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Barbara didn’t know what she was doing here.
Actually, that was a lie. She knew exactly what she was doing here, but she wasn’t quite sure she was ready to admit that to herself. She wheeled herself a little closer, the smooth path under her wheels giving away to the rough grass. She jerked a bit at the change on ground. It was too sloppily. She was still getting used to her new, fancier chair.
Barbara leaned forward and touched the top of the headstone.
It had been too long since Babs had visited Jason. She had done it a few times since the funeral, but never as long as that first time. Never as long as she had stayed already, this time.
“Hi, Jason,” Barbara muttered. She caressed the stone before bringing her hand away. She tucked it back in her lap, cupping it with her other one. “I know it’s been a while since I’ve been here.”
Babs leaned forward, eyes fixated on the large, black words of Jason’s name on the grave. It had been so long since that funeral, yet the clouds had followed her here. She wondered if it was going to rain again. She didn’t have Dick here this time to hold an umbrella for her.
“Bruce has been gone for months now, you know,” Barbara got right into it. “He was… messed up, before he left. Tim was helping, I think, by making him protect someone instead of only punishing people—himself actually. Before Tim… Shit, Jason, it was like he didn’t expect to make it out alive each night.”
Babs couldn’t help the heavy sigh that left her mouth. This wasn’t actually what she had intended to talk about when she came here. She was sure that Dick had told Jason all about this already.
“I couldn’t—I mean, I had to remove myself a bit. I wasn’t going to heal from... from what happened while watching him spiral downwards so hard,” She laughed, but there was no joy in it. “I still felt guilty about that. But I ushered that energy into building up my camera systems and hacking into classified databases, so. I’m building something for myself, despite what the Joker did to us.”
Even mentioning it without details made the vivid memory reply in Barbara’s head. She couldn’t help but close her eyes and cringe at the images that flashed through her head.
She wasn’t quite conscious when Jason found her. Babs didn’t remember much of that at all, only being loaded onto a stretcher and watching Jason’s devastated face. Jason was being held back by cops, still trying to get toward her.
He had her blood all over his hands. She never got to thank him properly for that. She never got to ask how long he had been keeping her alive.
A few tears slipped down her cheeks. She didn’t want to think about this. Coming here was supposed to be the culmination of her Oracle project, to tell Jason all she had accomplished.
“I came here to tell you about Oracle,” She blubbered. “Now I can’t help but think about how you saved me. Of course you tried to make it even for me after that… you had so much of my blood on your hands.”
A crunch of grass sounded behind her somewhere, but Barbara didn’t care. She wasn’t the only person who had someone they loved laying in this cemetery.
“I’m angry at you, I think,” Babs continued. “You never let me thank you for how kind you were. And then you had to go and try to get revenge for me—which I’m still thankful for the effort but—Fuck, Jason. Now we don’t get to do our coding lessons, or our tea book club, or… I had to do Alfred’s cake alone this year. It came out terrible.”
“Of course it did,” Jason—Jason’s voice sounded behind Barbara. Her spine went ridged. She knew her grief was a beast of its own, but hallucinating Jason? That hadn’t happened yet. “You’re a terrible baker.”
“At least I’m not as bad as Dick.” She told her subconscious. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew it wasn’t smart to talk to hallucinations. She did it anyway. Talking to Jason in front of his grave wouldn’t be the worst thing.
“He didn’t help you, did he?” Jason’s voice sounded again. There were more footsteps. Babs kept her gaze firmly focused on the gravestone in front of her. “I fear that would have made it worse.”
“No, he just watched,” Babs laughed wetly. “I wasn’t about to let his horrendous baking skills completely ruin our tradition.”
“Sounds like it went sour anyway,” Jason’s voice was right behind her now. Barbara closed her eyes and imagined that Jason was really standing beside her. “Oracle, huh? Like the prophet or the authority figure?”
“Infallible authority or guide,” Babs explained the definition she gravitated toward. “I have eyes everywhere. My codes are in in virtually every database. I can know whatever I want to know.”
“Whatever?” Jason asked. Babs brushed her hand over the tombstone. She couldn’t exactly know why she was hearing Jason’s voice, but she had a good guess.
Jason was one of the reasons she built up her Oracle database. The urge to still help—to still do something against the horrid villains in Gotham without Batgirl’s cowl to support her—had been what pushed her forward. But hacking the cameras on the borders of the city felt like a promise to Jason that no other Bird would ever be taken out of Gotham without her knowledge. Getting the ones in Crime Alley also felt like an homage to the Robin that was born there.
“Mostly,” Babs said. She took a deep breath, then told her imaginary-Jason what she had just thought about the cameras. “Getting the cameras on the border were… no other bird can be taken out of Gotham without my knowledge. I won’t let it happen again.”
“No other bird, huh?” Jason muttered. “There’s another one.”
Barbara’s face screwed up thinking about the new Robin. She had kept herself removed for so long that she still didn’t know that kid’s name. That was more her fault than the kid’s, she thought. Babs had sequestered herself away in her apartment to build up her Oracle database. Since she got her chair, she had done little else.
If she couldn’t move about the skies like she used to, she would know everything about the streets instead.
“From what Dick told me, he forced his way into the suit,” Barbara brushed her hand against the stone again. “Both he and B didn’t want another Robin. They’re still grieving you.”
Jason blew breath out of his lips quick and disbelieving. Babs could almost imagine the brush of air against her hair. It could only have been the wind. “Grieving me? That’s what you call the Joker still being around?”
Babs flinched in on herself. “The cameras around Arkham were the first ones I broke into.”
“That’s not enough, and you know it. Look at what he did to you. What he did to me.” Jason’s voice became deeper. Much deeper than Babs had ever heard it while Jason was live. “He’s not going to stop, either. How many victims has he had since I died?”
“Twenty-seven,” Babs responded immediately. She had a program specifically for counting the amount of people who fell prey to the Joker. “Thirteen of them died. Lower than usual, mostly because of the two times he was bedridden for months on end.”
There was a scuffling sound behind her. Babs lowered her head to angle it more toward the grave. People talked to graves all the time. Barbara talking to Jason wasn’t out of the usual at all.
Of course, most people didn’t imagine the voice of their dead loved one responding, but Babs wasn’t most people. With the trauma she had endured at the hand of the Joker, she wasn’t surprised that this was how her grief was manifesting.
“Bedridden?” Jason’s voice was choked. Babs tried not to equate it to how he sounded when she was injured. She failed miserably.
“Bruce got his shots in,” Bab’s explained. “Made him go down with a helicopter, first. When he resurfaced months later… Alfred had a hard time getting the blood out of the gauntlets. Same with Dick, when he went berserk on the guy.”
“…They tried to kill him?” Jason asked, quiet. Babs heard shifting, and swore she felt pressure on her chair’s handles. She closed her eyes.
“Of course they did,” Barbara admitted. “They just couldn’t finish him. Not for lack of trying. More of…”
“Lack of spine?” Jason seethed. Babs could imagine the exact expression he would have had on his face.
“Lack of resources,” Babs corrected. “They were always interrupted.”
“Huh,” Bab’s Jason responded, considering. “There’s that.”
“There’s that.” Babs echoed.
She hung her head, fingers brushing over the grave. What she wouldn’t give to tell Jason this—to tell him that he wasn’t forgotten or cast aside. There was nothing quite like the feeling of knowing that a loved one tried to get revenge for you. Babs knew that feeling keenly, after what Jason did.
But the feeling Jason would have felt would be so much different than hers. Tears welled in Barbara’s eyes. Jason wouldn’t have to deal with the fact that his loved one was killed in their attempt at revenge. Babs would have to deal with that heavy on her heart for as long as she lived.
A few tears escaped, landing with a wet plop on Barbara’s lap. She didn’t feel it. She only focused on that phantom pressure on her chairs handles disappearing, and the voice of Jason with it.