Chapter 25 – Barbara

Babs was sitting in a chair in the hallway outside room 215 of the Gotham City Medical Center. It had been hours since Jason had lost consciousness and been admitted to the hospital. The doctors had already set and cast his broken arm and tended to every cut and bruise he had, but Jason still had yet to wake.

When he finally did, Clark was on watch-duty, and he sat in there through the nurses checking up on him and explaining his injuries. He'd fallen hard on his arm. Apparently when Ra's threw him at that desk it had twisted under him and he'd landed on it. His elbow had dislocated, and the bones of his forearm had shifted backwards and chipped of the tip of his humerus. That chipped off piece of bone had been floating around in there somewhere. The docs had planned to operate in order to put him back together, but luckily one managed to pop all the bones back in place so it wasn't necessary.

The cast was red. Clark said he liked that color.

Somebody needed to go in there after Clark. Well, technically nobody needed to sit with Jason, but everybody felt like it was the right thing to do. Nobody liked being alone in hospitals, and Jason had risked a lot for the Wayne family. It was supposed to be Bruce's turn, but when Babs looked over at him she saw the bags under his eyes and the heavy look on his face, she exchanged a look with Clark and nodded before standing up to go in. "Take him home," she told Clark as she passed him. "He needs some sleep." It was, after all, 10 a.m. and nobody had gotten a wink of sleep since the day before.

Clark nodded and went to Bruce, and Babs entered the hospital room of Jason Todd. She was surprised to find that not only was he awake, but he was also sitting up in bed, running his free hand over the grooves in the cast on his left arm. "Can't sleep?" she asked. She snorted when he shook his head. "Makes sense, considering you've been sleeping for over 12 hours now."

Jason smiled sheepishly. "So they told me. They also told me about my arm. Wicked, huh?"

"That's one way of describing it," she said with a small smile. "It's quite a creative injury. I don't think I've ever met anyone before who broke their arm that way."

"The forearm breaking the humerus or being thrown into a desk?" Babs rolled her eyes. Jason snickered.

"They tell you how we found you?"

Jason immediately sobered and nodded. "Unconscious with my pants around my thighs."

"You've got quite the package down there." Jason jerked his head up to stare at her with wide eyes. She smirked. Score: 1-0. "Don't worry," she said. "I'm ace." Not that she thought that probably made much of a difference to somebody who had lived Jason's life. When he looked a little confused she sighed. "That means not interested."

Now it was Jason's turn to roll his eyes. "I know what it means. I was confused because Dick was your boyfriend for two years."

"Ace people date, you idiot. We just aren't interested in getting it on with the junk in your trunk." Jason opened his mouth to reply but then snapped it shut. She chuckled. "If it's any consolation, Dick is not asexual, so I suppose I can understand the confusion. That's one of the reasons we broke up, and why I was okay with it." Jason nodded his understanding. "The other reason was because he's hella gay for his best friend."

Jason laughed. He had a good laugh. No wonder Tim liked this one.

When Jason had stopped laughing he was somber again. "They told me my pants were down. They didn't tell me how far Ra's got."

Babs pulled the chair away from the wall and up next to Jason's bed. She plopped down on it, kicked off her heals, and put her feet up on Jason's bed. "Relax, kid. Ra's didn't get close enough to touch your ass, much less fuck it." Jason nodded and reached for a cup of water. She continued talking as he took a drink. "Though his pants were down when Bruce roundhouse kicked him in the face."

He choked on the water and spat it back into the cup. New score: 2-0, her favor.

He coughed a couple times and regained the ability to breathe. He looked at her with a smile on his face. "Are you serious?"

She nodded. "It was the most badass thing I've ever seen. There Ra's was, ready to put his boner up your ass, when Bruce stomped in and roundhoused him. Poor Mr. Al Ghul was unable to maintain his balance thanks to the pants around his ankles, and he promptly fell to the ground on his face, his nose spewing blood all over his nice wooden floor. Then Bruce stood straight up, all broad and buff, and said, 'Don't ever touch my son's boyfriend, you bastard.'" She lowered the pitch of her voice as much as she could to imitate Bruce's deep voice, but the attempt was more comical than accurate.

Jason cracked up. "Oh, I wish I had been there!" he said through his laughter.

She smirked again. "You were. You were just unconscious." When Jason just kept laughing instead of getting offended, Babs decided she liked this kid. She liked him a lot. "But let me tell you, kid, if life were a movie, that scene would have made cinematic history."

He shook his head. "I'm glad it's not movie, or else my ass would have been on TV." They both chuckled at that. "So," he continued, "other than Bruce kicking Ra's in the face, what happened after I lost consciousness?"

"Well," Babs said, "my team and I stormed the place. We probably got in there just seconds after you blacked out. My team arrested Ra's' henchmen, but I personally saw to Ra's. I pulled him up off the ground, gave him two seconds to pull up his pants, and then cuffed him and read him his rights. The asshole had a broken nose, but once that was tended to, he went straight to a cell. Bruce called an ambulance and they took you straight to the hospital."

After a minute of contemplation, Jason nodded. "Did my plan work?"

Babs gave him a smile, the first true smile he'd probably ever seen from her. "Yeah. Yeah, it worked. The recorded phone call and your injuries gave us the proof we needed to get a warrant to search his house. The judge wasn't happy about getting a call after hours, but we got the warrant. I spent all night digging through his computer. I only came to the hospital to tell Bruce what we found in person."

Jason opened his mouth to speak but hesitated for a moment. "What did you find?"

Babs cocked her head to the side, wondering how much she should tell him - and how much she could tell him legally. Then she decided that she didn't care what she could tell him legally because he deserved to know everything, considering what he'd suffered at Ra's' hands, and she knew no one would ever know how much she'd told him anyway.

"Years ago, around when Damian was born, Bruce and Talia got a divorce. After that, the two fought for custody. It took years, and no one actually ever won the court battle because Talia died in a car accident when Damian was two. Bruce had more money and better lawyers, but Talia was a woman, and the general consensus with these kinds of things is that children belong with their mother unless the mother can't provide or won't treat them right.

"Talia died just before Damian's third birthday, when the court probably would have just awarded her custody because she'd already had him for his whole life so why change it? But evidence was found that the vehicle might have been tampered with, and it made sense to a lot of people that Bruce might have arranged the accident to kill Talia so that he would get custody. Ra's accused him of just that and sued for not only the loss of his daughter but also for custody of his grandson.

"The police searched Bruce's home, his office at the university, his phone records - anything they could get their hands on, and they found nothing. My father was still commissioner at the time, and Ra's and everyone who supported him said that my father's friendship with Bruce was the reason they didn't find anything. It was a long court battle, and Ra's even got close to a conviction once, but then he messed up.

"Somebody caught him... disciplining Damian, and let's just say it was harsh enough to be called child abuse. This allowed Bruce to win custody, because he already had years under his belt of raising Dick, Stephanie, Cassandra, and Tim, and nobody had ever had anything but praise for his parenting. So Bruce got sole custody and nobody heard from Ra's Al Ghul for years." Babs grinned. "Until you applied to GCU and Ra's wrote your recommendation letter, of course."

Jason whistled. "Did they ever figure out who tampered with Talia's vehicle?"

"Actually, that's what I found on Ra's' computer." Jason's head snapped up to look at her from where he'd been playing with his cast. His eyes were wide as she nodded to affirm the suspicion she could clearly see playing on his features. "Ra's Al Ghul arranged his own daughter's death in order to win custody of Damian. He was sure she was going to lose soon, so he killed her to keep Bruce from winning and to put himself in the race."

Jason shook his head, unable to believe it. "No way. Who kills their own daughter to get custody of their grandson? I knew he wasn't a good guy, but he can't have been that bad." He swallowed. "Can he?"

Babs nodded and sighed. "He can. I found documents of everything. Ra's was meticulous, from hiring the guys who did it to giving them instructions to paying them. It's all there, including a copy of an email in which Ra's went on a very long-winded rant about how he deserved to have a son after all those years of waiting."

Jason exhaled and ran a hand through his hair. He didn't say anything else, so the two sat in silence for a bit. At some point a nurse came in to tell Jason that they wanted to keep him for observation for another 24 hours because of his concussion, but that after that he should be free to go. They sat there for another good two hours before Dick showed up to replace her so she could at least get a half-day at work. She figured that if she had to, she could get away with calling her time at the hospital 'interviewing a witness,' but she didn't think she really would need to.

When she got up to leave and meet Dick in the hallway, Jason said, "Thank you, Barbara. For everything."

She opened the door and looked over her should at him. "Call me Babs," she said, and then she walked out of the room. Hopefully he was smart enough to know that 'Call me Babs' was her way of saying 'Welcome to the family.'

Dick met her in the hallway and gave her a very, very large cup of black coffee, just what she needed to stay awake for the rest of the day. "So," he said, "how'd it go?"

She nodded. "Good. Hopefully Tim will come soon."

Dick sighed. "He hasn't left his room since yesterday. He spent all night with the door locked and his light on, doing God knows what."

"Well," she replied, giving Dick a meaningful look, "hopefully he won't be dumb like you and take forever to sort out his feelings."

Dick rolled his eyes. "Will that ever go away?"

Babs smirked. "Will Tim spilling his coffee on Jason ever go away?"

Dick's shoulders sagged and he stared at the floor with a forlorn expression on his face. "No..."

Babs laughed. Even after all these years and all they'd been through, Dick was still her best friend, and the only one who could ever make her laugh that way. "Have fun on watch duty," she said. Then she walked away, a small smile still gracing her lips.

Barbara Gordon took a big gulp of scalding coffee. Today was going to be a very long day.

A/N Fun story: I broke my arm the same way Jason did when I was in elementary school. For some reason, I can never have normal injuries, and I never get them in normal ways.

So, guys, there are only two chapters left! This is the first real long fic I've ever written, and it means so much to have gotten so much positive feedback (and feedback in general, really). You know how the deal-eo with Ra's ends, but what about Tim and Jason? Will they get a happily ever after? Is something like that even in the cards for someone like Jason?

You'll find out tomorrow…