Remnants of the Past
By Michelle
Disclaimer- I don't own any of it. I'm not making any money off it. So please don't sue me.
Author's Notes- I started this several years ago. It's a "Birds of a Prey" fanfic, set during the Pilot. There was one line that really got to me and it inspired me to write this story. This is Barbara's thoughts, on her loss, on who she used to be. I hope you enjoy it!
Pairing- Dick/Barbara.
Summery- She wasn't ready to let go who she used to be.
Spoilers- "Pilot".
Rating- PG-13
"I guess I never really let go of who I was, before."
- Barbara, Pilot
She sat in front of her commuter at the clocktower, watching Helena and a part of her ached. A part of her would always hate sitting helpless in her chair, while someone else went and fought the bad guys. A part of her would always be Batgirl.
It was hard for her to let go of that. To stop wishing for what used to be. But she had to. Those days were gone. She could never go back.
Too much had changed for that.
Still, she sometimes dreamed about the way things had been before that night. She had been a different person. Everything had been different.
Sometimes she thought of the people who had been a part of her life then, but who had no part in her life now. People she had loved in those long ago days when she had been someone else entirely.
Selina.
In a strange way, they had been friends. Barbara had felt guilty keeping her secret from Bruce, but in the end, she had done it because she knew that Selina was right. The world in which they lived was no place for a child and there was no way that Bruce would have ever left it--Not then anyway.
Bruce.
She wondered where he was. Where he had run to. She missed him. He had been her mentor, never really her friend, but she had cared about him. In a weird way, they had been family.
Barbara knew that Helena had real issues with Bruce and she understood that, but for herself, she was just sad for him. Sad that Bruce had been as broken as he had been. His entire life had been shaped by one moment when he was a small boy and that had driven him to become more myth than reality.
She often wondered if Bruce Wayne had ever really existed after that night or if he had only ever really been Batman after that, even if it would be many years before he would don the cape. He had never really let himself show his emotions, but at the same time, despite himself, he had cared.
He hadn't been good at relationships and had pushed a lot of the people he had loved away to protect them and had ended up losing them. And for someone who took upon himself to protect an entire city, it was a harsh blow when he couldn't even protect the people he loved. And so in the end, he had just walked away from everything without a word.
Yet, Barbara knew that he was out there somewhere and she wondered where. She wondered if she would ever see him again. After seven years, she had almost accepted that the answer was no. But there was a part of her who still longed to open the door and see Bruce's face on the other side.
But he wasn't the only one she missed. God how she missed them all.
Especially her father. He would have been horrified of what the Gotham PD was like today. She saw the corruption and knew that her father must be turning in his grave. Not there weren't corrupt cops in his day, but there had been so many more good ones. And he had been such a good one. The best.
There were tears in her eyes as she thought of her father. Oh, how she missed him. Every day of her life she missed him and unlike Bruce, there was no chance of him ever coming back.
So many people would never come back.
Like Jason. Another casualty of their way of life.
Then, there were the ones who had left willingly.
Tim, who had just had too much and went his way. She missed him too. She kept in touch with him, sometimes, not very often. But enough to know that he was okay.
She was glad for him, glad that he had been able to find peace and happiness. She was glad that he had been able to leave, she knew she couldn't. Even though she was different now, she still couldn't walk way. Very few could.
Look at Dick. He had left Gotham. Had left Bruce and his rules. Had left her. But he couldn't leave the world. He had just found a new name, a new city.
They didn't talk. She knew that he was doing okay, because she heard things. But he wasn't part of her life, he hadn't been for a very long time.
She missed him, missed what they had. She had loved him, in the way she would never love another human being, but she knew that those days were gone. That emotion belonged to the person she would never be again.
A lot of time had passed, a lot had changed. The Barbara who had loved Dick was gone. Just like the Dick she had loved was gone. They had both changed too much to go back. But she thought of him often, remembered what he had meant to her, what they had meant to each other once upon time.
Dick, Bruce, Jason, Tim, Selina, her father they were all part of that other life. It wasn't just her legs that had been lost, or her mantle as Batgirl, but so much more.
A different life, a different time. It was because of the memories that she couldn't let go of who she had been before. Because, she wasn't ready to let go of the memories, of the people she had loved then, in that different life. They had left her life, but never her heart.
Maybe, she held onto the idea of Batgirl, because it was all she could do to hold onto the people she had loved.
But... Those days were gone. The people she loved were gone, either dead or just moved on with their lives, and her days as Batgirl were at an end. It was time to let go, to move on, and embrace her new life.
She wasn't Batgirl any longer, she was the Oracle.
The End