Graybat Drabbles // Dick Grayson x Barbara Gordon

Love, Always, Babs

Dick picked up a pile of notebooks from the side of Barbara's bed. All of them were black, small, and kept perfectly. Each one had the year printed on the cover in gold. He bit his lip, flipping through one from 1996. Even then, when she would have been six or seven, Barbara's handwriting was perfectly curved and small and neat. The book was filled with drawings of Batman and police officers. And every single entry was ended with 'love, always, babs.'

The next one he went through was from 2000. The year they met. She was eleven, he was ten. He grinned when he saw the page where she'd drawn him, along with the words 'my best friend' and an arrow pointing to the drawing. A few months into the book, she started getting all gushy and romantic over the Boy Wonder. Dick could still remember his jealousy, despite being the person she was in love with. 

In December of that year, she'd written about how he'd asked her to marry him under the mistletoe. "Oh, Dick." She had laughed, "We're too young. Ask me again when I'm eighteen, and then I'll say yes."

In 2001, he cringed when he read the August pages. Barbara had found out about his 'night job' and refused to talk to him for almost a whole month. One whole god damn month. "Stupid, Grayson." Dick muttered to himself. 

2008. The year he'd taken her to his prom. Since Babs had gone to college when she was 15, she didn't have the chance to go to her own. He laughed when he saw that she'd glued the note he'd asked her out with into her book. 

A photocopy of her diploma was also stuck in there, as well as Dick's high school one. It was only fair. He would've repeated his senior year if she hadn't tutored him. He smirked. He'd picked her up and spun her around and told her he would marry her as soon as he turned eighteen. She'd laughed again. 

But through 2009, he realized she never had her hopes up. She saw everything going on between Bruce and Dick. She had even written, on the day he'd announced he was going to move into Titans Tower, that 'I don't think he'll come back, no matter what he says. He has his friends there, and that alien princess. I've seen the way he looks at her. It's much more than raging teenage hormones.'

By July that year, she'd almost completely stopped writing about Dick entirely. There were photos of her and some GCPD officer, Jason Bard. And then Jason Todd, the new robin. He was in there a lot, even though she'd apparently despised that Bruce replaced Dick at first. 

In 2010, she stopped writing for two months during February and March. She'd left her diary at home when the Joker shot her. When she got home, she barely wrote anything. The first week was only one or two sentences a day. 'In a wheelchair. No legs.' That was the first day. 'Dick wasn't at the hospital.' That was the next. 

Barbara ranted about her therapy. She'd split whiskey on the pages quite a few times. She said that the only people she'd talk to were Dinah, her father, and Bruce. The only mention of Dick was when she called him 'the boy blunder.' She called Jason Robin. She didn't even acknowledge Dick as Nightwing. Until Jason died, that was. 

April 28, 2010. She'd simply written: 'Jason's dead.'

She had written about Bruce being violent and angry. She'd written about Alfred and Bruce's fights. She wrote about her Dad's drinking and her brother's prison sentence. Then Dick was mentioned. 

The night that he'd come back to her. One night, only. How they'd made love. He remembered waking up briefly that night and seeing her writing down something. He remembered the stab of guilt. How he wished he could've torn up the wedding invite instead of watching her cry and scream as she forced him out of her apartment. 

She wrote about that night. It took up three pages. It was filled with so much hate that Dick wasn't sure it was even written by Barbara. The pages were stained with tears, and the ink bled in some places. He wanted to hit himself for all the pain he'd caused her.