Insert Standard Disclaimer Here
Apologies for the long wait, but Real Life takes precedence. Always. (Except when procrastinating!)
On with the show!
Selina was sipping tea and watching with amusement as Timmy completely, well, smashed Stephanie and Cass at Mario Super Smash Bros. He might be the youngest and smallest of the terrible trio but damn if there weren't days that she didn't consider attempting to recruit him herself before Bruce got his fangs in all the way. The child was extraordinarily gifted and could even out-hack Dick when he got focused enough to forget he was going up against his idol.
Now Dick…that was a crying shame. Such wasted potential. Under her tutelage, he would have become the greatest thief in the world. She had seen him run a heist before and it was a thing of beauty. Ah well, c'est la vie.
And speak of the devil.
The look on the boy's face was enough to have Selina gently replacing her teacup on its saucer and mentally running over everything she knew about both the Day and Night lives of her…It's Complicated's family. Nothing came to mind that could cause that sort of anxiety.
Dick slumped into the chair across from her with all the grace that came naturally to him but with a heaviness that had Jason, beside him, looking up from his book in curiosity.
"What's wrong, Bat-chick?" She asked.
"Nothing." Dick smiled brightly and visibly relaxed. "I'm good. How are you?"
Selina exchanged glances with Jason and knew that he wasn't buying it either. She reached across the table and gently rapped the older boy's knuckles. "You can't con a con woman, Chickie," She chided.
His smile grew brittle. "Nothing's wrong. I'm fine."
Jason snorted and rolled his eyes. "Don't give us your 'the show must go on' crap. Just answer the question."
Dick turned a truly impressive mini-Bat Glare on him and Selina cleared her throat, knowing from experience that if she let this escalate she would never get an answer and Bruce would be grumpier than usual for at least a week when he had to deal with his eldest two sons fighting. He was no fun to tease when he was in those sorts of moods. "Please, love." She took his hand in hers this time. "Talk to me."
With one last dirty look at Jason, Dick shrugged, his eyes fixed on where she was gently running her thumb over the knuckles she'd abused earlier. "It really is nothing. Just a…Team thing."
She perked up at that. She had been begging Bruce for ages to let her play with this new team of Robin's, just so she could meet them. He was unrelenting though, just as protective of them as he was his own children. They'd only ever come to Gotham twice, and both times they had been gone before she'd even heard about it.
"More drama?" Jason stuck his nose back into his book, a battered, paperback copy of The Tale of Desperaux. "Seriously, this is reaching telenovela levels of ridiculous."
"Not drama." Dick said reluctantly, the slightest hint of his accent showing beneath his carefully constructed American speech patterns. "Mission." He gave her a sideways look and Selina made sure the small smile she gave was genuine. You can't con a conman.
"I promised, love." She wasn't fool enough to think that the deal she made with Bruce meant she was told everything, but it did give the hatchlings the freedom to come to her with the woes they couldn't take to Bruce or even Alfred. She hadn't exactly learned enough to bring down the Justice League or anything, but she now knew enough that, if she wanted, she could probably put enough pieces together. So she very, very carefully stayed away from following certain trains of thought. (Especially the one that made Lois Lane's Superman articles seem extremely biased.)
Jason was frowning at them now over the top of his book. "The Belle Reve mission? What about it?"
Belle Reve? Selina blinked. This was likely to be juicy.
Dick nodded, his misery showing plainly now. That was the nice thing about Dick. Once he decided to actually share the emotions that he kept locked behind an impenetrable mask that was the mirror of Bruce's, he truly did let them show with honest abandon. No wonder Bruce had come to her in a (determinedly concealed) panic over him a time or two. If ever there were two opposites…
"It's stupid, I know. I mean, it's dangerous but not really any more than some of our other missions, less in some ways, we'll be right outside for backup and everything but still…" he trailed off and shrugged helplessly, his fingers tightening around hers enough that she had to conceal the discomfort from his aerialist grip. "I know it isn't the same but I still don't like it."
Selina still felt confused but Jason had a look of dawning comprehension and the Trio had paused their game to listen and Timmy and Cass had similar expressions.
"It's not like the JDC, Dickie." Jason said, his rough tone not hiding his concern at all. He wouldn't have meant it to. In so many ways, irony of ironies, street-hardened Jason was the most honest of the brood. Catherine Todd, for all her faults, must have been a remarkable woman to raise a child so unafraid to love in the depths of Crime Alley. "They aren't being sent in for real."
"They kinda are." Dick said miserably. "No one inside is going to know, not even Warden Waller. It's the only way to be sure."
"It's Belle Reve though." Jason insisted, as Cass slipped up to press against Dick's other side. "Like you said, Warden Waller. It's run completely different from Stormford. There is no way anyone as regimented as Amanda Waller would tolerate half of the shit they let those thugs get away with."
"My dad's in Blackgate." Stephanie spoke up, her usually bright voice subdued. "He said he was hoping he'd get sent to Belle Reve. It's better there."
Jason waved a hand, the tight look he always wore when his past came up shining from his green eyes. "And the Falcone's had my dad shanked in Blackgate 'cause he double-crossed 'em."
Dick frowned and Selina winced. That might not have been the right thing to say at the moment. She was beginning to piece the puzzle together and didn't like what she was seeing. She squeezed Dick's hand to get his attention. "Take it from someone who practically grew up in Stormford and has extensively studied Belle Reve." She said when he looked up at her. "There is no guarantee for perfect safety. Prison is prison." She squeezed again. "But of the two, whichever of your friends are going in will be much better off in Belle Reve."
Dick nodded and Selina looked around the room and felt the familiar flare inside as she glanced from one child to another. She was no stranger to too-old eyes in too-young faces. Hell, she had been one of those children herself once, but unlike most like her, she had never been able to dull her anger at a world that delighted in breaking that which should be protected into apathy. She thought of Stephanie, speaking with her father through bullet resistant glass and low-quality phones. Of Timmy, all alone in a too-big house. Of Jason, fighting for survival on the same streets she herself grew up on. Of Cassandra, fleeing into the night, refusing to be the weapon her father intended her to be. She thought of Holly, looking at her suspiciously through the caked on makeup that just served to highlight how old she was not. And to these she added the Dick Grayson she had first met, wide-eyed and skittish, alone in a foreign country and society, stuttered English seeded with words that didn't quite fit, and imagined him surrounded by children older and stronger than he, looking to take out their own pain and fear on anyone they could.
Bruce might be the one with a crusade, but Selina held her own accounting in her heart. For now, she simply slid to the floor and tugged Dick down into her lap, cuddling him close as she felt him struggle not to cry into her silk blouse and the other children clung to them both, offering comfort.
She had never wanted to be a mother. Never wanted to subject any more children to the cruelties of life. But sometimes she wondered.
And whether or not she and Bruce ever became anything real, she knew she would never turn her back on the flock of battered and broken little birds he had collected.