Endless Legacy Ch. 41 (DC Comics) (Patreon)

A/N: Oracle POV!

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There was always something, wasn’t there? The thought brings an involuntary rueful smile to Barbara Gordon’s face as she sits in her wheelchair in front of a rather large bank of monitors, eyes darting back and forth across the screens.

Once upon a time, Barbara had been the original Batgirl. A crime-fighting sidekick who took to the streets of Gotham to try and clean them up right alongside the legendary Batman himself. It had been her, Dick, and Bruce back then near the start. Just the three of them, with her and Dick far too young for the life they’d led, but unable to stop anyways.

Even all these years later, Barbara didn’t blame Bruce for any of it. Not letting them fight crime, nor supplying them with the gear and resources to do it. If not for him, they would have done something anyways… and probably wound up far worse for it. Watching his parents die had changed Dick irrevocably and her… well, she grew up as Jim Gordon’s daughter, seeing how the city of Gotham constantly beat her father down, only for him to get right back up again and keep on taking punches.

How could she do anything less in the face of her father’s obstinance? How could she sit still and be the good girl who got straight A’s and never got in trouble at school, while everything went to shit around her?

What she and Dick had become wasn’t Bruce’s fault. Gotham had a way of taking its best and brightest, chewing them up, and if they were lucky, spitting them back out. Always had.

These days, Barbara Gordon wasn’t Batgirl anymore. She hadn’t been for a long time, on account of her confinement to a wheelchair at the hands of the Joker. Shot in the spine, she’d been paraplegic for years at this point. But that didn’t mean she was out of the fight. Refusing to succumb to despair, Barbara had taken her fate into her own hands just like she always did. She’d reforged herself as The Oracle, going from crimefighter on the streets to the Gal in the Chair.

Using her skills with computers, she’d built up a worldwide information network that put most to shame. She used it to help other superheroes across the planet with their work, providing some of the best intelligence anyone on Earth could ask for, as well as the coordination and organization that so many superheroes, even those who were part of the Justice League, lacked.

As Oracle, her work took her outside of Gotham City in a way that being Batgirl never had. She was literally monitoring multiple things at a time across the face of the entire planet. But Gotham was still her city, in the same way that the Gotham Clock Tower was her residence and the secret lair of Oracle.

From Gotham Clock Tower, she could keep a bird’s eye view of the entire city, providing the more mobile members of the ‘Bat Family’ as some called it with up to date information. Of course, as much as Barbara loved Bruce and all of the others, there were times when she couldn’t rely on them. Times when it felt like because she didn’t wear a bat-themed cowl anymore, she was separate from the group.

This wasn’t entirely a bad thing, and in fact it was partially by Barbara’s own design. She wasn’t a teenage vigilante with a chip on her shoulder anymore. Now she was a grown adult woman with a chip on her shoulder. As much as she would always love and respect Bruce and the others, she had to be her own person, her own entity.

Unfortunately, being confined to a wheelchair made that a little harder. Everyone always tended to assume her paralysis made her less of a person, that because she was disabled, she needed help with every little thing. Yes, she was confined to a wheelchair, but that didn’t mean her intellect had been diminished in any way. And she certainly didn’t need minding.

That was where the Birds of Prey came in. An all-female team of superheroes, the Birds of Prey had had a few roster shifts at this point, though the main three remained. Her, the founder of the group, alongside Dinah Lance and Helena Bertinelli, the Black Canary and Huntress respectively.

Neither woman got along with Batman very well. Neither could be called part of the ‘Bat Family’. But they were nevertheless Barbara’s family these days, the people that Barbara could call on with the most certainty that they would drop everything to help her. They were her hands, her boots on the ground so to speak, even as she was their eye in the sky.

That did not, of course, mean that she had stopped working with Bruce in any way, however. Regardless of them maybe drifting apart, Oracle was still happy to play overwatch for Batman and the other members of the Bat Family whenever necessary. As well, she was happy to take on tasks for Bruce whenever he needed an extra pair of eyes and hands on a more… delicate matter.

All of that said, she was somewhat regretting taking on this latest request of his. Mostly because… she hated false hope. She hated it with a burning passion. And this latest situation positively reeked of false hope.

Something that Barbara and Bruce unequivocally agreed on was the simple truth that Lex Luthor and LexCorp needed to be kept out of Gotham City at all costs. Things were bad enough here without the baseline man who constantly went toe to toe with Superman coming in and mucking things up.

Wayne Enterprises and LexCorp were bitter business rivals by nature of course, fighting a constant economic war between their two businesses as well as subsidiaries and proxies galore. Unfortunately for Luthor, during one of his ‘incidents’, Wayne Enterprises had managed to extend itself into the city of Metropolis, LexCorp’s main turf.

This had of course pissed Lex Luthor off, and ever since he’d been trying to push back. He couldn’t manage to pry Wayne Enterprises out of Metropolis, because by the time he’d righted his own ship and cleaned up his latest mess it was too late to do so. However, the megalomaniac of a businessman had deemed it suiting and fitting that if Wayne Enterprises got to carve out a piece of Metropolis, then he should get to do the same with Gotham.

Nobody wanted that except for Lex Luthor. Gotham City was volatile enough without him bringing his particular brand of insanity and inexplicable hatred for Superman into the mix. As such, he’d been stymied every step of the way so far. For a time, it had even looked like he might be finally giving up. There hadn’t been a single mention of LexCorp trying to shove its way into Gotham in months. Beyond the handful of pieces of real estate they’d managed to get their dirty paws on but failed to renovate due to Wayne Enterprises’ stonewalling, LexCorp had no business in Gotham City whatsoever.

… Until now. Though the way in which Luthor was finally managing to sink a claw into Gotham was as unique and inspired as it was insidious and despicable.

Since LexCorp had been turned away at every junction from setting up shop in Gotham, it seemed that they’d gone a different route this time around. Namely by using the Luthor Foundation to set up a charity clinic. There was even precedent for such a thing. Dr. Leslie Thompkins ran the Thomas Wayne Memorial Clinic, which was funded by the Wayne Foundation.

This wasn’t something that Wayne Enterprises could block, obviously. All of the paperwork was in order, everything seemingly on the up and up, and whatever the scheme was, it wasn’t immediately obvious on the face of it. By all accounts, this was truly just the Luthor Foundation bringing its massive charitable coffers to the impoverished and ailing city of Gotham, no less and no more.

But of course, Barbara and Bruce knew it HAD to be more than that. Unfortunately, Gotham didn’t do ‘peace time’. So just because Lex Luthor had finally managed to slip something by them didn’t mean Bruce could drop everything to investigate. There was always something to be done, and for all that Batman had reached mythological status at this point, he was still just a man under the cowl, unbeknownst to everyone. A man who needed sleep and only had so many hours in each day.

That was where Barbara came in. If there was one lesson she was glad Bruce had actually learned over the years, it was delegation. That’s why she didn’t mind him throwing this case involving the Luthor Foundation’s new clinic her way. It wasn’t the kind of thing that Bruce Wayne could attack on his end, nor could Batman be seen to be ransacking free clinics either. And thus it fell to Oracle to figure out precisely what Lex was truly up to.

So far, she hadn’t been able to uncover much, unfortunately. Oh, she’d certainly uncovered more than just the cover story thankfully. It wasn’t as ‘on the up and up’ as it seemed at first glance. For one, when she peeled back the layers a bit, it was obvious to someone of her skillset that the ‘doctor’ the clinic had hired was a fake.

The documentation was nearly perfect and was in fact properly backdated to the point where Barbara couldn’t even report them to the proper authorities and expect anything to come of it. However, she was better than the proper authorities, as much as it always hurt her to admit it. And this… Doctor Luke Maximillian was as fake as could be. As was his ‘assistant’, a Ms. Kamara Blackwater.

Luke was a handsome man in his mid-twenties with a chiseled jaw and dark brown, almost black hair. Kamara, meanwhile, was of actual black hair, with blue eyes and pale skin. The look she gave the camera in the picture that Barbara had of her was one full of menace and danger.

Obviously, Luke was the doctor that the clinic was built around. Ms. Blackwater on the other hand… it was less clear exactly what role she was supposed to be fulfilling within the clinic itself. She was logged as Dr. Maximillian’s assistant, but she looked like she could easily have been anything from a secretary to a nurse… to security.

And that last bit was both troubling and interesting, because why would a free clinic need security? Sure, one might say ‘well it IS Gotham’, but while the Thompkins Clinic did currently have a ‘security guard’, it hadn’t always and for much of its life it’d done just fine. Why would a free clinic just opening its doors make its second employee after the Doctor clearly someone who could handle themselves in a fight?

Well, that had taken a little more digging, but eventually Barbara had uncovered two more interesting tidbits. Number One, Lex was really doing his level best to make it seem like this wasn’t one of his schemes. The information was buried almost to the point where it seemed like it was supposed to be what they wanted covered up, but Barbara had found it anyways. Namely, every last bit of this endeavor in setting up a free clinic in Gotham had been signed off on not by Lex Luthor himself, but by his right hand woman, Mercy Graves.

By all rights, one might think that she’d done all of this behind her boss’ back… if one didn’t already know that Mercy was as loyal to Lex Luthor as she was competent and skilled. The bodyguard was the perfect henchwoman for a perfect asshole of a man, and there was no world in which she would do anything without his approval.

The other tidbit that Barbara had uncovered was something that sent a shiver down her paralyzed spine. It couldn’t possibly be all there was to this new clinic’s secret true purpose of course. Rather, it had to be a cover within a cover. Still, if you went through the right channels, if you knew the right people, if you had the right level of affluency… it was said that the clinic’s doctor, Luke… could go beyond what modern medical technology was capable of. It was said he could provide healing beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.

Sickness, disease, injury, even age. Those with enough wealth could make use of this clinic’s ‘private services’ to gain access to healing that sounded like magic… or at the very least a metahuman ability.

A trap. It had to be. Barbara didn’t want to think too highly of herself. She didn’t want to be too egotistical. And yet, just looking at all of this, it felt like they had prepared this Siren’s Call with one person in mind.

The Venn Diagram of those who knew she was Oracle, and Oracle’s status as someone confined to a wheelchair… well there was a lot of overlap between the two circles. That said, both circles were very, very small. Barely anyone knew that Barbara Gordon had even been Batgirl, let alone that she’d then gone on to become Oracle. And just as few people knew that Oracle was paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair.

But what if? What if Lex Luthor had found out somehow? Barbara was well aware that her assistance to the Justice League and both Superman and Supergirl had been instrumental in stopping some of Lex and his cronies’ schemes a handful of times at this point. If he’d caught wind that Oracle was the source of his enemies’ information about him, and then figured out who Oracle was…

Sure, maybe she was being paranoid. But was it really paranoia if they were actually out to get you? Part of her longed to wheel herself down to this clinic to check it out in person and see if they could actually heal her. She had more than enough money squirreled away to pay for their hidden services.

But another part of her wondered… if she rolled into this new clinic, would she ever come back out again? She couldn’t quite shake the idea that this trap was designed with specifically her in mind. Or maybe not her specifically, but at least for Oracle, her shut-in persona.

… She didn’t have to go herself. In fact, she shouldn’t go herself. Bruce had merely asked her to look into things, and she could and should get back to him with her findings and let him take it from there. However, she didn’t really feel like she’d uncovered enough information yet to really report back to him.

That said, she had other options. She’d just been thinking about them in fact. The Birds of Prey. Either Helena or Dinah could go in her stead, case the joint and maybe see about getting some of those hidden services for themselves to see what it was all about.

Admittedly, that did mean sending one of them into danger… but then, Barbara had long come to terms with that facet of their relationship. She was the Gal in the Chair and they were the boots on the ground. That was simply how things worked.

Still, Barbara finds herself hesitating, her hands hovering over her keyboard until she finally makes a decision.