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Barbara really, truly hates being sick.
There was a time when it wasn’t so bad — a long time ago, where she would stay home from school and her father would set her up in front of the TV with a mountain of blankets, and she’d fall asleep to some daytime cartoon on TV that would work itself into her dreams. She’d wake up with a hot bowl of cream of wheat on the nightstand, her favorite books, and a sticky note with her father’s handwriting: Rest and recuperate, brave girl! Underneath his words, there would be a goofy-looking smiley face where he’d add a nose — he always added noses to his smiley faces — and Babs would smile back and really, it wouldn’t be so bad, being sick.
But now James Gordon is gone — something within Babs still withers like a leaf in fall whenever she hears the words heart condition — and being sick doesn’t come with the comfort of being taken care of anymore.
Instead, it just sucks now.
She’s currently laid out on the sofa in her depressingly dark apartment. The sun has almost disappeared for the evening but she doesn’t have the mental energy to even consider turning on the lights. First aid and coffee mugs are haphazardly spread across the coffee table. Half buried in her crumpled-up tissues and with her throat burning like a grease fire, Babs shakily pulls the thermometer out of her mouth and squints at the LED display.
A three-digit number swims in her eyesight. One… zero… something.
Ever one for sensibility, Babs calmly reasons that she must have the plague.
It’s a good thing that Oracle’s not needed tonight. Batman’s off-world with Nightwing, Batwoman is on a much needed vacation with her wife, and the younger vigilantes — Robin and Spoiler — are tucked safe in bed in their respective homes for the night. Which means Babs is free to 1.) push her sweat-soaked body up to reach for her glasses, 2.) down a fever reducer pill with a few sips of her no-longer-hot tea, and 3.) wait patiently for her exit from Flu Hell.
Babs slumps back into the sofa cushions, her heart racing from the exertion.
This will go away soon. I should be better by tomorrow night, Babs reassures herself as her head pulses, determined not to let her sleep. Oracle will be back online when the Bats need her. She squints at the cloud-covered winter sun dipping beneath the Gotham horizon through the living room window and another thought comes to her, guiltily. And if I’m not okay by then, I’ll just have to take a night off… or something.
(Even if she hasn’t needed to ask Batman for anything in ages, and she’s not sure she’d be able to keep the awkwardness out of her voice.)
Babs closes her eyes.
And then deafening static rips through her head.
Good god, what the actual fu —
“Let’s not do anything stupid,” a distinctly familiar voice says directly into Babs’s ears, causing her to jolt to attention, eyes snapping open in the dark living room. “Well… anything else.”
Babs’s fever-melted brain swirls about a dozen times before she recalls that she never took her glasses off. Her seemingly ordinary rectangular-framed turquoise glasses, which have her comms built in and are required to lock onto her DNA signature to be operational.
“Aw, you should know me well enough by now, R,” someone else wheezes in response on the line. “I’m made of stupid.”
Babs stares at the ceiling in disbelief, mentally logging the information. Currently, there is one (1) Timothy Drake and one (1) Stephanie Brown, awake. Out on patrol. Without Batman.
Or heck, Oracle.
“You’re too upset to be making a logical decision right now,” Babs hears Robin say.
“First of all, who the hell says I’m upset? I’m peachy,” Spoiler snaps, the wind billowing around her voice. “I’m actually glad he broke out! We can have a nice and happy family reunion, you know, without him knowing who I am, obviously, before I tip the cops and he’s shipped back to — ugh! Ow…”
Babs hears Robin yelp, “Did I just see you punch a chimney?”
“It always looks cool in the movies!”
“What kind of movies are you watching?”
With Robin and Spoiler’s voices in the background, Babs pushes her body up and checks the news on her phone. Her eyes, watery from fever, immediately catch on what Steph must be so inflamed about — and her stomach drops, reading about an Arkham breakout. CLUEMASTER ON THE RUN, GCPD IN PURSUIT.
Spoiler continues. “Anyway, secondly, I’m making a very logical decision, thank you muchly. It’s simple. When baddies escape from prison, we have to take them back, right?”
“B won’t like it.”
“What Batman doesn’t know won’t kill him. Besides, you’re with me.”
“I had to chase you out here. You’re still like, three blocks away from me!”
Babs bites her lip in sympathy for the younger girl. Steph shouldn’t be out tonight, and she also shouldn’t feel like she has to be out tonight. To be fair, Babs doesn’t know what it’s like, exactly — to have a parent who’s alive and supposed to be there for their kid but instead chooses something bad, every time — but no kid should have to put their parent away, either.
“Spoiler, please just… wait. At least until Oracle’s back online,” Robin says. “Then you can gallivant through Gotham on your own all night —”
Babs taps the side of her glasses to unmute herself.
“I agree with Robin on this one.”
“Oh, hi, O,” Robin says cheerfully. “I was hoping you’d hop in if you were free.”
“O?? ROBIN YOU LEFT THIS COMM LINE OPEN TO HER?” Spoiler hollers.
“I mean, you said not to contact Batman or Agent A, and she’s not Batman or Agent A, so — ”
“YOU BUTT!”
“Oracle, please talk some sense into her — ”
“No, don’t tell O to talk about my business — ”
“It’s all of our business when you put on the cape — ”
“— oh, don’t give me that, you don’t care about the cape, you care about what Batman thinks, because you’re obsessed with being Robin — ”
“— you acting like I haven’t broken rules before? Hi, have you met me? Or my uncle currently who doesn’t exist — ”
“ENOUGH.” Babs has no idea what Tim is talking about regarding his uncle, but she files that piece of information away for later. “Spoiler, I sorry Cluemaster broke out. But you’re not allowed to be out without Batman or Nightwing or Batwoman. Same goes for Robin. It’s non-negotiable.”
Spoiler lets out a tired whine.
“It’s not fair.”
“B’s rules. I just enforce them.”
Steph’s voice is thick. “No, it’s not… I mean, everything. None of it’s fair! He — Dad — he broke out, and I don’t want to see him, okay? It’s like… the birthday money he tried to give me last year all came from the wallets of people he killed. I was so mad that after he was put away, I didn’t visit or answer any of his letters, and now that he’s out, I… I just don’t want to see him. I don’t want him to sneak into my house and ask me why I didn’t write back — I just — please, I’d rather I just take care of him now. As Spoiler, not as his — his daughter — ”
Babs so desperately wants to be there, to wrap her arms around the younger, hurting child, and keep her safe. But she’s currently sofa-ridden and sick, so she gently says instead, “Consider it done, Spoiler. He’ll be dealt with. You won’t have to see him if you don’t want to. I’ll keep you safe. I promise.”
A wet sniff comes from the other line. “You can’t promise that.”
“I just did, didn’t I?”
Babs only hears the whooshing wind instead of Spoiler. She waits. But then —
“No, I agree with the little birdie, O. You can’t promise that.”
The voice that answers through Spoiler’s comms is not Steph. Babs’s entire body freezes like it’s been shot to the spine — and she has been shot to the spine before to deem it an appropriate comparison.
She knows that voice.
The thing is, Jason Todd never used to sound so mean before he died.
“Spoiler? Robin? Come in,” Babs says, her eyes widening in horror as there’s a gleeful chuckle in the background, over a constant hum of fuzzy feedback. She taps the side of her glasses again, this time to pull up the comm link status in her lens, even though she already knows that a noise like that means a broken comm.
Babs frantically scrolls down on the information spectrum, swiping through views on her glasses until she finds the vital scans.
“They’re alive, O,” mocks the deep voice on the other end, through Spoiler’s comms. “It was scarily easy to take them out. Isn’t it nice, what some benzodiazepine will do?”
Babs hasn’t spoken to Jason Todd since he came back from the dead. And when they found out he was Red Hood — well, it’s hard to have a reunion with your younger sibling when he’s actively trying to kill your other younger siblings. And right now — she doesn’t know if she wants to cry or cuss him out. Hug or strangle him through the comms.
“Don’t you touch them, Hood,” Babs says, her voice cracking. “I swear, if you touch a single strand of hair on either of them — ”
“Oops, touched a few strands,” comes Hood’s dry response. “Maybe I’ll cut some — take a lock, just for a keepsake. I mean, my replacement and the spare that the old man keeps around — I’m pretty lucky to have gotten two birds with one stone, don’t you think?”
Babs swallows. “Let them go, Hood, or — ”
“Oh, save the threats,” Hood interrupts, sounding bored. “Honestly, I thought I’d be speaking to Batman. But instead, I get to listen to the infamous Oracle. But since I have you on the line, explain this to me. Was it because the old man didn’t already have enough tragedy in his life?”
“What?”
“I mean, why else would he need a Greek prophecy?”
Babs hefts herself into her wheelchair, pulling her legs off the sofa one at a time. She isn’t about to delve into the gritty details of how she lost Batgirl or how she created Oracle. What she’d rather do is tell Hood exactly where he can shove his request for an explanation. But that won’t get him to talk. She needs to keep him on the comms, long enough for her to pinpoint the signal and find out his location.
“Well. It’s a nice name, isn’t it?” Babs says as she rolls down the hall to her bedroom as fast as she can. “Communicating with our heroes, warning them of danger… though it’s not exactly prophetic.”
“Predicting the future not on your resume?”
The monitors on Babs’s desk, across her bed, light up. The processors are silent and deadly fast as she pulls up location tracking of the Robin suits. Two neon blue dots appear on the map. One unmoving in Crime Alley, and the other moving towards it. Steph and Tim.
“Using relevant data sets, I can run an algorithm to determine where a criminal will run next after jailbreak,” Babs explains, as she sends out a notification for Batman and Nightwing, willing them to be somewhere, anywhere near Earth to boomtube back. “And nine times out of ten, I’m right.”
“Oddly specific,” Hood mumbles, and dryly adds, “And humble.”
“The humblest.”
Babs snaps to attention as she hears a groan from somewhere near Hood — Robin, from the sounds of it. And then, a kick and the following moan of pain that rings through Babs’s ears.
“That should keep him down,” she hears Hood say with all the air of a villain, and suddenly she’s digging her fingernails into her armrests. “Let me help you see into the future, O.” Babs can hear the smile crawling across Hood’s face, under his helmet. “I’ve got two little birds, and they won’t be able to work for Batman ever again. Communicate that message to your precious hero.”
And then, with an audible crunch of a comm being stepped on, the line goes dead.
It’s radio silent now, and the dread pools in the pit of her stomach.
“No,” Babs cries out, watching the screen go blank before her. SIGNAL LOST, it reads. “No, no, no, no!”
Babs pushes away from her desk, breathing hard, doubling over. Neither Batman or Nightwing have responded to the notification — they must not be available. And if they’re not available, then there really is no one.
Except…
Babs shivers. It’s impossible. She’s not suited for field work anymore. What’s she meant to do, roll into Crime Alley and request Hood give back Spoiler and Robin?
~
Half an hour later Babs is rolling into Crime Alley.
You know, to request Hood to give back Spoiler and Robin.
It’s windy and freezing and she can barely feel her fingers. It had felt like a solid idea earlier, to come here running on nothing but her wheels, pure will, and the ibuprofen she took earlier to reduce her flu symptoms. But now, gripping her wheelchair armrests with her numb fingers and way too tightly in the middle of Crime Alley, Babs thinks she might have been a little delusional in coming here by herself.
Hood’s base of operations — something Babs learned the location of within 5 seconds of digital snooping — is one of the many abandoned, boarded-up, and half-burned-yet-never-repaired buildings in Crime Alley. A warehouse in its past life, if Babs has to guess, from the size of it. And in its current one, three large men armed with guns guard the entrance. And not to mention, this place is scary. The street lights don’t work in this area of Gotham, people passed out on the side of the street with a box of needles next to them, and Babs is pretty sure there’s two people who have been following her ever since she got off the public bus.
How annoying, Babs thinks saltily as the wind whips her clothes around. Can’t they see I’m already scoping out an entirely different set of opponents?
Hands grab her shoulders from behind, following by mean laughter. The street thugs who have been following her for the past few minutes have caught up, clearly interested in the wheelchair, her pockets, or her. In a smooth motion, Babs grabs the arm of Thug Number One, and with the added force from rolling her wheelchair under his center of gravity, she flips his entire body over her, letting him slam into the concrete.
He doesn’t get up.
Babs smiles sweetly at a surprised-looking Thug Number Two, even though he can’t see her behind her full face helmet that she’s wearing — she’s got the flu, after all, she can’t be coughing in people’s faces — and whips out a pair of escrima sticks from her armrests. She rolls towards him, spinning at the last moment, and fully hits him into the brick wall, sticks crackling. She hears a few teeth clatter to the concrete. Switching out her indoor wheelchair for home to her muscled, thick-tired wheelchair for this mission was a good idea.
Heart pumping from that little warm-up, Babs moves across the street, keeping to the shadows. When she’s close enough to have Red Hood’s guards clearly in shot for her, she raises her small dart gun and fires off three shots perfectly. The guards slump to the ground, snoring softly.
Babs rolls over their sleeping bodies towards the doors.
Not too bad for a retiree, Babs thinks.
The doors slide open.
“Oracle.”
Babs cringes. Ah, hubris.
The person waiting for her inside is sitting on a set of metal stairs leading up to a modular warehouse office in the corner of the otherwise empty space. The doors behind her slam shut automatically, cutting out the wind. In Hood’s large, gloved hand is a combat knife, gleaming with the moonlight shining through from the elevated warehouse window on the other side of the building. Freshly sharpened. Not bloody, Babs notes importantly. Yet.
Babs’s eyes scan the rest of the warehouse, thankful for the moon’s light to help her search for the Robins. But they’re not there. Babs scowls at the sight of the warehouse office’s stairs — her worst enemy. And Hood’s here, too.
Hood’s in his full gear, just like in the security camera footage as Babs has seen him. He pulls out a gun from one of the holsters strapped around his legs, and points it at Babs.
“I had a feeling I’d lure someone in with these two birds,” he says. “But all that the old man could send was you?”
“I’m not exactly thrilled either,” Babs replies from behind her helmet.
Hood turns the safety off with a click.
Babs becomes very still.
“Well, that’s not fair. I’m in a wheelchair,” she says dryly.
With his chin, Hood motions at the door. “How’d you take out my men?”
Babs meets his gaze steadily. “Amazing what a little benzodiazepine can do, right?”
“What happens if one of them is allergic and they die by your hand, Oracle? Think the old man will be happy with you?”
Babs rolls her eyes behind her helmet. “They’ll survive.”
“You sound confident.”
“Well, I modified each injection shot with the proper amount of sedation that their bodies could handle, Hood. Though, I’m not so certain about my own survivability at this very moment.”
Hood seems to realize that he’s lowered his gun a few inches to listen to her talk, because he shakes his head suddenly and lifts the weapon back up. “You looked them up and… personalized their darts?”
Babs just stares back at him for a moment, befuddled. Out of all the effective peace negotiations they could be having currently — like Spoiler and Robin and how very much Babs would like to live — why is this what they’re stuck on?
“Was it supposed to be difficult?”
Bang.
Babs’s entire body flinches, but then she sees that Hood’s smoking gun has been pointing to the left, away from her. Hood clicks the safety back on and holsters the weapon. With a mask on his face, Babs has no idea what he’s thinking — but something’s changed, as he turns around to go up the stairs.
“Get out of my warehouse,” he grunts. “And bring me Batman. That’s the only way you’ll get the birds back.”
“Batman? He’s not here, Hood. Off-world.”
“When he comes back, then.”
“You’re going to hang onto a couple of teenagers for an undetermined amount of time? For what? What is this all about?”
“You think I’m going to tell you anything? An outsider?”
“Let me take a guess,” Babs says, ignoring the sting that the word outsider delivers to her. She doesn’t turn on her wheels, though. She’s either getting the kids back, or she’ll be fighting someone. But she’s not leaving empty-handed. “To prove a point. To show him how his ideals aren’t infallible. To make him hurt. Or is it all of the above?”
There’s a sudden tightness in Hood’s shoulders that makes Babs certain she’s hit a nerve.
“Keep talking, Oracle.”
It’s a thinly veiled threat, chilling the entire warehouse.
Babs is silent for a moment before she decides to take a gander and ignore it.
“If it means anything, Jayjay, I’m pretty sure Batman’s learned his lesson the first time he lost a Robin,” she says softly.
Hood has stopped. He has simply just… frozen. His eyes are electric, angry, furious, confused — and then, Babs doesn’t see Hood move so much as she blinks and the next thing she knows, he’s holding a knife against her throat. The white gaze of his helmet blazing through, sharp enough to kill.
“Who the fuck are you?”
Weird question, Babs thinks briefly before her mind starts to whirl through several possibilities of defense, counterattacks, and escape. She comes up with a few — but then Hood is shaking her, his grip on the knife tight and shaking with — with rage, yes, but something else, too.
“Answer the fucking question,” snarls Hood, and that’s confusing, because of course he knows, he’s been calling her Oracle this whole time.
Unless — he really doesn’t know —
Babs slowly moves her hands to her helmet, but Hood snarls, slapping her hands away, and rips off her helmet for himself. Babs’s hair bounces down to her shoulders, in all its honey orange glory, and she sees the exact moment Jason Todd recognizes her, truly, because he drops the knife.
“Barbara?” Jason asks, his voice breaking.
~
Jason doesn’t put up a fight when Babs pulls off his helmet to see his face. At the very least she expects to lose a finger or two when she pulls at his domino mask next, but he allows her to peel it off without a word. Or maybe it’s not so much compliance as it is that he can't fight her off — not while he’s carrying her up the stairs to the warehouse office. His arms hold her carefully as they go up in silence — one hand under her legs, the other bracketing her back. Babs observes his downturned brows and lips, then takes her gloves off and cups the side of Jason’s face to check for any murderous rage in his eyes.
“I thought you already knew Oracle’s identity,” Babs says, turning Jason’s face this way and that. The fading green vibrancy is replaced with a resigned annoyance as she pulls his cheeks.
Still, Jason doesn’t pull away — in fact, he leans into her palm — but his gaze is still hard, and he hasn’t said a word. He’s got the same wilted expression on his face as he used to when they were kids. Babs recognizes it as the one he always had after getting to the point in a book where a good character dies, or when Dick went to summer camp and he was left alone in the summer. That look has never failed to make Babs rush over with comforting words, but right now she’s not sure which words will even help.
The crease between Jason’s eyebrows deepens, and the green flickers, and he looks like he’s ready to burn Gotham to the ground and everyone in it. Babs observes Jason’s fingers tightening over her paralyzed legs.
“I didn’t know the clown hurt you.” His voice is flat with rage.
Babs reaches out to smooth the crease between his brows with her thumb.
They enter the office. It’s a neat room, with a desk and chairs and refrigerator. On the floor, however, lie Spoiler and Robin, still out cold.
“Jason.”
“They’re fine,” Jason says as he carefully lowers her onto a cushioned chair across the desk. At her prolonged look, he grumbles something under his breath, produces a small blanket from the desk, and throws it haphazardly over Steph and Tim’s unconscious forms. “There. Warm and toasty. Happy?”
Babs hums, unimpressed, but she doesn’t miss the way Steph’s fist is bandaged up — presumably the one she punched into a chimney — or the way Tim doesn’t look physically injured other than being out cold.
Almost as if Jason’s intimidating threat over comms was meant to be nothing more than theatrics to scare Batman.
Babs closes her eyes, which are suddenly too heavy to keep open. “I came here to take them back, you know.”
“Well, you can’t. The plan was — ” Jason breaks off, sounding annoyed. “Well, it wasn’t to have tea with you.”
“Clearly.” Babs sighs, leaning into the chair more. There’s too much to do. She has Cluemaster to find and get back into Arkham. She has to get Steph to sleep over at the Manor for the night — she’ll be safe if she’s not at her home, where Arthur Brown can find her. And Tim’s looking exhausted — someone clearly needs to make sure he actually goes to bed instead of staying awake — and what did Tim say about his legal guardian being a fake?
She needs to get to bed too, now that she thinks about it. Her eyes feel hot and wet. Her headache, which so politely left while she was dealing with her angry little Red Hood, is slowly returning. That’s no good. If she’s sick, she can’t do all of the things on her list. She needs to not be sick anymore.
“Babs. Oi, carrot-head.”
Jason is saying something, but Babs isn’t sure what. She just needs to open her eyes.
“…you narcoleptic or something, Barbie?”
Babs hears his footsteps draw closer, and a hand on her shoulder, lightly shaking. Babs shrugs it off. She just needs to sleep briefly. She’ll be up in a minute or two and take another fever reducer, since the first one’s clearly done running its course. She’ll just have to do that when she wakes up. Yes. That’s a good plan.
A cold hand presses against her forehead — and then someone starts to cuss. Babs mumbles, “I’m okay,” to get them to relax, but that only makes things worse.
The voice says, “—abs. Babs! I could cook an egg on your face. How do you have a fucking fever and be out here right now, what the actual — ”
So noisy.
When everything fades away, Babs lets it happen.
~
There was a time when being sick didn’t suck, but that was a long time ago.
Babs misses her father. James Gordon used to take care of her when she couldn’t, and now she’s alone and she’ll never have him take care of her again. Her chest heaves, and a sob tears through her sleep.
But.
But someone’s hand is immediately on her hair, softly shushing.
“Barbara, it’s alright. You’re okay, our brave girl,” they say, their voice deep and rumbling. “You dealt with everything well.”
Nostalgia and comfort burn through Babs, searing like a brand. It’s not her father — the voice isn’t the same — but it’s safe. It’s like the shade of a tree on a blazing day, or a gentle wave pushing her back to shore.
Before Babs can make sense of who it is, someone else snaps, “Bruce, you made her cry!”
Bruce...? It can’t be. She doesn’t ever ask for his help, so she must be dreaming — but his voice rumbles warmly above her again, saying, “She’s extremely feverish, Jason,” and oh. This is real.
“That doesn’t mean you can inflict your goddamn parenting on her —”
Babs opens her eyes and is greeted not with her apartment ceiling, but the warm wooden finish of the Wayne Manor living room. Oh. Someone brought her here. She’s lying on the chaise of the large sectional, her head pillowed comfortably and her shivering body covered in layers upon layers of the softest blankets. On her left, the fireplace cackles, and the orange glow fills the space with light. The large flat screen is on for someone, at a low volume.
Bruce sits nearby in his pajamas and sleep robe, wringing out a small towel over a bowl of ice water. Not too far is Jason, who is scowling and making some point in his argument that doesn’t look like it’s landing from the way Bruce’s eyes are quietly happy. It’s nice. Babs hasn’t seen the two of them in the same room in years.
Across the room, Babs sees Dick on the sectional as well, both thighs occupied by Tim and Stephanie, who are each using one as a pillow as they snooze. The coffee table is littered with canisters of flour, sugar, and frosting — and Dick is mixing something together in a bowl.
Babs blinks as she registers the familiar smell.
“Chocolate?” she croaks.
Everyone in the room who isn’t sleeping off looks at her.
Dick flashes her a grin. “Our favorite.”
Babs coughs out a weak laugh, even though it hurts her throat. Of course Dick would bring half the kitchen into the living room just so that he wouldn’t have to be away from them all.
“Forget the cookies, she’s going to eat Alfred’s stew,” Jason grumbles, slumping down beside Babs. “You know, because she’s sick.”
“Kidnappers don’t get to have opinions,” Dick replies sweetly, setting the bowl down to rub at Steph and Tim’s backs soothingly as they stir from the noise, before picking the bowl back up to mix.
Bruce swipes at Babs’s forehead with the cool towel. Its refreshing presence makes her sink a little deeper into the cushions in relief.
“How are you feeling?” he asks her quietly.
“Like I’m dreaming,” Babs manages to whisper, even though she’s never even dreamed of Bruce nursing her like this. “Are Tim and Steph…?”
“Dick has administered antitoxins. They’re resting,” Bruce says. “We got your message and came as quickly as we could, though I did not expect you to have gone out for a retrieval mission in your state.”
Babs holds the sting of those words at a mental arm’s length. “Because of my chair?”
Bruce’s eyes sharpen to daggers. “I was referring to your fever, Barbara. I knew you were sick last time you were in the Cave, after running the routine vital scans. And you knew at least before you left to collect Spoiler and Robin from an unauthorized patrol, because of the ibuprofen in your system.”
Bruce’s eyes have gone soft with disapproval and concern.
“As brave as you are, you don’t have to deal with this alone, Barbara.”
Babs winces and strategically lets her eyes close so she doesn’t have to pretend she’s in the right mind to reflect on her choices.
Dick and Jason are still arguing about something.
“So basically what it all comes down to, is that I’m right and you’re wrong,” Dick reasons sagely. “Right, Alfred?”
Jason lets out an affronted noise over the sound of steady, elegant footsteps on the hardwood floor. Something is pressed into Babs’s mouth, under her tongue. Lifting her heavy eyelids, Babs looks up wearily at the butler as he takes her temperature.
“I’ll let you boys figure all that out, Master Dick and Master Jason. However, I expect you both to pipe down and let Miss Barbara rest,” Alfred says in his ever-so-calm manner that settles both Dick and Jason down immediately.
The thermometer beeps. Babs watches as Bruce and Alfred read the temperature.
“Still three digits?” she asks.
“Just under it, as a matter of fact. Very well done, Miss Barbara,” Alfred says pleasantly. “Do keep this up and we will have kicked this fever to the curb by tomorrow.”
Babs grins. “I’m not doing anything.”
“That’s the key, my dear,” Alfred says with a wink.
Bruce replaces the cool towel on Babs’s forehead and adds, “You resting has done plenty of good. You were in much worse shape when Jason brought you and Tim and Steph here.”
“Thank you,” Babs says, feeling oddly emotional. “You didn’t have to do all this. None of you had to.”
“Oh, shut up,” Jason mumbles. “You were running on empty, talking in your sleep about blondie’s father and the Replacement’s uncle and all the work you had to do. I’ll take care of it, okay?”
Babs blinks. “You will?”
“You were going to ask me for that favor in the first place, weren’t you?” Jason scowls and looks away. “Don’t think about any of it. Just sleep some more.”
“Jason’s correct. Let it go for tonight,” Bruce agrees. “We’ll take care of it.”
“And you, if you let us,” Dick adds softly from across the sofa.
“And even if she doesn’t, Dickhead,” Jason snaps, glaring at his older brother. “She’s part of the family, you’d let her not accept the help?”
“That part was implied, some of us don’t like sounding like creeps — ”
As Dick and Jason descend into their usual bickering, Babs finds that there is only one option. She doesn’t want to. However, there’s no other people in the world that she trusts more than the ones surrounding her right now.
So she lets go.
~
The next time she wakes up, it’s very early morning, and she’s in a real bed with the fireplace live and cracking. The door is ajar and something in the air smells delicious, like cookies and stew and love. Downstairs, she can hear her family’s voices chattering away. On the nightstand, there’s a note in Jason’s neat handwriting.
We took care of shit. Get some sleep, carrot head.
Babs smiles into her pillow.
It’s not so bad, being sick.