Barbara Gordon - Oracle (knowsherstuff) wrote in newalliance, @ 2012-06-30 00:08:00 |
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Entry tags: | black canary, oracle |
Who: Barbara Gordon and Dinah Lance
Where: Clocktower
When: June 30th
What: Babs comes home from Thailand and finds a friend waiting for her.
Rating: PG
Barbara hadn’t told anyone when she was coming back for a number of good reasons. Firstly, there was no guarantee that she was coming back in the first place. Training with Shiva had been brutal, but there really was no quitting the program midway through. Plus, she had really had something to prove, and being back in Gotham City and in one piece meant that she had proven it, crossing that goal line that said (to any who would doubt) that she was really ready to wear the Batgirl mantle again.
Of course, being back in one piece didn’t mean she was in great shape, and that was the other reason she hadn’t announced her arrival. She was hoping to get a few good days of rest before needing to see anybody. To say her body was sore was an understatement. She was spotting a litany of bruises and little cuts, and her left wrist was wrapped up (but still functioning). At her relaxed pace, she walked stiffly, though if anyone had chosen that moment to pick a fight with her, she would have shown all the grace needed to promptly kick their ass. She was skinny, having kept to an incredibly strict and brutal schedule of meals.
Fishing her keys out of her pocket, she punched in her security code and opened up the front door to her apartment, dropping her duffle bag at the door.
~~~
Dinah was on Oracle duty tonight. Basically, Oracle duty (to Dinah) boiled down to sitting in front of a mess of computers and trying to find a way to occupy herself until one of the other Birds (or anyone else) needed a hand. So far, it was a surprisingly quiet night, given the whole Blackgate fiasco not too long ago. But tonight, tonight everyone was doing well.
So Dinah had tried to amuse herself. She’s started by playing the harmonica; a little known (underdeveloped) skill of hers. Actually, the harmonica wasn’t really playing for the sake of any musical proclivity but rather because it strengthened lungs and vocal chords and all the general muscles that Dinah used when she used her Canary Cry-- this way she could train those muscles and organs without actually Screaming anyone to death.
The problem was that she was absolutely atrocious at it- so she only ever did it when she was certain that no one else’s ears would be assaulted.
~~~
Barbara frowned immediately at the sound gnawing at her brain. Of course, the silver lining in whatever-the-hell was making that noise was the fact that she now knew someone was around Clocktower. That put a dent in her plans for a sneaky return to Gotham. She snuck her way down the hall, peeking around a corner to see just who was making themselves at home. To her relief (and somewhat to her utter shock and dismay considering the noise), she saw Dinah trying to make sounds come out of a harmonica. She really hoped her friend wasn’t trying to make pleasant ones because she didn’t want to break the bad news.
Not quite ready for hellos yet, she calmly made her way towards the fridge. She tried to be as nonchalant as possible, not making any of the many snarky remarks that she wanted to make about Dinah’s harmonica playing in lieu of a few more moments to herself.
~~~
Dinah stopped playing, tilting her head to one side as she listened. She’d heard something that hadn’t been her terribly rendition of ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’. She waited a few more moments to see if she heard it again and when it didn’t start, she started playing again, though now she was suspicious and alert. Every few moment she stopped playing under the pretense of looking a chart that was supposed to tell her how exactly she was supposed to be playing the damn thing- but really, she was listening.
There it was again. Dinah was absolutely certain now that there was someone in the apartment. Her first instinct, as was that of most people, was to ask who was there-- but Dinah clamped down on this thought. If someone was here, maybe they didn’t know that she knew-- which gave her an advantage. Getting up as quietly as possible, Dinah stalked towards the source of the
sound. Just outside of the kitchen, she took a moment to center herself before jumping into the kitchen, completely prepared for a fight and already throwing one foot up into a high kick when she saw who was standing at the fridge and stopped short.
“Babs?”
~~~
Babs instinctively had an arm up to counter, but they didn’t make contact as Dinah stopped short. “Hey.” A smile spread across her face as she pulled a jug of orange juice from the fridge. “Thank god the music finally stopped. Don’t quit your day job.” She laughed, unscrewing the lid and chugging back some much needed vitamins, fluids and sugar. She was going to keep going for the nonchalant route on this one. Dinah didn’t know where she had gone, and Babs was pretty sure her friend wouldn’t have approved of the choice to go. Ergo, she wasn’t going to mention the trip or her return or anything like that until Dinah pushed the subject.
Instead, she was just going to keep on drinking OJ.
~~~
If Barbara thought for one single red-hot second that she was not going to be pressured, pushed, cajoled and otherwise bullied into fessing up to where the hell she had been for a month, she had another thing coming.
For the moment though, Dinah just stared, mouth agape, and had to remind herself to put her leg down.
“Oh my God...” She trailed off, looking Babs over in obvious horror. She hadn’t even batted an eye to defend her pitiful attempt at music (Babs was right, it was terrifyingly bad). “Oh my God.”
It suddenly didn’t matter that Babs hadn’t called, or written, or said where she was going or if she was alive or dead. It didn’t even matter that she was drinking OJ straight from the carton (because seriously? Gross. Dinah had been helping herself to that). Dinah took two quick steps forward and grabbed her friend in a tight hug, dropping her head onto Babs’ shoulder.
She promised herself she wouldn’t cry.
~~~
Suddenly, Babs’s plan to be cool, calm, collected and Batman-like hit a snag. Dinah was practically a sister to her, and she had missed her friend. But then, she had known how long she was going to be gone and when she would see Dinah again. Clearly, her friend being kept in the dark might not have been the best of plans, especially because of the look she was getting. She hadn’t thought she’d looked quite that bad, but then suddenly Dinah was bum rushing her with hugs.
She carefully pulled the OJ away from her face, setting it down on the counter before hugging onto her best friend. “I’m home...” Okay, even she knew that was the lamest thing she could have said at that moment, but Babs found herself quite at a loss for words.
~~~
Dinah didn’t actually cry. She had promised herself that she wouldn’t, so she didn’t, but she did give Babs an extra squeeze and hugged her for a long time before she was able to pull away, her eyes shimmering a little but no tears actually fallin.
“Welcome home. God, look at you, you’re so skinny!” Like, deathly skinny, btu for the moment, Dinah didn’t bring that almost-dead-could-have-been-dead-how-wou
“You’re hurt.” She said, looking at Babs’ bruises and the bandage on her wrist. “Sit down, I’m going to get the first aid kit.” Not that there was probably a lot she could do to help, but at the very least she could get her some aspirin.
~~~
“I’m fine,” Babs said in protest to being called ‘so skinny.’ This. This right here was the kind of scene Babs had been wanting to avoid. Suddenly, she found herself wanting to just crawl her way into bed and never come out. And then Dinah said she was going to get a first aid kit. “I’m fine!” she whined again, holding up her wrist. “This is already wrapped up and--don’t get the first aid--oh my god, Dinah.” She let out an exasperated huff, picking up her juice once more, even as she turned to full blown sulking.
“And now that I’m fine and I’m back you can go home, and I can sleep uninterrupted by the nightmarish sounds of your harmonica playing. Sound like a plan?”
~~~
“Don’t.” Dinah said, holding up one finger, “Don’t even try to send me home or weasel out of this.” She wasn’t taking no for an answer, and given how beat up Babs was, Dinah was pretty sure she could take her, should she protest.
She disappeared for a moment and came back with the first aid kit, pointing to a stool at the island in the kitchen. “Sit. “ She said, grabbing a glass for Babs’ OJ as she came over and sat on the stool next to hers.
To her credit, as much as she was pushing and bossing Babs around for medical attention, once they were both seated, Dinah was quiet. She didn’t ask Babs where she had gone; despite the absolutely desperate burning curiosity and need to know. Instead, she just sat by and offered Babs the silence she said she wanted so badly.
~~~
Babs really didn’t see the point in the glass as she planned on drinking the whole container of orange juice, but if it was going to make Dinah feel better. She carefully poured a full glass, gulping it down. Otherwise, she just sat in the quiet for a moment, contemplating ordering food since she couldn’t quite muster up the will to cook when her nice soft couch and nice soft bed were so close by.
She eyed Dinah curiously for a moment. Part of her wanted to ask how things had gone without her, but she knew the moment that question escaped her lips, she was going to get pulled right back into the work. She needed a few hours to find her equilibrium first. Then, she could get to the task of sorting through a month’s worth of electronic communications.
~~~
Dinah didn’t ask any questions. Instead, she poured hydrogen peroxide on a cotton swab and carefully started to doctor the various cuts and bruises that Babs sported. It was at least twenty minutes before Dinah was satisfied that Babs wasn’t about to keel over from any of her injuries and she cleaned things up again, throwing the used medical supplies out and restocking the first aid kit.
“Are you hungry? What can I make for you? Do you want some tea?”
~~~
“No tea,” Babs replied. God, no tea. She had had so much tea that she was pretty sure she never needed to have tea for the rest of her life. “Uh...eggs?” She had finished with her first glass of orange juice, dutifully pouring another one and getting frustrated all over again that she wasn’t allowed to drink orange juice out of the carton in her own place.
She watched Dinah moving around the kitchen, sipping her glass of orange juice quietly. She was struggling to think of things to talk about that weren’t where she had been and what she had missed while she was there. “Did you cut your hair?” No. She hadn’t. And Babs knew better. But at least it was something...
~~~
“No.” Dinah said kindly, without telling Babs that she should know that. She dug in the fridge (which had continued to be stocked, Dinah assumed thanks to Alfred) until she found a carton of eggs.
Dinah glanced over her shoulder at Babs at she got a pan out from one of the cabinets. “C’mon Babs, this is me.” She said, turning the stove on. “We don’t have to make small talk. Just rest. And tell me what kind of eggs you want.”
~~~
“Scrambled, and we both know that if I don’t make small talk now, the silence is going bore us both and then we’ll inevitably get to the talk that isn’t so small that we aren’t having.” Babs finished off the glass of orange juice before pouring the last of her jug into the cup. She felt all sloshy inside, but still, she continued sipping. “Orange juice is amazing. I wonder if I have scurvy.” It would explain the orange juice craving, right? But it was pretty inconclusive with the diet she was keeping, and she figured it was probably just the sudden lack of restrictive diet that had her craving the sweet, store-bought juice.
~~~
Dinah chuckled and shook her head, cracking three eggs in a bowl and scrambling them up with a fork and a little salt and pepper before she added them to the hot pan, poking at them to keep them scrambled while they cooked.
“If you want to talk, you can tell me why you’re all starved if you’re coming back from a vacation.” She said, not so subtly, but didn’t push any further than that. “Or you can just sit and rest and try not to look like total, absolute hell-- making me feel all sorry for you. “
~~~
Barbara rolled her eyes. See? Dinah was just proving her point about the need for small talk. She finished off her orange juice, setting her glass down on the island. “Well, it was less a vacation than a journey.” Okay, that just sounded corny. “I mean, I didn’t go to Thailand for the food. I went to find out if I was still good enough and if I was really ready...for this whole Batgirl thing. I went for some training.”
She really hoped that Dinah wasn’t going to freak out because there were some obvious assumptions to be made when you talked about Thailand and training for their line of work...and, well, if you looked like Babs looked.
~~~
She got it. Dinah got it almost immediately-- not just why Babs had to leave and what she’d gone to do... but who she had gone to do it with. Really... if you’d already trained with Batman and Richard Dragon, there were only only a handful of people you could still go to when you wanted to learn more. Not that Dinah could fault her... seeing how she was doing the same thing.
“Okay.” Dinah acknowledged with a nod to show that she understood; all of it, why she went and the more subtle name-dropping. “Did you learn anything?”
~~~
Barbara was relieved that Dinah seemed okay with the information she had been given just now. She half expected a lecture, but that came from three years of people fussing over her after the incident. She should have expected more from Dinah who had never thrown Babs a full on pity party or told her there was something she shouldn’t do because of her injury. “I learned I can survive a month of that, and with no broken bones or anything.”
She stood, stiffly making her way over to Dinah and giving her friend the hug she should have gotten before. “I missed you, Di.”
~~~
“Good.” Dinah said without surprise. She could have told Babs that she knew that- that she could have saved herself a lot of trouble if she’d just let Dinah tell her that she could still take care of herself, that she was still fierce and capable and dangerous as she’d always been.
But it wasn’t up to Dinah. It wasn’t Dinah’s lesson to learn, or teach. It was Babs, and only hers. And not even Glinda the Good Witch could tell Dorothy that she could go home all along.
She was just taking the eggs off the stove when Babs came over and gave her a hug, and Dinah smiled fondly as she returned it, squeezing Babs tightly and patting her back. “I missed you too, Babs.” She said sincerely, hanging onto her friend for a few seconds more before she started getting all... feelzie and a little teary-eyed. “Go sit in bed, I’ll bring your eggs. What else do you want? Something else to drink?”
~~~
“Just the eggs. That’s fine.” Babs felt no small share of relief at the prospect of being in her bed again. She headed to the bedroom, stopping quickly in her bathroom to splash some water on her face. She grabbed a comfortable pair of pajamas and slipped into those before crawling under the covers. She stared at her phone, which she had left sitting on her bedroom table. Was it too early to call Ted? Dick? Bruce? Her father? Recognizing how much she’d missed Dinah seemed to have made her acutely aware of how much she had missed the other important people in her life.
Still, she looked like hell. It probably wasn’t the right time to advertise this fact. She dropped herself up with pillows, staring at the ceiling to stay awake.
~~~
After grabbing a fork and napkin for Babs, Dinah followed her in and sat on the edge of the bed beside her, handing over the plate of eggs. As much as she wanted to fuss over her friend like a mother hen, she knew how much Babs hated that (from personal experience being on the wrong side of plenty ‘I’m Fine’ lectures) so she managed to clamp down on that gut reaction and instead simply sat with her in the quiet.
“Do you want me to go so you can get some rest? I can come back in the morning.” For how hard Babs had been trying to get her to leave earlier, and how much Dinah had resisted, she was offering it now and wasn’t sure actually what Babs would prefer. She looked so tired.
~~~
Tired was subjective when it came to Babs. In her work as Oracle, she had spent days on end running on only a few hours of sleep. She wasn’t that kind of tired, but her body was definitely exhausted. She took the eggs, shoveling some immediately into her mouth. God readily accessible food felt good after the grueling schedule Shiva had had her own. When Dinah made the offer to leave, she couldn’t help raising her eyebrow. If there was one constant in her life, it was that when she was at her lowest, her best friend absolutely refused to leave her side (even when she wanted her to).
“You can stay a bit...catch me up on things,” she murmured, shoveling more eggs into her mouth.
~~~
“Okay.” Dinah said, settling in beside Babs on the bed, curiously watching her scarf down the eggs. She couldn’t imagine that her time with Shiva had been particularly pleasant, but by the way Babs was stuffing eggs into her mouth....
Dinah didn’t want to spend too much time thinking about what her friend had been through... what she had chosen to go through-- what Dinah herself would probably be going through in the not-so-distant future.
“Gee. What was the last thing that happened when you were here?”
It had been a long month.
~~~
“I guess the biggest thing would have been the debut of the Avengers,” Barbara replied, smirking at Dinah and setting her food down long enough to emphasize this with jazz hands. “Which was pretty memorable. Congrats on that, by the way.” She tapped her fork against the plate, thinking if she had missed anything else of note. “That’s about everything I can think of. I said my goodbyes to Ted, left you and Tim in charge. And then I went off to Thailand.”
She poked at the eggs again, waiting to see what she had missed out on.
~~~
“Ugh. Don’t remind me. I did get to drive the Batmobile though so that was fun.” Dinah said, thinking back on everything that had happened. What were the important parts? Really, the biggest things that would probably make a difference to Babs had only just happened in the past few weeks. Sure, there had been little crimes and little missions here and there, but the thing that was springing to Dinah’s mind had been recent.
“Your dad got kidnapped by Scarecrow. But he’s okay, Ted and Batgirl came with me to get him back. He’s okay, I promise... Riddler started a riot in Blackgate which was not fun. uh. Like everyone showed up to help so I guess that was good?” It had been resolved so there was that... Dinah poked her brain to think further back and frowned, then added softly, “Robin’s dad was murdered. ”
~~~
Barbara’s heart sank a little when Dinah mentioned her father being kidnapped. It was a good thing that he was okay, but she always worried about things like that happening whenever she looked away. (She was never leaving Gotham again.) She made a face at the mention of a riot in Blackgate. The Riddler could be such a thorn in everyone’s side. It was good to know, however, that everyone had pulled together. Less pleasant to hear was the news that Tim’s father had been murdered. She felt her heart tighten a little at the sad revelation. “What? ...oh god, poor Tim.” She brought her hands to her head and sighed. “What happened? How has he been holding up?”
~~~
“I didn’t ask him.” Dinah answer, honestly. She hadn’t wanted to pester him. After offering condolences, she didn’t bring it up again, though she would have talked about it if Tim had brought it up while he was staying with the Birds.
“He seemed alright... as alright as he could be I guess. I think he was trying to throw himself into work.”
~~~
Barbara was sure whatever had happened, she could dig up a report--either by looking into the GCPD database or simply searching around for reports on the internet. She was tempted to hop out of bed to do just that, but she didn’t want to start a fight with Dinah. Besides, if it was one thing she’d learned in her time working within Bruce Wayne’s family, it was that the grief was always there tomorrow.
She understood wanting to bury yourself in a project. Oracle had been her own way to cope with anger and grief, and then it had grown into something much larger than that. She hoped that the work had been able to give Tim some sense of peace or at least a way to keep his mind off of things. She sighed, setting her empty plate aside before burrowing into her blankets.
“You’re welcome to hang around, so long as you don’t play the harmonica again...but I think I’m going to get some sleep.” She reached out, patting Dinah on the arm. “Thanks for holding down the fort while I was gone.”
~~~
Dinah smiled and returned the pat, squeezing Babs’ hand lightly. “I’ll stick around.” She said, then leaned over to give Babs a kiss on the forehead before picking up her plate. “Let me just get these dishes done. Get some sleep, honey. “ She looked like she could use it...
~~~
“Will do,” Barbara answered back, burrowing under the sheets. It seemed there was a lot of pieces to pick up the next day, but for now, she was going to give in to sleep.