Love Birds

Chapter Twenty

-Athena's POV-

Rolling my eyes, I groaned and crossed my arms. "What do you want?" I growled, looking away from the three customers. The two youngest of the three were laughing while the respectable oldest man was giving me empathetic eyes and trying to get the two to stop. Not to my surprise, they didn't.

"Psst, Victoria, we need to talk." Joey called me into the back of the store. I crossed my eyes and glared at the laughing nineteen year old behind me. "Do you know who those people are?" Yeah, Batman, Nightwing, and Robin. Oh, he means identities. Dick Grayson, Bruce Wayne, and Tim Drake. The first being the most annoying of the three, I thought. "Victoria! Do you!?"

"Uh, yeah. So?" His eyes suddenly filled with anger and greed over his usual flirtatious nature. It made him look older. I stood a bit taller to show that he couldn't intimidate me.

"That's fuckin' Bruce Wayne! He owns like half of Gotham! He's literally made of money, and he gives it all away for no reason. We might be one of those places he gives an extra grand to for no reason. So, treat him and the princes of Gotham nicely or you won't get a paycheck!" He whispered in a yelling tone at me. I shoved his chest away from me and swaggered over to the ice cream bar with a fake and bored smile plastered on my face. Grayson had managed to hold his laughs in, but he grinned obnoxiously when he saw me again.

After what he said at the Watchtower, I had decided to ignore him. I didn't want to talk to him and he didn't want to talk to me, so I worked on not talking and not making any contact with him at all. Knowing Grayson, he probably hadn't even noticed.

"Hi, I'm Victoria Smith, what can I get you?" I said in a monotone and annoyed voice. Tim frowned at me and mouthed that he was sorry.

"I'll have one scoop of double chocolate brownie ice cream with chocolate chips and extra sprinkles along with a scoop of caramel gelato with extra whipped cream," Dick ordered, smiling smugly. He was trying to make this hard on me. I looked at Tim and smiled.

"And for you?" I asked sweetly with a genuine smile.

"I'll just have a vanilla scoop, please." Tim was shy and when he talked, it showed. Once you got to know him, he wasn't as shy, but he was usually pretty sad all the time. Sadder than everyone else. We were all orphans, but Tim had just recently lost his dad. He was so depressed, still.

"What about you, Bruce?"

"I'm alright, thanks Ms. Smith," Bruce formally answered. I made their orders quickly and handed them out. I had made Bruce a cup of straight up coffee with three extra pumps. Being Batman got tiring.

"For patrol," I whispered in his ear, setting his coffee down. He smiled a little thank you and wrote the store a check for two thousand dollars. I gasped, Joey gasped, everyone gasped. "Thank you, Bruce!" I tried to say in my most enthusiastic voice I could get out. Joey was about to pass out.

"Just what I do," Bruce told everyone in the store. The three boys finished their treats and left, waiting for me to follow. I shook my head and let them go. Quickly changing out of my work uniform, I headed home and immediately contacted Ra's Al Ghul.

"Nightingale, what is the meaning of this discussion?" Ra's voice boomed in the room, but he wasn't showing up in front of the camera. That was odd. Ra's always liked to getting as close to someone in person as he could and an audio meeting was not his acceptable forte.

"I would like to discuss my position at hand and give you a mission update. I was approached by a, well, psychotic and most likely in creditable source that explained to me that Batman was the Boss. I was confused, seeing as that you helped train him," I said. Ra's appeared on screen with a book in his hand. I pulled on my mask as an instinct.