Work Text:
HYPER-ENCRYPTED MESSAGE FOLLOWS
To: JLA@...
From: Oracle@...
Download follows, encrypted per Batman's instructions.
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HYPER-ENCRYPTED MESSAGE FOLLOWS
To: Redbird3@...
From: Oracle@...
Download follows. Backup will be deleted in 72 hours after this message has
been flagged as read.
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HYPER-ENCRYPTED MESSAGE FOLLOWS
To: Bruce@...
From: Oracle@...
Download follows.
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HYPER-ENCRYPTED MESSAGE FOLLOWS
To: BoyWonder@...
From:Oracle@...
Download follows.
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HYPER-ENCRYPTED MESSAGE FOLLOWS
To: Canary@...
From: Cassandra@...
Download attached.
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To JBard@...
From: BabsG999@...
Dear Jason,
By now you have heard about the operation. After talking to you, and my Dad,
and so many other people who care about me -- I finally went through with it.
It.
The operation.
It wasn't a success.
Entirely the opposite.
If I couldn't deal with you from the chair, I surely can't deal with you from a
bed I can't even lift my head from.
This is goodbye.
Barbara.
----------
Jason Bard blinked at the braille that came from his printer. "Oh, God..."
He knew what this meant. He stood, knocking his chair to the floor, reached for
his cane, and bolted for the door.
----------
"Hera, no."
The daughter of Themiscyra gasped at the words on the screen, and slammed her
palm down on the all-call button. She knew Batman would not answer if this mail
was on her screen, but the others had to know.
----------
The screen sat alone in an apartment in Bludhaven, its message flooding wan
light into a room that hung empty -- fluttering curtains flapped in the wet,
chill breeze.
----------
"Sir."
"Yes, Alfred?"
"You've got mail."
Behind the cowl, the Batman frowned darkly. Alfred had a sense of humor but was
not prone to using it inappropriately. His voice was too taut for him to have
realized his unfortunate choice of words. "Go ahead, Alfred."
"It's from Miss Gordon, sir."
"Go ahead, Alfred."
"It's the Damocles protocol, sir."
The Batmobile's tires screeched as the black vehicle ground to a halt. The
car's hydraulic jack turned it 180 degrees, and the Batman sped off in the
opposite direction.
----------
"Shit!"
Dinah Lance put a fist into the wall beside her home PC.
"Problems, Di?" the man known as Wildcat asked mildly.
"The biggest. I've gotta get ... get..." She stopped and closed her eyes. "I..."
She punched the wall again. "DAMN!"
"What, darling?"
"I don't know *where* she is!"
----------
"Mister Drake? Mister *Drake.*"
Time Drake blinked in horror at the message in the mail window of his laptop,
the voice of Professor Palmer, his teacher for this special advanced AP Physics
course, going unnoticed.
"Tim, man, he's *calling* on you." Ronnie Raymond shoved Tim gently from the row
behind.
"Huh?" Tim looked up, ashen faced.
Ray Palmer frowned at his student. Tim wasn't prone to daydreaming in class, nor
to dramatics. "Is there a problem, Mister Drake?"
"Um...yeah, Professor. The biggest." Tim didn't wait to be excused, just
slapped the laptop closed, vaulted his desk, and bolted for the door. "Demerit
me, give me a makeup test, but I gotta go!"
----------
Ted Kord and his partner Michael Carter sat in the midst of rubble. They were
out of breath, covered in dirt, faces tracked in sweat and tears.
The smell of smoke and burnt silicon The crackle of ozone sizzled through the
vast room. Broken glass and singed, melted plastic were scattered across the
floor, embedded in the walls, and covering some of Ted's clothing and Michael's
Booster Gold uniform.
A trickle of blood rolled down Ted's cheek, unheeded. "This is it, then. The
end. It's over." He bent and stroked his fingers across the blackened casing of
one of the many CPUs that now lay broken and destroyed around him. "I failed."
"You didn't fail, Ted," Michael replied softly, placing a hand on his friend's
shoulder. "This wasn't your decision to make."
"I couldn't stop her. I *helped* her," Ted's voice broke in a sob. "What kind
of a person helps a friend *do* this?"
"She would have done it with your help or without it, Ted, you know that."
Michael shook his head and clasped Ted's shoulder a bit tighter. "This way she
is safe."
"Safe?" Ted's unshaven face was a rictus of anguish. "From what? She can't
*feel* anything, she can't *do* anything -- she can only even type and send
email if she holds a tap-rod in her mouth!"
"Safe," Michael insisted, "From the hordes of people you know are going to try
to stop her. From the guilt trips and the promises and the grief people are
going to lay on her."
"You make it sound like it's a *bad* thing, that none of them are going to want
to stand by idly and let her do this!" Ted pointed an accusing finger. "What
kind of a guy *are* you, Booster? I know you're mercenary and made a pretty
penny off this particular contract, but --"
"But nothing," Carter snapped, cutting off his best friend. "She's *heard* the
damn promises already. That's what got her where she is now. They told her she
had a chance of walking again. And she reached for it, but the cards were
against her. You want her to play the hand she's been dealt?"
Ted's lower lip quivered. "We're trying to make it better. Fix it. Help her."
"The only way you could help her would be to go back in time, make sure none of
this ever happened." The transceivers both men wore crackled faintly as a weak
voice came over the connection. "And you know...I won't permit that. Wouldn't
do it when I had the chance. Too much at stake to do it just for my sake,
boys."
"But Babs..." Ted whispered into his throat mike.
"But what? But nothing. Oracle's finished. Even before, I needed sleep, food.
Now? Sleep is the only thing I *can* do without assistance from *machines*,
Ted. I typed 240 words a minute. Now? I can't even lift my little finger! What
good am I to the world..to anyone...like *this*?"
"The same as you always were to me, Babs."
Ted and Michael turned to see Nightwing coming in from the rear bedroom. He
looked around, then glowered at Ted and Michael. "Where is she? I heard you
talking to her. Where *is* she?"
"Somewhere safe."
"Don't give me 'somewhere safe,' Gold," Nightwing snapped, closing the distance
between them in a single leap. "Where...is...Oracle?"
Booster didn't even move a hand to defend himself. He simply lifted the
transciever off his ear and handed it over without a word -- or meeting
Nightwing's eyes.
"Babs?" Nightwing didn't bother with security. There was none. Two men besides
him now stood in front of the Oracle's sanctuary -- and the sanctuary itself was
nothing anymore. His nose told him they'd followed Barbara's Damocles protocols
-- they'd spiked her harddrives, run an electromagnetic pulse through the room,
and let Booster's lasers strafe the rest. Barbara had chosen to retire Oracle
permanently. And Dick knew better than anyone, being Oracle had been the only
thing that got her out of bed most days. Without this -- all she had left was
her quadriplegic body, and he knew better than anyone how she felt about *that*.
"Oh, Babs, please. You can't be thinking seriously of doing this..."
"Hey, former Boy Wonder," her voice came back to him, wistful, sweet, and
broken. "Doing? It's already begun. My data's gone, my system's crashed and
trashed." ~You should know,~ she thought, ~You and the Titans got a sizeable
chunk of the data.~
Tears welled in her green eyes and rolled down her cheeks. She could not wipe
them away. Though her hands lay unfettered at her sides, she could not lift
them. "Delphi has fallen."
"You know damn well we could put it all back. We could restore everything--"
Dick's voice was vergin on shrill; unusual for the normally composed Nightwing.
"Everything but me," Babs whispered thickly through a sob. "Not all the king's
horses. Not all the king's men. The best they could do made me worse." Barbara
couldn't quite keep the bitterness out of her voice. "They warned me of the
possible consequences. I finally listened to everyone tell me to take the risk
-- to hope. And this is what hope got me!"
Behind Nightwing, Robin had come in from the window. Batman loomed in the
doorway, staring down at a pale and guilty Ted. "What happened here?" the
Detective demanded, already certain he knew the answer.
Ted sighed, and pulled a small device from his pocket. He thumbed the red
switch on it; it turned green and a shimmering hologram of Barbara Gordon
appeared. She was, as could only be expected, in an inversion table, strapped
in. She was dressed from head to toe, rather than in a hospital gown.
~Ever prideful,~ Batman thought, as the image shimmered into focus. ~Unwilling
to show weakness even like this.~ He swallowed a cold lump in his throat, and
bit back hard on the bile of pride that tried to surge up inside him. "Listen
to me," he said to the image before him, knowing it was a two-way connection.
"I have been where you are now. I recovered. I came back, and took my city
back. There *is* still hope."
The laughter that came out of the mini-projector's speaker was bitter and
fractured. "Hope? Like you'd *want* me back on the streets if I could recover
from this? And let's not forget, O Great Dark Knight -- that *you* only broke
your back.
"I'm a quadriplegic! I feel *nothing* from my neck down! NOTHING!"
The room was silent. Batman flinched as though Barbara Gordon had slapped his
face with a steel-barbed gauntlet. "I know," he said softly, and there was a
world of apology and grief in those two words.
"So you're just going to give up?" Robin demanded, voice breaking. "You didn't
let me give up when Batman kicked us all out of Gotham. You didn't give up when
Hell came to earth. You didn't give up when the heroes were age-changed. How
can you give up now?" The normally mature and composed teen was near tears, and
dragged his hand savagely across his masked eyes.
"I don't expect any of you to understand me," Barbara said. "I'm not even
there because I knew you all would try this. And for what it's worth -- thank
you. It's a good last thought to carry with me that you all cared for me enough
to try to stop me."
"No one but you guys will miss me, and asking me to face another day like this
is asking too much," Barbara murmured, eyes closing. "It's been two years since
I took the operation. Two years of lying in a bed, more helpless than a newborn,
having to depend on nurses and machines for things I could have at least done
myself before. Cursing myself for being weak enough to not settle for the life I
had. Hating myself for wanting more, and ending up with nothing!"
"Two years," a new voice added, "Of everyone we had resources to contact
working to reverse the process. To return you to the wheelchair if not to
standing on your own feet." The solemn voice of Superman seemed to take up all
the air in Barbara's Gotham Heights apartment. Not even the taut breathing of
Batman, Robin, Nightwing, Kord and Carter was audible by comparison. "Cadmus--"
he began, but Barbara cut him off.
"Cadmus has taken hits from its own clone technology how many times? Mickey
Cannon still wears a leg brace. If they could've cloned him a better body and
put him in it, do you think he'd have just turned his head and walked away?
Their clone of Superboy was *evil*, for God's sake! Cadmus can't do me any more
good than anyone else."
Superman sighed. "I understand." He kept his silence after that.
Nightwing, who'd been silently listening to Barbara's passionate refutation of
everything these people -- some of the most powerful on Earth -- were saying,
finally moved. "Then..." his voice quavered, but he held his head up. "If we
can't dissuade you, you shouldn't be alone. Let me be with you."
Barbara's eyes widened from behind her glasses. "N-N-No..."
"Damn it, Babs, I *love* you!" He tore his mask from his face, and let her see
the pain in his blue eyes. "You've kept me at a distance since you were shot. I
told you it didn't matter then. It didn't. It doesn't matter now. I *love* you.
And if you're so willing to do this, at least I got to tell you. And you can't
*stop* me from being at your side." That said, he grabbed Kord by his collar.
"I know you have a way to get wherever she had you stash her. Send me. Now."
Ted considered protesting for a heartbeat, but then pulled a wristlet from his
jacket pocket and clasped it on Nightwing's wrist. ~If anyone can talk her out
of this, you can. Godspeed, kid.~
Nightwing nodded his silent thanks, slapped the green button, and winked out of
the room, appearing almost simultaneously in the holographic display of
Barbara's room. "Sorry," he said to those who watched. The holograph wavered
and dissipated.
----------
Dick knelt beneath the bed, staring wordlessly up at Barbara until she couldn't
stand to look at him any longer. She used the tap-rod to tap the button that
tilted her bed backward until she stared at the ceiling.
"You can't avoid me forever, Babs." Dick sprang to his feet and looked down at
her from the top of the bureau beside her bed.
"I don't have to avoid you forever, Dick. You can't change my mind. And I can
wait you out."
"You don't have to," Dick's voice had dropped to a whisper. "I told you I love
you. And if this is the only way you can feel like you've succeeded ... the only
way your pain can end -- I'll ... I'll help."
Barbara hadn't been expecting that. She'd had a contingency plan for everything
-- including Ted being soft-hearted enough to let one of her extended family
teleport to her saferoom. She'd expected impassioned pleas and persuasive
rhetoric from Batman -- and one of the Justice League.
She'd even expected the tears and pain she saw on the faces of her friends.
But she had not been able to predict that Dick Grayson would offer to be the
hand of her demise out of love.
"You ... you mean that, don't you?"
Dick nodded, wordlessly. "The nights will be darker and colder without you.
I'll never forget you. But if you really, really want to go -- I'm going to stay
with you until the end."
"I can't ask that of you."
"Can you do it by yourself?" Dick's smile was tormented and ironic.
"Already have," Barbara whispered.
"What?"
"Last thing before Booster and Ted destroyed my home... they drained the battery
backups here, then uplinked me to the network. I sent the cutoff notice to the
electric company here, and a denial of service to the backup generator. Power
should be going off within the next fifteen minutes by my estimation."
Dick's gasp sent a lance of pain through Barbara's heart. "But...I'm glad you
came anyway, twentysomething wonder."
Dick nodded.
"You think me terribly selfish for this, don't you?" Barbara avoided his eyes.
"No. I think you think it's your only way out. It hurts me to not be able to
fix it for you, same as it hurts Batman. Robin. Everyone else back at your
place. Everyone who got one of your Damocles emails. But in the end, they will
get over their grief. And your pain ... your sorrow...will be over, and nothing
worse can happen to you."
"That's awfully philosophical, Dick."
"Rationalization, I'm sure," Dick answered honestly. "I'll probably bawl like a
baby and take it out on Bludhaven's worst when the shock wears off."
"Ever the jokester, eh?"
"When I made you laugh was the closest I ever got to hearing you say you love
me."
"Dick?"
"Yeah?"
"I do love you. I always have. I'm sorry I wasn't able to be what you
deserved."
"You've always been what I deserved, Barbara."
The lights flickered, then went out.
Dick's hand flew to hold Barbara's; though she could not feel it, Babs could see
it, and know in the fading sunlight that she was not alone.
Barbara didn't say another word after the electricity failed. The teleporter on
Dick's wrist had nowhere near enough power to be siphoned and funneled into her
life-support machinery.
Alone with the woman he loved, Dick Grayson listened to Barbara Gordon's
breathing become labored...slow...grow shallow...
...and finally stop.
Dick gently lifted the glasses from her face, and gently pressed her eyelids
closed. "...And flights of angels, Babs. And flights of angels."
----------
The funeral was three days later.
Police Commissioner James Gordon headed the solemn procession. The pallbearers
of the casket were Batman and Superman, Nightwing and Black Canary, Ted Kord
and the newly re-sighted Jason Bard.
The procession was small, but attended to by every person who had ever dealt
with Barbara as herself or as Oracle. Alfred Pennyworth stood beside a solemn
Arsenal and daughter Lian. Wildcat and the Justice Society held silent vigil
alongside the Justice League.
And at the podium, James Gordon stepped up.
"I thank you all for coming. I will make this short and sweet because I know
that's how she would have wanted it. My daughter believed that the world could
get along without Oracle...And perhaps the world can.
"But that all of you -- some of the most powerful people in the world --
considered her of sufficient importance to bid her farewell here speaks better
of my beloved Barbara than any written eulogy. Thank you for being her friends,
for loving her as I loved her. And for being here to say goodbye.
"There will never be another Oracle. She was the voice of wisdom to many of us,
and she will be missed.
"She would probably have said you should all get out there and do some good. I
say the world is poorer without her. Thank you.
Gordon laid a simple white rose on his daughter's coffin, then walked solemnly
out toward the processionary, where his daughter would be laid to rest beside
his wife.