Chapter Text
This time, Janet took the train to Gateway. She was a little bit behind her own schedule - she’d wanted to be in the city early, so she could, like, buy a gift for Helena before they met up, but she’d panicked over what to wear and, well, she’d lost an hour to that, only to end up choosing the first outfit she’d picked out anyways – long black skirt with daisies, black turtleneck, cream cardigan. Simple. Elegant? Reliable colour combination – a bit of visual interest in the skirt. It’s nice. It’s calculated. Janet is overthinking this far, far too much.
She still managed to pick something up for Helena – unfortunately, she didn’t get to put nearly as much time into choosing it, but – it was cute enough, she thought. A little plesiosaur key ring charm, if Helena had a massive key ring she was hiding from Janet. Maybe it was better described as a mini plesiosaur plush. With a silver chain in its neck. Yeah.
The brunch spot was the perfect neutral location – nice view over the city, but not crowded, good skyline but a glimpse of the Pacific as well. Not too much ocean though, and some forest creeping in the corner of the window. The interior was just as non-offensive – some nice greens and dark wood, always a solid combination. Nothing beige, because beige was really wearing out its appeal, and Helena had gone on many a rant about house flippers gutting houses of their personalities. The restaurant wasn’t overly decorated, just some plants here and there, and a nice, almost underwhelming menu design. It was as close to perfect as Janet could find last night.
And she was ten minutes early. Janet fiddled with her napkin nervously. Ten minutes to go back over what she needed to say, right? Obviously she couldn’t just jump right into it, that’s jumping the proverbial gun, but she did need to start the serious part of the conversation in good time because she’d only reserved the table for an hour and a half, and she wasn’t sure if there was another booking right after them or not, so they’d have to wrap it up by then.
Janet rifled through her handbag for her pen and small notebook. Lists. She could make lists. Right. Well, she certainly needed to apologise. And explain – an apology was empty if it didn’t come with reasoning. Not that Janet had much of a reason, she’d acted on impulse and very few rational thoughts had gone through her mind up to and around the kiss. Well, then she should probably clear up the misunderstanding. Definitely apologise again. And… well, she’d be paying for the brunch, and she had the plesiosaur, so the apologetic gestures were pretty well sorted, it was just the talking part.
God, talking. Why couldn’t they just… stare at each other for a while then walk away for six hours and have everything be great again. That’d be way more efficient.
The bell over the door rang out, a tinkling sound that in any other context would’ve meant nothing, but Janet nearly jumped out of her skin. There was still five minutes before their meeting time – but of course Helena would want to be early, she’d always hated the idea of being late, even if it meant cutting through the decommissioned laundry to shave a few minutes off their school commute. Helena caught her eye with a smile, which Janet hoped she returned with half as much blinding brightness.
Helena slid into the booth, fingers ghosting over Janet’s hand. She’d painted her nails – amber, matching the frames of her glasses. Janet noticed this, for no particular reason. There was certainly no other reasons for how she noticed how Helena’s white shirt was just see through enough to see the faint pink of her bra, or how her navy flared pants swished with her stride. No. No reasons.
“Hi!” Janet said, her list scrunching into a ball in her fist. Okay. Play it cool. Everything was fine. “I haven’t ordered anything yet, so we can, uh, do that together in a bit.”
“Perfect.” Helena pushed her glasses back up her nose. “I’ve been meaning to come here, you know, ‘cause everyone’s always telling me how nice the coffee is, but, well, I guess I never find time.”
“Yeah,” Janet agreed. “It’s easier - I suppose it’s easier on my end, because Jack can watch Tim while I’m gone, but he’s at a meeting in New York today. I got a neighbour to babysit him. You remember Bruce Wayne?”
“Janny,” Helena began, severely. “I don’t know if you realise, but Bruce is actually a little famous beyond having been in our highschool year.”
“I - yeah.” Janet dropped her head into her hands. “He’s a lot less ditzy in person, actually. I forget he’s the same guy in the magazines. Anyways, he’s got a kid - Dick? I think you’ve met, right?”
“Not long enough to have a conversation,” Helena shrugged. “But I’ve seen him.”
“Tim’s obsessed with him,” Janet said, a smile creeping to her face. “We went to theirs for lunch a while ago, and ever since it’s all, when will we see Dick again, can Dick come over to play, all the time.” Janet shifted, and her bag was jostled - her bag, she’d nearly forgotten. “Oh, I got you something!”
“Aw, you needn’t have,” Helena said, leaning forward all the same. Janet finally managed to find the plesiosaur, deep in the recesses of her bag, and quickly dropped it in the middle of the table.
“I thought you were due a new keyring,” Janet said, shifting in her seat. Oh, shit, what if Helena already had one? What if she didn’t like her it? Helena picked up the gift, turning it around in her hands.
“Aw, Janet! It’s adorable! Where’d you find it?” Helena’s hand drifted to Janet’s. “Cassie’s going to love him, if I want anything to do with him at all I’ll need to get another,” Helena laughed. Janet ignored how it made her stomach flip - she hadn’t really eaten that morning, it was probably just hunger – and did her best to smile the way normal people smile.
“There’s a little bookshop place across from the zoo that has nice things like that,” Janet explained. “I found it a couple months ago with Tim.” One of the waitresses came over to them – a young dark haired girl Janet could vaguely remember – and they ordered their food. Janet stomach flipped at even the thought of eggs, so she settled for the açai bowl.
Helena ordered the eggs benedict.
Janet hid her fidgeting behind the guise of wiping her hands. Helena seemed… far more relaxed. Maybe Janet was taking this too seriously? Maybe… maybe they could just agree to never speak of this again. “…So.”
“So,” Helena parroted. Oh, great. Janet knew she’d have to be the one to bring it up, given that she was the one who invited Helena to talk, but god, if she didn’t hate being the one to initiate.
“About the other day - I’m really sorry. I didn’t – I wasn’t thinking,” Janet said in a rush. Helena’s smile froze. “I just – it was a mistake. It shouldn’t have happened.”
A beat of silence.
“A mistake,” Helena echoed. Oh, fuck, Janet was screwing this up. Backtrack? She should backtrack, right?
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Janet pleaded. “I don’t – I don’t know what I mean. I’m sorry. I should – tell Cassie I said hi. I’ll pay for everything at the desk. I’m sorry. I should – go.” Oh fuck, this was worse. She’d made it worse. Helena had hardly reached forward before Janet was gone, all but running to the counter, swiping her card, and fleeing through the door. Oh, that’s bad. Janet was the one that even arranged this outing. What the hell was she doing? Is it still – is it standing her up if she was ditching her after seeing her?
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
—
Janet was tempted to go straight home after that disastrous morning, but her train ticket wasn’t for until evening, and she still needed to face Diana. She spent five minutes staring at flower bouquets before she gave up on supermarkets’ abilities to arrange floral gifts and found the nearest florist.
Twelve minutes and a few steep hill-streets later, Janet made it to a quaint little flower shop. Peeling exterior that may have once been a bright yellow, had it not been for Gateway’s year-round sun, and a little bell over the door that dinged when Janet entered. The old lady behind the counter saw her walk in, sighed with a scowl, and continued pruning a potted rose plant.
This suited Janet just fine. She knew what she was looking for. Janet’s mother had been less than impressed by the limitations of her highschool – dozens of clubs, societies, yet never the kinds Camille Derosiers considered necessary for a well-rounded young lady to excel in. There was a time Janet feared her mother would manage to talk her into founding the clubs the school didn’t already provide. Horticulture was one of them.
Which, all things considered, Janet could understand her mother’s offence that horticulture was not already an established club. Her highschool was one of the few that didn’t offer it in some form or another. And, for a woman as garden-oriented as Camille, it was all too necessary, then, for her to teach Janet herself.
She’d taught a few things to Helena, too, when she visited. But Janet couldn’t dwell on that right now. She had plenty more time to make plenty more mistakes today. Not that Helena was… forget it.
Pink carnations, for gratitude. Yellow, for rejection and sympathy. Striped, for refusal… again. Very carnation-heavy, as far as bouquets went, but she could throw in some sweet pea – friendship – and basil for well wishes. That should be good enough. And would hopefully look as nice in real life as it did half-formed in Janet’s mind. The lady behind the counter took her request unhappily, but the end result was stunning, so Janet dropped a fiver into her tip jar.
She made her way to a park – no way was she going to spend money on another meal she won’t eat – and found a bench to wait on. The minutes ticked by. Janet got a notification about some sorcerer causing havoc in the suburbs. Diana was probably there.
Half an hour, an eight dollar crepe, and three seagulls trying to steal her bouquet later, Diana jogged up to her. Given how her face shifted to a more resigned look as she got closer, Janet assumed she could read the situation as it was.
“I’m sorry,” Janet offered. What was one more lacklustre apology in a day of them? “I can’t do this. It’s nothing wrong with you, but I… think I thought I was more ready for this than I was.”
Understatement of the year. There weren’t any good therapists in Gotham anymore. One of them goes crazy, suddenly everyone flees the city…
“I’m sorry as well,” Diana said eventually. “It… is not always as simple as I sometimes like to pretend. There isn’t always the space… the time… to prioritise much else.”
Janet nodded. “Yeah. Yeah.”
Priorities. Janet used to think she had those figured out. Now look at her – not even twenty-five yet, divorced, a mother, and she’d just ruined both her best friendship and her first proper relationship since Jack. Great going, Janet.
At least Diana liked the flowers. She even managed to get the whole compliment out before she had to run off to the next disaster.
—
“Mummy,” Tim began, scribbling away at his colouring book. “What’s the elephant coloured like?”
“Usually grey or blue,” Janet said. “What colour are you using now?”
“Suffle-flor,” Tim said, squinting at the crayon. Yellow, Janet would have said. Sunflower was what Tim was probably trying to read off the crayon sleeve.
“Sunflower? Good job, Ducky. Can you say sunflower again for me?”
“Sufflower,” Tim echoed. Eh, they could work on their ‘n’ sounds later. Janet was already planning her apéritif, a frankly couldn’t find it within her to care about small mistakes right now. She’d made more than enough mistakes for the two of them already.
“Fantastic,” she praised. “So are we gonna make a sunflower elephant? Or a blue elephant?”
Tim pondered for a moment, reaching up to gnaw on his crayon, which Janet gently moved away from his mouth. “Red. Like the fire engine truck.”
“A fire engine truck elephant? Oh my,” Janet said. “Will you show me what that looks like, so?”
Tim promptly went to grabbing his red crayon and scribbling away again, and Janet sat back with a barely-contained sigh. Jack was working away upstairs - they’d hit another good season for business, and Jack was dropping hints about going on a trip overseas soon if the current trend continued. Before, Janet had been hesitant, but… it might be what she needed, now.
He’d been working since she got home, actually. Dick had been over to watch Tim for them again, because between all of Jack’s meetings and emails, he simply didn’t have the time lately to devote to keep Tim entertained and looked after. The hope was that if they did the work now, expanded the company, they could reduce Jack’s personal workload and allow him to be at home more again. The last few days had been the exception – an entire week of Jack’s holidays taken, but he’d booked that time off before everything went mad, so Janet refused to let him feel bad about leaving everyone ‘high and dry’. They were hired because they were capable, right? They were fine.
“I’m naming him Dick,” Tim declared, pulling Janet out of her reverie. “After Dick.”
“Wow, that’s so sweet,” Janet said, taking in the violent red cloud that may have once been inside the faint outline of a cartoon elephant she could just about see. “You should show it to him the next time he comes over.”
“Okay,” Tim agreed, easily, like making decisions was the easiest thing in the world. God, Janet envied him. It only made her feel a little pathetic. “I wanna play cartes.”
“Cards? I think we have some upstairs. Did Daddy show you how to play?”
“No,” Tim said. “But. I know how to, how to play. Because I do.”
“Compelling argument,” Janet mused. “Okay, I’ll look for them. Will you be a good boy and stay here for me?” Janet flipped the page in Tim’s book. “Oh, lovely, a little birdie! Will you colour in the little birdie for me while I’m gone? And then you can show me how pretty it is when I get back.”
Tim nodded gravely, task assigned, and immediately went straight back in with his red crayon. Janet stood up, cracked her back, and made her way to the stairs. She passed Jack’s study – slowed down, then quickly walked past briskly and went into the landing’s storage room. This was where most of their odds and ends ended up – old Scrabble boards, a Twister mat, old CDs Jack had collected over the years. And, of course, their collection of novelty playing cards.
Janet skipped right past some of the lewder packs – fun to play with in the company of friends, not so fun in the company of her impressionable toddler – and found a set of fish cards. Perfect. Card pack in hand, Janet twirled around, across the landing, towards the stairs, past Jack’s door –
The door knob clicked, and turned, and Jack shuffled out, eye bags heavy and the smell of coffee clinging to his clothes.
“Oh,” Janet said. “When on Earth did you start working?”
“Not too early,” Jack lied. “Just had very annoying people calling me. A lot.”
“Office hours,” Janet said simply. “Advertise them. And stop picking up stupid calls after them.”
Jack chose to ignore her, because of course he did. “There was someone at the door for you today,” he said conversationally, though Janet could tell he was tense from how he plucked at his cuff links. “Said it was urgent.”
There was an uncomfortably long pause. “Oh. Did they say what was urgent?”
“Your father died.”
Silence.
“I don’t have a father.”
“That’s what I told her,” Jack shrugged. “Still, she gave me this to give to you. Wouldn’t stop badgering Dick until he called me down to talk to her, probably freaked him out. Apparently it’s a copy of his will.” Jack pulled a large envelope from his jacket. “According to her, that’s how they found out about you and your mom.”
Janet took the envelope wordlessly. It wasn’t as heavy as she thought it would be – in fact, considering the gravity of the situation, it seemed very flimsy. Janet had… well, she’d probably cared about having a dad at some point. Not recently enough for it to hold in her memory. She had Maman, and Maman always told her they had more than enough with each other, and in the summer, they could go to Antibes, and sure, Janet had no paternal family, but she had more than enough uncles and aunts and cousins and what-have-you to make up for it. Janet wet her lips. “Did she say what her name was?”
“Jessica Dent,” Jack recited, practised, or like he’d been researching it up until this conversation. “Daughter of the late Christopher Dent and, allegedly, your half-sister.” Jack turned back to his office to pull another small stack of papers from a drawer. “I took the time to check their family tree and whatever public records of them I could find. Most of it is probably pretty useless to you, but.” He shrugged.
“Jessica Dent,” Janet repeated, slowly. “As in, Harvey Dent?” Two Face?
Jack winced. “That’s what a lot of those public records cover, yeah.”
“This is super fucked up,” Janet said. “Even if it turns out to be some sick joke. I think that’d actually be worse.”
“Apparently you’re one of five,” Jack said. “Or, were. One of them is dead a while. The other has no official statement on it, but she’s been AWOL for years, so. And then you’ve got Harvey… Jessica’s the only kind of normal one, I think. Though, she is a politician, so.”
“I’m going downstairs,” Janet said, instead of responding to… any of that. “Tim wants to play cards. Join?”
Jack glanced back at his desk. Oh, not a chance. “I –”
“You are joining us for cards,” Janet said. “And then, you and I are going to put Tim to bed, I’m getting drunk regardless of what you do tonight, and you and I are going to exchange woes and watch Mean Girls.”
Jack resisted for a whole second more before deflating. “Yeah, alright. Does Tim know how to play cards?”
“He’s two. Not in the slightest.”