Who: Bruce Wayne, Dinah Laurel Lance NPCs: Ted Grant, Dinah Drake Lance, Jim Gordon What: A trio of retro scenes spanning ten years: their first meeting, paying respects and a conversation at the hospital. Where: Various locations in Gotham City When: 1998, 2001, and 2008, respectively. Rating: PG-13 for adult themes and feels
“Ted! Ted, do you know where Mom is? She said we were leaving like half an hour ago and now she’s disappeared.”
“Left without ya, did she, Junior? Guess you’re stuck here mopping up with me.”
“I wish. I have to help her make deliveries. Apparently every person in town pissed off their girlfriend last night and has to make up for it tonight.”
“Try not to give your mama too hard a time. “
“Yeah I won’t; if I could find her.”
“She might be down in the basement. I’ll go--”
“I’ll get her. Thanks Ted!”
“Junior; don’t go down th-- Junior! Dammit, Dinah Laurel I said--”
“Two seconds! Thanks Uncle Ted, looooveee you.”
She was going to pay for that one later, she was sure-- but for now Ted was going to be left in her dust with his mop as the younger of the Lance women leapt down the stairs two at a time and burst into basement, quickly slamming the door and leaning back against it as if Ted was going to come barreling down after her at any moment. She was still grinning and giggling when she realized that she wasn’t actually alone in the basement and had, in fact, found her mother.
Dinah Drake Lance stood in the middle of the basement with... someone-- someone dressed in black and wearing a mask. And it wasn’t until now that Dinah Laurel realized that they were both looking at her. Apparently they hadn’t expected someone to come barging in.
And Dinah Drake Lance was far less amused than her daughter and it was reflected in the completely nonplussed look that she gave her out of breath daughter. Said daughter, however was only slightly put off by the patented Mom Look; and her curiosity at the scene she’d stumbled in on.
~~~
He’d gotten much better at feigning comfort with social interaction, but there were some people he actually enjoyed talking to. Dinah Lance was one of them. Maybe it had something to do with her powerful, yet unoppressive presence whenever he came to train with Grant. While he knew she was there, she didn’t feel the need to keep up a constant stream of dialogue he was compelled to engage in; but when she did talk, it was always worth hearing.
Now was one of those times. He didn’t mind that she thought him crazy, or that she understood his intentions. Bruce intuited that she had plenty of experience in this area of her own. He soaked up her bon mots of knowledge, delivered with her unique brand of humor, saying little himself. And that was alright; comfortable. He rarely felt comfortable with others, only Alfred, Tony, and Julie - his fiancee.
The slamming door sent him into high alert, his feet shifting naturally into a defensive position until he saw the girl. She was a baby-faced version of her elegant-featured mother, removing all doubt to her identity. He almost reached up to self-consciously run a hand over the mask covering the upper half of his face, the cloth tied in back. It was too dangerous for anyone to know his identity but he suddenly felt awkward, and not for the usual reasons.
“Hello,” he said, without his usual grace.
~~~~~
It was weird. This was very very weird. Sure, Dinah knew that her mother and all of her mother’s friends put on costumes and fought crime. It wasn’t any big secret, at least not within the family-- but she hadn’t ever run into anyone else before. And what else could the masked person be but a vigilante (or maybe a thief who forgot it was the 20th century)? But what was this masked man doing in a basement at Grant’s gym with her mother? It was just... weird.
“Hi.” She replied with uncharacteristic shyness and a sheepish look on her face as she tucked a chunk of her long, black hair behind one ear, looking away a bit. “Uh, I was just looking for my mom.”
“I asked you to wait upstairs, Dinah.” The elder Dinah said, not taking her eyes off of the younger version.
~~~
Dinah. That was unusual. He hadn’t met too many female juniors. She seemed to be in an inordinate amount of trouble, too. “I guess you found her.” He had never seen her at the gym before - upstairs or in the basement. Given her mother’s response, there appeared to be a reason for that, but Dinah the younger also seemed to have a familiarity with the place that belied that. Maybe it was just him.
That made sense. He was a stranger who wore a mask and spent his evenings dressed as a bat. While Grant and Dinah the elder might not know the specifics of his nocturnal activities, Batman had been active in Gotham just long enough to have garnered a reputation as an urban legend. He knew enough about Mrs. Lance and her husband to assume that they could connect the dots.
Given that, he could understand why Mrs. Lance would want to keep her daughter far away from him. That she was young, beautiful, and apparently engaged - judging by the ring on her finger - could have been a contributing factor, as well.
“I’m sorry to keep her from you; she’s kind enough to occasionally give me advice and I appreciate her time.” The words felt heavy in his mouth. It felt like they were the most words he’d spoken here, but he knew they couldn’t be, even if they might have been more comfortable coming from his other persona.
~~~~
Junior was watching him with equal parts curiosity and suspicion, despite her mother’s best efforts at distracting her attention. Between she and her husband, they had done far too well at teaching the young woman to focus on the things that people didn’t want her to notice, taught her too well to pursue what intrigued her like a bulldog with a bone. It was coming back to bite them more often than not and it was getting harder and harder to keep anything from her. The only hope was to keep from drawing her curiosity to begin with. And on that front, Dinah Sr. had just failed.
“Advice on what? “ The younger asked, slowly sliding her eyes from the masked man over to her mother.
“I’m almost finished here, go wait upstairs. I’m sure Ted could use your help.” Senior said, trying again to send her daughter on her way. The last thing she wanted was for Dinah to get any hare-brained ideas. Well; any more hare-brained ideas.
“He’s fine.” The younger insisted, her focus shifting back to the masked man, watching his every move as if she thought he might disappear if she looked away.
“Dinah.” Dinah Drake said, her tone brokering no argument. Great men had fallen in line at that tone-- but not this young woman...
“Mom.” She smarted right back, only stopping herself from rolling her eyes because of the fact that it meant taking them off the stranger.
Senior looked for a moment like she might have said something pointed about the sheer amount of sass that came off the girl, but the look faded to something else-- something tired and defeated, a look that somehow made the crow’s feet at the corner of her eyes and the wrinkles around her mouth look more pronounced. She didn’t want to fight.
“Go upstairs, Junior.” She said quietly, shaking her head.
“But Mom, I was just--”
“Listen to me.” She hissed suddenly, staring the girl down, “I said go upstairs.”
There was no cowering or yielding in the girl’s eyes-- just a sudden fire that flared up, enough to match the passion of her mother’s, albeit without her refinement or subtlety. She didn’t say another word, but turned on her heel, black hair flicking over her shoulders like an annoyed horse’s tail, and marched directly upstairs.
“I’m sorry for that.” Senior apologized, her composure regained in the blink of an eye. “My daughter is...” She paused, thinking over her words carefully and the weary smile that crossed her face showed she didn’t miss the irony of what she decided to say of the dark headed teen, “... too much like me, I’m afraid.”
~~~
Oddly, her question was an easy one to answer. While Dinah the Elder’s advice was mission-specific, it could be applied to almost anything. “Life,” he answered honestly.
The corner of his mouth twitched in amusement as he watched the two, though he didn’t smile often. The dynamics of their relationship were vividly clear - the protective mother and the strong-willed daughter, both with equal amounts of attitude to face off with. But the love between them was clear as well, and it made his heart ache a little.
He watched her go until the door shut definitively behind her, then nodded in acknowledgement of Mrs. Lance’s apology. But her addendum made him smile faintly at the understatement, and he said, “As far as role models go, I don’t think she could do better.”
~~~~~
“Mm...” The older woman mused, looking towards the door and finally shook her head, “I’m afraid that remains to be seen- but thank you for your vote of confidence. Now; where was I..?”
~ 2001 ~
She wasn’t ready.
Despite their fights and constant head butting and misunderstandings and all the times when they both thought the other hated them, and even after nine months of taking care of her in every way imaginable; Dinah Laurel Lance wasn’t ready for her mother to die.
Or her father for that matter. Larry Lance had passed away only two years prior and now, with her mother gone, Dinah was an orphan. She wondering if you could actually be an orphan when you were twenty-one years old, or if that was just a title reserved for children. She felt like a child, if that counted for anything.
She stood in the kitchen of the brownstone she’d grown up in, washing the “Good Dishes” by hand after saying goodbye to everyone who had come to the memorial service, and stopped by the house after. She thought maybe she’d cry; knew that she was supposed to cry, but she hadn’t yet. She didn’t feel anything, and on the one hand, it was a little worrisome, but on the other-- it was kind of nice. She didn’t want to feel anything, if she didn’t have to.
Ted hadn’t gone home with the rest. He stayed in the living room without speaking; just so that Junior wouldn’t have to be alone in the empty house.
Dinah gave a hoarse, bitter kind of laugh that she wasn’t sure actually belonged to her and plunged her hands back into the hot soapy water.
At least now maybe people would stop calling her Junior.
Her head dropped forward, her dark hair covering her face and her shoulders started to shake.
She just wasn’t ready.
~~~
He didn’t like funerals. As best as he could, he avoided them - sending his regards, flowers, whatever would ensure that his sympathies were noted and his absence overlooked. The few he had no other option but to attend made him uncomfortable, reminding him of the first he’d ever witnessed and afterward, he avoided the mirror even more assiduously that normal, to escape the accusing glare of the boy looking back.
Gordon had told him about Detective Lance. There had been no reasonable way for him to pay his respects except with an anonymously sent wreath and a brief midnight visit. He hadn’t know the man as well as he knew his partner, but Batman had trusted him, and that was a rare commodity. Cancer was a terrible, debilitating illness, and he only wished he’d heard sooner that Mrs. Lance, just over a year later, was suffering the same fate as her husband.
There wasn’t much he could have done. Even if he could have found a cure, it would have taken time and effort, and even if he had enough of both, he doubted Mrs. Lance would want him want him to bother on her account. Certainly on something he wasn’t even sure he could do, which would take him away from his own work.
But she had been a great influence on him and many of the things she’d said to him in the earliest days of his career were still an integral part of his mission. Even though he hadn’t seen her in some time, it would have felt discourteous not to do something more.
Not the funeral though - not that. His presence would be considered unusual, anyway - no matter who he went as. That left him one option, which was in equal parts better and worse. Better in that it was private, but worse in that he now had to slip into the Lance home without frightening or - more likely - upsetting, the daughter.
Getting in was easy. He spotted Grant in the living room, but ignored him for now - the man’s warning regarding the young Ms. Lance, fending off any possible interest, suddenly echoed in his head with wry humor.
He found her in the kitchen. She wouldn’t know, but he’d seen her a few times since their first meeting three years earlier, though she’d been disguised - wearing a blonde wig and her mother’s old costume. Now Dinah just looked like the girl he’d first seen on the basement stairs, only more tired and sad.
He noted the absence of the ring she’d worn then. “I’m - sorry about your mother, Ms. Lance,” he said quietly, not just out of respect, but also to forestall the inevitable moment when Grant heard them and came to investigate.
~~~~
It probably should have bothered her more than it did that someone had been able to sneak up behind her to stand in the doorway between the kitchen and the rest of the house without her noticing; but people had been coming and going all day- and since everyone was dressed in black anyway, another shadow hadn’t seemed out of ordinary. But the voice was unfamiliar.
For a second she didn’t really move or say anything-- not that she didn’t want to, but it seemed like nothing was working; like when you’re stuck in a dream and know you should be running but for some reason your feet wouldn’t move. It passed quickly though and she nodded, glancing halfway over her shoulder at him as she wiped her hands on a nearby dish rag.
“Thank you.” She said automatically because that was the thing you were supposed to say and everyone knew that you were just saying it because that was the thing you were supposed to say and let it slide because they didn’t know what to say either.
Still holding the dish rag, like a security blanket, she turned around and looked at him for a long quiet moment before speaking again.
“You got bigger.” She observed, partially referring to the cape and ears, but mostly referring to his reach and reputation. A lot of people talked about The Batman these days-- which was funny somehow, since everyone said he didn’t exist.
“There’s some sandwiches if you want. Or coffee.” She offered automatically, again because it was the thing you did for guests at this sort of thing-- not because she was actually thinking about The Batman eating crustless sandwiches in her parents’ kitchen... though now that she did think about it; she couldn’t help but laugh. Or maybe she was crying. She couldn’t quite tell, really.
“I think we’re all out of Count Chocula though.”
~~~
He nodded, acknowledging her thanks and his own increase in status. It was interesting that she didn’t seem disturbed by his presence; far less than he had been expecting after he’d broken into her house when she was emotionally compromised. Maybe growing up around so many people in costumes had inured her to strange situations and presences.
“You have an impressive roundhouse,” he returned, lips twitching. “And in heels. Ted taught you well.” Batman was positive that her mother had hated Dinah’s decision to follow in her footsteps. Mrs. Lance had not had many positive things to say regarding costumed vigilantes, in spite of her own foray in that field, and her many loved ones who had been, and still were, in it as well. She had even called him crazy for pursuing his mission, so he could only guess at how protective she’d been of her daughter. It put their first meeting into new perspective.
But he also suspected that Mrs. Lance must have been proud of Dinah, nonetheless. As she’d told him once - the girl was too much like her.
“No. Thank you,” he said, but he smiled faintly, sadly, at her choked laughter, struck by the absurdity of the situation. Her mother was dead - her parents were dead - he’d broken into her house, and she was adhering to social niceties with a man dressed as a bat who had no idea what a ‘Count Chocula’ was, except it was probably some bizarre Dracula reference. “You don’t have to do that. I’m not exactly a guest.”
He felt as though he should say something else, to express what her mother had meant to him, but Batman had never been very good with words, and was only just growing comfortable faking it. His head dropped, turning to the side as he thought, focusing past lessons he’d had on being glib to search for something both more sincere and less awkward.
“I... know how it feels,” he said slowly. “To be where you are now.” Alone. Completely. To have lost both parents, so close together - he didn’t kid himself that age made much of a difference. Murder, cancer - it was still devastating. “I didn’t know her long, or well, but she was an impressive woman and I admired her greatly. Your father...” he paused. “He was a good man. He put himself at risk to help me; without him and Gordon, I wouldn’t have been able to do many of the things I’ve done.
“You’ve probably heard a lot of stories and platitudes today, already. People asking-” everyone wanting to know how you were when all you wanted was to be left alone. When the last thing you wanted was to be alone. “I understand.”
~~~~
It only surprised her a little to find out that he’d been keeping an eye on her been following seen her out on the streets. From what she knew of her mother’s relationships with her contemporaries; all superheroes knew the others’ identities-- it was part of what made them a community... family. Maybe that was why she wasn’t worried when he let on that he knew-- or maybe she just couldn’t be bothered to worry about anything at the moment.
“That was mom’s actually.” She said with a bit of a smile. Despite being very vocal about her disapproval of Dinah’s choice to put on fishnets and a wig and go out fighting crime; the elder Dinah had done everything in her power to prepare her. Once she determined that it was something she was going to do, Dinah Sr. had thrown her support behind her daughter-- even if she hated the idea of her only child being shot at and nearly killed on a regular basis.
“Yeah, they’re not very good anyway.” She said with a forlorn look towards the sandwiches and coffee. The coffee was particularly gross. She hadn’t quite gotten the hang of that whole... make coffee thing. She casually ignored the bit where he said he wasn’t a guest. If he thought she’d be able to get away with not rolling out the red carpet of hospitality, he clearly didn’t know how Dinah Drake Lance ran her household-- even if he had technically broken in.
She looked down at the rag in her hands, worrying the edges of it with her fingernails like it was the only thing that mattered in the world. It would get better-- some part of her knew it would get better. After her dad died and it’d been just she and her mother, it had been hard and it felt like nothing would ever be okay again; but slowly- it got better. Sometimes it still hurt, out of nowhere, over the littlest things, but mostly, she was okay. They had been okay. And now she was going to be okay... some day. By herself.
“Thank you.” She said again, her voice thick, but she nodded a few times to show she appreciated his condolences-- and she did, really-- though she couldn’t look at him for more than a few seconds.
She hadn’t cried since her mother died. Not a single tear-- maybe there had been too much to do, or too many people around, or too much else going on for it to actually catch up with her... but the irony of the fact that she was about to start crying in front of someone whose face she couldn’t even see was not entirely lost of her, and she gave another short laugh, touching her hairline with the side of her hand absently.
~~~~~
“I’m not surprised.” He had never seen Mrs. Lance fight, but he had read the reports and heard the stories. From all accounts, she had been as formidable a hero as she had been a woman. “She told me that you were just like her.” A variation on the phrasing, but still the truth.
He wished he could tell her something positive - that it would get better, but for him, it hadn’t. It did for others, he was sure. Plenty of people recovered from the deaths of a loved one with an ache for their memory, but his own memories were sharp and jagged and still hurt. Maybe not as much as they did when they were fresh, but the anger and sorrow - while carefully controlled - still came to him as easily as the emotions he could sense surfacing in Dinah now.
His hand rose a little and he closed it, forcing it to return to his side. There was nothing he could do here that wouldn’t cause more pain, and he wasn’t family. He wasn’t even a friend. “If there’s anything you need...” he cleared his throat awkwardly. He should leave.
~~~~~
She wanted to say something polite about how he didn’t need to go and he was welcome to stay and have some coffee or something- but she couldn’t quite get it out.
Thankfully, she didn’t have to though, since Ted had finally caught on to what was going on just out of his line of site. He didn’t bully or push though; just walked up behind Batman and put a hand on his shoulder, guiding him to one side so the big boxer could get through the doorway.
When she saw him, Dinah’s brow suddenly creased, and she pursed her lips together with all the look of someone who’d just eaten a particularly sour lemon, her eyes wide and full of tears that she was trying very hard not to let fall. She hadn’t even noticed that she’d knotted the dish rag around one of her fists and started pulling. It was as though seeing Ted made it all come true. He stepped forward, past Batman and pulled the young woman into a tight hug, one of his giant hands cradling the back of her head as if she were just a little girl still, and with her face buried against his chest, Dinah started to sob with a wet gasping noise.
Ted didn’t say anything but finally glanced over his shoulder at Batman without letting go of his surrogate daughter and gave him a nod as if to say he didn’t need to stick around, that Ted would take care of this. If the old boxer’s were watering as well or if it was just a trick of the light, he would never tell.
~~~
He had the sudden urge to protest that their conversation was entirely innocent, which just as quickly amused him as he stepped aside to let his former instructor pass. But apparently he wasn’t the only one made young again by Ted’s presence. His response was farcical besides Dinah’s childlike refuge in Ted’s arms, and Batman was definitely intruding now.
Giving Ted a respectful nod, almost before the older man gave him his cue to go, Batman disappeared quietly, deciding that tonight would be a better night for ice cream with Dick than crime-fighting, after all.
2008
He should slow down. He knew that he should - he hadn’t stopped moving in more than two days now. In truth, he’d been pushing himself hard for months, and it showed; he was exhausted, thinner, and more criminals than not were walking away from their encounters with him sporting broken bones, if they were walking at all.
But today he couldn’t sit still, not after what had happened, not after what he’d seen, what the Joker had done. It kept turning in his head, making him return to the streets in search of someone else to vent his frustrations on until the interminable waiting was over.
Not another one. He didn’t believe in God, but please - not another.
His chest tightened again, and he stopped, unable to breathe.
It was necessary to gain access to the hospital rooms unseen. Explaining why Batman would show any particular interest in Barbara Gordon would compromise her, whether her father was the police Commissioner or not. The same Commissioner who had also been injured that day, and had a room just down that hall. Visiting him would be easier, but Batman still preferred to go unnoticed as much as possible. It was better for everyone.
At this hour of the night, staff all over the hospital was light. He managed to slip in and up to where they were performing Barbara’s surgery, taking advantage of an unguarded moment long enough to determine that she was still being operated on, and likely to be so for some time still. His hands clenched and unclenched; at least she was still alive. He tried to tell himself that was the silver lining.
Making his way down to the ICU like a shadow, he shifted darkly into Jim’s room to check on him. Thankfully, he was still asleep. It was for the best; after the horror he’d been through that day, and all the horror left to face, he would need both his rest, and his sanity restored.
He paused, for a moment, suddenly realizing as he crossed the threshold that he wasn’t alone. Sucking in a surprised breath, he thought the stress must be playing tricks on his mind until he realized who it was. With her hair cut short, she looked just like her mother, only younger and, at the moment, frailer.
“Dinah,” he greeted softly, unable to completely keep the anguish out of his voice.
~~~~
She was half asleep in her chair already, arms crossed over her chest and her head dropped down. As soon as she’d gotten the phone call that Barbara had been shot, she’d caught the first plane from Seattle out to Gotham. Her life was a complete and utter mess-- more so than it had been when she’d left Gotham those years ago. She’d caught her boyfriend kissing her assistant, gone completely bankrupt and had to close her shop-- only to have the whole place burn down the week before she was shutting the doors. And that was all within the past month.
And now this.
No one had told her what had happened to Gordon either. When she showed up at the hospital for Babs, she’d given the last name and ended up in Jim’s private room which came as a very disturbing shock. It had taken a while to get the confusion worked out.
Dinah hadn’t even heard about the shooting until Barbara was already at the hospital-- then she’d had to pack, get a plane ticket, wait at the airport, get on the plane and make the five hour flight across country back to Gotham, skipping across four time-zones in the process.
And when she got here, Barbara was still in surgery. Dinah wasn’t sure if she was supposed to be relieved or horrified.
Worse yet; no one had actually told her what happened. All she knew was that Barbara was shot and Jim wasn’t much better off-- and no one would, or could maybe, say what happened. After the first hour or two, she’d stopped asking.
She lifted her head when she heard her name and frowned at the shadow in the doorway. Glancing at Gordon, she held one finger up to her lips before standing and moving to shut the door behind Batman so the staff would have less chance of seeing him there.
There was only one thing on her mind; and that was the first thing she asked the one person who always seemed to have the answers-- like it was his superpower or something.
“Is she going to be okay?”
~~~
Moving deeper into the room, away from Gordon’s bed, Batman opened his mouth to answer her question but no words came. He wanted to assure her that yes - she would be fine. Barbara was strong, she was a fighter. That the surgery was taking so long meant that her doctors were taking care and not that there was any reason to worry. But the truth was far simpler, and far less reassuring. Right now, he was all out of optimism, and his patience was as low as his spirits.
“I don’t know,” he admitted, hating the words even as he said them. “I just checked in and they’re still-” his throat dried up, cutting him off, and his body suddenly felt very, very heavy.
Gordon’s chart sat in the plastic shelf on the wall nearby and he grabbed it before allowing himself to sink into one of the sadistically uncomfortable chairs, exhaustion hitting him like a semi. He felt old. Flipping through the doctors notes, he took a little heart in finding that Jim was expected to recover physically within a few days; well enough to be discharged, at least. “No broken bones; a lot of bruising and abrasions... he was tortured.” Batman skipped over some of the finer, more embarrassing details, his jaw tightening. He realized his hands were shaking again and closed the file hard, dropping it on the floor. She didn’t need to know what had been done to her friend’s father. Her father’s friend.
Events, stress, and lack of sleep had him so muddled, that he only now realized Dinah probably had no idea what had happened. Unless someone from the precinct had called her - which would have been extremely low on their list of priorities tonight - all information on the evening’s activities was being withheld from the press for as long as possible. And she would have been in transit for quite some time.
“Who called you?” he asked. Leaning forward, Batman rested his elbows on his knees, rubbing his face with his hands. Maybe it would help him wake up.
“It was Joker.” As solemn as a death knell, his voice was laden with self-recrimination for his lack of retribution in the face of Jason’s death, which would have prevented tonight’s atrocities. “She wasn’t out in costume - he wasn’t even after her, she was at home; she just had the bad luck to answer the door when he came for her father.”
Batman glanced Jim’s direction, the weight of his guilt settling nauseously in his stomach. “They shot her in the doorway. The bullet entered her stomach and struck her spine. Depending on where-” He couldn’t finish, but he assumed Dinah was smart enough that he didn’t need to. “Sarah’s dead.”
Another. Another name. Another name on the paving stones of good intentions, lining his path to Hell.
“They took Jim to one of the gutted rides on Amusement Mile. Tied him up. Tortured him. Showed him pictures they’d taken of Barbara after they’d shot her, undressed...” the less said about that, the better. “And then I got there.”
He paused. “Too late.”
~~~~~
His response was honest, at least- albeit not what she had hoped to hear. The fact that there was something he didn’t know was strange enough to be disconcerting but when it came to her best friend’s life which may or may not have been ebbing away just a few hallways over... well, disconcerting was an understatement.
What was worse was that she didn’t think she’d ever seen him sit before; and certainly hadn’t seen him take his head in his hands like it might break if he didn’t keep a careful hold on it. Dinah leaned back against the door, partially to keep it shut, partially to keep anyone from looking through the small window, and partially because she wasn’t entirely certain she trusted her legs to not randomly drop her to the ground.
“T..ortured?” She asked very quietly, a lump sticking in her throat and dragging out the first syllable. Unconsciously, she touched her right hand to her left wrist, worrying at the thick cuff bracelet she wore on either wrist. She didn’t look at him but it was apparent from the look on her face that she was processing what he’d just told her-- which was more than anyone else had.
“Ted.” She answered, pulled out of her roaming, dark thoughts by his question. “He said Barbara had been shot and was in the hospital. I don’t think he knew about Mr. Gor-- her dad.”
When someone finally started to explain what had happened, Dinah suddenly thought that maybe she’d rather not know. “Oh no...” She said -- or at least it was the noise that came from her mouth but Dinah wasn’t even sure it belonged to her anymore. She swallowed thickly, trying to push past the storm of emotions and to listen to what he was saying. She’d been shot. Barbara had been shot-- she’d know that, right. She’d been shot in the spine. Barbara had been shot in the spine. What happened to people when they were shot in the spine? Not being a medical expert, Dinah came up with two conclusions; the weight of which knocked her feet out from under her and she sat down rather suddenly, sliding down the door to land on the floor with her knees up in front of her. She hadn’t known Sarah very well, outside of the fact that she had been a GCPD officer and was Barbara’s step-mother; but that didn’t change the fact that it was another deep wound to add to the pile. Their entire family had been...
...massacred.
Dinah stared at her jeans for a long time, picking absently at a stray thread along the seam-- and while her physical focus was on pulling the offending string off her pants, her mind was 2,867 miles away in a warehouse in Seattle, where she had... where thing had... where she was almost...
She opened her mouth to ask something several times, but what she finally got out wasn’t even a full question. “Did they...” She cleared her throat and tried again, “Was she...” but she couldn’t do it. She wasn’t comfortable asking any man that question. Not because she didn’t trust Batman, or didn’t think he would be excruciatingly professional about an answer-- but because she just couldn’t force that word out of her mouth around someone who... wasn’t a woman. If-- no, when-- Barbara got better, they could talk, or not talk, about it themselves.
~~~
He was beyond being concerned about his image right now. Just for a minute he was done with the strain of holding back the floodgates on his emotions, even if there was someone else in the room to witness it. Later, once he left he could resume his mantle of dark stoicism, but now was not that time and here was not that place.
Although mired by his own anxiety, Batman didn’t miss the more particular details of Dinah’s reaction to the information he imparted. There were the usual reactions, but smaller details - the hyperfocusing of her gaze, deft touch of hand to wrist, and unintentionally protective posture, all described trauma, and relatively recent. Anger flared again, but he let it fall back to a simmer. It was over, not his business, and nothing he could do that she wouldn’t have already.
She couldn’t ask the question, but he knew what it was; it was the same question he’d been asking himself over and over again all night long. Batman told himself no; Joker had never shown interest in sex. Any sexual pleasure he got seem to be derived from physical pain. But - and this terrified him - Joker’s whole M.O. was doing what pleased him, to cause the greatest amount of chaos. If... raping... Barbara furthered that end, why wouldn’t he? Or have someone else do it for him? Given what had happened to Jim...
It was possible. He couldn’t rule it out. And he hadn’t been able to bring himself to check for any visible signs at the time.
So even though she hadn’t asked, for the second time that night, he answered hollowly - “I don’t know.”
He wasn’t sure why he said it, to her or at all, but the words tumbled out before he could stop them. “It’s my fault. He did it for me.”
~~~~~
She wasn’t sure she had actually wanted an answer; but when it came, she still didn’t know how to feel. It also wasn’t something she wanted to discuss with him. It wasn’t something she could discuss with him. When --whenwhenwhen-- Barbara was okay, maybe they could talk. Or maybe Dinah could tell her and Barbara could listen and that would be okay too.
She lifted her eyes to him and gave a melancholy smile, slowly shaking her head.
“When I was a little girl, I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone what my dad did for a living. If someone asked, I was supposed to say he worked for the city and leave it at that. That was what... twenty years ago? Back when things were really bad.” Not that they weren’t still bad; maybe worse even, but she had to believe there had been some kind of a difference made in this town... she had to believe it. But that was debate for a different time, “I wasn’t supposed to say he was a cop because some people hate cops, and I was little and something could have happened to me, or someone could have followed me home, or who knows what.
“You know it sounds really silly now because anyone who broke into our house would have made probably the worst mistake of their criminal career; but I guess that wasn’t really the point.
“There are people who will do whatever they can to hurt a police officer-- their family or friends if they can’t get to them. And these aren’t... supervillains or people like the Joker. These are ordinary people, ordinary gangsters, thugs, criminals, cons... drug dealers, whatever.
“Being a police officer makes you a target-- and Mr. Go--... Commissioner Gordon has done a lot for the city. He’s practically a household name.” She said, trailing off and staring at her knee again.
“I just think that maybe, this is the one thing you can’t take the fall for.” She finished in a whisper, glancing up at him from her position on the floor.
~~~
What she told him was logical. He even knew it was true. The families of law enforcement officers were always at higher risk of danger. Their loved ones’ work presented a constant threat of retaliation that they either lived with or, like the first Mrs. Gordon, rejected.
Gotham had always been an animal all its own, but the people who worked here - by choice or necessity - dealt with upped stakes. The crime faced by other cities reached steroidal heights in Gotham, and only escalated from there with the addition of supervillains and the criminally insane.
As Commissioner, Gordon was at the apex of the nexus between law and vice; a natural target for criminals to fixate upon. But Joker didn’t think that linearly. While it was true that, one the one hand, Jim had been selected because the Joker knew he existed - because of his position in the government machine of due process - the truth was that Jim was incidental in the long wrong.
Batman shook his head. “He didn’t care about Jim; or Barbara, or Sarah. If it hadn’t been them, it would have been someone else.” The scene at the amusement part flitted through his head and his vision swam. He inhaled shakily, hearing that ribboning cackle that echoed through the cavernous building.
“He was trying to push me over the edge. By kidnapping someone he knew I cared about and torturing him, mentally and physically, he thought he could break me; that I would finally try to kill him.” And so soon after Jason... he had come so close.
So. Damn. Close. To proving him right.
“He wanted to prove that we’re the same.” He couldn’t meet her eyes. It was his fault and he knew it. He didn’t want to look at her, but he forced himself to. Dinah was both a Gothamite, and someone who loved the Gordons, as he did. She was in the best position to understand what he was telling her, and why she needed to know.
She was their family, and Gordon would blame himself. Barbara would blame herself. Nobility had nothing to do with it - he was guilty, and yet again, people had gotten hurt because of him, people he loved. If they were going to blame anyone, it needed to be him.
~~~~~
“Him? This?” She said, looking around the hospital room and slowly shaking her head, returning her focus to her knees, “It’s not new. It’s not unique. All around the world there are people who enjoy seeing other people hurt, or die, or worse. There are people everywhere who want chaos like this. There are kids who take guns to school and kill their classmates; people who kidnap and assault other people -or children, drug dealers who line town streets with the heads of D.E.A. agents and serial killers who roam from state to state preying on the population of each city they come through. The Joker might think he’s different, that he’s unique, that he’s got the monopoly on crazy, but he’s not. He just wears a costume to do it.”
She looked up at him again, briefly, then refocused on the string on her pants, “I guess maybe that’s how you’re similar. You’re not new or unique either, you know. You just wear a different costume.
“And you know..” She said, finally pulling the loose string free, “... maybe it’s a good thing he found you, focuses on you. I’m not sure there are many other people out there who could keep doing it. And you’ll keep doing it until its you lying there.” She said, inclining her head towards Gordon, “Or in there..” She added, nodding towards the far wall to signify where Barbara was in surgery. “Or dead maybe.” She was quiet for a long time, then spoke again, “You want to know how I know you’ll keep doing it?” She asked, looking for another string to pick at and glanced up for his response.
“Because you’re the only one who can. And as long as you do it, maybe someone else won’t have to.”
~~~
That wasn’t how he was like Joker. Not the only reason, at least. Batman knew what Joker saw, what he was after, and not all of it was untrue. What frightened him was that the line separating them was one Batman could see. There was a reason he understood his adversary better than anyone else. They were they personification of the wolves that lived within man - warring; thriving when fed. Both of them knew what would erase that line, and tonight - Joker had tried to do just that. Again.
He needed to work.
Standing up quickly, Batman shook his head - lost, distracted. “I should...” he gestured vaguely in the direction of the window. He took a long, last look at Jim, his lips setting in a grim line and he turned away before his anger got the better of him again.
He started for the window, but stopped, staring out at the night with one hand on the pane. “He killed Robin,” Batman told her quietly, almost in a whisper. It had been a long time since he’d last seen her but perhaps she’d heard from Barbara. “Joker. Beat him with a crowbar, then blew up the warehouse he was trapped in. Just a few months ago.”
Gathering the courage, he looked at her. “He won’t kill me. He wants me to kill him. Because when I do, he’ll have broken me.” And he’d become like him. He unlocked the window and prepared to go.
~~~~~
“I’m sorry.” She said automatically but the sympathy in her eyes was real. “I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.” Not actually having any children of her own, Dinah wasn’t capable of saying that she knew at all how he felt; but Roy was like a son to her these days and if anything happened to him -- well, anything else-- she wasn’t sure what she would do; but it wouldn’t be pretty.
She nodded to show that she understood what he said; what was at stake and didn’t try to stop him as he went out the window and back into the night.
Sitting there in the dark on the floor of her father’s partner’s hospital room while he own best friend was several floor away under emergency surgery to save her spine and considering what Batman had said, Dinah couldn’t help but reflect back on all the blood on her own hands... the deaths that she had caused-- and she thought for a minute, that if it came down to it, maybe Batman wouldn’t have to make that decision after all. Maybe, if the opportunity came up, someone who had killed before should take that choice out of his hands. With an exhausted sigh, she pushed herself to her feet and went to close the door before regaining her seat next to Gordon and started thumbing through apartment listings in Midtown as she waited for news about Barbara.