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banshee-cheekbones · 6 years

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I don't know if you're willing to write it but there aren't enough babitha fics out there and most of them are fully smut, not that that's a problem but.... prompt? barbara, who is now trying to be honest with tabitha so they'll be okay again, decides to tell her about solomon grundy and tabs sees that she's really changed so surprisingly chooses her? (please it'd make me so happy to actually see some emotional babitha content)

just in time for femslash february + femslash february celebrates black women! here’s some introspection set in a canon divergent version of season 4. contains past Tabitha/Butch and some brief mentions of Edward/Oswald.

~2200 words. on ao3 here.

rev·e·nant, ˈrevəˌnäN,-nənt, noun: a person who has returned, especially supposedly from the dead.

For once, it isn’t raining in Gotham.

From her spot in the shallow window seat of her bedroom, Tabitha can actually take in the view without it being obstructed by fog or swathes of rain pouring from the sky. Not that the view is really that exciting; the place Barbara has chosen to set up shop in isn’t exactly the most renowned area of Gotham. The streetlights are flickering intermittently or burned out altogether, the storefronts across the street are marred by bright streaks of colorful graffiti, and even the cars parked alongside the curbs look old and tired, like they might simply fall apart if someone gave them a hard kick.

Still, while it certainly isn’t the most inspiring landscape in the world, she has to admit that it is still far and away better than the depressing vista that her old rundown apartment, the place her and Selina had used as a base of operations, had looked out upon.

Shifting into a slightly more comfortable position, the glow from the crackling flames burning in the fireplace on the other side of the room dancing along her hand, she takes another sip of her wine. It tastes as expensive as the glass it’s in feels. Both of them serve as testament to how profitable Barbara’s new business venture has been, even though it’s still in its early days.

Part of Tabitha wants to simply squeeze the glass until it crunches and shatters, punctures her hand and makes blood run down her wrist. The other part of her, the part of her that remembers so well the feeling of cheap plastic cups and pitted, scarred coffee mugs that Selina brought home from a dumpster somewhere, wants to simply savor the extravagance, wants to enjoy it for as long as it lasts. After all, it’s bound to end eventually, come crashing down, no matter how hard they work to keep things together; everything else Tabitha has held dear has fallen apart since she followed her brother to this ugly, grime-streaked city.

The only thing guaranteed to remain constant in Gotham is the dreary sky and the omnipresent threat of rain.

Someone knocks quietly on her door, and she turns her head just in time to see it smoothly open, without a creak or groan to be heard. Although her hair is still severe, bleached nearly white and pin straight, Barbara has changed into a black silken robe, which is cinched tight at her narrow waist and nearly reaches the floor. She has a glass of wine to match Tabitha’s in one hand and an envelope in the other, and she doesn’t cross the threshold even though, technically, this is her space more so than it’s Tabitha’s.

“May I come in?” she asks, and only when Tabitha nods does she step inside. The orange glow from the fire flickers across her pale face as she crosses the room, bare feet nearly silent on the floorboards. She pauses in front of the window seat, and Tabitha brings her knees towards her chest so that there’s just enough room for Barbara to sit down. Even in that position, the window seat is small enough that her toes are still brushing against Barbara’s robe, the fabric cool and slippery against her bare skin, so unlike the leather and latex that Tabitha prefers.

It feels… intimate, being this close again. It feels like they should be back in Theo’s penthouse, looking down at the spires and towers of Gotham’s skyscrapers, like they should be laughing together in between kissing and plotting their takeover of the city.

The phantom scent of burning, electrified flesh momentarily wafts through the air, and Tabitha takes another sip of wine to try to clear her head.

Barbara doesn’t say anything. She remains still, one leg drawn up onto the window seat, knee nearly touching the glass of the window, the other stretched out towards the floor. She takes careful sips of her wine, and her fingers tighten and loosen around the envelope in her other hand. The crunching of the material as she squeezes it eventually starts to grate on Tabitha’s ears, and she clears her throat.

“What do you want?” she asks. There’s no way this is just a social visit, no way that Barbara just wants to see how she’s settling in. Perhaps she would have believed that if this was the old Barbara, the one that Tabitha was, momentarily, happy with, but she doesn’t believe that this new woman, this revenant seated before her, is that kind of person. She may say that she’s trying to turn over a new leaf, may have offered up her own hand as recompense for what happened to Tabitha’s, but that doesn’t mean she trusts her yet.

They’re still on shaky ground.

Tabitha isn’t sure if they’ll ever settle again, and perhaps that’s a good thing. The last time she became too complicit, she lost Butch, and she had to electrocute Barbara.

That’s not something she wants to particularly relive anytime soon.

For a few more moments, Barbara remains silent. Her gaze remains turned towards the window, and with half of her face in shadow and the other half bathed by the flicker of the fire, it’s easy for Tabitha to see Barbara as she’d been so long ago, when they’d first met, when Barbara had been fresh out of Arkham Asylum, so full of potential but so undeveloped, so lost.

Given the choice, if Tabitha could back to that time, she thinks it may have been better if they’d simply left Barbara there to wither away.

“Look,” Barbara finally says after she’s finished off her glass of wine and placed it in the tiny space between her hip and the window, “I know you don’t believe me. I know that you think I’m lying about trying to be… better, this time around.”

“Can you really blame me?” Tabitha retorts. A hint of a smile appears on Barbara’s thin lips, and she shakes her head.

“No. But if this is going to work, if we’re going to regain our rightful places on top of this city, we need to do it together. And we can’t do that if we’re continually lying to each other.”

“It might be hard to convince Selina to stop lying.” Barbara laughs and, momentarily, her face actually softens. It’s almost enough for Tabitha to forget about all the reasons that working with Barbara again is a bad idea.

Almost.

“That girl is something else. But I’ll worry about her later. For now…” Trailing off, she opens the envelope and slides out a handful of photographs. The actual pictures are still facing towards her chest; all Tabitha can see is the white backing. Letting the envelope drop to the floor, Barbara keeps a careful grip on the pictures, and she flicks her eyes up to Tabitha’s. She looks almost unsure, nervous, and Tabitha finds herself subtly inching her fingers towards her calf, where she still has a knife tucked into a holster that’s currently hidden by her leggings.

Before she can reach the handle, Barbara sighs and passes her the photographs.

“I have a source in the Narrows who took these for me,” she says, leaning back against the window seat once the pictures are in Tabitha’s hands. “She gave them to me a week ago. I nearly threw them in the fire, but… well, policy of honesty and all that. Besides, you were bound to find out eventually.”

Tabitha hears Barbara’s last words, but they don’t completely register in her head. She’s too busy staring at the subject of the pictures, too busy trying to comprehend what exactly she’s looking at, what this means and how it could be.

Apparently, her life is just destined to be full of revenants.

Everything about him is gray now; his hair, his skin, the circles under his eyes. There are dark ropy veins, almost black in color, visible on his exposed arms and barrel shaped chest, and he’s holding a severed arm in one hand, blood still spurting from the end, spattered across his face and the wrestling ring he’s standing in.

But even though he looks different, and even though she doesn’t understand why he would be in this setting, or what the deal with the arm is, it’s still Butch, and he’s still alive.

(Maybe. Reanimated, at the very least.)

“What is this?” she finally asks as she flicks through the pictures. They’re all fairly similar, apparently taken moments apart from each other. Curling her fingers around the edges and looking back up at Barbara, she continues, “Did you have anything to do with this?”

“Absolutely not,” Barbara snaps, eyes going bright with anger. “I had more pressing things to worry about than bringing your ex-boyfriend back to life.” She sounds almost hurt, and for a few seconds, Tabitha almost apologizes.

She manages to swallow it back. They both have plenty that they probably need to apologize for, but she’s not going to say she’s sorry about Butch. She’s not going to apologize for being happy, even if it was only for a fleeting time.

“Look,” Barbara continues after sighing deeply. “He’s going by the name Solomon Grundy now. And apparently Nygma is operating as his handler.”

Tabitha’s hand twitches, and she automatically reaches for her wrist, runs her thumb over the scar that encircles it. She’d heard tell that the twitchy maggot had managed to defrost himself and run away from The Iceberg Lounge, but then word had been quiet, and she’d been hopeful that he’d died somehow, that maybe Oswald had caught back up to him and dumped him in the river, offed him for good this time.

But to know that, not only is he alive, but that he has his hands on Butch again, may have even played a part in turning him into the thing in the photographs, makes her hands itch to curl around his throat and strangle the life out of him.

“What are they doing down there?” she asks, tearing her eyes away from the pictures. After a moment of consideration, she passes them back to Barbara, who carefully stashes them back in the envelope. Giving them up is difficult, but she doesn’t want to spend the rest of the evening staring at them until her anger chokes her.

“Fighting, so far as I can tell,” Barbara answers, tucking the envelope beside her empty wine glass. “Nygma’s using him to make money hand over fist. Nothing more sinister than that, apparently.”

“For now,” Tabitha responds, leaning her head back against the window sill and closing her eyes. It’s Gotham; it’s only a matter of time before things get more complicated than just a mere money-making scheme. It’s only a matter of time before Penguin gets involved, and if there’s one thing she doesn’t want to get involved in again, it’s a lovers’ quarrel between him and Nygma.

But the thought of Butch possibly being trapped inside this monster, this creature of violence, makes her long for revenge.

“For now,” Barbara repeats. Her hand drops to Tabitha’s knee, and Tabitha opens her eyes, glances down at it. Barbara’s fingernails are painted black, and even though Tabitha knows that her hands are capable of great violence, of eliciting enormous amounts of pain, she can’t help but notice how slim her fingers are, how pale and smooth her skin is.

No scars. At least not on that part of her body.

“I’m sorry,” Barbara says quietly. She doesn’t explain what for; she just lets the words hang there, between them, like it’s up to Tabitha to decide how deep the apology goes. She doesn’t want to give Barbara more credit than she’s due, doesn’t want to inscribe meaning to her words that doesn’t actually exist, but she believes that Barbara is sorry for something. She may be a great actress, but she’s not the best, and Tabitha doesn’t think there’s any way she could fake the softness in her eyes, the way her mouth is slightly open, slack, not pulled tight in a smirk or frown for once.

She remembers falling in love with a Barbara that occasionally looked like this, once upon a time. It’d only been one part of that Barbara, one portion alongside the chaos and the inventiveness and the sheer lust for violence and life, but it’d been a part of her nonetheless.

Idly, even though the image of Butch looking fresh from a grave is still forefront in her mind, Tabitha wonders if, despite everything they’ve done to each other, she could fall for this new Barbara.

“It’s fine,” she answers and, sighing deeply, she reaches out and drops her hand onto Barbara’s, feels the points of Barbara’s knuckles press up into her palm. “I’m glad I found out this way.”

From you is unspoken, but she presumes that Barbara hears it all the same.

“I’m trying,” Barbara says with the barest hint of a smile as she flips her hand around and slides her fingers back slightly, until they slot between Tabitha’s. “I promise I am.”

Tabitha believes her.

Things might end up being different in the light of day, when they go back to business, when they return to plotting their return to the throne but here, in the glow of the fire, in the quietness of her bedroom, as she squeezes Barbara’s hand tightly. Tabitha believes her.

#femslash february #ffcbw #femslash february celebrates black women #babitha #barbara x tabitha #mine #mine: fic #barbaratabitha #i hope you're still around nonny!!#sorry this took a hot minute to get to!

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