Chapter Text
January 7
The gang known as the Moth Men have struck again. This time, Joan Porter, wealthy Gotham socialite. In her sixties, single, female, many cats. The only thing that matches the rest of the Moth Men’s targets is her tax bracket. Rather than taking hostages, the Moth Men kidnap those in control of the bank accounts take them to an unknown location where they are held for an entire day in a room, described as a basement, by themselves. They are then given an option by The Moth-Man – identity unknown: their life or an offshore payment, somewhere in the Cayman Islands.
Two have died so far [Lois Dupree, Charles Winston] with their bodies appearing in Burnside Bay. The others are rendered unconscious and returned to their homes within 36 hours. At this moment, Robin…
“Barbie!” Jim Gordon’s voice echoed down the apartment hallway.
Eleven-year-old Barbara shot up from her computer desk and twisted around to face the front door. It sounded like Jim was at the front door. She could hear keys turning and then clattering into the communal key bowl. What is he doing at home? Barbara swung wildly and looked around her room. It was an absolute mess and covered in a lot of things she was not supposed to have. Not to mention the living room, she thought, panicking even more.
Barbara darted across her room, picking up all the things she’d stolen from the GCPD evidence locker that had once belonged to Batman.
Stealing them had been a lot easier than it should have been if Barbara were being honest. It was no wonder crime ran rampant in Gotham if Barbara got in after watching a YouTube instructional on lock picking. She wanted to tell her father, but at the same time, it was nice to have that sort of accessibility.
“Barb, you home?”
No time to think of that. She had taken all her illegal objects and strewn them across her room. In her defence, Barbara had been at home by herself for a week. Her brother was at a school camp, and her dad was caught up in the Moth Men case and had been sleeping at the precinct because of the weird hours. Barbara had lost track of time.
She grabbed a milk crate that she had lying around and threw in her collection of batarangs, pepper spray, some of Robin’s shurikens, a costume and a grappling hook. “I’m just… in my room!” Barbara called out.
She leapt over her bed and slammed the box in the back of the cupboard, then desperately pulled at the rolling cupboard door to squash it all in. The wheel popped off its rails, the door warped with the weight of the things she’d thrown in there. Barbara put her back against it and popped it back in. The mirror warped where the box pressed against the door and bulged.
The handle to her door started to turn when Barbara spotted her computer.
The acid green text was still typing, and on her desk was the Batarang that Batman had given her with various wires sticking out of it. She pushed off her cupboard and took another running leap over her bed, crashing into her desk chair and pressed ‘escape’, switching out of the screen and blocking the immediate view of the batarang with her tissue box.
She spun back around in her desk chair and kicked her feet up onto the corner of the bed just as Jim Gordon stepped inside her room, looking around the place. His bristled moustache twitched. He’d heard her moving around, trying to hide things. Barbara schooled her features, years of lying to her detective father teaching her a thing or two. “Hey, Daddy,” she said.
His red greying hair was flopping against his head. As he shifted from foot to foot, trying to find what was wrong in the room, his trench coat shifted around his hip, so Barbara caught a glimpse of his badge and gun. “Hey,” Jim said, eyes still darting. His brow furrowed in suspicion. She knew he’d had enough time to inspect the living room – Barbara distinctly remembered leaving pizza boxes and all her books and comics around the place. She’d also left the king-sized duvet she’d stolen from her dad’s bed, plus all the pillows, to make a blanket fort in front of the television. On his face, she could see he was calculating something. “How are you?”
“I’m good, Dad. What about you? Did you catch the kidnapper yet?” Barbara said, keeping her face neutral.
He looked over her shoulder at the computer, then back to Barbara, wary. “No,” he said, still trying to decide what it was Barbara was hiding from him. His eyes darted over to her wardrobe, and she held her breath as they both stared at the warp. “Not yet.”
Barbara got up, her body all limbs and gangly movements, deciding a distraction was in order. She’d had a growth spurt recently and hadn’t gotten used to the longer dimensions of her body. She climbed over the bed for the third time and launched herself across to her dad. Jim caught her with ease, hugging her tight, but she could feel his gaze on her computer. “I’ve missed you!” she said.
“Hmm,” Jim replied, kissing her cheek. He hugged her for a minute then his shoulders dropped. “I see you’ve sprawled yourself out like butter again.” There was no annoyance in his voice. Jim didn’t mind when Barbara took over the living room. He wasn’t around enough to discipline her about it. He put her down and was still eyeing the room, eyes trying to spot the difference. “What have you been up to?”
Barbara scanned the room slowly, trying to find an excuse, then spotted a party invite on her bedside. She grabbed it and passed it to her dad. “Just trying on clothes to see what I can wear to Esther’s Bat Mitzvah. I’ve never been to a Mitzvah before, you know? It’s a first.”
Jim plucked the invite from her hands and looked at it but mostly eyed her computer. “And if I turn that screen on, that’s what I’m going to find? Bat Mitzvah dresses?”
Barbara’s blood ran cold, but once again, she knew how to lie to her dad, and she rolled her eyes at him. “Yes, Daddy. Want to look?” Please don’t look, please don’t look.
Jim made another sceptical face. “You know, getting that phone call that you hacked the Gotham City National Bank last month wasn’t my favourite day, Barb.”
Barbara rolled her eyes. “Well, they shouldn’t have made it so easy.”
“Barbara…”
“I’m not hacking a federal bank, Dad. And I only did that once because I couldn’t remember your password to pay the electrical bill.” She didn’t add that she had tried calling him half a dozen times that day, and it seemed a lot easier to hack the bank’s system than get in contact with him. They’d already had that argument when it happened, and it hadn’t gone well. “I’m just… doing girly things.”
It was sad how easy her dad became flustered when Barbara said, ‘girly things.’ He smiled painfully, his face caught somewhere between constipated and a stroke, and nodded his head. “I mean… yeah, sure. I guess. I mean, I know if you have any questions, we can… I don’t… I can ask cousin Holly…”
“I’m fine. I just didn’t know you were coming.” Her disappointed shoulder slump wasn’t all an act. Barbara did miss Jim when he spent long periods away from home. She understood, but... “You’ve been gone all week.”
Jim sighed. “I know. I’m sorry, Pumpkin. I lost track of time.”
Jim was on the back foot. Barbara wondered if it was weird that she knew how well to manipulate her dad for information was, but curiosity was burning at her. “Is it the Moth Men case?”
He made an uncomfortable sound. “Yeah. But don’t go telling people.”
“Joan Porter was kidnapped last night.”
Jim raised his eyebrow. “Did the news already release that?”
“Um… no. I’m on some sleuthing website and-”
“You know I don’t want you on those kinds of websites–”
“But I was just looking it up because….”
“Doesn’t matter what the reason is, Barbara. You’re too young–”
“James is coming home from camp tomorrow,” she said.
“Don’t change the topic. You can’t…”
“I was trying to find out whether or not I should ask Simon Pilfrey’s mom to drop James off!” she said, making her voice louder than Jim’s. He fell quiet. Barbara couldn’t see the shame on his face, but she did feel his mood shift. The room felt… Sadder.
“No. I’ll pick him up,” he said. “I’ll make the time.”
Barbara thought about how he’d said that about the grocery shopping too, but for the third week in a row, she’d had to take his card and go and make sure there was food in the pantry. She didn’t say that out loud, though. Barbara didn’t want to upset him.
He reached out and cupped Barbara’s cheek, softly smiling as he rubbed her soft, plump skin with the rough pad of his thumb. He leant down and kissed her forehead.
Warmth flooded Barbara and, before she could think, she launched forward and threw her arms around her dad’s waist, beneath his coat. He brought his hands beneath her arms and lifted her, letting her head fall on his shoulder. She wasn’t sure who was squeezing who tighter, but it hurt a little on her ribs in a way that spread warmth through her chest. “Oh, I missed you so much, Pumpkin.”
“I missed you too, Daddy,” she murmured, feeling a little childish. But she also felt warm and fuzzy. Barbara had missed her dad. Even though she went to school every day, she’d been home alone for a week and had been feeling the loneliness creep in.
She understood, of course. Jim Gordon was essential in Gotham. He was one of the few Sergeants in Gotham PD that wasn’t corrupt. He’d spent most of his detective career cleaning up police houses and worked tirelessly to keep the city safe.
But sometimes, Barbara felt like being a little selfish. Sometimes, it would be nice if she could keep her dad all to herself. She kissed Jim’s cheek and tried to quash her disappointment when he put her back down on the floor. “Can you come out and clean up the living room a bit? I have a pizza on the way for dinner for us. We can have a meal, and you can tell me about your week.”
“Okay. Do you want a coffee?” she asked.
He nodded. “That’d be nice, Barbie. I’m going to have a shower.” He squeezed her cheek one last time, then headed back to his room and most likely straight into the bathroom.
Barbara looked over her shoulder at her computer anxiously, then at her cupboard. She’d had plans that night. Important plans. Plans to finally use the things she’d been collecting for almost a month and use them.
But Dad’s home, she thought, and the endorphins from her hug with her dad flushed her system, so all she could think about was how much she was going to have fun chatting with him at dinner.
She went into her living room and looked around, realising how far she’d let it go. The apartment could do with a vacuum and dust, but Barbara figured she’d do it all later and started to work on the bigger stuff. She packed up the blanket fort, stacked her empty pizza boxes and drink bottles on top of the bin, and filled the dishwasher with more dishes from the week before deciding it was full enough to start the cycle. It was her job to keep the place clean, and she thought she handled it well enough, but sometimes, Barbara knew she got lazy. Her dad was out at all times of day and night, so it wasn’t like there was anyone around to complain if there was a dust bunny in the corner.
She had just turned on the coffee machine when the door buzzer rang, and Barbara collected the pizza from the delivery man. She took out two plates and set them down on the dining table, just as Jim walked out of his bedroom in a different shirt and pants and his usual trench coat thrown over his arm. Barbara saw how exhausted Jim looked. There were bags under his eyes, and his shoulders slumped as he walked over to the kitchen island and grabbed a hand full of napkins. He opened the pizza box to stack his paper covered hand in slices. “Hey Pumpkin, I gotta –”
“You’ve got to go?” she interrupted, unable to hide her disappointment. “But… you said…”
“I know, I’m sorry, but Joan Porter’s has been deposited back in her apartment,” he said, leaning down and pecking her on the forehead. “I promise, I’ll try and be home for breakfast.”
It was always like that. Jim was always leaving to go out and solve Gotham’s numerous crimes, and always promising to be back at some point. Those promises didn’t mean much. It’s too much for the GCPD to handle… It’s too much for Batman to handle, Barbara thought.
And as quick as he appeared, Jim Gordon was gone again.
Barbara ran her finger over the flat of her batarang – the one Batman had given to her in case of emergency – staring at the outfit she’d put together on her bed.
Biting her lip, she considered it and reconsidered it again and again. She rubbed the material between her fingers of her opaque black tights that would be worn beneath two yellow knee pads she got for her ninth birthday that still fit her knobbly eleven-year-old knees. They didn’t quite match her elbow pads, bought a year later when her original set had cracked. The yellow cape was fabric reused from her Princess Belle Halloween costume, and she’d taken a great deal of care to rip off the skirt and hand stitch a collar around it, so it covered her neck and ears. She had a few batarang’s she’d stolen a grappling hook and some yellow spray paint too. She used the paint to spray a bat symbol on a black t-shirt in a yellow tone that vaguely matched her old tennis skirt but looked nothing like her cape.
Did she miss something?
If she wanted to be safe – and she had to be safe – was there something else she needed?
She went into her cupboard and looked for a pair of shoes and figured her old yellow hiking boots would give her enough grip to scale the walls if she needed it.
Perfect, she thought, then went back over to her computer.
She plugged the batarang back in then, using the port she’d discovered while playing with it one day, and used the GPS signal to piggyback back into the Batcomputer – as she liked to call it.
Batman had been writing up his notes earlier in the evening when she’d been online, and she very silently had been watching him type. But now, no one was online. Hacking into The Batman’s network hadn’t been easy. It took her at least a week to figure out how to get in undetected, and it was only because she had the batarang that she could slip in and out, disguising her signal as The Batman’s very own technology. The only drawback was if anyone else was using the computer – Batman, Robin or the mystery A who sometimes spoke over the frequencies – she couldn’t use anything, or she’d be caught. It was only when no one else was on that she could deep dive. All she had ever done in the two years she’d been on the network was read case files on the various criminals of Gotham and sometimes tried to solve the case herself. Twice she’d added information to the files when she’d figured out a connection before Batman or Robin did. Barbara wasn’t even sure they had ever noticed.
January 7
The gang known as the Moth Men have struck again. This time, Joan Porter, wealthy Gotham socialite. In her sixties, single, female, many cats. The only thing that matches the rest of the Moth Men’s targets is her tax bracket. Rather than taking hostages, the Moth Men kidnap those in control of the bank accounts take them to an unknown location where they are held for an entire day in a room, described as a basement, by themselves. They are then given an option by The Moth-Man – identity unknown: their life or an offshore payment, somewhere in the Cayman Islands.
Two have died so far [Lois Dupree, Charles Winston] with their bodies appearing in Burnside Bay. The others are rendered unconscious and returned to their homes within 36 hours. At this moment, Robin and Black Canary are placing cameras and trackers around the city to catch the subsequent kidnapping in progress. They are setting them up around the apartments of all suspected targets, major intersections and highways.
I don’t have time to read the rest of this. Dad already made me late, Barbara thought, flicking through to Batman’s map of Gotham. She could see a blinkered light, showing the Batmobile heading towards Robbinsville Park, and she knew that four of the potential next targets all had houses around there.
Well, that’s where I’m going. She shut down her computer, unplugged her batarang, and went to the window. The Batsignal was already up. I need to go now if I’m going to head out at all.
While putting on her makeup and gear – which took a lot longer than she realised – Barbara reminded herself again and again how to swing across the buildings. She had watched GCPD tapes of Batman and Robin, memorising how they used the grappling to swing in between buildings. Aim. Shoot. Pull the cable tight. Jump. Aim. Shoot. Pull the cable tight. Jump. It was her new mantra, clear and easy instructions.
She filled her eyes with black eyeshadow and pulled on a dollar-store plastic mask underneath her ponytail so her eyes could look blacked out. The last thing Barbara put on was her utility belt, which was made from a bunch fanny packs she’d stitched together. The pockets of said belt were filled with all the gadgets and equipment she thought she might need, both her own and stolen from the GCPD evidence locker.
She looked good. She felt good. Yeah, her gear might not have been as high quality as The Bat, but she made it herself, and she beamed in the mirror, fixing her mask one last time before she left.
She’d never felt so on edge about leaving her apartment before. First, she opened the door and peered out, her little masked face looking around the doorway, and when she knew the coast was clear, she locked up and darted across the hallway to the elevator.
The grappling was heavy on her hip, and she bounced from foot to foot, staring at the doors. Aim. Shoot. Pull the cable tight. Jump. Aim. Shoot. Pull the cable tight. Jump.
It wasn’t the jump that was worrying her.
Barbara wasn’t afraid of heights. She liked them. Ever since she’d been out with Batman, and he’d swung across the rooftops, she’d been obsessed. She went out onto the rooftop of her apartment most nights and just sat on the edge, wishing she could fly out there again. For Dick Grayson’s tenth birthday, they’d gone to a trapeze place, and Dick had taught her how to use her core to swing. It was simple. Easy.
The elevator doors opened, and Barbara froze at the sight of the elderly Mr and Mrs Yankovic from apartment 32, in their coats with their groceries. They sometimes looked after James for her when she had after-school activities. She stared at them, and they stared at her for what felt like forever. The doors started to close when Mr Yankovic lifted his cane and blocked the doors to stop them. “Are you coming in, Barbara?” he asked.
Barbara blushed a bright red and nodded, stepping inside awkwardly and punched the button to level 20, one before the roof and one after Mr and Mrs Yankovic. She bent her head forward, so her hair covered her burning features, and her stomach danced with nervous butterflies. As Mr and Mrs Yankovic got off on the ninth floor, Mrs Yankovic patted Barbara’s arm. “It’s a very nice costume, dear.”
Her features pinched. “It’s a suit,” she muttered after the doors closed. She noted that maybe she should cover her hair or something to make the disguise better and hit the rooftop exit again.
“Aim. Shoot. Pull the cable tight. Jump,” she whispered when she exited the elevator. “Easy.” The elevator was just a shortcut to the top floor, where she had to take the fire escape’s stairwell to the roof. Her footsteps echoed down the cement tunnel to the ground, and it briefly occurred to her how high up she was. It’s not hard, she added in her head, not wanting to seem crazy if anyone caught her talking to herself. Easy.
On the edge of the roof, Barbara adjusted the grappling’s strap around her wrist, tightening it as much as she could. She wasn’t afraid of the height, but she was precarious of it. That’s why she had studied the tapes so much.
I will be a hero, she thought, walking to the edge of the building. I can do this.
Scanning the city block, Barbara picked a gargoyle across the other side of the building and aimed her grappling gun. She fired, and the grapple shot across the street and missed the gargoyle altogether. It fell to the road beneath her, the rope still unwinding until it crashed into something. She surveyed for damage, but there were no cars that needed to swerve out of the way, but the hook did land on and broke the front window of a parked taxi, causing a few people to look up at her.
Oh crap, she thought, jumping away from the edge so no one could see her. She reminded herself to leave a sorry note on her way back.
She retracted the grapple. The cable zipped back into the gun quickly, the vibration coursing through her arm, and when the hoked snapped back into place, the anchor hit her fingers by accident, and she dropped the gun. “Damn it!” she cursed as the heavy weight of it swung from her wrist where it was still attached by the strap. “Stupid grapple…”
Okay, let’s try this again. Barbara aimed the grappling once again at the same gargoyle, just like she’d seen Robin do countless times. If Robin can do this, so can I. He’s not much bigger than me. It can’t be that hard.
Aim… shoot! This time, when the cable zipped across, it hooked around the gargoyle, spinning around it and grabbing on. Pull the cable tight. She pulled and felt it jam, grinning to herself as she walked out and stepped onto the edge.
The street, with all of its hustle and bustle, loomed beneath her. Barbara stared down but didn’t get a sense of dizzying vertigo. Instead, she felt calm. Deadly calm. She’d been swinging across rooftops before, with Batman of all people, when he’d taken a seven-year-old Barbara home. I can do this, she thought. Easy.
And yes, maybe she thought if she kept telling herself it was easy, it would get easier, but so far she’d had no trouble. So far, it working.
Her toes hung over the edge, and she took in a deep breath, checking once more that the cable was secure. Jump.
Barbara stepped off the edge.
She screamed, the immediate plummet sent her stomach up to her throat, and she lost her breath. Barbara didn’t swing at first. She dropped, and she looked up at the rope, panicking, but the rope then tightened, and Barbara swooped across the street, heading straight to the glass building across the road.
She was looking directly into her reflection in the fast-approaching office block when she realised she didn’t know how to stop and barely got to suck in a breath before her whole body hit the building. Pain exploded inside her so quickly she didn’t have time to register it entirely before it overwhelmed her. At the same time, the force made her lose grip on the grappling, and the strap tightened around her wrist, her whole-body weight focused around the joint.
The snap in her tiny wrist made Barbara scream childishly. Below her, she could hear shouts and gasps of panic, and she looked down to see them, then let out a second louder scream when she looked down and saw her feet dangling eighteen storeys off the ground. Barbara had no idea why she hadn’t been afraid of heights. They were horrifying and nauseating, and she was caught between crying, throwing up, and screaming some more.
No, no, no, no… Barbara looked down again and decided to scream louder because she was too overwhelmed to figure out how to cry, and vomiting did not seem like a good idea.
To make matters worse, tiny stones started to hit her head. She looked up, and the gargoyle that was holding the rope began to crumble under her weight, and her gloved hand was starting to slip through the wrist strap, the glove adding some give to it.
I’m going to die, she thought. I’m going to…
The rope gave, and she dropped down a storey, rope bouncing her and causing her arm to split unnaturally, and Barbara screamed louder, her voice drowned out by the city below. The hook had caught onto another part of the gargoyle, but the gargoyle was still threatening to fall. Not that either of those things mattered. Barbara was convinced her arm would detach from her body before the gargoyle gave way.
“Hang on!”
Barbara had been dangling wildly in a circle but saw a small colourful boy momentarily swinging through the buildings.
It was Robin, the Boy Wonder, and as she spun on the end of the cable, she caught glimpses of him grappling gracefully through the streets, spinning mid-air like an acrobat. He dislodged his grappling from one building to the next with a flick of his wrist and fluidly aimed and shot his grappling to the next building to catch him before he fell. When he got close by, he shot his hook took hold of the building’s roof above Barbara’s head. It secured in place, and Robin flipped mid-air before landing next to her, using the extra momentum to control his swing and plant his feet on either side of the window, evenly distributing the impact and ensuring the glass didn’t break. Only a tiny part of her brain was registering his tactics, the rest of it consumed with pain. But later, when she thought about it, she blushed in embarrassment because she had thought herself an expert. “I’ve got you, Miss!” Robin said, wrapping his arm around her waist.
He was small and lithe but strong, and Barbara could feel his hardened muscles as he grabbed her and carried her up, so she was no longer dangling. The lift took the pressure off her wrist, and her arm fell useless to her side. Barbara put her good arm around Robin’s neck, and he used his legs against the building wall to support her body, creating a seat for her on his lap. She gingerly managed to move her right arm with her shoulder onto her lap, pain flooding the broken limb, and she gasped and whimpered when the pain flared.
Robin looked at her and chuckled. “What are you wearing?” he asked.
Before Barbara could answer, he hoisted her in his arms and zipped up to the rooftop. Barbara had to climb over Robin to get up on the roof before he climbed up too, but by the time he was standing, she staggered, and her whole bruised body collapsed under her shaky legs. Tears welled up in her eyes without her express permission, and she shook all over, her dinner coming up her throat. “Hey, hey, hey,” Robin knelt in front of her. She leant over, and Robin barely had time to move before she threw up just next to herself. He moved behind her to pull back her hair and then drag her away from the mess, rubbing her back. “It’s okay,” he said. “You’re okay. Here, take this.” Robin took off his cape to wrap around her. It was made from a leathery material, and the inside was lined with something softer and warmer. It wasn’t fleece or anything like that, but it was gentle on her skin like his hands were as he handled her. Barbara clutched it with her good hand to get it better wrapped around her frame. “Wait...”
Robin moved his hand to her face and pushed off her mask, and Barbara tipped her head aside, more tears streaming down her cheeks. She felt so embarrassed as her body went into shock. “Barbara Gordon? What were you doing?”
Barbara shook her head, rubbing her face and feeling very stupid. “Everything hurts,” she moaned. It did. The whole side of her body had crashed into the building. There was nothing but pain running up and down her left flank, and her right wrist was the one that was broken. Robin opened his mouth to say something but stopped, tipping his head to the side. He frowned and looked Barbara up and down.
“I will be there as soon as I can. I’ve come across... an accident. I think I need to come to the cave. Maybe... We’ll see. No, I’m handling it. Over.” He lifted his head up again, no longer talking to ghosts. “Can you stand up?”
Barbara tried but collapsed quickly in a mess of limbs. Robin tried smiling at her and reached out. “I’m going to carry you,” he said. Barbara nodded and lifted her good arm like a child, and Robin hooked it around his shoulder and lifted her with hands under her knees and behind her back. Barbara let her head fall on his shoulder and fell into blackness.