The Science of Becoming

Prologue

A/N: I think what I love most about YJ is the notion of how different Babs must be. How her relationship with Dick must change, being best friends and classmates so early, and how his heroics would effect her. So everything about this story is playing with the notion of her character, and its sole purpose is giving me a chance to explore it. I plan on this being a longish piece spanning quite a few years, which is difficult for me, so I'm just going to go ahead and ask for patience here and now. I'm also going to try to stay pretty tightly to canon, so there might be some retconning when new episodes start again - we'll see! Enjoy. 3

July in Gotham wasn't like July anywhere else. It wasn't bright and busy, like in Metropolis, or sweet and dusky like the towns along the distant shoreline. Gotham summers were long, dirty and uncommonly intense, like they'd been filtered through a magnifying glass. They stretched on and on, weighing on native Gothamites, testing their patience and driving them to any ends for relief. Everything was worse in July. Crimes were more brutal, tempers were shorter and any measure of tedium became unbearable.

And Barbara Gordon was not tolerating another tedious moment.

She marched down the stairs, rattling the ceiling of the dining room with every determined footfall. Jim licked his thumb and flipped the page of his newspaper. The Bruins had lost, but that was hardly worth reading about. Trading the whole damn team away for an actual ball player or two, that might be newsworthy.

"Daddy," Barbara announced. Jim glanced up at his daughter and quirked a bushy eyebrow. The tiny thing seemed to take up the entire doorway by way of ferocity alone. "I am going to the park today."

"Are you now?" Jim asked. The girl stalked into the room, bristling with determination, and pulled up a chair.

"Yes. I am."

"Morning, baby," Sarah said, pressing a kiss into Barbara's hair and sliding a plate of pancakes in front of her. "Syrup or jam?"

"Not now, Mom," Barbara huffed. "Daddy, summer vacation is half over and I haven't even left the house. I want to go have some fun."

"Don't be ridiculous, you go out all the time."

"The library doesn't count!"

"Sure it does. They have air conditioning, that nice librarian, all those vampire books I don't want you reading-"

Barbara reached across the table and snatched her father's newspaper. He levied an exasperated look her way, but she did not back down. "I want to go hang out with my friends. It's not fair to keep me locked up like some creepy hermit for three months. It's going to stunt my emotional growth."

"Going to stunt your-" Jim shook his head, wondering where she got it from. "I don't want you running around this city alone, Barbara. It's too dangerous."

"I can take care of myself!"

"You're ten. The answer is no."

"But dad!"

"Why don't you take her?" Sarah asked, deftly interrupting the argument before either opponent could really start swinging. "They need me working doubles this week, or I'd do it myself."

"I was about to head into the office, honey."

"For yet more overtime." Peeling off her apron, Sarah fixed her husband with a pointed look. "You need to take a break, Jim. I'm worried about you. Take the morning off and take your daughter to the park. It'd be good for both of you."

Jim contemplated further argument, but ultimately slumped into his chair. The idea was too attractive to pass up. He instead shot his stubborn child a smile and switched his cell phone to silent. "All right. You win this round. How about you finish your breakfast and the two of us head out?"

"Other kids my age don't need their parents babysitting them at the park," Barbara grumbled.

"Tough luck, kiddo. It's me or nothing. What's it gonna be?"

Semi-mollified, Barbara dug into her pancakes, compromise accepted. Jim smiled and lifted a coffee mug to his lips. Let it never be said that the Gordon girl didn't know what she wanted.

By the time they left the house, the temperature had already climbed to the high nineties. It seemed even hotter in the city streets, pockets of blistering air getting caught between pavement and skyscrapers. Jim and Barbara both gasped as they stepped out, met by a shimmering wall of humidity.

"You sure you don't wanna just go stand in front of the freezer?" Jim panted. His single-minded daughter was already making her way to the curb and hailing a cab, though, so it was with a sigh that he followed suit. "So, what're you gonna do first?"

Barbara shrugged. Her eyes were locked on the window, watching the city roll by. "I dunno. Hang out, I guess. Erica and Darcy are gonna be there today."

"I haven't seen them around much lately."

"They've been busy."

She was getting so big. Jim had been saying that with equal parts terror and awe for years now, but it was getting truer and truer every day. She was in dire need of a haircut and a growth spurt had rendered most of her wardrobe obsolete; she'd need a new one that fall. Her legs had gotten so long. Barbara would be a looker, which utterly horrified him. Fatherly blind spot aside, Jim could see it coming, the tip of those difficult years starting to surface. Already things were not as simple for his baby as they once had been. Too fast, he felt. It was happening too fast.

The park was more densely packed than Jim would have expected, given the miserable weather. But then, the green space in the center of the city was one of the best things about Gotham; a sprawling oasis that attracted tourists and families and teenagers alike, being beautiful, affordable and relatively safe during daylight. It boasted jogging paths, playgrounds, ice cream vendors and street performers, athletic courts and meticulous gardens - even an aviary, for some reason or other. That day it bustled with activity. Mothers pushed strollers while chatting on the phone. Kids in swimsuits raced past, shrieking and making a beeline for the fountains. It would be easy for one little girl to get lost in all the hubub.

"Dad," Barbara was saying, "I think I see them. Can I go?"

Jim hesitated, but Barbara made such a desperate noise that he found himself relenting. "Fine," he said, "but I want you to meet me back at that bench in one hour, got it?" Barbara nodded earnestly. "All right. Have you got your cell phone?"

"Yes, daddy."

"And your mace?"

"I wish you wouldn't make me carry-"

"Have you got it?"

Barbara heaved a heavy sigh. "Yes, I have my mace."

"Good girl. And you remember how to use it?"

"Dad!"

"All right, all right." Jim bent to kiss his daughter's forehead and slip a five dollar bill into her hand. "In case you and your friends was a little treat, okay?"

In spite of her annoyance, Barbara managed a smile. "Okay, dad. Thanks."

"Be careful," he told her as she turned to go. "Remember, one hour. If you're not here, I'll call out the entire department. Don't think I won't!"

Barbara didn't walk. She ran.

By the time she reached her friends, sweat was pouring into her eyes and her clothes had begun to stick to her, but she didn't care. Barbara was all grins as the loped up, leaning on her knees to catch her breath.

"Hey!" she panted.

Erica and Darcy, one short, blonde and sharp-looking, the other tall, dark and tanned, regarded Barbara with a mixture of surprise and amusement. They had been speaking animatedly about something before Barbara had arrived, but now traded measured glances, as if they were trying not to laugh.

"Hey," Erica said. "Didn't expect to see you today."

"Daddy finally let you off house arrest?" Darcy asked.

"I wasn't under house arrest," Barbara replied, wiping the sweat from her forehead. "I said I'd come today. Remember?"

"We haven't seen you all summer. Getting ready for your new school?"

"I bet you've been studying really hard, huh?"

The girls looked at each other and laughed. Barbara frowned, confused and defensive. What was their problem? She couldn't tell. It had only been a few weeks since they'd seen each other, and they'd been okay then, she thought. When Barbara heard she'd received a scholarship to Gotham Prep, she'd texted them both immediately and they seemed happy enough for her. Of course, they'd be going to different schools that year, but what was the big deal? Why were they being so cold?

"So... what did you guys want to do today?" Barbara asked, feeling more and more awkward.

"We thought we'd go hang out at the aviary for a while. The guy who feeds the toucan is super cute," Darcy said with a flip of her hair. Barbara raised an eyebrow. Since when were guys 'super cute'? "Then maybe a movie downtown or something. Want to come?"

"Um, maybe. I'm supposed to check in with my dad in an hour, so I'll have to ask-"

Her friends dissolved into giggles again. There was an unmistakable note of mockery to their voices, and Barbara's confusion began to turn to anger.

"What is your problem?" she demanded. Erica patted her condescendingly on the shoulder and Barbara fought the urge to rip away.

"It's okay, Barbara," she cooed. "Maybe you should stay here where daddy can see you. You wouldn't want to hang out with us anyway. We've got this no nerds policy, kind of a new thing." The clumsy insults cut through Barbara like cold steel.

Her childhood friends turned, snickering cruelly, and strode off towards the aviary, leaving Barbara to the sensation of ice water burning through her veins. Tears stung her eyes and threatened to fall, but she was too angry - too angry and too stubborn - to let it happen. What right did they have? What suddenly made them so much cooler? All this over a scholarship? It wasn't her fault they weren't smart enough to keep up.

She turned, paused, turned again and finally stomped off towards the playground, furious energy buzzing through her body. How dare they? How dare they? They had all been friends for years! She kicked a stray pine cone as hard as she could, walked up to where it fell and kicked it again. How could they?

Fine, she thought. Fine. They wanted to be jerks, that was fine with Barbara. She didn't want them around. Who cared about the toucan guy anyway? Sounded boring to her. Finding herself at the monkey bars, Barbara climbed up and swung from one bar to the next in a vicious arc. The metal slipped under her sweaty palms and she plunged into the sand with a snarl. So she stood and tried again, and again, and once more, all with similar results.

"You're doing it wrong."

From her place in the sand, Barbara glanced up, looking positively ferocious. The speaker was a skinny little boy with an unruly mop of black hair, and he shrank under her gaze. She forced herself to her feet and brushed herself off, but she couldn't keep her expression from softening a fraction. He looked as if she was going to beat him.

"What?" she snapped.

"You're dong it wrong," he said again. "It's too hot. It'll mess with your grip. Try brushing some sand on your hands. It'll help with how hot the bars are, too."

Barbara glared suspiciously at the boy, but bent and clapped a handful of sand between her palms. She immediately saw the sense in it as her hands dried, and the boy tried a nervous smile.

"Try again, but now try to think of your body like a pendulum. Keep it moving in a straight arc, no twisting."

Barbara gave it another shot. This time she completed the circuit with ease, flying off the final bar and landing in a delicate crouch. When she turned to face her tutor, he was grinning. In spite of herself, Barbara could feel her fury ebbing away.

"What's your deal, kid?" she asked. "Do you just hang around playgrounds waiting for someone to fall on their butt?"

He shrugged. "I'm good at this kind of thing."

"I got that." Barbara looked him up and down. There was something plaintive about this boy. Shorter than her, big blue eyes, a hopeful expression, and there was something downright mischievious in his features. Angry as she was, Barbara found she liked him immediately. "What's your name?"

"Dick."

Barbara stared. "Dick? What, did your family not like you much?"

Dick's eyes immediately dropped, and such a palpable pain passed over his face that Barbara knew she had said something really horrible. She scrambled to backpedal.

"Hey, I'm sorry. Really. I didn't mean it. Dick's a great name."

"It's short for Richard," the boy mumbled.

"I think I had an uncle named Richard." She attempted a smile and held out her hand. "My name's Barbara."

He looked at her a moment before accepting her hand and giving it a timid shake. Barbara's smile got a little brighter.

"Hey, so, y'wanna get some ice cream or something? My treat."

Dick nodded. They glanced at the vendor, set up down the path quite a ways, and the thought occurred to both of them in the same moment.

"Race you?" he asked.

"You're on, kid."

They tore off their marks. Barbara had a head start of a couple of feet, but Dick had no trouble catching her. They scrambled, neck and neck, down the twisting path as bystanders leaped out of the way, lest they be run over. By the time they reached the ice cream stand, laughing, panting, and within inches of each other, they were already friends. Just like that.

"I beat you!" Dick was crowing.

"No you didn't," Barbara wheezed. "What do you want?"

Dick pointed to something colorful, cartoony and delicious-looking. Barbara bought two, tossed one to him, and the pair made their way to a shady tree under which to slump.

"So," he asked, peeling the paper away from his treat, "why were you so angry?"

"Huh? Oh!" Barbara blinked, taken by surprise. The entire ordeal had somehow slipped from her mind for a moment or two. "Oh, it was stupid. Just some friends being.. being total jerks."

"Over what?"

"I don't know," she sighed. She blew her bangs away from her eyes and stretched out across the grass, sobered. "I guess they're mad because I'm going to Gotham Prep next year, or something. We used to be really close, I don't know what's happening."

But Dick's face had lit up in entirely the wrong reaction. Instead of sympathy, he looked delighted. "You're going to Gotham Prep? Me too!"

"What, really?"

"Yeah! I just took the admissions test last month."

"No way!" Barbara couldn't help it; her face lit up, too. Her parents had been so excited over her acceptance to such a prestigious prep school, and she had been, too, sort of. She wanted to do well, but the prospect of starting over somewhere totally new, of not knowing anyone and being surrounded by rich strangers was a scary one for her. Knowing one person - even if they had only just met - made the whole thing seem a lot less awful.

Before she could say anything else on the happy happenstance, Barbara was cut off by her father's ring tone. She unearthed her phone with a groan, gesturing Dick to wait. "Hey, daddy. Right over by the ice cream cart. It has not been an hour! I'm fine. No, I don't need you to-"

Before she had even hung up, Jim Gordon was hiking his way up the crest of the hill. Barbara buried her face in her knees, mortified.

"There you are," he wheezed. "I was worried. What happened to Darcy and Erica?"

"Don't know, don't care," Barbara muttered.

Jim cringed. He remembered enough of young ladies to know that was bad, and he likely did not want to say the wrong thing. Instead, he turned his attention to the strange boy by his daughter's side. "Who's your friend?"

"Dick Grayson," the boy volunteered with a small smile. Jim returned it.

"Aha. Nice to meet you, Dick."

"He's going to Gotham Prep, too," Barbara blurted out, as if to explain what she was doing underneath a tree, sharing ice cream with a strange boy. It seemed to work, because where Jim had been cautious and curious, he now appeared delighted.

"Is that so? Good for you, Babs! I told you you'd make friends. And you haven't even started school yet, look at you." Barbara looked as if she wanted to strangle herself with her own hair, but her father barrelled on. "Where're your parents, Dick? You're not here alone, are you?"

"No, sir! I'm here with my butler. He's by the west garden, I think."

"You have a butler?" Barbara asked, open-mouthed. Dick shrugged.

"Didn't always. Wanna meet him?"

Barbara did. She had never met a real life butler before, and all her mental images of one were essentially the dancing penguins from Mary Poppins. Jim was anxious to make sure the child did indeed have supervision, and so he agreed; they should all go meet the butler. Dick led them across the park, chattering all the way. Apparently his name was Alfred, and he was very nice, but sometimes strict, and he didn't laugh much but he made amazing waffles. When they happened upon the thin, dignified-looking man perched on a bench and engrossed in a dusty old book, Barbara almost didn't place him for the character Dick had described. He seemed much too normal.

But when Dick called his name, the man looked up and smiled. He stood, and when Dick threw himself around his legs in as ferocious a hug as such a small creature could manage, the butler patted his head with appreciation, if not outright fondness.

"Hello, Master Dick. Enjoying yourself?"

Dick nodded ferociously. "I made a friend!"

"I can see that." Alfred peered down at Barbara in a way that made her squirm, as if he were inspecting her shirt for stains. She fought the childish instinct to hide behind her father. "Hello there, little miss."

"Hello," she murmured shyly.

"And you would be her father, I presume." Alfred offered Jim his hand and the two men shook, satisfied to find both children well looked after. "I do hope my charge hasn't caused you any trouble."

"Not at all," Jim assured him. "Seems like a good kid. Babs here'll be going to Gotham Prep, so it looks like they'll be classmates." A note of braggery crept into his voice, as it always did when he spoke of his daughter's accomplishments, and Barbara pressed one hand over her eyes.

"Is that so?" Alfred looked pleased. "She must be quite something. Master Dick is new to the area, and I'm glad to see him making friends."

"It's a good thing our kids found each other, then."

Dick and Barbara, meanwhile, were exchanging tortured expressions of various intensity. Neither of them much wanted to waste the day standing around and listening to the adults state the obvious back and forth. Alfred cleared his throat, startling them both out of their shenanigans.

"Perhaps they'd like to go back to whatever it was they were doing," he observed. Dick and Babs nodded sincerely, but Jim hesitated.

"I have to get in to work soon," he explained. "We should actually get going."

"Dad, come on," Barbara protested, coming dangerously close to a whine. "Please? You said you'd take the morning off, an hour is not the morning."

"We were going to go check out the plant displays!" Dick cut in. "You know, for the botany and stuff."

"Right! Botany. Super interesting. Never can be too ready for school, right dad?"

The pair offered Jim such wide and plying grins, it was almost unsettling. He watched them for a long moment, looked at his watch and sighed. "Fine," he said. "A while longer. Be back here by noon, the both of you, or I'll-"

"You'll come looking, we know. You proved that already." Barbara reached up to give her father a kiss on one stubbly cheek. "Thanks. It was nice to meet you, sir," she added politely in Alfred's direction. Dick grabbed her by the wrist, cutting off any additional pleasantries, and then they were gone.

Jim and Alfred watched them go. Eventually, the butler resumed his place on the bench, and after a moment, the commissioner joined him.

"They're going to be trouble, aren't they."

"They certainly are."