Category: vignette
Rating: G
Continuity: TAS
Summary:  A little missing scene from "The Shadow of the Bat."  Babs realizes 
that the superhero bit has its downside too. 

Disclaimer:  These characters are certainly not mine, they belong to richer 
folks at DC Comics who are not me.  I'm making no money off of this, indeed 
suing would be fabulously un-lucrative.

***

The Better Part of Valor
by Sarah Stella


***

Without bothering to turn on the light, she dances through the room.  The night 
is windy and she hasn't bothered to close the window yet.  Filmy polyester 
curtains brush against the backs of her hands, winging shadows slip over her 
skin.  She feels a chill, a rush, even in the warm night.

"What was that called again?  Indian summer."  Even her mind dances along with 
her feet.  She feels like a shadow herself.  Scent of dry, spicy leaves reaches 
her nostrils.  She feels her heart rising, fluttering inside her chest.

The cape smacks the backs of her legs, it is heavier than she had expected it to 
be, but the scalloped edges are more delicate, almost tickling even through the 
leggings.  Her feet are swimming a little in the boots.  She's graceful in spite 
of all these things.

She twirls experimentally, enjoying the feeling of her hair flying out and 
around.

"My hair."  The remembrance gives her pause.  She reaches up to touch it, her 
gloved hand deadening the sensation of strands falling over her fingers.  A 
small frown twitches across her lips.  She forces it away with a quiet snort.  
"So they know now.  I'm not Batman."  She laughs, a deep laugh, full and 
satisfying.  "So I'm not Batman."  Her arms spread wide, she twirls again.  She 
remembers when she was little, pirouetting around the house in her silky 
polyester slip with the pink rosebud bubbling out in the middle, her father 
watching with fond amusement.

The thought of her father brings a stab of guilt.  "He's sitting there in Gotham 
jail and I'm acting like a four year-old."  She can't stop the feeling that 
rises inside, unrepentant excitement.  She closes her eyes, reluctantly pulling 
at the fingers of her right glove.

When she opens her eyes, her hand looks strange in the moonlight, naked.  The 
glove is still warm.  "What I did tonight was . . . it was . . . " It is the 
first time she has spoken and her voice is loud and startling in the empty room.  
"Oh, you should have seen me.  I . . . "  She feels the memory of that night in 
the muscles in her arms, in her fingers, in the curve of her spine, in the 
limited stretch of her toes.  The memory of the street and how it felt through a 
layer of leather.  She wiggles her fingers before making them into a fist, 
pounding it into her still-gloved left hand.  The sting across her knuckles is 
reassuring somehow, like the lingering remnants of a punch.

She quickly strips off the other glove.  "I'm not Batman," she says softly, 
nervously smoothing her rented costume's material over her hips.  Her stomach 
clenches.  Her hand still burns with the smack of the leather.

There is no one to tell, no one to understand her happiness or her uncertainty 
because this is secret, the only secret now.  Her vision constricts and fear 
makes her palms sweat.  She rubs them together vainly trying to warm them.  
Sudden loneliness is a lump in her throat that she can't swallow.  She reaches 
over and shuts the window with a thump, closing herself in the room.