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The early evening air was frigid, and cooling fast as the last vestiges of sunlight (if such a thing could exist in Gotham) continued to seep away. Just as the night before, the bat-signal was fat and yellow and moon-like where it pressed into the smoggy sky. Gray-cast clouds gave an impression of more intense darkness. On the roof of the police station, Barbara leaned against the floodlight, feeling the warmth of it through her suit as it cast its half-beam away from her. Several stories down, a knot of pedestrians milled over the sidewalk, which glistened still with trodden-on slush. She felt distinctly that it would be another quiet night.
Seeming to confirm this, her phone buzzed. Fishing the brick — which she was coming to learn was nigh-indestructible — from a pocket on her waist, she found the murky grey-green of the monochrome display illuminated with a perfunctory note:
B: call if you can't handle it.
What a jackass.
She opened the conversation, clicking up through her messages from the previous night (‘where r u dude?’, ‘B i'm serious youre not bleeding out right?’, and, most shamefully, ‘I thought we were supposed to be a team’) before deciding not to waste her time asking this time. Slightly petty, perhaps, but warranted as far as she was concerned.
There was a subway station a short distance away; one that was always piss-stained, and where the lights were always sickly pale and flickering. It was one of multiple which came in such quick succession that the time between them was almost negligable, and as such, the most poorly maintained among them was generally regarded with suspicion. Barbara had grown up in this mentality, of course, but she had come to understand it in a far more intimate way in the few months since she'd officially taken up her mantle.
Through the maintenance tunnels, Wayne Terminus was barely a fifteen minute walk away. Those fifteen minutes — or, more accurately, her having to travel everywhere on foot regardless of urgency — were a matter of contention between them. It galled her that the Bat would encourage her engagement with various violent criminals, yet refused to finance her a motorcycle citing reasons of ‘danger’. She often mused on whether or not this was the result of his unspoken, but apparent (at least to her), respect for her father.
Finding the cave uninhabited, she removed her cape and cowl — the latter of which she sat so that the synthetic red hair could splay out from the nape largely without obstruction — before taking the private elevator up. It was obnoxiously fast, of course. Between the cold of the cave and the Gothic architecture of the penthouse when the doors opened into it, there had barely been time for the dank, musty smell of abandoned track to dispel from her clothes. She found Bruce standing over the large, octagonal table in what she privately thought of as the heart of the building. His back was to her, and he was standing in the near-dark as he was wont to do, looking small beneath the pretentious vaulted ceilings. Not actively dead or dying, then.
There were a few lightswitches by the door, and she flicked them on, bathing the room in a warm brightness that caused her to wince. It was a brief wince, though, and in a moment or so she addressed him casually:
“Hey, Vengeance.”
Bruce turned to her swiftly. One hand was raised to shield his eyes from above, but Barbara could still make out his owlish blinking underneath it. She half expected some snippy remark about her father being a bad influence, but he didn’t seem inclined to make one. Pity that, because she would have enjoyed the look on his face when she answered that it was Catwoman she was learning from, not her dad.
It took her a few seconds longer to spot the empty menorah sitting an arm’s reach away from him on the table. Sloppy. Not the kind of attention to detail she prided herself on. Noticing her distracted gaze, Bruce turned from her again, just briefly enough to confirm her sightline. With the overhead lights on, and his head angled as it was, she was finally able to see that he was wearing a kippah.
Fuck, she thought. Fuck, fuck, fucking shit.
“I'm really sorry,” she said, the words stumbling from her mouth as her hand reached back, groping blindly for the switch as if by flicking it back she could reset the scene she had disturbed.“I didn't realise—”
With a small and casual shake of the head, he cut her off. Barbara was acutely aware of the warmth of embarrassment filling her cheeks as she once again let her hand fall to her side.
“Just pouring,” he mumbled — the first words he had said since her arrival. Then, to emphasise the point, he picked up the little dark blue oil cruet that was beside him and used it to gesture to the small glass cups. “Light’s good. Should have it anyway.”
He put the cruet down again. Demonstration over.
“You look cold,” he said, a little awkward in what she could only assume was an attempt at redirection. He was no longer shielding his eyes, but he was also not fully recovered from his wince. Furrowed brows carved down through the familiar crease at the top of his nose, already far more prominent than it should have been, at his age.
She responded dryly, “It’s cold out,” before it occurred to her that she was also being awkward. There was some small comfort she could glean from knowing that, at least for her, that awkwardness was more of a situational occurrence and less of a general state of beings. “The sidewalks are all icy,” she continued when Bruce didn’t say anything. “Let me have a bike.”
He had this particular ability to change his entire expression seemingly without moving a single muscle. Perhaps it was a slight smoothing of his forehead which made him seem almost to smile, or a barely perceptible softening around the corners of his mouth. She couldn’t pinpoint it if her life depended on it, but it was undeniably there.
“If the sidewalks are icy, so are the roads,” he posited — and wasn’t that a typical Gothamite lack of trust in the city council? He was correct, of course.
With that response, she felt the lingering tension break, and started to walk across the room towards him.
“Didn't know you were Jewish,” she said, both for want of something better to say, and because it was true.
She was by his side now, leaning on the dark wooden edge of the table as she examined his things. A handful of small glass cups which seemed only to have a measure of water in them, the blue cruet, a single plain white candle as well as a larger, braided one, plus a cup of what seemed to be wine. Beside them was something that she did not at first recognise, but then realised must be wicks for the oil. Behind all of that, of course, was the menorah; empty, but very intricately decorated.
“Wait,” she said, standing up fully to face him, feeling slightly confused. “How did I not know that?”
Bruce raised one brow. The crease between them didn't exactly disappear, but it seemed shallower with the movement of the rest of his face. “You don’t read tabloids.” Which. Fair.
“I see you out on Saturday loads, though?” she pushed.
“I rest on one Shabbat in every four.”
“And yesterday?”
“Shabbat starts Friday night,” he pointed out with one, small shrug. “On holidays, I take Saturday night as well. It feels correct to me.”
“Right, yeah, I suppose.” She frowned. “Sorry, I must be really disturbing you.”
“Hn. No,” he answered. Picking up the cruet once again (this time with intent) he began steadily pouring a small amount of oil into one of the cups, but made no move to shoo her away. Taking in his passive, unbothered face, it seemed that he truly meant what he said, and she made the decision to believe him.
For a few seconds, she simply watched. The kippah Bruce was wearing was dark — the sort of off-black which felt worn and natural, and was very fitting to his usual style — but shot through with fine concentric rings of blue and white. His hands moved with a steady practice.
Barbara felt a sudden urge to speak. Coughing once to clear her throat, she began again to survey the items on the table; a distraction from her words so that they didn't become warped in her attention to them.
“My mother was Jewish,” she said quietly. Tilting his head, Bruce looked her way. His eyes slid slightly away from hers and rested instead on her cheek — something she had long since grown accustomed to. “I suppose,” she continued, “in a sort of way… that makes me Jewish too.”
He blinked once, then again. The crease was back and bigger than ever. “A fundamental way, yes,” he agreed.
“Right.”
“How not?”
She sighed. It wasn't one of her exasperated or annoyed sighs; it was one of those brief, where-do-I-even-start sighs. She tugged at her bottom lip, feeling the dry, wind-bitten skin against her teeth.
“She not the one who raised me,” she replied at length, pausing to consider her next words. “She’s not… I mean, she gave birth to me, but she’s not my mom. I don't know about any of this stuff, really.” It was embarrassing — she was embarrassed — to tell him this, yet a part of her felt relieved to let the words out. Religion, or lack of thereof, wasn’t something her family often discussed. She didn’t know how to discuss it.
Bruce hummed as he finished with the cruet. With those same steady hands, he began to place the oil cups in their places, into which they fit perfectly, clearly made for it. Though they were in good shape, the slight tarnish on the glass gave away their age. She realised that she was probably looking at a family heirloom. Most things in the room probably were, in fairness, but something about this felt more weighty.
Silently, Bruce passed her the one wax candle — the shamash, she finally recalled once it was in her hand, feeling unreasonably proud of the fact — and a lighter from his pocket. She realised at once what he meant for her to do, and she struggled with what to feel about it. She settled quickly on a sense of dread.
“I don’t want to fuck it up,” she whispered.
Bruce was placing the wicks in the oil, and did not look at her as he hummed a soft reply. “It’s candles,” he said. “You’ve lit candles.”
There was very little she could conjure in response to that. She could argue the point, certainly — she wouldn’t be Batgirl if she couldn’t argue a point — but the longer she held the candle between her two gloved fingers, the more it dawned on her that she didn’t really want him to change his mind. Transferring her grip, she peeled the gloves off of one hand, and then the other, dropping them to the floor beneath the table so that she could feel the wax warming beneath her fingertips.
Straightening, Bruce glanced her way momentarily. She thought that he was going to make a remark of some sort, but instead, when he turned back to the menorah, he began to sing a Hebrew prayer which she wasn’t able to follow, but half wished that she was. It was strange, but she’d never imagined that he might have a singing voice any more distinct than a tuneful murmur of familiar lyrics under his breath. Yet, he did, and it was clear that these words were just as familiar to him as any one of those songs he occasionally played while he worked at the computer.
There was a brief refrain; the quiet of which made Barbara’s arms prickle as she sighed a breath between her teeth. Then Bruce said something which Barbara recognised as the first phrase of the prayer, repeated. It was not sung quite as strongly, this time, but still undoubtedly melodic. He paused, looking at her. Barbara blinked.
“Say that again?” she asked, catching his meaning.
He did, low and strong — stronger than his voice ever was in passing conversation, like some part of this he wore like he wore the bones inside his body — and overly enunciated for her benefit. His voice took on a clarity it rarely had outside of the suit. Still fairly quiet, yes, but in a deliberate way; gentle and reverent. Pausing again, he looked towards her.
Haltingly, stumblingly, she moved her lips to make the shapes that his did. What came out of her weren’t quite words yet, but were clearly close enough an approximation that he didn't object. The taste of them in her mouth was unfamiliar, yet as she ended the short phrase with a questioning rise of her tone, she found herself wanting to try more.
Bruce nodded. He wasn’t smiling, but he was doing that thing again where his face looked soft regardless, and Barbara found herself grinning in response, a knot in her chest unfurling slightly.
Like that, he walked her through the rest of the prayer. It wasn’t until she began the next phrase with ‘Eloheinu’ that she realised the previous word she’d spoken had been ‘Adonai’. The movements of the words were familiar to her for some reason she couldn’t recall, but she knew she had never learnt their meaning. It fascinated her, how the sounds shifted. How they bent with her recognition of them. She wondered if their words made sense when cut up as they were, or if Bruce had segmented the prayer to tune — the blessing? — for her benefit alone.
When it was time for her to light the candles, he gestured for her to do so. The menorah was daunting: made from some material which looked like gold (and knowing the Waynes, probably was) which twisted up like a tree from its base and separated into branches. Each branch was decorated with little silver leaves. When she went to light the candles the same way as Bruce had placed them, he laid a hand on her wrist to stop her. With those bruised, bent fingers, he guided her to begin at the other end of the row of candles.
You need a splint, she wanted to say, to distract from the fact that she was standing there in her suit, if nothing else. But she refrained.
When all of the candles were lit, she placed the shamash in its place and took a step back, bumping into Bruce as she did so. Opening her mouth, she tried to find the words to convey her gratitude, but finding none, she closed it again. Bruce simply nodded.
“I’d better go,” she said, suddenly awkward, and feeling a warmth that made her want to cry just a little. Clearing her throat, she patted him on the arm and walked away. He wasn’t the type to get offended by things like that.
“You can stay,” he offered. “For Havdalah. For half an hour.”
Barbara paused at the door. It was a genuine offer, she could tell, but all the same she knew that it would stress him out if they both took the night off with no contingency. Besides, she didn’t feel like getting weepy with him. Not tonight.
“Maybe next year, B.” She realised that she was being genuine as well. “Happy Hanukkah.”
That trace of a smile was still there as he answered, “And to you.”