Barbara began to spend many hours in front of the computer, she began to
discover the utility of it. And helped to solved one of the GCPD cases that
was driving her father nuts. Someone was using computers to steal money,
and she helped without anyone realizing it was her. After that, she
understood that she couldn't let her life go down because of her condition.
Her computer began to be her library.
Barbara's base of operations was in the high-tech Gotham City Clock Tower in the Wayne Corp building. Bruce had given her that floor; he knew that by giving her all the facilities she would continue her great job as a crime fighter and Alfred helped her with the details.
She had even changed her name to Oracle. And so far she had been trying to break into the security of the DYFS computer system and search for Helena; after Selina's murder she was sure the police took her there, and from there to an orphanage that could be in any part of the country. She had asked for Helena at DYFS, but she wasn't a family member and the process to obtain information on the girl would be long; she needed to send letters explaining why she wanted know about the kid, and she didn't have the time either to be patient and to wait so much time to find out about her.
* * *
Helena had escaped again a week later. She jumped on the buildings, hiding until a storm covered the city. She had taken shelter out of the rain inside a grocery store and she opened a bag of cookies, the owner saw her and she ran to the exit taking another bag. It was bad luck that she crashed into a security guard at the exit of the store.
A few minutes later, she was in the police station where she made a big scene and hours later she was again in the Youth Detention Center. Maybe she wasn't outside much time, but at least she would make the guards and counselors mad for several hours, and that was enough for her.
She lied in the bed looking the ceiling, she was soaking wet, but the Director was furious with her and sent her to be punished in solitary confinement. No bed was as soft as her own in her home. She took the light blanket and covered herself. The night was so cold and it didn't gave her enough warm but it was the only thing that she had to cover her self.
She saw herself sitting in the middle of a dark alley. She saw her mother lying bleeding in the distance and that man was kneeling in front of her. He raised his face and walked toward her, she stepped back afraid; she felt sunk into the road surface; she was terrified as he smiled at her. He stopped and many people began to appear behind him in the darkness pointing her and calling her 'thief' and 'fugitive'. She felt desperation and tried to run but she moved clumsily while she sunk slowly in the pavement.
One of the counselors heard her scream and opened the door, she turned on the light, the girl was crying and sweating. The girl woke up trembling and scared. The couselor checked her forehead, she was very warm.
"You have temperature Helena, why didn't you chang your clothes? You are soaked. I have to take you to the infirmary..."
"The director was mad with me. and sent me here. I'm cold, Kelly" Helena whimpered, shivering.
"I guess, you made him mad with your last escape. First, you need take a warm bath and change your clothes."
"He will punish me again if I go out of here."
"And you are worried about that?" Kelly moved her head "It's the last thing that should matter to you, come on, come with me." She took her hand.
"No, he will punish me." Helena whispered.
"No, he won't." She tried to help her stand up but the girl refused.
"He will punish me..."
"You are delirious, Hel, I'll take the responsibility, okay? You need to change, come on." She forced her to stand and took out her out of the room.
* * *
Barbara was sleeping in her bed, she heard a noise and woke. The window was opened, and the curtains moved. She looked around but couldn't see anything, but she felt she wasn't alone. "Bruce?" she asked. She moved to her side and turned on the lamp. A chill ran in her back, in front of her was the Joker pointing her with a gun, he laughed.
"Knock, knock. who's there???" he laughed again "Hello Batgirl, I come to finish my job." He shot the gun and she screamed.
Barbara woke up sweating and scared, she breathed faster; the room was in darkness; she sat and turned on the light. She looked around but the room was empty, her hair was messy and she brushed it with her hand.
Her hand shook when she tried to take a glass of water that was by her night table but she throw the glass on the floor, she was too nervous and started to cry. That nightmare had followed her since that terrible night.
She had tried to endure it but the fear inside her was bigger than her determination. One of her fears was to go back to be a crime fighter was some day be face to face with
* * *
"Why did you take her out of her solitary confinement? She was being punished!" the Director shouted at the officer. They were in his office discussing the matter.
"She was sick, you send her there soaked, it was a cold night and she had temperature. We would have problems if somebody knew that!" The custody officer was really angry.
"She is a menace, she is out of control. Last week she hit two guards, three weeks ago she started a fight in the dining room some girls were injured. Now she escaped for almost four days and was caught stealing! And this isn't the first time that she escaped from here."
"I think that we are doing something wrong, her mother was murdered three months ago."
"And she turned into a menace to society!" the Director paced in his office.
"Maybe because we don't know how to manage her." The officer said
"I know how, tomorrow morning you will take her back to the cell for a week! She needs understand who is in charge here."
"That isn't the way."
"I'm not asking you, I'm giving you a order, and the discussion is over. Good afternoon miss Kelly."
The officer hung her head and walked outside. Kelly walked to the infirmary to see Helena. The girl was resting on a stretcher looking outside through the windows with bars. Sadness was always on the girl's face. She stood next to her, and Helena looked up at her.
"I have to go back to my cell?" she asked in low voice.
"No, not yet. How do you feel?" Kelly touched her forehead.
"Much better, thanks."
"You still are warm." Kelly sat next to her "Why did you do it, Helena?"
"Why did I do what?"
"Why are you so rebellious?"
"I dunno why I am here. I'm not a criminal, and you treat me as one. It's unfair. I just want go back home."
"You are under age, you have to live under state custody and you caused a lot of problems there." Helena kept silence "You have nothing to say?" Kelly insisted.
"Why? Anyway I'm under age and my words don't matter until I'm 18."
"Helena, this is not a comfortable place, but don't make it worse for yourself."
"Couldn't be any worse." The brunette looked at her. "I've lived in hell since my mom died."
* * *
Alfred watched Barbara moving clumsily in the manual wheelchair but he didn't help her, he knew she was trying to learn to be independant again. When the laboratory in the middle of Clock Tower was finished they celebrated with a glass of white wine in the kitchen.
"This place is really wonderful," he said.
"And functional, I can get access to everything, anytime." Barbara said with enthusiasm.
"And how do you feel now?" he finally asked.
"Very well," Barbara put sugar in her coffee "I got a job as a librarian and a grant from the Wayne Foundation to begin anew." She smiled and looked at her computer "And I'm discovering how marvellous computers are."
"I'm glad for you." Alfred smiled.
Barbara kept silenct before getting to the point. "He really left?" she asked.
"Yes."
Barbara sighed "I feel so sad from him. His heart is broken. he left without knowing."
"Without knowing..?"
"Alfred.." Barbara bit her lip, she didn't know how start "I need your help."
"My help? Of course miss Barbara, how may I be of assistance?."
".Bruce had a daughter." she fixed her eyes on him waiting for his reaction. Alfred opened his eyes surprised looking at her skeptically.
"He and Selina were very close. Selina was. pregnant. They broke up and she left, a few months late she had a baby, a baby that was born in Paris 16 years ago."
"Are you serious miss Barbara?"
"Bruce didn't know that, Selina hid it from him. The girl didn't know either that he is her father. Her name is Helena. That night I heard the news of Selina's murder on TV and I ran to the phone to try to locate her when I heard someone knocking on the door. I opened it thinking it was Helena, but it was the Joker. He surprised me."
"I'm sorry. If that is true. where is the girl now?"
"I was blocked with my own pain and I forgot her; she is under age, and she is alone, she doesn't have a family. I began to investigate a month ago, took me time to began to install codes and equipment. Don't tell anyone, I hacked into the police files. That was easy, the difficult part was creating the software to do it. Now I know that the police took her and kept her at the DYFS and later she was moved to the Youth Detention Center ."
"To the Youth Detention Center?"
"Yeah, it seems that she has been in a lot of trouble: rebelling, violent. She caused some trouble and was sent there, I have access to her files. She's there now."
Alfred smiled "You are really a genius."
"No, not really. " she said "I'm feeling guilty, guilty because I thought of her many times and I lost that time feeling ashamed of myself. But three days ago I felt most guilty when a lawyer came to see me. Selina gave him instructions to give me custody of her." She did a pause "She once asked me if something happened to her, if I would take care of Helena and I said yes, but I never imagined that she left instructions for that. She made me her guadian and I failed her."
"It wasn't your fault, you still have time to recover the girl." Alfred pointed out.
"But I left her alone in her worst moments." Barbara said with sadness.
"You weren't in a condition to help her, it was not your fault. What I can do for you miss Barbara?" Alfred asked curiously.
"She escaped seven times in three months; she's been into the police station another three times for disturbing the peace. She once knocked out three policemen."
Alfred raised his eyebrow in surprise "A sixteen year-old girl? She really is Selina's daughter. But how she could she knock out three policemen? She is just a kid."
".Selina told me she is half-meta." Barbara sighed. "She explained to me that she had the abilities of a cat: she can jump high distances, run and jump high distances and is very strong."
"She will be dangerous indeed."
"Helena is a warm girl and very smart. She loved Selina, I saw that. Now I can imagine that she is disoriented, she lost everything in one night, Alfred; I understand her, I know her she is so sweet, but she surely feels frustrated and she is using her fury to attack everybody. I need to help her. Nobody knows that she is half-meta. The lawyer thinks that I don't have the capability to take care of her because I can't walk."
"Are you going to talk with master Bruce?"
"No, I need to first rescue her, it would be very hard for her and for him to know this now. I need to first prepare her, but I need custody. The lawyer asked me to sign some papers refusing custody and I told him that I'm not going to sign."
"It could take time."
"I know and it doesn't matter to me. I can have custody now, because she wrote that in the will, while the fight with the law runs aound trying to reject the document giving me the right to keep her."
"Yes, that is correct. How can I help you?" Alfred smiled.
Barbara felt a little ashamed. "At home. I'm stupid yet moving around in this wheelchair, and I'll need all the help I can get trying to take care of a rebellious and mad teenager. My father thinks that I'm crazy trying to keep custody of a girl that I barely know, and. the daughter of a cat burglar.. I can't tell him that she is Bruce's daughter, he doesn't know that he is Batman. I can't talk about it with anyone."
"Have you talked often with the girl?"
"Well, I talked mostly with Selina, Helena knows me as Barbara Gordon but nothing about my 'hero' life."
"She knew about Selina's life as Catwoman?"
"Yes, Selina told everything to her when she turned fifteen, she understood everything well, but as I told you Selina hid her father's identity from her. What do you say? Would you help me?"
Alfred smiled. "Count me in."
Barbara felt great motivation inside her, she now felt really useful again. She used to work in front of her computer late every night helping with the JLA team with her database or was the second in command of Amanda Waller's Suicide Squad. She had became a largely-unseen quasi-member of that team. It gave her more connections in interesting places than when she was Batgirl. And now, she had found Helena.
* * *
Barbara's base of operations was in the high-tech Gotham City Clock Tower in the Wayne Corp building. Bruce had given her that floor; he knew that by giving her all the facilities she would continue her great job as a crime fighter and Alfred helped her with the details.
She had even changed her name to Oracle. And so far she had been trying to break into the security of the DYFS computer system and search for Helena; after Selina's murder she was sure the police took her there, and from there to an orphanage that could be in any part of the country. She had asked for Helena at DYFS, but she wasn't a family member and the process to obtain information on the girl would be long; she needed to send letters explaining why she wanted know about the kid, and she didn't have the time either to be patient and to wait so much time to find out about her.
* * *
Helena had escaped again a week later. She jumped on the buildings, hiding until a storm covered the city. She had taken shelter out of the rain inside a grocery store and she opened a bag of cookies, the owner saw her and she ran to the exit taking another bag. It was bad luck that she crashed into a security guard at the exit of the store.
A few minutes later, she was in the police station where she made a big scene and hours later she was again in the Youth Detention Center. Maybe she wasn't outside much time, but at least she would make the guards and counselors mad for several hours, and that was enough for her.
She lied in the bed looking the ceiling, she was soaking wet, but the Director was furious with her and sent her to be punished in solitary confinement. No bed was as soft as her own in her home. She took the light blanket and covered herself. The night was so cold and it didn't gave her enough warm but it was the only thing that she had to cover her self.
She saw herself sitting in the middle of a dark alley. She saw her mother lying bleeding in the distance and that man was kneeling in front of her. He raised his face and walked toward her, she stepped back afraid; she felt sunk into the road surface; she was terrified as he smiled at her. He stopped and many people began to appear behind him in the darkness pointing her and calling her 'thief' and 'fugitive'. She felt desperation and tried to run but she moved clumsily while she sunk slowly in the pavement.
One of the counselors heard her scream and opened the door, she turned on the light, the girl was crying and sweating. The girl woke up trembling and scared. The couselor checked her forehead, she was very warm.
"You have temperature Helena, why didn't you chang your clothes? You are soaked. I have to take you to the infirmary..."
"The director was mad with me. and sent me here. I'm cold, Kelly" Helena whimpered, shivering.
"I guess, you made him mad with your last escape. First, you need take a warm bath and change your clothes."
"He will punish me again if I go out of here."
"And you are worried about that?" Kelly moved her head "It's the last thing that should matter to you, come on, come with me." She took her hand.
"No, he will punish me." Helena whispered.
"No, he won't." She tried to help her stand up but the girl refused.
"He will punish me..."
"You are delirious, Hel, I'll take the responsibility, okay? You need to change, come on." She forced her to stand and took out her out of the room.
* * *
Barbara was sleeping in her bed, she heard a noise and woke. The window was opened, and the curtains moved. She looked around but couldn't see anything, but she felt she wasn't alone. "Bruce?" she asked. She moved to her side and turned on the lamp. A chill ran in her back, in front of her was the Joker pointing her with a gun, he laughed.
"Knock, knock. who's there???" he laughed again "Hello Batgirl, I come to finish my job." He shot the gun and she screamed.
Barbara woke up sweating and scared, she breathed faster; the room was in darkness; she sat and turned on the light. She looked around but the room was empty, her hair was messy and she brushed it with her hand.
Her hand shook when she tried to take a glass of water that was by her night table but she throw the glass on the floor, she was too nervous and started to cry. That nightmare had followed her since that terrible night.
She had tried to endure it but the fear inside her was bigger than her determination. One of her fears was to go back to be a crime fighter was some day be face to face with
* * *
"Why did you take her out of her solitary confinement? She was being punished!" the Director shouted at the officer. They were in his office discussing the matter.
"She was sick, you send her there soaked, it was a cold night and she had temperature. We would have problems if somebody knew that!" The custody officer was really angry.
"She is a menace, she is out of control. Last week she hit two guards, three weeks ago she started a fight in the dining room some girls were injured. Now she escaped for almost four days and was caught stealing! And this isn't the first time that she escaped from here."
"I think that we are doing something wrong, her mother was murdered three months ago."
"And she turned into a menace to society!" the Director paced in his office.
"Maybe because we don't know how to manage her." The officer said
"I know how, tomorrow morning you will take her back to the cell for a week! She needs understand who is in charge here."
"That isn't the way."
"I'm not asking you, I'm giving you a order, and the discussion is over. Good afternoon miss Kelly."
The officer hung her head and walked outside. Kelly walked to the infirmary to see Helena. The girl was resting on a stretcher looking outside through the windows with bars. Sadness was always on the girl's face. She stood next to her, and Helena looked up at her.
"I have to go back to my cell?" she asked in low voice.
"No, not yet. How do you feel?" Kelly touched her forehead.
"Much better, thanks."
"You still are warm." Kelly sat next to her "Why did you do it, Helena?"
"Why did I do what?"
"Why are you so rebellious?"
"I dunno why I am here. I'm not a criminal, and you treat me as one. It's unfair. I just want go back home."
"You are under age, you have to live under state custody and you caused a lot of problems there." Helena kept silence "You have nothing to say?" Kelly insisted.
"Why? Anyway I'm under age and my words don't matter until I'm 18."
"Helena, this is not a comfortable place, but don't make it worse for yourself."
"Couldn't be any worse." The brunette looked at her. "I've lived in hell since my mom died."
* * *
Alfred watched Barbara moving clumsily in the manual wheelchair but he didn't help her, he knew she was trying to learn to be independant again. When the laboratory in the middle of Clock Tower was finished they celebrated with a glass of white wine in the kitchen.
"This place is really wonderful," he said.
"And functional, I can get access to everything, anytime." Barbara said with enthusiasm.
"And how do you feel now?" he finally asked.
"Very well," Barbara put sugar in her coffee "I got a job as a librarian and a grant from the Wayne Foundation to begin anew." She smiled and looked at her computer "And I'm discovering how marvellous computers are."
"I'm glad for you." Alfred smiled.
Barbara kept silenct before getting to the point. "He really left?" she asked.
"Yes."
Barbara sighed "I feel so sad from him. His heart is broken. he left without knowing."
"Without knowing..?"
"Alfred.." Barbara bit her lip, she didn't know how start "I need your help."
"My help? Of course miss Barbara, how may I be of assistance?."
".Bruce had a daughter." she fixed her eyes on him waiting for his reaction. Alfred opened his eyes surprised looking at her skeptically.
"He and Selina were very close. Selina was. pregnant. They broke up and she left, a few months late she had a baby, a baby that was born in Paris 16 years ago."
"Are you serious miss Barbara?"
"Bruce didn't know that, Selina hid it from him. The girl didn't know either that he is her father. Her name is Helena. That night I heard the news of Selina's murder on TV and I ran to the phone to try to locate her when I heard someone knocking on the door. I opened it thinking it was Helena, but it was the Joker. He surprised me."
"I'm sorry. If that is true. where is the girl now?"
"I was blocked with my own pain and I forgot her; she is under age, and she is alone, she doesn't have a family. I began to investigate a month ago, took me time to began to install codes and equipment. Don't tell anyone, I hacked into the police files. That was easy, the difficult part was creating the software to do it. Now I know that the police took her and kept her at the DYFS and later she was moved to the Youth Detention Center ."
"To the Youth Detention Center?"
"Yeah, it seems that she has been in a lot of trouble: rebelling, violent. She caused some trouble and was sent there, I have access to her files. She's there now."
Alfred smiled "You are really a genius."
"No, not really. " she said "I'm feeling guilty, guilty because I thought of her many times and I lost that time feeling ashamed of myself. But three days ago I felt most guilty when a lawyer came to see me. Selina gave him instructions to give me custody of her." She did a pause "She once asked me if something happened to her, if I would take care of Helena and I said yes, but I never imagined that she left instructions for that. She made me her guadian and I failed her."
"It wasn't your fault, you still have time to recover the girl." Alfred pointed out.
"But I left her alone in her worst moments." Barbara said with sadness.
"You weren't in a condition to help her, it was not your fault. What I can do for you miss Barbara?" Alfred asked curiously.
"She escaped seven times in three months; she's been into the police station another three times for disturbing the peace. She once knocked out three policemen."
Alfred raised his eyebrow in surprise "A sixteen year-old girl? She really is Selina's daughter. But how she could she knock out three policemen? She is just a kid."
".Selina told me she is half-meta." Barbara sighed. "She explained to me that she had the abilities of a cat: she can jump high distances, run and jump high distances and is very strong."
"She will be dangerous indeed."
"Helena is a warm girl and very smart. She loved Selina, I saw that. Now I can imagine that she is disoriented, she lost everything in one night, Alfred; I understand her, I know her she is so sweet, but she surely feels frustrated and she is using her fury to attack everybody. I need to help her. Nobody knows that she is half-meta. The lawyer thinks that I don't have the capability to take care of her because I can't walk."
"Are you going to talk with master Bruce?"
"No, I need to first rescue her, it would be very hard for her and for him to know this now. I need to first prepare her, but I need custody. The lawyer asked me to sign some papers refusing custody and I told him that I'm not going to sign."
"It could take time."
"I know and it doesn't matter to me. I can have custody now, because she wrote that in the will, while the fight with the law runs aound trying to reject the document giving me the right to keep her."
"Yes, that is correct. How can I help you?" Alfred smiled.
Barbara felt a little ashamed. "At home. I'm stupid yet moving around in this wheelchair, and I'll need all the help I can get trying to take care of a rebellious and mad teenager. My father thinks that I'm crazy trying to keep custody of a girl that I barely know, and. the daughter of a cat burglar.. I can't tell him that she is Bruce's daughter, he doesn't know that he is Batman. I can't talk about it with anyone."
"Have you talked often with the girl?"
"Well, I talked mostly with Selina, Helena knows me as Barbara Gordon but nothing about my 'hero' life."
"She knew about Selina's life as Catwoman?"
"Yes, Selina told everything to her when she turned fifteen, she understood everything well, but as I told you Selina hid her father's identity from her. What do you say? Would you help me?"
Alfred smiled. "Count me in."
Barbara felt great motivation inside her, she now felt really useful again. She used to work in front of her computer late every night helping with the JLA team with her database or was the second in command of Amanda Waller's Suicide Squad. She had became a largely-unseen quasi-member of that team. It gave her more connections in interesting places than when she was Batgirl. And now, she had found Helena.
* * *