My Knight in Shining Armor
by Jubilee (jubilee@ipoline.com)

***

It is late at night. Approaching two. No three o'clock in the morning but 
Barbara can't sleep at all. She's busy. She is determined. She isn't gonna 
let any punk hacker beat her at this game. And he isn't. Barbara Gordon is 
The Oracle. MHR is the one who wants to test Oracle's abilities so now 
he shall see what the Oracle can do. Oracle isn't just some frail weak girl. 
Oracle isn't some regular computer program that can be hack into. No. The 
Oracle is Barbara Gordon and MHR is now gonna get a piece of her mind.

As Babs traces the email to a closed ended link, reworks that channel and 
finds several open sources which the email could have been sent through... 

"Damn... that means that he must have..." she mutters to herself when she 
hears a knock on the door. It wasn't just a quiet knock either. It was 
more like a BANG. Suprised, she spins around and looks at the time. It was 
almost three am in the morning. "A robber?" she thought to herself... Her 
eyebrows raised. 

"Does he really wanna break in here tonight? I am not in a good mood." But 
no, it was coming from the door... And a robber wouldn't be so kind enough to 
knock. 

"Darn. The visuals are out... only audio," Babs reminds herself as she looked 
at the screen. So she wheels herself to the elevator, goes to the door and 
opens it slowly, Nightwing falls over on top of her into her lap. 

"DICK!" she cries. "Dick? Can you hear me?" she asks as she pats on his 
cheek.

"Huh? Mom?" Dick says with a weak smile.

"Silly." she says almost in tears. "Can you stand?"

"Yeah... But I'd prefer to crawl if you don't mind from here on end," he 
jokes. Babs looks around anxiously relieved that no one was around. 

"Come on... Up on your feet Mr. Comedian," she teases as she helps Dick back 
on his feet with most of his weight leaning on her shoulders and back.

They slowly move forward as the door closes behind them. On their way back 
up, Bab asks what had happened. 

"Catwoman did this to me," he pointed to his fighting wounds. 

"Ouch. That girl's got claws," Babs remarks as she briefly takes a look while 
she presses the elevator buttons.

"Yeah... Then Ivy gave me these."

"Double ouch... Anyways, we're here Boy Wonder. Come on, just a little 
further to the bed," Babs struggles through the elevator doors as Dick was 
becoming more weak. His weight was gaining as he no longer had strength to 
walk. Finally they made it to the bed and Babs literally plopped him on 
it. 

"Humph. Leslie Thompson is out of town for a meeting... Can't call her now." 
She sighs for a second, taking a deep breath and she watches Dick drifting in 
and out of conciousness. Then she got worried for a second... 

"He didn't get a hit to the head did he?" she wonders. "He could be suffering 
from a concussion." So she moves closer to Dick and holds his head gently in 
her hands as she searches for evidence of a concussion. He seemed fine and 
she breathes a sigh of relief. Babs wheels herself to the bathroom and takes 
out her first aid kit, finds a small towel and dampens it, then she zooms 
back to the bedroom.

She smiles as she notices Dick asleep already. Using her arms, Babs shifts 
her weight and moves to the bed so that she can sit next to the now asleep 
Romeo. She peels off his mask and his hair falls slightly. She combs it back 
with her fingers. She lifts his head slowly with one hand while taking the 
damp cloth to wipe his face gently with it before lying him back down. 

"Hmmm... I can't let him sleep in that," she grins at the thought. Taking 
some care of Dick's bruises, she takes off his gloves and boots first and 
throws them into the hamper. Then she slowly takes off his kelvar suit and 
pants til he was just in his black boxer tights. Feeling like a basketball 
player, she throws the clothes into the hamper again. Babs grins for a second 
while tilting her head as she watched her knight in shining armor fast asleep 
in her bed... 

"My do I feel giddy," she laughs with a shrug. She takes the damp cloth again 
and begins wiping his body cleaning off the dirt and the blood til the clean 
towel was a dirty old robe. Looking at it, she shrugs and tosses it into the 
garbage can. Babs opens the first aid kit and slowly bandages up Dick after 
wiping some antiseptic on his infected wounds. Babs takes her stuffed Batgirl 
doll from her nightstand and places it next to Dick with a smile. Then she 
pulls the blankets up to his neck to make sure that he'll be warm. Hesitating 
a little, she takes a little more time to comb her hand through his hair when 
Dick suddenly grabs her hand and pulls her closer to him where their lips 
almost touch. The two linger there for a second as Babs hands was still on 
his face and his hand was on her hand.

"Thank you Babs..." he says weakly in a semi-concious state.

"Anything for you my prince," she says softly as she leans over and kisses 
him softly on the lips. "Get some rest now, you hear?" she says as she 
finishes combing her fingers through his hair and softly touches his cheeks. 

"Yes... my princess," he mumbles as he falls asleep again. Babs smiles 
contently as she moves back into her chair. She wheels herself out the door, 
looks at Dick fast asleep, closes the lights and closes the door... Leaving 
just a slight crack so that she can hear his voice if he ever called 
her in the middle of the night.

She wheels into the kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee before heading 
back to the computer. She yawns a little and takes a big gulp of her coffee 
before she begins typing again. "Now... Where were we?" she furiously types 
away on her keyboard.

-fin-