Chp. Summary: When reeling in a catch, sometimes it's important to let out the line a little...
Notes: I tried to get this done earlier in the month but it just didn't happen. So I'm posting now because I have a free night, its still July where I am, and the weekend is shaping up to horrendous. I don't like the look of my diary and I'm the one that agreed to do it. :(
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CIRCLE II
BETWEEN THE CRACKS
3. Line
A nurse poked her head around the door. "Ms Gordon?"
"Yes?"
"You have some people here to see you."
People? That implied a plural and she was sure that she knew that many people on that personal a basis. The ones she did know were already here in the room, not... elsewhere, potentially waiting for her presence. "Did they... say who they were?"
The nurse's forehead wrinkled a little at the question. Or maybe in memory. "No. But they said to tell you it was about the phone thing."
Oh.
Oh.
Barbara nodded, forcing her expression to remain calm. She could do this – she was sure of it. "Where are they?" In other words, how public would the coming confrontation be?
The nurse smiled, probably used to these sorts of conversations. "I directed them towards the patients' lounge to wait for you there."
"And they're the only ones there?"
"When I left them, yes."
This is going to be wonderful, I can see it already. (Because sometimes it was the private confrontations that hurt the most.) She nodded politely. "Thanks. I'll meet them there right now."
She thought nothing of heading there immediately. She'd already made her excuses to Bruce (whether he'd heard them was something the doctors were debating, and they could do that just fine without her), and the sooner this matter was handled, the sooner she could be back where she belonged.
She paused for a moment outside the door to the lounge, not only to compose herself, but also to confirm her suspicions about who was within. It was just as she'd thought. The Titans. Not just any Titans, but the original ones. Arsenal (Roy Harper), Troia (Donna Troy), Flash (Wally West), and Tempest (Garth). They'd left New York and had come all the way here... for what? A confrontation over her phone conduct? Or something more?
(For that matter, how did they did know she was here? That Oracle was here?)
She pushed her way into the room (stupid non-disabled-friendly door), her glare strong and her expression glacial. Just the way she liked it. (Armored personality to overcome the weakness of her body.) She immediately fired the first salvo in what she was sure would be a battle over data, cutting right to the chase. "How did you find me?"
"C'mon, Barbara, its not that hard a deduction. How did the headlines go again?"
Wally grinned. "`Play Boy Philanthropist in Coma', I think. They were even kind enough to give us the hospital's address."
Oracle narrowed her eyes, both at the security breach – stupid journalist, stupid press release, just stupid, stupid, stupid – and at the cavalier attitude. "But how did you find me?"
Roy snorted and rolled his eyes. "Give us some credit. We go back far enough that it wasn't hard to figure out who was hiding behind the curtain." It also helped that they'd had Dick to explain a few things, but this wasn't the time for that discussion.
Of course. The one chink in her armor was always the one thing she could never fully eliminate – personal connections. Barbara forced herself to settle and breathe deeply. There was really no need to treat them as enemies; at least not until they'd proved themselves to be so. "Okay. I'll give you that. So why the elaborate ruse to meet me?"
Donna smiled gently. "To be fair, hon, you're not that easy to reach. It's not like we could look you up in a superhero directory or something."
She nodded. "Fair point." There were reasons she'd gone to great lengths to hide Oracle's identity.
"Actually," Garth spoke up, right on schedule, "speaking of looking up things, you might want to look at this." He handed her a phone with the (copied) tracking data they'd obtained.
She stared at the data on the screen in shock. "But that's—" That was the data she'd pulled up on her phone. Her Oracle phone. Identical data. It took long moments for her voice to work. "How did you—"
"How did we get that?" Roy asked for her, grinning lightly. He always liked this part. "Trade secret."
Oracle crossed her arms and glared, feeling off-balance and not liking it. At all. "I'm not going anywhere or doing anything until you tell me how you got that."
Roy and Donna exchanged looks and shrugs. It was the kind of quick wordless conversations people can have who know each other well, when they've fought side by side on numerous battlefields, and learned the hard way how to read someone at a glance. Donna finally sighed and stepped forward. "Before we tell you this, you have to understand that you'll be the sixth person alive to know this. In the entire world. We've guarded this secret with our lives, and some of us, well, they've had to take it beyond. What you do with it... will be up to you."
Oracle nodded slowly. "I... understand."
"We have our own 'voice behind the curtain'. We just call him Oz, not Oracle."
"Oz?" Barbara echoed, feeling more a little bewildered. Why hadn't she heard of this vigilante before? But then, if she was really only the sixth person to know (get the facts here Barbara, sixth person alive) (Because apparently some who knew had taken – in maybe all the really hard ways – this knowledge to their grave.) of this person's existence, was that really so strange?
"Yep. Oz," Roy nodded. "We figured it was appropriate," Roy smiled a little like it was a joke. (And, hell, the way this day was going, maybe it was.) "How do you think we manage to find out what we do without coming to you all the time?"
That was... a perfectly valid point, actually. The Titans hadn't been coming to her. Not for years. But that hadn't dulled their performance in the field. Far from it. If anything they were better than ever. (Perhaps even better than her and the JLA combined, a small part of her whispered, but she wasn't listening to that.) So whoever this Oz was, she had to at least admit to their existence, and some measure of information-gathering skill.
One thing was also clear: Oz was better than her in the crucial area of secrecy. It was to her great chagrin that Oracle was known to more than just the superhero world. It was the one problem with setting yourself up as an information hub: you then became known as an information hub, and not just by the people you wanted to know about it. (In some ways she envied Oz. She had moments when she wouldn't mind a quieter life.)
Barbara nodded finally. "Okay. Let's say, for the moment,that I believe you." Because she always reserved judgment until she had proof in her hands, and sometimes not even then. Because she was Oracle and was a master of faking it. (And also because she also understood the importance of confidences, and what it took to break them.) She squared her shoulders and looked around, meeting their gazes with her head high. "What now?"
Arsenal grinned at her a smile that was all teeth. "I think... we need to go hunting."
Elsewhere
"Has he talked yet?"
"No."
"Then don't stop until he does."
TBC
(Bear with me with the Titan thing... We're almost where we need to be.) :)