( closed )

[brat]

WHO: bats & co
WHEN: April 30th-ish.
WHERE: Wayne Manor
WHAT: an important meeting.
NOTES\WARNINGS:

( with the announcement comes a need to prepare; one that, unfortunately for most of their group, requires planning together. thus, those from gotham and close associates either receive a ping on their devices, coded with instructions of when to meet up, or - a note left where they'd find it, equally coded, because no one's leaving obvious meeting notes behind.

the manor's massive living space is where everyone settles, rather than the cave. not all of them arrived in uniform, and considering goliath has made himself comfortable and is taking a nap - well. it's best not to disturb him. )

Comments

[cohero]

Chewing over his lip, Dick gives a small shrug. "No, we don't have a batgirl. We've got a wondergirl. Donna Troy is my best friend. That's what I've got. I don't like to compare worlds or people. It doesn't work like that in the multiverse. I know that sometimes, people are completely different. In one world they could be batgirl, in another they could be a secretary or a scientist. It's not the same everywhere. There might be similarities, and there might not"

There's a small sigh. There are some with Barbara, but Dick doesn't want to bring it up. It's how they recognized one another instantly. There's that ineffable chemistry that lands between them in this world and the other. It's her brain and her determination. He can see it in her eyes, the set of her jaw. Dick would never have mistaken her for someone else despite the color of hair. It's not about her, in the same way the other Dick isn't about him-- but they both can't help but compare anyways.

[her_own_rules]

Barbara visibly has to process that—a world where she doesn't exist. Or does (a Barbara Gordon does), but Batgirl doesn't exist—no Batgirl. No Batgirls comes swiftly next, looking toward Steph and Cass, as the one goofs off and the other is quietly pleased, even in her seriousness. Of course. No Genesis Domino.

There's the press of brows upwards at his words as he oddly starts to tell her what the multiverse is and how it works. Like somehow he thinks she needs to be told it. (When he was the one who said he'd known of it but never interacted with it.) "I know. My world is well-versed in the multiverse, both the theoretical and the actual part, remember?"

Though, he might not. Their conversation hadn't exactly clung to any specific rails. But it's normal in their world. Well, it's not normal. But also nothing like impossible. Or an earth-shattering epiphany. It's another problem to solve. It's a large bit of the reason why che central around them isn't full of panicked voices, but mostly serious faces, who are dedicated to trying to plan as well as they can for the absolute unknown on the otherside of whatever this labyrinth will be.

"That isn't going to stop me from asking. You're the one who said your Barbara was doing something you knew I absolutely wasn't. You can't expect me not to ask, if you're going to say things like that."

[cohero]

"I- I'm sorry." There was a lot that first conversation, and Dick had already had quite a morning with the rain and all before he met up with her. Then there were all the feelings and flashes of things that were invoked by her mere presence, the things that still lay there in the dusty spots of his mind. He's done work so that they don't flare up, but tonight's not all that easy for him either.

It's difficult being in a room full of people he doesn't know. Being a stranger sitting in a chair and not knowing how to attempt to start a conversation this time around is a kick in the ass for Dick. So, he'll apologize-- he'll do it as many times as he needs to tonight. He's already been jealous, said the wrong thing aloud, and gotten off on the wrong foot. Somewhere along the way, he might figure all this shit out. Maybe.

It's not looking like he's going to manage it with Barbara though. She's worse than a dog with a chew toy. He tries to think around the problem. "Your other is in a chair, and she's working with the police force. You're obviously not. You work as a vigilante, like us, and your legs work fine." He breathes out softly, eyes tender as he speaks of her-- his care evident.

[her_own_rules]

"They don't."

The words are out even before her expression changes; this careful slide toward sympathy for her other self, even as it pulls her back and inward without her body shifting on the arm of Dick's chair. Not being injured was not a thing she had wished on her other part because it wasn't a thought to exist in her own head. She took her life as it was, and then she demanded it be what she said it would. She was not broken. She was not beaten. She refused all such ideas. She had created the biggest ghost in the machine, which all the heroes in her world relied on, from it.

"I have a temporary neural implant." One that was experimental at best when it went in. With a shelf life of 'it won't last forever,' might fritz out, stop working at any second without warning--that she'd had to cut directly out of her body with her own hands more than once. No one needs to tell her what that's done to its viability and shelf-life either. "It bypasses the severed part of my spinal column that can't ever be fixed."

It takes so little effort to say the facts,

and so much to make it through the next two words. "For now."

"There are still whole strings of hours or days I need a wheelchair. It's only sheer luck it hasn't happened yet here." And it is only a yet. There's no question of if in her voice." It's still had touch and go days since arriving, but not insurmountable problems yet."

[cohero]

There's a light in Dick's eyes that closes beyond the one she can see. All the pain he'd hoped that she hadn't had to endure shatters past. Certainly she was never broken or beaten. That would never, ever be in Barbara's repertoire. It was still a thing that Dick wished had never played through her life.

To have been spared the horror of that night, and the miserable task of learning how to relive life-- Dick had cared so deeply for her and it hurt him even if he didn't go to her. He was a sorry ass chicken. He knew it. Rubbing the back of his head, Dick closes his eyes and tries to hide the wealth of thoughts that go running through his brain, all the memories that surge forward.

Vibrancy, them dancing back and forth over the vase before ending up deciding to become partners in crime and life. Then again, not too long before he ended up here-- finding himself in her arms. He looked up to her. "I'd hoped you didn't have to go through that. I hope that the implant works the best it can while you're here. I know the chair never holds her back, not to compare, but I do doubt it does you either. This place, this planet? It makes me anxious in ways I don't get in Gotham often."

[her_own_rules]

There's an odd sort of symmetry to it. Barbara watches him close his eyes and rubs his head. It's for her, and it's not. It's her through the lens of what he experienced of that trauma with his Barbara. (Not quite living through it again, but incapable of understanding the price of it, the weight, the pain.) It's the same as wondering if it's an echo of what Dick was feeling when he wasn't there.

She doesn't quite have a lot of words to say about that (she doesn't always with her people either, not on the days she has to be stuck in the chair or quietly helped from it to a bed). She doesn't look away. She isn't hiding from it having happened, or the injury she'll have for life, or his grief, or apology, or acknowledgment. Her eyes are a solemn green, and her tightens a little in understanding.

There's the slightest nod of her head for that.
Barely there. Likely not seen from half the room away.

"Gotham's," Barbara hazards, letting the last syllable linger into silence. "A predictable known."

"This place isn't, so it's left only everything ever as the options of what could be thrown at us."

[cohero]

There's that paradox that can't be avoided again no matter how much Dick wishes that it could. The subtle ways in which worlds collide and his mind wanders back to Barbara's counterpart in his world instead of staying fully rooted here and letting worlds be completely singular in their existence-- never letting the issues of the multiuniverse interfere with his determination to treat people as utter individuals, such as he wishes to be treated.

It doesn't work. His head needs to let it all go, but he hasn't figured out how to navigate this ship yet.

Noting the way she moved, the look in her eye, Dick wishes he didn't have to mention things. It was his unknown and now there's this here, but it will move on in time. It's always there, but he has a feeling it will move on.

Nodding, Dick sets his lips in a line. "That's it exactly. Gotham may have its own horrors, but we know how we face them there. These are all new horrors not within our borders, with our settings.

[her_own_rules]

She doesn't mind touching on it, but there's not much use staying on the topic. She won't stop being injured ever. She won't stop having delicate experimental technology holding her spine together today. (Hopefully.) And so she does what she always does. She bulls through it. She nudges him with one bare foot—just the slightest of touches before her heel is back against the chair arm again.

"Buck up, new Boy Wonder. We'll all be too distracted by them to think about comparisons soon, probably."
As much as it's worrying, there's a part of her that would rather be handling it under the cowl, too.
A part of her that forever thrills toward all those times. Taking it head on.

Then, something catches her, and she backtracks, absently turning a little in her seat. At ease. Maybe a little of it is forced, but something fond and a touch amused creeps back into her voice again. "Back home, my Dad never wanted me to be a cop. That's sort of how all this got started on my side. With me aiming to give him a heart attack in party costume."

[cohero]

Funny that she calls him the new boy wonder, when he's obviously older than the other Dick Grayson. It doesn't matter to him either way, but it makes him smile to be called new. He hasn't felt new in a very long time. If anything, life's recent events have made him feel older than ever. This turn in the paycheck might make him wish he were the younger model. Age wears everything down eventually, no matter how perfectly kept the body is-- being injured time and again isn't necessarily perfect for human bodies. Not that any bat would ever complain.

"No, I have plenty on my thought plate. You're right."

Like a dog with a bone. He nailed it, because she's back around and plucking away at the other Barbara's life. It's strange how he continues to fill in the spaces and she is so insistent, when she wouldn't tell him an ounce of information about Jason. Don't people in his world get to have a right to their privacy as well. "Did he? That sounds like him. Barbara has given her dad attacks in plenty of ways. You don't have to know everything about her. It's not really our deal to pick apart people in other time lines is it? I mean, I can tell you I got to know her doing things that were illegal, and you'll have more and more questions. It's only right she gets her privacy, isn't it? Like Jason?"

[her_own_rules]

Barbara raises an eyebrow as he launches into a little reprimand, bringing up the topic return to his Babara while accusing her of it. It's blatantly passive-aggressive—mentioning another thing, on purpose, and telling her she'll want to ask about it but that she shouldn't ask about it. This sudden, unnecessary mention of illegality contrasts his point of not saying things. Or he does it to bother her, to leave it like a thorn in her skin. But if he was trying to score a point for making her stop—for making her not want to ask, or know, or want to know, but not want to ask him about the words coming out his own mouth?

He's won that point.

"Right. Sorry for sharing something about myself, then." Barbara slipped off the arm of the couch with the light grace of a dancer, a fighter; someone used to the air. "We can just keep it all professional and not talk about either of our lives, then. I should get back to working as it is. I'll make sure your name is down with everyone's for those supplies. "

[cohero]

That hadn't been what his intentions were at all, but he was working the room with normal stellar social grace this evening. It was probably best that he grant himself leave before too much else happen. He really didn't know anyone that well anyhow and he'd already done the one thing he'd come to do.

Clothes had exchanged hands, and he was thankful to Damian for the small arsenal that he had. Nodding his head at Barbara's ire, Dick inhaled and exhaled deeply. "Gotcha. You don't have to worry about me. I take care of myself. You take care of the rest." Dick rocked forward out of his chair and with another short acknowledgement to the people he knew, Dick left the exchange all together.

They could meet again on the other side if it came down to it.

[her_own_rules]

Barbara stands there, bare toes in the plush carpet and green eyes narrowed speculatively behind her glasses, watching him push himself up and all but run away from the room. It keeps catching her as a surprise; for all that, this new Dick looks right around the same age as her and Dick; he acts so much younger. This wholesale abandonment of the room and its greater purpose—to them, to every person pulled into this multiverse and now required to bear its stressful unknowns as he just put it—is just another showing of it.

After a moment, she does finally make it back to her computer.
She won't change her mind about the supplies. She never would.


It's what she does. What Oracle does.
Watching out for all the heroes who need it.

Especially the ones twisting in the wind, saying they don't.