Like We Were Before
a fic for Dickbabs week 2020 day 1: history
Summary: Babs and Dick, what things were like before, what they’re like now, and how they’ll be in the future. Because Rebirth is frustrating and I’m never sure what the characters do and don’t remember.
The night was settled and smooth, with streetlamp light seeping through the blinds of her apartment. Babs and Dick had dragged themselves in after a night of high-energy crime fighting and immediately shaken off the Nightwing and Batgirl getup to run it through the washer. Babs had been waiting up to switch it to the dryer, and now that that was done, she could go to bed. Dick was haphazardly sprawled on her bed like a pair of discarded socks. She pressed her lips together against a smile. Even while he was drooling on her pillow, he was so completely him that she couldn’t help but find him adorable.
Babs lightly shifted him over to his side to make space for herself on the bed. She didn’t have a couch in her new apartment yet, so if she wanted to sleep at all, she’d have to share the bed with Dick, she told herself. But, the soft stillness of the night made her honest enough to admit to herself that she didn’t mind. It was nice.
“Babs?” Dick asked softly.
“Yeah?”
“I can sleep on the floor if you want.”
“No, I don’t mind.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. Seriously, don’t worry about it. I only shoved you over because you were taking up a little too much space. You’re like…an invasive plant species, taking over my bed like-“
“Hey!” Dick was more awake now.
“No, no, hear me out,” Babs cut in before he could object. “Like, you just sprawl everywhere, but it’s not bad. You’d be a GOOD invasive plant. Like morning glories, or ivy.”
“Ugh. Not ivy, ever,” Dick muttered into the pillow.
“Gotcha, morning glory.” Babs tugged the blanket up and rested her arms above her head. She relaxed into the mattress and breathed deeply.
It was a good night. There was a reaching peace inside her, the kind that usually came after a light workout that relieved aches and worries, and before a day with no obligations. She stared up at the ceiling and played with that thought. That was becoming more common, as of late. She couldn’t remember a time in her life when she’d been so consistently happy.
She had recently climbed out of a rough patch. Her mind had been a jumble of conflicting memories. Or, rather, it still was, but now she was starting to make sense of them. Before, it had felt like two different versions of Barbara Gordon were trying to reconcile with one another. She’d been in constant turmoil. She didn’t know which memories to believe and to act on. Which Barbara remembered Lady Blackhawk? Was Cassandra Cain ever Batgirl? Was Babs being selfish by keeping that from her now? Which of Tim’s personalities was the real one?
Eventually, she had put it together, piece by piece. It was like everything happened in a timeline. First, she had been permanently in a wheelchair. Then, all of a sudden, she was walking and running and Batgirl-ing again, with no explanation. It had made no sense, but at least it fit together nicely.
Babs tried to return to the contentment she had been feeling. With a sigh, she rolled to her side, leaving her facing Dick’s back. Did he ever think about things like this? Most people didn’t realize anything was different in their memories, but she’d learned that most heroes had the same issues she did. Dick probably had an even more jumbled mess than she did. His hair poked out funny over the bullet scar, and she itched to run her thumb over it. After a few more seconds of the itch, she slowly reached out and tenderly smoothed his hair.
She felt a tingling current. She used to do this, before, but it had been so long since she and Dick had been so close. Back then,
he hadn’t had a bullet scar, and she’d been a little bit more in love with the world. Did Dick remember that?
Her breath caught when she remembered that he was right next to her and she could ask him if she really wanted to.
“Hey…Dick?”
“Mm hmm?
“What do you… remember?”
Well, that was vague.
“In the sense that…do you feel like you’ve lived two lives? Are your memories all…split?”
Dick rolled over to face her and blinked at her. “Hmm. Yeah. I’m not a huge fan.” He curled in to bring the blanket up to his chin and his head lower on the pillow so their faces were level. It made Babs feel like they were kids again, curled up and close. Dick sighed. “It’s been awhile since my brain made any sense at all,” he said with a rueful laugh. And sometimes, all I can remember is the bad stuff, like, the crime syndicate.”
Babs took a sharp breath as a memory suddenly flashed through her: Dick, chained up and tortured, secret identity revealed.
Apparently Dick was more used to that memory than she was, because he kept talking, his words picking up momentum.
“What’s crazy is that I actually remember more since I got a bullet to the head. When…I remembered…I had all these memories, and I didn’t realize I didn’t have them before until a few days later. It was- I- I was thinking about you, actually, and I remembered something that I knew I didn’t even know before.” Dick squinted. It was something they both did when they were thinking hard- as if squinting pointed their eyes at their thoughts.
Dick used to visit her from Blüdhaven—that was from Memory Timeline #1. He’d swing into the clocktower window. She’d usually be doing Oracle work, and he’d bring her something- usually coffee or pastries- along with a hacking request. He’d start working on one of his own cases, but they’d ask each other for help and usually both end up working on the same one. She would realize she was squinting, then look over at Dick and he’d be doing the same thing. “You’re doing the squinting thing,” she’d say with a grin, and he’d say, “Don’t act like you weren’t doing the squinting thing just a minute ago, oh high and mighty Oracle.”
She laughed and told Dick, “Hey, Boy Wonder, you’re doing the squinting thing.”
He broke his squint with a laugh. “What ever happened to ‘Hunk Wonder?’ Have I been downgraded?”
Her heart skipped a beat. He remembered, then.
“We-“
“Some-“
They started speaking at the same time.
“You first,” Babs said.
Dick sighed. “Sometimes I wish I could go back.” She expected him to wistfully stare off into the distance as he elaborated, but instead he looked straight into her eyes and held her gaze, waiting for her to say something.
“Things were better,” she solemnly agreed.
“You were in a wheelchair!” Instead of sounding puzzled by her agreement, Dick sounded sounded teasing.
Babs took this as a good sign, and, without letting herself think her way out of it, quickly worked around the knot in her throat to say softly, “We were engaged.”
Dick nodded, not breaking her gaze. “That’s why I wish I could go back.” Before Babs could say anything, his next words tumbled out in a rush. “When I remembered, I was still with Bea. I did love her, and she’ll always be special to me, but I couldn’t stop thinking about you, Babs. I remembered how we were before, and I compared it to how I was at the time. I was slowly, slowly getting back to how I was before the brain injury, but I realized I didn’t like who I was even before I got shot. I was a flake. I got too absorbed in myself to care about what was going on around me. I made stupid decisions and then refused to admit any responsibility or fault.”
Babs laughed. “Well, look at you, a new man already, taking responsibility and admitting fault at the same time.”
“I was dealing with a lot. I’m not trying to make excuses, but I had a lot on my plate. I was tortured to death, brought back to life, Bruce convinced me to fake my death, Damian was dead, then he wasn’t, everyone hated me for pretending to be dead, and then when I finally started to get things figured out, boom. Bullet to the brain.”
Babs opened her mouth, but Dick cut her off before she could say anything.
“I don’t like talking about it, and that’s all I’m going to say. Moving on. Anyway, I realized that I was not happy like that. I didn’t feel like myself. And I realized… I feel the most like myself when I’m with you.” He kept his gaze on hers expectantly.
“Dick- I-“ she started, but she couldn’t choose what to say. After a breath, she tried again. “This isn’t going to be nearly as sweet and sappy as what you just said, but thank you, everything you said means a lot. Wow. I-” She had to take a break to get her voice under control and to quickly blink her teary eyes. She was smiling now. She kept trying to bring her lips together to push it away, but it was hopeless.
“When I’m with you, I feel content. Like, right now, I’m thinking, how long has it been since I felt so at peace, and so happy with my life? And I realized, oh, it’s actually been this way a lot recently. The last time I felt this was actually last week, when we were tracking Mudman through the sewers together and you kept squealing whenever you saw a rat. Even the most disgusting thing is good if you’re there.”
Babs didn’t feel dumb about smiling anymore, because Dick had an equally corny grin on his face. He shifted closer and put his head on Babs’s pillow. “I love you,” he whispered.
Babs tangled her legs with his and brought up an arm to twist his hair with her fingers. “Let’s get engaged. Again,” she said.
“Barbara Gordon, did you just propose to me? In your pajamas?”
“So what if I did, Hunk Wonder?”
“Well,” he said with a sly grin and scooted closer to her under the covers. “I’m not complaining, if it gets me promoted to Hunk Wonder. I’ll be the perfect trophy husband. When you get elected president, everyone will say I’m the handsomest first man the nation has ever seen.”
“Is that a yes? We’re not even dating,” she pointed out.
Dick got serious again as he said, “Babs, I don’t need to date you again to know that I’m 100% certain. You’re my best friend, isn’t that what everyone says? You should marry your best friend? Plus, it helps that every time I see you, I want to sweep you off your feet like in some sappy romance movie and kiss you.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Do it then, you coward.”
Later, as Dick’s heartbeat and his arms around her lulled her to sleep, Babs let go of her longing for the past and was carried off by dreams of the future.