Transitory

A/N: Couldn't contain myself! I've been wanting to explore Dick and Babs' friendship in the scope of the YJ universe, and especially how it would change being best friends from around the time Dick lost his parents. I'm so interested in their dynamic, especially since so little of it has been revealed to us. You'll probably see a lot more of this in the coming weeks. Happy reading!

"We're still on for this weekend, right?"

Dick and Barbara walk closely together. They always have. Shoulders bump and wrists brush as they jostle along, and neither pays much attention. It is a sort of protective barrier, a force field against being swept apart in the river of people they are forever combating. In the academy hallways, in the city streets themselves - there are always hustling, chattering, impersonal crowds threatening to separate them, and so they stick close. They have always faced the world by sticking close, it feels like.

Dick gets the look on his face that means he's calculating something. Balancing some internal equation. Trying to see if he can fit her into some nook or cranny of his valuable free time, whatever new thing his life has become. She hates that look.

"Probably. I think. Dad wants me to - er, get in some private training on Saturday, so can we go see it on Sunday?"

"Sure." She shoots him a pointed look. "If you think you can manage to sit for two uninterrupted hours in a movie theater. Can your mysterious double-life handle it?"

They are walking home from school, and it seems as if this is the only thing that has not changed in the past six months. Her father assures her that they're just growing up, and this is what happens. Barbara doesn't buy it. Sometimes she thinks she sees things more clearly than her father. It's a curse.

"It's not a mysterious double-life," he protests. "You read too much Nancy Drew, Babs. It's just a fencing team. They're really competitive, that's all."

"Fencing. Right."

She does not believe for a single heartbeat that Dick Grayson is a fencer.

She worries she's losing him. He gives her this excuse and that, they speak less than they used to, see each other little. Three years ago, the summer that they met - a bright, hot memory in Barbara's mind, at once moments and lifetimes ago - she had stumbled over the flighty, weedy boy with sadness in his eyes and awkwardly offered him a turn on her new scooter. She can't forget his slow smile, the first time he laughed or the way he latched on, as if she could save him from whatever awful thing he was drowning in. The air shimmered with humidity and sweat-soaked clothes clung to their torsos, but they were best friends in an afternoon or less. Barbara is pretty sure that's some kind of record.

It felt as if there had never been a day before their friendship, as if it were some mathematical constant, some perfect design of nature, and sometimes it still feels that way. The idea of an absence of him had never occurred to Barbara before, but now it is a menacing shadow growing longer in her mind. He keeps secrets. He disappears and forgets their arrangements, and he is never sorry. It doesn't occur to him to be sorry, because it's Babs. She understands. But she doesn't.

Every day, it's as if her chest is filling with lead, dragging her down to a place where she cannot reach him, this creeping sensation of losing her friend. She feels like screaming sometimes. In panic, in anger, in bewilderment and in plea, but nothing can stop this thing that is happening, this valley between them. And that is the worst part.

"So, what's her name?"

"Huh?" Dick stops mid-ramble, genuinely confused.

"This thing you keep ditching me for. It's a girl, isn't it?" She tries not to sound jealous or catty. It isn't about that, anyway. "You're a terrible liar, Grayson."

Dick laughs - awkwardly, Babs thinks; a strange phenomenon in the most self-assured boy on earth - and gives her a gentle shove. "No! It's not. I've told you like a dozen times, it's just a team. Dad wants me to be.." He pauses, looking for the right word. "Well-rounded. Although…"

Her eyebrows rise. "Although?"

His grin is slightly sheepish, slightly manic. It unnerves her. "There is this girl that hangs around sometimes. She's kinda cool. Smart and quirky and really different. You'd like her."

Barbara is startled by the heat of her own loathing.

"But, like, she's.. maybe not out of my league, exactly, but she makes me nervous. No one makes me nervous. I don't know how to deal with it."

Barbara considers dropping her bag and sprinting for home.

"She's special. Like, in ways I could only dream of. We aren't really on an even playing field. What would you do?"

When Barbara finds her voice, she is surprised by the words that come out of it.

"I'd show that person exactly how special I can be."

Dick pauses, lowering his bag to get a good look at his friend. They stand inches from each other, growing into new bodies, new minds, new lives, poring into each other, searching for sincerity and holding it close. For a brief moment, she has never wanted anything more than for Dick to reach for her hand.

He doesn't.

Slowly but surely, a pensive look melts into one of realization, of cockiness and eagerness, a look that is wholly Dick Grayson, and this is how Barbara knows his confidence has been restored. He is planning something, determined to put her words into ridiculous action. The valley between them stretches and something in her writhes.

"Genius. You always know what to-"

A beeping. Dick glances at his watch and gets that look in his eye. 'Fencing' calls.

"I've gotta go! See you tomorrow, Babs!" His shoulder bumps hers as he takes off at top speed.

Whoever heard of a fencing team that calls practice by wristwatch?

Barbara stands on the sidewalk, watching his silhouette disappear in the general direction of Wayne manor. The city is too loud for her to hear his footsteps echoing off every building, but she imagines that she can. She imagines that each one reverberates through her in golden waves, as if it's something she can wrap up in her core and hold on to, some piece of him that will stay. It isn't the girl that worries her. It isn't this mysterious team or the time they're losing. It's the fact that his eyes are cast so far ahead that he simply doesn't see her anymore. He takes for granted that he knows everything about her, and that means he's missing it. He's missing it all. Every new thing she's become, this strange, dark, wonderful thing growing in her - if she wants to share it with anyone, it's Dick.

And he just doesn't see her anymore.

If Barbara were a different girl, she might start to cry. She might bow her head in that busy sidewalk and let the pain twisting in her chest wash over her, release it, go home to her father and find solace in his steady arms. But Barbara is not that girl. She is a rare thing, and her eyes do not squeeze in misery; they harden in resolve.

The sun will set soon. If Dick Grayson is looking for special, she will show him special. She will show him exactly how special she is. Her dark form will cut a brilliant arc through the skies of Gotham, hair streaming out behind her like woven fire, the smallest guardian phantom the city has ever known, and someday he will know, for better or for worse, there is no one quite like Barbara Gordon.

There is no one like Batgirl.