NOTES:

None of the characters mentioned in this fic belong to me. They all belong to DC 
Comics, who usually treat them pretty well. Events mentioned in this story come 
from the issues of Nightwing where Dick holed up at Babs' place (Ballistic 
Romance) Nightwing #38,39, the issue where the Joker killed Sarah Essen 
(Endgame:3) Detective Comics #741, and the New Years' party (Days of Auld Lang 
Syne) Shadow of the Bat #94. Don't remember the issue numbers offhand. Part of 
this fic also takes a little bit of inspiration from Falstaff's "Silhoutte on a 
Dark Night".

Thanks to everyone who gave me encouragement while I was writing this and put up 
with all my spammage. Most especially thanks to the crew of #kjcorner 
(specifically Kael and KayJay), Indigo, and Frito.

Feedback, prettyplease? I'm thinking of writing another piece in parallel with 
this, and then a sequel. But if I'm gonna do that, I'd like to know that people 
actually read and liked _this_ one. :) All flames will cheerily be rerouted to 
bite.me@you.silly.sod 
Enjoy the fic! 

***

Introspection at Delphi
by Twiller (anon333@vt.edu)

***

Oracle. Mouthpiece of the gods. 

Well, then again, unless the gods have started talking through a hardwired T1 
line with triple redundancy backup... 

But seriously, some of the parallels between me and the old Greek oracle are 
pretty scary. Of course, that's why I picked the moniker, isn't it? 

But some things aren't quite the same. For instance, the oldstyle oracle was 
forcibly secluded from humanity. Nobody was allowed to touch the oracle. 

Me...I do it to myself. 

It's like the bullet severed more than my spine. It severed my connection with 
the rest of humanity to the point where I'm just a cripple recluse whose only 
social outlet is the 'Net. 

But that's not really true. I've been pushing people away for longer than that. 
The wheelchair is just a convenient excuse. 

Like with Dick. Intellectually, I know that Dick loves me, and that the 
wheelchair really means absolutely nothing to him. But I can't seem to do 
anything but push him away. I can't seem to let go of my own self-image of the 
"untouchable Oracle". Or the unloveable Oracle, if you will. 

If I accept that Dick loves me, I have to accept that the chair doesn't matter 
to him. And I don't know that I can do that. 

During No Man's Land, he got inside my guard. He showed up on my doorstep, wet, 
bruised, bleeding, and defenseless. I nursed him back to health, and somehow, 
all my defenses came down too. He flirted with me, and I flirted back. It 
was...comfortable. He picked me up and kissed me, and for a fleeting moment, the 
chair really didn't matter. It was just me and him, and a kiss like we haven't 
shared for a long time. Since Batgirl and Robin, when a twenty-two-year-old took 
a sixteen-year-old into her bed, and found a love that she never really managed 
to let go of. Even though the Batman told her in no uncertain terms that she 
would. 

And then Pettit and Huntress had to crash the party. And instead of Dick and 
Babs, we were back to being Nightwing and Oracle, and the only thing we had time 
to concentrate on was the bad guys. He tackled me and tried to get me to safety. 
A hundred and two degrees of fever, and the idiot was trying to protect ME. If 
he weren't so damn sexy when he's being noble, I woulda kicked his ass right 
then and there. 

And then there was the elevator shaft. Power outage? Dime a dozen. 

Borderline homicidal Bat-family wannabe? Hey, I dealt with Jean-Paul, didn't I? 
Psychotic ex-GCPD? Feh. 

Touching romantic moment with Dick? I felt like my heart was going to thump 
right out of my chest. I'm amazed I managed to say anything, considering I was 
practically panting from my heart beating so fast. And the little I said was 
only the smallest part of all the things my heart aches to tell him, but my 
fears keep me from voicing. 

I wonder sometimes if Dick, being trained by the greatest detective in the 
world, can hear all the things I don't say to him. The way my voice caresses his 
name when I'm not careful. The huskiness that I have to fight to keep from 
creeping into my voice whenever I talk to him by communicator. 

The longing, regretful gazes I cast his way when I pray he's not looking. 

I wonder if he knows that I never truly stopped loving him. I wonder if he knows 
how it killed me inside to break things off with him. I wonder if he knows that 
I wasn't the one who made that decision. 

I wonder if Dick knows that Bruce threatened me with legal action if I didn't 
stop our relationship. 

Dick and I didn't have much time for each other after the episode with Pettit 
and Huntress. He was busy with the Titans and his own problems in Bludhaven, and 
I spent most of my time tracing Lex Luthor's attempts to buy up most of Gotham 
for Bruce. Of course, that's another excuse. I could have made time to call 
Dick. There were a number of pregnant pauses in our conversations on the comm 
over those few weeks before Christmas. Pauses where Dick was waiting for me to 
say something about what had happened between us. But I was throwing myself into 
my work and trying to ignore it again. 

And then...Christmas. The frantic search to find the babies the Joker had 
abducted, the traps, and then the single gunshot echoing from the makeshift 
police headquarters. I may never have called Sarah "mom". She was too near my 
age for that. But she was a confidant, a mentor, a friend. 

I don't know how Dad managed to not kill that maniac. I don't know how he 
managed to look at that rictus grin that had taken my legs and Sarah's life, and 
not rend the Joker limb from limb. But then, I've always known that Dad's a 
better, stronger person than I am. 

Dick was such a rock for me at the funeral. He didn't say anything, didn't push, 
just placed his hand ever so gently on my shoulder and let me know that he was 
there for me. I don't know how I could have survived it without him. 

But at the party later that evening, I had an epiphany. I sat there, watching my 
dad move through the crowd, shaking hands without really hearing or seeing 
anything, and it came to me. 

I've been a coward all this time. 

I've been through a lot, granted. I mean, getting your lower body paralyzed is 
NOT a walk in the park by any stretch of the imagination. But looking at Dad, 
and seeing the stark, haunted look on his face, I realized that I had never felt 
pain like that. Ever since my paralysis, I had subconsciously been saying to 
myself "If losing my legs hurt, how much more would it hurt to lose something 
even more valuable?" And so I pushed people away, hid my heart behind a wall, 
and threw myself into my new work as Oracle. 

But sitting at that party, thinking, I decided that I was tired of letting that 
fear of more pain rule my life. And with that decision, I needed some time to 
myself to reexamine my life and my decisions. Which I couldn't do with Dick 
around. So I tried my best to explain it to him, and bless his heart, he 
understood. Told me to take as much time as I needed. 

And so here I sit, a digital spider at the center of her World Wide Web, the 
"ghost in the machine". Nominally, I'm keeping one eye on the current world 
hotspots for the JLA while also tracking the latest happenings in Gotham 
organized crime for Bruce. But in reality, the only thing that's on my mind is 
the only thing that's _been_ on my mind these past few weeks. 

Dick. 

My hands hover over the keyboard. I could be talking to him on the comm in 
seconds, no matter where either of us are. I even have a comm outlet routed to 
the bathroom, in case there's an emergency while _I'm_ having an emergency. And 
Dick is never more than a few seconds from his. But do I dare call him? Do I 
dare lay my heart out on the line for him? 

Oracle has been the sum total of my life. Do I dare let it be more? 

***

End