Secrecy, loyalty, courage

batarangsandcomputers

“Would you believe it actually isn’t what it looks like?”

Kara ran her fingers along strands of soft red hair. She closed her eyes, listening to the steady heartbeat of her fiancée. It is always comforting. “I was going to call some wedding planners. But that can wait.”

“But they did! I was just about to get my things and leave this forsaken place. Care to escort me out darling?”

“I’m sure a reminder wouldn’t hurt,” Dick said cheekily. It must have fallen on deaf ears. The silence still surrounding them with determined breathing vessels in walking distance from them. They could detect these scumbags’ heartbeats from higher altitudes.

As he concentrated on how to maintain safety and silence in this scenario, he had to break the silence as carefully as possible to his equally headstrong partner who was doing a hell of a job. “Nice, Barb,” he said through the comms, “you might outshine Bruce someday. Let’s say we double team the remaining one or two?”

Hardly able to deny a small smile at Dick’s compliment, even despite the seriousness of their situation, Barbara raised a hand to her cowl, carefully clicking the comms system back on. “I don’t share well, remember?” She answered sarcastically.  

Kara absentmindedly began tracing slow patters up and down Barbara’s side, while snuggling closer to her. 

“They are probably in the living room still. That’s where we began, didn’t we? I mean, they still have to be inside the apartment. But don’t put them on. Let’s stay naked today. Or do you have somewhere to go?”

“Terry has a long way to go, but he’s making fast progress.” It had taken Bruce years to perfect his technique even before donning his cape and cowl and hitting the streets, and even longer after the fact. Considering he was just a high school street punk before Bruce took him under his metaphorical wing, Terry had made excellent progression. He was nowhere near close to how Bruce was in his prime, but he would get there, someday.

“I’ve heard that before...” It was hardly a lie, considering what all of them had been through in the past years. Every one of them had shown promise, had shown something that made the Bat sit up and take notice. But in the end, time had won the war, in more ways than one. Opinions and loyalties changed, until eventually, they all went their own ways. The costumes down in the Cave were all that remained of the past, in some fashion.

“Tim will be fine, you need to focus on getting proper rest.”

Bruce realized fairly early on in the conversation that despite the toxin having worked it way out of Barbara’s system, the memories of her dream had left a psychological scar. Nobody but Barbara herself could help her with overcoming that, but at the very least Bruce could assure that she wasn’t overworking herself to the brink of exhaustion.

“Batgirl doesn’t need it...” Still typing away, even despite the growing feeling of heaviness in her eyelids, Barbara knew that Bruce was right, on some level. Even if she had managed to survive the initial toxin, it was obvious the side-effects were still there. Even she couldn’t deny that. She could feel the lack of sleep in everything she did, even under the cowl. That exhaustion could lead to sloppiness, which none of them could afford. 

She placed a loving, tender kiss on the side of Barbara’s temple. “Well for lying in bed you don’t need clothes, do you? Besides, I’m rather fond of you naked.”

The girl gripped onto the knife tightly before looking around the alley. It was an understatement to say she was scared. Dropping the knife was not an option, but going with this woman might be the only solution to this problem that she found herself in.

“Look. I don’t know where I am or who you are. But I’m not dropping this knife. You show me where I gotta go…and I’ll follow.”

Barbara hadn’t ignored the feeling of fear that had surrounded both herself and the young teen. Considering that it was now fairly obvious she wasn't from around here, there was no doubt she’d hadn’t heard of either Batman, or herself. That alone explained why she was holding onto the knife so tightly. At least in the Bat’s eyes.