Warnings: Character death, including a child.
He knows he's going to be too late. Just about every available thug in Gotham has been unleashed in his path, and no matter how fast he drives, runs, strikes, it isn't going to be enough.
Two-Face is apologising to the last Gordon when Batman arrives. The coin, he supposes, finally landed right side up.
He waits in the shadows as she's untied, as she runs to the broken bodies of her second family. She doesn't sob as she shakes them, screams at them, finally closes their eyes and her own.
They're dull when she opens them again. Slowly, she stands, dripping blood and sweat and tears, and turns to the kneeling Harvey. Batman only just catches the flash of fire in them.
Harvey is just beginning to rise when she kicks him in the face.
The blows, as desperate and erratic as they are, show some practice. Batman doesn't know if she'll beat him to death if she isn't stopped – Harvey isn't fighting back – but he doesn't wait to find out.
A nerve pinch takes care of Harvey, and then he's face to face with the girl he failed. Her eyes have gone blank again, as if they're nothing to do with the tracks of tears down her pale cheeks.
For a time, she only stares, and every tremble, every gasp, rips at his heart. When she finally speaks, her voice is flat.
"You're late."
"I'm sorry."
He lets her wait in his car; the Batmobile, her dad calls it, with a sort of exasperated awe. She feels only a spark of delighted curiosity when he guides her inside, gloved hand impossibly gentle on her bloody shoulder.
It fades quickly, even as her gaze focuses and files. Dreams mean little after such nightmares.
She thought it was, at first, when she awoke with her head pounding and her limbs bound to a haze of screams and sobs. When she saw Jamie's prone body and knew with sudden, sickening clarity that he'd been hit too hard. She tried so desperately to wake up.
Now she sits, and stains her dreams with her family's blood, and waits.
Adoption is usually a long, arduous process, but his wealth and name smooth the way and soon enough Barbara Gordon Wayne is an official member of the household.
She's quiet; just as quiet as he was, after. Her marks in school don't suffer, but she never brings friends from there. She heads straight for her room and locks herself in with her books and her grief.
She never looks at him with resentment. She never looks at him with very much at all.
He can barely recognise the sly, precocious teenager he'd caught spying on him and Jim a year and a lifetime ago.
The first spark of that old vibrancy he sees is when she discovers the cave, and perhaps that's why he allows her to train with him there.
She'd already been excelling in Karate – and track, and dance – and it shows in the sleek, strong way she moves.
But she has a long way to go.
One of the first thing she does is chop off her hair, because no matter how hard she scrubs she can still see the blood there. Bruce doesn't even blink when he sees her, simply says they can stylise the cut if she likes. Barbara decides that no, she likes it rough and jagged; it's more sincere that way.
Short hair is more practical anyway, for fighting, and fighting is one of the few times she feels happy anymore.
No, not quite happy; passionate, and content. She feels the same way when she does her research. She studies every relevant field, memorises miles of maps, reads every newspaper.
She already wanted to be a hero. It was an escape in Ohio, an aspiration in Gotham. Now it's an obsession.
Barbara is fine with that, if it means less orphans in the world.
Sometimes she laughs.
It's a quiet sound, hushed and frayed, but it's sincere, and precious to them both.
Usually it's Alfred who draws it out, with dry tones and sharp words. Often directed at Bruce himself, when he forgets to eat, or sleeps to little, or comes home from a night he pushed too hard.
They soon gave up on sending Barbara away when this happened. She doesn't flinch from the blood or wince at the wounds. Eventually, Alfred accepts her help in mending them.
Sometimes she'll look at him, with sweat on her brow and blood on her hands, and nod.
Approval and understanding have never touched him quite so deeply.
She's been reluctant to open her family's belongings, to rummage through the bits and pieces of their shattered life. Everything has been carefully boxed, set aside in one of the many rooms of the manor, and though her steps always slow by the door she never steps inside.
Until now.
Now she lets herself weep as she handles jewellery and pipes and toys, glimmering scarves and worn watches and tiny shoes. Her hands trace the buttons of her father's old coat, battered but tough, that he refused to ever throw away; the wildflowers springing from her mother's brightest hat; the stitches sewing together torn tigers and bears and monkeys.
She takes her mother's favourite necklace, a simple black string bearing an aquamarine pendant, and clasps it around her neck. She takes her father's favourite watch, one of dull steel and frozen hands, and slips it onto her wrist. She takes her brother's favourite toy, a stuffed purple dragon, and holds it close to her chest.
Then she stands, and turns, and Bruce is there, with that sad smile and silent sympathy and she collapses, sobbing, into his arms.
She's fifteen when she presents the suit to him, determined and proud.
It's designed well, meticulously crafted and skilfully engineered. A golden bat gleams from her chest, matching her utility belt. She has no cape, but bat wings; wings that will glide through the stars. Set in the cowl are shining goggles, and draping down from it are sleek black strands.
He studies her for a time. He knew this day would come, and he hadn't done much to discourage it, much to Alfred's dismay. "And what are you supposed to be?"
Her lips curve beneath the cowl, one of her sharp little smiles.
"Batgirl, of course."