Barbara spent that morning tirelessly punching in passwords and reinstating firewalls, her husband retrieving her more coffee whenever her mug ran out. "I hate these early morning shifts," Dick said, leaning over her shoulder.
"Did you see Sarah get on her bus?" Barbara asked, ignoring his statement.
"Yeah, she's fine." How much more do you have to do?"
"I've cracked most of it already." Barbara said, sipping her coffee. "Believe me, if I could just have these things under normal lock and key like in the old days, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But without all of Bruce's tech, security's been too hit and miss to risk."
"I thought we were supposed to be retired." Dick said, laying a hand on Barbara's shoulder. "I thought that throwing out the outfits was our way of saying we just couldn't do it. Or that we were ready to move on with our lives. Or something."
"Well, they don't call us too often. God willing we'll be able to just get this taken care of and get back to our lives," Barbara said, completing the last of the demands for a password across the previous three hours.
"You're an atheist, Babs," Dick said.
"If God is a good guy he's going to help me anyway," Barbara said, taking in the satisfaction of the lime-green color overtaking her computer screen.
Ten years ago, a deal had been struck. A deal that formally brought an end to the group fittingly known as "The Bat Family." With the new commissioner came new decisions and new unrest. Maybe if Bruce had been with them the negotiations would have turned out entirely differently. Surely, he never would have surrendered.
But Bruce wasn't there. Dick and Barbara were the eldest representatives, and by then they had a family to think about. In exchange for their costumes and identities, the Gotham City Police Department had sworn them a pension and protection… Provided when the need arose, they volunteer their expertise.
The family was not unanimous in this decision. Angry, embittered words were said that day. It was considered to be one of the key reasons Damion had travelled far out of state to attend college, and kept only rare contact with his father's allies.
"Speaking of which, you suppose we should tell the others?" Dick asked, stepping away from her shoulder and into the living room.
"How is that a 'speaking of which'?" Barbara asked.
"I don't know. Just saw Sarah hadn't put this away yet," Dick said, holding up a colorful card reading 'Happy Birthday Miss 6!' "Cassie signs everything, 'God bless', I guess was the best connection I can come up with."
"Cassie wouldn't want to know about this," Barbara said, returning her attention to the screen. "It'd just be undue stress. Then Sadie starts asking what's going on and she's dealing with that too, it's not worth it."
"Sadie knows who we are you know," Dick replied. "I was only surprised the first time she called me 'Robin', even if she was running a little late."
"This is probably just some punk amateur anyway," Barbara said. "Some edgy gangbanger trying to revive a symbol out of bad taste."
"Then what do they even need us for?"
"Seriously babe, just let me work," Barbara continued with a sigh, Dick returning to the place watching over her shoulder.
In the center of the screen was a photograph taken from the scene of the crime. The bodies had been cleared away but the bloody Batsymbol remained stained into the wall. Despite Barbara's critique, the craftsmanship was actually rather impressive, a only a few drops offsetting the deep red mural. Surrounding the image were a number of applications running different tests on the image as Barbara leaned into her hand and sipped from her mug.
"What did Sawyer even want you to test for?"
"Exactly what I suggested," Barbara said. "That whoever did this wasn't trying to say anything specific other than that they wanted the symbol. And from the looks of it they weren't. Like I said, just a punk with poor taste."
"You had to spend all morning re-installing files for that?"
"In our old line of work, you can never be too careful. But this doesn't look like it's going to be a problem. You don't see anything unusual, do you?"
"Other than some wackjob trying to pass himself off as Bruce? No. Like you said, typical." Looking over the recent files in the application, he raised an eyebrow and asked, "When were you searching through hospital records?"
"… A month or two ago," Barbara sighed. When Dick gave her a look she added, "I wasn't trying to do anything all that questionable. I peeked at a few old files and followed it with a search around online. It wasn't anything major."
"What were you looking at hospital records for?"
"Well, it's Stephanie's birthday in a few months, you know?"
"That's not until August. That's still five months away," Dick said.
"Well this gift might be time consuming. And I might even give it beforehand. I was thinking… Well… I looked through some records and found some information on an adoption over a decade ago. Some little girl named Jodie Miller."
"Please don't tell me you-"
"I didn't do anything rash, Dick. I promise," Barbara assured him. "I just did some snooping around. She's a beautiful girl. Bright, blonde hair, big smile. She and her family live over in Pennsylvania."
"You should leave that alone, Babs," Dick said. "What's going to be any better by trying to bridge that gap?"
"That's the thing. Jodie? She put up one of those pictures with the cardboard signs online, saying's looking for her birth mother. Just to know she exists."
"Babs… Steph doesn't want that. There's no way she wants that. She and Tim have kids of their own now. I can't imagine wanting to hear anything about this again at this point."
"I just wanted to offer her the information if she wanted to see it," Barbara said. "Well, one way or the other the street's got a new freak, but that's down to the police it looks like. No sign it was any of us, they said there weren't any fingerprints or anything."
"And you're not worried about that?" Dick asked.
"I'll just tell Sawyer the truth. No concrete conclusions, but probably didn't have anything to do with us. Hopefully it is just one tasteless punk and this'll all be over before we know it. And we'll leave it to the police. No use getting involved."
"Good."
As Barbara began unplugging her numerous USBs and hard drives, she stopped at one point to mention, "By the way, Robin invited Sarah to come over for a playdate tomorrow after school. I was going to take her and do some catching up with Stephanie. You can come along of course, if you want to talk."
"Is Tim going to be there?"
"It's his house too and he's about as skilled as Bruce was at trying to run a company," Barbara said. "So yes, I'm going to assume he'll be there."
"I can't then. I can hardly stand the way he leers at me when we're picking the kids up at the same time or we're at soccer games or whatever."
"Sooner or later you're going to have to get past this," Barbara said with a little frustration. "Robin and Oscar love their Uncle Dick. Sooner or later you need to patch things up. For them."
"I've tried patching things up, B. Tim just doesn't want to hear from me anymore. That's all there is to it." Dick crossed the room to the closet, pulling out and pulling on a jacket. "I need some fresh air, hon. Send that thing over to the police and close down. We didn't get this far to revert now."
Barbara pushed her wheelchair around to face him as he pulled on his shoes. "You really don't miss any of it at all, do you?"
"No," Dick said, kissing her forehead. "I don't miss the costumes. I don't miss the scrapes. And most of all, I don't miss worrying about if we're both coming home in one piece."