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seriousficTitle: Two Heroes Gotham Needed and Two Heroes Gotham Deserved
Fandom: Batman, Nolanverse
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,319
Timeline: The Dark Knight, post-movie. Spoilers.
Characters/Pairings: Bruce Wayne, Helena Bertinelli, Tim Drake, Barbara Gordon, Dick Grayson.
Summary: It only takes a single stone to start an avalanche.
Helena had expected the witness stand to be uncomfortable. It wasn’t. The chair was comfy, well-padded. Harvey Dent kept watching her, nodding encouragingly when he saw her looking back. Testifying against Franco Bertinelli had been the easy part; the defense had ripped into her so hard that she was sure anyone who looked at her could see bone. But Harvey smiled at her when he got up to redirect.
“Did your father ever hit you?”
“No.”
“Cut you out of his will?”
“No.”
“Mistreat you in any way?”
“No.”
“Then if I may be so bold, Miss Bertinelli…”
“You sound like one of my students when you call me that.”
Chuckles rumbled through the jury. Harvey gave her a split-second of his famous smile; even Helena knew it was good when juries liked witnesses.
“If I may be so bold, why are you testifying against your own father?”
Helena folded her hands together as she leaned forward, like she was in the classroom. Delivering the moral of today’s lesson. “Because my father sells drugs to kids.”
***
There should’ve been anger when he walked into her apartment, Barbara’s hero-cop-martyr-uncle who just caught the Joker… shuffling his feet like he was embarrassed to still be alive after all the tears his family had shed. She should’ve been angry. But her heart was too full of relief and love and pride to let any hate in. She hugged him and when her arms wrapped around his sides, her fingers touched the stiff bandages under the back of his shirt.
That started her crying and Barbara swore she wouldn’t lose him again.
***
What kind of sadist asked a teenager what they wanted to be when they grew up? Wasn’t that what college was for? Tim didn’t even know what movie he wanted to see that weekend. In fact, the thing he knew best was that if Steph would lean a little further over his shoulder, he’d be able to feel her training bra on his back. “Fireman or astronaut?” she asked of him.
Tim tapped his homework assignment with his pen. Technically he wasn’t supposed to be doing it “on-duty”, but it wasn’t like he wanted to work in a mini-mall all his life. “She takes off for pat, flippant answers.”
“Really? Damn. Remind me not to take her class next semester.”
“No, uh, she’s a really good teacher. I’ve learned a lot.”
Steph grinned, incredulous but affectionate. She wasn’t one of the popular girls, of whose number there were prettier women, statuesque with the silicone boobs their dads had bought them and the dyed blonde hair. Not to mention Hollywood babes like Bruce Wayne was always bedding. But though she was cute rather than beautiful, Steph was the only woman Tim had had consistent sexual fantasies about.
He wished he could say two words to her without feeling like an idiot.
“So anyway, der Fuhrer wants you to clean the restrooms.” Steph dropped the key-ring with the Lex-Mart logo into his lap. Tim sighed and got up from his comfortable seat behind the register. There were three registers in the mini-mart, but only him and Steph were on them. Weekday, dusk, low traffic. No one was driving at 11.
“Don’t fill out my homework sheet. I’m still trying to convince my teacher that I honestly believe there was homoerotic tension between Nick and Gatsby.”
“Homophobe.”
“Perv.” Then he wondered if she really thought he was calling her a pervert, so he escaped to the restroom before he could dig himself any deeper.
Tim had just finished dousing the sink with the blue stuff when he heard a scream. He rushed out of the restroom and it was only when he saw the gun that he dropped the spray-bottle.
The guy with the gun didn’t look like the junkies on Law & Order. His clothes didn’t fit and his skin didn’t match and his bones were a size too big. The gun was just right, though. He had it in Steph’s face like he was giving her a present. “Money! Moneymoneymoneymoneymoney!”
The litany was almost religious.
Steph had backed up until her spine was pressed against the cigarette cartons. “Please don’t hurt me, please, my mom would worry—“
The spray-bottle landed and the cap popped off. Blue stuff sloshed out like blood from a dying man. The junkie whirled. Tim squeezed his eyes shut. Don’t think of people dying. He opened them. The gun was pointed at him now, but that didn’t matter. Steph wasn’t in the line of fire.
“Can I help you… sir?”
The gun shook. “Money!”
“Okay, okay, money, I can respect that…” Tim walked behind the register.
The junkie’s eye might’ve been twitchy, but the gun watched him like a hawk. It was a shitty gun, a Saturday Night Special if Tim was remembering his first-person shooters right.
Tim popped his cash drawer and moved the ones and fives and tens and twenties to the counter. Then he did the same with Steph’s drawer. The junkie tapped the third register with the barrel of his gun. “Now this one!”
Tim gulped. Shit. “I can’t open that one. It’s locked.”
“Who has the… the-the-the—“ he scrubbed his face for the word. “KEY!”
“Der—the manager.”
“Then get him out here, retard!”
No way Tim was dragging someone else into this. “It doesn’t matter, because there’s no money in there anyway. It’s closed, empty. The money’s put in from the safe by the general manager. He’s at home and it’s a fifteen-minute drive. You want to wait that long?”
Steph piped up “We get cops in here all the time! We have Krispy Kreme!”
Tim took off his watch. “This is a Rolex. My dad gave it to me. It’s worth more than what would be in the drawer anyway. Take it. Take it and just go.”
The junkie snatched it up like a dog would a treat. Shoved it in his pocket. Shoveled the money into a plastic bag and ran. He hadn’t taken one step out the door when a snare caught his foot. He was jerked off his feet, head smacking the credit-card-hawking floor mat with a muffled crack. Then he was reeled in like the world’s biggest trout.
The money landed a second later in a neatly tied bundle. Boots touched down to either side of it. The Batman walked in, dropped a Rolex in front of Tim.
Steph was trembling, but she covered for it well. “Cut it a little close, dontcha think!?”
Batman glared at her. “I couldn’t take him down while he had a gun on someone. Too risky.” He turned to Tim and all the boy could think was he can turn his head now. “You kept a cool head. That probably saved lives, including your own.”
“Can I get your autograph?” Tim asked, lightheaded.
“…you have a pen?”
Tim provided his hero with a counterfeit marker and a copy of the Gotham Times, a grainy photo of Batman on the front page. The headline read Batman Kills Five; Commissioner Declares Manhunt. “I think you’re innocent, by the way.”
Batman signed the paper. Tim eagerly spun it around. Neat writing read good work, Batman. When Tim looked up, Batman was gone and Tim Drake had realized what he wanted to be when he grew up.
“I am the man,” he said, hiding the paper. Cops were coming and he didn’t want them to do a handwriting analysis on it.
Steph bumped him with her hips. She had stopped shaking already; she was a Gotham Girl. “That so, why don’t you have the balls to ask me out?”
***
Everyone else bought that Coleman Reese didn’t know who the Batman was, that he was just trying to buy Gotham some time and got in over his head, but Barbara was the only one who dug into what he was working on. It’s what she took to her boss, Mr. Fox.
“The Lao account is closed,” he told her. “I suggest you focus on the work you’re being paid for.”
As if Wayne Corp’s encryption software is going to need to be upgraded in the next decade.
She waited until Wayne was doing his annual inspection and ran him down between the cubicles. It was hard; he walked fast.
“Mr. Wayne, a moment of your time.”
He looked at her, but mostly saw the legs and cleavage she had on display. It made her wish she’d unbuttoned her blouse a leetle further. “Normally I’d love to… talk, Ms. Gordon, but I’m pressed for time and the last thing I need is your uncle coming after me for all those unpaid parking tickets.
And of course, being pressed for time had nothing to do with the giant bat lighting up the night sky (she wondered idly how her uncle had scavenged it).
“Chiroptera!” she shouted after him.
He turned around, and there was nothing of the playboy in the look he gave her this time. “Your Latin’s excellent.”
“Thanks.”
“You’ll understand if this has to wait for dawn.”
“I’m a patient woman.”
Bruce Wayne was as good as his word, showing up at Barbara’s door not ten minutes after sun-up. That was alright; she hadn’t been able to sleep anyway. Bruce hadn’t even made an effort to hide his wounds or dress up. He wore a black turtleneck and slacks, both glossy where blood had soaked through. “So what do you want? Money?”
She let him in, ignoring the snooty look her neighbor Miss Maplethorpe gave her for inviting in a strange man offering money. While wearing a nightgown. She threw a robe on over it before serving him coffee. He took it black. Big surprise.
“A promotion, maybe. Vice President of Having A Cushy Job.”
“I’m Jim Gordon’s little girl. Give me some credit.” She sat down across from him, sipping tea. “I want in.”
“In?” That raised an eyebrow.
“I’m smart enough to uncover you, I can hack anything with ones and zeroes, and I’m a Gordon. You can trust me. C.f., me not turning you in.”
He steepled his fingers and Barbara wondered how she could have ever fallen for the fop act. “If this is a job interview, I suppose I should ask you why you want this job. It’s not exactly held in high regard.”
“You catch crooks. Crooks that want my uncle dead. I help you, I help him stay alive.”
He nodded. “Family. Okay.” He offered her his hand. “Job’s yours if you want it, Ms. Gordon.”
Barbara took his outstretched hand without a second thought. “Call me Babs.”
***
The other man in a mask snatched the rifle out of the assassin’s hands and clubbed him with it before dropping the bent, cracked weapon at Batman’s feet. “No guns, no kills. Your rules, right?”
Batman scrutinized him for a moment before touching the headset concealed in his cowl. “Oracle, upload Officer Richard Grayson’s file to my visor.”
The sight of the vigilante’s shock and dismay was almost comical, before it was halved by Batman’s HUD and the headshot of Grayson that perfectly matched the costumed man in front of him.
“Ooh, he’s a cutie,” Barbara opined.
Batman touched his headset again to cut off the color commentary. “Scar on your forehead,” he explained. “Your mask should cover it. Now how can a cop practice vigilante justice?”
“A cop knows exactly how far a cop can go.” A bullet chipped the wall nearby. “Oh, hey, your fanclub’s back.”
Batman ran, signaling him to follow and not bothering to pout out that if the assassins are his fans, that makes Grayson a groupie. “Oracle, I need a retrieval!”
“Alright, but I’ll have to make a slight detour to pick up my laundry from the cleaner.”
Grayson was in good shape. He kept up without breaking a sweat. “Who do you keep talking to?”
“Your competition for comic relief.”
More bullets chewed up the pavement on their heels. Batman returned fire with a Batarang, Grayson with a handgun. It drove them off, for the moment. Batman gave the firearm a hard stare.
“Rubber bullets,” Grayson said, grinning bashfully. “Promise.”
The Tumbler burst through the wall with a shower of bricks as heralds. Grayson gazed upon it with unabashed glee. “I get to ride in the Batmobile!?”
“No, you don’t.” Batman climbed in and left the would-be hero in his dust. He caught up to the assassins a block away. They were battered and hog-tied, guarded by masked men on motorcycles. Batman got out to stare them down. They weren’t giving an inch when Grayson caught up, using parkour to travel over the rooftops.
He swung down on a fire escape. “Not as direct as driving through walls, but I get by.“ He nodded to the vigilantes. “Others who believe as we do.”
“Rookies,” Batman said dismissively.
“Then train us. We’re willing.”
“I don’t need help.”
The vigilante in the red mask stepped forward, fists clenched. “Screw this guy, we don’t need permission--”
A lithe girl with her entire face covered by a leather mask touched his arm, calming him.
“You’re one man,” Grayson said, stepping in front of Batman. “Think about what you could do with an army.”
He had. And he’d dismissed the thought a thousand times. He could never ask people to risk their lives in his name. But if they’d chosen this life… as he had… “I don’t even know their names.”
“We don’t have names. We have callsigns.” He began pointing. “Red Hood. Canary. Orpheus. The quiet one is Kasumi. There are others, but they’re either on patrol or still in training.”
They carried themselves well. And there were times he needed to be in four places at once. “And what’s your ‘callsign’?”
Grayson smiled. He knew they were part of the family now. “I’m Batboy.”
“…we’ll have to work on that.”
Fandom: Batman, Nolanverse
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,319
Timeline: The Dark Knight, post-movie. Spoilers.
Characters/Pairings: Bruce Wayne, Helena Bertinelli, Tim Drake, Barbara Gordon, Dick Grayson.
Summary: It only takes a single stone to start an avalanche.
Helena had expected the witness stand to be uncomfortable. It wasn’t. The chair was comfy, well-padded. Harvey Dent kept watching her, nodding encouragingly when he saw her looking back. Testifying against Franco Bertinelli had been the easy part; the defense had ripped into her so hard that she was sure anyone who looked at her could see bone. But Harvey smiled at her when he got up to redirect.
“Did your father ever hit you?”
“No.”
“Cut you out of his will?”
“No.”
“Mistreat you in any way?”
“No.”
“Then if I may be so bold, Miss Bertinelli…”
“You sound like one of my students when you call me that.”
Chuckles rumbled through the jury. Harvey gave her a split-second of his famous smile; even Helena knew it was good when juries liked witnesses.
“If I may be so bold, why are you testifying against your own father?”
Helena folded her hands together as she leaned forward, like she was in the classroom. Delivering the moral of today’s lesson. “Because my father sells drugs to kids.”
***
There should’ve been anger when he walked into her apartment, Barbara’s hero-cop-martyr-uncle who just caught the Joker… shuffling his feet like he was embarrassed to still be alive after all the tears his family had shed. She should’ve been angry. But her heart was too full of relief and love and pride to let any hate in. She hugged him and when her arms wrapped around his sides, her fingers touched the stiff bandages under the back of his shirt.
That started her crying and Barbara swore she wouldn’t lose him again.
***
What kind of sadist asked a teenager what they wanted to be when they grew up? Wasn’t that what college was for? Tim didn’t even know what movie he wanted to see that weekend. In fact, the thing he knew best was that if Steph would lean a little further over his shoulder, he’d be able to feel her training bra on his back. “Fireman or astronaut?” she asked of him.
Tim tapped his homework assignment with his pen. Technically he wasn’t supposed to be doing it “on-duty”, but it wasn’t like he wanted to work in a mini-mall all his life. “She takes off for pat, flippant answers.”
“Really? Damn. Remind me not to take her class next semester.”
“No, uh, she’s a really good teacher. I’ve learned a lot.”
Steph grinned, incredulous but affectionate. She wasn’t one of the popular girls, of whose number there were prettier women, statuesque with the silicone boobs their dads had bought them and the dyed blonde hair. Not to mention Hollywood babes like Bruce Wayne was always bedding. But though she was cute rather than beautiful, Steph was the only woman Tim had had consistent sexual fantasies about.
He wished he could say two words to her without feeling like an idiot.
“So anyway, der Fuhrer wants you to clean the restrooms.” Steph dropped the key-ring with the Lex-Mart logo into his lap. Tim sighed and got up from his comfortable seat behind the register. There were three registers in the mini-mart, but only him and Steph were on them. Weekday, dusk, low traffic. No one was driving at 11.
“Don’t fill out my homework sheet. I’m still trying to convince my teacher that I honestly believe there was homoerotic tension between Nick and Gatsby.”
“Homophobe.”
“Perv.” Then he wondered if she really thought he was calling her a pervert, so he escaped to the restroom before he could dig himself any deeper.
Tim had just finished dousing the sink with the blue stuff when he heard a scream. He rushed out of the restroom and it was only when he saw the gun that he dropped the spray-bottle.
The guy with the gun didn’t look like the junkies on Law & Order. His clothes didn’t fit and his skin didn’t match and his bones were a size too big. The gun was just right, though. He had it in Steph’s face like he was giving her a present. “Money! Moneymoneymoneymoneymoney!”
The litany was almost religious.
Steph had backed up until her spine was pressed against the cigarette cartons. “Please don’t hurt me, please, my mom would worry—“
The spray-bottle landed and the cap popped off. Blue stuff sloshed out like blood from a dying man. The junkie whirled. Tim squeezed his eyes shut. Don’t think of people dying. He opened them. The gun was pointed at him now, but that didn’t matter. Steph wasn’t in the line of fire.
“Can I help you… sir?”
The gun shook. “Money!”
“Okay, okay, money, I can respect that…” Tim walked behind the register.
The junkie’s eye might’ve been twitchy, but the gun watched him like a hawk. It was a shitty gun, a Saturday Night Special if Tim was remembering his first-person shooters right.
Tim popped his cash drawer and moved the ones and fives and tens and twenties to the counter. Then he did the same with Steph’s drawer. The junkie tapped the third register with the barrel of his gun. “Now this one!”
Tim gulped. Shit. “I can’t open that one. It’s locked.”
“Who has the… the-the-the—“ he scrubbed his face for the word. “KEY!”
“Der—the manager.”
“Then get him out here, retard!”
No way Tim was dragging someone else into this. “It doesn’t matter, because there’s no money in there anyway. It’s closed, empty. The money’s put in from the safe by the general manager. He’s at home and it’s a fifteen-minute drive. You want to wait that long?”
Steph piped up “We get cops in here all the time! We have Krispy Kreme!”
Tim took off his watch. “This is a Rolex. My dad gave it to me. It’s worth more than what would be in the drawer anyway. Take it. Take it and just go.”
The junkie snatched it up like a dog would a treat. Shoved it in his pocket. Shoveled the money into a plastic bag and ran. He hadn’t taken one step out the door when a snare caught his foot. He was jerked off his feet, head smacking the credit-card-hawking floor mat with a muffled crack. Then he was reeled in like the world’s biggest trout.
The money landed a second later in a neatly tied bundle. Boots touched down to either side of it. The Batman walked in, dropped a Rolex in front of Tim.
Steph was trembling, but she covered for it well. “Cut it a little close, dontcha think!?”
Batman glared at her. “I couldn’t take him down while he had a gun on someone. Too risky.” He turned to Tim and all the boy could think was he can turn his head now. “You kept a cool head. That probably saved lives, including your own.”
“Can I get your autograph?” Tim asked, lightheaded.
“…you have a pen?”
Tim provided his hero with a counterfeit marker and a copy of the Gotham Times, a grainy photo of Batman on the front page. The headline read Batman Kills Five; Commissioner Declares Manhunt. “I think you’re innocent, by the way.”
Batman signed the paper. Tim eagerly spun it around. Neat writing read good work, Batman. When Tim looked up, Batman was gone and Tim Drake had realized what he wanted to be when he grew up.
“I am the man,” he said, hiding the paper. Cops were coming and he didn’t want them to do a handwriting analysis on it.
Steph bumped him with her hips. She had stopped shaking already; she was a Gotham Girl. “That so, why don’t you have the balls to ask me out?”
***
Everyone else bought that Coleman Reese didn’t know who the Batman was, that he was just trying to buy Gotham some time and got in over his head, but Barbara was the only one who dug into what he was working on. It’s what she took to her boss, Mr. Fox.
“The Lao account is closed,” he told her. “I suggest you focus on the work you’re being paid for.”
As if Wayne Corp’s encryption software is going to need to be upgraded in the next decade.
She waited until Wayne was doing his annual inspection and ran him down between the cubicles. It was hard; he walked fast.
“Mr. Wayne, a moment of your time.”
He looked at her, but mostly saw the legs and cleavage she had on display. It made her wish she’d unbuttoned her blouse a leetle further. “Normally I’d love to… talk, Ms. Gordon, but I’m pressed for time and the last thing I need is your uncle coming after me for all those unpaid parking tickets.
And of course, being pressed for time had nothing to do with the giant bat lighting up the night sky (she wondered idly how her uncle had scavenged it).
“Chiroptera!” she shouted after him.
He turned around, and there was nothing of the playboy in the look he gave her this time. “Your Latin’s excellent.”
“Thanks.”
“You’ll understand if this has to wait for dawn.”
“I’m a patient woman.”
Bruce Wayne was as good as his word, showing up at Barbara’s door not ten minutes after sun-up. That was alright; she hadn’t been able to sleep anyway. Bruce hadn’t even made an effort to hide his wounds or dress up. He wore a black turtleneck and slacks, both glossy where blood had soaked through. “So what do you want? Money?”
She let him in, ignoring the snooty look her neighbor Miss Maplethorpe gave her for inviting in a strange man offering money. While wearing a nightgown. She threw a robe on over it before serving him coffee. He took it black. Big surprise.
“A promotion, maybe. Vice President of Having A Cushy Job.”
“I’m Jim Gordon’s little girl. Give me some credit.” She sat down across from him, sipping tea. “I want in.”
“In?” That raised an eyebrow.
“I’m smart enough to uncover you, I can hack anything with ones and zeroes, and I’m a Gordon. You can trust me. C.f., me not turning you in.”
He steepled his fingers and Barbara wondered how she could have ever fallen for the fop act. “If this is a job interview, I suppose I should ask you why you want this job. It’s not exactly held in high regard.”
“You catch crooks. Crooks that want my uncle dead. I help you, I help him stay alive.”
He nodded. “Family. Okay.” He offered her his hand. “Job’s yours if you want it, Ms. Gordon.”
Barbara took his outstretched hand without a second thought. “Call me Babs.”
***
The other man in a mask snatched the rifle out of the assassin’s hands and clubbed him with it before dropping the bent, cracked weapon at Batman’s feet. “No guns, no kills. Your rules, right?”
Batman scrutinized him for a moment before touching the headset concealed in his cowl. “Oracle, upload Officer Richard Grayson’s file to my visor.”
The sight of the vigilante’s shock and dismay was almost comical, before it was halved by Batman’s HUD and the headshot of Grayson that perfectly matched the costumed man in front of him.
“Ooh, he’s a cutie,” Barbara opined.
Batman touched his headset again to cut off the color commentary. “Scar on your forehead,” he explained. “Your mask should cover it. Now how can a cop practice vigilante justice?”
“A cop knows exactly how far a cop can go.” A bullet chipped the wall nearby. “Oh, hey, your fanclub’s back.”
Batman ran, signaling him to follow and not bothering to pout out that if the assassins are his fans, that makes Grayson a groupie. “Oracle, I need a retrieval!”
“Alright, but I’ll have to make a slight detour to pick up my laundry from the cleaner.”
Grayson was in good shape. He kept up without breaking a sweat. “Who do you keep talking to?”
“Your competition for comic relief.”
More bullets chewed up the pavement on their heels. Batman returned fire with a Batarang, Grayson with a handgun. It drove them off, for the moment. Batman gave the firearm a hard stare.
“Rubber bullets,” Grayson said, grinning bashfully. “Promise.”
The Tumbler burst through the wall with a shower of bricks as heralds. Grayson gazed upon it with unabashed glee. “I get to ride in the Batmobile!?”
“No, you don’t.” Batman climbed in and left the would-be hero in his dust. He caught up to the assassins a block away. They were battered and hog-tied, guarded by masked men on motorcycles. Batman got out to stare them down. They weren’t giving an inch when Grayson caught up, using parkour to travel over the rooftops.
He swung down on a fire escape. “Not as direct as driving through walls, but I get by.“ He nodded to the vigilantes. “Others who believe as we do.”
“Rookies,” Batman said dismissively.
“Then train us. We’re willing.”
“I don’t need help.”
The vigilante in the red mask stepped forward, fists clenched. “Screw this guy, we don’t need permission--”
A lithe girl with her entire face covered by a leather mask touched his arm, calming him.
“You’re one man,” Grayson said, stepping in front of Batman. “Think about what you could do with an army.”
He had. And he’d dismissed the thought a thousand times. He could never ask people to risk their lives in his name. But if they’d chosen this life… as he had… “I don’t even know their names.”
“We don’t have names. We have callsigns.” He began pointing. “Red Hood. Canary. Orpheus. The quiet one is Kasumi. There are others, but they’re either on patrol or still in training.”
They carried themselves well. And there were times he needed to be in four places at once. “And what’s your ‘callsign’?”
Grayson smiled. He knew they were part of the family now. “I’m Batboy.”
“…we’ll have to work on that.”
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Date: 2008-07-27 05:04 pm (UTC)