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Barbara knows what’s happening before most people do. It’s her job. More than that, it’s her responsibility. She finds the things that need to be found to protect the people that need to be protected. For every crime she’d stopped as Batgirl, she manages a hundred more as Oracle. Knowledge is power, and there are very few people more powerful than her.
Right now, though, she’s weak. She’s weak because Dinah’s crying and Barbara doesn’t know how it happened. She can’t find the cause and definitely can’t find the solution. She hunches over her monitors and watches Dinah wipe at the tears on her face. Her mouth moves, and there’s a second of delay before the phone she’s got to her ear transmits the sound through Barbara’s headset.
“Hello?” Dinah says into the click of Barbara answering.
“Why are you crying?” Barbara asks. Dinah’s in Star, which means it takes the eternity of three seconds for Barbara to get traffic camera footage of the street outside Dinah’s hotel room. She scrubs through it at quadruple speed looking for the flash of blond hair she can track to the source of the problem. “Are you okay?”
Dinah chuckles, voice still thick with her tears. Even as Barbara watches with one eye, Dinah’s wiping her cheek with the inside of her wrist. It’s the sort of habit somebody used to wearing gloves has, the sort they don’t get rid of even when they’re dressed down in a sweatshirt and rolled up joggers.
“Can you tell from my voice, or is there a hidden camera I should be worried about?” she asks.
Barbara finally finds what she’s looking for. 6:13 p.m., Dinah leaves the hotel on foot. Barbara follows the path she takes, cutting into security footage of a jewelry store when Dinah goes through an alley without any convenient stoplights to watch from. Barbara loops the footage and slows to double speed so she can be certain, but it doesn’t look like there are any people following her, not on this leg of the walk. She brings up the next stretch and divides her attention between them, then divides it again so she can answer Dinah’s question.
“Both,” she says, “but you don’t have to be worried about the hidden camera. Perfectly benign surveillance only, I promise.”
She watches Dinah look around the room. She doesn’t find it, but that’s only because it’s not in the room. Barbara’s watching her through a wireless camera the person across the street left on their kitchen table. Dinah’s got her curtains open and the camera’s resolution is the sort even Bruce would approve of. All Barbara had to do was zoom in and rotate the image 90° so the image isn’t on its side like the camera is. Careless treatment of expensive electronics is always an easy in.
“It has to be a sign of insanity that I find that comforting,” Dinah says.
Her tears have slowed and so has Barbara. She’d made it through the 15-minute walk in 45 seconds and hadn’t seen anything more suspicious than Dinah getting catcalled. Looking like Dinah does, that’s not an uncommon occurrence.
Barbara still runs the guy’s face through a couple rounds of facial recognition until his unpaid parking tickets show up. Her program forwards his location to the police under the guise of a dispatcher. He’ll have the weekend in jail to think about how he talks to women. Speaking of pigs, Barbara’s found the destination of Dinah’s walk.
“What did he do?” Barbara asks.
No video footage of Oliver’s house. He’s that good, at least. She settles for a perspective change and throws the view to a satellite so she can watch the red dot of Dinah’s location walk through the front door. She has the program bounce it through every cell phone tower in the county to get it more precise. The margin of error for the GPS shrinks to six inches in any direction, and Barbara adds the next county’s towers to get it down further.
“He didn’t do anything,” Dinah says.
Barbara hates hearing that. He’s obviously done something. He always does. Oliver has the distinction of being the most frustrating person Barbara’s ever met, and she works with Batman nightly. However, Bruce never broke Dinah’s heart. Barbara can admit to having a bias because of it.
“Something in your eye, then?” Barbara asks dryly.
Just in case the joke is less than a joke, Barbara accesses local pollen levels. It’s November in California, though, which means there’s not much in the air of Star City besides salt. Barbara bites her lip and drums her fingers across the top of her keyboard. She’s not pressing anything, but it’s only because there’s nothing to do but sit in ignorant silence until Dinah finally speaks.
“I had to see him,” Dinah says, and it’s not a good sign that she’s leading with a defense.
Barbara won’t admit to having every fight she and Dinah have had recorded. She definitely won’t admit to watching them obsessively. Forewarned is forearmed, though. She learns the arguments inside and out so she can make sure they don’t happen again. There’s not so much of a difference between being Batgirl and being in love. Preparation is key for both.
When Dinah leads with a defense, it means she’s feeling defensive. When she’s feeling defensive, Barbara comes across as smothering. One of Barbara’s monitors flashes with news about a bank robbery and she’s grateful for the distraction of it. She sends Tim after it with a few keystrokes even as she formulates her answer.
“I know,” Barbara says. “I do. I know he’s important to you.”
Dinah’s smile is grainy through the hyper-zoomed camera. It’s still lovely. Barbara’s attention drifts from the Metropolis General Hospital intake feeds so she can look at it. It’s only for a moment and she still manages to forward the names of two people with acute lead poisoning to Lois, so Barbara doesn’t feel too guilty about it. She’s doing it as a favor to Clark, whose particular brand of skills don’t translate well to slumlords.
“I know how much that hurt to say,” Dinah says, “but I appreciate it.”
“Like a shot to the spine,” Barbara confirms. “And believe me, I’d know. Still, anything for you.”
The air quality meters she’s got in Robinson Park all hit 0.4% Poison Ivy pheromones at once. She forwards the data straight to Bruce, then sends it to Dick, too. Bruce doesn’t call for backup, so Barbara has to do it for him. Sometimes before he needs it.
“I wasn’t lying, you know,” Dinah says. “I meant what I said. He really didn’t do anything.”
“Then what’s got you upset?” Barbara asks.
Dinah’s not a liar. Not usually, at least. It really might have been something besides Ollie. Barbara widens her usual alert parameters to include Green Arrow’s rogues. After a second and a half of waiting, she widens it again, this time to include Star City hospital admissions. If somebody was hurt, Dinah wouldn’t have gone back to her room, but better safe than sorry.
“Apparently, his memory didn’t come back the way it was supposed to,” Dinah says. She sighs, puts a hand in her pocket, and slouches against the wall. It looks like the sort of thing that has to have been practiced to be as smooth as it is but absolutely hasn’t been. Dinah’s grace is supernatural. “The way we all thought it would.”
“What happened?” Barbara asks.
She hasn’t gotten to be the most dangerous information broker in the world through a lack of curiosity. Still, this is different. Barbara can’t manage her usual fast-paced disconnect, not when it’s Dinah’s reddened eyes she’s looking at through her monitors.
“Connor called me because he wasn’t sure what to do with Ollie,” Dinah says. “He can’t even hold a bow without shaking. It’s hard to see, Babs. Oliver Queen can’t shoot. It’s not right.”
“You’re crying because he can’t shoot?” Barbara asks incredulously.
Barbara zeroes her focus on the conversation. She gets her Gotham danger algorithm going and minimizes the rest of her feeds. She’s got nearly every piece of information in the city filtering through a server big enough that it takes up an entire floor of the Clocktower. It’s not as good as the real thing, but she can trust it to handle things long enough for her to have a conversation.
“He doesn’t know anything from the last 10 years,” Dinah says. Barbara watches through the camera how the words bow her shoulders. “He still thinks we’re together. Hell, he still thinks moving to Seattle is a good move for us.”
Barbara tucks a piece of hair behind her ear. She’s glad the connection is one-way. She’s uncomfortable with the little display of worry.
“Do you want that?” Barbara asks. She’s at her worst in conversations that upset her. “I know that Seattle changed things between you two. You were in love with him when you moved up there.”
“No,” Dinah says, and her voice is firm. It gentles. “No, I don’t want that. I love Ollie for what we were. I love you for what we are. You don’t have anything to worry about on that front, okay?”
“Oh,” Barbara says. She’s not so insecure that the words feel like heaven. Absolutely not. “Well, that’s good. And I love you, too.”
Dinah’s face doesn’t show the same relief Barbara feels. She stares into the middle distance and sighs.
“It’s hard to see,” Dinah repeats with the barest tremble. “Too much for one person.”
“You can tell me,” Barbara offers. “I’ll share it with you. Maybe it’ll lighten your burden.”
Dinah’s quiet for a moment. Barbara doesn’t rush her, even though she wants nothing more in the world to get a response. Barbara’s mind is fast. As Batgirl, her speed was all in her body. As Oracle, it’s in her brain. Dinah’s silence seems longer to her.
“I slept with him,” Dinah says, and it doesn’t hurt. They’re not exclusive, Babs reminds herself. It wouldn’t bother her if it was somebody else. It’s hard to feel like she compares to the man who’d spent years learning Dinah’s body like the back of his hand. “He fell asleep right after. Apparently, he sleeps a lot now. Jason Blood says it’s his body readjusting to having a soul again. God, this all sounds so crazy.”
“That’s because it is crazy,” Barbara says. “But that’s life for people like us, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Dinah says. Her voice is exhausted. “Doesn’t make it easier to deal with, though.”
Dinah shivers like there’s a chill down her spine. It doesn’t look to have anything to do with the temperature, but Barbara still remotely accesses the thermostat in Dinah’s room to turn the heat up a few degrees. Dinah startles at the sound of the heater kicking on. But when she relaxes against the wall again, she seems more at ease.
“I take it that was you?” Dinah asks.
“Obviously,” Barbara answers.
Dinah laughs and shakes her head. Her voice is less hesitant when she continues, but it doesn’t do much for the sorrow.
“I wanted to see him,” she says, and it has the quality of a confession. The distance between her and Barbara, the filter of the technology, it doesn’t manage to rob her voice of that particular hush. “I know you two have your differences — most of them are because of me, how could I not? — but I can’t stop caring about him because that part of my life is over.”
Of all the things Barbara can offer Dinah, reassurance is rarely on the menu. Every time she tries, she fumbles it. It doesn’t mean she knows how to stop trying. Quitting isn’t a lesson that ever took. An alert pops up, somebody with her direct line asking for backup. It’s Helena. Guilty as it makes her feel, Barbara doesn’t answer it personally. She sends it on to Stephanie with a promise to contact her if things get too dicey. She doesn’t want to split her attention
“I don’t expect you to stop caring,” Barbara says. It sounds like a lie, but it’s a good enough one that it feels true even as she’s saying it. “My problems with him are mine. I don’t expect you to carry on my vendetta just because we’re involved.”
“That’s not the sort of thing you expect to hear from one of Batman’s proteges,” Dinah replies. “Very emotionally healthy.”
The joke sounds right and lands wrong. The amused tilt to Dinah’s voice is hollow, is matched by the tension in her face. Barbara ignores that and lets the conversation follow the path Dinah’s laying out. If she wants joking, Barbara can give her that. Anything to make this easier to say, to make the burden of it less to bear.
“I’ve always said I was better than him,” she replies. “The only thing he’s got on me is the height. It is a lot of height, though.”
Dinah goes quiet. On screen, she’s staring at the far wall like there’s something just out of sight. After a moment of that stillness, she crosses one arm low on her chest and takes a deep breath. Barbara pushes her glasses up her nose and waits for the words that will follow. She’s an expert on Dinah, enough at least to know she’ll get where she’s going eventually.
“Connor told me that Ollie says my name in his sleep,” she says. “He’s processing it all, I guess. All those years he missed out on. He’ll apologize, or yell, or cry”—and her voice goes weak on that last word because she takes it harder than most when she hurts the people she loves, even if she didn’t do anything to cause it—“and I don’t know. I guess I wanted to help.”
“You always do,” Barbara says.
You don’t have to be the all-seeing, all-knowing Oracle to know that. Dinah sighs.
“I stayed in bed with him,” she says. “I thought that if I was there, it might help him. I wanted it to help him.”
Barbara should let her finish, but knowledge is a curse. Always has been, all the way back to Cassandra in ancient Greece. People might believe what Barbara says, but that doesn’t mean they want to hear it.
“It didn’t,” she says. “And that’s why you were crying? Because it didn’t magically fix him?”
Dinah makes an irritated sound in the back of her throat, the first time all night she’s managed to be something less than beautiful in her upset. It isn’t her fault that appeal comes so naturally to her, but it’s still a relief to see something beneath it. As much as it might grate on her to admit, Barbara’s got at least one thing in common with Ollie; Dinah’s as close to perfect as either of them is ever going to get.
It’s what makes the frustration now so valuable. The peeks at something human beneath the beauty and grace and power are a comfort, a promise that Barbara’s not the only human in their relationship. That had to mean the same thing for Ollie. Maybe even more. It would go a long way to explain why he’d always pushed her to her limits with his constant bad decisions.
“Sorry for caring about people,” Dinah says. The sentiment beneath — unlike you — is just as loud as the words and twice as pointed. Dinah doesn’t take back either. “He doesn’t deserve to suffer like that. Nobody does.”
Barbara’s typing on instinct. The Star City Star is up and she’s bypassing the search bar to dive straight into the archives with her own algorithms. ‘Green Arrow’ is a popular topic. She can trace Oliver’s life in the second it takes to parse the information.
His emergence onto the scene and the petty crimes of yesteryear. Then, there’s the escalation into the world Barbara grew up fighting in. She even manages to find a photo of him fighting with Dinah during one of their very first team-ups under the headline CANARY FINDING NEW CITY TO ROOST IN?
Then, he’s gone. It’s Seattle, it’s killing, it’s everything that happened in that florist’s shop on the hill. It’s the national news network from the Star’s affiliate papers about Green Arrow being an enemy of the state.
It’s an obituary. Five years of memorial pieces and retrospectives. In Gotham, Batgirl was one of many. Part of a revolving door of vigilantes all wearing the same symbol. In Star, Ollie was one of a kind. They took the loss of their hero hard, harder still because he died protecting Metropolis, someplace that was never supposed to need a hero besides the Man of Steel.
The number of articles on his resurrection is staggering. They range in tone from guarded hope that their champion is back to outrage that somebody would imitate a lost legend. There’s even a few attempts to interview Connor — who the public collectively decided was the true inheritor of the mantle — about his opinion on copycats. He doesn’t comment.
She sees all of this. She knows it’s not fair, but that’s what lets her reply the way Dinah needs her to. Barbara’s known Ollie for a long time. Longer than most, if she’s being honest. She’s liked him, even. It’s unsettling that her dislike of him runs deep enough that she needs outside opinions to remind her of his goodness. She does, though, and there’s no changing that.
“He’s a good hero,” she says. It’s more than she usually manages, but that doesn’t make it enough. “I don’t think anybody could argue that.”
There’s a breathless moment while Barbara waits to see if Dinah can accept the non-apology. She shouldn’t. That’s two things she’s got in common with Ollie, then. Neither of them knows how to step outside the tangle of their own emotions when they get to be too dark.
“He remembered something while I was there,” Dinah says. She’s all strength and irritation when she speaks, but it peters out before long. She’s back to sorrow when she continues with, “the end. Dying.”
Barbara doesn’t react, and that’s only by long practice. That explains the tears. It explains a lot, actually, and that only makes her feel worse for her attitude. It definitely doesn’t help that she’s curious even about this. She wants to know, has that same innate curiosity as everybody else. What’s on the other side? Is there a reason for this, for anything?
“Are you okay?” she asks instead.
Dinah shakes her head and looks at the ground. Her hair falls in front of her face and hides whatever expression she’s making from Barbara.
“No,” is the answer. “No, I’m really not.”
Then, she’s crying again. They’re more subtle than the tears from earlier. If it weren’t for all the years between them, Barbara might not have known at all. Shrouded as her face is by her curtain of blond hair, the only sign of her tears is the breathy quality of her voice. Barbara’s more familiar with it than she wants to be.
“I think it was me,” Dinah says, voice thick. “It happened as soon as I starting getting up like he knew I was leaving. He made that face he always does when he’s having a nightmare. After everything, he still scrunches up his face the same way.”
She takes a moment to breathe. Eventually, Barbara prompts her back into speaking with a quiet, “it’s not your fault, Di.”
Barbara knows better than most how easy it is to be caught up in the past. She recognizes the silence for what it is. Regret. There’s nothing to be gained in that. After running her hand through her hair, Dinah seems to remember that, too.
“He put his hand up,” she says. “Like he was… grabbing something, I guess. I’m not really sure. Then, he started screaming. Like nothing I’ve ever heard. You can’t imagine what it’s like to be with somebody for 15 years and hear a scream you’ve never heard before. There shouldn’t be anything new, anything worse. He shouldn’t be able to hurt more than what I saw when we were together.”
For the first time in a long time, the tension in the pit of Barbara’s stomach doesn’t drive her fingers to the keyboard. It drives them to her chair instead, hands on the wheels like she’s getting ready to leave. Ollie’s pain has always been contagious. He hurts, so he makes Dinah hurt, and that makes Barbara hurt. This is the last in a long line of echoes. It shouldn’t still be so potent.
“It just kept going,” Dinah continues. It doesn’t seem like she wants to keep talking, but neither does it seem like she knows how to stop now that she’s begun. “I tried to — I don’t know, to do something — but Connor showed up and stopped me. He said that Ollie had to get through it on his own. If I woke him up, Ollie would just have to remember it again. Then everybody else was there and I couldn't do anything.
“By the time he woke up, he couldn’t even scream anymore. His throat was shot to hell. He could barely even whisper. I don’t think he noticed I was there at first. He just looked at Connor and said ‘I wanted it to happen, didn’t I?’”
Barbara’s mouth opens around a gasp she doesn’t allow to be a sound. She hunches over in her seat and waits. Dinah’s got a way of taking up space in a conversation. When she’s not finished, you know. Her presence is a heavy thing, even when she’s only trying to keep her voice from shaking too badly.
“I never believed Clark,” she says, and Barbara knows. Dinah’s told her time after time that Clark was keeping something from them, that Ollie never would have blown himself up if he’d had another choice. “Not once. Ollie was too… too Ollie to die. To let himself die.”
“Dinah, I’m so sorry,” Barbara says.
It’s not close to enough, but it’s all she can give. Dinah hunches over further, tries to fold in on herself in a way she’d never quite gotten the hang of.
“I didn’t even know what he was talking about,” she says. “It was Connor that told me. He took me to the kitchen and explained how it happened again. Ollie was holding the switch, Babs. That’s why his hand was out. It’s bad enough he had to die once, but he never should have had to do it twice. God, and Connor had to see it both times.”
Dinah’s sobs are deep and wrenching. That’s something Oliver’s earned. Not because of his suffering, but because of his love. For whatever else Barbara thinks of him, he’d earned Dinah’s devotion. These tears, compassion made liquid, are proof of it.
Barbara’s hated pity from the very first second she’d gotten in her chair, but it’s all she can feel now. Pity for Dinah, for the pain she’s bearing for the people she’s let close to her heart. Pity for herself, even, for that brief flare of jealousy that Dinah can still cry over Oliver.
Mostly, it’s pity for Oliver himself. He’s just a person. He’s not Green Arrow, not the specter of Dinah’s past, but a person. And now he’s a decade younger in a world that doesn’t remember Oliver Queen. They remember Green Arrow, and even that’s been passed along like nothing. He doesn’t even remember himself.
All he remembers is the end, and Barbara doesn’t envy him that. She doesn’t envy him the pain of that last moment, the dreams that aren’t just dreams. She especially doesn’t envy learning about the end before the beginning. Barbara might hoard knowledge, but she can’t say that she’d want that.
Barbara patches herself through to the Batcave. She knows Alfred’s still up and manning a computer of his own. She takes care of a lot these days, but she can’t take care of everything. Besides, she appreciates the backup at a time like this.
“Alfred?” she greets.
If he’s surprised to hear her voice filtering in through the Cave’s speakers, he doesn’t show it. That British reserve has to be a superpower all its own.
“Miss Barbara, what can I help you with?” he greets.
He sounds perfectly at ease. Barbara spares a glance for Dinah, still crying through the screen.
“Can you take care of everybody tonight?” she asks. “I need to handle something.”
“Of course,” Alfred answers. He sounds marginally tenser when he adds, “is everything alright?”
Barbara bites her lip. It’s not her place to talk about the things Dinah had told her, but it’s reflex to answer him. She settles for a middle ground.
“Dinah needs somebody to talk to,” she says. “I don’t want to be distracted.”
She doesn’t say whether she’d be distracted from Dinah or her work. She doesn’t know herself. Alfred only hums his assent.
“In that case, give Miss Lance my regards, will you?” he says. She can already hear him bringing up the crime feeds she’s sent his way. He might not be on her level, but there’s a reason Bruce wasn’t a bloody smear on the ground after his first night out. “It’s been ages since you’ve brought her by.”
Barbara knows it’s stupid to blush, but she happens to know a lot of things she doesn’t act on. She looks down to the desk and feels her cheeks warm at his knowing tone. Alfred’s no slouch when it comes to gathering information himself.
“I will,” she says, “and thanks. I owe you.”
He scoffs. “You most certainly don’t. A pleasure speaking with you, Miss Barbara.”
“Right back at you, Alfred,” she says.
The whole conversation takes less than a minute, and that still feels like too long. She closes the channel to Alfred, opens the channel to Dinah, and starts giving orders. She’s always been good at that.
“Hold your phone up, okay?” she asks.
Dinah sniffles and complies. Barbara doesn’t take advantage of it often, but it’s not too hard to get into Dinah’s phone. Harder than most phones, mostly because of Barbara’s own security systems, but it’s still only the effort of a few keystrokes. She uses that access to activate a video call.
It’s not the one-sided affair it usually is, and Barbara tries not to feel self-conscious about that. She tucks a bit of hair behind her ear and smiles instead of fidgeting.
“Hey,” she greets.
Dinah gives a watery smile and dabs at the corner of her eye. “Are we having a sleepover?”
“We are. If you want to, I mean.”
“Is the world going to collapse without Oracle?” Dinah asks.
Barbara shrugs. “Maybe. But Alfred’s watching Gotham tonight, so at least that’ll be fine.”
Barbara hopes Dinah hears what’s being said beneath that; there isn’t an Oracle tonight, same as there isn’t a Black Canary. It’s only Dinah and Babs, distant and close at the same time. Dinah hasn’t stopped crying, not really, but the tears have slowed again. It makes Barbara think Dinah does get it.
“I hope you’re not expecting anything fun,” Dinah says. She’s already walking to the bed. “I don’t see anything in my future but a whole lot of sleeping. My head’s starting to kill me.”
“Hard as it is to believe, I don’t hate our conversations,” Barbara said.
“You might not get much of that either,” Dinah says.
“I think I’ll survive,” is the answer to that.
Dinah falls into the bed, phone laid down on the pillow beside her. The sight of her like that, resting on her side and staring at Barbara with her hair pillowed around her, is so familiar that it could be from any of the countless nights they’ve shared.
“I appreciate it,” she says. They both know what she’s talking about, but she still continues with, “I mean it, Babs. Thanks for listening.”
“You don’t have to thank me,” Barbara says. She thinks back to the man she knew, the charm and outdated cologne and sheer presence. She compares that to the man in Dinah’s story tonight. She doesn’t have to like him to think that’s a tragedy. “I’m sorry. For you, and for him.”
Dinah’s small smile fades. The expression that’s left is terrifyingly vulnerable. Dinah’s always stood out from her contemporaries in the martial arts circuit. Above a certain level of skill, people start to forget how to be soft. After training with Bruce, Barbara knows that better than most.
Dinah’s never had that problem. She’s not strong in spite of her kindness, but strong because of it. She takes the hurt that’s dished out and still manages to love with that unwavering surety. Even for her, though, this tenderness is almost too much. It leaves her bare all the way to the core of her. Still, she shows Barbara her heart while she lays there in a bed on the other side of the country and smiles.
“That means more to me than you know,” she says.
And Barbara does. The sort of love Dinah has for Barbara, Barbara can only return. She can’t stretch it out, let it warm everybody in her orbit. Barbara can’t understand the peace it brings Dinah to see the woman she loves make an effort for the man she loved.
She can’t say anything but a soft, “anytime.”
Dinah’s eyes slip shut, though, so it’s enough. Barbara’s grateful that it’s allowed to be enough. She minimizes every feed but the one showing Dinah’s peaceful face. She can’t be there in person, but she can watch her until Dinah’s phone slips from her loosening grasp. She can be there in this.