The Violet Vela Files: Batman Fan-Fiction @violetvelafiles - Tumblr Blog

FIC PREVIEW: "If You Kill Me, He'll Never Love You"

In 1999, someone killed the Joker with a crowbar. GCPD found fingerprints. Jason Todd, born 1980.

In 2005, someone killed Jonathan Crane with his own fear gas. GCPD found nothing. The door was open. He was smiling.

Batman is looking for a ghost called Crow. He's not going to like what he finds — not because of who Crow is, but because of what Gotham became after the Joker died. Dr. Harleen Quinzel Dent sends her regards."

(In this chapter, Jason is 16, Dick is 18, and Barbara is 19)

CHAPTER 3

RAIN DATE

August 23, 1996

"I received a mailer last week from the Columbia House Music Club offering twelve compact discs for the price of one. My teenage son tells me this is how music works now. You get twelve albums for a penny and then spend the rest of your adult life dodging a bill collector in Indiana. He has forty CDs and no shelves. His mother has a Visa statement and no answers. I'm told this is capitalism."

— Ted Delaney, "From Delaney's Desk," Gotham Gazette, August 22, 1996

Pearl Jam's fourth studio album, No Code, released Tuesday, marks a quieter and more inward turn for a band that has spent the last five years uncomfortable with its own stardom. Frontman Eddie Vedder has described the new songs as "personal in a way the others weren't," and early reviewers have singled out "Off He Goes," a ballad about a friend who disappears for long stretches and returns a stranger. "He'll come back someday," the chorus promises, though the song itself is not convinced.

— Clark Kent, "No Code Signals Quieter Direction for Pearl Jam," Gotham Gazette, August 28, 1996

"Ms. Gordon arrived for an engagement with Master Dick that appears to have been miscalendared. She'd rather not go home just yet, and I thought perhaps you might not mind the company of your friend."

Miscalendared. It was a great term. Alfred always had the best terms. He didn’t do what Bruce did, which was know exactly what happened and say something else. Bruce would’ve said: Dick unfortunately couldn’t make it tonight, his other obligations came up. Technically true. Also not at all what had happened.

Whereas Alfred’s truths were always served the way he made a PB&J sandwich: warmly toasted and trimmed crusts. We all know what happened here, so why say it? No need to embarrass anyone involved.

The truth, as Jason could infer, was this: Barbara’s “on and off” relationship with Dick had shifted back into the “on” phase, except Dick had miscalendared her, so maybe it was “off”? Her expression certainly said so. She walked into Jason’s room with the air of a college sophomore forced to hang out with a high school junior because her college freshman boyfriend had stood her up, probably because that’s exactly what had happened.

“Hey Barbara. Honored to be your last resort.” Jason looked up from his desk, vaguely amused. He was working on his latest drawings, alternating between pencil and ink work. It was one of those quiet nights in late August where the summer starts packing up and getting ready for fall. The broiling and humid daytime weather finally gave way to some rain, the first time in weeks Gotham had gotten any precipitation. Seemed like a good night to stay in, listen to music, and mess around with his art.

Barbara sat on the floor at the foot of his bed, mostly because Jason didn’t have anywhere else in his room she could sit. She had a scrunchie in hand and started to pull her hair through it, then seemed to second-guess that and slipped it back on her wrist. Jason didn’t know whether he was reading too much into it, but it almost felt like Barbara decided a ponytail meant giving up on salvaging the busted evening, and decided against it.

She looked up at him from her position on the floor, hugging her knees to her chest. She let his comment pass, instead firing back with her own question: “What is this mix tape you’re listening to?”

“Alice in Chains.”

“Yeah, but you… recorded like the middle 30 seconds of “Would” and stitched it back to back. To back. Is this whole mix tape just two hours of that?”

Jason’s eyes narrowed. He wasn’t used to girls knowing anything about Alice in Chains, let alone “the middle 30 seconds” of a particular song, and recognizing that it was being looped. It was even more of a sneak attack given Barbara was wearing an Alanis Morissette t-shirt underneath her gray Champion hoodie. Barbara had fired shots from a Venn diagram space of musical tastes that Jason didn’t even know could exist.

To answer Barbara’s question: no, the whole mixtape wasn’t two hours of Alice in Chains’s song “Would” recorded back to back. The mixtape was the song “Would,” from 1:07 when the first chorus finished, to 1:28 when the next verse picked up, recorded eight times in a row, for nearly three minutes. Then there were other songs, similarly butchered to extract their instrumental parts, made by a boy who thought his favorite songs had something to say even when no one was saying anything.

Jason didn’t say this, though; Barbara clearly thought he was weird for listening to this music, and nobody ever got out of being classified as weird by explaining why the weird thing wasn’t that weird at all. So instead, Jason did the thing that sixteen-year-old boys do when they have their feelings hurt, which was pretend they don’t have any feelings at all.

“Lot of books in the manor library, Barbara. Might find the music better there.”

And then Jason turned away from her, and ignored her.

Did Jason want to upset her? Get her angry so she’d just walk out of the room and leave him alone? Yeah, kind of, except Jason realized immediately how badly he had failed in that regard. He could see Barbara grinning through his peripheral vision; in other words, he was noticing her smile at the exact moment he was trying to act like she didn’t exist. And she was smiling because she knew he was failing to ignore her. She no longer looked like someone frustrated at being… miscalendared.

Somehow she had managed to trap him in a situation where even ignoring her meant giving her attention that amused her. The whole thing seemed unfairly circular. Is this what people meant when they called college girls ‘sophisticated’?

“Would” finally finished its eighth recording playthrough on the mixtape. The next song was “Fade to Black.” A beautiful and insane 1:28 intro, no weird looping required.

Barbara’s head bobbed with the drumbeat of “Fade to Black”; it took her a few moments to recognize the tune. Then she nodded to herself, as if her hypothesis behind the mixtape insanity was confirmed. “Come on Jason, don’t do that. This is, like, your drawing mixtape, right? You’re recording the instrumental parts, without lyrics? And looping them if they’re short?”

She was exactly right. Not that Jason heard. He was ignoring her.

* * *

“Jason. Look, I’ll leave if you want. But if I call my dad to pick me up right after he dropped me off, it’s going to be… annoying.”

Jason did kind of want Barbara to leave, but he didn’t want to kick her out. He gave up the ruse he was only interested in the 36 inches of space on his desk and set his pencil down. He shifted in his chair to face her again. “Why annoying?”

“Well, he’s going to be annoying about it. My dad.”

“Why, I thought he was cool with Batgirl?”

Barbara sighed, hugging her legs closer to her body. “No, it’s just… not a fan of me dating Dick. ‘That boy doesn’t know what he wants, he only calls you when he’s lonely, you’ll always come number two to Batman.’ He likes Dick, just doesn’t like the…”

Jason filled in the blank where Barbara trailed off. “‘On and off’ thing.”

Jason may have only been a rising high school junior, but he had lived with Dick long enough to see this pattern. Not just with Barbara; Dick could be ‘on and off’ about a lot of things. Dick always gave a hundred percent of himself to whoever needed him; the problem was that he gave it to whoever needed him most recently. Dick Grayson often set himself on fire to keep someone warm, and then struggled with other people in his life wanting more than ashes.

Barbara just let her chin drop onto her knees, which was all the answer Jason needed. She didn’t want to explain her problem, she just wanted to sit with someone who understood it. And Jason understood it well enough. He felt bad for Barbara, and more than a little annoyed towards Dick. Not because of how he made Barbara feel bad without intending to, but because of how much Dick’s behavior ended up reflecting on him. Maybe it’d make Barbara feel a little better if he spoke about that.

“Look, it’s fucked up. Because Dick does this with everyone. And Bruce has such a blind spot for it. If you let people down because ‘you’re trying too hard,’ that’s okay. But if you actually manage your, like, schedule – you’re selfish. ‘Gotham needs you, Jason. Basketball isn’t what’s important.’ I should’ve just done whatever bullshit he wanted, then bailed halfway through because ‘Gotham Prep basketball team needed me, and I had to step up.’ That’s what Dick does, and he never gets shit for it.”

Barbara got surprisingly pensive, recalling events in the past that now made more sense to her. “Oh, that’s why you… had that big fight?”

Jason rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Basketball tournament in North Hunterdon. If we advanced, which I think we would’ve, last game would’ve ended at 9pm. Long bus ride back and I don’t get back until 11pm. Too late to be useful for whatever Batman wanted to do that night. So I couldn’t go. Just got named starting varsity shooting guard, but it didn’t matter. So I’m Selfish Robin and Dick Grayson is the Boy Wonder.”

Barbara nearly giggled at the labels. “He’s not the Boy Wonder anymore, he’s Nightwing. As he never hesitates to remind us on patrols to use our handles and not real names. I thought it was a Bruce thing, but he only cares about being called ‘Batman.’ Bruce often calls me ‘Barbara’ over comms.”

Jason rolled his eyes, then sighed. It was the sigh of someone about to do Barbara a favor by explaining something that should’ve been explained by someone else a long time ago.

“So, look. One, Bruce thinks of himself as Batman. Like his actual identity is Batman, and Bruce is a CEO-shaped personality he slips into as an alter ego. His, like, inner monologue, he calls himself Batman.”

Barbara’s eyes grew wide at the revelation. “That makes so much sense now! Whenever he’s out in the field solo, but leaves comms on by accident, you can hear him: ‘c’mon Batman, let’s think about Nashton’s next move.’ So why’s Dick so much more of a stickler – wait, it’s because he picked the names, isn’t it? He picked ‘Robin’ and ‘Nightwing.’”

Jason snapped and pointed. “Exactly.” Batgirl was a fast learner. Jason and Barbara hadn’t talked much in this way, but Jason realized a lot of their conversations followed this pattern: Jason barely needed to explain things, and Barbara would easily fill in the blanks and wrap his conclusion up into something neater than Jason would’ve said anyway. Barbara was very smart in a way that suggested she was smart at everything. Like anything she didn’t know was never a function of comprehension; she just hadn’t gotten around to knowing it yet.

Jason continued, “He’s proud of the names he picked. He picked Robin, and he picked Nightwing, so of course he’s going to insist on those names. But unlike Bruce, he thinks it’s ‘unfair’ if he gets to call you Barbara but you can’t call him Dick. So it’s always ‘Batgirl’ and ‘Nightwing’ with him.”

Jason picked up his pencil, and tapped the paper he was using as his canvas.

“And Nightwing’s suit’s a fucking pain in the ass to draw, although not as bad as his stupid fucking haircut.”

Barbara was suddenly intrigued; she had no idea that Jason was drawing Dick. She unfurled from her spot on the floor and walked over to Jason’s desk. “You’re drawing Dick? As Nightwing?”

“Drawing all three of us, actually.”

Barbara stood behind Jason’s chair and peered over his shoulder. His desk wasn’t just a surface for a drawing but a project. He had so many drafts – pencil outlines, pencil and ink, ink and colored pencil. All working towards an illustration of all three of them, in their respective batsuits, in a fighting position – as if lifted from a comic panel, but a level of detail and style that went well beyond what you’d get from an actual comic.

"Jason." It came out before she had decided to say it, which is why he knew she meant it. "These are really good."

/ / /

1996Aug23.doc

Dick stood me up. Again. It’s so fucking embarrassing I really don’t want to talk about it. Actually, the really embarrassing part was letting Dad give me a ride. He hates this “on and off” shit with Dick. He specifically hates the “on to off” part, where I’m sobbing in my bedroom for a weekend because Dick’s decided “he’s too busy” and “maybe we need some space”, and how “he needs to focus on (being Nightwing, going to college, supporting Batman, assisting Alfred, or giving a shit about basically anything else but me).”

Dad also hates the “off to on” part, where I start acting like a giddy schoolgirl and think things are going to turn out any other way than back to “on to off.” So you can imagine, it’s raining, and a ride to Wayne Manor sounded pretty damn convenient. And I’m at those huge front doors – I always like to use the door knocker, those thundering booms are so much better than the doorbell – and Alfred appears. And he’s surprised to see me. First bad sign.

“Is Dick here?” I asked him. By the way, all we were supposed to do was watch a movie. I went into this eyes wide open, all our arguments about “high maintenance.” So if I was going to do this again with Dick, I’d have to be “low maintenance Barbara.” So that was it – I rent Trainspotting, I come over to his place, and we pretend to watch it for 20 minutes and start making out. And probably more than that, if he’s lucky, which he wouldn’t be, because being lucky would require him to ACTUALLY BE THERE, which he wasn’t.

So I’m literally standing there in the foyer of Wayne Manor on a rainy Friday night like a fucking dork, as Alfred informs me “I’m afraid Master Dick may have ‘miscalendared’ you.” And my Dad was still outside, but what was I going to do? Get back in his car, and say, “Thanks for the fifty minute ride to Wayne Manor, but never mind? My fucking flaky non-boyfriend I keep going back to, who pisses you off because he makes me look like a moron, fucking flaked again?” No, I wasn’t going to do that. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I wasn’t going to do that. I’d rather have Alfred offer to take my “unusually small backpack.” He always has the most biting remarks for young people’s fashion. Touche, Alfred, but it’s easy to say when you just wear formalwear.

Anyway, so he says I’m welcome to wait, but he said in that Alfred way, like, [you may be waiting awhile]. As in, Dick’s out with Bruce, doing bat-buddy teamwork ops, and I probably shouldn’t wait up. And… of course he’s doing that, right? Because now I can’t be mad. We talked on the phone earlier this week, we made plans THIS FRIDAY, which I know, because I wrote it in my red planner, which has the columns for Saturday and Sunday on the left side, and Friday is the last day on the right. So it’s right fucking there, DICK @ MANOR, 9:00PM. But he’s going to say he thought it was Saturday, and then I’ll say no, it was Friday, and he’ll say, “well I wasn’t free Friday, I had to help Batman.”

He’d fucking say it like that too, like I don’t know Batman is Bruce, like it’s some special secret they think they’re all keeping. My dad has known Batman is Bruce Wayne since the fucking Reagan administration. I probably knew who Batman was before Dick did. So yeah, he can’t just say “I wanted to help Bruce,” or even “Bruce wanted me,” which would at least imply a level of selfish agency and candor he would have to apologize for, or at least feel bad about. No, it’ll be “I had to help Batman.” Again, my dad “has to help” Batman all the time, and still manages not to be an inconsiderate flake. Usually.

Look, I should be honest that the night didn’t totally suck, because of Jason Todd, of all people. I barely talk about him, since he’s just… there, sometimes? Well, Robin is there sometimes. Jason is never there.

I know he argues a lot with Bruce, and I think he’s just not a great fit for “Robin” the way Dick was. Or maybe he’s pissed he had to inherit Robin? He got to make some changes to the suit, there’s no more green, and it’s more of a tunic than the tights-and-speedo look Dick had. But I can tell he just thinks Robin suit isn’t what he’d wear if he got the chance, and he thinks the name “Robin” itself is “gay.” That’s kind of why I gave him a wide berth – I spent too many years around stupid high school boys, I don’t think I missed that in my life.

But, yeah, Jason’s kind of cool? Okay, so get this. He draws. Like, he’s a really good artist. Pencil, ink, colored pencils. It’s still teenage guy stuff, like comic-style drawing, but he’s good. He puts a lot of work into it. I mean he’s sixteen, I think? And he’s spending his Friday night drawing and listening to music. I don’t know, definitely more of a thoughtful kid than I thought.

Oh, and the music. So he knows a lot about music, but his tastes are insane. It’s not just heavy, hard rock – lot of guys like that. But he makes mixtapes that are like, the “Fade to Black” intro, then either solo Ozzy, but probably Black Sabbath since the recording quality sucked ass. Then the outro to “Black” (Pearl Jam), and then the last quarter of “November Rain” (admittedly the only actually good part of the 9 minute song), and then, like, the entire track of “Immigrant Song.”

This is his mix tape. I shit you not. He’s drawing these beautiful comic panels of us and listening to this insanity. And he’s totally unapologetic about it. “It was already on the tape, it’s only two minutes long, and it kicks ass.”

And honestly? Respect? Like, Jason actually loves rock music. Whereas most guys I’ve met fall into two camps: guys (and they are mostly guys) who like playing rock music, and guys who were rock music experts. The Band Guys didn’t actually listen to that much music. But the Experts didn’t love rock music – they basically spend $17 on a CD so they could structurally critique why the band sucked, and explain why Gavin Rossdale is structurally identical to Eddie Vedder, and thus a sellout. Maybe don’t buy his fucking $17 CD then, man?

But I can tell Jason actually just likes rock music, because the bands and songs he likes, he described in terms of feeling. The songs helped him “concentrate,” or let him “zone out,” or “pumped him up,” or just “kicked ass.” That’s it, he listens to music to feel things, and – I don’t know, I guess we all do that? It was cute when he said it, though. Like he’s some precocious 13 year old, but he’s 16, so I guess not that precocious. You know what I mean. No you don’t. It doesn’t matter.

So the way Jason works, I think, is that he gets a pencil outline draft, then he makes like fifteen Xerox copies (side note: why does Bruce Wayne having a single Xerox commercial copier in his mansion seem more extravagantly wealthy than his fleet of cars?) then plays around with different inks and colored pencils. And he’s explaining why he hates drawing Dick’s hair, and showing me like four drafts where he’s tried to ink it in. “He’s had the same preppy side part since forever. Always looks like I’m drawing a helmet of his own hair, like he’s a Ken doll.”

And yeah, I laughed. Because it kind of did that way? But Dick does have Ken doll hair, kind of? It’s dark, so it doesn’t immediately come to mind. It’s just, like, the haircut every boy has in their school picture with the lasers in the background. I shouldn’t say that, I’m not going to do that thing where I’m mad at him and pretend he’s not even good looking. Sorry Dick. He should get a new haircut though.

* * *

I noticed Robin’s haircut wasn’t Jason’s actual haircut (which is called a Caesar cut, I think? It’s kind of like George Clooney’s haircut on that ER show). And he tells me he’s “going for a Simon Phoenix look.” Kind of like, a short mohawk flattop?

And I go, “From Demolition Man?” And he literally stops drawing and just… looks at me? There’s a look that guys get when a girl says something they thought was Exclusively Male, like they just reformatted whatever opinion they had of you. Even worse if it’s an opinion and not just familiarity. Remember Sean, on my floor, last year? I thought he was cute, he clearly only had a passing interest in me, then I said, “Celes was a better character than Terra” and we hooked up the week before the semester ended. Wonder if I’ll see him when classes start again. He was cute.

I think that’s what bothers me the most about being “off and on” with Dick – I’m almost positive that he doesn’t think guys like Sean exist. Maybe I should figure out a way for Dick to realize they do exist. Feel like he might not be as eager to switch “off,” if he knew.

But yeah, Jason’s giving me kind of that same look Sean did. He did that a couple times tonight, actually, like when he seemed blown away I recognized songs by “Alice in Chains.” The “wait I need to recompile you” part, not the hooking up part. Obviously.

I mean, is it that unusual I’d remember Simon Phoenix? I definitely remember seeing the movie junior year of high school. My dad suggested we go to the Sony Theatres, then bitched about the price, then the teller insisted that I had to be over seventeen (despite probably being younger than me), my dad pulled out his badge and asked to talk to the manager, and I mostly just stood there and tried to disappear, or at least be invisible to anyone from school that might be around. So, I tell him, yeah, I remember Demolition Man.

Then I kind of smiled and asked, “You going to get that haircut?”

And Jason smirked, and said, “Can’t go to a barber and say ‘give me the Simon Phoenix cut.’”

“Right, you’d need to go to a hairdresser.”

“Walk into a salon and tell a woman, ‘give me a ‘Simon Phoenix’?”

Look, I want to be clear: Jason was not interesting only because he was this juxtaposition against Dick. But it was interesting to see, like, how they both had been socialized. Like Alfred’s Wayne Manor Manners for Wards apparently covered tying a Windsor knot or opening champagne silently, but didn’t cover “men go to hairdressers.” Even though, as I told him:

“Men work at salons, Jason. It's not a sorority. Where do you think Bruce gets his haircut? $11 at Supercuts?”

“Probably goes to some fancy barbershop for billionaires?”

“Yeah, those are called salons. Ask Bruce where he goes for his haircut. Just go there and bring a picture of Wesley Snipes. They’ll probably do it for like, $40.”

Jason was skeptical. “No way, that won’t work. One, he’ll freak out if I get that haircut. Two, I’ll get the barber he goes to in trouble. Three, I’m sure Dick told you about our monthly allowance, stipend, whatever. And I get less than him, so you know I can’t get a $40 haircut.”

It’s true. I don’t know the exact details of how their “allowance” works, because it’s intentionally fluid. Almost everything expensive and important for a teenager is paid for, and everything a teenager would actually want to buy was not, and Bruce had an annoying tendency to shift items from Column One to Column Two when he doesn’t approve. Jason was basically saying the $11 Caesar cut is free; the $40 Simon Phoenix cut would not be. Which, fair enough.

I noticed on one of his Robin With Simon Phoenix Hair drafts, it looked like he had a patch over his eye. Thought he was going for an “Escape from LA” look; he said no, just an ink stain. He uses this cool pen for inking; you have to literally dip it in ink, like you’re Teddy Roosevelt writing a memoir. Anyway, so he actually wipes his pen, grabs the draft with the ink stain, and sort of spreads the ink so that it does look like an actual eyepatch.

Robin with that haircut and eyepatch looked… kind of sick? I mean, I can’t really talk about suits, given I got my vigilante career started by buying a costume and stalking Batman and Dick around. But this was a cool Robin. I actually really like the Nightwing suit, it looks so sleek and polished, but it looks flat in illustrations, and I don’t think Jason was doing that on purpose (Why would he? I’m the one mad at Dick, not him!). Nightwing just looks hard to draw as anything besides a surfing wetsuit with an upside down blue chevron.

Anyway, finally his weird-ass mixtape hit the end of side A. Jason stood up to flip the cassette in his stereo, and I literally grabbed his hand, and go, “Wait.” And then he gave me another look, but this was… I don’t know. He wasn’t used to his hand touching a girl’s hand. That’s the best way I can describe it. Which is surprising, he’s not bad looking? I would’ve thought he was cute in high school, probably.

And then he goes, “What?”

And I ask, “Can we please listen to a normal album? Just, like, the actual album from an artist?”

And that eyeroll… I did not expect that. He had seemed a little… I’m not going to say “intimidated,” I don’t think that much of myself, but he was definitely standoffish. Aloof? But that eyeroll, like, why is this fucking random girl here who doesn’t GET IT, she doesn’t get MY MUSIC… I don’t know. I literally didn’t have a preference for what band or what album. I just, literally, could not listen any longer to these “tracks” that were like the first 15 seconds of “Bullets With Butterfly Wings” looped fourteen times in a row. And his ridiculous look of annoyance was so sincere it was almost cute. And then it got even funnier.

“Fine, whatever.” And then he… get this. He spins around this huge lazy susan caddy, pulls out the Alanis CD. Which he apparently owns. He had over 100 albums. I’m guessing CDs were part of Column One.

“We don’t have to listen to Alanis.”

“Well, I don’t know what music you like, but you’re wearing her concert t-shirt, so you must like her.”

Then – I don’t know why I said this. But I go, “Okay, play something you like, that you think I’d like.”

I don’t know what I was expecting, but – he spins the caddy, pulls out “Live Through This,” by Courtney Love’s band. Hole. And he just shows me the jewel case, like, is this sufficient for your auditory pleasure, your highness? No words. His eyebrows asked the question.

And I just nodded, well selected, my vassal, and he… put the jewel case back. Didn’t take out the CD. It was already in his stereo. He pressed some buttons, and we’re listening to Hole.

That column in his caddy with “Live Through This,” it was like his “girl rock” section? L7, No Doubt, Garbage, Fiona Apple, Cranberries.

So he sits back down and gets back to drawing. And then goes, “Sorry I don’t have ‘Celine Dion.’” He was practically sneering.

I don’t know, the way he said it. It was hilarious. I just started laughing. Then he did too. I interrupted his weird abstract instrumental rock tracks mixtape, and he was mad enough to accuse me of liking Celine Dion, and – I don’t know. You had to be there. The way he said “Celine Dion” – I can’t explain it. He really thought he dissed me there. Although, he kind of did? I think so. I think I got dissed by a high school kid. That’s why it was so funny.

* * *

So he had the CD on shuffle, which would’ve been fine except “Live Through This” is like six amazing tracks and then a bunch of filler. I started to mess around with the buttons on his stereo, which I couldn’t figure out, not that I had much time because it was three seconds before he got annoyed again. He was definitely going to accuse me of liking Dave Matthews Band (guilty, alas) if I didn’t stop distracting him.

“Can I help you.” Pure deadpan. But not aggravated. I don’t know how to explain how he sounded.

Actually, let’s just be honest, I can’t explain how Jason sounded, but I’m pretty sure I can explain how he was feeling. He didn’t like that I thought his mixtape was ‘weird.’ And yes, it was weird, but I meant it in the ‘creative/unusual’ way, but he thought I meant it in the ‘abnormally childish/juvenile’ way. And he was sensitive to that, so there was sort of this, oh look, college girl is going to tell me how to listen to my own music defiance.

“Can you play the tracks in order?”

“I will if you can tell me the name of the first track.” He was almost smiling now. This is what I mean, he was not upset at me, like mad I was there. Just this wounded pride over the mixtape.

“It’s the… fuck. ‘And the sky was made of amethyst…’ That’s track one.”

“Right, and – name of the track?”

I knew it wasn’t amethyst, because I used to think it was, until I looked at the liner notes and realized the song was actually called… fuck. For fuck’s sake. It was on the tip of my tongue. Then it came to me, or I thought it did: “Violent.”

“Violent? With an N?”

“Yeah. ‘I want to give the violent more violence.’”

He put his hands behind his head. Apparently I did not know the answer. “So close, Barbara.”

By this point I was leaning against his desk.

“Okay smart guy, what’s the answer?”

“Are you this bossy with Dick?”

"There's no point in being bossy with Dick. He just agrees with you and then does whatever he was going to do anyway."

"So what, there's nobody at college you can boss around? No guys there?"

Look, I’ll take some shit for insulting his mixtape, but – didn’t care for that comment. It really bothered me. Not because it was insulting on its face. But I wanted to like Jason, so I wanted him to stop saying things like that, or at least not be in the room if he was going to say things like that. “Hey Jason, it was good hanging out. I think I’m going to take off.”

He got sincere in a hurry. “No, it’s cool. Stay, really. If you want.” Then he unfurled himself out of his chair to adjust the stereo again. Track 1, no shuffle.

(By the way, I still don't know the track name, and I can’t find the jewel case – ugh, if Sarah threw it out that’s going to be so annoying – already used up my hours for the month for AOL so I can’t look it up there either.)

And the sky was made of amethyst…

I guess writing all this down is overwrought, but – I just want to remember this, because this is when he sat back down and started working on Batgirl. He shuffled his copies around, he had some drafts where I was already fully inked, but not colored. Can I just say: he made me look fucking amazing. I’m tall, but I’m not all legs – he got that right. More impressive was my jaw, of all things. Every time I’ve heard someone say, “you have a very ‘defined’ face,” I just hear “you’re a girl but have Jim Gordon’s mouth and chin,” but he actually got my jawline right, because mine isn't exactly like my dad's.

There are some days I look in the mirror and like what I’m seeing, and that’s how Jason drew me. That’s the best way I can put it.

So he starts coloring in my suit, but with… purple. Boots and gauntlets were still yellow, but he was filling in the suit with this shade of purple.

“Purple?” It was interesting, I wasn’t offended. But he must have thought I was.

“Come on, I’m not using hot pink. This isn’t even purple. This is…” he rotated the pencil to show me the name etched on the side. “Deep Amethyst.”

“Track 1 inspired you to draw purple Batgirl?”

“Yeah, I don’t know. Girl rock makes you listen.”

I’d write more about my time there, but we really didn’t talk that much more. I was there for awhile though; long enough to grab a chair from one of the other twenty-eight bedrooms in the mansion, long enough to stop caring if Dick would show up, and long enough so that I could reasonably call my dad. Alfred offered me a ride home, but I wasn’t going to make him drive all the way back to South Gotham in the rain.

It was just nice watching Jason work. He was so efficient. That was the most impressive part: no hesitation, very little erasure. Like the songs were telling him something, and he just listened.

That’s about it. I do know I put my hair up at some point. I guess I thought it’d help Jason with inking my eyes. Or maybe I was just feeling comfortable and knew I’d be staying for awhile. Haven't taken it down since, actually. Noticed that just now.

* * *

It’s not like I want to brag about this, but I’m a pretty good liar. Being good at lying is mostly just remembering the last lies you told; if you have a good memory, like I think I do, then it’s easy. Easier, at any rate.

The problem with having a detective for a father is he’s really good at pretending he believes your lies. It’s literally his job, right? He gets perps to start digging their tunnel of lies. They think they’ll eventually dig back out and get away, but all they’ve done is trap themselves a hundred feet underground with no light. Forget digging out; they can’t even remember the way they came. That’s what an interrogation with my dad is like.

And I’m stupid sometimes and I think I can beat him. But that’s only because sometimes he doesn’t care enough to make me dig. Like when I tell him I’m hanging out with Shannon, when I’m actually going with Shannon to a bar with some friends in my infosci class and using a fake ID; that sort of thing. Shannon? Great, tell her I said hi. I think I “outsmarted my dad,” but really, he just decided it wasn’t worth tempting me to dig the tunnel.

So I came really close on the car ride home. I mean, I lied to him and said I had a good time with Dick. And we’re just making conversation, or so I thought, but I realize he’s making me build on this lie about seeing Dick tonight. I didn’t know how he could fucking know! But he knew. Wasn’t going to get trapped in the tunnel to nowhere, so I told him. Yeah, your daughter is a big stupid fucking idiot that got stood up by Dick Grayson. Again. Please proceed for the next thirty-five minutes of lecture.

But he just said, “Thanks for being honest. He left you a message on your answering machine, about an hour after I got back. He’s really sorry he got the date wrong, apparently. Really sorry and really hopes you’ll call him back tomorrow.” Then he rolled his eyes so hard, it practically lifted his glasses off his nose.

(Do I even need to explain the irony that Dick, trying to at least be polite enough to leave a message apologizing for flaking out, almost got me in more trouble with my dad, than if he just didn’t contact me at all tonight?)

So Dad asks me what I actually did at Wayne Manor. He obviously realized I was too embarrassed to call him, thought maybe I read books in the library or something. Told him I hung out with Jason. And he goes, “Oh, Jason. I like that kid. Good kid.”

Then: “He’s good police.”

“Really? Kind of rough around the edges.”

“Yeah, but those are the best police.”

I don’t know why I’m writing this part – I just know it’s a very flattering thing for my dad to say about him. He’ll say that about people that have nothing to do with law enforcement. “Good police.” “Alfred’s good police.” I don’t even know what the fuck it means, I just know that my dad doesn’t say it about many people. I don’t think I’ve ever heard my dad say it about a teenager before. Definitely not any of my guy friends. (By the way, you can’t be a woman and ‘good police.’ He has nothing but good things to say about Sarah’s career, but I’ve never heard him call her ‘good police.’)

Dick is not “good police,” for what it’s worth, but we knew that already.

Anyway, I guess I’m writing this down because it was nice of my dad to say, and I guess I want to remember it? To tell Jason next time I see him. Whenever that is. Not like I plan to hang out with a high school kid again any time soon. But as far as high school kids, he’s more interesting than most, and not just because he’s Robin. He’s “good police.” I think he’d like hearing that.

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The Violet Vela Files: Batman Fan-Fiction