You keep working for me until the woman you're replacing is back. You'll be paid well and compensated for expenses, but you'll be shot at. A lot."
Renee pushed the shower curtain aside to look from Huntress to the phone. "I want him to suffer."
Huntress tucked the phone away. "I can just tell you'll be the class clown."
***
AA wasn't a problem. She'd never really had an addictive personality; there was just nothing better to do than drink when her world was turning to shit. With a way to fight back, alcohol interested her only slightly more than dick. The most trouble she had was putting up with the whiners at the meetings.
Getting back in shape, learning to knock a guy out with her pinkie, that was more her speed. Oracle (yes, really) had her spend every waking moment with a different mentor, learning everything from bare-knuckle boxing (Wildcat) to Taekwondo (Richard Dragon). Renee would've preferred to just shoot people who gave her trouble, but big daddy bats wouldn't approve. Even if he had skipped town.
After weeks of that, Renee was starting to think she would never stop training. Then it was all-hands-on-deck time. Oracle had finally found a hole in Intergang's security and discovered the location of a 'revival meeting'. The whole team was going to hit, hard and fast.
Huntress Renee had met, Zinda was new. She favored guns as well, but two at once like Chow Yun-Fat. Renee was still all about police training.
The mission was simple. Bust up the service. Catch the preacher.
"Ready to have your cherry popped?" Huntress teased.
"Hell no, I'm not nearly drunk enough."
Zinda laughed. "I like her!"
It was just like a SWAT raid. Only SWAT never dropped a shipping container through someone's roof. Benefits of having a helicopter pilot on the team.
They ziplined in through the new skylight, firing over the heads of the crowd. The warehouse had been transformed thoroughly into a temple—it would've been very atmospheric except for the sunlight flooding in now. Hundreds of recruits were running for it by the time Huntress and Renee landed. They went hand-to-hand, knocking around cultists, while Zinda fired concussive bombs through the windows. Sometimes you just had to show the scags who's boss.
Huntress wiped out three men with her staff. "Looks like someone's deserting the flock."
The preacher was fighting his way through the stampede, six bodyguards clearing a path.
"We'll never get there in time!" Renee cursed.
Huntress just shot her grapple-gun and ascended to the rafters. Renee kneecapped a pair, followed suit.
"Ever swing down from sixty feet up to kick somebody's face?" Huntress jibed.
"It's only fifty-feet," Oracle said in her ear. Oracle had been laying off the vocalizer lately. Renee could make out that it was a woman's voice.
They dropped, swung, Renee's gut vacationed in her ears. She coiled her legs before landing and kicked out, catching a bodyguard and knocking him into another. Huntress tackled one to the ground and came up firing a bolt into the preacher. His remaining guards dragged him along as he screamed in pain.
Renee kicked the guy Huntress was wrestling with, then triggered her earpiece. "Zinda, northeast exit?"
When the bodyguards threw the door open, they let in a wind full of newspapers and trash. The helicopter was hovering right outside.
"Y'all can leave and we take him or we can shoot you and—" Zinda didn't finish her threat before they opened fire. Cop-killer bullets sparked against her ship, fussing the paint. And while Zinda cursed, Huntress and Renee came up behind the bodyguards and took them out. Renee grabbed the preacher and faceplanted him against the chopper to put the cuffs on. Then she pulled him away, a strand of blood connecting his nose to the hull for a moment, and tossed him inside. Mission accomplished.
Intergang had something of a defense mounted by the time Renee and Huntress had clambered into the chopper. Some bloodied henchmen and a few true believers came roaring out, firing their pistols and AK-47s from God knew where. "Canary, use your—" Helena started, then stopped. "Fuck."
Zinda flipped a switch and a concealed holographic projector shot a bat-figure up to the rooftops, while a speaker roared "I am vengeance! I am the night!"
They took off while Intergang scattered like roaches with the lights on.
"I hate using that thing," Helena groused.
"I love it," Zinda enthused. "Like playing rap music at a Klan rally."
Then the preacher broke loose, his handcuffs unlocked, hanging from one hand. A knife was in the other. He was coming at Helena and Renee didn't think, she moved. She got close enough to the preacher to smell the boiling sweat coming off him as he stabbed her, and she held the knife in with both hands so he couldn't hurt anyone else.
The last thing she saw was Zinda shooting him just as Helena did.
***
The next thing she saw was a hospital room. It wasn't the sterile, off-putting white she had come to expect on a cop's salary. No, there was a floral motif. It was actually kind of pretty.
She must've been on painkillers. Her sponsor would love that.
"You're awake." The voice is familiar. The wheelchair isn't, tires whistling as she drew closer to Renee. "Thirsty, right?"
Renee tried to wiggle toes. "Oh, shit, is this a support group thing?"
"Not unless your spine is in your stomach. Painkillers make everything numb. A few days on a liquid diet, you'll be fine."
Now Renee recognized her. The red hair, the cute glasses—maybe it was because she'd been hung up on Kate Kane since the Bush Administration, but she recognized Barbara Gordon.
"Miss Gordon, what are you doing here? I'm not on the force anymore."
"Drink," Barbara insisted, pouring a glass for Renee. She thrust it in her face. Renee took it and drained it. She'd been parched. "You're the detective, Renee. Why am I here?"
Renee set the glass down with a thud. "No nurses, no doctors, and this technology is way too sci-fi for Gotham. So I must be in some kind of superhero hospital, which means you must be in on it. You're a Bird."
Barbara adjusted her glasses. "Oracle is always watching."
"Holy shit." Barbara was Oracle. Commission Gordon's daughter was Oracle. "Holy shit."
"More water?" Barbara was already pouring another glass.
Renee took it, for lack of anything better to do. "I always thought you were more… 'pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.'"
Barbara took off her glasses, bending an earpiece back and forth. She couldn't walk, Renee knew, ever. Couldn't run or kick or tap her foot. So all she let out was playing with her glasses. "I'm trying to be more trusting. Besides, you've earned a face to face."
"I got stabbed on my first mission."
"I wore high heels on my first mission. Yellow ones. Deal." Barbara closed her glasses and held them in her lap. "Why'd you do it?"
"You don't let your partner take a hit. Ever."
Barbara just looked at Renee. Renee wished she knew how well Gordon could see without her glasses.
As long as they were in the same room, Barbara couldn't control the conversation, shut her down. It was too much for Renee to resist. "Would you really have let Corrigan go?"
"Of course not. But I needed something to snap you out of it. So I hit two birds with one stone."
Renee was tired of lying down. She pulled herself up against the headboard, feeling the first twinge of pain as her blanket slipped down. There was a mass of bandages on her stomach. Maybe she and Helena could compare scars. "So why me?"
"You needed it. And you deserve it." Barbara reached out to meticulously straighten Renee's covers, hiding her bare feet. "You know Gotham, you're tough, you have contacts in the department, the list goes on. But it boils down to you. I suppose when you've been a broken bird, you develop a soft spot for them."
"Very Lifetime."
"If I'd known I was getting Helena 2.0, I would've asked if any of the Titan girls look good in black."
"So this really is a no-boys-allowed club?"
Barbara put her glasses back on with a shrug. "It simplifies things. If you had any idea how many daddy issues I have to deal with in the JLA alone—"
"So you take a bunch of pretty, athletic women and train them to do your every command? That's kinda gay."
Barbara laughed. It didn't sound like her usual voice. "Now you sound like Dinah."
"Who's she? My predecessor? What happened to her?"
"Long story. You need your rest and I need to get back to Delphi. Rain check."
***
Renee healed fast, owing to some very privatized healthcare. When she was back on her feet, Barbara had a new costume ready for her. It was black with red accents, and no sleeves, making it technically a tanktop. Very butch. Doing nothing to quell the rumors Renee had heard about the Commish's daughter.
"It's knife-proof," Barbara said. "Spider silk. In ten years, everybody will be wearing one, as long as they're likely to be stabbed."
Renee held it over herself. Skintight. Good thing she'd been eating hospital food. "So does it come with a codename, or do I have to wait for some newspaper to call me the Crimson Bouncer?"
"I was thinking Raptor. I've always wanted this team to have a bird theme, but Huntress won't change her name."
***
They never did get that rain check. Arkham had another break-out, Intergang tried to blow up a synagogue, Harvey Dent became Two-Face again. Renee took to seeing her name in the paper as Raptor. She moved to a better apartment, she bought new clothes. She kept her earpiece in at all times, just like Barbara said to do but Helena never did. She lived for that voice in her head, promising her society's justice without any of the system's bullshit.
It probably would've kept going that way for a long time—Renee at arm's length, Barbara further away—if it weren't for Vic.
Renee was catching a shower at the Clocktower. She didn't hang out there like the old guard did, but she wanted Killer Croc's drool off her as soon as possible. She came out of the bathroom in the sweatpants and cotton tanktop Oracle provided in all sizes (not quelling anything) to find Helena with her mask off, talking across the kitchen table with a guy.
They were drinking tea. Renee wouldn't have figured Helena for anything decaf.
The guy was handsome enough. Not up to Helena's usual standards, but it wasn't like Renee was the best judge of that. He wore a blue suit of Mad Men cut, the coat on his chair and a crooked fedora on his head.
Helena looked at Renee with some actual good nature in her eyes. Good god, she'd gotten laid. "Oh, hey Renee. This is… Vic."
Vic offered his hand. "I'm in the business."
"I figured." Renee shook his hand. He had a good, firm handshake. Her father would've loved him. "Have we met before?"
He looked harder at her, trying to place her face, and he actually looked a little cuter with his brow furrowed in thought. Maybe that was what Helena saw in him. "I don't think so. There is a trace of déjà vu. Perhaps in another life, you walked over my grave. Or I just have one of those faces."
"Uh-huh. So what's the occasion, Hel? You know Barbara isn't going to like you getting boy-cooties all over HQ."
"We're celebrating."
Vic raised his teacup. "Four months cancer-free."
"Wow. Congratulations." Renee looked at the kitchen table. There was some newspapers and a batch of muffins. "Low-key party."
"I believe the most joyous celebration is in taking account of one's life and appreciating the journey you've been on."
"Uh-huh. Party on, Vic."
"Have a good journey," he replied.
For some reason, the meeting shook Renee. There was a touch of something there, maybe it was just seeing Huntress, Helena Bertinelli of all people, with someone to share a quiet moment with. Renee didn't have that, not anymore. She liked the others, but she couldn't imagine splitting a cup of coffee with any of them, shooting the shit about anything that wasn't business. Barbara struck her as the same way, someone who kept things so compartmentalized that maybe the work compartment was too big for anything to fit elsewhere.
Maybe that was why she found herself up in Delphi.
Barbara might've been pretty sane, all things considered, but she was still a Bat, and they loved their melodrama. The nerve center of superheroics was located behind the clockface of a Gotham high-rise, the gears clicking away with the same German efficiency as the computers and coolant pumps. In fact, they were the only sound. It was a little soothing, Renee supposed, if you could get used to it.
She'd also always thought that Barbara was working hard when she was up there, keeping up the never-ending fight, but there she was, in front of the clockface, looking out at the city as the minute-hand lowered its shadow over her. Brooding. Renee couldn't judge her for that. She'd lost more than Renee had ever had, and still she'd found it in her to help Renee. How ungrateful Renee must've seemed to her. How… childish.
"Hi there," Renee said.
"Renee." Barbara turned. In the clock's shadow, her glasses still managed to catch the light, little pin-prick reflections like signal flares. "Good work today."
"Tell that to the laundry service. They're the ones who have to get the smell out of my costume." Renee didn't keep her distance. She went to Barbara, looking out at the city with her.
In the day, you could see Gotham's decay, pollution, ravages. In the night, it was a fearsome beast, teeth of skyscrapers and claws of alleyways. But at sunset, the dim light wiped out the bad and illuminated the good, shining off glass like it was polishing the city.
Gotham was a hellhole, but it was their hellhole.
Renee put her hand on Barbara's wheelchair. Barbara didn't acknowledge it. "You know, no matter how drunk I got, when I heard a siren, I reached for my shield and my gun. It wasn't that I missed the action, the supervillains and the lead in the air—I'm not that crazy. It's that I missed being part of something bigger. It made me feel complete."
"I see what you did there, with the parallel." Barbara tapped the side of her head. Her fingernail scratched the earpiece of her glasses. "Very clever."
"This thing we're part of? You're so much more of it now than you ever were as Batgirl."
"I know that. Intellectually. And I'm all intellect these days, that should make a difference. But my heart's stubborn." Barbara looked at Renee, maybe for the first time. She hadn't been crying. "Do you miss being a cop?"
"I still help people. I still hurt bad guys."
"Do you miss it?"
"Parts of it." If Renee closed her eyes, she could've seen crisp uniforms, proud parents, shiny badges. She didn't close her eyes. "But there are things here I would miss… even if I'd never had them. Is that a parallel?"
Barbara smiled. She did that often enough, when Helena joked, when Zinda said something corny in 1940s slang. But the smile she wore when they were alone was smaller. It fit her face better. "I'll tell you about Dinah. Then you can tell me."
***
"I let her go," was the last thing Barbara said. It took an hour, probably more than that but Renee wasn't counting. Barbara started slowly at first, distracting herself constantly. Offering Renee lunch, cleaning her way around the kitchen. Renee rode it out, prodding gently.
Barbara gave her the biography first, Dinah Lance, Black Canary, birthday, eye color, hair color when it wasn’t dyed. She couldn't keep all the fondness out of her voice, the anger when she talked about how Dinah had been hurt, broken. Her pride when Dinah put herself back together. Her joy when they worked together.
The words came faster and faster, like Barbara was lost in them and trying to escape. She'd thought they were close, the Black Canary and Oracle. They talked about everything. They did everything. They had sex. It wasn't enough. It wasn't that Barbara kept insisting the tall blonde that accompanied her everything was just a friend. It was that, in the pit of her heart, Barbara thought of Dinah that way. A friend, a good friend, but in the end, a partner. Someone she worked with.
Lady Shiva didn't need people like Dinah did. She didn't look at couples who could hold hands with envy, or cringe when she heard someone say "I love you" but never to her. She didn't cry alone, her supposed lover watching it on her monitor, able to see it in the highest resolution and listen with crystal clarity, but not go down one floor and wipe her tears away.
Dinah had said it was about softening Shiva, helping her. Helena and Zinda were fooled. Barbara wasn't. Not about that. She fooled herself into thinking Dinah wouldn't go through with it.
And there, Barbara's words slowed down, like emphysemic breaths. She talked like she was bored of the words. Like she'd already been over them a thousand times in her perfect memory.
"I told myself I didn't need her. I had Helena. I had Zinda. I could have anyone the mission needed there with one phone call. Except her. I call her and she doesn't pick up."
"Do you call her?" Renee asked at last. "Or do you just tell yourself that?"
"You underestimate my patheticalness," Barbara said with her small, unmeant smile. "I've called her, e-mailed her, hired people to find her. She's off the grid. I don't even know if she's alive." Now Barbara looked at Renee again. Each time she did, it was like she caught something, found another facet of Renee to file away. "How's that parallel? Do you know if Daria's alive?"
"I know she moved to Metropolis. Gay marriage is legal there. Not that she's asked Maureen Holiday, or Maureen has asked her." Renee shrugged. "You really should put a password on your Big Brother laptop."
"Honor system," Barbara said. "You could've called her at any time. Told her you were sober."
"Yeah." Renee sat down across from Barbara. The better not to give into her urge to go around straightening shit. They were really too much alike. "You know what I love about Daria? She'd forgive me. But she wouldn't forget, she's too smart for that. And Daria should wake up looking at someone who doesn't remind her of all the shit I put her through."
"You gave up on her," Barbara said. It wasn't an accusation. You had to be a little righteous to do that.
"I let her go," Renee said. "Giving up on someone means you stop loving them." Her smile was as small as Barbara's, an ember in a dark room.
Sometimes, there was nothing left to say. You let the words empty into the air and drain into the mind, because to talk more would be gluttonous. Of late, Renee had been convinced that 'nothing left to say' was the default for conversations that exceeded three exchanges. But this, this companionable silence that descended when a conversation had passed out of the realm of questions and answers, it showed her she was wrong.
Even though Barbara wasn't looking at her, Renee stayed by her. She wanted to be there in case Barbara was incomplete.
***
Six months was a long time. Long enough to infiltrate Luthor's Everyman Project, to help Helena and Vic when they got in over their heads tracking Intergang to Khandaq, to expose Booster Gold's illicit profiteering.
But not long enough to give up.
"She's not coming back, Babs." Renee said it on one of those quiet before the storm days, when they'd just come out of a maelstrom and they had a moment to breathe before the next one.
Zinda was either in the middle of a bottle or at the bottom of one. Renee envied the pilot a little. She'd never gotten the hang of being a fun drunk. Helena was off expanding her mind with Vic (or expanding something else). That left Barbara and Renee in the Clocktower.
Renee guessed that made them the equivalent of Helena and Zinda, drinking buddies without the drinking. Renee got along alright with Helena—Zinda annoyed her a little—but Barbara was the only one she felt a connection with. Maybe it was a cop thing. Zinda saw her job as a game, Helena as a war, but Barbara saw it as a sacrifice. Renee had come to feel the same way.
Maybe that was why she said it. After an hour of suffering in silence, watching Barbara bleed more of her youth and beauty for her father's cause, her mentor's cause, Renee could no more stand by than she could let someone get mugged in front of her.
"She's not."
These days, Barbara met her eyes readily, almost aggressively. "I know that. In my head. But I warned you my heart was stubborn. I still do this, don't I?"
Renee could look into Barbara's eyes, those sickly green pools of melancholy, and stare fire into them all day. "You're going to die alone just to spite Dinah? She wears fishnets, for God's sake!"
When Barbara's eyes returned to Renee, they'd broken out of their glass prison. "You didn't know her. She was perfect."
Renee threw her hands up in the air, barely putting the brakes on a stream of Spanish. Profanity flowed so much smoother in Espanol. "Daria was perfect. Kate was perfect. Everyone's perfect when you're in love with them. Or when you lose them."
Barbara's smile had shrunk since Renee'd met her. It barely moved her mouth as she took off her glasses and cleaned them as thoroughly as a dentist polishing teeth. "I'm not speaking of nostalgia. Trust me, I'm well aware of Dinah's shortcomings. But she was perfect for me. I don't have the most winning personality, but she balanced me. The only time I feel crippled is without her." Barbara turned back to her work, a bottomless pit of wrongs to right where she could be buried forever.
Renee grabbed Barbara's face, as tightly as a choke. Her skin was cool as stone. It was like it had grown cold without human touch to warm it. "So change. Let someone else be perfect for you. Find a new balance."
"Be someone else," Barbara retorted. "And who would you have me be?"
"Yourself." Barbara rolled her eyes. Renee let go of her and bowed down, forcing herself in Barbara's face so the other woman couldn't look away. The only thing between them was glass. "You're a good person. I don't say that about a lot of people I meet. With you, it's an understatement. You deserve to be happy more than anyone else I know. I just wish I could make you happy… I'd do anything to make you happy…"
Barbara's only motion was to take off her glasses. "If I'm so great, what do you want me to change?"
Renee's fingers traced the softness of Barbara's face, her hair, without hard-edged spectacles to block them. "You're so strong, but you don't have to be, not all the time. The world won't end if you let someone else be strong for you. Or if you do something just to be happy, even if it's just for a moment."
There was a note of hope in Barbara's voice. "That sounds like a proposition."
"That sounds like you accept." Renee pulled Barbara's lips to hers, and for all her strength, Barbara couldn't resist at all.
***
Over the next few hours, they did a lot and said little. Barbara went to sleep with a smile on her face. Small, unassuming, but it lasted. Renee laid awake, her eyes tracing Barbara's bedroom. It seemed odd that she'd never seen the room in all her months on the Birds, but then, it did seem to have more of Barbara's personality in it than the rest of the Clocktower. There were books strewn everywhere—even some stuffed animals. On the bedstand, Barbara's glasses stood watch.
Neither of them were the cuddling type. Barbara wrapped in on herself like the world was still out to hurt her. But she wasn't wound so tightly that Renee couldn’t reach out and take her hand. Barbara responded to the warmth, squeezing Renee's hand tight enough to make her fingers tingle.
Renee just laid against the pillow and stared at Barbara. It wasn't that Barbara looked different in her sleep, it was just that Renee finally had time to really look at her. Every curve of her face, every strand of her hair, and lower. Her body was more than arousing, it was a testament to what Barbara had survived, scarred and beautiful and vibrant. Barbara had pulled herself up from deeper than Renee had ever been, and still stooped to pick Renee up as well. No one had ever done that for her. No one had made her feel so loved.
"Hey," Renee said gently, the words not even creasing Barbara's brow. "I wish I could tell you this when you were awake. Thank you. Thank you so much. Those things I said? I wasn't trying to make you feel better. I meant every word. And I know you'd never believe that, but that's why I'll stay. Because you need someone who believes in you as much as you believe in everyone else."
With that, Renee got up. Barbara barely struggled before releasing her hand. In the dark and the quiet, Renee dressed before going back to her own room. Barbara wouldn't like people knowing she had a sex drive, wouldn't like waking up with someone else in her bed. It'd be too close, too uncontrollable. But Renee would be there, at the breakfast table, at the mission briefing, the next time Barbara was alone at night.
The most important thing Barbara had given her hadn't been revenge. It was a purpose. She didn't need anything else.
Author:
seriousficRecipient:
mazilyFandom: Birds of Prey
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,982
Notes: This story takes place during the "missing year" depicted in 52, but departs from canon because canon killed Big Barda, c'mon! Betaed by
axolotl_lan.Characters/Pairings: Renee/Barbara, Helena Bertinelli, Vic Sage
Summary: Renee's partner is dead. Her girlfriend's left her. Maybe a new job can turn things around.
Renee hated being bothered while she was drunk. The only time she wasn't drunk was when she was hungover, and the best cure for that was getting drunk. And she was fine with all of Gotham leaving her alone. Her apartment was clean, though. She'd pawned the junk to go toward her tab, and the place was paid up from back when she'd been a cop. So she was set from now until her liver self-destructed.
"A hard-drinking ex-cop with angst? When does the Philip Marlowe narration start?"
The detective in Renee must've still been rattling around, because she immediately pegged the voice. Female, early thirties, Italian accent light enough to have been educated at, so probably Mafia. But what a Mob chick was doing in the field was a mystery. The Godfather wasn't an equal-opportunity employer.
Still, Renee was going to throw something at her. She grabbed a bottle and turned on the voice, only to have her weapon shot out of her hand. By a crossbow.
A cape. Wonderful. Purplish bodysuit, crucifix, literally a cape… Jesus. Not even a Bat. One of the Bat groupies.
"You are wearing way too much clothes to have been invited here."
The woman—Huntswoman, Huntress, Cunning Hunt—reloaded her crossbow with no regret. "You wouldn't answer your phone. You gonna offer me a drink? You've got enough."
"Touch my beer and I'll kill you."
Huntress picked up a bottle at the end of her arrow. "Heineken. Maybe you could just piss in my mouth and call it even." She tossed it in the recycle bin. "My team has a vacancy. We've got this 'no dudes' rule and Onyx is busy. Job's yours if you want it."
Renee got up, letting the sheets fall off her naked body. Huntress looked unimpressed. Damn. She had fun-looking fingers. "You want me to be a superhero? I don't have the tits for one of those outfits."
"Dress code is casual. One of us just has a miniskirt. I'm sure we could accept jeans and a Xena shirt."
Renee wandered into the bathroom. Time for her biannual shower. "I'll pass. I've already got an exciting career as a wino lined up."
Huntress followed her in, sitting on the sink. "Thought you'd say that. Honestly, I don't need a sidekick. But my boss would still like a word."
She took out an annoyingly high-tech phone and set it on speaker. A moment later, a voice (digitalized, gender hidden, cadence was Gotham native) addressed Renee. "Jim Corrigan. I can give him to you. Legally."
It hit Renee harder than expected, the hate. She turned the water on hot enough to scald. "If you could, you'd get him whether or not I signed on."
"I have big fish to fry. I can take this smallfry and empty his bank account, put him on a sex offender registry, and make him the IRS's bitch. But I don't like footprints. If you want me to leave one, make it worth my while."
Renee pushed her head against the cool tile. A moment later, she turned off the water. Almost instantly, she was shivering. Corrigan. God, Crispus. "So what's your while worth?"
"You work for me. On call 24/7."
Huntress smirked. "No time off for good behavior."
"You're in AA, starting now. Training too. You keep working for me until the woman you're replacing is back. You'll be paid well and compensated for expenses, but you'll be shot at. A lot."
Renee pushed the shower curtain aside to look from Huntress to the phone. "I want him to suffer."
Huntress tucked the phone away. "I can just tell you'll be the class clown."
***
AA wasn't a problem. She'd never really had an addictive personality; there was just nothing better to do than drink when her world was turning to shit. With a way to fight back, alcohol interested her only slightly more than dick. The most trouble she had was putting up with the whiners at the meetings.
Getting back in shape, learning to knock a guy out with her pinkie, that was more her speed. Oracle (yes, really) had her spend every waking moment with a different mentor, learning everything from bare-knuckle boxing (Wildcat) to Taekwondo (Richard Dragon). Renee would've preferred to just shoot people who gave her trouble, but big daddy bats wouldn't approve. Even if he had skipped town.
After weeks of that, Renee was starting to think she would never stop training. Then it was all-hands-on-deck time. Oracle had finally found a hole in Intergang's security and discovered the location of a 'revival meeting'. The whole team was going to hit, hard and fast.
Huntress Renee had met, Zinda was new. She favored guns as well, but two at once like Chow Yun-Fat. Renee was still all about police training.
The mission was simple. Bust up the service. Catch the preacher.
"Ready to have your cherry popped?" Huntress teased.
"Hell no, I'm not nearly drunk enough."
Zinda laughed. "I like her!"
It was just like a SWAT raid. Only SWAT never dropped a shipping container through someone's roof. Benefits of having a helicopter pilot on the team.
They ziplined in through the new skylight, firing over the heads of the crowd. The warehouse had been transformed thoroughly into a temple—it would've been very atmospheric except for the sunlight flooding in now. Hundreds of recruits were running for it by the time Huntress and Renee landed. They went hand-to-hand, knocking around cultists, while Zinda fired concussive bombs through the windows. Sometimes you just had to show the scags who's boss.
Huntress wiped out three men with her staff. "Looks like someone's deserting the flock."
The preacher was fighting his way through the stampede, six bodyguards clearing a path.
"We'll never get there in time!" Renee cursed.
Huntress just shot her grapple-gun and ascended to the rafters. Renee kneecapped a pair, followed suit.
"Ever swing down from sixty feet up to kick somebody's face?" Huntress jibed.
"It's only fifty-feet," Oracle said in her ear. Oracle had been laying off the vocalizer lately. Renee could make out that it was a woman's voice.
They dropped, swung, Renee's gut vacationed in her ears. She coiled her legs before landing and kicked out, catching a bodyguard and knocking him into another. Huntress tackled one to the ground and came up firing a bolt into the preacher. His remaining guards dragged him along as he screamed in pain.
Renee kicked the guy Huntress was wrestling with, then triggered her earpiece. "Zinda, northeast exit?"
When the bodyguards threw the door open, they let in a wind full of newspapers and trash. The helicopter was hovering right outside.
"Y'all can leave and we take him or we can shoot you and—" Zinda didn't finish her threat before they opened fire. Cop-killer bullets sparked against her ship, fussing the paint. And while Zinda cursed, Huntress and Renee came up behind the bodyguards and took them out. Renee grabbed the preacher and faceplanted him against the chopper to put the cuffs on. Then she pulled him away, a strand of blood connecting his nose to the hull for a moment, and tossed him inside. Mission accomplished.
Intergang had something of a defense mounted by the time Renee and Huntress had clambered into the chopper. Some bloodied henchmen and a few true believers came roaring out, firing their pistols and AK-47s from God knew where. "Canary, use your—" Helena started, then stopped. "Fuck."
Zinda flipped a switch and a concealed holographic projector shot a bat-figure up to the rooftops, while a speaker roared "I am vengeance! I am the night!"
They took off while Intergang scattered like roaches with the lights on.
"I hate using that thing," Helena groused.
"I love it," Zinda enthused. "Like playing rap music at a Klan rally."
Then the preacher broke loose, his handcuffs unlocked, hanging from one hand. A knife was in the other. He was coming at Helena and Renee didn't think, she moved. She got close enough to the preacher to smell the boiling sweat coming off him as he stabbed her, and she held the knife in with both hands so he couldn't hurt anyone else.
The last thing she saw was Zinda shooting him just as Helena did.
***
The next thing she saw was a hospital room. It wasn't the sterile, off-putting white she had come to expect on a cop's salary. No, there was a floral motif. It was actually kind of pretty.
She must've been on painkillers. Her sponsor would love that.
"You're awake." The voice is familiar. The wheelchair isn't, tires whistling as she drew closer to Renee. "Thirsty, right?"
Renee tried to wiggle toes. "Oh, shit, is this a support group thing?"
"Not unless your spine is in your stomach. Painkillers make everything numb. A few days on a liquid diet, you'll be fine."
Now Renee recognized her. The red hair, the cute glasses—maybe it was because she'd been hung up on Kate Kane since the Bush Administration, but she recognized Barbara Gordon.
"Miss Gordon, what are you doing here? I'm not on the force anymore."
"Drink," Barbara insisted, pouring a glass for Renee. She thrust it in her face. Renee took it and drained it. She'd been parched. "You're the detective, Renee. Why am I here?"
Renee set the glass down with a thud. "No nurses, no doctors, and this technology is way too sci-fi for Gotham. So I must be in some kind of superhero hospital, which means you must be in on it. You're a Bird."
Barbara adjusted her glasses. "Oracle is always watching."
"Holy shit." Barbara was Oracle. Commission Gordon's daughter was Oracle. "Holy shit."
"More water?" Barbara was already pouring another glass.
Renee took it, for lack of anything better to do. "I always thought you were more… 'pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.'"
Barbara took off her glasses, bending an earpiece back and forth. She couldn't walk, Renee knew, ever. Couldn't run or kick or tap her foot. So all she let out was playing with her glasses. "I'm trying to be more trusting. Besides, you've earned a face to face."
"I got stabbed on my first mission."
"I wore high heels on my first mission. Yellow ones. Deal." Barbara closed her glasses and held them in her lap. "Why'd you do it?"
"You don't let your partner take a hit. Ever."
Barbara just looked at Renee. Renee wished she knew how well Gordon could see without her glasses.
As long as they were in the same room, Barbara couldn't control the conversation, shut her down. It was too much for Renee to resist. "Would you really have let Corrigan go?"
"Of course not. But I needed something to snap you out of it. So I hit two birds with one stone."
Renee was tired of lying down. She pulled herself up against the headboard, feeling the first twinge of pain as her blanket slipped down. There was a mass of bandages on her stomach. Maybe she and Helena could compare scars. "So why me?"
"You needed it. And you deserve it." Barbara reached out to meticulously straighten Renee's covers, hiding her bare feet. "You know Gotham, you're tough, you have contacts in the department, the list goes on. But it boils down to you. I suppose when you've been a broken bird, you develop a soft spot for them."
"Very Lifetime."
"If I'd known I was getting Helena 2.0, I would've asked if any of the Titan girls look good in black."
"So this really is a no-boys-allowed club?"
Barbara put her glasses back on with a shrug. "It simplifies things. If you had any idea how many daddy issues I have to deal with in the JLA alone—"
"So you take a bunch of pretty, athletic women and train them to do your every command? That's kinda gay."
Barbara laughed. It didn't sound like her usual voice. "Now you sound like Dinah."
"Who's she? My predecessor? What happened to her?"
"Long story. You need your rest and I need to get back to Delphi. Rain check."
***
Renee healed fast, owing to some very privatized healthcare. When she was back on her feet, Barbara had a new costume ready for her. It was black with red accents, and no sleeves, making it technically a tanktop. Very butch. Doing nothing to quell the rumors Renee had heard about the Commish's daughter.
"It's knife-proof," Barbara said. "Spider silk. In ten years, everybody will be wearing one, as long as they're likely to be stabbed."
Renee held it over herself. Skintight. Good thing she'd been eating hospital food. "So does it come with a codename, or do I have to wait for some newspaper to call me the Crimson Bouncer?"
"I was thinking Raptor. I've always wanted this team to have a bird theme, but Huntress won't change her name."
***
They never did get that rain check. Arkham had another break-out, Intergang tried to blow up a synagogue, Harvey Dent became Two-Face again. Renee took to seeing her name in the paper as Raptor. She moved to a better apartment, she bought new clothes. She kept her earpiece in at all times, just like Barbara said to do but Helena never did. She lived for that voice in her head, promising her society's justice without any of the system's bullshit.
It probably would've kept going that way for a long time—Renee at arm's length, Barbara further away—if it weren't for Vic.
Renee was catching a shower at the Clocktower. She didn't hang out there like the old guard did, but she wanted Killer Croc's drool off her as soon as possible. She came out of the bathroom in the sweatpants and cotton tanktop Oracle provided in all sizes (not quelling anything) to find Helena with her mask off, talking across the kitchen table with a guy.
They were drinking tea. Renee wouldn't have figured Helena for anything decaf.
The guy was handsome enough. Not up to Helena's usual standards, but it wasn't like Renee was the best judge of that. He wore a blue suit of Mad Men cut, the coat on his chair and a crooked fedora on his head.
Helena looked at Renee with some actual good nature in her eyes. Good god, she'd gotten laid. "Oh, hey Renee. This is… Vic."
Vic offered his hand. "I'm in the business."
"I figured." Renee shook his hand. He had a good, firm handshake. Her father would've loved him. "Have we met before?"
He looked harder at her, trying to place her face, and he actually looked a little cuter with his brow furrowed in thought. Maybe that was what Helena saw in him. "I don't think so. There is a trace of déjà vu. Perhaps in another life, you walked over my grave. Or I just have one of those faces."
"Uh-huh. So what's the occasion, Hel? You know Barbara isn't going to like you getting boy-cooties all over HQ."
"We're celebrating."
Vic raised his teacup. "Four months cancer-free."
"Wow. Congratulations." Renee looked at the kitchen table. There was some newspapers and a batch of muffins. "Low-key party."
"I believe the most joyous celebration is in taking account of one's life and appreciating the journey you've been on."
"Uh-huh. Party on, Vic."
"Have a good journey," he replied.
For some reason, the meeting shook Renee. There was a touch of something there, maybe it was just seeing Huntress, Helena Bertinelli of all people, with someone to share a quiet moment with. Renee didn't have that, not anymore. She liked the others, but she couldn't imagine splitting a cup of coffee with any of them, shooting the shit about anything that wasn't business. Barbara struck her as the same way, someone who kept things so compartmentalized that maybe the work compartment was too big for anything to fit elsewhere.
Maybe that was why she found herself up in Delphi.
Barbara might've been pretty sane, all things considered, but she was still a Bat, and they loved their melodrama. The nerve center of superheroics was located behind the clockface of a Gotham high-rise, the gears clicking away with the same German efficiency as the computers and coolant pumps. In fact, they were the only sound. It was a little soothing, Renee supposed, if you could get used to it.
She'd also always thought that Barbara was working hard when she was up there, keeping up the never-ending fight, but there she was, in front of the clockface, looking out at the city as the minute-hand lowered its shadow over her. Brooding. Renee couldn't judge her for that. She'd lost more than Renee had ever had, and still she'd found it in her to help Renee. How ungrateful Renee must've seemed to her. How… childish.
"Hi there," Renee said.
"Renee." Barbara turned. In the clock's shadow, her glasses still managed to catch the light, little pin-prick reflections like signal flares. "Good work today."
"Tell that to the laundry service. They're the ones who have to get the smell out of my costume." Renee didn't keep her distance. She went to Barbara, looking out at the city with her.
In the day, you could see Gotham's decay, pollution, ravages. In the night, it was a fearsome beast, teeth of skyscrapers and claws of alleyways. But at sunset, the dim light wiped out the bad and illuminated the good, shining off glass like it was polishing the city.
Gotham was a hellhole, but it was their hellhole.
Renee put her hand on Barbara's wheelchair. Barbara didn't acknowledge it. "You know, no matter how drunk I got, when I heard a siren, I reached for my shield and my gun. It wasn't that I missed the action, the supervillains and the lead in the air—I'm not that crazy. It's that I missed being part of something bigger. It made me feel complete."
"I see what you did there, with the parallel." Barbara tapped the side of her head. Her fingernail scratched the earpiece of her glasses. "Very clever."
"This thing we're part of? You're so much more of it now than you ever were as Batgirl."
"I know that. Intellectually. And I'm all intellect these days, that should make a difference. But my heart's stubborn." Barbara looked at Renee, maybe for the first time. She hadn't been crying. "Do you miss being a cop?"
"I still help people. I still hurt bad guys."
"Do you miss it?"
"Parts of it." If Renee closed her eyes, she could've seen crisp uniforms, proud parents, shiny badges. She didn't close her eyes. "But there are things here I would miss… even if I'd never had them. Is that a parallel?"
Barbara smiled. She did that often enough, when Helena joked, when Zinda said something corny in 1940s slang. But the smile she wore when they were alone was smaller. It fit her face better. "I'll tell you about Dinah. Then you can tell me."
***
"I let her go," was the last thing Barbara said. It took an hour, probably more than that but Renee wasn't counting. Barbara started slowly at first, distracting herself constantly. Offering Renee lunch, cleaning her way around the kitchen. Renee rode it out, prodding gently.
Barbara gave her the biography first, Dinah Lance, Black Canary, birthday, eye color, hair color when it wasn’t dyed. She couldn't keep all the fondness out of her voice, the anger when she talked about how Dinah had been hurt, broken. Her pride when Dinah put herself back together. Her joy when they worked together.
The words came faster and faster, like Barbara was lost in them and trying to escape. She'd thought they were close, the Black Canary and Oracle. They talked about everything. They did everything. They had sex. It wasn't enough. It wasn't that Barbara kept insisting the tall blonde that accompanied her everything was just a friend. It was that, in the pit of her heart, Barbara thought of Dinah that way. A friend, a good friend, but in the end, a partner. Someone she worked with.
Lady Shiva didn't need people like Dinah did. She didn't look at couples who could hold hands with envy, or cringe when she heard someone say "I love you" but never to her. She didn't cry alone, her supposed lover watching it on her monitor, able to see it in the highest resolution and listen with crystal clarity, but not go down one floor and wipe her tears away.
Dinah had said it was about softening Shiva, helping her. Helena and Zinda were fooled. Barbara wasn't. Not about that. She fooled herself into thinking Dinah wouldn't go through with it.
And there, Barbara's words slowed down, like emphysemic breaths. She talked like she was bored of the words. Like she'd already been over them a thousand times in her perfect memory.
"I told myself I didn't need her. I had Helena. I had Zinda. I could have anyone the mission needed there with one phone call. Except her. I call her and she doesn't pick up."
"Do you call her?" Renee asked at last. "Or do you just tell yourself that?"
"You underestimate my patheticalness," Barbara said with her small, unmeant smile. "I've called her, e-mailed her, hired people to find her. She's off the grid. I don't even know if she's alive." Now Barbara looked at Renee again. Each time she did, it was like she caught something, found another facet of Renee to file away. "How's that parallel? Do you know if Daria's alive?"
"I know she moved to Metropolis. Gay marriage is legal there. Not that she's asked Maureen Holiday, or Maureen has asked her." Renee shrugged. "You really should put a password on your Big Brother laptop."
"Honor system," Barbara said. "You could've called her at any time. Told her you were sober."
"Yeah." Renee sat down across from Barbara. The better not to give into her urge to go around straightening shit. They were really too much alike. "You know what I love about Daria? She'd forgive me. But she wouldn't forget, she's too smart for that. And Daria should wake up looking at someone who doesn't remind her of all the shit I put her through."
"You gave up on her," Barbara said. It wasn't an accusation. You had to be a little righteous to do that.
"I let her go," Renee said. "Giving up on someone means you stop loving them." Her smile was as small as Barbara's, an ember in a dark room.
Sometimes, there was nothing left to say. You let the words empty into the air and drain into the mind, because to talk more would be gluttonous. Of late, Renee had been convinced that 'nothing left to say' was the default for conversations that exceeded three exchanges. But this, this companionable silence that descended when a conversation had passed out of the realm of questions and answers, it showed her she was wrong.
Even though Barbara wasn't looking at her, Renee stayed by her. She wanted to be there in case Barbara was incomplete.
***
Six months was a long time. Long enough to infiltrate Luthor's Everyman Project, to help Helena and Vic when they got in over their heads tracking Intergang to Khandaq, to expose Booster Gold's illicit profiteering.
But not long enough to give up.
"She's not coming back, Babs." Renee said it on one of those quiet before the storm days, when they'd just come out of a maelstrom and they had a moment to breathe before the next one.
Zinda was either in the middle of a bottle or at the bottom of one. Renee envied the pilot a little. She'd never gotten the hang of being a fun drunk. Helena was off expanding her mind with Vic (or expanding something else). That left Barbara and Renee in the Clocktower.
Renee guessed that made them the equivalent of Helena and Zinda, drinking buddies without the drinking. Renee got along alright with Helena—Zinda annoyed her a little—but Barbara was the only one she felt a connection with. Maybe it was a cop thing. Zinda saw her job as a game, Helena as a war, but Barbara saw it as a sacrifice. Renee had come to feel the same way.
Maybe that was why she said it. After an hour of suffering in silence, watching Barbara bleed more of her youth and beauty for her father's cause, her mentor's cause, Renee could no more stand by than she could let someone get mugged in front of her.
"She's not."
These days, Barbara met her eyes readily, almost aggressively. "I know that. In my head. But I warned you my heart was stubborn. I still do this, don't I?"
Renee could look into Barbara's eyes, those sickly green pools of melancholy, and stare fire into them all day. "You're going to die alone just to spite Dinah? She wears fishnets, for God's sake!"
When Barbara's eyes returned to Renee, they'd broken out of their glass prison. "You didn't know her. She was perfect."
Renee threw her hands up in the air, barely putting the brakes on a stream of Spanish. Profanity flowed so much smoother in Espanol. "Daria was perfect. Kate was perfect. Everyone's perfect when you're in love with them. Or when you lose them."
Barbara's smile had shrunk since Renee'd met her. It barely moved her mouth as she took off her glasses and cleaned them as thoroughly as a dentist polishing teeth. "I'm not speaking of nostalgia. Trust me, I'm well aware of Dinah's shortcomings. But she was perfect for me. I don't have the most winning personality, but she balanced me. The only time I feel crippled is without her." Barbara turned back to her work, a bottomless pit of wrongs to right where she could be buried forever.
Renee grabbed Barbara's face, as tightly as a choke. Her skin was cool as stone. It was like it had grown cold without human touch to warm it. "So change. Let someone else be perfect for you. Find a new balance."
"Be someone else," Barbara retorted. "And who would you have me be?"
"Yourself." Barbara rolled her eyes. Renee let go of her and bowed down, forcing herself in Barbara's face so the other woman couldn't look away. The only thing between them was glass. "You're a good person. I don't say that about a lot of people I meet. With you, it's an understatement. You deserve to be happy more than anyone else I know. I just wish I could make you happy… I'd do anything to make you happy…"
Barbara's only motion was to take off her glasses. "If I'm so great, what do you want me to change?"
Renee's fingers traced the softness of Barbara's face, her hair, without hard-edged spectacles to block them. "You're so strong, but you don't have to be, not all the time. The world won't end if you let someone else be strong for you. Or if you do something just to be happy, even if it's just for a moment."
There was a note of hope in Barbara's voice. "That sounds like a proposition."
"That sounds like you accept." Renee pulled Barbara's lips to hers, and for all her strength, Barbara couldn't resist at all.
***
Over the next few hours, they did a lot and said little. Barbara went to sleep with a smile on her face. Small, unassuming, but it lasted. Renee laid awake, her eyes tracing Barbara's bedroom. It seemed odd that she'd never seen the room in all her months on the Birds, but then, it did seem to have more of Barbara's personality in it than the rest of the Clocktower. There were books strewn everywhere—even some stuffed animals. On the bedstand, Barbara's glasses stood watch.
Neither of them were the cuddling type. Barbara wrapped in on herself like the world was still out to hurt her. But she wasn't wound so tightly that Renee couldn’t reach out and take her hand. Barbara responded to the warmth, squeezing Renee's hand tight enough to make her fingers tingle.
Renee just laid against the pillow and stared at Barbara. It wasn't that Barbara looked different in her sleep, it was just that Renee finally had time to really look at her. Every curve of her face, every strand of her hair, and lower. Her body was more than arousing, it was a testament to what Barbara had survived, scarred and beautiful and vibrant. Barbara had pulled herself up from deeper than Renee had ever been, and still stooped to pick Renee up as well. No one had ever done that for her. No one had made her feel so loved.
"Hey," Renee said gently, the words not even creasing Barbara's brow. "I wish I could tell you this when you were awake. Thank you. Thank you so much. Those things I said? I wasn't trying to make you feel better. I meant every word. And I know you'd never believe that, but that's why I'll stay. Because you need someone who believes in you as much as you believe in everyone else."
With that, Renee got up. Barbara barely struggled before releasing her hand. In the dark and the quiet, Renee dressed before going back to her own room. Barbara wouldn't like people knowing she had a sex drive, wouldn't like waking up with someone else in her bed. It'd be too close, too uncontrollable. But Renee would be there, at the breakfast table, at the mission briefing, the next time Barbara was alone at night.
The most important thing Barbara had given her hadn't been revenge. It was a purpose. She didn't need anything else.
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no subject
Date: 2011-08-16 10:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-16 07:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-16 07:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-16 12:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-16 07:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-16 08:59 pm (UTC)And Daria! Thanks for giving Daria a happy ending--she really deserves it.
Really well done piece of fic. =D
no subject
Date: 2011-08-16 10:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-17 04:18 am (UTC)I love that they're both still broken--that you don't try to fix what isn't really fixable, don't make everything better through the magic of them getting together--but hopeful. Purposeful. Birds. And, seriously, "You know what I love about Daria? She'd forgive me..." is just perfect. It keeps running through my brain.
I don't have words to tell you how much I love this--other than "I love this," of course--but, well, I love it.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-18 01:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-18 08:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-19 12:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-19 05:45 am (UTC)