Chapter Text
Barbara glared at the wheelchair with disdain.
It was top of the line - a rigid, carbon-fiber frame and the best cushion Bruce Wayne's money could buy. The tires were all terrain, and the handrims were cutting-edge, designed to reduce strain on her hands and wrists. She despised it on principle.
Rehab had been, so far, the most humiliating experience of her entire life. Barbara had thought the worst moment of her life was staring down the barrel of the Joker's gun, but it was nothing next to the first week in the hospital after waking up. She was Batgirl, protegy of the most notorious vigilante on the planet, and she couldn't manage to sit up in bed by herself. She couldn't control her own bowels. Seven different nurses had checked her urinary catheter. They rolled her around like a ragdoll to change her sheets.
The helplessness wasn't even the worst part. No matter how much she hated having to rely on other people for her most basic needs - her father was busy enough without having to sit at her bedside all day and feed her pudding - it paled in comparison to the pity. She had already yelled at Dick until she was hoarse, and threw things at Jason and Bruce until they left her alone, but the texts and calls hadn't stopped. The entire hero community knew Batgirl had been hurt by the Joker - a career ending injury. Like a football player tearing their ACL during the playoffs. She knew their pity was mixed with a bit of relief it hadn't been them.
She was transferred from the hospital to the rehab facility two weeks ago. She still couldn't get out of bed by herself. Her routine consisted of hours of physical and occupational therapy every day, with a rotating cast of therapists and nurses whose faces blurred together easily. They all insisted she could regain her independence, like they shared a script.
Bullshit. They didn't understand. None of them ever could. She had flown across rooftops and backflipped away from bullets. She had faced down Rogues that sent the people of Gotham running in terror. That was all gone. The Joker was still on the run, and she was useless. She would be useless for the rest of her life. It didn't matter if she could pop a wheelie in her chair or get into the shower by herself. Her life was over. Batgirl was dead.
Tim frowned as he brushed crumbs off his keyboard. He really needed to limit his snack consumption at his desk. At this point, cheeto dust was beginning to stain the keys. Still, he couldn't bring himself to halt his search for the Joker long enough to eat in the kitchen. Chips would have to do.
The Joker had gone to ground after his face-off with Batgirl nearly a month ago, and the trail had gone cold almost immediately. Tim was an expert in tracking Rogues - virtually, of course, his days of trailing behind them on rooftops were long gone - but the Joker hadn't been seen at any of his usual haunts, and the money trail Tim was accustomed to tracking was nowhere to be found.
That might have something to do with the Commissioner's absence from the GCPD since his daughter's injury. Tim could only hack virtual records, and it was Commissioner Gordon's insistence on digitization that gave Tim access to files that would otherwise be on paper, at least in poorer precincts. When the Commissioner wasn't breathing down their necks, Tim noticed officers tended to slack on typing up their written reports.
Tim frowned as he pictured the commissioner sitting at his daughter's bedside in the hospital. He wondered if he was the overbearing sort of parent - pushing food at her and hounding nurses for details - or if he would be more like Tim's parents when he got hurt, uncomfortable and distant.
He hated thinking of the hospital. Not because his own memories of it were particularly traumatizing, but because he didn't like to remember the time before. When he flew across rooftops with a camera chasing after Gotham's favorite Bats. He remembered the thrill of getting the perfect shot, the thrumming in his veins as he pushed to keep up with Batman and Robin, tracking Rogues and villains across huge swaths of Gotham. On busy nights, Tim could travel miles across the rooftops.
These days, Tim was lucky if he got to leave the house. It had been three years since his fateful fall off of one of Gotham's many rickety fire escapes, shattering his spine. In the chaos of that night - Killer Croc facing off Batman, Batgirl and Robin fighting together to take him down- no one had heard the snap of the rusted metal coming loose, tossing Tim thirty feet to the alley below. He was lucky to be alive.
At least, that's what the doctors told him after he had woken up from surgery. Someone had stumbled upon his broken body during their morning commute hours later, horrified to find a ten year old unconscious with legs bent like broken matchsticks. It was fortuitous that Killer Croc had surfaced in Burnside and not Park Row. If he had taken that fall in Crime Alley, chances are a passer-by would have just searched his pockets before leaving him to die.
He frowned, wondering how Barbara was handling her own injury. Reports on how bad it was were beyond even Tim's hacking ability, which had improved significantly in the years he'd been stuck at home, glued to his laptop.
He had been conflicted about hacking the hospital to find her medical records, and had wrestled with himself for hours between maintaining her privacy and finding out if one of his heroes was still alive. In the end, it hadn't mattered either way. The encryption on her patient file was ironclad. All he had found was a patient transfer record from Gotham General to the top rehab facility in the state, located in one of Bristol's richest areas.
Tim sighed, and mentally threw in the towel for today on his search for the Joker. He had been trying to find any digital trace of the man for nearly fourteen straight hours, and his vision was beginning to blur. He pulled the armrest of his power chair back down to his side and switched it on - leaving it powered on when he was sat at his desk drained its battery - and headed to the kitchen. A wiser man might have headed to bed, but Tim wanted coffee, and he knew he would be mentally functional for at least twelve more hours.
After Tim was paralyzed, his parents had come home for two whole months. They had helped him move into a bedroom on the bottom floor of Drake Manor, paid for modifications to the precious vintage architecture to allow for a roll-in bathroom and entry ramp, and sat by his side with rare words of encouragement through rehab.
When it became clear that Tim's injury was not the sort that would get better, and that he would need care for the rest of his life, they had soured quickly. The caring personas faded. As soon as he was released from rehab, they handed him off to a home nurse and left for a dig site in Vietnam.
He waited impatiently for the coffee machine to finish dispensing into a travel mug. It was nearly four AM, and his nurse would be here at six. Mateo was kind, if a bit of an idiot. He would help Tim shower and use the bathroom, check his skin for sores and help him dress. He was only employed to work four hours a day, and seemed particularly unaware of Tim's independence for the remaining twenty hours.
He was under the impression that Mrs. Mac, their housekeeper, was his night nurse. Tim had no desire to correct his misconception. Mrs. Mac stopped by every few days and dropped off food, yapped his ears off for a few hours, but not once had she helped with his medical care. It wasn't her job. Tim was more independent than his parents or his nurses gave him credit for, and despite how much his neurosurgeon had droned on about how a child cannot manage their own care with a thoracic spinal cord injury and how he would need around-the-clock care for years, if not decades, Tim had managed just fine on his own with Mateo stopping by once a day.
He could do his own skin checks with a mirror. He could change his own clothes with the tools he made out of coat hangers and wire. He could manage his own bowel program and change his own catheter. At this point, Tim thought, they might as well give him his nursing degree.
It would be best if he was in bed, faking sleep, when Mateo got there, he thought. The man had his own conceptions about Tim's ability to transfer in and out of bed, and would probably panic-lecture Tim for transferring by himself. He put his to-go coffee in his cup holder and grabbed another bag of chips, heading back to his room. He had at least an hour more of CCTV footage to comb through, searching not only for any trace of the Joker but also adding to his log of Batman's encounters with the people of Gotham. His data analysis pipeline indicated that, since Batgirl's injury, unnecessary escalations and injuries to criminals were up 16%. He sipped his coffee - ouch, too hot - and hoped Robin could calm him down as more time passed.
Hopefully Batgirl gets out of rehab soon, he thought. When she patrolled with Batman, he was always at his calmest. Most of the injuries Gotham's vigilantes had gotten over the years had been relatively minor - broken limbs, bullet wounds - but nothing too permanent. Even a bullet to the abdomen, if rumors of Batgirl's injuries were to be believed, could heal fully with few long-term consequences with the assistance of surgery and physical therapy. Tim was sure Batgirl would be back on the streets within a few months.
He reminisced about Batgirl's antics over the years, those he had caught both with his own camera and with the surveillance footage around the city. She was a force to be reckoned with, tempering Batman, foiling assassinations, and handling her own villains with impeccable grace. I hope she gets better, Tim thought. Without Batgirl, Gotham might be doomed.