"Still around, Mom. Love you~"
“When are you coming home?”
misfittotherescue:
virtualbatgirl:
Barbara’s face, unseen to her caller, appeared racked with pain. She’d spent almost a year trying to track the girl since they’d had to blow the tower. Feelers were sent out and every time the girl appeared, she became a ghost. It was a mother’s worst nightmare. “Right now I’m at Kord’s Needle in Gotham. And if you’re afraid to come to me. I’ll come to you. Just… stay put this time, okay?”
She…she could afford to be selfish. Just this once. Right? A year had past without incident, but…it’d been so long since she bounced this far. She’d intentionally stayed away from Gotham, never less than twenty miles from the border. And after a while, when she knew was safe from Oracle’s all-seeing eyes…she would stay put. Settle down for a while.
…but she wanted to go home. She missed her bed. She missed her mother. She missed…being Misfit.
Without a response, Charlie ended the call, shoving it back into her pocket with a trembling hand. Tears stung in her eyes, guilt and fear twisting in the pit of her stomach.
Fuck it.
Her eyes squeezed shut, pushing through the anxiety and fear and finally…finally…
And in a puff of pink smoke not terribly dissimilar from a certain 60′s TV show, the girl appeared in Oracle’s most well-guarded citadel, the newly completed Needle in Gotham. Barbara pulled the girl close before the smoke had even cleared, happier than she’d have ever thought possible that the girl was okay.
It was then that she finally broke down. Tears streamed from her eyes as she fell to her knees and clung to the woman for the first time in what felt like a decade.
“I’m sorry,” she wept. “I’m sorry, I…I never should’ve left. I just…I wanted to keep you safe, and…Momma, I’m sorry…”
Barbara couldn’t hold the tears back, either. A child she’d never asked for that she’d all but tripped over, but still her child. Safe, whole, and more or less home. She grasped Charlie’s shoulders and held her a few at a distance of a few inches. “You damn right you shouldn’t have left. Because even if you have doubts, I don’t.” “And the destruction of the Tower was not your doing. That was my choice. You bear no responsibility for it.”
“No, but everything else? That was me, Mom. I’m the reason why you almost died. That’s....th-that’s why I left. Even...even after the therapy, and...and the move...every time I put on the mask, I...I was still afraid. I didn’t...I didn’t want to hurt you again.”
It was all coming back to her; the pain, the fear...
“I thought you were dead...and when you came back, I promised myself I would never put you through that danger again...”






















