Glance
By:  Carmen Wayne (argonian_queen@attbi.com)

***

	It was tough work, for most the day.  Joker, never ceasing to 
amaze the amazing, had managed to light half of Gotham and Metropolis 
on fire in the shapes of smiley faces.  The entire day was wasted on 
call after call for information of the nearest clinic of a number of 
street by a name of a street, and what kind of pain killers are best 
for what kind of wound, and who was available to come help clean the 
mess and the dead.  At one point, becoming so overwhelmed, the 
"guardian" of these verbal pathways called for another to aid.  When 
the other arrived, not once did they look at one another.
	The last call came in.  It was Superman, the Man of Steel.
	"Oracle?"
	"Yes, Superman?" the red head asked in her voice synthesizer, 
cool and collected on both ends of the frequency as always (well... 
almost always).
	"I just wanted to thank you for your help.  You've been nothing 
but a big help today."
	"It's my pleasure, Superman," she replied with a smile.  "I love
getting 'thank yous', especially from the Last Son."
	A light-hearted chuckle came from the other end.
	"You rest well, Oracle.  I'm sure this day has been hard on you 
as well.  Goodnight."
	"Goodnight, Superman, take care."
	With a push of a button, Barbara Gordon shut down her side of 
the elaborate computer system she had set up-and reorganized for the 
day.  She turned her wheelchair to look over at her partner for the 
time being.
	"All done, big boy wonder?" she asked.
	"I certainly am," Dick Grayson said, running a hand through his
raven hair.  He did a twirl on his stool and took up his jacket to 
slide it on.  "And not a moment too soon!  I gotta get to the 'haven 
and get some shut-eye..."
	"You want to crash here for the night?"
	"Nah, thanks though.  Sorry to run on you like this though..."
	He started for the door, Barbara pushing after him in her 
wheelchair so she could simply show him out.
	"It's alright.  Was nice not seeing you," she joked with a wink.
	Dick laughed a bit.  He opened the door and finished zipping up 
his jacket.
	"No kidding.  You'd think in ten hours, we'd actually look at 
each other's faces.  But we will!  To at least say 'Guten Nacht'!"
	"Practicing your horrible German again?" Barbara asked, wheeling 
up to hold the door open for him.
	"Yeah.  So..."
	He turned to her after zipping up his jacket and smiled faintly,
pushing his hands into his pockets.  Barbara looked up to him and 
smiled back.  What could have been deemed an "awkward silence" 
followed, though neither one of them seemed to notice.
	In Barbara's mind, in that instant that she was looking up at 
his cool colored eyes, she could remember the first time she saw him as 
a child. He was... rather weird looking, but then again, most children 
were.  His hair had been a mess because he had been playing a futile 
game of tag with Bruce Wayne.  She had to drop off something in an 
envelop from her father to Bruce, though she wasn't sure what.  He 
stared at her a long moment, making her rather uneasy, and then just 
turned his back almost scornfully and went to get Bruce and Alfred, who 
were bickering over what voltage of light bulb to use in some burnt out 
lamp.  When Bruce came to talk to her, she kept seeing Dick's head pop 
around a corner to watch her, trying to disappear before she would see 
him every time she'd look his way.
	When she saw him at age sixteen, he was starting to grow into 
such a charming young man.  Muscles were being defined, and he wasn't 
oddly built anymore.  He was starting to grow in the ways a boy should 
at that age.  And a charming young man he truly was.  Bruce Wayne had 
invited her father and she to an opera on a wet rainy evening.  Though 
Dick would exchange so few words with her, he would open doors and help 
her over puddles.  Trained to be the perfect gentleman is what she and 
her father concluded later on after the night was over.
	At eighteen, he was almost completely the man he was meant to 
be, both physically and mentally.  Considerably the best student in his 
school, raved about as a incredible young man in all ways by the press, 
Barbara would often halt whatever she was doing if she saw something, 
anything, about him in the papers to read.  And if she saw something 
about Bruce, she would do the same, curious about the young man.  She 
wasn't interested in him though, really.  He was far too young for her.
	As Nightwing, she could see the full man he had grown to be.
Muscles finely designed for the acrobatic skills he so masterfully
harnessed.  Eyes that were so cold in color, yet so warm in emotion.  
He looked so much like Bruce Wayne in pigment, but where Bruce was
appropriately large, Dick was structured without excessiveness.  Where 
Bruce was cold in emotion, Dick lighted the cold with his emotional 
warmth.  He was a leader, a friend, a warrior and a prankster.  Barbara 
had begun to think of him as a man as well, never again regarding him 
as "far too young". Often she found herself thinking one thing about 
all the years she's ever noticed him...
	"He's never even noticed me..."
	In Dick's mind, he remembered the first time she came to the 
mansion on Wayne Manor to see Bruce.  When he opened the door, he 
stopped in place, just staring at her.  He wasn't quite sure what to 
say to the teenager.  He didn't even notice his own hair a mess and his 
chest heaving.  Behind him, Bruce and Alfred argued about something, 
but he honestly couldn't remember what.  He continued to stare at her, 
until she appeared to grow annoyed, and he hurried to get Bruce.  When 
Bruce got irritated and went to talk with her, Dick slid around a 
corner and would peek around every so often to look at her, and he 
would hide each time she would begin to look his way.  To present day, 
he was positive she didn't see him.
	At sixteen, Bruce told him they were going an opera, and he had
invited Commissioner Jim Gordon and his daughter Barbara.  It had been
years, so he really didn't think of it...  Until he saw her face once 
more. The entire night he spent on chivalrous acts for her, being the 
best of a gentleman he could.  He felt slightly guilty though, because 
he didn't know what to say to her, so he said so little words to her.  
He felt like she was judging him as well...
	At eighteen, as Robin, he found himself often checking around 
her area of Gotham at least three times a night.  It wasn't even his 
area of patrol but it didn't seem to bother him.  The teenager he first 
met when he was so young was now a young woman, beautiful and refined.  
Eloquent and intelligent.  She could be a supermodel, kick serious butt 
and also tell you all you needed to know about binaries.  But even so, 
he still continued to check on her, until the time of Robin passed from 
his life and was born anew to another.
	When he became Nightwing, he had begun relationships, and
quasi-relationships, with others.  But still he often looked back to
Barbara.  She was beginning to mature from a beautiful young woman to 
an astonishingly beautiful woman in her mid-twenties.  He swore that 
wasn't old, but to the female standard, it was insisted she was no 
longer "young". And despite the wheelchair she so adamantly hid behind 
to guard her from the pains of relationships, it seemed, all he could 
see was the gorgeous woman he had watched grow all those years, 
seemingly in stages, as both Barbara Gordon and Batgirl.  Her almost 
flaming red hair, her incredibly loving and caring emerald eyes that he 
always gazed at whenever she was patching up a wound of his with the 
greatest of care or even screaming at him for being a stupid male.
	So many times he tried to point out through words something he 
tried to make obvious in actions, but something always prevented her 
from hearing. And now, watching her in the doorway of her clocktower 
home, he found himself thinking the same thing he's been thinking for 
years, every time he's seen her...
	"I've loved her since the first day I saw her..."
	The two of them watched each other for a long moment, longer 
than either planned.  And that silence that others would feel awkward 
seemed to be obsolete, their eyes saying more than they felt they could 
say aloud.
	With a deep breath to restrain himself from doing something he
shouldn't, Dick merely watched her eyes while he spoke.
	"Goodnight, Barbara," he said softly.
	Barbara nodded to him slowly.
	"Goodnight, Dick...  Be good."
	She slowly backed inside and shut the door, making it lock up
securely.  Dick stared at the door a bit longer, and then sighed and 
started down the hall.
	Meanwhile, inside, Barbara leaned on the door, eyes spaced, 
until she gathered the strength to sit up and make her way to bed.
	Their silence was all they needed to make their feelings clear.
Their silence, their eyes, said it all for them.
	"Why don't you ever notice me, Dick?"
	"I've always noticed you."
	"I don't want to restrict you..."
	"Love isn't a restriction.  Love allows you to do the things you
can't normally.  Love lets you fly, Barbara."
	"Love makes you blind."
	"Stop pushing me away, Barbara."
	"I don't know how to love, Dick."
	"You do too... and one day, when you let me in, I'll show you 
that you can love.  I'll show you that you can love stronger than you 
ever thought possible.  Until then...  Goodnight, Barbara."
	"If anyone can teach me, Dick, it would be you.  Goodnight, 
Dick... Be good."

The End.