Title: Alternative In Life
Summary: A consideration on the women that make the men that rule in darkness and in the spotlight. An exercise in choice, if you will. One-shot, sorta AU, could be considered to hint at femslash.
Disclaimer: I make no possible notion or commentary on even the suggestion that I own the rights to the characters or the series present here. I make no money from this; this is a non-profit piece.
Warnings: Multiple choice story, femslash hints, the usual. Also, half based on comics, but could go either way.
Dedication: This is for RMMB (Rose came back, Rose came back!) who suggested I build on something she'd been trying but couldn't quite continue. I can hardly blame her; this was awful and not quite right, but I think the endings were worth the work.

-:-
Here: an exercise in choice. Your choice. One of these tales is true.
-Fragile Things, by Neil Gaiman.

I.

And here, blue eyes frightened, hand reaching for steel or stone or mortar—anything—to hold her up; her white ruffled cuff of the skin tight suit she liked to think (once) she wore with pride tore down to nothing but air and a scream that she doesn't realize is her own until she is encompassed by rain drenched shadow and doesn't see light again until much later. Later, she will realize, can be described as a kind of eternity for past sins when your bones are shattered and one of your hands looks like nothing but the experiment of mad science…

…She can look back at it in her old age—after having a daughter that didn't love her, spending almost twenty years in Africa getting lucky after aiding some Genocide relief effort and being rewarded with a mine that bore fruit in the form of diamonds that lead her to being reasonably well off without drawing any attention to herself, gaining two grandchildren that didn't listen to a word she said—and not cry, but she's still far from amused at any thought that brings it up.

Still bent down painfully over a garden of herbs she harvested and dried into medication for some people much older than her that couldn't afford it, knees burning a little around the scars she'd accumulated along her kneecaps and lower legs, Harley noticed almost immediately the dark shadow that moved over her Queen Ann's Lace that followed in the motion of footsteps before settling over herself. She had not been expecting any visitors, so she tensed up—almost impossible to notice to the common eye—and tightened her hand along the grip of her spade.

"You know, I never would have imagined you wearing blue in your maturity."

Harley dropped the spade and, through the throbbing of the joints of her neck (every tendon and every nerve damaged beyond repair because of a fall that she didn't like to think about, the hand that held the spade too gnarled so it looked like a tree's root) looked over her shoulder to find a girl that used to be a bane of her life turned ragged in age, with snowy hair replacing sunset color. Time marches on, but it was nice to see that it eased up on the more civil of universal servants.

(…It was a close call as ever there was one, in all the years since Gotham. True, little Duela was being taken care of by Lady Cassandra in her garden while Harley herself worked the mines (presiding over young men who were paid well for their hard work, hot sun turning her skin dark enough to turn her Sanskrit, the twin braids with beads twined into them by a local jiggling with every move she made) but even with the thought that her daughter wouldn't be caught with her didn't help soothe the thought of the blonde woman being caught period by a person she'd last seen trying to pull her up out of a pit.

The diamonds she'd brought up from that afternoon's load to pay for the workers' lunch made a grinding noise in her overall shorts while she pressed her back to the brown and white outer wall of the closest stores for anything at all in miles before someone reached the city or the mine Harley owned; listening, listening to the conversation inside.

"It's good to know that the work around here has been getting better. You say the work in the mines is on account of some lucky son of a bitch striking it rich and wanting to improve the ambiance of this place?"

"Lucky daughter of a hound, more like," the owner of the establishment corrected, smiling from the way his English lilted up at certain words. He thought he was witty sometimes; and on occasion he was right.

Laughter echoed too close to the door and Harley pulled farther toward the back of the establishment.

"My husband and myself are glad that this is all going on. Perhaps you'd know where we could find the mine's owner so we could make this business she's in more permanent for the people?"

"Sorry, but I doubt I could be of much help in this question," there was a pause which was usually a preamble to the owner trying to remember more English and proper timing to it. "This woman—she has been a mother and very sec-secr-secretive since coming. Trying to keep child safe, fulltime job. Probably not going to speak to anyone."

Chapped lips smiled sadly. Coaching the owner had been a grand idea, never mind that it sometimes coast her quite a bit after each time a person came along to try and meet with her. Worth every strawberry sized diamond, though…)

"Well," Harley paused, lifting up by grabbing her home cane—it looked a bit like a hollowed stick covered in glaze used for paintings that stood at seven feet and made her look smaller—which was entirely different than the one she went out with (usually accompanied by picking up her grankiddies from the slammer and giving them a firm telling off), "I never imagined you and Batsy giving the leading man role to a kid that was neither of the Boy Wonders, never mind not even being related to anyone in 'the family'. But hey, things change, don't they Commissioner?"

Barbara smiled a little wider than what might have been intentional, bowing her head lightly at the older woman and her candor.

Harley bowed her head as well, smile cracked at the edges not in the way of emotion, but in the way her skin had been going after she'd reached fifty and had taken up Crow's Feet at its most compromising. It was nice to see the younger woman looking not half bad at being both queen of the good cops and Bat-momma; a full head of hair and barely needed glasses included in this observation.

"I come baring a request to an old clown with more sense than a couple others I could name," Barbara started again, business like but seemingly trying to be respectful when she noticed Harley's hunchback the Commissioner had simply assumed had been Harley's bent over posture when she had been tending her garden. It was more or less obvious that she had never dreamed a woman who had once been a top-notch, Olympic level gymnast could have a hunchback. It made her sad.

Harley lost her pleasant glow of happiness and hissed before spitting at the grass. It wouldn't take a genius to figure where this conversation was going; a reminder of a few weeks ago when Barbara had gotten her number and was screaming her head off about Harley's grandchildren getting into trouble for what must have been the fiftieth time since they'd been alive.

Barbara braced herself for more yelling like the weeks before, to be asked to leave this premises Harley owned in the woods for miles on end, but instead, the shorter, older woman deflated and she canted her head, taking steps forward to lead Babs to her porch with a teapot sitting on a little blue potholder in a carrier with three tiny cups and a creamer toss shaped like a rabbit's standing foot.

"What did they do now?" Was the short, prim, angry question, not quite directed at Barbara (more she was directing her supreme anger at her grandchildren into the spiderwebs of the universe to be lost in time).

Barbara coughed in the back of her throat and stopped at the porch steps, pressing her shoulder into the wood that held up the second story of the house. Harley took up the teapot, poured some dark, caffeinated drink into two cups, handed one to Babs as the elder woman sat on the porch swing that had been there as long as the house had, with few needs for renewal; Barbara still couldn't get used to the blue the other was wearing.

Taking a sip (the drink coffee, the flavor bordering vanilla, the temperature just right) Barbara got up her nerve and spoke up, "Uh, your granddaughters and their gang were involved in brawl today between the Jokerz and a rather aggressive sect of Splicers that ended rather messily and lead to the Batman having to intervene. The brawl was apparently about some tech that could be worth a lot of money if sold to the correct buyer. Now, we know that one of the members of your grandchildrens' gang hid the tech away, but we haven't been able figure out which one; none of them are talking."

Nimble fingers brought black liquid to Harley's lips and she sipped before feeling inclined to answer, her disposition turning darker despite her face being nearly impassive, "And you want me to try and get it out of one of my offspring, right?"

Babs nodded with no pause.

Harley moved the cup in her hand around in a semi-circle, an ironic sort of smile coming to her blinding blue eyes that looked none too far away from becoming cataract. She was obviously displeased, but a mild chuckle came to her before she answered the more presentable, more righteous woman.

"My dear Batgirl, they think me beneath them. The only thing they ever do these days is act like that worthless son of a bitch they came from—minus the inclination to blow away as many people as possible. Even if I did ask them, they wouldn't tell me."

Eyebrows fine and white flew up the incline of Barbara's forehead at the mention of Joker in such a negative sense from Harley's mouth, but she made no verbal question on it.

"However," Harley added, "I might be able to help you out on a few conditions."

Ah, old Quinn arises. Barbara frowned a little at the sly look that crossed into Harley's eyes, but stayed any objection of hearing the other out.

"You tell me things, I tell you things," Harley shrugged, seemingly less then what she was. "It's old fashioned and crass, but I'm old and am quite irritated with the way the New Kid is handling himself, even if he is under yours and his senior's tutelage."

"Tell you things?"

Harley waved her gnarled hand, looking dismissive, "Oh, don't look at me like that. I don't care what his name is or some Super Villain stupidity like that. I just want you to tell me things to give me reasons not to give my two brats bail money anymore. And this could go in your favor; that young man that works for the old man could use some shaping up. Reckless little thing, isn't he?"

At that Babs laughed, "Oh, yes. Yes, yes."

II.

Or here, upon the precipice where a little body not much older than herself fell,(not much more than hope, skin, bones and bruises,) stands and dives into the abyss a heroine of blue eyes and auburn scorched hair. She knows that she should be headed back to help the man she thinks she loves—pretty certain, but not quite—and save the little boy she thinks of as brother, but she can't very well stand herself if she doesn't at least go in to see if there is still a corpse to bury after impact on what must be rock so sharp it could split an armored car…

…Stepping out into the Seattle rain that comes almost each day onto her new apartment and her balcony (brown streets below turn ebony black, her black silk nightgown clings indecent to her breasts, the light from the kitchen inside glows against white tiles), Barbara Gordon smiled sadly. The phone call with Bruce had been rather long (minutes into hours when it didn't really seem so) but had ultimately ended the way she'd wanted it to. She got her divorce and basically full custody of baby Terry (Bruce could see his youngest son whenever he wanted, his older brothers could as well) and assurance that the Wayne patriarch—not Batman—would make it a point to keep in contact with both Barbara and Batgirl.

Ten years is a long time to be in a marriage she was warned from entering into from the very beginning. Even if the woman who had warned against it had turned into a friend of the redhead, rather than an enemy.

("I really don't think this is going to work." These words held no traces of an accent; they were somber and truthful as pale, scarred hands turned the steering wheel of the cherry red car driving the two women to a business meeting at Wayne Industries. "I mean, I know you love Damian and Helena like they were your own, but be that as it may, he has children with two women he still can't make up his mind about loving. If he can't choose either Talia or Selina, what makes you think it will be any better with you?"

"I love him, Harley," Barbara stated, whole hearted, more than it should be for a woman in her early twenties. "I've loved him since the first time I ever saw him."

Silence took precedence over the whole of the both of them long after this statement of total truth, hopeful and decided. Barbara had felt she'd made the point that she wasn't actually asking the blonde her opinion—which she didn't need since, really, Harley was almost fresh out of Arkham and Bruce had hired her as a chauffer only because it was understood that Bruce was going to keep a steady eye and ear on her forever, regardless of the son she now had to look over and had pledged to give a better life to—when, truthfully, she just wanted to know what she thought about all this.

When Harley had parked the car and got out to open Barbara's door (dressed in black pants and peacoat short jacket with the matching chauffer hat, left leg trotting slower than the right, hair cut short and feathery to touch her shoulders but not her back) she just had one last question for the woman she had gotten to know in the last four-going-on-five years.

"Did he ask you or did you ask him?")

A quiet ding rang inside the kitchen, pleasant and small and would have gone unnoticed if her two guests staying for the evening hadn't called out to remind her of the milk bottles boiling on the stove in water.

Babs wiped her feet on the mat inside (blue oyster in color, little green fish along the outline, some of the material coming undone near the edge) the door and put on a bit of a happier face to see her son being bounced on Dick's knee, more sedate than he had been earlier. "I'm so sorry! Better get those before they melt," the redhead apologized, not noticing the light incline of her breasts under her gown as she swept by Harley standing and rocking the older looking baby girl (found in a basket two days after Nathan Quinzel's funeral only seven days previous at the age of only seventeen, another girl in the basket too sick for any real good, left on Harley's porch with a simple note, 'Now that he's gone, I can't take care of them. They're Delia and Deidre. So sorry.') while the other slept at the center of the room in the crib all the babies shared since they'd come to the city that always rained.

She removed the bottles from the steaming metal dish of water on the stove with a pair of oven mitts and pinchers most people used when grabbing life lobsters from tanks at high priced restaurants to prove freshness; the redness in her eyes dissipating with the sounds of Terry making gurgled laughter that usually came with Dick hanging him upside-down when he thought the infant's (almost toddler, he could practically take seven steps straight without falling over onto his rear) mother wasn't looking or close enough to notice.

It would take a moment for the milk to cool enough for the two conscious children to be able to drink, but until then, the adults in the room could talk some trash.

Stepping back into the living area (the lights are off for the smaller sickly girl, the blue darkness means nothing to these night owls, the wind from outside is better than the humidity of the days) was a relief from the heat that radiated inside the water dish on the stove. The young woman grinned at how happy Terry looked as she held out her arms and Dick easily handed her son to her; Harley looking sideways from quieting Delia through the eye with scarring from when she'd fallen to her near death a little less than two decades ago. Barbara found her scars endearing (why should she think anything else when anything was better than the deep bruising Nathan had given her if ever he had gone off of his Schizophrenic medication and started seeing that shadow or heard those cackles in his head that told him to hurt the lovely woman that was his mother) and similar to the scars Bruce had along his body, but brooded FAR less over. She lost all emotion to vanity the minute she found out she was pregnant, and she had become all the better for it.

Barbara could almost believe she loved her like a sister for that.

"Hey there, Mister Batglare," Barbara giggled as Terry grasped at one of her bangs (there was no helping that she kept noticing the behavior he exhibited from Bruce and so little from herself; too tight a grip, absorbent eyes, taking up things one so young shouldn't be able to. Eventually she could imagine Damian and little Helena jumping across rooftops as soon as they could with Terry) and didn't pull, but instead glided his chubby fingers through her Fall Season colored locks.

"So what do you think of Seattle so far?" Dick asks, not really knowing about the city that was truthfully, basically the coffee shop capitol of the world with constant rain and dark skies that were (in their line of work) pleasantly mysterious, but far more dangerous than the Gotham skyline considering it also came with lightning that occurred much more and for longer periods. Since he'd gotten through the airport to see Babs after she'd finally told Bruce it was over (really, it was weird; she had been the only person that had gone to Nathan's funeral with Harley, which wasn't that odd seeing as nobody had wanted much contact with the much, much, much more pathetic blonde since Nathan had been diagnosed crazy and the only kind of notice she'd given the general public—or, friends or lovers or anyone at all-that she was burying him the day after the coroner released the body was in the notice section of the Gotham Tribune "To Whom It May Concern: Nathan is dead." After Nathan was buried beside the grave with the blank headstone every hero in Gotham knew of but didn't talk about to be respectful of Tim, Babs had made the decision and told Bruce over Harley's home phone that she wanted a divorce) he had been supportive and would not stop making 'Sleepless in Seattle' jokes.

"It's wet." Babs spoke in a flat voice, looking out onto her balcony again as more rain poured on, however worse than it was earlier when it was actually pleasant. "But, you know I just…I can't be in Gotham right now. It's too hard."

Dick acknowledged the unspoken insinuation in that statement, saying not a word as the woman he had loved since before he could remember set her now worn-out son down beside Harley's so quiet Deidre. Too hard was not a valid description when, to Dick—to Tim, Damian, Helena, hell, Alfred—it was more like a fucking nightmare. Bruce had actually been cheating on Babs with Selina and thought the redhead hadn't known. Babs had understood, though, which was more than Dick ever could have done if he had a wife and she had been cheating for as long as Bruce had been (a little over a year; before Terry was even born).

"You know," a gentle, weathered voice that had been Harley's since she'd found the little week old babies on her porch just a little over forty-eight hours before where all three of them stood in time at that second in the night, in the dark; setting down the now sleeping healthier girl beside the slip of her sister (Babs was pleased when Terry finally looked sleepy and allowed his mother to place him—so much bigger, really—in the center of the crib) and Terry. Whereupon both of the woman grinned for a moment at the thought of the ending to 'Bambi' with the doe and the two fawns, though neither mention it aloud, "I know this is going to sound stupid coming from me, but I think at least one of us should inform you to the rights you have. I realize Gotham is pretty much Batman's all around, but that doesn't mean you should banish yourself to this…"

Babs anticipated Harley's conclusion to whatever the rest of her statement was, but waited as the older slip of a woman went to get the bottles that lay forgotten to set inside the crib out of the reach of the babies, as well as she handed out a bottle of Root Beer Harley had bought while out earlier, one for each adult. They all looked normal popping the bottles in their own hands so they made no noise to wake up the infants.

"…Life sized snow globe of a town, just because he picked Selina and didn't even bother to tell you about it." Harley finished, swallowing a mouthful of her own fizzy drink (doing well not to gag, the white foam insufferable to most people).

The man that was Nightwing opened his mouth to agree (actually agree, not sarcastic, actually in deference and great respect) with Harley, but Barbara interrupted, the little pop of her lips leaving the end of her bottle like a starter's pistol.

"You told me. From the very beginning."

"True," the elder with blue eyes and the first few streaks of grey noticeable in her bangs agreed, smile not unkind, but honest, "Doesn't mean I had to be right, though."

From the crib, unnoticed, Terry had woken a little, arms moving and knocking over the bottles. In his waking, the girls did as well, neither crying as they just snuggled in closer to the one boy between them and Terry gladly suckled the bottle he had been able to grasp in his little hands.

It was pleasing.