Author's Note:
Whelp, it's already March 13 of 2020, and COVID-19 doesn't seem to be slowing down at all where I am, so I hope things are better where all of you are and I certainly hope that everyone is doing their very best to stay safe and keep others protected! I wish you all the best of everything and remember, even if you don't feel sick, you could still be carrying the virus, so wash your hands, refrain from touching your face (or most particularly, your grandparents' / parents' faces, even affectionately... move to shoulder hugs or something), and be aware that everything you've touched is still clinging to your clothes when you get home even if you wash your hands... Be alert, be cautious, support your family, and everything will be alright.
Chapter Thirty: Rule #28.3 – Support Your Family
Eventually, the fight does end.
It takes that fact an awkwardly long moment to sink in – for everyone in the makeshift arena, but it takes a beat even longer for everyone else to process than it does for Stray and his little friend. The pair dash into the center of the ring to catch Jason as he begins to collapse – his final fight having been soundly won and his muscles giving out as the adrenaline dissipates.
Batman and Nightwing set about getting the exact terms of the Tolovis' immediate egress from Gotham handled and executed, while Stray and the stranger start dragging Jason away from the scene – Barbara follows them, certain that the boys can handle the gangsters and that someone needs to keep an eye on Jason.
Besides, this gives her a semi-private opportunity to chat with Stray about the person underneath the goggles.
It doesn't go the way she thought it would.
If it is Timothy Drake underneath those bulbous orange goggles, he can lie like a pro.
No hesitation, no drama, no extraneous details… Just a damn good cover story and the know how and die hard grit to stick to it properly.
Barbara doesn't get to dig into the details too much, because Batman arrives to take over the mini-interogation. And then Catwoman joins in too – though her intent is clearly to derail it, which she accomplishes with her usual, sensual ease. On another night, it would be amusing to observe how easily swayed Bruce is by Selina – heartwarmingly adorable, even – but tonight it's just a strange mix of relief and suspicion.
Barbara doesn't want Bruce to know if it's Tim beneath the goggles – that is a turn of events that could only go poorly for everyone – but she wants to know… and she thinks Selina knows it by the wary squint and the almost apologetic smile she sends Barbara's way.
Mentions of a head-start on something of a cure for Jason get made, the stranger's possible interest and alliegances get analyzed, and no real questions get any answers.
While Bruce is distracted by the soul mate he won't admit constantly holds nearly the entirety of his attention, and Jason manages to stir in such a way so as to remind everyone what the most important thing in the current situation actually is right now, the mysterious probably-assassin scoops up Stray and they vanish into Gotham's shadowy labyrinth.
Bruce summons the Batmobile as he and Barbara move to inspect Jason to make an almost-blind assessment of the damage. Selina sweeps up the strange girl's chemical offerings, and secures them in an empty pocket of Bruce's utility belt – moving into his personal space with easy confidence and an uncanny familiarity with which pockets Bruce keeps empty.
Dick shows up as they work on getting Jason into the back seat – the bulk of the situation inside has been handled and the Leaguers are taking care of the remaining details.
The ride to the Cave is excruciating.
Deathly silent, unbearably slow, and impossibly fast in a reckless way that feels both beyond idiotically perilous, and yet nowhere near risky enough to have pushed the limits enough to matter – even though it's probably a miracle they didn't crash a hundred times over...
Alfred has Spoiler knocked out on a gurney in the medical wing, visible through the glass walls keeping her separated from the main Cave. Babs makes a mental note to check in on that situation later, but focuses on helping Dick get Jason situated on the gurney Alfred has rolled over for him – Bruce, meanwhile, goes straight for the Batcomputer to analyze the chemical samples the stranger acquired for them.
Bruce is too distraught to be useful in the medical arena, and so is Dick – but while Dick is rendered useless in all possible arena and has taken up a chair at Jason's bedside like a veritable zombie, Bruce is compelled to focus his distress into something that may help his son.
Barbara checks in with Alfred to see if there's anything she can do, but with Jason's current condition being so… nebulous, his injuries seemingly healed but his body probably still hurting, and with that awful drug still coursing through his bloodstream at unknown saturation levels… all they can really do is hook him up to fluids to keep him hydrated.
It's just banana bag of hydration, electrolytes, a few key nutrients, and a basic wash of antibiotics, just in case… It's all just something to keep his body functioning as well as possible under its own healing power but nothing really medicinal… nothing that can actually help.
With a heaviness hanging over her shoulders, Barbara joins Bruce at the Batcomputer and soon they're both joined by Barry Allen.
It's slow going but there's definite progress being made and before the second hour's up, they have something tangible to add to Jason's IV that will emolliate the lingering effects of the drug that's already sent him spiraling into a coma.
While the medicine is added to Jason's IV, Barbara checks with Alfred regarding Spoiler.
She apparently arrived unconscious – the results of an attempt to hack the Batmobile, a successful one, he adds almost inaudibly with a pointed look to encourage Barbara to quietly dig deeper into the situation.
Superman volunteers to set Spoiler safely back into her bed before he heads out on the return trip to Metropolis as he and Wonder Woman give their fairwells.
The Flash is going to stick around to make sure that the counter drug they've crafted actually works the way they hope it will.
Dick's friends from the Teen Titans volunteer to stay, as well.
Their offer is the first thing to draw Dick out of his own semi-catatonic fugue state.
He and Kori shoo Kid Flash off, but Starfire will not be sent away.
Seeing her effortless protectiveness, her genuine and deep concern for Dick sends of pang of something tight and hard to swallow through Barbara's chest. It's not jealousy exactly, but it's also not entirely free of the kind of fearful longing and egregious self deprecation that brings violent jealousy to life.
For approximately fourteen seconds, Barbara remembers how she felt when she dug into the background of Princess Koriand'r of Tamaran… buxom, unabashed, affectionate, powerful, and both sexy and sweet beyond adequate description, seeing Dick date Kori felt to Barbara like watching every aspect of herself being unbearably replaced with an updated and highly improved new model.
But it wasn't that.
Barbara knows that.
Knew it even when it stung too much to think about with a clear headed honesty.
Koriand'r is a true blood royal, a living goddess, by any estimate.
It simply isn't reasonable for Barbara to compare Kori to herself against a human scale of criteria to measure any kind of base attractiveness.
And furthermore, Barbara's relationship with Dick had been different than the one Kori currently shares with him, and any similarities were superficial overlays at best.
They were just Babs' own ego centric vanities getting in the way of truly seeing.
And Kori is… empathetic, beyond all reckoning, truly understanding in a way that clearly can't be human, that marks her out as both alien and genuine royalty. She's too good, too kind, to emphatically caring and wonderful to be any mere mortal or member of the human race.
She and Barbara care for Dick, love him, and Kori will never deny the continued existence of Barbara's feelings for him, or how deep they run. She knows they're different, knows that – at the heart of things – what's most important is that they both want what's best for him.
They want him safe and happy.
Barbara allows herself to wallow in self pity for fourteen seconds.
Then she spins on her heel and marches off to take a shower. Dear god does she need one, and Barbara can admit with a level mind and only the slightest brush of bruised feelings that Kori is the one between them who can provide Dick with the most comfort right now.
Barbara cleans off the grit and the grime of the night, washes away the worst of the strain still tight in her muscles… changes into her comfiest Gotham Tech sweats. Emerges after a lingering for nearly hour under the comforting barrage of eternally hot water to find Dick and Kori still as statues in exactly the place where she left them, hovering at Jason's bedside.
Dick is still in his full Nightwing getup – hasn't even managed to remove his mask.
It's not what Dick needs, but it's something that Kori wouldn't have reason to think about. As a Tamaranian princess, her superhero persona and her daylight role within society at large are exactly the same – she can't fathom the wear and tear and mental toll of maintaining dichotcally separate identities for day and night, let alone for how those incongruous identities can hurt a fragile self of mind that doesn't entirely suit either character.
Dick needs a shower, needs to be a human again instead of a vigilante – needs to be the Dick Grayson that isn't just the Wayne Ward or the circus kid. He needs to be a big brother.
Barbara gives Nightwing a rundown of the situation.
Gives Dick Grayson a reason to transition out of the mindset of being on the job, communicates what needs to happen for that to Kori in nothing more than a weighty look.
Barbara stays with Jason, trusting Kori with complete faith to man-handle Dick into a shower and some fresh clothes – to drag him out of his own head long enough to help him remember how to bring himself back to being human.
When the pair of them return, Dick looks a thousand times better – still worn, still worried, but human and like he knows he's truly loved.
Kori deposits Dick back into the chair beside Barbara.
She takes both of Barbara's hands and intertwines their fingers, moving slowly and gently to twist their hands upside down in a Tamaranian gesture of sisterhood and solidarity.
And then she takes her leave.
Dick and Babs wait together in silence and mutual support through the night.
The next morning she calls her father, checks in, gives vague details about friends being excitable and girls' nights being called for the occurrence of some so-called 'adventure days' and such. It's a huge advantage to be both at home and at university in the same stretch of time, being that she can just fall off the face of the earth like a college student whenever she feels like it, and pop back on the grid without any real questions being asked.
A ten minute phone call and Barbara's taken care of her alibi for the next week at least.
She hopes it won't take Jason that long to wake up, but she's fully prepared to wait it out for that long and even longer, if necessary.
After her phone call, she moves to the Batcomputer.
Checks up on Tim. And the Batmobile he hacked.
Follows the com Jason had him linked to.
Tim IS Stray.
It's an undeniable fact.
And it's enough to be a serious problem… if left unaddressed, or if addressed improperly.
But… it's easy enough to hide…
For the first time since she truly came into considering herself a genuine member of the Bat Family, Barbara subverts the trust she's earned and uses her skills to actively hide something from Bruce directly. She makes it look like Tim hacked the Batmobile, and then called on Selina and her friends for help, before walking back to his bike and heading home.
It's only been about twelve hours since he got there, so Bruce definitely hasn't managed to check up on Tim's activity yet – Tim is considered low priority while Jason is still comatose.
Bruce's current absence is a circumstance brought about by means of Alfred and Barry, likely ganging up to drug Bruce into a sort of medically induced pseudo-sleep for an hour or two.
But regardless, it means that for now, Barbara is alone and able to cover her tracks on editing the Batcomputer's archives without worry of being caught in the act. She covers everything up before she can think of a reason to hesitate and then goes back to her chair beside Dick, resumes waiting for Jason to wake.
With Alfred's help, she coaxes a bit of food into Dick, somehow eats something herself.
She keeps an eye on Tim's activities (just a cycle of home and school and library in an alarmingly anti-social cycle of clearly cognizant avoidance), and she runs coms for Bruce when he goes on a brief patrol that night… rinses and repeats the next day.
Bruce has just finished up his shower from his post-patrol routine on Saturday morning, and she's been dozing off for about twenty minutes, when Dick explodes into action as Jason jolts and shudders into a painful kind of almost wakefulness.
Hugs and happiness and a bone-deep relief flood the Family, and even though Jason's bout of consciousness is fleeting, it marks a turning point that renders him as being fully out of the darkest part of the woods.
It's not… enough, exactly, but somehow Barbara feels like it's still going to be fine.
Now that Jason's awake and as healthy as could be expected, Barbara can turn her attention more fully to Tim, leaving the rest of Jason's care in Dick's overbearing hands – and with Alfred forcing him up to bed for a while, Dick will be rested enough to handle it on his own.
Barbara takes her own nap, then showers and gets dressed in proper clothes – still a comfy kind of civvies, but ones appropriate for venturing outside in public.
Being Saturday, Tim doesn't have school.
He's gone to a museum instead. On the far edge of Old Gotham, where he'd have the least possibility of running into any of the Bats going about the daily lives of their cover stories.
Which makes it clearer than ever that he has been proactively avoiding them.
It could've been coincindence before – that he was too stressed with keeping up with school work while worrying about Jason to actually come over and inquire about him, or to send a question off to any of the contact numbers Barbara knows Tim has for all of them… but now… he's not occupied with anything he needs to do, so he's occupying himself with things that keep him away from the Bats for reasons other than necessity.
Avoidance is the only real answer.
Which is not a good sign.
It could be for a simple reason… like Jason's usual pattern of problem solving by retreating into his own head with the kind of issues that are more emotional than not… just an internal retreat for a while to sort himself out before coming back to deal with things as usual.
Or not.
Barbara needs to talk to him in person to have any solid idea.
She finds in him a dark corner of the geological wing, staring at a piece of stone like it's personally offended his existence. He's so intent on staring that he doesn't notice her arrival.
Nearly jumps out of his skin when he realizes who exactly has sat down next to him.
Yeah. He's decidedly not in a good way.
It pulls painfully at Barbara's heartstrings.
She wishes she'd been more proactive about checking up on him before now – understands and accepts her own reasonings for why she wasn't, but still…
Handling Tim… it's a delicate dance… a carefully balanced act of impressing upon him that the Bats want to help without backing him into a metaphoric corner.
Trying to convince him that he can come to the Bats to talk, to convince him that none of this is really his fault – that even though he's been kidnapped, even though it's happened to him twice now, it's not his own doing so much as a twist of bad luck and the natural consequences of being close to the Bats – is like trying to save the Titanic by bailing out the flooded holds with a plastic beach bucket.
Barbara doesn't push it further.
She's in this idiocy for the long haul and the short game isn't her priority. She'll get Tim to come around to seeing things clearly, eventually, and she'll keep chipping away at his resistance for however long it takes to wear it down.
For now, she has one more pressing line of inquiry.
Stray.
She's not entirely certain that she wants Tim to admit to her that he's the one behind the mysterious kitten's orange goggles.
Barbara blindsides him with a few leading statements and he stiffens like he's nothing more than a talented amateur playing at his very first round of chess in the lying game's big leagues – clearly panicking beneath the blanked out mask of a neutral expression he's adopted.
Barbara assures him that she hasn't told Bruce – that she hasn't told anyone – and he reacts to that revelation with the almost professional cool that she'd seen earlier from Stray. His mind is probably running at ten thousand miles a minute, but there's nothing at all that gives an outward indication of it, but a moment later, his voice is strangled and stuttering when he forces out a question asking if Jason remembers anything from his ordeal.
When Barbara assures him that Jason's memory is almost entirely blank, Tim relaxes… if only fractionally. He maintains the perfect blankness of his façade, but something in his posture wilts and he leans unconsciously towards the comforting warmth radiating off of Barbara.
It's a good sign.
It means that Tim trusts her implicitly, even if he won't talk to her openly.
Barbara watches Tim's face in the reflection of the gems' exhibit casing. Only the barest hints of minute changes expose the fact that Tim's thoughts are a whirlwind roaring in between his ears – that he's going over the entire ordeal with a different lens than before.
Barbara's not sure what lens exactly, but it makes a red tinge crawl up his neck so she thinks she might be able to guess at something of what the kid's remembering.
That is an entirely separate can of worms and it's going to be it's own long road to handle, but Tim's only twelve for goodness' sake and Jason's only fourteen. They've got time to work it out if it's destined to evolve into anything more than an unspoken mutual crush.
It's difficult for Barbara to contain her urge to let a fond smile peel across her expression, but she's glad that she manages it when Tim suddenly seems to remember her presence.
She can't quite resist the urge when it rears up again in the face of the terrified little bunny rabbit gaping at her in white-out levels of horror and confusion and uncertainty.
He doesn't know what she's thinking, doesn't even know what he's thinking, and his brain has definitely come straight to an abrupt and screeching halt.
With careful words and a deliberate, slow delivery, Barbara gives him a blanket assurance that he is an important and deeply valued part of the team – already one of the Bats in all the ways that matter.
She also makes sure to warn him that Batman will want to talk to him soon.
To that warning, Tim reacts differently – surprisingly.
Instead of shuttering his expression, or panicking, or anything else she's seen from his during this encounter, he rolls into a steady focus – calm and collected in a way that reminds her of Bruce with a startling degree of resemblance.
Yep. That look is all Bat.
Barbara tells Tim that, officially, she's interrogating him on behalf of B, as a precursory measure, and promises that she's going to maintain a plausible cover story for him.
He's startled by her easy soft assurances, surprised by them like he's still utterly bamboozled by the idea that she might be on his side.
A bit belatedly, he gives a stilted nod of heartfelt thanks.
There's another long pause between them.
Just before it gets awkward enough to make Tim begin to spiral inside his own head again, Barbara sighs and tries once more to let him know that he's already become an important part of the Family.
"We get worried about you, Tim, because you matter to us," she concludes, "We don't want to force anything on you, but we want to make sure you're okay."
Tim is clearly baffled by the sentiment.
Tries to give her some bullshit promise that he's okay, that he's fine without the support structures of the Family she's trying to tell him he already has a valid claim to embracing.
Barbara doesn't sigh.
She doesn't let what she's thinking show up on her face.
And she doesn't try to hug him.
She simply waits until the moment passes.
The she lets him know she would appreciate it if he didn't disapprear on her – and from his brief flicker of utter terror that she's some sort of mind-reader, Barbara knows she hit on the money and is glad she decided to move on the vague and fretful hunch.
Then she tells him that she's leaving him up to his own devices and slips back out into the weak sunlight of a dreary Gotham afternoon.
She makes it back to the Cave to find Dick sitting at Jason's bedside, returned to his vigil.
Barbara joins him, basking in the solidarity and relief found in sitting with Dick as they watch Jason sleep easy. She lets herself enjoy the moment, lets them both relish in the relative scraping of peace they've managed to carve out of the chaos.
She wraps her hand around his and squeezes gently as she draws a deep breath.
"I talked to Tim today," she forces herself to say eventually, breaking the quietude.
It hurts Dick exactly like she knew it would, and she stays still and quiet and steady and grounding as the riot of emotions barrels through him – the guilt and fear and worry he'd surpressed for Tim while he'd been focusing on Jason.
It takes a lot to talk Dick down from his panic.
It takes the projection of confidence that Barbara doesn't fully have settled herself to convince him of the notion that Tim is like Jason in his avoidance tendencies, but so much worse with them because of the bottomless resources (and his awareness of those resourses) that he has at his fingertips.
She knows that one push too far will send Tim skittering away from them – possibly out of their reach forever – but if they don't push at all, they'll likely lose him in a different way.
Dick latches on to the one thing that's been her foremost worry as well: the fact that Tim is alone in the aftermath of all of this, the fact that Tim doesn't have anyone to help him through any of it… The psychological exhaustion that comes from a traumatic event like this isn't something can or ever should be worked through entirely alone.
It takes a while of talking through it, but Babs manages to convince both Dick and herself that staying close, but not too close is the only safe call they can make.
And then Dick asks the other important question: "What are we gonna tell Bruce?"
It would be counterproductive to tell Bruce about how close Tim is to everything.
Paticularly with what Barbara knows about his role as Stray… She considers telling Dick about Stray's identity, but ultimately decides that there's no reason to worry him any more dramatically than how his current helplessness has already rendered him feeling.
Instead of telling him the whole truth, Barbara spins the story she gave to Bruce already: about Tim somehow knowing about Selina's hidey hole, going off to ask her for help rescuing Jason, and with that accomplished, Tim walked backed to his bike at the donut shop and then made his own way home.
Shortly after Dick and Barbara mutually agree that it's probably best to leave everything well enough alone, Jason wakes up again. They spend the rest of the day at his bedside.
Alfred and Bruce join them for a quiet dinner.
Delightfully, the meal is more pleasant than any other they've all shared in a long while.
Everyone is still either too weak or too relieved to pick a fight.
Eventually, Bruce is lured back to business and he takes a restless Dick with him out on the night's patrol while Babs and Alfred stay behind to watch over Jason as he falls back to sleep.
It's a blissfully quiet night on the streets and Barbara thanks every deity that might be listening for such little miracles as that.
Over the next few days, things get back to a semblance of normal.
Babs closes up her counterfeiting case with Bruce's help as they determine that the incidents were fabricated by the Tolovis to get the attention of Tavian Ross and his crew – who apparently officially specialize in counterfeit cases in their work with GHOST.
It wasn't supposed to make sense or be solvable, it was supposed to be confusing enough to validate Tavian Ross coming in person. Without the Tolovis around, without a need to create random and confusing incidents meant to gain outside attention, the case practically closes itself and the problem with fake goods and fake bills simply disappears.
Barbara eventually goes back to the condo she shares with her father – a careful trail of backdated receipts from a spa spilling from her purse, and stories about adventures with friends who will have her back on confirming details with zero notice (because they've prepped for emergency getaways like this… because they have strict parents too and they all know that sometimes a girl just needs a few secrets to stay sane, and with a cop for a dad and the tragic circumstance of living with him while in college, Babs has got to need it bad sometimes…).
She goes back to attending classes, going out on patrol at night, and keeping an eye on the parts of her Family that are determined to be uncooperative and self destructive.
Dick is struggling to get Tim to let him in – to let him in emotionally so he can try to help or even just to let him into his house so he can hang out for no reason other than to facilitate their budding friendship.
And Jason simply refuses to stay in bed.
Especially after he gets moved upstairs to his bedroom instead of the Cave's med bay.
Within a week, he's begging to get back out on the streets.
They get a couple of calm moments in, some long overdue family bonding time over movie marathons with comfort food and decadent sundaes. It's not nearly enough to satisfy Dick, and far too much to be a comfort to Bruce or Jason, but Barbara thinks it's perfect.
Still, she'd like to keep Jason in bed recuperating far longer than he'd ever be willing to allow, and she coordinates with Alfred to both hold him back for as long as possible, and to help the others come to terms with the facts of reality.
Bruce is distracted with the effort of willfully blinding himself to Tim's awareness of their nighttime activities to catch on to Alfred's maneuverings. And Dick is being pulled in so many directions by his worries for Tim, his duty to help Bruce protect Gotham, and his responsibilities for his classes and with the Titans to pick up on Barbara's subtle shoves moving him towards the the Manor door and back to San Francisco.
Dick is almost ready to head back out west to Titans Tower when Jason first heads out to try getting through to Tim – Dick's worries about Tim are probably the last thing holding him in Gotham for the moment, and Jason's probably the only person who can get through to him.
Barbara may comandere a satellite to watch Jason live as he attempts to make it past Tim's barriers. Tim doesn't come to open the door for him, but Jason just picks the lock. From there, it's a simple matter for Barbara to access the Bat bugs and to hack Tim's own security system to listen in on how the conversation progresses.
It's remarkable how easily Jason gets Tim to just roll over and relax with him.
It's the kind of thing that makes Barbara want to smile like a giddy school girl watching a Korean soap opera – witnessing an adorable rut of drama and tension that yanks on a person's heartstrings in all the right ways.
After that, things get back to their real normal very quickly.
Dick goes back to California.
Bruce calms down and gets back to trying to finagle a means of connecting with Tim as his daytime persona.
Jason goes back to being his usual bratty self, somehow being even more endearing for it than usual – and eventually, Bruce lets him head out again in Robin's pixie boots. The Bat sticks a bit closer to his bird, but he still lets Jason use his wings – flying through the night to save the wretched souls of Gotham.
And Barbara finds her zen again.
She is part of the Crusade and it's a part of her, so there's no getting out of it no matter how many doubts she has. Sometimes, the doubts make her scared enough to think about quitting, but most days she can see how impossible that would be for her – and some days she can even come to terms with that. She's never going to be safe or calm or happy in the way that other people hope to be, but at the same time, she can find a kind of content fulfillment that very few other people could ever hope to even imagine.
It might not be the perfect happy ending, but it's about as good as it could possibly be.
And more than that, it's a good day and a good night where both are always filled with measurable progress and the potential to make the world a better place for everyone.
Her Family is safe and sound and doing something truly good to help the City.
And that's really all that Barbara needs to know to feel good as she lets herself sleep.
