The night is dark. It’s always dark in Gotham, but on some nights the shadows crawl farther than others, and tonight they’re seeping into the tiniest crevices in each and every building, dripping down storm drains, and even scrabbling into your injuries. It’s enough to make Batman weep. Not Maps Mizoguchi, though – she’s seen enough of this to know what she’s getting into. And she thought to herself, even before she left tonight, Maps, tonight is the night they’re finally going to get you. It’s all she can do to stumble back home.
Steady, she tells herself, in a voice you’d expect out of the most hardened of crimefighters, steady, girl. You’re almost there.
She lands on a balcony. Silent, like the Bat she is.
It’s her dame’s place, this gorgeous, turn-of-the-century thing. The scrollwork itself is to die for. Not that Maps hopes she dies. In fact, quite the opposite. She hopes she doesn’t die, a worry that seems ever more likely as blood, like shadows, seeps from her skin.
Olive will know what to do.
Actually, come to think of it, Maps should know what to do, because she’s had basically a ton of first aid training, she did it on purpose to be Robin, and it’s kind of weird that she doesn’t remember any of it now? Also her head hurts. Anyway she wants to lie down.
Ahem. Maps Mizoguchi, who studied on the mountaintop under the old and grizzled – she can’t remember anymore. That was her character, anyway. Maps actually studied in a boring building on cold cement, but that doesn’t make for a good opening.
And she’s going to need a good opening, once Olive gets ahold of her.
She flips herself over the balcony and tries not to spin. Once she’s got that down, she tries to stop wobbling on her feet. She’s got to remember the feeling. It’s an important plot point, important enough not to forget it for when –
Maps is reeling from the fight. Too much adrenaline, see, from running away. Trying to make it on half a leg, nearly torn off – she can’t go on. She has to seek respite the only place she knows, the only place she can trust. Her one beacon in the dark. Olive.
Stumbling to the ground, carpet fibers warm and soft on her fingers, Maps only has thoughts left for protecting her secret identity. Tearing off her domino, she quickly squirrels it away under the shelf. She tugs her shredded cape from around her shoulders, pulling off her bloodstained vest in a practiced motion, ignore the flinch of her hands. Times like these, you have to hold it together. Whoever heard of a hero who couldn’t take off her gloves and her boots – just those – to protect her loved one? Not that Maps is much of hero, these days. She’s done things. Dark things. Things so dark they would boggle your mind.
The agony, though, of a leg half torn off, overcomes her. Her one boot slips off just fine, but the other – the other burns like hellfire. Fitting, it seems, for someone as damned as she’s made herself. She collapses, insensate, on the pristine rug, marring its bright, innocent surface. She never should’ve brought these problems to her gal.
Maps blinks angrily as the light flicks on, but she can’t make it go away again.
“Maps?” Olive asks, rubbing sleep out of her eyes.
Maps looks up forlornly, drinking deep from those kind eyes, the last she’ll ever see, just as beautiful as they were every time she ever saw them. “Olive,” she whispers, like drawing glass through her parched throat, “go on… without me…never forget me….”
“Oh my god, Maps, what the frick happened?” Olive says, in a weirdly strangled tone, tugging Maps up and into a chair with barely any hesitation at all. It’s not even remotely comfortable on her bumps and bruises, she can tell you that! Not to mention her mangled foot.
“Well, you know,” Maps says, evasively, making bat ears with her fingers until Olive nods. “I was doing the, um, secret Gotham business, and it went… wrong.”
“Wrong,” Olive repeats, with a snort, peeling Maps’s boot off her foot as gently as she possibly can, Maps figures, except it’s not gentle enough because Maps is saying whole five dollar swears about it, and, like Maps doesn’t even know that many five dollar swears so she’s saying most of them more than once. Also Olive has some horrible warm cloth she’s doing something with and she keeps patting it against what used to be a foot and Maps has to work really hard not to yelp, which is super embarrassing.
Maps clears her throat, beginning once more her tale of just the usual horrors in a city like this. This time wasn’t even that bad, not for a place like Gotham. There was a time when Maps thought more fondly of it all, but she’s grown up now, and she knows better. “There I was, in the deepest recesses of their dark lair, and, yes. It all went wrong. It was all swell, smooth as butter, when what trick should the devil play but shining a single stray light at the most inopportune of moments, right on – ow!” Occasionally, Maps happens to have her dramatic monologue interrupted by Olive jabbing at the ouchy part of her foot: all of it. “Long story short they shot at me and I had to rabbit. Or like. Rab-bat. Real quick. Oh! Like a bat out of hell.”
“Too fast, it looks like, Maps, you need to be more careful,” Olive says, but she sounds more worried than irritated, which in turn makes Maps more worried, because she hadn’t thought she’d actually torn her foot off. Until Olive tries to tilt her foot. Then she does. “Oh, no. Maps, I really think this is broken. Or at least sprained.”
Of all the times to be injured. Isn’t it just her damned luck that it would be now. “But I’m in the middle of a mission.” She scuffs her foot in that sullen way – no, wait, she doesn’t scuff her foot, because that would hurt a lot. Okay. She tilts her head about 30 degrees towards the window and stares, hopelessly, into the middle distance. “You don’t understand, sweeeeeeeetheart, these people are doing the weapons deal of a lifetime. We’ve got to catch them in the act, or we’ll never catch them at all! A lifetime, they said, Olive, of a lifetime!”
“Right. I’m not going to call you ‘Detective’, but that sounds like real bad news, Maps, and I think maybe you should hand this off to someone… else. Like. Anyone else.” Olive is clearly trying not to say someone better trained, and it really galls Maps that her dame thinks so low of her. She could probably do it. “It’s not your job to stop every bad person in Gotham, Maps.”
Maps looks Olive right in the eye – Maps motions Olive closer, until they’re nose to nose, so she can look Olive right in the eye – and gives her a glare worthy of the earliest pre-coffee morning, challenging her to throw more disrespect at Maps’s expertise. She’s the only detective in this city worth a damn, and she’ll show everyone why. “It’s a mission, Olive. I’m a Robin. It’s the one thing that’ll always be true – Gotham needs Batman, and Batman needs Robin, and Robins never give up on their missions. That’s me. Not giving up.”
“It’s not a mission,” Olive says, the moonlight streaming in to catch the silver of her hair, bathing her in the unsettling beauty – wait, huh?
“It is so!” Maps has never heard the like from her beloved’s lips. Is this the end of the line for them? “I have to do it right or all the rest of the Batfamily will laugh at me and think they’re better than me and then they’ll kick me out and never let me be Robin again and my whole superhero career will be in shambles and I’ll never get to join the Justice League. Also the bad guys will sell a bunch of rocket launchers to little kids or something. I had to, um, leave before I got to hear that part.”
“The Batfamily? What is this, the mafia? Wait, no, don’t tell me, if we learn that, too, I’m just not going to be able to deal with it tonight,” Olive shakes her head, her hair trailing all the way down to where her legs go all the way up, tending tenderly to Maps and her war wounds like an avenging battle angel war nurse thing, that ice pack is majorly cold. “Okay, I’ll tell you what. If you go get that foot checked out by an actual doctor, I’ll do your thing for you.”
“Mission,” Maps says, trying very stoically and stone-faced not to pass out from the pain in a super impressive expert way, “and deal.”
“I’m not calling it that,” Olive tells her, but at least she pulls out the pajamas Maps can’t reach, and then helps her tug them on so she doesn’t look like she was out doing vigilantism in the middle of the night and the nurse won’t have any reason to be suspicious that there are any more Robins on the premises. Opsec.
“Well, the Batfamily is a real word,” Maps says, not sounding strangled at all. “For real! It’s not even a secret superhero term. All the superheroes call them that. I don’t know if everyone knows they’re supposed to, but you can follow them online, and everyone there does.” She gestures vaguely to her phone, realizes she isn’t holding it, and decides that, intrepid protagonist as she is, she still doesn’t have the energy to find it and get it out.
“Please tell me you’re not logging your vigilante hours into your exercise app again,” Olive says. For some reason, she sounds teasing, instead of like Maps had a brilliant idea that she’s jealous of. Maps half climbs onto Olive’s shoulder as Olive hoists her up from underneath, so they can hobble down to the nurse together. “That’s worse than tax evasion for getting caught.” Oh, yeah, right. Opsec.
“I would never do tax evasion,” Maps informs her. Sternly.
Maps comes to slowly, head pounding, blood rushing loud and fast in her ears. Another late night, then. Figures. All the nights are late, these days. Her gal, Olive, stands above her, shaking a water bottle, too fast, too loud. Just like she like her coffee, too – vindictive and strong enough to kill her. Maps groans, to prove she’s – against her will – conscious to the world again.
“Rise and shine, sleepyhead, time to take your meds,” Olive says, in her melodic, floating voice, and the night comes crashing back in roaring color as Maps obligingly opens her mouth to let Olive slip the blissful pills in, followed by a sip of the coldest water she’s ever tasted. It was the worst of nights, the way they always are, and – Maps crashes back down to the bed when her ankle refuses to cooperate with her internal monologue.
“Well, that’s out,” she says, just so she and Olive are on the same page. And Maps worked so hard to get them to make her cast up in Robin colors, even, and now she’s not even going to get to use it! She swears she remembers at least one of the Robins doing all the acrobatics and stuff in a cast. Well, it looks nice, at least, so it’s a beautiful stumbling block in her hero’s journey. It would probably look less lonely if more than Olive had signed it so far.
“Yeah, Maps, you’re going to have to stay in for a while,” Olive says. She doesn’t even sound like she’s sorry about it, even, she just sounds like it serves Maps right for going off and trying to fight an entire weapons trafficking ring on her own, which it so doesn’t. Of course, after Maps manages to look suitably horrorstruck, Olive kisses her nose and says, “don’t worry! I’ll pamper you! Bring you pillows, stack all your videogames in easy reach, make you tea. Soup, even, if you’re nice.” So at least there’s that, in this cruel, unrelenting world.
“That settles it,” Maps says, in her best Bat voice, so it’ll sound serious enough, and also so Olive knows what topic they’re discussing without having to announce it out loud where everyone can hear, “there’s only one way out of this.” Then Maps tries to give her best puppy eyes to Olive, except she’s not sure she did it right because the pain meds kind of make her face feel all tingly. Anyway, it doesn’t seem to make Olive realize either her Fate or her Knightly Duty, because it’s supposed to work instantly, due to the weight of it all.
“Oh. No. No, no, no, Maps, we’ve talked about this, I don’t want to be involved,” Olive says, in that tone that’s, like, whatever the opposite of the femme fatale is, where she wants to be as least fatale as she possibly can be, and not help Maps out with the mission. She just has to punctuate it with a weird little pat on the head and a vigorous hair ruffle, which is probably intended to be soothing and is really more very much not soothing at all.
Maps considers the options (while carefully smoothing down her hair again), and shrugs, and reaches for her sewing box. Which is all the way in the closet on the other side of the room, and therefore her arms aren’t long enough to reach. If they were long enough to reach, that would be a horror show also. Anyway, she’s got to butter Olive up somehow – olives? Isn’t that olive oil, and not butter? – if she’s about to ask for favors… even the favor Olive already agreed to, thus sealing their fates together in this long, unending night.
Olive figures it out somehow – possibly the grabby hands – and brings her the box. It’s not a real antique, because then it couldn’t have illustrations from the latest Serpents and Spells guide carved all over it, but it is solid wood with a pretty convincing weathering effect that Maps didn’t even have to do herself, so it keeps her stuff safe and neat. She pulls out the little pouch with all her needles and thread and the thimble she never uses, and then grabs the fabric underneath them, shaking out the colors she wanted right away.
Well. Okay. Maps mostly stocks red, yellow, and green, but it’s still fortune favoring her, an omen in the gray mist of this unhappy day, telling them there’s still a chance in this world, to keep everyone from moving to the next one doubletime.
“Honey,” Olive says, slowly, her pause echoing like a cavern filled with running water some floors and floors below you, silencing even the bats above, “watcha got there? What are you sewing right now?” Her words are filled with more traps than the warehouse Maps got caught in, the one that mangled her leg and all, you know.
“I think you know exactly what I’m sewing, Robin,” Maps says, except her throat is kind of scratchy, so she gives up on the deep voice halfway through, trying to eyeball Olive’s size with her thumb, which seems to be moving in and out of existence on its own accord. She’s never sewn for Olive before. Ah, well, they can do final fittings later.
“Don’t call me Robin. I didn’t agree to be Robin,” Olive says, aghast, and Maps really wishes she had a good analogy for that one, because Olive is being really reluctant and heroically stubborn and it’ll be all emotionally cathartic when she finally drums up her courage and all. Anyway, she heaves the world’s longest, most put upon sigh, and makes several sad faces that Maps is not falling for when the fate of the world, or at least the city, when the fate of the city hangs on threads its citizens can’t even see as they go about their rhythmic little lives, never quite intersecting with the accidentals in the streets.
Then Olive finally remembers what she said and adds, “oh, hell, I did agree to be Robin, I guess, fine, whatever. What do I need to do to be Robin?” which isn’t the most heroic way to put it, but Maps knew this was an uphill battle in the first place, which is why she wrote a whole training manual in her head while asleep, it’s just not very good because she was asleep, and dream logic would be really cool if you could actually do a montage for real.
They also need to train Olive out of cringing when she says Robin but it’s not an immediate concern because she’ll most likely be by herself for now, and she shouldn’t be calling her own callsign in the field, which isn’t even useful. (Sometimes fun, though.)
Maps pulls her needle through the cloth, weaving in and out in a careful pattern, like the lives of all the oblivious people – like her own life, before she heard about this awful arms deal that haunts her thoughts. They need a plan, if they want to take down these guys, real tough sons of a bitches, and it’ll take all of Maps’s thinking to make it out alive. Olive’s quick, but if she’s not quick enough – if Maps can’t bring her up to speed – she might just not make it out unscathed, either, even with lady luck on her side. The right training, Maps as mission control, it’s just this side of doable. The other side – the other side isn’t worth thinking about.
“I took that self-defense course over summer break,” Olive reminds her. Maps tries to do that snap and point thing, but since she’s holding a needle, she just stabs herself. She lights up at Olive running through a few of the moves they taught, though – she’s fast, and her form is even pretty good. Maps keeps gesturing for her to change, and Olive seems to know what she means, which isn’t the best way to tutor someone, but also Maps doesn’t remember the word for that thing where your arm bows into an L shape, so she’ll take this as, like, a crash course. “Oh, right, right, I got it,” Olive says, which is great, because Maps doesn’t, “you want me to practice the moves as Robin.”
Maps nods, trying to hold in her enthusiasm, so she can seem grizzled and worldly, like all mentors are supposed to be, but that’s a fantastic idea. “You should grab one of my spare masks out from under the bookshelf, just to make sure you can see out of it. That’s of grave importance, you know, the very gravyest.” Maps decides to crawl over to them, but then she doesn’t seem to be moving, which is just as well, because she’d crash into Olive.
The green fits her like a glove, like she was born to it, like all of Gotham cried out for a savior, and a new Robin was born. It’s almost insulting the ease with which she dons it, and it is insulting the way she says, “oh, that’s not so bad. It’s actually pretty comfortable, and I guess I can see okay. I assumed you had problems.”
Maps’s only problem is her willful protégé refusing to follow orders. And her mangled foot. Also she has a history test. God, she forgot to study for her history test, now she’s definitely going to get a bad grade. Maybe she can convince them she’s on medical leave?
Anyway. Maps settles back into sewing, the comforting ebb and flow of the city guiding her hands as she folds each seam just sew. Olive, being a fashionable dame, wouldn’t wear something like this, usually, but these aren’t usual times, and they don’t call for usual clothing, no matter how well that fashionable clothing hugs her curves. She can make this stylish, as stylish as it can be, give that Robin a little flair the others lack. It’ll end up sleek as a thief on the roof at night, only Olive will hopefully stop the thieves and also she’s going to be brightly colored so she probably can’t do any of that.
“Fine, fine,” Olive says, clearly struggling not to laugh. As if it’s funny, to have the fate of the world at her feet, although Maps does appreciate the kiss. “But only until we finish your… project. When that’s done, this is done – no more Robin until you’re back on your feet.” She has such a determined gaze in her eyes that Maps can’t help but agree instantly – she’d hand this gal the world, if she knew how, and that wasn’t a supervillain thing.
“No more Robin, after that, unless you like it so much you don’t want to stop,” Maps agrees, silently hoping, as soon as she says it, that Olive doesn’t want to take over permanently, because that might put a strain on the relationship, tbh.
Olive, minx that she is, raises one perfectly sculpted eyebrow, but when Maps matches her expression – the skeptical part, not the minxiness – she nods as if they understand each other, finally, on equal footing in this arena against the darkest impulses of mankind. Or, at least, she starts running through her block and strike patterns (until Maps reminds her to stretch) taking all of the notes that Maps manages to shout through the pins in her teeth.
This will probably go great.
“Um, so – what am I doing?” Olive asks, over the headset, as Maps looks around, trying to get into the mindset of the Guy In The Chair, and not the lone warrior between death and destruction and the heart of the city. It’s a tricky thing, but she’s making it work.
“You’re being Robin,” Maps says. She just uses her normal voice, because she’s behind the headset, but something about it doesn’t feel quite right to Maps – she stares at the screen, looking for landmarks.
Olive is in the dingiest part of the city, smelling of seawater and broken dreams – Maps knows it well. That’s where the heart of several criminal empires lies, if you know where to look, but you better make sure you know what you’re looking for. Even a Robin can be taken by surprise, when overwhelming force is the secret behind door number two.
Alright. She’s ready. “Ahem. You’re being… Robin,” Maps says, in a voice that isn’t like the one she applies in the field, but carries some of the weight of the venture all the same. It’s always hard, letting a bird fly from the nest, but fledglings always grow up. That’s the nature of Robins, whether anyone likes it or not.
“Damn, you’ve got the voice down, Maps,” Olive says, with a flattering whistle.
Maps accidentally basks for a minute before saying, “codenames! Codenames!”
“Sorry, sorry,” Olive says, whispering into her mic. She fades into the shadows at the edge of a building, cloaking herself in the fog of night. “Isn’t Maps sort of a codename already?”
“No! Maybe,” Maps says, caught up in the visual of Olive’s dewy hair reflecting Gotham’s warm streetlight, a wraith in the dark. “It’s not one that protects my identity, anyway, and, you know what they always say, infosec is paramount!”
“I don’t know what that means, M-”
“Don’t say it!” Boy, sitting in the chair ordering someone around is a lot harder than she thought it would be given how many people want to do it. She has to say something, though; Olive can’t just avoid addressing her all night. “Hmmm… Mizog-ichi!”
“That’s not more secure,” Olive assures her, which is easy for her to say, she seemingly doesn’t even believe they should have any kind of security at all. Maps wants to stuff her under the desk and watch her until everything is safe again.
“Okay, call me Oracle, then,” Maps says, finally. The dark is closing in on her as she approaches the handoff spot. Soon, she’ll have what she came here for. Soon, they’ll know whether or not all this prep was worth it – once she has the key in hand.
“Won’t Oracle mind?” Olive asks, and she pads forward on panther feet, using the shadows for her own ends. She sees the goons in front of her, and waits, eyes narrowed, for the perfect opportunity to strike.
“No! Probably not, anyway, we’re colleagues and all, doing the same thing – oh, watch out!” Olive performs a pirouette that would make the great stages of the world jealous, folding away from the big goon with the ugly knife. It could’ve been gory, but her gal can always dance away from danger. It’s sweet glory to watch.
“Oracle!” Olive yells, and Maps snaps back to attention.
“Uh! Dodge! Jab, cross – duck – right hook, jab, jab again – okay cross cross cross – wait, on your eight, on your eight Robin!” Maps yells into her headset, wishing her foot would just heal already so she could be out there, when the entire camera goes up in flames, and then she loses visual. Oh. Oh! She knows what happened.
Olive saw the fist coming her way – she always did – and grit her teeth against the wave of fury she was always holding back. These goons, though – there was no more reason to hold back against them. She let the fire burn, and she let it burn free, taking the whole building down around her as she made sure they’d never live to talk.
They’ve probably lived to talk. But you get what Maps means. “Okay. Fire works too.” She didn’t even train for that! It might’ve been good to put that in the plan somewhere.
“I’m sorry!” Olive says, voice high and high strung, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to, I just got scared and then, you know, it was there.”
“It’s okay!” Maps says, almost yelling into her headset. “I’m pretty sure you scared the crispity crapola out of them, anyway, so it’s all good!”
Olive sighs, shaking out her gorgeous locks – Maps assumes – tossing her head back to look longingly up at the night sky, the stars shining with an intensity most of the city’s underbelly lacks. She clears her throat mournfully. “Now they’re going to know I’m not you.”
Still picturing her flowing silver hair, Maps says, “your hair already makes it pretty obvious. That’s why I – aw, nuts.” Some grizzled mentor she is.
“What?” Olive says. She has – probably – that soft, slightly puzzled expression she gets when she’s worried, but doesn’t know why she’s worried about you in particular. Every day of her life, Maps asks the same damn question. What could she have done to earn the favor of a goddess like Olive? What can she do to keep it except protect the city with her very breath?
“The wig,” Maps says, feeling totally fine and not bad about it, “Anyway, head back to the Bat’s Nest, Mizog-ichi out.”
“The What?”
“Oh, that’s our room.”
“Oh! Okay. Um. Copy. Roger.”
Maps sighs, rubbing her fingers against the bridge of her nose, as she wills her everpresent headache back into the ether, but such is never the lot in life of their ilk. No, her vocation dooms her to this pain behind her eyes, even as she passes the torch. “You’re supposed to say ‘wilco’,” she whispers, even though probably no one else can hear.
“Like the band?” Olive asks, and Maps doesn’t even know what to say to that. Clearly their lines of communication are compromised. Or something.
She waits for darkness to fall.
Wait!
She waits for the only light left in the world to shine on her again.
“Like this?” Olive asks. She holds her hands in a ladies’ feint, not at all the firm fist Maps is trying to show her. Still, she makes a passable effort at it, even marred as it is by her having to lean over to cover for the infirmity Maps can’t seem to get past. She might be sitting in a chair, but it isn’t a hardship letting the dame lean over her, trailing silky hair against her cheek.
Maps draws in a breath, fingers light against her gal’s delicate skin, and gently bends the dame’s hand backwards until her wrist is no longer cocked inwards. She mumbles something perfectly coherent, she’s sure, even in the face of Olive’s divine smell, like a full botanical garden come to visit her in her convalescence.
“And I stand like this?” Olive says, adopting a fighting stance that looks fierce enough to please the most experienced warriors, and yet isn’t right for her at all. Her feet are wide enough she’ll topple over in the first stiff breeze. Maps has half a mind to blow on her just to prove how unstable the whole thing is – except this mission is unstable enough as it is.
“Here, let me show you,” Maps says, levering herself up with the help of the back of her trusty desk chair. It shouldn’t be too much to hobble over to her gal, one foot held aloft, and move her. Any excuse to run her hands along shoulders and hips, of course, but watching from afar is no way to correct form. Martial arts take a keener eye than that.
“Maps, no!” Olive says, pushing her down fast enough that Maps almost gets whiplash and might have chairburn from how fast her butt landed back in that seat. She’s sitting again, which doesn’t help either of them, except Olive looks pretty pleased by it so Maps guesses it’s okay, then. Of course, then Olive sits directly in her lap, so Maps is also pretty pleased.
“I was just going to show you how to stand,” Maps says, peevishly, or something, she’s running out of emotions to put into her voice that don’t just sound lovey dovey and stuff, which is not conducive to training so she has to save it for later. And Olive knows that! So she should probably be sitting somewhere else, is all.
“You were going to hurt yourself is what you were going to do,” Olive says, staring at her foot like she knows any better than Maps whether it’s healing or whatever. Doctors aren’t even going to know that until they x-ray it again! Still, her lap is full of warm girlfriend, so Maps has changed her mind about moving.
A moment of reveling in it later, Maps clears her throat.
She takes Olive’s hand firmly in her own grip, molding fingers and thumb into position, then places one hand flat against the shoulder blade, moving the arm slow so Olive gets where she’s going with this. It’s a simple hit, but effective, and if Olive –
Olive kisses Maps on the nose.
It’s important to learn the basics, if you’re going out on the streets. Maps knows that better than anyone. Olive’s got to learn to punch with her whole body, put all of her weight into it, really land every hit with everything she’s got. Maps puts one hand on her waist –
Olive kisses Maps on the cheek.
Maps can’t stand, and, oh, the lost opportunity in that, but she can still hold her arms as well as anyone, and she presses them under Olive’s, miming out her every action in slow motion. This is what she would do in a fight. This is how Olive should take her training and –
Olive kisses Maps on the neck.
“Okay,” Maps says, wrapping her hands fully around Olive’s waist, and tugging her just a little bit closer. Now’s not the time for it, but if not now, when? Life is short, war is hell, everything could be gone tomorrow – anyway, Maps kisses Olive full on the lips. Then, after a pause, adds, “five minutes for kissing. Only five. Then back to practice.”
“Only if you promise no standing,” Olive says, spinning to better face Maps, leaning over her so the curtain of hair separates the two of them from all the rest of the world. They sit, forehead to forehead, gazing all schmoopy into each other’s eyes for a minute.
“Deal,” Maps says, and then presses their lips together. Just for five minutes.
The night is dark, as all nights are in Gotham. The superheroic dame is poised for action, waiting for the opportune moment to fulfill her promise to justice, Gotham, and her girlfriend. Maps takes a moment to savor the scene, not only because a beautiful woman is about to lay the smackdown, but because on this, of all nights, the smugglers will meet their match, and their fate. It hurts to be behind the scenes instead of out there, but there’s more justice to be dished out like mashed potatoes at a dinner party.
“Okay, Olive, you got this!” Maps says. The words sound strange in the open air like that. Usually they echo around her head as she practices, keeping herself motivated as she runs though martial arts until she’s made her way through the entire catalog of every single one she knows. Still. If they can motivate Maps, they can motivate her stand-in, and that’s all that matters.
“Oh, yeah, I for sure got stealing,” Olive says, like she’s never stolen anything before. Ah, Maps knows well the ethical dilemmas inherent in the fight for justice in this dark city; the parts of yourself you have to give up to protect those relying on strong forces to keep them safe. Those lonely voices crying out for Robin’s help. Or Batman. Or Batwoman, et al.
“It’s not stealing,” says Maps, trying to assuage the maligned cries of a fury faced with injustice. Ironic, because Olive is also her muse. Ah, the righteous rage behind the domino mask, ready to make the city safe for the average resident, not just those with the mob at their back. “It’s a heist!” The depths they have to sink to in their quest for… um, still justice.
“That’s just fancy stealing,” Olive complains, and Maps struggles to find a way to soothe her noble beast. Olive is the best of them, because she’ll never let wrongdoing slip through her fingers. Not like Maps has had to face, over and over, but that’s a story for another time. Maps notes down the story for another time.
“No, it’s stopping a weapons trafficking ring,” Maps says. It’s important, in this fight against the worst the city has to offer, to remember why you’re doing things. Because of the – kids or something. Shoot. That’s right, Maps never heard that part. “Find the list. Secret like.” Secrecy is the important secret of the superhero trade, to keep people from knowing things.
Olive, tossing her shining raven wig, notes her misgiving to Maps, because it’s them together against the world and all. “Okay, well, I don’t know why they’d list out all their locations like a real estate agency, but I’ll look for it.”
That’s a good point, actually. Maps sort of assumed the list would be forthcoming because it’s a convenient device for a DM, but that might not be true in real life?
The line cuts off. A bitter silence fills the void, ringing in her ears as Maps struggles to reconnect with the only person she cares about in this diseased world. She can’t let Olive down, not when there’s so much at stake, more than just the name of Robin.
“Who is this?” a voice cuts in over the line. Not Olive’s voice. Not anyone in particular’s voice, given that it’s all electronic-y and masked.
“Uhhhhhhhhhhh,” Maps says, stalling for time, clicking around on her computer trying to figure out where she put that thing that was supposed to be able to trace numbers and stuff, which Colton totally promised for sure would work. “Who is this? No backsies.”
There’s a pause. Then the voice sounds normal, and not like autotuned or anything. An incredulous “Maps Mizoguchi?” comes over the line, at which point Maps starts clicking random things on the computer to prevent being traced herself, if it’s not too late for that.
“No,” she says, struggling to remember her codename, which is way harder when it’s not Robin, she totally didn’t realize it would be and she should be nicer to Batwing and whoever, “I’m… Mizog-ichi, and… aw crap.” Olive was right. It’s kind of obvious when she says it like that. Oops.
“Who’s being Robin?” the voice on the other end of the line – confused, maybe a little irritated, but in Maps’s experience all the Bats sound a little irritated, maybe most of the time, it’s probably a byproduct of constantly fighting costumed supervillains and saving innocent bystanders and waxing the Batmobile and stuff.
Assuming it is a Bat. Which they haven’t even proven, anyway. “Wouldn’t you like to know,” Maps says. That’ll show them.
“I would like to know!” the voice says, now sounding like her parents basically every time they decided to ground her, only like three of which were even fair. “She set several goons on fire last night!” Which is even less fair, because it’s not like Olive can control who she sets on fire. She’s working like so hard at fixing that, and it’s completely not her fault it’s such an inconvenient power.
Anyway, why does this potential Bat even care? They were “only bad goons,” Maps explains, then, wondering at the wording, “wait.” She thinks for a minute. Goons are normally bad, sure, but at the same time, if they’re usually bad, then these ones were also bad. So that math checks out. “Yeah, only bad goons.”
“I thought it might be one of the Fireflies,” the voice confesses. Which is either pretty good evidence it’s a Bat, because they’re the only ones who really worry about the Fireflies, or else they’re trying to convince her they are. Tricky, tricky!
“Mean,” Maps says, to the voice, both for trying to trick her, and for the comparison. “Don’t say that to Olive, or she’ll – aw, crap, pretend you didn’t hear that.”
Oracle sighs. Or, at least, Maps hopes it’s Oracle – the little Oracle icon has finally appeared on her computer, and that one’s hard to fake – telling her off, otherwise she and Olive have bigger problems, like, secret identity problems. “You can’t just let your friends be Robin, Maps.” Which isn’t fair either, because no one told her that was a rule!
“Someone has to do it,” Maps says, letting some of her irritation leak into her voice. Olive looks fine on-screen, but who knows if she needs a guiding voice in her ear! “Gotham needs Batman, and Batman needs Robin, and I broke my foot so it has to be her.”
“She’s not trained for that,” Oracle says, patiently. Like, so patiently. Like when Kyle is trying to get her to eat her vegetables patiently, although thankfully that hasn’t been a problem for Maps in like several years. “You aren’t, either, for that matter. You can’t be her handler.” Aw, handler is such a cool word. Maps is totally stealing that.
“I bought her a wig,” Maps says, just to prove she actually is a really good handler.
“What?” says Oracle. She sounds confused. Score one for the Maps Ma’am.
“You’re one to talk,” Maps says, finally finding her backtrace program and clicking it, for all the good that will do. The Oracle program shuts it off. Oh, yeah, she’s good. “You’re out here spying on high school kids instead of, like, your job and stuff – why are you even spying on me anyway? We’re the good guys!”
Oracle sighs again, like she has better things to do. Which Maps wishes she would just go do, then, if it’s so important. “The Oracle program uses its own name as an emergency keyword, in case any of us need help and can’t get to the comms. It scanned and caught your conversation.”
Nuts. Maybe Oracle does mind. “Okay. Well. I’m sorry for calling myself Oracle. But the point stands that you shouldn’t spy on people!”
“That’s my whole job,” says Oracle. She has Maps there. It is her whole job. Then she adds, which totally isn’t her job at all, “get her out of the field.”
“What?” says Maps, who was being a completely fine handler up until this point, and doesn’t appreciate being second-guessed, “you can’t just –”
“On your left,” Oracle says. Maps looks left before she notices that there isn’t the odd noise-cancelled static filling her headset anymore, and she can hear Olive breathing again. She maximizes the video, and a goon is to the left of Olive, kicking right at –
“Holy crap!” Olive dodges really impressively, with a backflip and everything! Looks like her Robin powers finally kicked in. “Wait, who was that?”
“Nevermind, I’ll explain later!” Maps yells, hurriedly zooming in on her video to call out numbers and directions and that Olive should jab-cross those motherflippers. Maybe Oracle is right. Maybe Olive shouldn’t be in the field, if people are going to be – oh, crap, shooting at her! Maps practically holds her breath until Olive manages to get away, into a shadowed corner of the next building. She leans her fevered brow – she cools her racing – she – she leans against the brick, and huffs out a breath.
Maps can see her wave the piece of paper vaguely in the direction of the camera. “I got the list. Or a list, anyway, should I –”
“Yeah, yes, yeah,” Maps says, nodding vigorously even though Olive can’t see her. “Yeah, put that somewhere safe and head out. I mean. Come home.”
The movie is okay. It’s some sort of space detective thing, which Maps usually loves, but she’s caught up in Oracle’s warnings. Oracle’s one of her heroes! (In both senses!) Maps shouldn’t feel so bad about getting to talk to her and all. But she’s probably right. Olive’s been upset every single time she’s gone out, and she’s come way closer to getting hurt than Maps ever did. Is Maps putting her needlessly in the line of fire? It hurts to think about, but everyone ever told Maps the hard questions always do.
“Maps?” Olive says, hand squeezing hers where they’re still locked together, even though the credits have been rolling for several minutes now, and the lights are coming up. That’s been the one reassuring thing about the movie date – she can always feel Olive right next to her, hand in hers, and warm against her side. Everything else is question after question.
“Mhm?” Maps says, eventually, after she realizes Olive’s been saying her name more than once, and maybe shaking her hand a few times for good measure.
“You’ve been awfully quiet,” Olive says, leaning in to whisper it, like anyone in the audience is still expecting quiet. It’s almost drowned out in everyone else’s conversations.
“Yeah!” Maps agrees instantly, assuming, for a second, that Olive means because a movie was playing, and Maps always works very hard not to chatter in the movie theater, even when the movie’s really interesting. Then she realizes Olive means, like, generally. “No, it’s fine!”
Olive leans in even further – so far her hair tickles Maps’s ear, and she starts to blush – and whispers, “did I do something wrong as Robin?” Maps can feel her heart start racing, but it almost doesn’t have time to get up to speed before it slows again, because she can hear the disappointment in Olive’s voice.
“No! You were great!” Maps says, quickly, patting Olive’s hand and, awkwardly, basically all the way up her arm in the haste to reassure her. “I mean, not in a fight maybe, and you did keep getting lost in alleyways, but your detective work is highkey badass.”
Olive stares at Maps, her frown twitching in that subtle way that sometimes means she’s about to cry. Maps flings herself forward to hug her girlfriend, but all Olive does is say, “okay, so you just hate the movie?”
Maps freezes at the question, because, as much as she doesn’t want to say anything about anything that’s going on, she’d hate it even more if Olive thought the movie she’d carefully picked was such a dud Maps stopped talking forever. Unfortunately, Olive notices the freeze, so she doesn’t even have time to backtrack. “Okay…okay. Hmm. Oracle – real Oracle – told me I wasn’t trained enough to have my own sidekick, and you need training too.”
Maps can feel Olive frown at the word ‘sidekick’ – even though, like, what else is Robin? – but she almost seems relieved as she says, “oh. So. We stop?” Her body practically goes limp in Maps’s arms. Not even from the hug, even though Maps is an excellent hugger.
“Yes. Stop,” Maps says, a plan building in her mind. A plan Olive obviously wouldn’t like – which is why she’s not going to tell Olive – but which maybe Oracle would like better? A plan that Maps likes better than putting Olive in the line of fire again. “No more Robin for you. Although, okay, this movie wasn’t great, because I think it would be harder than that to get into the Hoover Dam. I mean, when I went, we had to wait a really long time, and there totally was security. But I guess there weren’t aliens then.”
Olive snorts a laugh, her eyes closing almost all the way as she grins at Maps. “I would think aliens would make it slower, even. I mean, I’m no security expert, but wouldn’t security want to keep space aliens out of a big landmark?”
Foreheads pressed together as Olive laughs in time with her, Maps says, “right? That’s what I’m saying!”
“Is that why you’ve been so quiet?” Olive asks, eyes opening wide as she lowers her voice again, still pressed close but not laughing anymore.
“Aliens?” Maps asks, also in a whisper.
Olive laughs again, and Maps sighs in relief, and also because Olive has a really pretty laugh that sounds good. “Because you got to talk to Oracle.” Maps really likes listening to Olive’s laugh because it’s so pretty, but it’s even harder to explain to her why than it is to explain the whole Bat stuff.
“Oh! Yeah, that was weird, I guess,” Maps agrees. Come to think of it, it was cool to talk to Oracle. Oracle is pretty badass herself. Maps wonders how she deals with putting all of her family and friends out in the field where they can get hurt, even Batman.
There’s too long a pause, probably, because Maps got caught up in her own thoughts again, and Olive says, laughing again, “what about that guy’s hat, though? How did he manage to keep it completely clean with no dust and alien blood and stuff?”
Maps relaxes enough to laugh, too, because even Batman doesn’t come out of scenes like that without anything on his little bat ears. “Right? And all that wind! For sure it should’ve blown his hat away, or at least into a puddle or something.”
Olive is laughing so hard a little tear trickles down her face, and she snorts again, and Maps basically basks in how wonderful she is, and warm, also. “It’d be a favor to him if it did, if you ask me!” Which explains why she was laughing every time the hat came onscreen. Maps hugs her tighter, and gives her a big smackeroo.
It’s dark out. Early morning isn’t usually this dark out. Being a handler, being behind a screen? Everything is run through night filters until it looks so bright you could forget it isn’t daytime. It feels like a movie, sometimes, watching it on screen. Maps waits for her eyes to adjust. Her foot doesn’t hurt nearly as much as it used to. She took her painkiller anyway, so it shouldn’t bother her. At least long enough to do the mission, anyway.
Oracle shouldn’t mind Maps being Robin.
It’s easy, donning the familiar suit. It’s easy putting on greasepaint and her domino mask. It’s easy enough fitting a boot cover over her cast, even one the right color. She looks injured. No way around that. But she still looks like Robin.
Maybe the bad guys will underestimate her. Maybe they’ll see a helpless injured girl. Hopefully they won’t see her at all. It’s a fact-finding mission, that’s all. Nothing strenuous. Nothing she needs Olive for. Nothing that should be hard for Maps, even as hurt as she is. She just needs to pace herself. Hydrate. Try not to strain anything.
Maps doesn’t tell anyone where she’s going. That was the status quo a month ago. She was Robin, and she said nothing. She didn’t tell Olive. She didn’t tell anyone. The secret identity came first. It was respectful.
It doesn’t feel respectful now. It feels lonely. Her comm is in her ear, but it rings in its silence. She could call Oracle. It wouldn’t be the same. Taking a deep breath, Maps lowers herself down the grappling line, just like she’s practiced, sucking in air every time her foot twinges. She lands silently. Her foot throbs anyway.
She doesn’t scream. She breathes through the pain, wincing quietly.
In the middle of the night, goons are awake. Early morning, the early risers shouldn’t be up yet. Everyone else should hopefully be asleep already. Early morning is a good choice. A safe choice. The choice where she’s least likely to get caught. It was supposed to be an hour to sunrise. It’s probably less than that. The bus was late. But everyone should be asleep.
Maps is half right. Of the two guards, only one is awake. That one is busy playing the news at full volume, covering for any slips where Maps gives into her foot’s protests.
She needs proof. They want this on the news, and no one on the news will be interested without proof, but they don’t have any yet. It’s easy enough to get. Get in, photographs, get out. All she has to do is find their “samples”. Record them in high enough resolution, and it’ll be proof enough to run with the story. The kinds of weapons they have are interesting on their own. She doesn’t need another angle, if she gets that one.
It starts smoothly enough. She misses Olive, but it isn’t practical. She wants to hold hands and smile and be lovey-dovey. She doesn’t want to be here at all. But she pushes it down and presses on towards the rooms she marked on the blueprints. Slow and steady doesn’t make her foot scream any more than it usually does. Her crutches are hastily painted, but painted, to keep them from catching the light. The room itself isn’t even guarded.
It’s like they want her in here, photographing everything.
She checks each storeroom in turn. One has boxes too big for her to open; one has weapons too common to be interesting. The other’s what she’s looking for. She pries the lids off, sets her newspaper down, and takes the pictures. Closes it up. Moves onto the next one. The paper is a couple days old, but hopefully it’ll still be hard enough to fake that people will believe her. She’s quiet, and methodical, and takes all the evidence she can.
Maps tucks her phone away. Gets back on her crutches. Retraces her steps. That’s when she runs into trouble. She almost throws up.
She’s been dizzy and nauseous since she got on the painkillers. It helps to sleep them off, but she had to get up early today. She’s not used to nerves, as Robin. It feels like she’s about to throw up just from the fight. Both the guards find her at once, both bigger than she is, one much, and she swings out. Her crutch strikes something heavy. They yelp. She yelps too, every time she lands on the wrong foot. Half her moves are right out the window.
The only reassuring thing is that, even when Robins die, they always seem to come back.
Maps hopes when she comes back it’s soon enough that people still remember her.
Fire flashes over her head. Maps thinks it’s from the concussion at first. She presses her eyes shut. She swings, and her crutch makes contact again. Something big. Something with a deep voice. She can’t tell if it’s superhero or supervillain or rival trafficking ring. It doesn’t matter. She crawls. Towards the door, as fast as she can, she crawls. If she can make it out into the alley, she can probably make it home.
Her nose is running. She sniffs, and there’s a stab of heat like a needle pressing from the tip of her nose all the way through to the other side of her skull. Maps tries not to whimper and lets the heat drip steadily down her lip. She needs to keep moving. If Olive were on the comms right now she’d be saying her goodbyes, trying to think of something poetic to reassure her. She’s glad Olive isn’t on the comms. Olive shouldn’t have to hear that. She thinks she whispers for Oracle, but there’s no way to be sure, and she won’t get to see the miracle, or the arrest.
Then someone is pulling her up by the elbows, and Maps gets ready to scream through her raw, scratched-out throat – and worried eyes stare back at her through her spare domino. The halo of silver hair makes her think it’s an angel for half a second, and then Olive’s features resolve and Maps knows it’s an angel come to rescue her.
Maps coughs. She can taste blood where she bit her cheek. “I thought – I thought I bought you a wig,” she manages to choke out.
“Oh my god, dude, they already know there’s two of us!” Olive whispers back at her, frantically. At some point during all this, she got out a grappling gun, and before Maps knows it she’s sailing through the air, into the glittering night sky – only it’s not night anymore, and the sun is coming up. “What were you even doing here?”
“I need to get evidence! We can’t get a news crew to bust them if we don’t have any evidence,” Maps mutters, sailing from one roof to another. Wow. Olive is pretty good at that, actually, when did that happen? “It was for the mission!”
“I said I would do that for you!” Olive says, exasperated, as Maps finally starts to recognize the terrain – they’re heading back to the Academy (duh, why wouldn’t they be). “You’re lucky you didn’t compromise the mission!”
“Ha!” says Maps, tiredly, as Olive slows down, still in the city, but far enough away from everything that was happening that Maps can finally relax. “You said mission!”
She’s not sure entirely what happens after that.
There’s a fog in the air, cold like the fog through Maps’s old, old body. She’s been doing this for too long. Maybe it’s time to retire – but, no. She’s got at least one last mission in her, even if she has to trust Olive to carry the torch for them both. Olive’s a smart girl. She knows what she’s doing. If anyone can take over the mantle, it’ll be her.
But like Oracle said, she’s not ready. And not being ready… gets Robins killed.
Maps heaves a sigh, wearily leaning into her mic to explain, “okay, if you’re going to be Robin, you need more practice.” Olive is a good kid, but she doesn’t know everything there is to know about the world. She doesn’t know about the darkness that lurks within the hearts of man. She doesn’t know about the darkness that lurks within the streets of Gotham.
“Mhm,” Olive says, placidly. “I thought I was practicing on the goons?” Ah, she’s fearless. It’ll take her far… unless it stops her short.
“No! Those are the bosses,” Maps says, and then, clearing her throat, explains in a cool, collected manner befitting the wisdom of years. It’s up to her to impart everything she knows while there’s still a chance to use it. “Okay, they’re minibosses, really, but practice means farming something easier for the XP.”
Olive paces, her own shining silver hair shifting in the breeze. The cat’s out of the bag, now, and there’s no point trying to put it back. Not unless you want an armful of angry cat. Maps has always preferred cats who are nice to her. “There’s no XP in real life.”
Oh, this old chestnut. Maps has heard it too many times to count – and had to explain it to some real tough nuts to crack. Wait. Anyway. “Yes, there is. It’s called regular experience, and you get it every time you do stuff.”
Olive reaches a hand out to flip up her domino the way she’s been doing when they run through drills in their room and Maps has to make several undignified squealing noises to get her to stop. She does, though. “And I’m going to get this by fighting petty criminals at random?” Oh, the hallmark of youth, the idea that their experiences are so much more pure, so much more grandiose than anyone who came before.
“Yeah!” Maps has to agree. Oh, she’ll go a long way to assuage her dame’s fears, if it’ll get Olive to assuage her own. Namely, the fear of an untimely and gruesome death, with like blood and guts and stuff, plastered all over the evening news where no one can miss it. “Well, muggers, anyway. Not graffiti artists. I like those. Have you seen the old Kane Bridge, with –”
“Maps. Focus,” Olive says, and it’s enough of a slap of cold water to the face Maps can’t even scold her for forgetting the infosec so important to everything they do. Let’s face it – Maps is getting old. She might not be cut out for this, anymore. But no one will ever be able to take it away from her, any more than they’d be able to take her away from it. “And, yes, I do like all of the snail knights, you’re absolutely right about that.”
“Snights. Anyway. That’s how most superheroes start out, I think,” Maps says, letting the grit into her voice. Oh, she’s met more than her fair share. Batman. Several of the Robins. That other Batman that one time in the future. Also Wonder Woman, sort of, well, anyway, Wonder Woman waved at her one time while she was doing a superhero thing and Maps wasn’t which almost counts. Maps can see, so easily the steps she’d take in Olive’s shoes… but this is Olive’s journey to walk, not hers, and much as it pains her, Maps has to wait for her to walk it. Alone. “Practicing on muggers.”
“That’s doesn’t sound right,” says Olive, skeptically, but, then, that’s part of her charm. The dame never believes anything completely until she gets a chance to check it out for herself. It’ll make her an unstoppable detective, one day… unless it stops her, first. Like with death. Anyway, it’s not going to come to that because Maps is watching from the screen, where she can at least call for help if disaster strikes.
“Well, you need more practice somehow,” Maps says, in exasperation, forgetting to do her grizzled mentor voice. She hopes it doesn’t make Olive feel less reassured in the field. It’s only practice right now, anyhow. It shouldn’t be any problem for her. “Oracle said so. I think a week should do it, if we hit all the scheduled benchmarks.”
“Just a week,” Olive says, like it takes a full week to immerse yourself in justice, learn the ins and outs of this world we live in, the minds of the deranged who want to dress in weird costumes and take over landmarks and inject people with being bats and stuff like that. Oh, Olive, so naïve in the ways of this madness –
“Oh, there’s one now!” and Maps sends Olive to stop a pickpocket.
“Don’t worry, babe. You got this.” Olive is a hell of a… hell of a… oh, hell, Olive is extremely together during all this, despite the fact that Maps is the one who’s supposed to be experienced and calm. Which is like. Fine.
“I know. I know I got this.” Maps is… Maps is a river. Maps is a cool mountain stream, who’s going to keep going no matter what life throws at her. Can’t stop a mountain, baby.
“Are you still psyching yourself up?” Olive asks, tentatively. Olive is a hell of a dame, always looking out for old Maps, despite the fact that she’s holed up in here where it’s safe already, trying to protect her one good leg while she can.
“Only a little,” Maps says, which is the slightest white lie of an understatement. Still, it wouldn’t do to upset the missus, not while she’s in the field.
“We practiced kind of a lot, M…izog-ichi,” Olive says, and Maps appreciates the sudden about face in what she was going to say, but the fact of the matter is – even the most optimized scheduling can only pack so many different kinds of evildoers into a single week, and Olive may be going into this less prepared than she should be. And if she does: it’s on Maps.
“Yeah, but this is the final battle!” She didn’t mean to say that.
“I hope it’s not my final battle,” Olive says, with a snort, not sounding like she’s taking this at all as seriously as she should be, but that’s why Maps loves her. That’s a gal that isn’t going to let anything in the world stand between her and where she’s aiming, not when justice is on the line. Not when the world is in the palm of her hands, ready to be saved. Fearless.
“For the level,” Maps corrects, just in case Olive isn’t getting what she’s going for. Honestly being a handler isn’t at all like being a DM and she’d like to switch places, please. Especially since this is, again, the epic final boss fight. Well. It’s the last boss fight before the finale boss fight, anyway, if that happens, which it shouldn’t, if they’ve timed it right.
“Once again,” Olive says, her voice soothing like a strawberry kiwi smoothie when you’ve been out in the hot sun all day running around and forgetting to drink ice and stuff, “you need to stop thinking of them as levels, or you’re going to barf again.” Which is rude of her, honestly, because Maps is pretty sure that was just her painkillers and not at all because she’d psyched herself up so hard she psyched herself out.
“Remember,” Maps says, slipping into handler voice again, “Tonight is recon only. No funny business. Get in, get the information, get out.”
“I would not forget that,” Olive says as, true to her word, her voice lowers as she gets closer to the building. It’s the nondescript kind of building that’s always the worst place in the world, home to the kind of activity that’s always excessively descript. From the word on the street, some heavy hitters are moving into the area, and it’s always better to walk away from a fight by not having one at all than only by the skin of your teeth.
“Be sneaky,” Maps says, nodding her head vaguely, watching the dark shadows creep around the building, giving a dark warning for those willing to darkly heed it. Those who don’t have to wade into the mire just to keep it from seeping into everyone else’s homes. “Be invisible. Be a ghost.” The best thing to do is get out unnoticed. That way they maintain the element of surprise. And given some of these baddies out here, something tells her they’re going to need it.
“Not literally, right?” Olive asks, making Maps stare blankly at the computer screen for almost a full minute before she starts understanding what the question means. “I mean, because we didn’t practice any spells for this. Like not at all.”
“Oh, shoot,” Maps says, tilting her head back to stare forlornly at the ceiling for just a moment before she turns her attention back where it needs to be, on her fearless dame and the case of a lifetime. “Do you really think there’s a spell?” Although, if she could’ve done this all by magic, it would’ve been, like, a way different type of story.
“Probably not,” Olive admits, which makes Maps feel a little better. Not all the way better, though, because that’s probably not even true. Someone could probably do a spell about it, if they figured out how. Maybe they should’ve asked Pomeline.
No, Maps can’t let fantasy and daydreams cloud her mind. She needs to keep it sharp, like, crystal clear in the face of danger. She needs to reassure Olive that someone’s got her back, down to the last fighting breath. “I’ll talk you through the fight.” Then, remembering that they’re playing this like stealth and shadows, avoiding any untoward gaze, “if there is one.”
“I know,” says Olive. She’s laughing, and it’s definitely not at the situation, so Maps is a little worried it’s about her. “You’re getting pretty good at it, so far.”
“Oh! Thanks,” Maps says, trying to spin this back in the direction of the mission, except the entire battle plan has fallen out of her mind. “Um.”
“Get the lay of the land, right?” Olive says. Good. She’s been listening the whole time, eyes narrowed to catch the details even Maps misses, building up the kind of step by step key to a heist that only the worst criminals and the best detectives can put together. Maps just hopes she’s got it clear which one Olive is. “Deal’s going down tomorrow, right?”
“The next day, I think,” Maps clarifies, because a stakeout is one thing, but Olive’s probably going to complain if she has to do two stakeouts in a row without warning. It’s cold out there! “It wasn’t clear.” It wasn’t clear because that, that was the day of… The Accident, and Maps was too busy hauling her own sorry carcass out of there to hear the rest of it. Olive knows this story, and a good thing, too, because Maps couldn’t bear to tell it again, the whole thing with being shot at and almost losing her foot, and then Olive had to be Robin.
“We can do two nights, we’ll be fine,” Olive says, in the same soothing tone she’s been using to get Maps to take her painkillers. Which are obviously necessary, but she could at least let Maps pretend to be too stoic to need them.
“Really?” Maps asks, just to be sure. Olive doesn’t have the first clue how bad stakeouts are, yet, and she’s maybe going to regret that promise.
“Really,” Olive says, and blows Maps a kiss through the comms. That’s her gal, always trying to make sure Maps is taken care of, even when she’s on her way into the kind of dangers even Gothamites shudder to dream of. “Going radio silent.”
Maps expects the radio to fall silent, after that. She doesn’t expect it to cut out to full static, just a long enough pause to make her suck in a breath before an increasingly familiar voice says, over the line, “We’ll keep an eye on you two. Good job.”
“O. M. G.” Maps says, trying to figure out what the most polite and respectful way is to address Oracle, especially when she’s trying to help. Instead, she says, “have you been listening to us?” with such indignation that Oracle pauses for several full seconds.
“Yeah,” she says, and then clicks off, and the comms go normal silent again.
The day dawns gray as ever, but the night – the night falls darker than that, dark as it ever has. An omen, if Maps is to believe in such things, of shadowy doings. But shadows have always been a Bat’s friend, and shadowy doings are what they’re here, tonight of all nights, to reveal.
“This is it!” Maps yells.
“Yes. I know,” Olive says, way too calmly given that it’s The Big Night, “you’ve been saying nothing but that –”
“This is it!” Maps yells.
“Right,” Olive agrees, not even bothering to turn around. She’s been lounging on the roof since everyone went in. Except for the part where she was calling in favors.
“This is it!” Maps yells.
“Hey, we’ve practiced this, okay?” Olive says. Her voice is like a silk bandage, wrapping around all the pain Maps has held deep inside until now and finally soothing the hurt. “We’ve got this. We’re going to do this.”
“The!” Maps says, as night closes in, swaddling them in its protective cocoon, “smugglers!” She’s worried she’s not making sense. But since when did anything in this godforsaken world ever make any sense. Especially this close to victory.
“I know, hon,” Olive says. Her voice glitters like cold steel, a single sharp bullet through Maps’s heart, only it’s a love bullet and her laughter is the honey that coats it. Or something. “We’ve got them. We’re not even going to have to fight them! We’ve got this.”
“We might,” Maps says, with sudden caution. This may be the end of the line, but goons have a way of surprising you, even when you think you’re down to the dregs of suffering, thinking you can eke out a victory just by burning the rest. Who knows where the night could lead. Who knows what trouble could leap from around the corner. It’s just her luck.
“And I will, if it comes to that,” Olive says, soothingly. Maps has to learn to trust her. She’s proven time and again how brilliant she is in the field, and now, if any, is the time to let go, and let her fledgling Robin fly free. Also it probably won’t come to that.
But there, in the center of that smooth concrete slab, a hollow box of nothingness, lies the entire army that Maps has been traveling behind in secret, waiting for them to make camp so she could swoop in and take out the enemy forces all at once. There’s boxes full of contraband, only some of which Maps has even seen before, but those photographs were enough to turn her stomach, even then. To know they plan to sell these to whoever Maps will make sure to double-check about later, it’s enough to make even grown Bats weep.
They’re not worried. They didn’t notice Olive’s sneakery last night, so they have no idea that the other side is about to blow their secrets wide open. So many of them, milling around watching these boxes, waiting for their buyers to arrive, and when they do?
Oh, that’s the ticket. Maps would recognize that suit anywhere – the material, the cut, the jewelry accompanying it. She doesn’t recognize the face that goes with it, but it’s still dark, shadowed enough that he could be anyone. Hell, he could be Bruce Wayne, if, you know, Bruce Wayne were a smuggler and stuff. Which would be wild. Anyway, the rich guys in their fancy suits show up, and from then, Maps knows that even a single slip up could let the whole lot of them slip through Gotham’s collective fingers.
A van pulls up behind the building. Slow and silent, all of its lights off, it’s careful not to draw the attention of either crew like a cat sneaking in for extra kibble at night. Maps holds her breath, just a face behind a screen, and even Olive is on the roof of the next building over. If it all goes pear shaped, it’ll take a while to finish. Olive will have to finish it.
The floodlights go on, completely surrounding the building, shining down into the skylight and everything. Maps quietly pumps her fist in the air and, on that cold and lonely roof beyond the reach of the glow, so does her gal, just as quietly, just as ferociously.
The goons are shocked, their mugs frozen in witless expressions of terror. The businessmen are making that calculating frown, clearly planning to grease palms and make it all go away again, but Maps is too smart to fall for that. Oh, she and Olive, they’re quick thinkers. They anticipated this plan back in the early days, and they’ve set the perfect trap. There are a lot of palms you can grease in this city, but Grace O’Halloran isn’t one of them, is she?
The steel of a door slides up, and several cameras make their way inside, already filming, already streaming live to an audience who’ll never forgive these fancy men for whatever havoc they’re wreaking on our fair city.
And, majestic as ever, she sweeps up, mic in hand, to confront the leader of them, knowing, all the time, that if everything goes wrong, Olive will swoop to her rescue. “I’m Grace O’Halloran, and we’re here with some weapons smugglers, right in the middle of their big night! What do you have to say to my fans?”
That’s it. That’s the rest of the case wrapped up in a neat little bow. Maps has done her part, and done it well, and now, at long last, she can rest. For like twelve hours, hopefully. Her leg is not feeling great, still. “It’s so fricken sweet we got Grace O’Halloran, nobody else could pull it off like she does.” Oh the victory laps – once her foot heals – will be wondrous.
“I know, those favors were so worth it,” Olive whispers, watching the scene avidly. “I had to call in basically all of them, but look at those guys. We got them. We got them!”
“Let’s stay and watch the rest of her speech, then you can go,” Maps says, almost pleadingly, before she remembers the other half of the thing, with Bat Duty and Justice and all that, “uh, I mean, in case she needs. Backup.”
“Yeah, yeah, right, of course, backup,” Olive agrees, setting her binoculars to record, even though they’re going to have to dub in the audio later. “She’s so cool.”
“I know!” Maps says, as the two sit back to watch. Maps even microwaved herself some popcorn. If she’s going to be stuck at home, right? A couple times she hears the crackle of Oracle’s monitoring, but the plan goes off without a hitch.
Maps awakens to the sound of Olive saying in her ear, “ugh, I’m so tired I could eat a horse.” Which is totally weird, because she wasn’t asleep in the first place. Yeah she kind of zoned out when Olive started heading back to their room, but she didn’t fall all the way asleep. She reevaluates that when Olive continues, “oh, Maps, I love it!”
Scrambling to figure out where the camera is outside their room, Maps says, hastily, “love? Love what?” but it doesn’t go through. That ominous static is back, and once more that familiar voice fills her ears.
“Just a little surprise I set up.”
Maps shrieks. Just a little, but a little bit’s enough to knock you out of your chair when you’re only half awake in the early morning hours when the sun’s just bursting over the horizon, and a superhero hacker decided to talk into your ear.
The voice sounds far less robotic than usual as Oracle laughs. “Go get your girl.”
“What?” Maps says again. All these conversations with one of her heroes, and you’d think she’d manage to have one of them where she got to sound cool and together and suave and stuff, and totally seem like she knew what she was doing. Something something the nature of not understanding what you have until you lose it. Maps isn’t sure. She’s too tired to remember poignant bits of philosophy at the moment.
“Oh, young love,” Oracle tells her, even as Maps struggles onto her crutches to find her way out of her room and onto the balcony. “Hurry, before the tea gets cold!”
“I can’t believe you got breakfast for us!” Olive says, dashing into the room to hug Maps, pulling her close. Olive smells of dusty rooftops, that gravel and rubber smell you only get from patrols and stakeouts. Maps breathes it in and it’s almost like being here, and either way not as good as having Olive back here with her.
Maps lets herself be led onto the balcony, where their little table is piled high with a fancy tea service – the teapot has bats all over it – and fruit and pastries and whipped creams and sugar and everything. Oracle wasn’t lying. But, then, Oracle can do, basically, anything, so why should breakfast be hard? Even if she did have to sneak past Maps’s watchful eye to do it.
“Did you make this?” Olive asks, once she helps Maps into one seat and takes the other herself, her mouth already full of some kind of scone. Maps is jealous for only about half a second before realizing she can have one, too. Or like. Many of them.
“Uh,” says Maps, thinking about Oracle wishing them well, “no. I had to call in a favor. Too.” She starts laughing as she says it. Oracle might bring them breakfast as thanks for busting open a huge case, but Maps doesn’t think there’s any way she could convince a Bat to bring her breakfast as a favor. Except for Olive, probably.
“Ugh, I’m starving,” Olive says, between bites. Which, of course she is. She’s been out all night, watching and waiting to see if she had to fight. Maps is hungry, and she was only running surveillance on the whole thing. She spoons out some of the fruit for both of them, even as Olive butters a piece of toast for her. The tea might get cold before they get to it anyway, at this rate.
“Hey, Olive?” Maps says, as she finally takes a minute to pour the tea, watching the steam curl away in looping trails up into the early morning sky.
Olive pauses long enough to swallow, take a sip of the scalding drink, and say, “yeah?”
“Thanks,” Maps says, and presses a kiss to Olive’s lips. She tastes mostly like powdered sugar, even if she still smells like the open night sky, and justice, and promises kept.
“Anytime,” Olive says. She pops a strawberry into Maps’s mouth. “It’s what Robins do.”
Sunrise shows up slowly that morning, stretching itself up through the cloudless sky as the morning dew steams off into the warming air. The tea does go cold, eventually, but by then they’ve eaten most of the food and, pressed up against each other, let their eyes close again, just for the rest of the morning.