Barbara remembered the first proper vigilante lesson Bruce taught her, how to instil fear.
She could see the difference in their eyes. Where previously there were taunts and laughter, there was now trembling at her mere appearance in the alleyways. With the rain and the thunder behind her, she made a slow, deliberate step towards her target, and he bolted into the dark street. With a practised arm movement, a bolas swung down the alleyway, and a click was all it took as she watched as the man fell, his head meeting with hard concrete. With a glance at the woman she saved, she grappled to the rooftop where she knew he was waiting, chest rising in anticipation.
"That's all for tonight, go home," his dark figure towered over her, an amorphous mass of square shadows in the darkness of Gotham.
Meekly looking up, she squeaked out a "yes sir," In retrospect, she thought, she should never have expected any praise. Robin got much praise, and to him, she was just a teenager girl who had stolen an old Batman uniform and was playing pretend.
As she jumped from rooftop to rooftop she reflected on what it was that Batman meant. Vigilantism is a show, the actual work behind the scenes, the beatdowns and the batarangs, were not what the power came from. The power came from the little actions, the way Batman leapt down when the sky had darkened, the way he seized his cape before landing to give himself a larger size, and the way he moved as if sensing a person rather than seeing them. It was there, jumping between rooftops, seeing her father make breakfast through the window of their apartment in the distance, that Barbara learnt about the presentation of a superhero.
♡♡♡
Wenlock had seen first-hand, the false presentation of superheroes.
She had seen it when the second Robin beat a man within an inch of his life in the hallway of her apartment complex. If this was what the civilians thought was their last line of defence against criminals, they were insane, she thought.
and... Wenlock closed her eyes, she needed to stop thinking about what they did to him, what they could do to her and focus on the task at hand.
"thread the wire through... not that, don't do t-, okay let's start again" With a robotic version of a sigh, Oracle restarted the animation on the screen.
"I don't get it, I'm threading it through the same thing you showed on the screen?" Wenlock smiled lightly at Oracle's annoyance, despite what either of them said, they enjoyed this time together.
"It's the angle, there are two connectors in there, you can't see it of course, due to not being able to use your perfectly functioning eyes, but you're putting it into the wrong one"
At this, Wenlock rolled her eyes, "You know I don't get why we're making it this shape," she held up the head, well, helmet. It was the head of the Oracle robot, with Oracle now uploaded to Wenlock's other devices, they had decided to repurpose the head into a mask. But...
"It kind of resembles the bat masks, I mean the ears? really?" she flicked at the flat metal diamond shapes sticking out at a symmetrical angle, not short enough to be like the Batman's, but not long enough to be intrusive, like a fox or a hare's ears.
"It is quite unfortunate, call it convergent design, they give me a stronger connection to you from here. For the Bats it's sonar for scanning the area, we have me so we don't need that, otherwise I'd have a satellite dish on your head."
"So you're turning me into a walking wifi router..." Wenlock sighed as she slumped back on the couch, looking at Oracle's digital "face" on her monitors.
"You could say that" The flickering green face on the monitor moved into what could be considered a smirk.
Wenlock sighed and put the helmet on, as it flickered to life to scan her face she looked through the yellow-tinted lens at Oracle. It was an angular shape, made up of triangles and diamonds, a beautiful piece of work, she thought, too bad it would make her stoop as low as the people she hated. But it might be the tool that would keep her alive that night
YOU ARE READING
conflict and compromise / barbara gordon
FanfictionA needed struggle, that's what Barbara would call her life, a story with ups and downs as stability eluded her again and again. Well now she had found it, she had a family to support her, a team that needed her support, and a supportive girlfriend. ...
