Jason doesn’t flinch—or he hides it very well.
“Why do you care?” he suddenly asks, throwing a quick furtive glance her way. “Like—no offense, but you never told me why you showed up in LA all of a sudden, and I mean before. Before I picked Dick up and flew him across the country. It’s not like we’ve ever been particularly close.”
They had their moments, sure, more before his death than after, and Jason’s always done his best to not step on her toes in particular even if it mean chasing her around and making sure she didn’t do things she thought she wanted to do under a blinding wave of rage.
It felt like she’d been mad at him every time, or at least… reluctant to want to need his help. Outside of that they were… okay, maybe. Jason kept out of her way and assumed that she kept tabs on him the way she kept tabs on everyone else. Nowhere to hide from the scrying eyes of Oracle.
A better amendment to that would probably be that she never felt like she wanted to be particularly close to him.
“...Is that what you think?”
Barbara doesn’t like having regrets; they’re an inescapable part of her life, of all their lives. But she wishes she hadn’t been so sick of being Batgirl when Jason joined up with Bruce the first time, wishes she hadn’t been such a wreck when everything came to a head. She doesn’t blame herself for that, not given how close everything was, but-- she does regret it.
So maybe she and Jason weren’t as close as they could’ve been -- maybe Barbara wasn’t really in a mindset to get close to anyone, back then, but it doesn’t mean she didn’t are about him. And it doesn’t mean she doesn’t still care about him.
“You’re my family. I know we don’t-- always see eye to eye, I know we don’t do things the same way, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care about you.”
Barbara wants to look him in the eye for this, but she’ll take what she can get; if the length of this drive is the duration of time she has to make her point, here, she’ll take that. “I wish I’d been able to be there for you, before, that I’d-- I don’t know, somehow known you weren’t dead, or that I’d had my own head on straight enough to do anything about it.” They all do; Barbara knows that like she knows breathing, like she knows her systems. “But I have my head on straight now -- as straight as it’s ever gonna get -- and I did when I tracked you down, then, too. I did it because I wanted to -- because you’re my family, and I care about you, and I was worried about you then. Not... what you might do. You.”
Abruptly, Barbara looks out the window, not really seeing anything. Just for something to do. She wonders what it must be like to be the people in the cars around them. “I’m... sorry, that I didn’t make that clear, before.”