They compile evidence. It's what they do; it's their job. Batman was a detective, Barbara was a programmer. They found what worked, fit it into its place, and watched it perform. At the end, the process would either flow or it wouldn't. Unfortunately, Barbara had been born into a life with faulty evidence. There were clues which didn't fit into any hypothesis, cases that couldn't be solved, puzzles that couldn't be put back together. As much as she missed flying, as much as she missed Dick, she missed the world that made sense for all its giant typewriters and Bat-whachamacallits (she doubted Bruce had ever forgiven Dick for turning boomerangs into Batarangs and "The Car" into a Batmobile). She missed the Three Musketeers, and Alfred as affectionate den mother to their rambunctious adolescence… yes, even Bruce had been boyish then. It was evidence that didn't fit in with the way the case played out. It was not Point A to B. It was Point A to Point Zoo.
"I need you at the Keplinger party," he said. Over the phone, not in person. She couldn't remember the last time she'd seen him in person. Maybe he'd grown a beard.
"Keplinger… that's an actual party, isn't it?"
"It's for a charity I support and I can't very well fly solo."
Barbara smiled, thinking of the tabloids she'd seen at her last supermarket checking lane. Apparently, Bruce was having illicit affairs with Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Aniston, and Brad Pitt.
"Anything to keep the gadflies away?"
"It would be good for the Commissioner's daughter to be seen outside her lair as well," Bruce said, with a little less grit than usual.
So there they were. Making small talk. Bruce was desperately uncomfortable in a tuxedo and despite years of self-actualization, Barbara felt a little like a sideshow freak amongst these perfect plastic people who all stood high above her. They had a dance, switched off partners, made a little smalltalk that they barely survived, then retired to a dark corner to talk shop. Between the two of them they talked their way through the solutions to half Batman's caseload, including an honest-to-God locked room mystery.
"Old school," Barbara said.
"No school like the old school," Bruce said, sipping his ginger ale and checking his watch as he did so. "Tim said that to me once."
"He seems the nostalgic type."
They're all the nostalgic type, though, and Barbara doesn't talk about her admiration for the man whose hair wasn't yet graying and whose smile could still be seen in the corners of his lips, but only as if from a distance. Bruce was still pretty far gone when she met him. But she was catching up.
He touched her hand as they bled off the remaining minutes until decorum would allow Bruce to slip out. Him sitting at the dinner table, her sitting next to him in her never-felt-so-bulky wheelchair, gazing out wistfully at the dance floor. She had never much cared for dancing before the Change, but now she would give a year off her life for those callused feet and stepped-on toes.
"Is it wrong that I feel the most pride in people when they don't want my approval?" Bruce asked her, daintily holding onto her wrist in a low-key way, maybe meant for the gossip columnists. Flirty, they would call it, or sweet, or adorable. He was a good actor.
"I think it's wrong that you don't tell people how proud you are of them until they need it the least."
He winced; she could feel it through his hand. She changed the subject.
"They could probably feed half their charity cases with the catering for this thing."
Bruce laughed. A genuine, albeit bitter one. She found it more relaxing than his charisma-oozing playboy chuckle. "Gotham, where selflessness drives a Ferrari."
She looked at him, then. "What do you drive?"
"Why, you need a ride?"
He took the Batmobile at breakneck speed, roller-coaster curves, paralyze her from the neck down this time if they crashed. But he didn't crash, or flinch, or hesitate. A thousand sensory inputs, radar and sonar and GPS, allowed him to slip through the streets of Gotham like a spider through its web. Barbara hung on and was flying once more. Whisper-quiet, he pulled to a stop a block from her place and watched through pupilless eyes as they took the secret entrance to the Clocktower. And whenever her mind wandered, whenever she lay awake in bed at night or day or dawn, she went over the evidence in her mind as it piled up, piece by piece.
A. She asked him once whether he missed her, during one of those lulls when he was talking to her because he wanted someone to talk to, not because she could do something for him. Batman said You were an effective member of the team. Your efforts are missed. Barbara said But do you miss me? He didn't feel very talkative after that.
B. Batman came to the Clocktower one night, when he was wounded and the Batcave was too far away. He lost consciousness on her couch and left blood all over her throw rug. She bandaged his wounds and put an icepack on his head, but left his mask on. He woke and left when she wasn't in the room, but left a Batarang behind. Barbara thought he meant it as thanks. Or as an excuse to come back later.
C.He came back later.
D. He hired her as a consultant without asking. A secretary phoned her to ask when she would like to come into work. The poor girl was actually surprised to find out Barbara hadn't taken the job "yet." Barbara took it and improved efficiency 16 in her department, just to tease him. He sent a memo commemorating her accomplishment, CCed to her. She blushed when it came through the Clocktower's fax machine.
E. He gave her an office, albeit one that smelled of mildew from where a water fountain one floor above had burst and seeped its cargo down through carpet and roof tiles. It was another means of control, she knew, another symbol over her breasts, another leash, a gilded cage he built for her in the expectation she would reject it. She never really went there, but she left trinkets there sometimes. Snowglobes and pencil jars and a stress ball filled with sand. It was like she was haunting it, if there could be a ghost for a life that had never been led.
F. He did paperwork in her domain, scanning quarterly reports while she juggled a dozen super-teams, including her pet Birds. She felt no sense of violation or compromised privacy to have him there. He was haunting too.
G. "Have you ever loved anyone else?" she asks one night they haunt each other. The implication is presumptuous, but she's always been bold.
"Love would be the wrong word for it. I believe affection would be more apt." He shifted a little and she bit her lip when he moved inside her. "I've heard it described to me and I've never felt that feeling. That Lois and Clark feeling. That Dick and you feeling."
Bastard.
H. Wouldn't it be great though," she persists, after they've rattled chains another night, "if we could love the way we did as kids?"
"I was never a kid," Bruce said, so closed off, pulled so tightly in on himself she would have described him as fetal if she didn't know him better. "And the only love affair I ever had was Gotham."
That was a long time ago, she knows without being told.
He studies her body like a blueprint and builds her up each night. Some mornings she's torn back down. She's not sure if it has anything to do with him.
Barbara gave up hope of ever reaching the end of the alphabet. She'd have to be content with the evidence she'd gathered. She could never truly know for sure. But then, neither could he.