"But you'll feel better when you wake up
Swear to god I'll make up
Everything and more when I get back someday
This is more than just a phase, love
Shooting stars all break up
And even though it seems like half the world away"

EDEN, "Wake Up"


The first thing Barbara did when she woke up, the same thing she'd done every day since she and Dick got together, was reach for him. She stretched her hand across the sheets, warm and dripping sunbeams, and feel for the planes of his back. She searched for the dip between his shoulders, the way his muscles dented his skin, and the soft curls at the back of his neck that he could never comb straight.

But today, when she felt nothing but fabric next to her, she flinched awake. She knocked her glasses onto the floor when she scrambled for them, and almost fell from the bed reaching. She put them out, the world clarifying as she checked the entire bed. Her breath came faster, and she pinched herself hard on the arm. The understanding that she wasn't dreaming drowned her, and her voice sounded small to her own ears as she called out to the Clocktower.

"Dick, where are you?"

And her sigh was louder when she got a reply from the kitchen.

"Barbara?" His head leaned back into view down the hallway, a shock of black hair over his pale forehead. There was a clatter as he put something down, and jogged back to the bedroom.

She buried her face in the pillows a second too late when he asked, "Hey, are you alright?"

Barbara tried everything, biting her lip and the inside of her cheek, even her tongue. The tears came anyway, and she sucked in a breath. "I-It's nothing. It's fine. I'm okay."

Tim trusted her word. He hadn't been around long enough to understand not to when it came to questions like "are you okay?". Dick had been around from the beginning. He knew better.

His fingers held her hair back to kiss her temple. "Can't lie to me, Babs. Never could."

She finally lifted her head, and dragged her freckled forearm across her eyes. "I shouldn't...freak out like that, but...I woke up. And you were gone, and I thought…"

She didn't have to look at him. It was all over his voice, the furrowed brow and the frown. "You thought what? That I'd left you?"

Barbara turned her face, just the smallest amount so he could see younger eyes out of the red, scrubbed skin around them. She didn't answer him.

It felt like when she was sixteen, him fifteen and shorter than her, and she had sprained her wrist knocking a criminal outcold. She'd only been there three months, in the Batgirl costume and giving both he and Bruce a run for their money. He had asked if she wanted ice, and she didn't answer him. She held her arm and let the breeze blow past their capes, before she told him to mind his own business.

He hadn't, and she never forgave him for it, or forgot it. She could feel the ice against her wrist, the gentle pressure, but never felt the cold. She was too busy looking at him. Now, he took the same wrist, and pressed her palm against his cheek.

"Kori's still in Bludhaven, last I heard," Was all she said, barely above a whisper.

Dick shook his head under her hand. He'd avoided talking about Starfire from the moment he showed up at her door a few days back, and she had thought it was because it hurt. Now, she knew it was because there wasn't much to say. "Garfield shot me a text this morning, said that Kori left the condo...to go where, I don't know. The fight we had before she kicked me out wasn't really a fight more than a realization. She knew. The entire time."

"Knew what?"

"How I feel about you," He closed his eyes, and gathered her against him, laid back on the bed with her folded to his side. She listened to his heartbeat, and felt the vibration of his skin as he spoke, "...What I felt for her was serious, sure. We care about each other, and probably won't ever stop, in some way. But what I feel for you, Barb...it's been there years, since we were stupid kids in capes…"

"Really stupid kids in capes." She agreed, her smile tucked into his chest like a lovenote. He ran his fingertips up and down her spine, and he never went beyond the point she couldn't feel his touch. After a moment, he settled to cradle her head in that hand, her hair spread on him.

"Remember when I found you in the chapel after the gala?" His voice was so soft and his warm breath fell down her neck in a wave. "...And you asked me when the last time I prayed was? I lied...I told you it was after Jason, and though I did pray for him, it wasn't the last time...I…"

"Dick, tell me," She propped herself on her elbow, dug into the mattress by his shoulder. His blue eyes were shining, and he bit his lip, that unsure way that he never escaped when he hit sixteen.

"It was after you," He said, and kept her gaze as she paled. "I went to see you, right after I returned from space with the Titans. As soon as I touched the ground, I was running for you. It was like I'd been shot too, it hurt so bad when I saw you...You were still asleep, but breathing heavy and like you were in a nightmare. I sat by you that night...all night, and held your hand," He took her hand again, and kissed her fingers, "...I prayed all night into you, prayed that you'd be okay."

"Dick…"

"Kori demanded to know why now, why I chose now to tell her about kissing you instead of telling her a year ago," Dick said, and he shifted to touch his forehead to hers. "I told her about that night I stayed by your side, prayed and listened to you sleep, and knew that someone else was going to take you home, take care of you. I told her that I cared for her, as much as I could while still loving you. I told her that I never meant to hurt her or you, but if I'm to be an honest man, I should own up to everything."

Barbara let go of a sigh and bowed her head. His fingers bent under her chin and led her mouth to his. She didn't cry often, but she refused to fight them anymore, not when he was smiling into the kiss, tugged her in tighter.

"I hate you," She whispered into his lips, something she told him a thousand times when they were stupid kids in capes. Dick swept her frozen legs over his lap and kissed her.

And he replied in turn, swiping her tears away. "No, you don't."


I hated doing this, but when the pain was about the nicest thing I've felt all week, I didn't mind so much. I put a stool in front of the mirror, got out the whiskey and the pens, and started about straightening my nose, still in my armor from night shift.

I stuck the stiffest pen up my nose, my eyes watering with the aftershocks radiating down my sinus. Roy watched from the door, styrofoam cup of ramen in his hands. He slurped his noodles as I made the first adjustment, pulling the pen out of my face.

"There a reason why you're watching me do this?" I wiped the snot off the pen, and lined up a clean one with my nose, seeing where the next one needed to be done.

"You're not handling it well, are you?"

I glared at him, and returned to the mirror. My fingertips tested the ginger skin around the re-broken bones. "Handling what well? Having my nose bashed in for the zillionth time by freakin' Deadshot?"

Roy laughed, had another mouthful of ramen. "You know what I'm talking about. You just don't wanna talk about it...Seeing Joker the same week Gail comes back. Whole hurricane of emotions just hittin' you at once."

"You charge by the hour there, counsellor?" I mumbled, inching the pen up my nose before I held my breath and jerked it to the side. A loud crack sent shockwaves up and down my face. I tossed the cap off the whiskey and drank until I needed air. "Fuck…"

He sighed, and set his ramen on the counter. He spun me around to face him, and after a second of pushing my hands away, pushed his thumbs on either side of my nose. "Thing is, Joker's a fixed grief. You can put him to rest with your own two hands and make sure he doesn't come back. You do it yourself."

Trauma aside, he was mostly right. If I did it, Joker stayed dead. It'd be permanent, and with him in the ground, all would be right with the world. I hissed as he pushed on a sharper bone. "Okay. Yeah. So?"

"Gail's different. You can't do much to stop how you feel about her, and there isn't any use denying it because I've been texting her."

I leaned back out of his hands and stared at him. "You've been texting her?"

"I'm not your housewife, but I am basically your home nurse," Roy said, and checked my nose for straightness, tilted my head to see up. "I'm your go-between with everybody else, pretty much. Since you went to see Talia."

"Gonna dress up for me? Little flouncy skirt and heels, stethoscope, sponge baths and chicken soup?" I smirked, and he rolled his eyes.

"You ain't that lucky, Todd." He adjusted another bone with a sharp crack that had me tensed all over, my nails digging into my thigh. "And don't change the subject. Yeah, I've been texting Gail and she told me everything you aren't saying. How you guys used to be."

"What'd she tell you?" I tried not to let it show in my voice how much I wanted the answer, but it was his turn to smirk. I squeezed my eyes tight as he straightened more bones.

"You guys were thick as thieves," Roy said. "She didn't tell me a lot, to be honest with you, but what she did tell me…" He whistled. "Never took you for the slowdancing type."

My cheeks were traitorous bastards, and when he finished off my nose, about as straight as it was going to get, I stood up and turned away from him. "It was a long time ago."

"It was a year ago. Not exactly a long time." He washed off his hands and picked his ramen back up. I tore off my armor, and peeled off my undershirt, sighing as cool air hit my bare chest.

"A year can be a decade if you forget about the clock." I rubbed my thumb over a whipping scar on my arm, fought a shiver. I moved past him, and he followed me into my room. The tank top felt normal, but somehow, talking about her made me tense about leaving my neck exposed. The ghosts of her hands ran up and down my back. "She isn't the kind of girl you just...get over."

Roy's eyebrows lifted, and he chewed noodles, pointing his fork at me. "So she and you were…?"

"Not together. We were just friends."

He twirled his noodles around his fork, slow and pensive. "Good friends? Friendly friends?" His grin was getting bigger and bigger, and I reached into the fridge for water, mostly to cool off my face. "Friends with ben-"

"-just friends, Harper."

I straightened and screwed off the top of the water bottle before chugging half of it. He grinned into his cup as he drank the broth. "Uh-huh."

"...Well."

"Well what?"

"I didn't wanna be friends…" I sipped my water, and the corners of my mouth were tugging. "I, uh…"

"Yes?" I could tell he was about to explode.

"It started innocent, just helping each other out and we became friends, covered for each other, that kind of thing," It was sweet, looking back on it like a storybook. My toes worried at a crease in the floor, and my gaze wandered to the patch of floor where we had slowdanced together, where I had kissed her neck. "And then it just...blew up into something we couldn't pack back together. For a while there, we were okay with that. We didn't touch it, really, but...we thought about it."

Roy was quiet when he said, "She told me you guys were pretty much inseparable."

"Yeah...we were."

"Why didn't you guys get together?"

"I think it's a bit like how you put it earlier…" I met his eyes as I passed him, "I wouldn't have handled it well. I would've been the death of her, and she would've been the death of me." I paused by the door, and looked at him. "...And the sad part is? I think we were okay with that."


Most wouldn't have heard her footsteps two floors down in the beachside cottage, but he heard everything, even in the deepest of sleep. His eyes opened and while they adjusted to the darkness, Bruce let his memory guide him to the door of his bedroom. He pressed his ear to the crack in the door, tuned out the waves crashing into the shore outside his window.

Her feet were light, but too light. He didn't know who it was yet, who had found him. There were thirteen steps from his bedroom door to the staircase, where he estimated her to be now. That is, if he were her target. He turned his doorknob, the click loud in the near-silence.

Bruce sprang from the bedroom, and someone leapt for him in return, a small fist nailing his jaw. He spun on his heel, rammed her into the wall behind him. A grunt embedded into his side, and she kneed him there, hard, before she smacked him in the mouth.

The crown of his head impacted the wall, arrows of pain ricocheting in his head. Nails raked down his chest, and weird nostalgia raced down his spine as the scratches ran over old scars. He seized her wrist and tugged her close, before he lifted her off her feet and slammed her onto the floor. She wheezed out a breath. "S-Son of a…"

And then the heel of her hand jammed into his chin, forced him to bite on his tongue. The hand he had in her hair to control her head pulled. They struggled for a better position, her legs over his and his arms weaving around hers. Bodies rolled over each other until his back met the window at the end of the hall, and as she planted herself on his lap, pushed his shoulders to the wall, he finally caught her face. Moonlight gleamed off her green eyes and the familiar scars over her cheek, eyebrow, and the side of her lip turned the gears in his mind until they locked.

"Selina?" He tried to sit taller, but she held him down.

"Careful," Her mouth spread into a Cheshire's grin. "I think I chipped a nail back there."