"Variations"
by Amanda
email: anxietygrrl@hotmail.com

A note about continuity: This is a companion piece to "Ancient History" by 
Becky and myself (which can be found at 
http://www.fanfiction.net/profile.php?userid=12084)
and fits into the universe that story established, which takes as canon 
anything presented in the various animated series up through the first season of 
Batman Beyond, but not the retcon revealed in 'Return of the Joker.'  It's an 
alternate timeline, 'what if...?' kind of thing, and it's really not as wacky or 
confusing at it sounds.  Speaking of canon: unless I'm delusional, I read on the 
official BB site that Barbara was once Gotham City's District Attorney before 
becoming police commissioner, but the stuff about the prom I totally made up.  
Technically this is a BB story because technically it's a Barbara story, and a 
Barbara/Sam story, but you know what?  It's really a Dick and Babs story, 'cuz 
I'm a big sap.  *g*

* * * * * *

Barbara looked in the mirror and straightened her skirt.  Again.  She 
smoothed her red hair behind her ears, then changed her mind and brushed it out 
next to her face.  Her mouth quirked in dismay as a gray hair caught her sight.  
She pulled the section of hair straight down in front of her nose and winced as 
she plucked out the offending follicle.  She didn't know why she bothered.  
There would be more to take its place soon enough.  Sighing, she ran her fingers 
through her hair one last time and shook her head a little, deciding on the 'I 
didn't even think about what my hair looked like' look.

Her skirt was still crooked, though.  And maybe it didn't quite match the 
shoes after all...

"Damn it," she muttered, and went to the closet to pick something else.  As 
she flipped through the rack, pulling out and rejecting one garment after 
another, she once again mentally chastised herself.  'For God's sake, Barbara.  
You're a forty year old woman, not some giddy teenager getting ready for the 
prom.'

Truthfully, she was more nervous now than she had been on prom night.  After 
all, that hadn't been a real date, just another night out with a friend.  And 
she'd had to practically beg him to go with her.  There hadn't been any 
butterflies in her stomach that night. Moths, maybe.  Those little moths that 
fly around the porch lamp.  She'd done her best to ignore them.  And by the time 
he was twenty minutes late picking her up they'd been thoroughly bug-zapped.

Her father had opened the door, while Barbara sat on the couch furiously 
tapping her foot. "Well, young man.  I hope you have a good excuse for your 
tardiness."  There was no real displeasure in his voice, though, and as Barbara 
sneaked a quick glance over her shoulder she thought her father seemed almost 
amused.  Well, she certainly wasn't.

"Sorry, Mr. Gordon--er, Commissioner.  I had a uh...  I had a thing."

Barbara rolled her eyes.  She stood up, smoothed out the aquamarine satin of 
her dress, tried to balance her temper somewhere between miffed and piqued, and 
stepped out into the hall.

"Oh really?  What kind of--oh my God!"  All her pique deserted her and she 
rushed toward him as she saw the alarmingly large bruise discoloring the left 
side of her date's face. "Dick, what happened?"  She raised her hand toward his 
face but stopped short of touching it as he preemptively winced.

He shrugged sheepishly.  "Aw, it's nothing, Babs."  He looked away from her 
concerned expression and toward her father again.  "Just got a little too rough 
in a game of touch football with the guys."

"What did they use for the football?" she frowned.  "Your head?"

He rolled his eyes at her.  "It's no big deal, really.  Don't we have some 
sort of party to go to?"  He held his arms out to the sides and grinned 
playfully.  "See, I got all dressed up and everything."

She took note of the tuxedo, and the grin, looked him up and down with an 
appraising gaze. Well.  "You certainly did."  She rubbed her palms against the 
skirt of her dress before she could stop herself from doing it.  It was the 
lotion, she thought.  The lotion she'd put on made her palms a little greasy, 
that was all.

She looked down--to make sure she hadn't left any gross stains on the 
fabric--and when she raised her head again, his grin had faded considerably.  He 
was looking at her... strangely.  Why was he looking at her like that?  "You 
look... really nice, Babs.  Really."

Oh.

"I got you that thing like you said," he mumbled quickly, and turned to pick 
up the corsage from the side table where he'd laid it down.  "You want me to... 
uh...?"

Her father was still standing right there, of course.  She was about to save 
them both by asking, 'Dad, would you mind pinning this on?' when her father 
suddenly threw his hands up in the air and exclaimed, "The camera!  I forgot the 
camera.  I'll be right back."

She and Dick watched him retreat down the hall.  They stood there silently 
for a few moments until, in unison, they said, "So."

The resultant laughter broke the weird tension.  "So," he repeated, smiling, 
his eyebrows raised, "I guess I should..."  He held out the corsage like it was 
an alien artifact.

"I can do it myself, really," she offered, reaching out for it.  Their hands 
touched.

"No," he said more firmly.  "I insist.  Come on, Babs, we'll pretend it's a 
real date."

She returned his smile and closed her fists before she could wipe them on 
her dress again. "Okay, why not?"

They stepped toward each other and he held up the corsage in the general 
vicinity of her princess neckline, trying not to look embarrassed or the least 
bit daunted.  She couldn't help but giggle.  "Oh, for God's sake, Dick."  She 
took his hand and guided it to a safely neutral zone near her shoulder and he 
managed to complete the procedure without drawing any blood.  It seemed to take 
a little longer than was perhaps necessary for your standard corsage-pinning, 
however.

"I found it," came her father's voice.  "A new roll of film, too."

They both jumped, and Dick's fingers grazed her collar bone as he pulled his 
hand away.

She bit her lip.  Stupid moths.

Barbara patiently indulged her father and his camera for what seemed like an 
eternity until he was finally ready to let them go.  "You get my daughter home 
at a reasonable hour, young man."

"No problem, sir," Dick answered confidently.  "I'm not really a night 
person."

Over twenty years later, standing in front of her closet, Barbara remembered 
that, and laughed.  Nothing earth-shattering or magical had happened that night.  
Rubbery chicken, bad pop music, endearingly tacky decorations.  And dancing, of 
course.  Once they were among the crowd even the slow dancing had very little 
subtext.  It was just... comfortable. She had indeed gotten in at a decent hour, 
and was left with a friendly kiss on the cheek. The subtext, that came later.  
Eventually followed, of course, by actual text.

Barbara's smile began to fade.  Sighing, she sat down on the edge of her bed 
and pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers.  Now was not the time to 
be thinking of this, because thinking of this unfailingly led to thinking of 
other things.  Other nights. Nights that were so far in the past they shouldn't 
matter anymore, shouldn't intrude into her thoughts as often as they did.  She 
made an effort to force them away.  There was nothing to be gained from fretting 
over the past.

Better to fret over the present, she thought, as she checked her reflection 
one final time.  The outfit, the hair, they would have to do.  She hadn't 
been at the peak of her loveliness when Sam Young had asked her out, after 
all.  She'd stayed late at the office, a stack of case files to review from 
the assistant district attorneys under her authority.  As she often did when 
she worked late, she'd changed into her sweats, ordered in Chinese, and put 
her hair up in a messy ponytail.  She had chopsticks full of lo mein on the 
way to her mouth when there was a knock on her office door.  She assumed it 
was her assistant.

"Come in," she said distractedly.  When the door opened and the handsome 
defense attorney walked in the noodles fell to the desk with a 'plop,' right on 
top of the Johanssen indictment.

She put down her chopsticks and tried to look casual as her hand reached up 
to her hair almost of its own volition.

"Mr. Young.  Working late?  We don't get that many visitors from across the 
aisle at the D.A.'s office this time of night."

"It's Sam."

She blinked.  "Excuse me?"

He smiled easily at her.  "Call me Sam."

"Oh.  Well, call me Barbara, then," she said, surprising herself.  "What can 
I do for you, Sam?  I haven't seen you since the Reynaldo case.  Is this about 
the appeal?"

Reynaldo had been the last case she'd actually tried herself.  A high 
profile drug dealer, the mayor insisted that no one less than the district 
attorney herself prosecute him.  Sam Young, a junior partner in a prominent 
Gotham law firm, had represented one of Reynaldo's associates who'd turned 
state's evidence.  She'd seen a lot of him during the trial—in the professional 
sense, of course--and they'd gotten along remarkably well.  She'd even sort of 
hoped...  Well, that had been months ago.

"Actually, no.  I'm not working that case anymore.  I've resigned from the 
hallowed halls of Sloane, Barnes, and Fretzken."

Curious, she leaned back in her chair, momentarily forgetting her disheveled 
condition. "Really?  Thinking of coming to work for the good guys?  We could use 
you."

"I just might at that," he said with a smile.  "But I think I want to try my 
hand at my own practice first."

"Well, good luck to you, Sam."  It was surprising how easy it was for her to 
call him that.

"Thank you.  Although that's not really the reason I'm here."

"Oh?"  Now that she thought about it, it didn't really seem like a good 
reason at all. "Then what...?"

He reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope.  "I've got two 
tickets to a performance of the Goldberg Variations at the Athenaeum Friday 
night.  I was wondering if you'd like to join me."

She stared at him.  Was he... asking her out?

When she didn't respond he continued hesitantly.  "I remember you saying 
over lunch one day that you liked Bach..."

"I do!"  She winced a little at the level of enthusiasm in her reply, and 
tried to tone it down a little.  "I love Bach.  I'd...  I'd love to go."  How 
about that?  He *was* asking her out.  'Guess it's been so long I forgot what it 
was like,' she thought, a wry smile touching her face for an instant before 
resolving into a genuinely pleased one.

So they'd made the date, said a pleasant goodnight, and Barbara hadn't even 
minded working another few hours that night.  She smiled through the motions and 
depositions.  She smiled at her assistant.  She smiled in her car on the drive 
home.

It wasn't until she'd closed the door behind her and set her briefcase down 
on the couch that she remembered.

God, she hadn't thought of that in years.  The Goldberg Variations.  She 
didn't know whether to laugh or cry.  Her first real date in almost a year, and 
it had to be the Goldberg Variations.

She sank down into the cushions and leaned back, staring up at the ceiling.  
"You always have to do this to me, don't you?"  She childishly stuck out her 
tongue and then shook her head, chuckling at herself.  Then she took a deep 
breath and pulled a pillow onto her lap, leaning over until she was lying on the 
soft couch in a loose fetal position.

"You can't just let me forget..."

When Dick had come back to Gotham after his extended snit--er, world 
tour--she hadn't seen very much of him for a while.  She'd missed him.  And at 
first, even when she did see him, she still missed him.  He was different.  Not 
*bad* different.  Definitely not.  But still... even though she had accepted the 
end of their romantic relationship, she missed her best friend.  She was afraid 
things had changed too much.  So she took the initiative to make sure they 
hadn't, and wouldn't.  She got it into her head that she would drag him along to 
some kind of event, on the pretext that she had an extra ticket, and they could
get to talking, test the waters, that sort of thing.

It seemed like the perfect plan.  She'd ask him to meet her for coffee and 
then spring it on him.

Unfortunately, there was only one thing she could get tickets to.

"Classical music?  Babs, do you want me to fall asleep in public?  Because I 
don't mind, but it might be a little embarrassing for you."

"I'll just pretend I don't know you, like I do now," she teased.

"Can't we do something more fun?  Like, I don't know, go to the dentist?"

She rolled her eyes.  "You're such a big baby.  It's Bach.  It'll be good 
for you."

"That's what Alfred used to say about broccoli."

"Ah, but broccoli doesn't have that intricate melodic line, that exquisite 
counterpoint."

"Yeah, but Bach can't be made tolerable with cheese sauce."

She threw her hands up in mock exasperation.  *This* was what she had 
missed.  "Fine.  If you don't want to spend the evening with me, I'm sure I can 
find someone else to go." She went back to reading her magazine, or at least 
pretending to.  She could hear his spoon clinking as he stirred his coffee, and 
tried to stifle a smile.

"Well..."

"Yes?" she asked, still not looking up from the magazine.

"Maybe it won't be *so* bad."

"Maybe not."

"I'd hate for your 'extra ticket' to go to waste."  She swore she could hear 
the quotation marks in his voice as he said it.

"Sometimes the level of your consideration for others astounds me," she said 
with as much faux sincerity as she could muster.

The magazine was snatched away from her, and she looked up and met his eyes.  
"I'll pick you up at six," he said, and she considered him for a second before 
replying.

"Well, how about that," she remarked.  "You *can* still smile."

When he got to her apartment, the first thing she said to him was, "We're 
walking."

He stared at her quizzically.  "What?  Babs, it's 23 blocks."

"I don't care.  We're not going to the concert hall on..." she waved a hand 
at the motorcycle "that thing."

"'That thing'?  You love motorcycles."

"In certain contexts, yes.  This is not one of them."

He sighed.  "Okay, so we take your car."

"It's in the shop."

"Then good old, dependable public transportation."

She raised her eyebrows at him.  "In this dress?  Oh, I don't think so."

He cocked his head at her.  "It's a nice dress," he conceded.  "Very... 
dressy."  Oh, damn. Why was he looking at her like that?  That look had not been 
on the agenda.

They started walking, and she self consciously pulled her shawl around her 
shoulders. "Thank you.  I see you actually wore a jacket.  And it's not made of 
leather.  I'm impressed."  And maybe just a tiny bit disappointed.  She kind of 
liked the leather jacket. Inappropriate as it may be.  For the occasion, that 
is.  The jacket, not her liking it. That is...  "However I do believe I also 
mentioned something about a necktie?" she added, before her thoughts could 
completely get away from her.

"And I believe I mentioned something about 'not in your wildest dreams.'"

No, no neckties in her wildest dreams.  Although the leather jacket...  Damn 
it!  The evening was already going way off track.  "Please, it's not like I 
asked you to put on a sweater vest."  He grimaced as expected, and she forced 
back a giggle.  There.  That had set things on course again quite nicely.

They chatted companionably during the walk to the concert hall, and 
continued as they took their seats, which were toward the back.  "Near the 
exits," Dick commented, "for an easy escape."  She pretended she hadn't heard 
him and studied her program.  She really was looking forward to this.  She loved 
Bach.

As the lights dimmed and the keyboardist took the stage, Dick groaned 
audibly.  "You didn't tell me it was a harpsichord!  A *harpsichord,* Barbara!"

The applause covered his remark from the rest of the audience, thankfully.  
"I'm surprised you know what a harpsichord is."

"Sure I do. It's that instrument all those '60s bands started putting on 
their records when they were taking acid."

Barbara rolled her eyes and decided to ignore him for a while.  She didn't 
have a great view of the stage, but it didn't bother her.  She often preferred 
to just close her eyes and listen to the music, anyway.  But it was a little 
difficult tonight, with Dick constantly fidgeting beside her.

"How much longer?" he leaned over and whispered, after only five of thirty 
movements.

"Why," she whispered back crossly, "do you have an appointment?"  You might 
think so from the way he kept checking his watch.  Every time that stupid 
Indiglo lit up she thought it was the bloody Batsignal.

"Hey, just asking."  He forgot to lower his voice and an elderly patron 
sitting in front of them turned around and shushed them harshly.  The offended 
look on Dick's face amused her, and she put her hand to her mouth to hold back a 
laugh.

Uh oh.  That was a mistake.  She caught him grinning and she knew.  Even 
when she wasn't looking at him, she knew he was sitting there, just trying to 
come up with ways to make her laugh.

Damn him.

By variation 15 he still hadn't done anything, though.  She was beginning to 
think she'd misjudged him.  For some reason this was disappointing to her.  She 
had finally shaken herself out of such a silly notion and was back to enjoying 
the performance when she sensed movement next to her.  She opened her eyes just 
in time to see Dick's hand inching its way over toward her knee.  So she elbowed 
him.  Not too hard, but hard enough to earn her an indignant "Hey!"

She hid her smile behind her program as the shushing lady turned around 
again and scowled at them, this time joined by several others.  Barbara leaned 
over and whispered in his ear, "Nice try, Captain Subtlety."

She felt his breath on her face as he whispered back, "I was just testing 
your reflexes. The next time you won't even see me coming."

She snorted, and this time got a nasty look herself from the man on her 
right.  "Sorry," she mouthed, chagrined.

The game went on.  She felt sort of bad.  She really was there to enjoy the 
performance--well, at least partly.  But... this was just more fun.

She did see him coming the next time, and intercepted him with a quick kick 
to the ankle. She beamed triumphantly.  He hadn't been expecting that.  She was 
fairly certain she was winning.

Until she looked into the aisle and saw the usher glaring at them.  She 
Shifted uncomfortably.  This guy was the Batman of ushers.  Dick didn't seem to 
notice.

The third time, he almost succeeded, but she caught him just in time and 
pressed her fingernails into the back of his hand.

"Ow!"

Shushing lady was furious, and so were about a dozen other people in the 
general vicinity. On stage, Barbara was sure she heard the keyboardist trip over 
a few notes.  She buried her head in her hands, trying to hold back the torrent 
of giggles, and Dick held up his program and weakly offered an excuse to the 
disapproving crowd.  "Uh... paper cut."

By this time she was biting down on the knuckle of her index finger, and 
tears were starting to leak from the corners of her eyes.  She completely lost 
track of which variation they were on.  She let her guard down and moved out of 
her defensive posture.

And that, of course, was when he made his move.

Almost before she even felt his fingers tickling that one horribly sensitive 
spot on the back of her knee she let out a noise that was closer to an 
ultrasonic squeal than a laugh.  The music stopped.  Everyone, including Dick, 
turned to look at her in astonishment.

At the same instant they both started laughing; ridiculously, boisterously, 
uncontrollably. He gave her that grin, grabbed her hand and they raced through 
the exit, through the lobby and out onto the street.

"See?  I told you we'd need an easy escape."

She smacked him on the arm, but she was still laughing, wiping away tears.  
"I can't believe you did that!  You're insane!"

"No, you're just ticklish."

She kept punching him playfully and he grabbed her arms, pinning them to her 
sides as he began tickling under her ribs.

She let out a yelp and squirmed out of his grasp, running off down the 
street.  He ran after her, and when he caught up, fondly slung his arm around 
her shoulder.  They walked home in companionable silence until they reached her 
front door.

"Gee, Babs.  I think I like classical music.  We should do this again real 
soon."

"Don't you give me that smirk.  Now it's confirmed.  I can't take you 
anywhere.  This was your plan all along, wasn't it?"

"Nah," he shrugged.  "I improvised."

He smiled at her and she could feel her own smile stretching broadly across 
her face.  She hadn't smiled this way in a long time.  It felt really good.  It 
felt natural.

Dick reached up and brushed a lock of hair out of her face.  "Thanks," he 
said softly.

She swallowed.  "For what?"

"For being you."

"Who else could I be?" she asked, only half-teasing.  'This is us,' she 
thought.  'Who else could we possibly be?'

"Never change, okay?" His face was almost serious, now, and she matched her 
expression to his.

"Okay.  You too.  Promise?"

"Promise," he replied.

There was a moment, a split second when she wondered what would come next, 
or what she *wanted* to come next.  What came wasn't exactly what she expected, 
but it was nice.

He stroked one thumb along her cheek, leaned down, and kissed her on the 
forehead. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight," she answered, not sure if she was relieved or disappointed.  As 
he got on the motorcycle and rode off around the corner, though, she decided it 
didn't matter. It was nice.  And it meant maybe the future could be nice, too.  
Maybe everything wasn't as screwed up as it sometimes seemed.  Maybe, just 
maybe, everything would work out okay.

It hadn't, of course.  Instead of the best, the worst had happened, and it 
seemed to happen all at once.  The whole world changed.

Dick had left--again.  And not much later, Dick had died.

Not that she thought she and Dick would have necessarily ended up together.  
She wasn't that naïve.  Still, if he had lived, if Tim had lived, if she and 
Bruce hadn't...  She shook her head.  'No, let's not go there this evening, 
shall we?'

However it had happened, here she was, forty, still single, and nervous as 
hell about a first date.  These weren't butterflies in her stomach, or moths.  
They were pterodactyls. And for some reason she was blaming them on the dead 
guy.

She didn't relish dating.  It seemed, more now than ever before, that always 
when she least expected or wanted it, she'd hear his voice in the back of her 
mind, usually offering up unsolicited commentary on some perfectly nice guy.  
Something like, 'Nice catch, Babs.  He's got the looks of the Mad Hatter and the 
personality of Mr. Freeze.' She wished he would just shut up already.

As for real relationships, there hadn't been many.  A few brief experiments 
with serial monogamy.  They'd all been very nice, but she never really felt like 
she *knew* any of them.  That's what she missed, she knew.  She missed her 
friend.

Barbara rose from the bed and walked into her kitchen to pour herself a 
glass of wine. She needed it.  To calm the pterodactyls.  She was just beginning 
to feel a little less flooded by the past when the buzzer on her intercom 
sounded.

She looked over to the monitor and saw Sam Young standing by the building's 
front door. Carrying flowers.  Smiling, she suddenly felt as though she'd broken 
through the surface of that dark pool.  Or at least could see the light above 
the water.

"Barbara?"

"I'll be right down, Sam."  She grabbed her coat and purse, locked up, and 
as she stood waiting for the elevator, said to the air, "And you, you just shut 
up tonight, okay?"

And the funny thing was, he did.  Sam and Barbara had dinner.  They went to 
hear the Goldberg Variations and actually listened to the piece, like real 
grownups.  And she didn't feel that twinge very much at all, as the evening went 
on.  She invited Sam up to the apartment for coffee, and they talked, like old 
friends, about so many things she couldn't even list them the next day.

At the end of the night he didn't stay, but he did kiss her before he left.  
On the mouth. And she kissed him back.  They made plans to see each other again 
soon.

Before Barbara went to sleep that night she lay in bed for quite some time, 
listening to the quiet dark, for the first time in a long time thinking about 
the future instead of the past.  She surprised herself by thinking that maybe 
things weren't as hopeless or hard as they sometimes seemed.

Maybe she'd be okay.


END