random_cantina | (no subject)

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She did not expect to find herself in a cafe. She'd been chasing down a criminal, saw him duck into an alley and through a door, and followed him in. Wherever it had lead, it certainly shouldn't have been someplace like this.

And yet, she sensed that she wasn't really in any kind of danger. She was good at scoping places out, looking for threats, and she just didn't see that that. Slowly, she let her crossbow drop and hooked it to her belt.

"...Second time this kind of thing has happened. Just plain strange," she muttered.

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Helena can't hide her shock and horror at all of this. "I... I can't believe anyone would do anything like that. That's just... that's beyond evil."

Brenda took the refilled cup and drank again, then poked at the remains of her sandwich and wondered if she wanted to eat it. "Several of the children from that lab never grew up."

"I can't imagine anything like that. It's like some kind of nightmare."

Those kinds of things... just didn't happen on her world.

"Bruce had already given a home to one who had escaped; a genetic full sister to Dick Grayson. Because of this some of the people who had put forward money for what the lab was producing hired an assassin, who drove the Wayne limousine off the road while Mary Grayson and Alfred were traveling to what Bruce hoped would be a safe place for them while the JLA did the strike on the lab. Alfred nearly didn't survive."

She shook her head slightly. "Do you understand them a little better now?"

The other Batfolk, she meant.

"I..." She trailed off, uncertain. The thought of losing Alfred was a frightening one indeed. "So much tragedy..."

Certainly, her own world had seen its share of ups and downs, even in the personal lives of some of the heroes, but nothing of that kind of caliber.

((Helena still has Alfred?))

Brenda nodded, those ice blue eyes steady on the older woman's face. "It's hard not to just disappear into the shadows and become what criminals see us as. To be one with the night. Spirits of vengeance. The darkness is always there calling, even for a guy like Clark."

((Alfred, albeit elderly, is still very much alive in the Earth-2 continuity. Unlike more modern incarnations, he didn't raise Bruce, but came into his life after he'd already become Batman and taken Dick as his ward. Also noteworthy is that the E-2 Alfred is Alfred Beagle, rather than Alfred Pennyworth.))

"It's tempting, even for me, it even was for Dad. But early into his career, he caught the man that killed my grandparents. That changed things for him. Stopped it from being about vengence and made it about keeping people safe. He started to put it behind him, move on... Embraced the light. Batman became as much a public figure in Gotham as Superman is in Metropolis."

((riiight. *wapself for forgetting that*))

"It isn't about vengeance for us either. It can't be, or we become like them. Besides..." Her voice dropped slightly and her eyes went to her coffee as she pondered a Batman who worked during the day and was cheered openly like Superman. "I don't have anything to be vengeful for anyway."

((No worries. I'm only familiar with it 'cause I've been re-reading some of the old stuff with Helena recently.))

"I put on this costume to avenge Mom, and later, to save Dad... And I managed to do both of those." And yet she'd lost her father a few months later anyway, with him never knowing she'd been the Huntress. "Now, no, I don't have anything more to be vengeful for."

"I never did have anything." Brenda shrugged. "I'm just there to keep a reality running."

Helena nodded. "Must be nice."

She made and effort to switch topics. "You said Dick Grayon stopped being Robin? Took up some other identity?"

Brenda arched a brow, but then understood.

-Yeah, I suppose it is... but I tend to come off like dark vengeance anyway.-

"Nightwing."

"Very weird. Dick's been Robin for almost thirty years now. He updated the costume from time to rime, but he's always been Robin."

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