Chapter 8

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"What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from."
-T. S. Eliot

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For over forty years those thoughts and words had been building up. Barbara felt odd to have been the one to say them. Bruce might've been thick enough to let things stand, but the weight of those years had weighed heavily on her. She felt the change after she had walked away. It felt like if they were silenced now: the echoes from the past which had always ruled the cave. Those echoes would regain their voice, but she enjoyed the reprieve. She took a moment to remember the others in the silence. Alfred would never get to see his charges united. The kindly, older gentleman wouldn't have lived long enough, even if he had died from natural causes. And Tim, she wasn't supposed to know how to contact Tim, but Dick had been a mentor and a friend to Tim. Even after everything, Tim deserved to know about Dick's return. Knowing Bruce, that duty would fall to her.

She had simply been wondering the cave passages, but this particular path kept unfolding in front of her. It was almost as if the walls were herding her, stealthily lowering the ceiling, threatening to crush her forever within herself. Barbara wasn't normally a claustrophobic person, but she was hyper aware of the rocks around her. Barbara sensed she should turn back. She turned twice but never made it back to the manor. The dark unknown corners compelled her down passageways she had believed long sealed off. There was more to the cave than the med lab, the museum, and the abrupt mouth to the abyss, but Barbara had never had a reason to venture beyond her familiar surroundings. Now, she needed to know what passed beyond the masks and million-dollar equipment.

The stifled air dissipated in the cavern's beauty. Water had created sculptures that had taken millions of years to mold and the slightest human touch could forever discolor. Barbara removed her shoes to ensure the peace of the place. It felt wrong to breathe inside the chamber and she would not disrupt nature where she did not belong.

While the walk had been dark and blurry, a box of crayons could have been used to fill this room with color. Every crack on the walls was highlighted and bursting from the walls, adding to the fantastical atmosphere that resided there. But the picture was not complete until she found it's cache of secrets hidden inside the cracks. The small shrine was the first indication that she was not the first person to unveil the usefulness of the place.

She unpacked the box with the same care she would've used at a crime scene. Each object had once been a child's treasure: Dick's treasure. Some things she could only guess the significance of, and others she had helped make significant. Each item provided another piece to the puzzle and the past became clearer. Sorting through what could now be considered junk, her own experiences began to gain perspective.

She had fooled herself for too long. The daughter of the Police Commissioner and the student of the world's greatest detective should have seen the signs. Not every bruise could be covered and it be coincidental only so many times that they both had to cancel a date when the city needed saving. It had seemed natural to flirt with each other when they were Robin and Batgirl, as well as Richard and Barbara, but never acknowledged the pattern or the ease. They had both been willfully blind, but she was only beginning to understand Dick's anger when their farce was forced to end.

Maybe Dick had finally understood everything before he went off to Fiji. They had grown back together and although they each had doubts, the forgiveness had been there. She should've gone with him as backup. Saving the world from some psycho cult had been more important than even her father, but Dick had insisted on going alone. The one time she had actually listened to his instructions would take him from her.

The details of the mission and what had gone wrong were still unclear. Bruce had made it seem an effortless undercover job and so Barbara had spent more time with her father in the hospital than with Dick reviewing the mission. He had wanted to stay with her, but there was a world to be saved and neither Bruce nor Tim could leave Gotham. She had insisted he go and had sent him off believing he would return and everything would be right.

The cult of Brother Blood had somehow known about Dick and was prepared, but not even that could stop him. In some crazy stunt that only Nightwing could pull off the entire cult collapsed, but there had been a price. Barbara had never been superstitious, but she cold only describe Dick's condition as cursed. She had searched many years, but it was only after she told herself she had moved on that she finally found where Bruce had hidden away his ward. She had gone alone to the Wayne Tech hospital, unaware of what would be waiting for her. Barbara could've handled everything from scars to a coma, but instead she found nothingness. Everything vibrant and beautiful about Dick could only be seen through monitors which were tuned to another spectrum not visible to human eyes. Near as anyone could tell her he was only attached to this dimension by a thread and no one knew how to bring him back.

There was nothing real left of Dick to hold onto. The grave site was a shame and none of her senses could pick up Dick in the hospital, even when the monitors said she was next to him. And she discovered she had not moved on at all.

Replacing the cherished things, Barbara admitted to herself things she had avoided, the truths she had not finished speaking in her argument with Bruce. For the first time, she faced her past, which remained behind her with each step back towards the command center. She was lost in her thoughts with no concept of time, until she noticed the scene in the cave.

Bruce. She knew it was his heart before she reached him.

Forgetting all her training, Barbara rushed to the still figure slumped by the computer. She fought her panic and the man's dog as she frantically searched for a pulse. Bruce's calm, young voice filled her head. She remembered to breathe, then remembered her training - his training - and the emergency plans he had prepared.

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Terry was sent home from the hospital. Wayne might've lived as a recluse for decades after losing his empire to Powers, but his name still had some pull, just enough for a security detail. Commissioner Gordon had the staff updating her of his condition and managed to get visitation rights for both of them, but not until the next day. And neither of them could explain Dick. So with a not so gentile shove, Gordon pushed him out the door, reminded him of his exams, and sent him home.

He stopped by Matt's bed and pulled his sleeping brother into a firm hug until the boy squirmed away.

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Dick glared at the machines which kept Bruce alive.

"Oh, I get it. This is your own revenge. I basically die, so now you have to put me through the same thing. Well, guess what Bruce? You don't have to do all this because I know what it's like, remember?" Dick raised his voice hoping for any response. "You know, if you go through with this I will hate you for the rest of my life; which looks like it might be a long time."

Dick doubted anyone would be convinced he was angry while his voice cracked and his eyes were teary. His fingers itched to tug at gauntlets which he wasn't wearing, a habit Bruce had trained out of him about his body's age. He wasn't quite sure what he hoped to accomplish by pretending to be angry with Bruce, mostly hoping Bruce would wake up and be angry in return. It was the easy, comfortable way of approaching the situation. But easy was never that comfortable for him.

"I'm not sure who I'm supposed to be angry at anyway. Old age? Time? That's hardly something to be angry at, and we both know unfocused anger is useless. You taught me that, although Terry seems a little lost on that now. He's out there with Barb now. Don't know exactly what happened in his past - I could make a pretty good guess - but he wants to go beat up somebody for this. Well, probably the staff for not allowing him in. I was smart enough not to wait for permission I knew I wasn't going to be granted.

"Barb is talking to him. She's quite good at that sort of thing, in case you hadn't noticed. She's good at a lot of things. Our little Batgirl, Police Commissioner, who would've thought? I've missed out on so much, I abandoned her through the best and worst times of her life and yet she hasn't held it against me. Or if she has, she's better at acting then I am. She's somehow managed to hold it all together, even though losing you would be like losing her father again. I don't know what happened to Jim Gordon, but I know she was suffering when I left those years ago. She doesn't know how to let you go, and neither do I. Not even Ace does."

Dick paused as one of the guards shifted outside the door. A minute later the man returned to his magazine he was reading instead of doing instead of his job.

"May be Ace sensed it too - down in the cave - it wasn't the same. Nothing was physically wrong with the place, but it felt," Dick groped for the right word, "strange. The air didn't seem as weighted, as if some huge burden had been lifted; the bats were still; the cave had lost something. It was empty feeling, but it was finally free. I can't explain it, but it's almost as if the past finally released the place and stopped it's perpetual reminders. The museum seemed to have had lost it's significance even before we found Barb's note in the cave. How she managed to get you here is a mystery to me, but we can guilt it out of her together. Just like old times.

"I really miss everyone now - Tim, Alfred, Doctor Leslie - especially Doctor Leslie now. I think I must be allergic to hospitals or something. If she was around, we wouldn't be here. We could be at home, safe from everyone and everything. Tucked away neatly in our own little world. But I'm being selfish. Of course things are going to change when you are gone, but it still kind of hurts. It's almost like I'm George Bailey and you've just pointed out to me that 'It's a wonderful life,' yet I don't get to go back and live what I missed. What good is being ten again when you have no one else to share it with?"

He recognized he was losing focus if he was comparing himself to Christmas movies. Bruce had indulged his Christmas movie marathons as a child, though Dick remembered it had taken until the year Joker tried that Christmas With the Joker scheme to get Bruce past the title of It's a Wonderful Life. As an adult, Dick had learned those movies had actually saddened his mentor because of how much Bruce was still that lonely boy his first Christmas without his parents. But Bruce had never said no to the movies, even while Dick was in college.

"When I was in the park this morning it was you who got me out of there alive. I was only beginning to remember bits and pieces of my training, but I don't think I could've gotten out of there if you hadn't shown up. Or at least what looked like you. Only with a worse taste in ties. Or should I say without an Alfred to give him a decent taste in ties.

"I had a point." Dick paused.

"If it wasn't for you, I who knows what I might have done. Strange to give any credit to your evil twin since he wanted to destroy me, but you aren't like that. I might have doubted you for a second if I hadn't known the type of character that drives you. No one is infallible Bruce, but you are not cut out to be a gun wielding maniac. What the Cult of the Brother Blood had used in hopes of driving me to them, now only makes me wish he had made the attempts sooner so I could have this revelation forty years ago.

"So Blood got away again. I couldn't even tell you if he was ever there. I won't be able to tell you probably even with the most through investigation. I've made quite a habit out of leaving the scene in ruins, haven't I? Some philosopher might find some symbolic meaning behind that, but all that thinking just makes my little head hurt.

"It's probably a good thing I'm not wasting my time thinking. Then I might get suspicious of your last minute call, but I know you didn't just want to make amends only because of your heart problems. Did I ever tell you that I do not blame you for anything? Except for instilling the desire to fight crime and corruption and never to swerve from the path of justice. That was all you, and I loved almost every minute of it."

Dick gripped Bruce's left hand with both of his. He told himself it was to keep from pulling at imaginary gauntlets.

"A horrible thought occurred to me: this sounds too much like a funeral speech. The sad thing would be that I couldn't even say any of this stuff there. I doubt if your d-" Dick bit his tongue to keep from stuttering, "death could be kept a secret, and who would want to see some random kid talk? It's not like they have seen me before. They can't know what really happened. That would bring up too many questions. So I would be stuck listening to everyone else share their stories but me. I'm not looking forward to the day, but the least I could do for you was to speak at your" Dick had to close his eyes as he said the word, "funeral. So, if I'm allowed to be petty for a minute, you can't die until I am old enough to handle it. I've found I don't just look like I'm nine-and-a-half, but I feel like it sometimes. Pain doesn't lessen with age, but I'm not sure how many more emotions this body can handle. I can be thinking perfectly rationally, but right now all I want to do is stomp around the room until I get my way.

"Of course, you would argue I was like that in my twenties too."

Dick's brief grin vanished. "Who am I Bruce? Am I stuck in my adolescence, my twenties or am I older than that? How do I suddenly explain my appearance to the world? Where will I live? How much longer will I be stuck living a life that isn't mine? How can anything be put into perspective without you?"

He didn't like sounding desperate, almost anything was better than that. "Okay, so I lied to you a couple minutes ago. What I meant was now I don't condemn you for anything. I don't think I really hated you back then either. I could tell you what I was thinking, but admitting it to you - even like this - is hard. But I think you know and it might've made you regret ever taking me in, and I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry for tons of things during that time, but dwelling on that will change nothing. I hope I never made you regret letting me run around as your partner. It meant everything to me and I just threw it all away. I needed the change, but I could've done it better. Those years of fighting each other were such a waste and this is the first chance we would have of fixing everything, so now I'm stuck with this guilt.

"It seems kind of fair after all those years. I know you felt horrible because of the life threatening situations that I put myself in. See, I admit it now: I put myself in peril. One could even argue that you tried to prevent me from getting myself hurt by leaving me in the cave, but that's a topic I don't want to get into right now. But have you ever stopped to think that I wouldn't be alive now if it wasn't for you? And I'm not talking about the times where I ended up in some fiendish plot as bait; I wouldn't be alive now if you hadn't jumped in the river after I fell in. You couldn't gotten Zucco so easily if I hadn't botched things up, but you saved me instead. When I first lost my memory, the last thing on my mind was you keeping me from being lost under the current. You meant the world to me, and nothing anyone else could ever do would take that away.

"And since you dragged it out of me, you mean a whole lot more than that now."

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The Beginning

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This story is followed by Piercing Whispers.

I owe tons of people my thanks:
*Coie - my wonderful sister and editor.
*Becky and Amanda - the writers of Ancient History, the first part of their excellent story was my inspiration to write my own version.
*The creators of all the characters, because Bob Kane has to be wondering what the fuck we've all done with his happy, carefree Batman and Robin.
*Writers in the fanon, for lots of ideas of Dick's childhood.
*The obsessed people who put up Batman Beyond sites so people who know practically nothing about the show can learn enough to write a fanfic.
*Anyone who has given me feedback during this time, especially Syl who forced me to work on my own story when I was ready to quit.