A small note on the songs I will be choosing for the titles of future chapters. These are songs I believe Jason would relate to, listen to, or otherwise. They're all wonderful, I highly recommend looking them up. But anywhom, I hope you all enjoy this. It's a little interlude into the heavy material of the next number of chapters. Feel free to review, it helps a lot.
Best,
GP
"Hand of fate is moving and the finger points to you
He knocks you to your feet and so what are you gonna do
Your tongue has frozen now you've got something to say
The piper at the gates of dawn is calling you his way
You watch the world exploding every single night
Dancing in the sun a newborn in the light
Say goodbye to gravity and say goodbye to death
Hello to eternity and live for every breath"
- Iron Maiden, "The Wicker Man"
ORACLE'S CLOCK TOWER - MIDNIGHT
Some criminals blackmail their adversaries with business. Guys like the Penguin can make a rich man flat broke with a single deal. Some do it the old-fashioned way. Two-Face can rob a bank blind so fast, they'll see double for weeks. Knowing him, he'd have it no other way. When I was Arkham Knight, going to the crook conventions with Scarecrow was no better way to see the enemy up close. My enemy. My mission. My targets.
But when you use these skills on your friends, it's best to do it in plain sight. With simplicity, above all. Push your pawn forward on the board first, and not second. The best defense is a good offense. I learned this from the best. My weapon of choice? Funny you should ask.
I stood the dinner stand beside her with one hand, and with the other, set down the bowl with the cookie dough ice cream sundae. Barbara's sky blue eyes went from me to the ice cream slowly, her hands withdrawing from the keyboard. The screens on all sides of her were nearly forgotten as she looked from me to the bowl, shifting the ice cream around with her spoon at first. She pursed her lips.
"Okay, Jason. What do you need?"
"What?" I asked in mock hurt, putting a hand over my heart as if offended. "I can't make a sundae for my favorite girl?"
"You put chocolate on it." There was no hiding from her, was there? And that's why she's the best of us. "And bananas."
"Sue me." I shrugged off my leather jacket, and grabbed one of the fold-up chairs she kept by the lift. Sitting beside her, I threw my jacket over the back of it and got comfy. "I admit it. There is some bribery involved."
"And the truth comes out," Barbara joked, before scooped her first spoonful into her mouth. "Well? What do you need? Before I finish devouring your blackmail."
I smoothed out the creases on my jeans, feeling the calluses on the heels of my hands. I leaned forward, my forearms pressed against my knees. I prefaced with the crucial part of this transaction, "None of this goes to Dick or your lover Boy Wonder."
"Tim," She corrected, as she had done many times.
The lady doth protest, and all that. I've seen the way they steal glances at each other when they think no one can see them. Barbara explained it to me that they had put the mission before what they felt. I made the point that the mission doesn't mean you ignore any chance at a normal life that comes your way. Sure, I know; that was great advice coming from someone who needed to take it to heart himself.
"I need everything you know about Carmine Falcone and his operation, including a list of known affiliates." I gauged her face as I spoke, and she maintained that cool calm. She heaped more ice cream onto her spoon with one hand and used the other to dedicate the screen to her left to my request. I saw her pull up the list from the BatComputer database, a visual of Carmine and many others I recognized next to certain names from the list.
His son Alberto, his daughters Kitrina and Sofia...there was an asterisk beside a third slot with Selina Kyle written next to it. Catwoman was illegitimate, maybe? I ignored that and moved down the list. I stood up, studying it. There was Sherman Fine. Scarecrow had gotten the materials he needed from Falcone to perfect his toxin through a Sherman Fine, codename The Broker. And then there was Calendar Man...
"Mind if I ask why you need info on Falcone?" She sounded worried.
I crossed my arms, squinting at the list. "Don't. Not until I know what's going on."
"Would this have anything to do with that hostage situation today?"
"It does," I said sternly over my shoulder, "But I'll tell you when I figure it out."
Her hand was on the back of my elbow, urgent and warm. Her voice was soft, gentle. Cautious. "Jason, I hate to bring this up, but those were your exact words before you ran off after Joker…And I refuse to stand by while you jump into danger twice without telling anyone. Let me help you."
My gut clenched and I gritted my teeth so hard my jaw ached. I squeezed my eyes shut. I should be telling her everything. She was perhaps the only person left in Gotham who has a clue about how I felt, my pain, my rage. I was about to pry apart my teeth to say something - anything. A comforting few words that I wasn't like that anymore, that I knew what I was doing now. But I knew it was only a half-truth. I had my bad days and touchy subjects. We all did. I was about to tell her when a beeping alerted to a comm signal coming in. Her hand left my arm. I didn't turn around. I knew who it was.
"Oracle, need you to get an officer over to Chinatown. On the front steps of the bank. There's a present there awaiting jail time."
"You got it, Tim," Barbara's voice held a smile in it.
"Who's that behind you?"
"Oh, Jason stopped by," She said, and I felt her eyes on my back. I waved a hand, keeping my eyes locked onto the list on the screen in front of me.
"Barbara." The single word had a note of scolding into it. Like Barbara had been stupid to let me in.
"To be honest with you, Robin," I crammed as much sarcasm into my voice as possible. "Kidnapping Barbara is really 'been there, done that' at this point. Besides, she pepper-sprayed the driver and wrecked the car last time I tried so I'm over it."
"That's not what I-"
Barbara cut him off as a notification showed up on the top right corner of my screen. I watched her cursor pull it to the display in front of her, out of my view. "Hold on - there's a distress call over police radio near your location, Tim. In the Cauldron." I heard her tapping on the screen behind me. "The security cameras are showing a group of eleven thugs wearing Penguin's insignia closing in on Detective Bullock. He's pinned down, hurry."
"On it. Be careful."
"You be careful," I said, before the comm link shut off. I turned around, seeing Barbara's glare and the half-eaten bowl of ice cream on the stand.
"He's trying, you know," She pointed out, "Not everyone is as understanding as Dick or me. To him...he sees you as the bad guy still. When Bruce and Tim thought I was dead...while Bruce held Scarecrow responsible, Tim held you responsible…"
"Barb, I hated what I did to you," I lowered my voice so it wouldn't crack. The guilt twisted my stomach as I spoke. "Above everything I did six months ago...doing what I could to try to kill Bruce, sieging Gotham, holding your dad hostage...Above all, I hated what I did to you. Because you didn't deserve one bit of it." I sat back down next to her, stared her hard in the eye. "And I know that when I showed myself to you back in that compound...and while I was yelling at you...You were only trying to help me."
"Jason, I told you," She brought a hand to my face, directing my gaze to hers, offered me a smile. She ran her thumb over my cheekbone, over the brand but didn't pay it any attention. Like it didn't matter and that meant the world to me. "I forgave you. Crane could have done anything to me...but you protected me in there. You guarded me."
I couldn't help but smile back. Here she was. After I did everything I could have possibly done wrong to her, here she was. She's the closest thing to a best friend or a sister I had. I'll always guard you, Barb. "As if you needed protection."
She laughed. "There are some obstacles that I will always need help with, Jay. Like stairs."
"I'll carry you, no problem."
Barbara looked at the floor for a couple of seconds and then said as if she were proposing a business deal, "Listen...if you won't tell me about Falcone yet, I'd like to ask about something else."
"Like what?" I asked, and I eyed her warily.
"The girl who took you in. The one that doesn't exist on records." She said, measuring every word. "Tell me about her."
She didn't talk about it like it was a bad thing, something which Tim had spent nearly every conversation with me trying to prove. But still, when I let my thoughts drift, they went to what Abigail said. How much longer can a person live disguising loneliness with cruelty? Sometimes I couldn't tell which I felt more, angry or lonely.
"What's to tell?" I replied, staring down at my hands as they picked at the scars on each other. "Educated, practical, decent taste in music...She did something I'm not sure I would've done in her position."
"There's that..." Barbara said pensively, pushing her bowl to me to finish, "Did she say why she saved you?"
"Yeah, she said it was because she agreed with me. She believed in me." I dug into the bowl, and did my best to keep my thoughts in the present. To talk about the past and not relive it. "She said she had reasons for that, but didn't tell me."
"Lots of people have reasons for wanting criminals to face justice. But there's a line between justice and revenge." Barbara sounded sad and I glanced to her, catching her blue eye. "I've got mine, you've got yours. But I like to think we've both learned to get past revenge."
Six months ago I would've told her to speak for herself. But some part of me is glad that's over. All that anger felt like flickering between fire and pain.
"Abigail Byron," She said, and hearing that name made the healing gash in my neck itch. "You know, you told me you weren't going to see her again...But maybe when we learn something about where that card came from...The Joker card, I mean."
"Barbara." My tone was a warning.
"It's just a suggestion. I know you don't plan to see her again, and I know you think you'd put her in danger if you did." She paused, taking a deep breath before she continued, "...but it's the same thing as when I met Batman. Bruce knew I'd be in danger if I helped him, but that was a risk I wanted to take because I understood the mission. It's the mission my dad fought for. It's the mission that I've fought for all my life, even when I didn't know it. And from what she said to you, Jason," The typing beside me stopped, and I looked at her. "I think she just might understand."
If she kept this up, she might almost be as good at lecturing me as Bruce and Alfred. But I appreciated her doing it. If anyone, I'd rather it be Babs. She had a point, though. I didn't want to say so, but she had a point. I finished off the ice cream, commenting lightly, "You know, I thought you'd be first in line to tell me to stay away from her. A girl who doesn't exist throws up a lot of red flags."
"And I thought you'd be first in line to tell me to forget about Tim," She bantered, taking her glasses off and cleaning them with the edge of her Twisted Sister t-shirt I knew she got from Tim.
"Pfft," A release of nervous energy and air through my lips. "I'm not blind, Barb. He may be a holier-than-thou, irritating little shit, but you deserve someone who'll be good to you. Tim's good to you. So I won't have to get medieval on him for that, at least." I got up from my seat, stretching out my arms and yawning. "What time is it?"
"Nearly one-thirty." She replied, "I'll let you know if Robin needs help. And Jason?"
"Yeah?" I had one arm in my jacket.
"Think about what I said, alright? The info on Falcone's been sent to your computer."
I yawned again; probably going to need two cups of coffee when I got back to my safe house. I scratched the nape of my neck on my way to the lift, standing to face her once inside. She peered over her shoulder at me. "Be careful."
I shot her a salute and a grin that I'd used on several occasions while choking out a two-bit thug. "Time to punch in."
Abigail Byron slammed the door behind him so hard that the glass on the cabinets rattled, a noise of pure frustration escaping her. She rested her forehead against the cool door, and focused on her breathing. But a raw pool of rage bubbled in her stomach and she found herself hyperventilating again before long. Her face was red, and her throat was hoarse from shouting. She stared down at the gun in her hand, and then hurried to her bookshelf. Shoving the gun back on top of the books on her lowest row, her chest heaved up and down in exasperation and fear of what she had just done.
"Damn you, damn you, damn you," She ranted, storming to her purse where it hung on the coat rack by the door. She jammed her hand inside and pulled out her inhaler. While she shook it like she was wringing a neck, she exhaled as steadily as she could, but still had a few hitches. She administered the treatment, breathing in sharply as it sprayed. She held her breath, but hot tears threatened at her eyes. Abigail couldn't remember the last time she had been this riled up, this angry, this outright offended.
How dare he come here and make demands of her? Had he not taken enough the first time he'd screwed her over? Or the second? Or how about the third? She should be the person he spent the rest of his life making everything up to, the person he held onto, not the one he blackmailed because he had a wishbone where his backbone should be.
She took the inhaler with her, going into the guest bedroom of her apartment that she'd remodeled into a library. It was an expansion of the collection of books, vinyl records and graphic novels she had in the sitting room, and it was her pride and joy. This place, more than any other, would be where she was most likely to calm down.
Plucking the book she needed from the shelf closest to the door, Abigail collapsed onto the armchair, her legs thrown over one arm and her back against the other arm. She pushed her bangs out of her face, and held the beat-up copy of Alice in Wonderland to her heart. This particular book was the one her mother taught her to read with. She fixed the torn bindings herself with duct tape and both covers had been reinforced with craft paper, the title re-written several times on the front where it had rubbed off. When she thought about safety, about the concept of home - she thought of this book. Because it was all she had left of her mother.
"Mom, I need your help," She said to the book, closing her eyes and imagining her mother's reassuring smile, a mirror of it on her golden G.C.P.D. badge. How her mom's hand always twitched towards the gun at her hip whenever she saw her daughter cry, ever the guardian of her family. "He came by again today...asked for me to hand him someone I saved. I did a good thing for someone, and he wants me to betray that someone so I'll be safe."
Abigail curled up into a ball in the chair. "I pulled a gun on him, Mom. I pulled your gun on him. And I'm not sorry. Why am I not sorry…? Because I couldn't save you and he's one of the three people I could kill to make myself feel better about it?" She clutched the book even tighter, as if it were a conduit to the grave she still drove to on Sundays. "The sad part is I'm related to two of those people. How's that for cruel irony, huh Mom?"
She was calming down now, which was a sign that this was exactly what she needed. Talking to nobody in her apartment always calmed her down, though Abigail often mused about what that said about her mental state. "I study morality, and there isn't any in this situation. None whatsoever. How do you keep a clear conscience when there's filth around every corner? What do I do, Mom?" She sighed, allowing the first tear to fall but no more. "If I do as he asks, I rob this city of a justice it hasn't seen since Batman. A justice it desperately needs...And if I don't...I risk death at the hands of the man who took you away from me."
Abigail loosened her grip on the book and her fingertips ached. "Even if the guy I saved was rude to me, I am no executioner. I could not live with myself...But how do you hide from the Devil once you spit in his face?"
"Mom, do you remember that rhyme you taught me when I was nine? The one with the days of the week and where all of the days had brightness except for Wednesday?" Her lips spread in a little smile, the scar on her lower lip held taut. "Wednesday's child is full of woe. You always told me it was because Wednesday was the most difficult, that Wednesday had challenges to overcome. You always told me I should try to meet those kinds of challenges head-on, and do what I think is right, no matter what."
Abigail set her jaw, and maneuvered out of the chair, standing once again. She gazed out of the open window, towards Wayne Tower. She had done this many times. "You told me that if I should place my faith in anything, it should be in the people that do protect this city even with all of its sins. Whether or not they are on the right side of the law." A gust of wind came through the curtains right in her face. She didn't know if it was some sort of sign, but she could allow herself some hope now and then. "I know, Mom. I know."
A silence filled the room. She knew that what she was doing was either really brave or really stupid. But she knew it was just. Her studies had proven to her what her mother had always said: that no matter how high the stakes are, you must do what is right because it is right. Not because you'll be loved for it. She smiled sadly.
"At least with this, the only one who can get hurt is me."
