Work Text:
Jazz stared up at the building before her. This was where Barbara lived. She took a breath and forced herself to walk forward. Alfred had dropped her off a good ten minutes beforehand and she had been frozen on the sidewalk since. She could do this, she could. She wanted to do this.
She just wished it wasn't all so intimidating.
With another quiet huff to herself she paused in front of Barbara's door and knocked before she could start thinking too much about it again. There was silence for a couple of minutes where Jazz's thoughts began to spiral and then the door opened. Barbara looked up at Jazz and offered her a bright smile.
"Welcome to my home," she rolled back a bit to allow Jazz the room to walk in, "Please come in."
Jazz offered her a nervous smile before stepping into the entryway, looking around, "Thank you for having me. Your home is lovely."
Barbara closed the door behind her and started down a hall, gesturing for her to follow, "Thanks. And I'm happy to have you. I would really like to get to know you. I know we missed out on sharing a childhood, but that doesn't mean that we have to miss out on knowing each other as adults."
"I agree," Jazz said, relaxing a bit as she followed Barbara into her guest room, "Besides, it will be interesting to see how much is nature vs nurture when it comes to likes and dislikes and just overall behavior."
Barbara chuckled as Jazz set her bag at the foot of the bed, "Scholarly type, huh?"
"I was accepted to three Ivy League schools," Jazz admitted, turning back toward Barbara.
"That's amazing," Barbara said with a smile, "I'm attending Gotham U while I work at the library."
"That's probably where I'll end up if I decide to go back to school," Jazz admitted, "After everything that's happened, I'm not ready to leave Danny on his own…"
"I understand," Barbara murmured, face softening, "He seems like a good kid."
"He is," Jazz said with a proud smile, "He was going to graduate with honors after almost failing his freshmen year. I don't know that it'll happen anymore, though."
"Yeah," Barbara said with a frown, "But he can still get his GED if he's not going to transfer to a local high school."
Jazz nodded in agreement, "I'm sure that I'll have to talk to him about it in the next few days, but with everything so up in the air…"
Jazz cleared her throat and offered Barbara a smile, "But enough of that. I'm not here to talk about Danny."
Barbara shook her head with a small smile, "He's a big part of your life and you both just had a huge trauma happen. I'd be more worried if you weren't talking about him."
"And here I thought that I got into psychology because of how we grew up," Jazz said with a smile of her own.
"It's kind of a thing here in Gotham. With all the super villains we have running around, an alarming amount of them with PhD's. Is psychology what you plan to major in?"
"If you had asked me that two years ago, I would have said yes," Jazz said as she fell into step with Barbara and headed back down the hall toward the living room, "But now I'm not so sure."
"Why's that?"
Jazz bit her lip and took a seat on the couch, "When I was in high school, I did a lot of studying about psychology and how it effects people. I used to lecture my parents on what they were doing to Danny and how they were causing him harm through neglect and obsession. Then I'd try to be Danny's therapist, which he hated by the way and would constantly tell me to leave him alone…"
Jazz trailed off with a sad smile before shaking her head a little and looking back at Barbara, "I'm sure there's plenty about it that I still don't know and I probably compounded a lot of Danny's issues by going about things the way I did, but I just don't think that I'd actually make a good therapist or even a councilor knowing what I know about myself now."
Barbara gave a quiet hum, "That makes sense. What do you think you'd be good at, then?"
Jazz blinked in surprise, "Oh. I uh, don't know."
"Have you ever had a job?"
Jazz shook her head, "I was… too busy taking care of Danny and the house most of the time."
Barbara gave her a sympathetic look, "Sounds like a good time for you to explore who Jazz is outside of being Danny's sister."
"That's a little scary," Jazz admitted, "But I guess if Bruce is going to be taking care of Danny that it opens up my schedule a lot."
"Danny will never want for anything in that house," Barbara reassured her, "Bruce isn't always the best with words, but he does love his kids and does right by them as much as he can."
"That's good to hear," Jazz said, relaxing a little, "But here we are blathering on about me when I'm here to get to know you."
Barbara chuckled a bit, "There's not a whole lot to know. I already told you I'm a Gotham U student and a librarian. You already met my dad."
Jazz bit her lip, "Can I ask…?"
Barbara tilted her head a bit and Jazz gestured toward the wheelchair. Barbara nodded a bit, taking a breath, "Do you know who Joker is?"
"Uh, kind of?" Jazz shrugged a little, "I'm not super familiar with what I assume is Gotham's rogues but the name is familiar."
Barbara nodded again, "He's one of the worst of them. He came to my house and while I was fighting him off, I got shot and it paralyzed me."
"That's horrible," Jazz whispered, "I'm so sorry."
Barbara gave a small shrug, "It was a couple of years ago. I'm just glad to still be alive."
Jazz nodded a bit, "Yeah, I can imagine."
Barbara tilted her head a bit, eyeing Jazz, "I'm guessing your teens weren't nearly as harrowing?"
"Uh," Jazz said, and then shrugged, "There were a lot of ghost attacks in the town, but also at our school. We were mostly out of danger, but there were some close calls."
"What are the ghosts like?"
"Oh, they're… rambunctious."
"Interesting choice of word."
"…it's hard to explain?" Jazz frowned a little, "Like the box ghost. Perfectly harmless. Wants very much to be a bad guy, but his gimmick is, well, boxes."
Barbara laughed a little, "I know the type, we have a couple of those in Gotham."
"Lunch lady? Former lunch lady who got upset that they changed the lunch menu. Used food to attack us. But then you have Skulker."
"Well he sounds much worse than Lunch Lady or Box Ghost," Barbara said, looking amused.
"He hunts ghosts, collects them like they're for a zoo. Our hero, Phantom, he's a ghost and he's powerful so Skulker is always trying to hunt him so he can 'hang his pelt' on his wall."
"That… is quite the visual."
"Yeah," Jazz agreed, "So it varies. A lot."
"Speaking of Phantom…" Jazz raised an eyebrow in silent question, "Dick was telling me that the Justice League was told Phantom disappeared the same time you guys did. They're worried that the Fentons did something."
"They did," Jazz admitted after a moment of hesitation, "But he's safe now."
"That's a relief, we were worried that they had him somewhere."
"No," Jazz shook her head, "They won't be able to hurt him or anyone else anymore."
"I'll let Dick know. He can tell Batman."
Jazz nodded a bit, biting her lip, "I'm getting hungry…"
"Me too," Barbara admitted, "Let's order in. Do you like pizza?"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Barbara had to admit, after a few days of living with Jazz, she was jealous of Danny. Danny had gotten to know Jazz his entire life and Barbara was just barely scratching the surface still. But Jazz was bright and kind and funny when she wanted to be while also being a force to be reckoned with.
Barbara supposed the same could be said about herself, but Barbara had assumed at least part of that had come from growing up in Gotham. They also had the same taste in a lot of foods, which had made meals very easy.
Jazz had gone to her room about 45 minutes beforehand and Barbara was getting ready to sneak off to the Clocktower to run comms for the Bats. Tim had been doing it the last few nights for her, but she really needed to get back to her life. They weren't sure how long Jazz was going to stay and Oracle couldn't be offline for the same amount of time that Jazz was staying with Barbara.
Though, it was likely that both Danny and Jazz were going to need to be let in on the secret.
Sneaking around just wasn't very practical long term. No matter how good they all might have been at it. Barbara headed out of the house quietly, hoping that Jazz was already asleep and wouldn't notice that Barbara wasn't in her own room. When she arrived at the Clocktower, she relaxed and got to work.
She hadn't been on the comms very long before Tim's voice came through, full of confusion, "Who is that?"
"Show me," Barbara replied, switching her monitor to the cam on Tim's mask. She frowned as she noticed the somehow both bright and dark shape that seemed to be floating through the air a couple of roofs away from where Tim was. "Can you get closer?"
Tim gave a quiet hum and moved. When Tim landed on the roof below the floating figure, it turned toward him and Barbara was able to grab a screen capture. She tilted her head a bit. Clearly young, either in their teens or early 20's. White hair, dark suit, white boots and gloves with a white decal on his chest. The picture was too blurry to make out many details but Barbara had a feeling…
She pulled up a search for Phantom. In the last couple of days, she'd been able to break through the GIW firewall finally (Tim had sent her a text about it with like 8 exclamation points). With access to Amity Park, she had finally been able to access things like their news stories. And something that was almost constantly reported on was Phantom.
It wasn't hard to find a picture of him, white hair, black suit, white gloves and boots…
"I think it's Phantom," Barbara replied and Bruce abruptly cut in.
"Where?"
"Edge of the city," Tim reported back, "He took off when he saw me, though."
"Which direction?"
"Strangely? Toward the manor."
Barbara paused, looking back at Tim's footage and, sure enough, Phantom had flown away from the city and out toward the suburbs where the manor was. There were a lot of places that he could be going in that direction that weren't the manor but…
"Jazz implied that they saved him from the Fentons too when they saved Danny."
Danny, who was also in his late teens.
"But he wasn't with them when they came to us," Bruce continued and Barbara got a sinking feeling.
"Unless he was invisible or something," Tim offered.
"Or they could have left him at the hotel."
Or…
"…he was there all along."
"Oracle?" Bruce asked and she could hear the frown in his voice.
"You have the videos from the Fentons' lab, right? Did you send it over to me?"
"You should have it," Tim agreed.
Barbara pulled up the footage with slightly shaking hands. There was no way. It wasn't possible. It didn't even make sense.
She scrolled through the videos, not bothering to turn on the sound or look too closely at what was happening in them. It was definitely Phantom that they had. The white hair was all that Barbara stayed focused on until a splash of red caught her attention.
Jazz.
Jazz broke Phantom free, stitched him back together, got him to his feet and suddenly there was a flash of light and it wasn't Phantom standing there anymore, it was Danny.
"…B?"
"What did you find?"
"Phantom and Danny. They're the same person."