No Takebacks

Sorry, this is much longer than a drabble, but I've been toying with the idea of a Batman/BSG AU story for a week or two, and I couldn't resist. In this AU, Lee = Dick Grayson (Nightwing) and Kara = Helena Bertinelli (The Huntress). Don't worry if you don't know much about the Batman characters, I think this little bit of fluff will be fun anyway. I'm posting it in two parts for length.

Misfits

As she regained consciousness, she heard the muffled brush of footsteps moving away from her, followed by the quiet tones of a touch keypad and the resounding clang of a heavy door. Raising her head painfully, she oriented herself. She was handcuffed in a padded cell. It was empty save for her fellow inmate and a shiny silver pen, both of which were lying on the floor directly across from her.

As she watched, Nightwing came around, blinking his eyes groggily as he took in their surroundings. Two-Face had stripped them of their suits and all their weapons; Nightwing was left in a simple black T-shirt and shorts, but she’d been out of clean laundry that morning and had raided her roommate’s closet. She was fairly sure there were Disney cartoons on her clothes.

At the moment, death was looking like her best option.

Nightwing had gotten to know her fairly well by this point, and recognized that her sudden horror was a reaction to her exposed accoutrements rather than their mortal peril.

“Oh, come on,” he said, sitting up and rolling his eyes. “Your suit is your weapon, it’s where you keep all your tricks – naturally it’s the first thing any captor takes away.” Without pausing, he reached for the pen Two-Face always left as his trademark, snapped off a metal strip from its cap, and began to work on picking the lock of his handcuffs. “I once had to disarm a bomb at thirty-thousand feet in dinosaur pajamas.” He shrugged. “Stay in this gig long enough, you learn to choose your undergarments on the assumption that supervillains will be seeing them.”

She blinked. “Do you even listen to the words coming out of your mouth?”

“Sometimes,” he said absently. She heard a metallic click and his hands came free. She turned her back and he bent to her cuffs.

“I’m sure I’m gonna regret asking this,” she mumbled while he worked, “but have you got any superpowers?”

“Sorry to disappoint, but if you wanted Superman you should have tried Metropolis. Here in Gotham we’re just regular guys.”

She snorted. “Regular guys don’t dress up in capes and name themselves after nocturnal animals. I believe the street lingo for guys like that is: freaks.”

“I prefer the term ‘misfits.’ It sounds more charming and roguish. Besides, you dress up to fight crime, too.”

“I dress up to commit crime, that’s totally different.”

“Whatever,” he said, moving to examine their prison’s walls.

“Right.” She rubbed at her wrists where the cuffs had snapped off, focusing on the security keypad by the bolted metal door. “So, basically, we’ve got nothing?”

“All we can count on right now is you and me.” He grinned over his shoulder. “That’s not nothing.”

From:

She raised a hand toward the security pad and Nightwing was suddenly beside her, his hand clutching her wrist with surprising urgency. “Don’t,” he warned, all business.

“I heard the keypad tones when he punched in the exit code,” she explained. “I can pick out the numbers and release the lock.”

“He’ll have switched around the tones and numbers – they won’t be standard. Trust me, Romo’s been fighting us a long time, he knows our capabilities and he likes to give us just enough rope to hang ourselves. It keeps him entertained. The thing’s probably wired to explode or short out.”

“Yeah, I could hear that he’d shifted the frequencies, just like I can hear that your natural timbre is tenor, not the faux-baritone thing you’re trying for. I’ve got perfect pitch, and none of the psychos in this town know a thing about my capabilities. Including you.”

He frowned, but seemed to take her seriously. “OK. Tell me the sequence and I’ll punch it in.”

She was about a second away from kicking his officious little ass straight back to unconsciousness. “Get out of my face and let me work, will you?”

“If something goes wrong, wouldn’t you rather it happen to…”

His voice trailed off as she finished typing and the door glided open. He raised an eyebrow. “Nice.” They moved into the corridor, alert for traps. Falling instinctively into rhythm, they scouted the corridors and made quick time through the abandoned warehouse. “You should consider using your powers for good,” Nightwing whispered as he brushed by, close enough to touch. “Seriously.”

She rolled her eyes.

After fifteen minutes in the silence and shadows, the ominous creaks of the derelict building began to get on her nerves. She spoke just to hear her own voice. “What’s your name?”

Her temporary ally paused, angling carefully around the corner to clear the next stretch of their escape. “Just call me Nightwing.”

“Okay, that’s never gonna happen. I don’t know how you can use that name with a straight face.”

“Says The Huntress?”

“I don’t care what the newspapers call me so long as I stay in the headlines.”

“Well, those of us with secret identities are a little shy of…”

“I’m not asking for your real name, you idiot. Just make one up, it’s not that hard.”

His forehead crinkled. “What, like Bob?”

She had a wicked smile. “You look more like a Dick to me.”

He sighed. “Classy.”

“For someone who fights crime in a costume,” she said, “you’re surprisingly conventional.” They finally appeared to be nearing the exterior wall – if a trap was waiting for them, they should stumble upon it any minute. She held herself tense and alert.

“For a walking advertisement of Disney cartoons, you’re surprisingly crass,” he muttered.

They stopped for a moment, crouched behind the last creaking wall before the wide and deceptively barren entryway. She could smell the night air, so close and so far.

Their eyes met, and she felt something...new.

“My name’s Lee,” he said quietly.

She nodded. “Kara.”

Without further discussion, they flung themselves into battle.

From:

delle.livejournal.com

As awful as it sounds, had the Cylons not attacked the Twelve Colonies and killed all but a handful of humans, I don't think Lee and Kara would have connected. A snarky encounter in the brig, a handshake or a nod on the way out... and that would have been it.

No need to admit you have feelings for someone you shouldn't unless the world's about to end I don't think they were even aware of their feelings about each other until the end of the world.

(eta to change to appropriate icon)

Edited Date: 2010-07-29 02:32 am (UTC)

From:

scifishipper.livejournal.com

Given that RDM portrayed K/L as having an immediate attraction, I think they could have sought each other out. Or maybe their paths crossed somewhere down the line. My personal AU canon says that they would be together under any and all circumstance (except of course real canon).

*pouts*

From:

Me too. **high fives you**

ETA: Sorry I haven't been participating with the drabbling y'all. Brain has been focused on other stories and has no juice leftover.

Edited Date: 2010-07-29 03:13 am (UTC)

From:

scifishipper.livejournal.com

*high fives back*

(Yes, but 27 pages! It's worth it!)

From:

Agreed! :)

I also have to do a 1000-word fic by Saturday that I have zero ideas for! That should be fantastic. Sigh.

From:

I've always been a misfit, she says, ever since I can remember. Not like you.

Are you kidding? He touches her cheek below the latest bruise. Kara Thrace, best pilot the academy's ever known, a misfit?

You're an Adama. The perfect officer, the perfect fighter, always making the right decisions. Her hand skims over his, hesitates.

And I hate it, he says.

You hate what it stands for, she corrects, not the thing itself.

He shrugs. Let's both be our own misfits.

Their hands fit perfectly, she thinks, and notices the gleam in his eye.

Their mouths fit perfectly, too.

From:

I do not know this Huntress, but she is awesome, even wearing Disney cartoons! (Unsurprisingly, if you're crossing her with Kara.)

I love that moment of vulnerability when they share their real names. :)

From:

scifishipper.livejournal.com

OMFG. THIS IS AWESOME!

This is absolutely perfectly written. *flails*

Edited Date: 2010-07-29 03:42 am (UTC)

From:

I don't think they were even aware of their feelings about each other until the end of the world.

Yeah, I agree with this - at least, I think there might be a spark of attraction whenever they come across one another, but it'd be suppressed so quickly they'd barely notice it. Ah, guilt. :-/

From:

Eeee, thank you! <3

I love it when they just flow out like that. :)

From:

No worries about the drabbling! Was the big story (27 pages) for Pilots Big Bang? I am hoping to get some time to read over there this weekend.

From:

Yup, sort of anyway. I started my fic (a crossover with the movie The Cutting Edge) as Pilots Big Bang, but it kind of grew and grew and it's a WIP now at 33K with half the story still to come. Whoops!

From:

*pouts with you*

I adore the instant banter between them that we see in the mini-series, so yeah, I think their paths would keep crossing. And hopefully one of them would, at some point, see sense and make a move!

From:

kag523.livejournal.com

Well finish it up darling and then I'll read it. *geez* :>P

From:

kag523.livejournal.com

Guh. Sooooo good! *blinks to clear eyes*

From:

You're dead to me, since you're cheating on me with Heather's WIP.

THAT IS ALL.

:P

From:

ninety6tears.livejournal.com

what do you think would have happened to Kara and Lee if the Cylon attack hadn't come when it did? Well...I was sitting in a Buick a couple years ago with my sister when we got into a conversation about this exact thing. I had a pretty detailed answer where I figured, hmm, since my personal canon is that there was a bit of a falling-out between them after Zak's death, that they'd probably not speak to each other for a long time, then kind of awkwardly reconnect eventually, and then start to get *closer*, at which point Kara would freak out and admit her guilt in Zak's death, and things would never be the same between them again. How sad, right? She then proceeded to write an absolutely amazing AU fic (http://flowrs4ophelia.livejournal.com/113085.html) in which most of this happens, but managed less of a gloomy ending.

From:

Rebels:

The more she saw of Zak’s brother, the more she felt she had been misled.

Lee had been a casual fixture in Zak’s conversations ever since they’d started dating; always the uptight elder brother, the responsible one, the model soldier. She’d expected a bit of a cardboard cut-out, and though she refused to think too closely about that first warm night of empty bottles, the vague assumptions about him she’d absorbed through osmosis had contributed to her mistakes.

They were both far more careful now.

But every time they met she found new edges, piercing and unexpected. He was the most refreshingly competitive man she’d ever met; her sense of humor didn’t embarrass him; he walked away from fights like he was carrying off some secret prize. She didn’t understand him very well, but she felt like his family must understand him even less.

For some reason, she took that personally.

One night at dinner, Zak made some comment about Lee’s latest wrangle with their father, and Kara couldn’t entirely suppress the accusation in her tone when she muttered, “You always said you were the misfit in your family.”

“Oh, I am,” Zak smiled. “I’m the misfit and Lee’s the rebel.”

“What?”

Zak toyed with his food, looking nostalgic. “I break small rules for fun. Lee’d never do that. He saves himself for the big rules, and be breaks them like it’s serious business.”

He set down his fork and poured himself a little wine. “Our mom drank too much when we were growing up,” he said lightly, lifting his glass like a toast, “so Lee spent his teenage years defiantly sober. Our dad gave the military first priority, so ever since Lee enlisted he’s made it a point to date attentively. Half the time I think he cares more about proving it can be done than about the girl he’s with. He’s kind of an idiot.”

Zak shook his head. “He hasn’t really got his head on straight, yet. But once he does, just watch him. He’s gonna change the world.” He lifted his glass again, this time tilting it toward her. “So are you.”

“Oh, really?” she grinned.

“Uh-huh,” Zak nodded.

“And what about you?”

“Me? I’m gonna be happy.” He reached across the table for her hand. “And so are you.” He kissed her fingers. “Promise.”

From:

kag523.livejournal.com

OMG I laughed so hard I just about choked.

If I'm not dead to you already, you're certainly trying to do it.

From:

So glad you enjoyed it! Yes, in the comics Huntress is on the side of good but a little too violent and reckless for Batman's tastes -- he thinks she needs to be stopped, while Nightwing thinks she just needs to be listened to. One of the key points between Nightwing and Huntress in the comics is their decision to tell each other their real names.

I think that's how it goes, anyway :) I must admit I don't read the actual comics, so I pick up all this through fanfiction. It was just fun to play with ~ maybe someday I'll get around to writing a real story about this with Bill as Batman and Tigh as Alfred :)

From:

;)

From:

You hate what it stands for, she corrects, not the thing itself.

So true!

Love this whole thing. Yay!

From: