Chapter 20

Babs looked up hopefully as Dick and Bruce walked into the kitchen, and she let out a relieved breath at Dick's loose shoulders and Bruce's moderately neutral face.

"All good?" she asked, looking between the two of them and noticing Dick's red eyes. Bruce nodded but Dick actually smiled as he came over to her.

"Really good," he said quietly, bending down to hold her face and give her a soft kiss as he stroked his thumbs over her cheeks. He didn't pull away as fast as Babs thought he would and as her tummy fluttered, she thought how glad she was that her Robin could still give her shivers after all of these years. He saw the heat in her eyes when he finally broke the kiss and gave her a little wink, and Babs felt herself grinning like a lovestruck teenager.

Maybe their relationship would finally settle down into the easy partnership that Babs had first expected it to be, she thought to herself. She had never stopped longing for what she knew that they could achieve - the teamwork and cooperation and mutual respect and affection that they'd had so long ago as Batgirl and Robin. Those memories were what she clung to over the years on every long night that Dick had spent sulking in Bludhaven instead of sleeping in her bed where he belonged.

And now, when she saw the peace in his eyes that had been absent for so, so long, Barbara couldn't help but feel hopeful. Dick's eyes grew tender as he stroked some of her long red hair back from her face and bent to kiss her cheek.

"I love you," he whispered into her ear and she smiled.

"I love you, too," she said back to him softly, snaking her arms around him to tug him into a hug. She sighed as he held her, neither one of them letting go until Bruce cleared his throat loudly, but with a touch of amusement.

"We were going to have a game night," he said pointedly, but there was a little smile on his face as he looked at his eldest son making peace with his almost-wife. But Steph groaned.

"I'm not in the mood for games," she grumbled. Bruce started to frown but Harley caught his eye and shook her head a tiny bit.

"We could just eat our cakes," Tim suggested as he looked at Steph. She nodded but Damian frowned.

"I was promised competition," he said, folding his little arms across his chest and glaring first at Tim and then at Steph. "An attack can come when you least expect it, Stephanie Brown," he said severely. "Training when you do not feel like it will benefit your preparedness and may one day save your life."

"We were going to play Scattergories!" Steph protested. "That's hardly life or death training, Damian."

"Sharpening one's mind is a most necessary part of training," Damian scolded her. "And one that you could benefit greatly from, based on your report card," he added with a smirk, looking to his father triumphantly as Steph shot daggers at him out of her eyes.

Bruce sighed and started to look defeated. Goddamn parenting, he thought to himself with frustration. None of the kids sassed Bane like this and despite his lingering anger at his friend, Bruce found himself missing his one-time enemy. His absence hurt like a nagging toothache, although the pain felt surprisingly good. It meant that Bane was important to him. Well, more than important, Bruce mentally groaned.

How the hell did that even happen? he wondered to himself. He'd never thought that he was bisexual. It wasn't like he went around getting hard-ons for other guys. But something about Bane made Bruce want to curl up in his arms. What the fuck, he sighed as he considered his kids and wished that he could be as good with them as Bane was.

And sure, Bruce could be Batman-the-Asshole and force them to do whatever he wanted, but he was trying to be a better parent. And Steph did look like shit, when he considered her more closely, but if Damian went into a sulking fit they'd all pay for it, for God only knew how long.

Bruce looked over to Alfred for help, but he merely gave him a bemused smile, so Bruce found his eyes turning to Harley in a silent but desperate plea for salvation. Harley beamed at him.

"I have a great idea!" she said with enthusiasm. All the eyes in the kitchen turned to her - Damian's narrowed and suspicious, Steph's baleful, and Tim's interested and alert. Dick and Babs looked mildly curious, and Bruce realized that he hadn't introduced Dick to Harley yet.

"Hold that thought," he said to Harley, although his relieved gaze washed her in a flood of gratitude. "This is Dick," he said to her. "Dick, Harley."

"Hi," Dick said, raising his eyebrow as he slowly reached his hand out to her.

"Hi, yourself, Nightwing," Harley said cheerfully, and even though she didn't have gum in her mouth, Bruce could practically hear it crack as she grabbed Dick's hand and pumped it up and down.

"So, here's my idea," she immediately went on, undeterred by Bruce's intrusion of manners. "I thought of this the first day I got here, actually," she beamed. "Those bannisters on that big old staircase have been calling out to me," she said. "And I think we should have a sliding competition!"

Damian sat up straight as an arrow and gave Harley a sharp, fierce nod.

"I approve," he said with authority. Tim looked a little befuddled, but he slowly said, "Ok."

"Steph can judge," Harley said graciously, "because her ankle is broken," but she added a wink to the teenager as she reached across the table and patted Steph's hand.

Steph relaxed a little bit and mumbled, "Ok. But Alfred has to help," she said, looking to their elderly grandparent with a friendly smile.

Alfred fluffed up like a peacock. "I would be honored, Miss Stephanie," he said with great dignity.

"Good!" Harley said, clapping her hands together. "Everybody else has to compete," she said, looking around at the adults. "Oh! I have the greatest idea! Well, the second greatest one!" she said, standing up and starting to bounce a little bit.

"Let grab some blankets and spread them out on the foyer floor and we can have a cake picnic while we play!" Alfred looked shocked and was about to protest, but Tim was already jumping onto Harley's plan.

"Come on, Damian," he said, "to the guest rooms!" Damian took a flying leap off of his stool and the two of them took off running, leaving an astonished Alfred speechless in the kitchen. Bruce quickly turned away from him with shaking shoulders, covering his mouth with his hand and looking down at the floor while Dick looked on, amused.

"Maybe you could put on a pot of coffee, Al?" Babs asked him gently as she came over to rub his back. "At least the blankets will keep the crumbs off the floor," she added as she guided a muttering Alfred over to the kitchen counter. "And the guest room blankets could maybe use a wash anyway, huh?" she asked him, but Alfred gave her a severe look.

"They were just washed two days ago, Miss Barbara," he sniffed. "As they always are on Wednesdays."

"Oh," she said quietly, now the one biting her lip as she glanced over her shoulder at Dick, whose own shoulders were starting to shake.

"Grab the other cakes," he quickly said to Bruce, grabbing the first one off of the counter so he could make his escape. Bruce moved to pick up Tim and Damian's, but he suddenly stopped short.

"Good God," he said, picking up Damian's cake and looking at it in awe. He slowly turned it around as his jaw hung open.

"Did you see this?" he asked Babs and Harley, who nodded. Alfred half turned around from the coffeepot and beamed with pride.

"Young Master Damian shows promise," he said.

"More than promise," Bruce muttered, looking at the perfectly, intricately designed and decorated cake covered with tiny rosettes, piped trim, vines, and leaves.

"He came up with sixty-seven ways to kill people using the decorating tips, too, while he worked," Steph said conversationally as she picked up her crutches and started to make her way to the foyer.

"Of course he did," Bruce mumbled, but there was some affectionate pride in his eyes as he said it. Harley grabbed a stack of plates and forks out of the cupboard and set them on the counter.

"Smart kid, that one," she said, pulling a large cake knife out of its holder. "Maybe me and Al can convince him to be a baker instead of a vigilante." Bruce laughed.

"Have you met Damian?" he said sarcastically. "I don't think Mr. Sixty-Seven Ways to Die is going to be easily dissuaded from being Robin when he's older."

"Don't get me started on that, Bruce," Harley warned him, shaking the cake knife at him ferociously.

"Miss Harley!" Alfred said in horror at the same time that Dick yelled "Be careful with Alfred's knife!" and Bruce's eyes went wide in terror. Dick ran over to Harley and firmly but very delicately removed the knife from her hands and gently laid it on the counter.

"We do not touch Alfred's knives in this house," Dick said to her seriously, putting his hands on her shoulders and looking into her eyes like a frightened animal. "Never," he repeated. "Never, ever, ever, touch Alfred's knives."

Bruce was wiping his brow while Alfred managed to snatch his knife up from the counter as carefully as if it was a Fabergé egg. He looked at Harley sternly as he cradled it in his hands.

"Kitchen knives are not weapons, Miss Harley!" he reprimanded her. Harley stared at him, Bruce, and Dick. Babs looked like she was about to giggle.

"What the hell am I missing?" Harley asked them suspiciously.

"It is forbidden to speak of it in this house," Dick said somberly, putting the cake plates and forks back into her empty hands. "Ask Jason," he mumbled under his breath so that Alfred couldn't hear.

"It was bad," Babs whispered to her as she took her by the elbow and guided her out of the kitchen.

"It must have been," Harley said in wonder, looking back at Alfred who was practically cooing over his knife while inspecting it for dings.

Tim and Damian had already returned to the foyer with huge piles of blankets which they were arranging on the black and white tiled floor under Steph's direction as the adults walked in, minus Alfred who was busying himself with his knife and the coffee.

"I'll get Alfred a chair," Bruce said, setting the cakes down well out of the way of the emerging picnic blankets. "Do you want one, too, Steph?" he asked her, unsure of how comfortably she could sit with her broken ankle on the ground.

"Maybe just a pillow," she said, and Bruce nodded, heading off to a living room to grab the additional seating.

"I'll go help Alfred bring the coffee in when it's done," Babs said, ready to head back to the kitchen after eyeing the unfolding chaos in the foyer.

"What have you done to my family?" Dick asked Harley only half-jokingly as he, too, took in their energetic preparations for a night of sliding down the fucking bannisters. Seriously, what the hell, he thought to himself. Even when Talia was still here, they never played around like this. Harley shrugged.

"I'm a powerful and dangerous woman," she said. "Gloominess, beware!" she called out with vigor as she flung her arms out to the sides. "Harley Todd is coming for you!"

"Oh," Dick said in surprise. "You took Jason's name." Harley looked at him.

"Quinn was never my name," she said darkly, suddenly sobering. "And Quinzel, well, that's hardly still me, is it?" she asked him moodily. "I'm Harley Hood to the community, now," she added. "For secretive purposes. But, of course, you can still call me the Queen or Your Majesty," she said without any trace of humor at all.

"Right," Dick said, giving her some side-eye.

"You need to work things out with my husband, you know," Harley said to him abruptly. Dick stiffened.

"He's said something?" he asked her hesitantly.

"Jay tells me everything," Harley said coolly, looking decidedly less friendly to Dick than she had been to Babs earlier that night during the girls' coffee-chat. Dick swallowed uncomfortably.

"I know I haven't been very fair to him," he said, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. "I was kind of a mess after losing my family," Dick said, "and I blamed Jason for a lot of things that weren't his fault." Harley's demeanor only became the slightest bit softer.

"Well, it's normal to get fucked up when your family gets killed," she said reluctantly. "And I get you were still a teenager when Bruce adopted Jay. But from what I hear, you gave Jay a hell of a lot of shit and had your head pretty far up your ass." Her tone was terse and Dick flushed, knowing damn well what Harley was talking about.

"That's accurate," he said quietly, looking guilty and feeling unable to meet Harley's eyes. Because even Babs didn't know the full extent of Dick's past antagonism towards Jason, and there were things that Dick had fervently wished would stay buried with Jason forever.

"I'll talk to Jason when he gets back," Dick said, closing his eyes for a minute to try to will the memories away, even if only temporarily. He offered up a silent prayer that maybe he and Jason could work things out, but honestly? Dick wasn't so sure it was possible. Even up until a month ago, he'd been an asshole about Jason and although working things out today with Bruce had helped him see the past more clearly, Dick finally knew that nothing excused his behavior back then.

And given who Jason was today… Dick had doubts that he would be forgiven. His anxious thoughts were interrupted by Bruce's return to the foyer with an armchair for Alfred. Dick opened his eyes as Bruce tossed the pillow in it to Steph who set it down on the blankets and cautiously lowered herself to the floor with Tim's help. She gave him the sweetest smile as he held her hands and kept her balanced and Dick noticed that Harley and Bruce were both smiling a little bit, too, as they watched the teens interact.

Huh, Dick thought. Guess I should've seen that coming. Babs and Alfred came back at that moment with trays of coffee mugs and ice water that they started passing around as everyone took their seats on the blankets and waited for Harley to explain the rules of her crazy game.

"So!" Harley said delightedly, clapping her hands as she moved to the front of the group like a schoolteacher. "Take your shoes off, you need to be in socks," she commanded. "The first round is who can get down the fastest. We'll keep it easy so you can get the feel of the railings. But then we're gonna vigilante it up," she said with excitement.

"Damian, you and me are up first to show them how it's done," Harley announced to Damian's great pleasure. "Come on," she said, running up the wide marble stairs that spilled out into the foyer from the second floor overlook. Damian quickly overtook her as they pounded up the stairs in their sock feet and he took his position at the top of the left bannister as Harley went to the one on the right.

"We have to go down on our feet like we're surfing on a balance beam," Harley told him. "Ok?" she said and Damian nodded, already climbing up to stand at the top of the rail. Harley took her position, too.

"Steph, give us the signal," she called down.

"Ready?" Steph called up, raising her hand up while holding her cake fork.

"Ready!" Damian and Harley yelled back.

"Oh, my God," Dick muttered in amused disbelief, looking over at Bruce, who was seated to his left. Bruce was actually grinning like a little kid with his eyes lit up, eager to see what happened.

"What if someone falls off?" Alfred called up to the competitors.

"Then they deserve the pain," Damian yelled back and Harley giggled.

"She doesn't want them out fighting crime but surfing down the bannisters in their socks with no safety mats is acceptable?" Alfred said to Bruce, leaning forward in his chair to speak in his ear.

"I don't think that particular part of her brain is working right now," Bruce murmured back up to him with a playful twinkle in his eye. "Don't spoil it, Alfred," he pouted, "no one's going to fall. I trained them better than that."

"Very well, sir," Alfred replied with a sigh. "Our bracelets should have said 'codependent' instead of 'BFF'," he lamented, but Bruce just chuckled.

"It's fine," he said again. "Go ahead," he prompted Steph, who still had her fork in the air and was giving him an impatient look accompanied by a mighty huff.

"Ready?" she called out again, waggling the fork for good measure. "Go!" she yelled, dropping the fork onto the blankets.

Damian and Harley pushed off and assumed a crouched position as they slid down the marble railings. Harley angled her body forward to gain momentum but Damian had thrust himself off at the start with a powerful kick of his back leg and bent his body as low and flat as he could make it to cut down on wind resistance, and he sailed past Harley and flew off the bannister ahead of her, touching down to the floor gracefully on his feet and rolling into a somersault to land. Harley finished last, but she landed with a cartwheel and a backflip.

"Yay!" Steph and Tim cheered and Babs whistled while the men clapped. "One point for Damian!" Steph announced. "Now Dick and Babs," she said, turning to face them. Dick laughed and started pulling Babs to her feet, but she started protesting.

"That's not fair!" she said. "I'm out of practice. It should be me versus Tim and Dick versus Bruce."

"Hey!" Tim protested. "I take offense to that," he teased.

"Aw, come on, baby," Dick wheedled her, sliding his hands seductively up and down Barbara's waist and hips. "It'll be like the old days," he flirted, and Babs giggled and looked back at Harley and Steph who gave her responding grins and thumbs-ups.

"Ok," she said, leaning in for a quick kiss. "But I'm totally gonna beat you up the stairs!" she yelled, pushing him suddenly aside and making a break for it. Unsurprisingly, Dick won his heat but Tim won his, having less body mass and a leaner frame. Bruce made a good effort though, and truly, seeing Batman slide down the railing in socks was worth its weight in gold, even if he was dressed as Bruce Wayne, Harley thought to herself with glee, secretly filming it on her phone to send to Jason later. And, to save for blackmail just in case she ever needed it. Because you never knew.

The competition continued with more rounds, some involving cartwheels and flips, some as freestyle with points awarded for tricks, some with match-my-moves dares, but all of them with loads of laughter from the whole family as they watched and judged. The points became mostly irrelevant to everyone except Damian who followed Steph and Alfred's judging like a hawk, although even his face had a rare smile on it, which Bruce noted with a tender look in his eyes and a renewed feeling of thankfulness in his heart to Harley.

She was crazy, sure, but… maybe sometimes crazy wasn't so bad, Bruce thought as he watched Tim and Dick go head to head with aerial cartwheels while Alfred gasped and clutched his breast dramatically. Steph watched Tim most appreciatively as he twisted and turned through the air, although she quickly masked her features when he landed.

"Osito needs to do a round," Bruce said to Damian, who had his bear sitting next to him on the blankets enjoying the picnic with the rest of the family. Damian's eyes lit up.

"You have to catch him if he falls, Father," Damian said to Bruce seriously as he got up with his stuffed friend. "Osito has not had the training that the rest of us have received."

"Ok," Bruce said, secretly rejoicing that his son the assassin was acting like a child for once. "Dick, come spot Osito on the other side," he called to his oldest son, who had just landed with a double flip.

"Do not let him fall," Damian said to Dick with a ferocious warning in his eyebrows.

"Or else Osito will stab you with his shiv," Bruce added with an equally ferocious Batman glare which caused Damian to nod in satisfaction.

"What?" Dick said, startled, trying to look more carefully at the bear as Damian ran ahead of them up the stairs.

"Just don't drop him and you'll be safe," Tim called to him with a grin as he sat down next to Steph on the blankets. "I'm glad I'm not the one catching him," he said to Steph, pressing his shoulder into hers, which made his mouth awfully close to her face. Steph blushed a little bit when she turned her head to answer and found their lips practically touching.

"Um, me too," she stammered out. "I'd like you to live," she said as their breath mingled together and she looked into his eyes. Were they possibly looking back into hers with a little more warmth and affection than usual? Steph wondered.

She was so used to looking into Tim's eyes; hell, most of their communication was silent snarky glances or secret laughter or mutual understanding that flashed between their pupils in quick meetings of their minds. And Tim's eyes were always so welcoming and comfortable. But they were often timid and anxious, too.

Except since Bane had been here, Steph had begun to notice a lot more confidence in Tim's gaze. And in his voice and manner, too, she realized. He seemed less like a nervous hen and more settled in his own skin. And Steph liked the change. A lot. So she smiled and pressed her shoulder back into Tim's until they were distracted by Damian shouting at Dick.

They looked up to see Dick dive down several steps to catch Osito right before he hit the stairs - and Osito's head promptly popped off and rolled away. Damian shrieked and Dick gasped. Bruce quickly ran to retrieve Osito's head and met Dick with it as a screaming Damian came running down the stairs to attack Dick, cursing at him in several different languages, a few of which Steph couldn't even recognize.

Dick quickly thrust Osito out at Damian and Bruce looking helplessly between them as Bruce calmly stuck Osito's head back onto the -

"Wait, is that the shiv?" Steph said to Tim. He snickered.

"It looks like Osito's spinal cord is Bane's secret weapon," he said.

"So… that must mean the head was supposed to come off?" Steph said in confusion. "Then why is Damian yelling?"

"It's Damian," Tim said reasonably by way of explanation. Bruce was bending down to his tiny assassin trying to comfort him as Damian continued his shrill diatribe against the incompetence of one Dick Grayson, who was sheepishly shuffling away back to Babs.

"Oops," he said with an embarrassed smile. Babs laughed and Harley and Alfred shook their heads. Dick pulled Babs up to her feet and into a warm kiss. "We should probably get going," he said to her, and the steamy look in his eye was reason enough for Babs to promptly agree.

"Yeah, I gotta patrol tonight, anyway," Harley said getting to her feet, too, "and you're on Jumbotron duty, Batboy," she said, reaching out to ruffle Tim's hair up affectionately. "And we gotta get all this cleaned up and meditate."

"This was fun, Harley," Barbara said to her, turning to give her a hug. "I'm glad to get to know you."

"Yeah, you too, Babs," Harley said with a friendly smile, which faded as she looked past her to Dick. He cleared his throat.

"I'll, um, talk to Jason when he's back in town," he said.

"You do that," Harley said without a smile. Babs looked from Harley to Dick.

"He'll work it out," she assured Harley, who nodded a little bit.

"I'll see you around, then," she said, moving to help Alfred pick the dishes up off of the blankets. Babs gave Dick a look.

"Exactly how bad were things between you and Jason when he died?" she said softly. She frowned as she saw Dick's neck start to turn red as his blush crept further along his body.

"Kind of bad," he mumbled. Babs looked concerned and would have said more, but Bruce was propelling Damian and Osito over to them.

"Give your brother a hug," Bruce instructed Damian, "and tell him you forgive him for letting Osito's head pop off."

"He should apologize before I forgive him," Damian sulked.

"I'm very, very sorry," Dick said at once with complete sincerity, bending down to give Damian a hug. "Osito is lucky to have a friend like you who would never let him lose his head. He would be in trouble if he was depending on me." A small, pleased smile began to curl at the edges of Damian's lips.

"Indeed he would, Dick Grayson," Damian said with superiority. "I suppose you cannot help being inadequate," Damian sighed. "We forgive you," he said magnanimously.

"Thank you," Dick said gravely. Damian tolerated hugs from Babs, too, before she and Dick hugged Bruce good-bye.

"We should start having regular family dinners," Bruce said to them. "Once Jason and Bane get back. I missed you," he said to Babs, cupping her cheek. "And I'm glad that you and me worked things out," he said, turning to Dick and hugging him tight. Dick squeezed him just as hard and blinked away his tears.

"I need to work some stuff out first with Jason," he said to Bruce. "But if we can do that… yeah, I guess family dinners would be nice. Now that you and me won't be fighting through them," he grinned sheepishly.

"If me and Jason can make peace, you two ought to be able to," Bruce said. Dick sighed.

"I hope so," he muttered, feeling completely unsure. As they finished making their rounds of hugs and good-byes, the knot in Dick's stomach grew. He knew that Babs had questions. And he'd tell her. He was done hiding things and stuffing them in. But… he wished that he could go back and rewrite the past. Because Jason had deserved a hell of a lot more than the shitty brother he'd ended up with in Dick Grayson.