Chapter Text
He's sitting alone when she sees him.
She's supposed be back in daddy's office either doing homework or reading her book, but she'd gotten bored and decided to go on the hunt for some snacks—maybe pretzels or M&Ms, depending on what the vending machine by the bullpen has to offer.
Typically, whenever she comes to the station with daddy and he's busy she has to stay with Uncle Harvey, who sometimes daddy says is a bad influence. Harvey usually grumbles and mutters something about how how he's a stellar influence, and daddy always rolls his eyes and says, yeah, sure.
She's about halfway down the corridor when she spots the boy at the end of it. He has a blanket over his shoulders; it's colorful and intricate and faded and worn in a beautiful kind of way, and it looks like both he and it have been on that bench for a while.
He looks familiar, Barbara thinks, and it takes her a minute to place him. She recognizes him from all of those posters and flyers for the circus, the same one she'd bugged her father about going to for a good two weeks, to which he always said maybe, which at this point she knows is just a nice way of saying no. That hadn't stopped her, though, because the circus was exciting and had elephants, a trapeze act, cotton candy, and basically anything a nine-year-old would be enamored by and would likely drive her father up a wall.
They hadn't gone.
Daddy had been hesitant about telling her why, but Barbara already knew; even at the age of nine she was no stranger as to how dark the city of Gotham could be. So she watches him, for a moment, the boy from the circus, whose face she knows but name she doesn't, the three quarters she has warming in her palm. Eventually, Barbara settles on pretzels and watches the boy out of the corner of her eye the entire time.
She goes over to him slowly, not entirely certain what she wants to say to him.
"Hi," she settles on, voice barely more than a whisper. The boy looks up at her but doesn't say anything. Barbara shuffles from one foot to the other and thinks about walking away. "I like your blanket."
The boy looks down like he'd forgotten it was there. "Thanks."
He hasn’t told her to go away or leave him alone, which she takes as a good sign. He eyes her as she moves to sit beside him and draws the blanket tighter around himself. The bench is smooth and warm, and she makes sure to seat her self close to the edge so her feet just barely grace the floor and she notices his don't touch it.
"I'm Barbara," she says, because that's the polite thing to do, daddy always said. Plus, it doesn’t seem like the boy is about to start conversation. When he doesn't respond at first, she's fully prepared to carry a one-sided one, but then he whispers,
"I'm Dick." That’s not a very nice name, Barbara thinks, but she doesn't say that. She’s heard her daddy call Uncle Harv that a few times under his breath, and his tone is usually a little annoyed.
Barbara looks down at her feet, at the wall across from them with all its posters and bulletins, and the other detectives and officers milling about, and then back at him. "You're from the circus, right?" She sees Dick frown and pauses because the expression makes her stomach hurt a little. "Sorry."
"'s okay."
He doesn't look at her and doesn't say anything beyond that, but she thinks his eyes look so sad. Daddy's look the same way sometimes when he picks her up from school or gymnastics or comes home after work, but doesn’t really talk about it. It isn't a very good look; it’s a look with a lot of hurt and Barbara finds she doesn't want to see Dick make that face ever again. She isn't quite certain as to why.
"I didn't go," she says. "But I would have liked to see the elephant."
"Zitka," Dick says with the tiny hint of a smile, though so his eyes are still sad. "Her name is Zitka. You would like her."
Barbara nods. She doesn't ask about his parents or how he feels, and instead just offers him a pretzel. He hesitates only for a second and then pulls one from bag when she offers it and murmurs a thanks. They sit in silence for a few minutes and Barbara thinks about telling him not to worry, her daddy will find the man who did this, but then she thinks about the last time she said that it was to a girl a little older than them, maybe thirteen, who said maybe if her daddy and his men did their jobs like they were supposed to, she wouldn't have been there in the first place.
They munch on pretzels and Dick plays with the edge of his blanket. Barbara pushes her glasses back up her nose. She decides it's not his fault he's not very talkative right now. She probably wouldn't be, either. She looks around the bullpen, listening to the hustle and bustle of the rookies and other detectives and the secretary who keeps dancing glancing over at them from her desk. She gives Barbara a little smile.
Barbara moves and reaches for Dick's hand where it's fallen next to him on the bench; he freezes but he doesn't pull away. His hand feels rough in hers, but she holds it anyway.
"I'm sorry about your family," she murmurs, he's probably heard it a hundred times already in the hushed tone adults like to use, and still the thought of losing her daddy makes her hurt. She knows what it's like to lose a mommy because her own left, but that's very different and she didn't lose both her parents.
And so she sits there for a while, homework forgotten and left for tonight while she talks about everything and anything that comes to mind, Dick interjecting to murmur his own thoughts on occasion, the two holding hands on a bench in the middle of the GCPD bullpen.
She doesn't know how long they sit like that there for, but it must be long enough to get her father to come looking for her. She's still holding Dick's hand when daddy comes up with her backpack and she doesn't know what to call the expression on his face when he sees them. Dick looks up when she stops talking, peters out mid-sentence and his shoulders fall as he looks away from her dad again. Daddy tells her to go get her coat and she tells him she'd like to sit with a Dick for a little longer, please. Daddy shakes his head and tells her to go say goodbye to Uncle Harv and that he'd like to talk to Dick for a moment. Barbara realizes there’s no point in arguing, but when she goes to stand Dick holds her hand a little tighter.
Barbara squeezes back.
He lets go.
She doesn’t know what to say, so she doesn’t say anything and instead bends back down to wrap her arms around his shoulders. Her glasses are askew and her hair has to be getting in his face and in his nose, but he doesn't complain about it or make a big deal.
"Bye, Dick, it was nice to meet you," she says.
"It was nice to meet you too, Barbara," he whispers. As she goes to get her coat and buttons it up, she sees her dad crouch down in front of Dick, though she can't hear what he says. Dick glances at her over his shoulder and gives her a little wave. She smiles and waves back just as her daddy stands back up. He puts his hand on Dick's shoulder and gives it a little squeeze and, while Dick looks sad he doesn’t look as upset as he did earlier.
Barbara loops her arms through the straps of her backpack as daddy holds it out to her, and then takes his hand to follow him out to the parking garage; she glances back to Dick just before the elevator doors close.
"What's going to happen to him now?" she asks and daddy’s head shakes a little.
"I don’t know," he says, which means he does but he just doesn’t want to tell her. This is usually the part where she starts asking too many questions, or at least enough to make daddy sigh and grumble and pinch the bridge of his nose.
"He's just so sad," Barbara says. "And I don't like it. I think we should help him."
Daddy squeezes her hand as the elevator doors open and he leads her into the garage. "That's what I'm trying to do, Barb," he says. His voice sounds tired, the kind of tired he gets after the rough cases mom used to tell him she wished he would quit, or maybe take some time for himself. It's a kind of tired Barbara's used to hearing.
"I know." Barbara looks up at him all the way up at him from where he stands, so much taller than her as he pauses to fish out his car keys. "Where is he going to stay?"
Daddy waits for her to lay her backpack on the seat beside her and buckle herself before he answers. "That isn't up to me; for now he has to stay at the station, and then I think one of the social workers you met last week is going to look after him," he says, as vague as possible and closes the door.
Barbara's frowning and playing with one of the buttons on the jacket while her dad rounds the car and climbs into the driver seat.
"Why can't he just stay with us?" she offers. "We have enough room."
Their home may be on the smaller side, but she's sure if all else fails he could stay on the couch, or maybe even in her room with the air mattress they don’t use a lot if it came down to it. Daddy looks back at her in the rearview mirror as he pulls out the spot.
"It doesn't quite work like that, Barb, but it's a nice idea."
Barbara folds her arms and more or less pouts out the window.
"Well it should. He's a kid and he shouldn’t have to stay by himself. He's my friend."
"Oh, so you're friends now?"
Barbara nods, even though daddy probably can’t see it. “Yes, I like him. He was sad but he was nice and he told me about the elephants at the circus.”
Daddy mutters something about damn elephants like he doesn’t think Barbara can hear him, and now he owes a quarter to the swear jar they got for Uncle Harv. She doesn't say much during the ride home, but she can’t stop thinking about Dick and how sad he looked when she left, and worries she may not get to see him again. Daddy promises he and the rest of his men are going to do everything they can to help him.
Daddy makes spaghetti for dinner and lets her help cook, which usually means he doesn't want to talk about something anymore or for her to push it. Barbara only does a little.
Over the next few months daddy makes good on his promise, and Bruce Wayne gives Dick a place to stay while Tony Zucco sits in a jail cell. Batman sightings grow more and more popular as does her increasing fascination with him, which daddy actively tries to discourage.
She's waiting for him one night, hanging around the station because he got called in and couldn't find a sitter in time despite her insistence she didn't need one, though that argument was always going to be fighting a losing battle on her end.
He's been gone for a little while, so she ducks out of his office in search of him. She spends fifteen minutes making her rounds through the other offices and the bullpen before making for the stairwell and the roof like she's definitely not supposed to. Barbara's giddy with a dangerous sense of excitement, mostly because there's a small chance she might get to see Batman in person, and a bigger one that she's about to get in trouble.
The door to the roof makes more noise than she wishes it did, and she know she's busted before they even spot her. Barbara flushes both in embarrassment and at the sudden chill in the air, which serves as a stark contrast to the heat inside the station. Daddy grimaces at her and she freezes because not only is Batman there, tall, dark, and intimidating, but he's also come with his companion, who Barbara has only seen in the newspaper clippings her dad keeps, and on spots on the news.
Batman doesn’t say anything before he leaves, but daddy doesn’t seem too surprised. It's Robin who seems to throw him off though, and he has his hand on Barbara's shoulder as he herds her back to the stairwell.
She looks in time to see Robin offer a little wave she starts to return, and daddy grumbles: "not on your life, Boy Wonder."