Barbara decides to break the stereotypical self-sacrificing superhero mold and take her own advice when it comes to mental health.
It hasn't been easy without Dinah or Helena around very much, even though she has less work now – she gets less requests for information or cyberstalking or hacking. And the Network takes care of a lot of actively looking for information. But having friends did wonders. Seeing them everyday did wonders, rather than just keeping an eye on them or giving them backup on missions. It was so much better to see them succeed in things that mattered to them outside the field, like Helena getting her teaching job back, Dinah setting up a flower shop –
Maybe she's too much like Dick. Maybe it's too easy to try to take care of herself by taking care of other people. He got the memo – at least for a while – but she never did.
And she's not going to try to let things get so bad that someone has to continuously take care of her injuries, or tell her to stop killing herself and just hold back and think, because she's been in that role. It's exhausting.
Having a life as Barbara Gordon would definitely help. Right now, the people she sees most are all 'in the life'. Which makes sense. Most of her long-term friends are the ones who know what she's been up to, people she can be honest with and who don't blame her for her occasional month or two of no contact.
But Barbara doesn't need to talk to civilian friends to have a life as Barbara Gordon. She doesn't mind being alone. She loves her friends, of course. But she also doesn't mind having a little time where the only company she has is her own – as long as she does it well. As long as it's intentional – exercise, taking a walk, reading... rather than just sitting around feeling sorry for herself.
So she goes outside. The air is still chilly, but the snow has melted. They're probably free of snow for another couple weeks or so. So now she can go on a walk without thinking about it – there's no snow to push through, and though the curb cuts and sidewalks aren't perfect near her house, she knows where the low curbs are, the ones that are easy to wheelie over, if she needs to. It doesn't surprise her.
She meant it when she said that not much would change about how she goes about her life from the average able bodied person's if she was out of the vigilante business. You take care of your physical needs a little differently, she has to be more careful on the areas of her body she can't feel, and she has physical therapy, but she has a car with adapted steering, she has an extremely high end wheelchair, and even though people are idiots about it, the ADA is still a thing – and none of the annoyances are really about her disability, they're about how people react to it or how buildings are designed.
She is aware, of course, that lots of this is luck. Being wealthy enough to afford the adapted car. Being thin enough the wheelchair can be narrow. Having enough mobility left to do wheelies up and down curbs so the bad curb cuts annoy her less.
If anyone had told past Barbara, the Barbara that just got shot, that she was lucky, she would have torn them a new one. She would have said "This is lucky?!" gesturing at the body she perceived as broken beyond repair. She's pretty sure she did say something similar when someone told her she was lucky to be alive.
But right now, just moving through the cool late-autumn air, she feels lucky. Not because it could be worse or any morbid thing like that. No, because she likes the walk. She likes moving on auto-pilot, she likes turning the corner and saying 'hi' to the neighbor who always seems to be outside playing with his dog, no matter how cold it is.
She likes, just for a moment, being Barbara Gordon.
.
.
.
Next on the menu, is basketball.
Barbara enjoys playing, even though she wasn't really a basketball person before her injury. But sports are fun, doing physical stuff is fun, and there are way more people to play basketball with then there are a lot of other sports. Wheelchair basketball is popular.
The current court she's been visiting has been at Leslie's clinic, though she hasn't actually started playing yet. Just watching. So she hasn't actually gotten her old chair out of storage.
Barbara hasn't ever intentionally thrown out any of her old wheelchairs. The chance for needing something suddenly in case her current one gets damaged is too high. So she still has the first chair she ever got – but not the adjustable version of her current chair she got before getting the non-adjustable kind, since it was trashed when her last base was trashed – and she still has the court chair she used to use to play sports back when she got out of the house more.
The court chair's tires need to be pumped up before she can use it – a solid two years in storage will do that – and it's a pain in the ass to fit in her car. The integrated anti-tips and metal guard around the caster wheels make it so she can't put it in the front seat next to her; she has to push it in front of her to her car while sitting in her regular chair, move down the back seats in the car and open the trunk, then put the thing in.
"Need any help?" asks one of her neighbors. Gracie Quinton. Barbara hasn't spoken to her much but knows her name, because she made sure she had a full list of everyone living in her building before moving.
"I'm fine; I need the exercise," Barbara says as she's fitting the court chair into the trunk. People are weird about things like this. If you just say no, I'm fine they think you're protesting too hard. You have to make it sound like it's somehow a favor to you if they aren't 'helping'.
"I wouldn't say that," Gracie says, but she doesn't make a move to 'help'; she just smiles. "Nice day out, huh?"
Barbara squeezes her eyes shut briefly. Cynical to start the conversation on the defensive, anyway. "It is nice," she agrees.
And she gets in her car and drives to Leslie's.
She's aware, of course, that she doesn't really need a fancy court chair for a casual game. But if anything does happen that damages the chair while playing, she'd rather it be on one she doesn't use every day. Even if it is annoying to get in and out of the car.
… and again, she realizes, sparring was probably harder on her chair. But there's never been a delineation between normal life and sparring – her friends and most of the people she works with spar. None of her long-term friends do the same sports that she does, so there's always been that delineation for sports.
She intentionally timed her arrival to the court so that she'd get there shortly before the games that were scheduled. Barely anyone's there, due to the cold – just a long-time regular and Wendy. She's not surprised to see Wendy already there – Wendy's been spending a lot of time at Leslie's as it is for physical therapy – and, of course, breaking into the place at night for more physical therapy.
When Barbara had talked to her about it, Wendy had said that she wasn't going to give up on the use of her legs just because Barbara did a hundred years ago. Barbara guesses that being associated with the Teen Titans – and helping Cyborg – gave Wendy a bit more optimistic expectation of what's possible than most people had. She had already seen impossible things every day.
"Ms Gordon," Wendy says when she sees her. It's not exactly formal or even deferential, like you'd assume if someone's saying 'Ms'. More of a challenge.
"It's good to see you again, Wendy," Barbara says.
"I'm surprised to see you here," Wendy says. "Actually on the court, I mean."
"Why is that?"
Wendy looks away. "Thought you gave up on this type of stuff."
There's more to athleticism than walking – in fact, plenty of people walk all the time without being athletic at all – but Barbara doesn't say that. She wants to completely avoid the will-you, won't-you ever walk again conversation.
"Well, I'm here now," Barbara says. Painfully non-committal. But she has to approach this whole thing gently.
Wendy rolls over to where they keep the basketballs and grabs one. "Yeong was going to one-on-one with me."
"I'll one-on-one you both," The long time regular – Yeong says. "I just wanna play basketball and no one showed up today. It's not even below freezing!"
"By three degrees. Leslie needs an indoor court," Barbara says, because she doesn't like the cold. Her regulation of temperature is all messed up. She had to put on three pairs of pants – long underwear, leggings, and jeans – and she still knows it could get too cold if she stays out too long.
"Play Wendy first," Barbara says. "She's been out here longer." Barbara could say the same for Yeong, but she's guessing whatever makes her disabled isn't an SCI if the cold doesn't bother her.
Wendy scowls immediately. "I'm fine," she says.
At least she seems reasonably bundled up, like Barbara is. She's wrapped a blanket around her legs and is wearing the gloves that cover her fingers, rather than the usual finger-less gloves.
Yeong just looks between the two of them.
"Fine," Wendy says, though she still has the slight bit of anger in her voice. At Barbara.
Barbara's got to get better at not pissing people off. Though she's guessing Wendy's more angry at the situation than her – her traumatic injury, her sudden paralysis, her brother's death – she just presents herself as an easy target.
Barbara wheels over to the sidelines, just to watch.
Yeong and Wendy start. Yeong's obviously going easy on Wendy – Barbara's seen her play before – but it makes sense in this context. Yeong's been doing wheelchair basketball for years; Wendy just became paralyzed less than three months ago. It wouldn't be fair to expect her to be on Yeong's level.
Barbara starts moving partway through their game, just so she doesn't get too cold. A modified kata – one she modified herself when she was re-training, learning how to fight in a wheelchair.
She rotates the chair 90 degrees, pulling only back with her left hand, keeping her right arm bent, hand near her waist, ready to block. One push with both hands, swap to the right hand for controlling the wheels, rotating her back so she's facing the same direction she was when she just started. Left hand takes the blocking position now. Starts with both hands at her sides, hanging down by her handrims, then arcs them up over her head – it was explained as representing a peacock by her karate instructor. Chambers her hands, comes out with a cross strike, attacking both sides of a presumed attackers face, and then pulls down on what would be their ears. Strike to the inner knee, punch to the groin, move the hand up to backfist and knock backed a pitched-over enemies head, strong hook to the temple.
Start the other way. Pulls back with her right hand on the wheelchair handrim now, facing the opposite 90 degrees she was the first time, and her left arm is out ready to block. She repeats the same motions on the other side.
She changed the middle block/ low block combo she did when she was able-bodied. Instead, she moves her chair with the hand that would be low blocking and treats the middle block as a strike. The same thing again.
Push with right hand to turn around again, low block with left hand. It would slam into someone harder than a low block done by an able bodied person would in that situation, because her momentum was still carrying her in the direction of the strike.
Able-bodied kata form dictates continuing in the 90 degrees she was supposed to turn to, but she always overshoots slightly – it's hard to stop yourself from this position, with only one free hand dedicated to not punching things – so she modified it. Instead of doing the clean show-kata thing where most of it is done at 90 and 45 degree angles from a presumed viewer, she just keeps what's available to her – and besides, she's interested far more in function than form for this. So she just continues in the same direction her low block was, the direction where she overshoots to, with a strike to the eyes, elbow to the bottom of the jaw, backfist to the nose, hammerfist to the groin.
Doing the kata – go pei sho – is relaxing. It was her 'graduation'. When she was training with Richard Dragon. Even though this kata was karate and he was kung-fu. It's fitting, she said. You normally have to make up a bunkai to graduate from one level of black belt to the next – demonstrating which fighting techniques in the motions you are using or that you want to extrapolate from the kata, since a low-block could be a strike or a block; a middle-block and low-block combo could be what it sounds like, or two strikes, or an arm-bar. She was just doing the same thing – while also showing how she'd adapt it for a wheelchair.
Wheelchairs are pretty quiet – when there's no messed up wheels – so Barbara doesn't hear Yeong and Wendy come over, but she does see the two of them in her peripheral vision. She stops and turns to face them.
"You do martial arts?" Wendy asks.
Barbara nods. "Karate, Aikido, and Ju-Jitsu, mostly."
"You actually fight?" Wendy asks again.
"That's what martial arts is about," Barbara says.
"Not always," Yeong says. "I have a friend who does Tai Chi. She says it helps her relax."
"I find fighting very relaxing. Personally," Barbara says.
She knows that everyone regards it as a stupid move, secret-identity wise, to look competent at something you do in the hero business. But she only fights with bad guys if something goes wrong. She's normally already in her base, already exhausted her defenses, and most importantly, already 'unmasked'.
"You ever actually win?" Wendy asks, clearly still skeptical. "Against an able-bodied person, I mean?"
"Ah," Barbara says. "Able-bodied people. The most people-y kind of people."
Wendy's mouth drops open in offense.
Barbara knows that was below the belt. She knows it wasn't what Wendy was trying to imply, that someone else being disabled somehow makes them less of a person. She knows it's probably frustration, trauma, and survivor's guilt talking.
"Look, Wendy," Barbara says, softening her voice a little to try to make up for it. "I know it seems implausible to you. That's because you're still adapting – "
"If I hear one more speech about how I have to 'get used to it' or 'learn to live with it', I'm gonna kill someone," Wendy says, then cringes. "I don't want the whole 'it gets better' crap."
She must not be super proud of how she's dealing with this conversation either.
"It is crap," Barbara says slowly. "But not because it doesn't get better. It's because of the passive voice – it only gets better if you make it better."
"I'm already doing all my physical therapy; what more can I do!"
"I, uh, obviously don't know this entire situation," Yeong says, then she puts a hand on Wendy's shoulder, "But have you considered that even if you still want to be able to walk, you can learn how to do stuff in a chair? It's just dealing with the situation you have right now; you're not going to regret learning if you do get the use of your legs back in six or ten or twelve months. It will just make those months not miserable."
Bargaining. Barbara's not sure if that will work, long term. But short term, it must work because Wendy at least nods.
"Let's get out of the cold," Barbara suggests. "We can carry on any conversation inside."
.
.
.
For most of the time, the three of them just chatted. Wendy didn't give the exact details to Yeong – that she used to be with the Teen Titans – but she did explain that her brother and she got assaulted and her brother died and she became permanently disabled.
Even though it's morbid, Barbara shares her story as well. At least, the safe for non-superheroes version. It was a mugging, she got shot in the spine. And Yeong talks about being sick in the hospital with meningitis when she was just a teenager – younger than Wendy is right now.
It's refreshing, Barbara will admit, to be able to hear someone says "I'm sorry, that sucks," and just leave it at that. No self-flagellating "I don't know how I'd live like that" or "that must be so rough for you; you're so brave just for existing" from the well-intentioned assholes; from the non-assholes, there's no shocked look as they try to figure out the nicest way to say thing – do you offer sympathy because it was a life-changing event or do you brush it off like nothing because the person is happy now. Everyone already knows how they feel about their disability. Wendy hates it, Yeong acts like it's no big thing –
And well, Barbara... she did mind a whole lot, then she didn't mind as much and eventually at all, then it was up at the forefront of her brain due to complicated supervillain encounters –
But she still wouldn't change a thing.
And it feels like such a huge fucking relief to finally admit that to herself after a couple months of doubt from the Birds disbanding, from her encounter with the Joker getting outside her guard, from making all of the wrong calls and Bruce's death.
But she made most of her best contributions after her injury; she met most of her long-term friends; she worked most independently after it...
But of course she can't tell Yeong or Wendy about this, because they both are civilians. At least, Yeong is. But Wendy still doesn't know about Oracle.
For the time that they're not talking, Barbara and Yeong teach Wendy how to do a wheelie. It's hard to imagine she hasn't learned it yet – Barbara learned in the 'life skills' she had to get from her occupational therapist after her injury. Wendy should have had one, too. But, Barbara guesses, Wendy hasn't really been looking for much outside of hanging out in Leslie's clinic and trying to physical therapy herself back into walking again.
It goes... well enough, with either Yeong or Barbara chasing after Wendy as she builds up enough speed to try to do a wheelie the first time, in case she tips over and falls down. Even if you don't really need the forward momentum; it definitely feels like you do the when you just start out.
At least it did for Barbara.
At the end of the lesson, Barbara goes back out to her car and swaps her wheelchair again, getting in the lightweight one just to put the court chair in the trunk. Yeong helps her, and Barbara actually lets her. It just feels different this way.
"The only chair I have is a court chair," Yeong says, "Because I can walk with crutches. So the people of the mall simply have to deal with the big footprint on my bad leg days."
"You can walk?!" Wendy asks. "Why the hell are you in a chair then, anyway?"
"Uh, because being able to get from the couch to the bathroom does not guarantee being able to stand outside a bus stop until the bus comes, move through a busy mall, or even go on a walk and enjoy it?" Yeong says, though her voice pitches up slightly like it's a question.
"I'd enjoy any walk if it was on my own feet," Wendy says.
Yeong presses her lips together slightly. Barbara's guessing her residual mobility is making the situation awkward for her – the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, and telling Wendy it wouldn't be enjoyable because of pain, tiredness, or fall risk – Barbara doesn't know – wouldn't go over well.
"It's obvious you prioritize basketball over fitting in," Barbara says, which she means as a compliment. "With the court chair."
Yeong smiles and puts a hand to her chest. "Please, people are going to stare at me when I go shopping no matter what kind of chair I have."
Barbara laughs. It definitely feels true.
"How do you avoid chewing people's heads off for it?" Wendy asks. At least she seems distracted enough that she's no longer mad at Yeong for not being disabled in the right way.
Though she was also mad at Barbara for not being disabled in the right way. The 'right way' being wanting to completely reclaim your previous mobility.
"It's a learned skill," Barbara says. "Like doing a wheelie, but more emotionally frustrating."
"Yeah, well doing wheelies is actually fun," Wendy grumbles. But at least it seems like she enjoyed the lesson.
"We should do this again," Yeong says. "Girls night out. But during the day and without the alcohol."
"Girls' nights out require alcohol?" Barbara asks. Though she supposes that her experiences weren't always typical – in college, she didn't get to any partying, and most of her 'girls' nights out' as an adult pre-Oracle were almost always in the form of punching supervillains. Post Oracle, she didn't drink, because she might need to hack something or help someone out at any moment.
"Everything fun for adults requires alcohol, allegedly," Yeong says. "I mean, it's not my rule. But it seems like it's lots of people's rule."
Barbara nods. It certainly does seem like that can be the case. But she doesn't have anything to add, so she and Yeong just exchange numbers and she gets in her car and drives to the Batcave.
.
.
.
Work starts straightforward.
A hacking request here, a money tracing request there. Keeping track of all of the various potential threats as best as she can.
Partway through the day, Cassandra comes down and starts training on her practice dummies. As usual. The thwuck thwuck thwuck of her fists and feet on the dummies is actually kind of relaxing. It reminds Barbara of the first time they were living together, when it was both of them in the Clocktower.
"Working?" Cass asks, coming up over Barbara's shoulder after about an hour of training.
Barbara nods.
"Robin should be here soon," Cass says.
"I appreciate the heads up, but you won't be distracting," Barbara says.
Cassandra shifts slightly. Barbara gets the idea she doesn't know what to say.
Barbara wheels a pace back away from the computer, so she can actually look at Cassandra, instead of just staring at the screen while talking to her. Besides; it'd be good to clear her brain from all the figures and fuzzy security camera footage and witness testimonies.
"You've taken on a lot of extra work," Barbara says. "First training Stephanie. Now Damian."
Cassandra shrugs. "Stephanie is my friend."
"And Damian?"
"... Damian... could have been me. Or I could have been him," Cassandra says, looking down for a moment.
Barbara nods. She guesses it makes sense. "No matter what," she says, "I'm proud of you."
Cassandra raises an eyebrow in confusion.
"You're doing what I did for you. What he did for all of us." She doesn't have to say who he is. "It's an important part of being Batman."
"You don't think... Dick is Batman?"
Barbara almost wonders if Cass is feeling insecure. "I think you both are," she says carefully. "And I think that for the time being, that's a good thing. What do you think?"
"... Neither of us is," Cassandra says.
Barbara wheels forward and grabs Cassandra's hand. Cassandra yanks it back almost immediately.
"He'd be proud of you too," Barbara says.
Cassandra shrugs kind of awkwardly, like she's trying to avoid the topic. "Should go back to training," she says, and gestures over her shoulder at the mat. "But... thanks."
While Cass starts training Damian, Barbara gets back to work.
She's still trying to figure out what exactly is going on with the crime boss Dick brought in a bit ago. Laszlo Valentin, aka Professor Pyg. He obviously had some type of brain-control device beyond just the drugs, with the dollotrons that Robin reported. Though, according to Robin, the brain-control device was fallible. He met a girl who had the mask on, but wasn't brainwashed into being a dollotron. The same girl he asked her to find.
Barbara compared the sketches that Damian had given her – Dick's right; the kid was a pretty talented artist – to the 3D model of the dollotron faces she had compiled from security camera footage from when Dick fought them the first time. Most of the surface features are similar, though obviously each victims face varied somewhat in length and position of the features, no doubt accommodating the shape and size of their face and skull.
She doesn't think that the angles and quality of the images on the cameras will allow the program to make a clear distinction between the rest of Pyg's victims who had missed the ambulance ride to Gotham General and the girl Damian is looking for in specific, so she's expecting quite a few false-positives. But she does finish inputting all of the parameters she needs for her program and set it to beep if it gets something.
Damn, programming is so convenient. Scanning through footage by yourself was much more tedious, even though she knows she'll have to check occasionally to make sure it's working right and not missing things. There's no way its humanly possible for her to monitor everything she has to monitor without computers.
By time Barbara's done getting her program set up, it's past dinner time. She doesn't even notice until the scent of Chinese take-out hits her and her stomach growls like an angry dog.
"Thanks, Alfred," she says, turning around in her chair, but –
The person who brought the food over isn't Alfred. It's Dick.
Dick grins. "Alfred? I know I'm not young enough to be the Boy Wonder anymore but wow. That hurt."
Barbara holds her hand out for the food. "Gimme," she says.
Dick does not approach. "Not until you apologize."
She knows he's just messing with her. "I apologize sincerely for mistaking you for a great man who helped raise you as a child."
"That's better," Dick says, and hands her her box of food.
"You know," Barbara starts. "If you want me to not mistake you for Alfred when bringing me food, you can always bring me food more often."
"Are you requesting me to come over to your place to cook? Because I can actually cook," Dick says.
"It might be nice," Barbara says as she starts opening her box. Mongolian beef already mixed in with rice. She starts on her food while Dick sits in the computer chair and starts on his.
He's holding himself upright, almost unnaturally straight, probably trying to avoid any rib pain, and eating with a fork in his left hand, kind of awkwardly. The right one is nearly immobile, just holding his food.
"What were you working on?" Dick asks.
Barbara decides honesty is the best policy and tells him. "Trying to find out if there's anyone behind Laszlo Valentin. You said you thought there was."
Dick nods. "He had to be getting his drugs from somewhere. What Robin and I and the police saw at his base didn't really have the volume of supplies we'd have expected if he was completely synthesizing his own stuff. We're just looking for motive."
"You said his motive was infecting all of Gotham and holding the city for ransom, right?" Barbara asks.
"So he implied."
"Lots of people have that motive," Barbara continues. "Those who don't have it in for Gotham for revenge against perceived slights or because they hate Batman could surely want the money."
"Yeah, but we don't need to interrogate every dirtbag who's ever hated Gotham," Dick says. "We need to find out who was in contact with Pyg. Valentin. Whichever way you're calling him."
Barbara nods. Of course Dick's right. She taps open a window on the computer screen and shows him what she was looking at before she got distracted with the project Robin had asked her about.
"I've been trying to trace the money," she says. "It helps that Cass stole the documents from Harrison. Half the stuff is small-time crookery like blackmail or gambling, but there are some funds that are unaccounted for. That might have come from someone more mysterious or better at covering their tracks."
"You're thinking Valentin?" Dick asks.
"I'm thinking it's something we need to investigate no matter what," Barbara says. "And if you are staking anywhere out, it might give you some good places to start."
Dick nods. "I'll have Robin take a look out it when he's on patrol – with Cass; I'm not sending him out alone," he says with his hands up, preemptively defensive.
Barbara's not sure how he decided on Cass as a babysitter, considering no one even asked her this time. "Are you sure Cass is okay with it?"
"I mean, she wanted to go on patrol with him earlier," Dick says. "But I guess I shouldn't assume."
Barbara nods, because he's right. Even though she knows Cass will probably say yes – and who knows, it might even help the criminal underworld continue thinking that there's only one Batman. Dick's five inches taller and fifty pounds heavier than Cass, but seeing the same Robin might make people think it's the same Batman, as long as they're only seen from a distance or in combat.
Dick tries to scoot his chair closer to hers. "So," he asks after they've finished eating. "Is this what I'll be doing when I'm too old or injured to be Batman?"
"What?"
"Well, I don't have your hacking skills, but I do have command experience. With the Titans. And I could do a little bit of hacking the old fashion way. You know," he says as he mimes holding a phone up to his ear with his left hand. "'Hello, Evil Hideouts Incorporated. This is Johnny Henchmen, I've lost my password'."
"So retiring isn't on the menu?" she asks.
Dick shrugs (and then immediately winces). "I used to think about retiring when I was a kid. Sometimes it felt like I always had to be Robin and I never really got a chance to be Dick Grayson."
Barbara doesn't know how to respond to that, so she just leans in slightly and squeezes his knee affectionately. Dick grabs her hand back.
"But this," Dick says, while gesturing vaguely at himself with his left hand, "Is Dick Grayson. And that's not a bad thing."
"It's definitely not a bad thing," Barbara says, trying to reassure him –
And damn it, she hated it when people tried to reassure her if she was feeling insecure, so maybe he's hating it too. But he's not really shrinking back from it or anything; he's still just sitting there.
"I'm not saying there can be more than one Oracle; I'm not angling for your 'job'," Dick says with a quick smile. "But I can't really see myself not wanting to help at least a little if my friends are going into danger and I can do something."
Barbara sighs. There's a lot of ways to go about this – you're not yet thirty, why are you thinking you might be out of the field? would come across as fake because you don't have to be middle aged or anything to get injured suddenly – she was twenty four when she was shot in the spine. So, instead, she just says, "Maybe there should be more than one Oracle."
Dick raises an eyebrow. "You're admitting someone else can do what you do? After you were so modest about it?"
Barbara smacks him on the arm lightly. "Like you said earlier," she says, "I've been thinking on my decisions. And I think some of the more regrettable ones come from trying to do so damn much at once and not having time to think things through properly and – well, you know when you were trying to get me to relax. Everything fell apart in 24 hours."
"Barbara, I'm so sorry – " Dick starts.
But Barbara cuts him off. "Don't apologize; it was good advice. It's not your fault you're not omniscient. But seeing you actually having downtime to heal because Cass is here – "
"You wish you had the same?" Dick asks.
Barbara shrugs. She's not getting physically injured in her job; she doesn't really need downtime to heal. And she knows that too much downtime is a bad thing; it will just send her into overthinking or feeling alone or useless –
And she can't really let that happen either.
"Have you scoped out any candidates yet?" Dick asks.
Barbara shakes her head. "I know who I could ask – Savant has a lot of skills, though not always hacking, but I still don't know that I'd trust his judgment all the way. I trust Dinah with my life but she hates computers and is too much of an asset to take out of the field. Charlie would probably try to do it if I asked, but she's sixteen and doesn't have the requisite skills."
"Tim's probably the second strongest hacker in the family," Dick says. "But..."
Barbara nods. "Exactly. Tim's got his own stuff going on. Even if it was something he'd be interested in – which it's not – he needs to deal with Bruce's death his own way. You tried to help and he wouldn't let you."
Dick looks down.
Barbara knows Dick feels at least somewhat guilty about how things went down with Tim. He told her he felt like he was being asked to choose between Tim and Damian and at that time – before he'd spent two months with the kid – Tim had seemed like the best choice. The person he actually viewed as his little brother and actually wanted to see more. He picked Damian because he needed to, because Damian had no one and needed someone to take care of him.
It's obvious his feelings on the matter have changed by now, at least regarding Damian. He'll smile when he talks about the kid sometimes, and that's probably something Damian needs. But it still wouldn't make things easy.
"Either way," Barbara says. "It's not something I have to actually implement immediately. Just... on my mind."
Dick nods, leans in, and kisses the top of her head. She won't lie – she could get used to this, just being around him more. But saying that out loud would make it sound like it's a good thing he got injured, so she doesn't.
Dick, however does. "Well, I'm no backup Oracle, but I was trained by the World's Greatest Detective," he says. "So let's put our heads together and find these guys."