Author's Notes: Wow. I am amazed. This is the fastest I've ever spit a story 
out. Within hours of reading the Batgirl and Robin date challenge, I had a 
story idea and draft from beginning to end. I *think* I met the challenge 
requirements, I only changed the statement slightly from "And I thought Dick 
had it bad" to "And I thought Nightwing had it bad." Thought I'd be creative 
and do it from Cass's POV, and am quite pleased with the way it turned out. 
This is inspired slightly from me and my friend Rachel's escapades with the 
NYC pigeon population and the song "Chicken Hunting" by ICP that was playing 
on winamp when I read the challenge. Whether this is a good thing or not 
remains to be seen. Standard disclaimer implies. I dunna own anything DC 
related, and I altered all the other brand name stuff, so it doesn't really 
matter, I guess. (Ah, my good friend copyright avoidance...)

Rating: G

***

To Catch a Bird
by Slipstream (slipstream_chan@hotmail.com)

***

It's cold out. Snowing. White blobs that drift downward against the swirling 
black and grays of the city. The snow falls in clumps on my shoulders and 
cape and gathers around the ears of my cowl. Across from me, I can see my 
reflection in a building window, and I note that the bat-suit does not look 
good in polka dots. 

The wind rattles a flag pole above me and the snow gathered there deposits on 
me with an ungraceful thump. My reflection now shows a slightly human shaped 
white lump with pointy black ears and shoulders poking through the fluffy 
snow. I am Batgirl, bat demon of the frozen north. Fear my wrath.

Barbara says that the one disadvantage to me recovering my speech is that I 
have developed a slightly odd sense of sarcasm. I see no problem with this.

I wish I could move to get out of this snow, move somewhere and get warm, but 
that would betray my position. Warn my prey. I have sat here, in the snow, 
for too long to ruin my chance of catching that which I seek. All I have to 
do is sit, waiting, for the precise moment...

Now.

I pounce, hands moving lightning fast, fingers wrapping around the 
unsuspecting body before they can take flight against my attack. A prisoner 
before he even knows it, the pigeon emits a startled cooing before beginning 
to thrash in a flurry of feathers. I regard him with a slight smile. The 27th 
one so far tonight.

It has been a very, very, VERY slow night in Gotham City.

My experiences with people are... limited... but I know that it is common for 
humans to invent little games to keep themselves occupied under extreme 
boredom. I have observed Barbara type on an imaginary keyboard during a 
meeting, Superboy guessing out loud the pant sizes of every passing female 
during a stint of monitor duty, and I think that Batman is over a third of 
the way done with mentally counting every cell in his body. 

Anyway, when I'm out on patrol with nothing to patrol, I chase pigeons. It 
takes extreme concentration and skill to sneak up on a pigeon. Trust me. So I 
think that Batman wouldn't disapprove of my... hobby. It works on my prowling 
skills. It focuses my mind onto the task at hand. It kills time. It's...

It's pathetic.

I am cold. I am bored out of my mind. I, Batgirl, a vigilante otherwise known 
only as Cassandra, am not happy at all.

I sigh and let the pigeon escape to fly away into the night air. 
Time to begin my hunt anew. I scan the rooftop, but all I find is a 
completely different kind of bird. Robin is standing next to the air vent, 
his body hidden by his cape in an attempt to stay warm, hair blown lightly 
into his face, and an expression that doesn't require my skills in 
interpreting body language to be understood as "What the heck...?"

He stutters a bit upon realizing I've noticed him. "Um... You were... 
catching... pigeons?"

"Yes." One word answer. Pretend it's nothing unusual. Come on, Boy Wonder, 
dare to ask.

He doesn't. "Oh." There's a pause and I can see in the way he shifts his feet 
that he ponders the idiocy of the situation. "Can I ask why?"

"Slow night."

"Oh."

Quiet again.

Looking at him, I know that there're a million places he'd rather be in short 
sleeves, preferably in the tropics. And I thought Nightwing had it bad 
without a cape. "Can I ask why you came?"

He grins. "Slow night." Smart alec. 

He settles down next to me in the snow, breath coming out in a steam. 
"Actually, I'm feeling kinda weird, `cuz even though we've been through No 
Man's Land together and have been part of the Bat-crew for the last year or 
so, I still feel like I haven't done enough to get to know you. And after the 
whole Deadeye thing..." He shrugs. "It's a slow night. I figured we could 
maybe, y'know, find someplace warm and pretend to be normal. Talk."

"Is that a..." What's the word Barbara uses? "...date?"

He blushes. A first. Out of all my time with the bat family, no one has ever 
blushed. Batman does not blush. If he ever does, I think I will fall over 
dead with shock. I know that if I ask Robin about it, he'd blame it on the 
cold, so I leave him alone about it. For now. "W-well, I was thinking 
something more along the line of a friendly meeting between coworkers."

I regard him for a moment. "Okay."

He smiles. Nice smile. A true one, not the one I see sometimes. He should do 
it more often so he doesn't loose it's sincerity. "You hungry? We could get 
food."

"Nothing... healthy."

"Fine by me. Have you got civvies?"

I pat one of the pouches on my utility belt. I'm still getting used to 
communicating verbally and not physically. "Sorta."

He smiles again. So nice. "S'okay. We'll make do." He extends an arm and 
steps onto the ledge. "Shall we be off?"

I take the crook of his arm, still unsure of what to do, but I can feel the 
corners of my mouth tugging upward beneath my mask. "Yes. Let's." 

With that we leap into the darkness.

***

We must have made a sight when we walked into McDoland's at about one in the 
morning. My "sorta" civilian clothes are a pair of baggy black jeans over my 
leggings and boots and a black tech vest zipped up to cover the yellow bat on 
my chest. My gloves, cowl, and cape are tucked into various pockets of my 
utility belt, which I have slung over my shoulder and across my chest like 
Rambo. My eyes are hidden by wrap around shades and my hair is pulled back in 
the ponytail I keep it in while in costume. 

Robin looks about as mismatched. He too has baggy black jeans over his tights 
and boots and is wearing face fitting black glasses, but he's pulled his 
green undershirt on over the rest of his costume to cover his red tunic and 
belt. The cape he's folded up and stuck between his skin and the tunic in the 
small of his back. The gloves and mask are stashed in a pocket somewhere, I 
think. 

Anyway, we look like reject mannequins from a New Navy store. A couple of 
seasons out of style. But the guy behind the cash register doesn't seem 
grounded enough to care or notice that the baggy clothes are covering key 
areas of our hastily concealed costumes. From behind the sunglasses, Robin's 
eyes flash mischief at me and he takes a dramatic regard of the menu. "So, 
`Cass,' upon what item from this delicious five-star menu do you wish to 
dine."

"Double bacon cheeseburger. Fries. Dr. Paprika. Super-size it."

"Shouldn't you be watching your girlish figure?"

"I live... with Babs. We never eat out. Give me my food or die."

Laughing, he adds to the order a home-style burger meal with fries and a 
Zesti, super-size. Grabbing our food, we take our pick of booths from the 
otherwise almost completely empty restaurant.

I will give the boy this, if he could fight just as well as he could wolf 
down grease saturated meat products, Batman would be out of his league. I 
guess he normally doesn't eat like this, not with Batman or Alfred around. It 
must be that we're so much closer in age, so he feels more comfortably about 
acting his 15? 16? years. I don't think about it, really. We're only a year 
and a half apart, at most. 

"Maybe you should... be watching... your figure." Damn. I wish I talk as 
smoothly as I'm thinking.

He snorts some of his Zesti and blushes again. Cute. When he's finished 
getting the carbonated beverage residue out of his sinuses he regards me with 
a baleful, but subtly happy expression. "Wow. Beneath the dark, quick, and 
spooky exterior you have a sense of humor. I am not alone!"

Looking at him, I realize a few things I'd never noticed before, like the 
slightly strained pull on his face or the tension around his neck and 
shoulders. "You joke... to not be... alone?"

He shrugs, dumping about half the salt shaker on his fries before drowning 
them in ketchup. "Sometime. Yeah. But mostly so that the job doesn't get to 
me. S'funny. Around the `family' I'm the joker, but when I'm with YJ I'm the 
serious one. I'm not sure if it's a personality shift or just a reflection of 
company. You?"

I shake my head and try to wrap my tongue around what I'm trying to say. "I'm 
just... me. No difference between... the mask... and... me. Same person. 
You... are split. More ways... than one. Identities... personalities... 
emotions. You're a teenager, like me... but... argh!" I slap my forehead and 
mentally berate my lack of a vocabulary. "Can't say..."

"It's okay. I understand. Philosophy's hard to spit out around a mouthful of 
junk food." Robin looks somewhere over my left shoulder and that grin returns 
to his face. "Hey," he nudges me with his foot and gestures across the 
restaurant. "Betcha I can nail the trashcan from here."

Grin back. "Bet you... can't."

"Ha! Watch this." He crumples up his trash into a ball and takes careful aim, 
face screwing up in concentration and tongue sticking out of the corner of 
his mouth. He tosses it overhand and it sails through the air in an arc, a 
perfect shot, until at the very last second when a rival paper wad hits it 
and knocks it off course. His trash lands inches from the lip while the 
unseen assailant sinks with a thunk into the garbage.

Mouth agape, he looks at me. "Did you...?"

I look up at him, an expression of mock innocence across my face. "Me...?"

"Yeah, you!" He's indignant now, pointing at me accusingly. "You threw that! 
You made me miss."

"No proof."

"Liar!"

I laugh evilly and take a long drag from the last of my Dr. Paprika. The 
balding manager in the corner is looking at us rather pointedly and making 
loudish comments on proper restaurant behavior that I know are directed our 
way. Taking the hint we wrap up the rest of our meal and crunch our way 
outside into the cold snow. We walk in silence for a while before Robin sighs 
and speaks up again. "Pretending to be normal is just as boring as a slow 
patrol night. And nowhere near the exercise."

I ponder this a moment and look longingly up toward the rooftops. "We 
could... chase pigeons." I fish the still half-full carton of fries from my 
pocket. "I saved... some fries. We could... use them... as bait."

His eyes are laughing again and he regards me with mock surprise. "Why 
Cassandra, is that a date?"

"I was... thinking... something more... along the line... of a... friendly 
meeting... between... coworkers." I rattle the fries in temptation in front 
of his face.

"Okay. But the *instant* one of those birds takes a dump on me, I'm outta 
here."

"Fine by... me." We take a quick turn into the nearest alley and I begin to 
teach him the finer points of pigeon hunting. It promises to be an 
interesting night.

***

-Fin