April 23
Mood: Apprehensive with a little twist of excitement
Music: "Mad World" - Gary Jules
So, early this morning the phone rings. Mom's on the other end of the line.
"Jessie?"
"Hi, Kate...er, mom."
"You can still call me Kate if it's easier, Jessie. How are you feeling?"
"Much better. That plate they put in feels weird - it's like one side of my face is heavier than the other. I know it doesn't weigh enough to really feel it, but it feels heavier all the same."
"It'll pass - you just need to stop thinking about it. Sorry I didn't wake you when I took you home from the hospital - you were sleeping really deeply, and I couldn't bear to wake you. You found that note Barbara wrote for you, though?"
"Yep. And I've been taking my painkillers like a good girl. I'm getting antsy now, though. She was supposed to call me."
Kate chuckles softly. "She will, sweetie - she's a little busy right now."
I perk up at that. "With what? Could I help?"
"She'll call you when she's ready for you, I promise. I just wanted to check up on you - and to tell you how proud I am of you. Between getting in with the Bloodrain and that fight, you handled yourself really well."
"Yeah, I guess I did alright - I mean, it wasn't quite as cool as pulling a knife out of my own heart to stab someone, but still..."
"Renee told you that story, did she? Did she mention the part where I nearly died?"
"Yep - it's still pretty cool, though."
Kate laughs. "I'm glad you think so. Anyway, Jessie, I'll let you go - I just wanted to call and check up on you."
"In a hurry?" I tease. "Off to a hot date?"
"God, I wish. Off to another high society gathering - one of three this week. These people bore the hell out of me, but I've got to at least make an appearance."
"Well, try to have a little fun, anyway - spike the punch or something."
"Not a bad idea...I'll talk to you later, okay?"
"Alrighty - bye for now, mom."
There's a soft click as she hangs up, and I get up with a languid stretch and hop into the shower - it's been a couple days, and I'm starting to get a little ripe. With a look of regret at the lovely skirt that was singed in the fight at the Tribune, I slide into a pair of black low-rise jeans and an old t-shirt. I waste a good half-hour straightening my hair, and make a half-hearted effort to do some long-overdue dusting, but the boredom I've been trying to fend off finally hits. I grab the necklace and earring from Oracle and hit the toggle on the necklace.
"Oracle, this is Scorpion." I really need a better name.
There's a long silence before she replies. <<"I copy, Scorpion. What's up?">>
"I'm bored. I was going to wait for you to call, but I've done everything I can do around here and I was really hoping I could come by and you could show me what you've dug up."
<<"Um...yeah, okay. Just give me a half-hour or so to finish up a few things. I'll leave the door open for you.">>
"Sounds good - see you in a bit." I toggle the necklace off with a grin. When in doubt, be proactive!
I give her an extra fifteen minutes before I let my feet retrace years-old steps and enter her hideaway in the clock tower. The beam of light that passes through me doesn't surprise me this time. I must still be me, because Barbara comes out of the shadows with a smile - she's in a manual chair this time, and just as heart-stoppingly pretty as she was the first time I met her.
"Come on in," she points to her left. "There's a kitchen over there if you'd like a coffee or some water or anything."
"I'm good, I think - can I get you anything, though?"
"No thanks. Shall we get right to it, then?" She's keeping things very business-like, and for the moment I go along with it.
"Sounds good." She wheels herself over to a bank of computers and gestures to an empty chair beside her.
"So, after our discussion with Mr. London the other day, I tapped into the city's traffic cameras. As it turns out, one of them has a perfect view of his drop point. Even luckier, they keep months' worth of video on their servers in case people take traffic tickets to court. So I did some searching and found this." She reaches out and taps a key, and the screen flickers to life. There's a soundless video of London retrieving a package from the mailbox.
"Then, I did a little bit of wizardry and had the computer search back through the video for that same package. And..." she taps another key. "Viola!" Another video plays - this one is of a tall man in a long jacket carrying the package that London retrieved. He's utterly composed - he walks up, slides the package in and walks away, never looking back.
"Who is he?"
"That I don't know. But I did some image searching, and found him in two pictures. Both of them," her fingers danced across the keyboard, "show him in the entourage of the vice president."
"The vice president of what?"
She stares at me. After a too-long minute, my brain catches up. "What...you mean the Vice President? Of the United States? Mrs. Straight and Narrow? You're joking."
"I'm afraid not." The pictures appear on the screen, and there's no denying them.
I run my hands through my hair. "You're saying the fucking government is involved in this?"
"Not necessarily. All we know is that he knows the vp. The vp might not know what he's up to in his other life."
"But if she does know...then even the president might be involved..."
"Easy, Jessie - don't start plotting assassinations just yet. We need to take things one step at a time."
"Fine - what's step one?"
"I get you to call the vice president's office, ask her secretary about the people in these photos. If you're up for working together, I mean."
"Of course - yeah. I..." I heave a sigh. "Okay, one of us needs to point out the elephant in the room. Can we talk about what happened two years ago?"
She does her best impression of a deer in the headlights, but recovers quickly. "Sure. Uh...there's a living room over that way. It'd be more comfortable than talking in here."
I follow as she navigates her chair through the maze of high-tech gadgetry and into the living room before easing herself out of the chair and onto the couch. The only other seat in the room is a reclining chair with a horribly dated pattern. I give it - and her - an appraising look before I sit down.
"I know what you're thinking," she says with a ghost of a smile. "And no, I didn't pick that out - it's for when the Birds are here - Huntress likes it." She exhales loudly. "Okay, I-"
"Can-" we're talking over each other. I let her go first.
"I want to say how sorry I am, Jessie. It was...what I did was terrible. But you have to understand how hard it was for me to see you shot. You know my story, right? How I ended up in this chair?" I nod. "It was like seeing myself get shot all over again. I didn't sleep for weeks after that night. When you..." she's tearing up, "it was just too much."
"I understand all that," I know I can never really understand it, but it's all I can think to say. "But why did you cut me out so completely?"
"I don't know," she admits miserably. "I thought...there was someone hunting me, and they had some way of knowing where I'd be that night. If either of the two guys from the restaurant ID'd you to their employer, and we were in the same place again - I couldn't bear the thought of anything happening to you because of me."
"And you couldn't have...hell, I don't know...called me on the phone? Told me why? Instead of just freezing me out?"
She's crying now, the tears sliding down her alabaster cheeks, magnifying the dusting of freckles there. "I could have. I should have. I just...for the first time in a very long time, I couldn't decide what the right thing to do was. I hadn't felt like that since I made the decision to become Oracle. It was like," she stifles a quiet sob, "it was like I was frozen inside. I wanted to call you, I wanted to tell you, but I couldn't decide if that was what was best. So I did nothing. I holed up here and didn't do anything. And then the summer went by and you vanished off the face of the earth and I thought I'd never have a chance to tell you I was sorry," she's nearly hyperventilating now, and I cross the infinite space between us to take a seat beside her on the couch and encircle her with my arms.
She leans into me, and the scent of her is almost overwhelming - strawberries and vanilla. I sit quietly with her, lost in thought, running a comforting hand up and down her back. After a few silent minutes, she pulls back and looks me in the eye.
"Can you forgive me?" her eyes are rimmed red, and the sad, lost note in her voice just shuts down any answer but the one I give her.
"Of course." I hug her again, and whisper teasingly in her ear. "But only if you'll go out with me again."
Yes, yes, future readers - I can hear you asking now. ‘How could you just forgive her? Don't you know you're just setting yourself up to get your heart broken again?' And the answers are 1.) Because she's gorgeous, and 2.) Yes. Now quit asking silly questions and just keep reading, yeah? Great.
She smiles a bit, her warm lips moving softly against my neck as she replies. "Of course. But no jumping in front of bullets this time, okay? At least, not without armour."
"I should hope not. Did you ever find out who those guys were working for? Or how they knew you'd be there?"
She pulls away again, settling back against the couch. "No - on both counts. The two guys disappeared in transit to the police station, so nobody I trusted ever got a chance to interrogate them."
"Interesting coincidence that they'd end up being transported by a couple of crooked cops."
"Well, yes and no. Dad wasn't working that night, so that didn't help. I don't think we can jump to the conclusion that they're connected with everything else, though - there are a lot of crooked cops in Gotham, and these two guys might have just paid well."
Her cool rationalism grates a bit. "So you don't think it's at all possible that the cops in question were mixed up in this whole thing?"
"Oh, of course it's possible," she says soothingly, "but there's no proof either way. The report, the one that would have had the names of the cops transporting them, vanished and was never entered into the computer. So we're at a bit of a dead end on that front." She rubs her eyes with the back of her hand. "Now - are you ready to be an adoring fan of the Vice President?"
"OMG!" I exclaim in my best teenage girl voice, "she's, like, so great! She's such a maverick! And she tolerates my lifestyle, which is like, so nifty!"
Barbara laughs loudly. "Sounds about right." She moves from the couch into her chair and wheels herself back to the computer. "I'll get you print copies of those pictures with the dates they were taken. You might as well call now while I do that, ‘cause I'm sure you'll be on hold for a while."
She's just returning with the photos as I get transferred to the vp's secretary. "Hi!" I nearly squeal, "this is, like, so exciting! Like I was telling the, uh, switchboard girl, I'm, like, totally doing this article on the Vice President for the school paper, and I wanted to run these two pics with it..."
A half-hour later, with a migraine looming and a sore throat from continuous use of that stupid voice, I hang up and hand Barbara the pictures back, with annotations. "There we go," I whisper hoarsely, "got him. The name doesn't sound familiar, though."
She runs it through the computer, and it comes back with a single match. "Well, that's interesting. He's a Kazakh national."
"Kazakh?" my lack of university education is showing, and I blush a deep red. She pretends not to notice.
"From Kazakhstan - one of the breakaways from the Soviet Union. Although it sounds like our Mr. Ivanovich still has some ties to the mother country."
"How so?" I've taken a seat beside her, and she favours me with a smile as she keeps typing.
"Well, he's former KGB, for one. For another, there are a few open FBI investigations into the Russian mafiya that have his name featured prominently."
"You hacked the FBI?"
She gives me a haughty look. "Please - I hacked the FBI during my first year as Oracle. I pop in and out at will now."
"Huh. So, any idea where we can find this guy?"
I watch in awe as her fingers dance over the keyboard - the multiple monitors seem to fade as the display struggles to keep up. Her tongue peeks out from between her lips, and I fight the urge to lean over and meet it with my own. Her glasses are sliding down her nose, but she doesn't even notice - she just keeps working. Suddenly the computer beeps and her gaze snaps up to the central monitor. "There!" she exclaims. "He bought a first-class plane ticket to Moscow last night. He's already left the country."
I'm just about to curse when she turns to look at me. "How do you feel about joining me on a trip to Russia? I've got just the plane - and a hell of a flight crew."
That was yesterday - there's a bit more to tell, but I'm in the middle of frantically packing, so I'll fill you in on the rest either on the plane or once we've landed. In the meantime, feel free to visit the concession! Oh, and the gift shop - don't forget your full-colour program and DVD!
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