Endless Legacy Ch. 43 (DC Comics) (Patreon)

A/N: The people have spoken, more Barbara POV it is~

-x-X-x-

When Barbara doesn’t immediately answer him, Luke lets go of her and steps back, causing her to jolt out of her introspection as he looks at her concerned.

“How are you feeling, Ms. Laville?”

It’s a testament to how out of sorts Barbara currently feels that she reacts with incredulity to that question, at least initially. How is she feeling? She can walk again! But then she realizes the fake doctor isn’t asking her how she’s feeling mentally or emotionally, but physically. He’s doing his duties still, as though he were a real doctor.

Barbara knows better of course, but he doesn’t know she knows better. So she has to continue playing her role, even if every fiber of her being currently wants to find a way to gain a position of strength and advantage in this conversation so she can interrogate him properly.

Instead, looking down at her legs, working for the first time after so many years, Barbara purses her lips and focuses on how they feel, moving from foot to foot, rolling on the balls of her feet.

She’s a little wobbly, as previously noted. Definitely still a bit physically weak. However, all the muscles that should have been atrophied and the bones that should have been weakened by years of disuse… feel fine. They’ve all been regenerated it would seem, right along with her fixed spine. She can not only walk again, she’s in better health than she’s been in years and years.

“I feel… good. Better than good, really. I feel amazing. You… what is that thing? What did it do to me?”

Looking at the tube he’d put her in, Barbara gestures to it helplessly, still playing her role. She wishes she could ask the real questions, of course. Like for instance, where the actual technology is. She’d recognized the tube as a fake piece of alien technology before, but did that mean it was entirely fake, or was the alien veneer just that… a façade to disguise whatever was going on ‘beneath the hood’ so to speak?

God, what she wouldn’t give to be able to take it apart right now. The device she’d attached to its underside would give her some information, hopefully, but she wouldn’t be able to access that data until she’d left the clinic behind. That meant while she was still here, she had to do as much fact finding as possible, with the limited authority she had.

Put simply, she wasn’t Barbara Gordon right now, nor was she Batgirl or Oracle (fuck, she could be Batgirl again!). No, she was Hope Laville, and the most ‘authority’ she could exercise at the moment was as a patient who had just been through an untested medical procedure. Sure, it was an untested medical procedure that had seemingly worked, but she was still entitled to her concerns about the long term effects.

Dr. Maximillian smiles at her and Barbara does her best to ignore how handsome his smile is as he glances at the tube as well.

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you much, Ms. Laville. As you already know, it’s not of our world. This device is… well, let’s just say it was hard to come by and cost a pretty penny and leave it at that, okay? Not to worry though. I can guarantee the success of the procedure you just went through personally. As well as the lack of any long term side effects. In fact, there’s only a couple things you need to do in order to ensure your health in the following days.”

Barbara finds herself listening intently, not just because she’s still intent on sussing things out here, but also because she very much intends to keep this good health she’s miraculously gotten, on top of getting her legs back.

“First, take one of these pills each day for the next five days. Second, take it easy for at least the next three days. No strenuous activities. No running, jumping, or climbing. I’m sure you’re not the type to go parkouring around Gotham anyways Ms. Laville, but it still bears noting.”

The former Batgirl, who had very much been the type to go parkouring around the city once upon a time, carefully doesn’t freeze up at the fake doctor’s words, even as he hands her a small bottle filled with five large pills. The instructions on the bottle repeat what he said, to swallow a whole one once a day until they run out.

Still, a comment like that… did he know? Barbara is careful not to give anything away, even as she looks into his eyes with a soft, hesitant smile on her lips.

“T-Thank you, Doctor. I didn’t… I didn’t think I’d ever get to walk again. You’ve changed my life."

She doesn’t think she sees any knowing glint in the handsome man’s eyes that might give away knowledge of her identity. Luke just grins as he clasps his hands behind his back and nods.

“It was my pleasure, Ms. Laville. And to be fair, it’s not like we did this out of the kindness of our hearts. You paid quite the sum of money, and we provided a service in turn.”

Even the humility seems entirely genuine. Barbara huffs and lets her smile grow a bit stronger as she decides to take a different tack with the fake, handsome doctor.

“Well your service still changed my life, Dr. Luke. As evidenced by the fact that I’m standing on my own two feet. Maybe…”

She makes a show of thinking about it for a second, before looking at him and ‘subconsciously’ licking her lips.

“May I have a pen and paper?”

He raises an eyebrow at that, and Barbara thinks she can see the light of understanding in his eyes, but he gets both items for her, nevertheless. Quickly, acting like she’s moving as fast as she can so as to not lose her nerve, Barbara goes ahead and writes down a phone number.

“I know you already have my number… but this is my personal number. In case you wanted to… call to chat.”

She makes sure to bat her eyelashes as she hands him back the pen and the paper. The number isn’t actually her personal line, but she’ll still get any calls to it, rain or shine. When you’re someone like her, you don’t really have a personal line… just an ever-increasing number of lines for different groups and people that you have to juggle.

Since it doesn’t seem like the Hope Laville identity has been burned quite yet, maybe Barbara can stretch out the heiress’ use a bit longer… certainly, as the fake doctor glances down at the number before putting the paper and pen away in the pocket of his lab coat, he doesn’t seem that upset by the overly familiar overture.

“I appreciate the offer, Ms. Laville. I can’t promise anything, given how busy running a clinic like this leaves me… but I’ll keep you in mind.”

Barbara beams at him, playing the socially starved, innocent and vulnerable crippled young heiress to the hilt. If Luke wasn’t as good a man as he seemed, he SHOULD want to take advantage of her, or rather of Hope. And seeing as he worked for Luthor and was clearly not a real doctor… well, they would just have to wait and see.

“Now then, you have your pills and your instructions, yes? Let’s get you to your car.”

Barbara finds herself escorted out of the room with her wheelchair in tow, allowing herself one last lingering look back at the ‘alien’ tube before the door shuts behind them. From there, she’s handed off to Kamara Blackwater again, who is just as silent as the last time, even as they descend back to the private parking garage together.

Taking one last chance as the doors to the elevator open, Barbara steps out into the parking garage and then turns to look at Kamara, still acting her heart out.

“Um… Ms. Blackwater, right? Do you know if… if Dr. Luke is single?”

For the first time, Barbara thinks she sees something besides the silent intensity and all around prickly personality of the woman standing with her. For the first time, she sees a hint of amusement in Kamara Blackwater’s eyes. There’s not a single twitch of her mouth however, her jaw remaining set in a perpetual frown. But she definitely sees something in the other woman’s gaze.

Of course, staying true to form, Blackwater doesn’t speak even then. A moment later the elevator doors close, leaving Barbara alone in the parking garage with her now empty wheelchair in her hands.

Biting her lower lip, Barbara waits for just a second to make sure the security cameras pick up on her indecisiveness. Then, she heads to her car, hurriedly getting in and pulling out of the parking garage. As soon as she’s able, she gets her onboard systems up and running, beginning with connecting to the bug she managed to attach to the machine.

It’s unfortunate she couldn’t get a bug anywhere else in the clinic, because while the device is capable of picking up audio, it’s not like Luke and Kamara are going to spend all their time chatting in that room anyways. That room is clearly meant for the high roller patients, not for any private conversations between the two of them.

At the same time, the data flowing in from the device regarding the tube that supposedly healed her is still mission critical, as far as Barbara is concerned. Unfortunately, there’s an issue with what she’s getting from it all… namely, a whole lot of fucking nothing. The data is claiming that the tube that healed her isn’t just fake alien technology… it’s fake technology altogether.

That doesn’t make sense… but at the same time, it sort of does? In the end, it really means one of three things. One, the technology is not only incredibly advanced, but also protected against would-be hackers and basically presents a blank when anything tries to get a read on it. Two, the technology really doesn’t exist, and Luke Maximillian is a metahuman. Or three, the technology really doesn’t exist and magic is involved in some way instead.

Of course, magic healing on this level was just as rare as technological healing. Even Zatanna Zatara for instance, the Justice League’s premier magic user after her father’s retirement, can’t heal on the level that this tube healed Barbara. Else, she would have been walking around ages ago.

Lips pursed together; Barbara looks from the potentially ersatz data coming in regarding the tube to her small bottle of pills. She’s supposed to take one a day for the next five days… but like hell is she going to put a single one in her mouth without testing the hell out of them. And that meant she needed to go back to her Clocktower. But first…

Barbara shoots off a quick message to Dinah and Helena, instructing the Black Canary and the Huntress to meet her at the Clocktower as soon as they can possibly get away, and then focuses on getting her own ass back to base.

-x-X-x-

“Babs, wha- holy shit you’re standing!”

“What? Whoa!”

By the time Helena and Dinah join her at the Clocktower, Barbara has already begun putting the pills from Luke Maximillian through their paces. Impatient as she was for the results of the high tech scanning she put them through, she’d taken one of the pills and put it under a microscope, just in case there was something she might be able to see with her naked eye.

That’s why, when the other two main members of the Birds of Prey finally arrive, it’s to the sight of her bent over said microscope, standing. Briefly, she’d considered using her wheelchair until they arrived and making a big reveal out of everything… but given the seriousness of the situation, it didn’t feel right.

Pointing over at a nearby tablet, Barbara doesn’t remove her eye from the microscope, even as she responds.

“I’ve compiled everything I have so far into a report on the tablet. Read it and I’ll be with you both in a second.”

“But Barbara, you’re… you’re healed!”

“Read. The. Tablet.”

Finally, the two heroines do as they’re told, taking up the table together. Barbara watches them out of her periphery for a second before returning to the microscope. Unfortunately, the ensuing silence doesn’t last long before…

“You did what without us?!”

Yeah, that was to be expected. Sighing, Barbara pushes off of the table and away from the microscope, crossing her arms over her chest as she looks at the closest thing she has to teammates in this era. She’s a bit removed from the Bat Family at this point after all, and to pretty much everyone else, she’s an information broker. But the Birds of Prey are hers, and Helena and Dinah have been the ones who have stuck around the longest of anyone.

“I know it was a dumb move. I know I should never have gone to the clinic without backup. I arranged a dead drop in case I fell out of contact, but I understand that my decision was tactically unsound and entirely driven by emotion. I’m sorry for not including either of you until now.”

Dinah and Helena exchange a glance at that, before both speak at the same time.

“You don’t sound very sorry, Barbara.”

“You didn’t even loop Batman into this, Babs?”

Sighing, Barbara leans back against the table, shaking her head.

“I… it’s hard to feel much shame or regret when I’m walking around right now and it all worked out for the best. As for Batman… no. He would never have let me go in alone, just like you guys wouldn’t have either.”

Before either of them can react to that, there’s a sudden beep from Barbara’s computer. Turning to the monitor, she frowns as the data from the pills comes flowing in.

“What’s all that then?”

Not looking up from the console, Barbara grunts.

“I was given these pills to take for the next few days after the procedure. Obviously, I wasn’t going to put anything in my body without checking what was in it first.”

“Oh, but you’re willing to put your body in some untested machine without knowing what it would do to you, is that it?”

Barbara doesn’t try to defend herself from the jab, knowing she probably deserves it. Instead, she keeps studying the results… and her frown only grows.

“… What is it, Babs? Anything dangerous?”

After a long moment, Barbara huffs.

“No, or at least my equipment can’t find anything dangerous. All these are, supposedly… are calorie pills. They’re basically massive meals in pill form, thousands upon thousands of calories and other vitamins condensed down. It makes some sense. I’ve run scans on myself as well, and it seems almost like the procedure cannibalized my caloric reserves in order to heal me.”

Pulling away from the console, holding up one of the large pills Luke gave her, Barbara stares at it, still frowning.

“Basically, these are meant to replenish what was used up to heal me, I suppose.”

There’s a pause, in which Helena and Dinah glance at each other briefly. Before finally, Dinah clears her throat.

“Are you going to tell Batman now, Barbara? This seems like the kind of thing he should know about.”

Barbara stiffens up at that, her instinctive response being ‘no’. But… Dinah was probably right. Didn’t make it any easier though.

-x-X-x-

Barbara: "I won't bother pranking them with the wheelchair, I have too much respect for my fellow Birds for that."

Dinah & Helana walking in to see Barbara's fine ass in the air and her back arched as she stands bent over the microscope looking like a fucking snack: "hubabhgulgh"