Chapter Text
** 2015 – April – Berlin **
“So… Aside from being sexy, what do you do for a living?”
The heavy German accented English makes Eleanor pause with her drink halfway to her lips, raising a very unimpressed eyebrow at the blonde man giving her an attempt at a flirty wink. Then at the hand resting on her upper arm. What was it about her slouched posture, pulled up hair and smudged makeup that attracted people to her?
Seriously. This was like the third guy who’d approached her, this night alone.
She places her free hand on top of the blonde’s then grips his fingers and bends them backwards, the guy lets out a startled yelp, snatching his hand away, Eleanor lets him.
“Touch me again and I’ll break your fingers.” She says, then goes back to her drink, the bitter liquor burning down her throat when she sips it. He blinks owlishly at her before scurrying away back to his mates, who laugh at him. Eleanor rolls her eyes, grabbing the attention of the bartender and taps at her shot glass. Despite the hostility she’d shown to the other guy Eleanor can’t help but think that he’s kind of attractive, black haired and blue eyed with a pleasant white toothed smile, if a bit pale. Dressed in a black button up with rolled up sleeves that show off well defined muscles and the fact that he clearly takes care of himself. She doesn’t miss how he subtly eyes the low cut cleavage of the top she’s sporting.
He refills her glass with more jaeger, “you want to talk about it?” He’s got a Brooklyn accent, she notes, he looks around her age, maybe a bit older, in his early twenties. Where she sober she might comment on the fact that he was far from home. Instead Eleanor downs the liquorice tasting liquor in one go.
“Talk about what?”
“About what’s got you down. I hear bartenders are good listeners.”
She snorts, staring down at her… what was it again? Some sort of tonic with lime in it. The drink was terrible if Eleanor was honest with herself, but she was pleasantly buzzed so she didn’t mind too much at this point. Eleanor swirls the clear liquid in her glass a couple of times, pursing her lips.
“I was the vigilante known as Nightingale, six months ago my brother, Robin, was murdered by the Joker and now I’m in Germany getting drunk in a shitty bar because even a master of the magical arts couldn’t resurrect him.”
Is what she’d like to say.
What she actually does say is, “I actually don’t feel like talking.” Her tongue darts out to wet her lips and she props her elbows up on the bar, giving him a better view of her cleavage. He looks, before dragging his eyes back up to meet hers. Eleanor definitely wouldn’t flirt with anyone under normal circumstances, but the buzz of the alcohol is lowering her inhibitions enough that she doesn’t care, and well, she’s got a type apparently.
The bartender leans closer, a sly smirk on his lips. “What do you feel like doing?”
“You.” Eleanor is close enough to him that she can feel the heat of his skin, before she pulls back. Taking another sip of her drink, deliberately letting some of it spill out the corner of her mouth and watching as he follows the movement of her tongue as she licks it up.
“My shift ends in an hour.”
Eleanor hum’s noncommittally, pushing her shot glass in his direction with one finger. “I guess I could wait.”
Later, when bartender guy has her pressed up against the wall just inside his apartment, his breath hot against her ear and Eleanor’s legs wrapped around his hips. He thrusts hard against her, drawing a moan out of her and pulls back to look at her, she closes her eyes.
“My name is–“
She jerks him in by the collar of his shirt and presses her lips against his in a biting kiss to interrupt him.
“No names.”
His fingers move up her tank top, pushing it up so it’s over her breasts, “no names,” he agrees, kissing down her neck and dragging his teeth down her collar bone. “bed?”
“Bed.”
He leads her stumbling through his apartment, undoing his button up shirt as he goes and when they reach the bedroom she pushes him down into the mattress. Fingers deftly working on undoing his jeans and push his underwear down before she wraps her fingers around his half-hard length. He groans, fingers digging into the cover.
“Condom?” Eleanor questions, moving her hand up and down him. The bartender lets out another low moan before gesturing at the bedside table, managing to open the drawer from where he lay. She glances over, spots the square package and quickly rips it open before putting it on him. Getting out of the bed briefly enough to pull her own jeans and underwear off she doesn’t pause or stop to think before she climbs back on him pressing her hands against his pecs to keep him on his back. If she closes her eyes and ignores the noises he’s making she can almost imagine Dick’s calloused hands on her body when she lowers herself onto him.
Eleanor tilts her head back, tears building at the corner of her eyes with every roll of her hips. She’s glad that the only light in the room is coming from the moon shining through the window, so he can’t see her face as she chases after her release. Rubbing her fingers against herself to hasten the process. When Eleanor does come, it sneaks up on her and has her hunching over. Biting her lip to muffle any noise that she’d normally let free. He groans bellow her, hips thrusting up in an irregular pattern, before she rolls off him and passes out.
Eleanor wakes up with sunlight hitting her straight in the eyes, a pounding headache and her mouth tasting like death. She sits up slowly, rubbing at her temple when she feels a hand on her lower back.
“Mornin’, gorgeous.” Eleanor stills, oh right. She went home with someone, the bartender with the blue eyes. Most of her memory is fuzzy in her head, but she definitely remember having sex with him.
“Uhm, morning?” She rasps out. Where are her clothes?
“Oh wow… You’ve got loads of scars.”
Eleanor quickly tugs her top down to cover up and moves away from his wandering hand. This was getting more and more awkward by every passing minute. Rubbing her eyes she searches the room, she’d slept in her long sleeved top and bra, but she was missing her underwear, jeans and one sock.
“That was a bit rude, sorry. I’ll make it up to you, how about breakfast? I make mean pancakes.”
She blinks, refusing to turn around and look at him. She’d slept with someone that wasn’t… Eleanor knew that technically she hadn’t cheated; her and Dick had broken up months ago. But her heart didn’t get the memo, and fuck, she felt so guilty.
Spotting her clothes she quickly redresses, pinching the bridge of her nose to try and clear her head a bit. The guy moves around too, Eleanor is carefully avoiding making eye contact with him, which gets harder when he stops in front of her.
“You okay?”
Eleanor can feel herself slipping, the angst and guilt building into what she knows will soon end up being a full on panic attack. She needs to… she pats at her neck to try with trembling fingers to find the comfortable weight of the chain, but it’s not there.
“My necklace,” she gasps out.
“Uh, I think you dropped it over here?” He says, moving back to the other side of the bed. Eleanor follows on unsteady legs, clinging to the bedframe for support. When he stands again he’s got the shuriken in his hand and holds it out to her. Eleanor immediately snatches it to her, running her fingers over the familiar bumpy metal to calm her racing heart.
She sees the hand out of the corner of her eye and surprisingly fluidly doges it when the guy tries to put it on her shoulder. Then looks up to meet his eyes. Her stomach clenches, and for a moment she feels like she might actually throw up. Eleanor forces herself to breath in through her nose.
What the hell had she been thinking?
Black hair and blue eyes yes, but that’s where the similarity ended. Not even the same shade of blue. Eleanor swallows back bile.
“I need to go.” She mutters, grabbing her shoes and pulling them on as she steps out of the bedroom, the guy follows behind her, he’s talking but honestly she can’t make any of the words out. Her jacket is on the floor next to the front door and she grabs it, doesn’t put it on until she’s out of the building.
Somehow she manages to get back to her hotel room in a haze, walking through the cold spring morning streets of Berlin. As soon as she slams the door close behind her she starts pealing off her clothes and steps into the shower before she’s even set the right temperature. Eleanor scrubs her body clean until her skin is pink and feels raw under her touch, then dressed only in a bathrobe she collapses onto the couch and cries until she passes out.
When she wakes up later it’s almost dark outside, and the clock on her burner phone tells her it’s seven-thirty. Sitting up slowly she turns her laptop on, eyes darting back to the phone. The temptation is there, Eleanor knows Dick’s number by heart. She could call him, he’d answer, and he would talk to her because he’s just that good of a person. The letter she had written to him is still on the table next to the laptop, along with the one addressed to Jason.
Eleanor sighs, looking over to the empty bottle of rum on the table, remembering the reason she’d gone to that bar to begin with. It hadn’t started out like this. She’d only drunk enough to not get any nightmares, that had been the purpose of it all. Then it had just gotten easier, being buzzed was enough to keep her darker thoughts at bay. It was a weak excuse, part of her thinks that maybe she should have just taken Ra’s up on his offer.
Eleanor types in the password to her computer, pulling up the web browser and clicks on the Gotham Gazette link. She hadn’t actually checked the news in a long while now, too drunk to care. Eleanor skims through it, ignoring headlines like ‘Wayne Enterprises donates one million dollars’ and ‘Simon Stagg to unveil new step forward in medical science!’. She almost misses the headline that makes her blood run cold.
‘Joker still at large!’
Eleanor clicks the link, getting rid of the annoying popups as she scrolls down the page.
‘The police still have no new leads on the Joker after he shot and paralyzed the newly appointed Commissioner Gordon’s daughter, Barbara Gordon. Miss Gordon, who just turned nineteen, was admitted to Gotham General with a spinal injury two weeks ago, sources confirm that Miss Gordon will not be able to walk again. No statement has been issued by the family.’
She waits for the anger to hit her, waits for that uncontrollable rage as she reads more and more, but there’s nothing. Instead all she feels is disappointment and sadness. Eleanor reaches for her phone almost automatically, while Barbara and she hadn’t been very close she still considered the woman part of her family. After all, when you fought side by side with someone you formed bonds not easily broken. What would she say if she called her now? ‘I’m sorry you’re crippled for life?’ or ‘Sorry I didn’t kill him when I had the chance?’.
Another life ruined by the Joker, and when Batman caught him again, he would just return the maniac to Arkham. When was enough, enough? Killing Jason, paralyzing Barbara, what next? What line did the sick monster have to cross to finally be put down?
Eleanor closes the link to the newspaper and is met with her mothers face on the screen. Alice Aedan were soft when Eleanor was sharp angles, chocolate brown hair that curled ever so slightly, Alice’s skin a warm tan that Eleanor herself could never attain. She had her mother’s eyes though, the same almond shaped brown almost black colour framed by thick and long lashes. In the picture, Alice’s red lips are tilted up slightly in a coy smile, it’s from a news article about of her art gallery. It’s dated the fifteenth of October nineteen-ninety-six.
There are newer pictures of her of course, but most if not all are taken by paparazzi during the pregnancy and sold to gossip tabloids with titles like ‘Billionaire Bruce Wayne knocks up local Gothamite.” It had been a proper scandal, and when Alice had died, all the papers had talked about was that Bruce Wayne surely wouldn’t keep the baby. Jokes on them, Eleanor thinks, reaching up to close the laptop.
Eleanor puts clothes on and heads out, making sure to take her necklace and some cash with her. She didn’t really need anything else. By the time she passes the third fast food restaurant she gives in to her grumbling stomach and pushes the doors open to the place. She orders a burger on the go and manages to eat about half of it when she hears the sound of a struggle up ahead. Part of her tells her she should just let it go, Eleanor isn’t a vigilante anymore, it wasn’t her problem.
She sighs. Looking wistfully at the remains of her burger, before tossing it in a nearby trashcan. The German voices get louder as she turns down an alleyway, Eleanor pulls her hood up to cover her face – old habits after all. There’s six people total, four guys and two girls. The two girls are stood a bit further away, both sneering, throwing homophobic insults and slurs around.
One of the guys is on the ground, looking dazed with a large red mark on his cheek. The second guy, with a red scarf wrapped around his neck, is being pushed quite forcefully against one of the brick walls by a guy almost twice his size. The fourth and final guy turns towards her as she approaches.
“Let them go,” Eleanor says, flexing her fingers.
Number Four scoffs, “you hear that guys, this American thinks she’s tough shit.” The two girls giggle, turning their ire towards her now, calling her a number of insulting things. She rolls her eyes, taking a threatening step forward.
“I’ll only tell you one more time,” Eleanor growls out, Red Scarf whimpers as Number Three’s fingers dig into his shoulder. She switches over to German, “let them go, or I’ll kick your ass.”
Four laughs, stepping forward and raises his hand to grab her, Eleanor ducks out of the way, grabs his wrist and twists him until she can press his arm up his back, knowing he’ll have to step away from her or risk dislocating his shoulder. Four lets out a startled yelp as he tumbles – barely managing to catch himself when he almost faceplants the ground.
“What the hell?” Three says, releasing Red Scarf to help his buddy up. Four ignores his friends outstretched hand with a look of surprise on his face. When Eleanor holds her hand out to the guy on the ground however, Four quickly gets back on his feet.
“Who do you think you are, bitch?”
“Bitch!” One of the harpies screeches in echo, the other one lets out a similar squawk. Four goes to push her and Eleanor quickly ducks under his arm, striking her foot out to trip him up and he goes sailing onto his face yet again. Three takes the opportunity to try and make a grab for her so she drives her elbow into his stomach and watches him wheeze out a breath, moving away from her. The smarter of the two, clearly. The harpies lash out as well, but instead of grabbing or shoving they claw at her with ridiculously long – and pink, nails. Eleanor ducks one, blocks the other one and slaps it away from her.
Eleanor doesn’t say anything as she stares them all down, standing protectively in front of the two victims. Four’s pride doesn’t let him give up though, Eleanor has seen similar looks in guys back in Gotham a hundred times over. He throws a sloppy punch that probably would have hurt him just as much as it would have hurt her if it had connected, instead she bats it away and strikes out against the bundle of nerves on his other arm, the limb goes limp, Eleanor watches as panic crawls into his face.
“What did you do?” He yells, cradling his arm. Her lips quirk up into a half smile, it felt good to let lose, even if she was holding back. These guys deserved whatever came their way for the way they’d been bullying the other two but, criminals, by nature, are a cowardly and superstitious lot. All Eleanor needed was a little fear, and maybe, just maybe, they would refrain from doing anything like this again.
Quick as a snake, she coils out and strikes his other arm, watching as it drops limp to his side. It wouldn’t last for very long, but she didn’t need it too.
“If you’re quick,” Eleanor murmurs darkly, “I won’t do the same to your legs.”
Four’s eyes widen and then he’s running. Or rather scrambling down the alley with his arms uselessly hanging at his sides. The two girls squawk at each other again, surprise colouring their eyes as they watch the big strong man run away like a terrified child. One of them, the taller of the two lashes out in blind anger and Eleanor quickly redirects the blonde’s punch and jabs her fingers to the other woman’s ribs. The blonde wails like a banshee, overdramatically clutching at her side, it works in Eleanor’s favour. The other man, the one she’d elbowed in the gut is finally getting his breath back.
“Please,” he wheezes in a heavy German accent, “don’t hurt me.”
Eleanor takes one step towards him, and he scrambles away, the harpies following a moment later. When they’re out of view, she rolls her shoulders back, stretching her neck. Then turns to look at the remaining two. Red Scarf helps the guy up from the ground, carefully tilting his head back to inspect the forming bruise on his cheek.
“Thank you,” bruised guy says, blinking at her over Red Scarf’s shoulder. Who nods, lacing their fingers together.
“Yes, thank you for standing up to those people.”
Eleanor shrugs, “put some ice on your cheek,” she says, tapping her own. Before she turns and strolls back the way she came from.
She feels better than she has in ages when she heads back to the open street, the adrenaline after the fight still flooding her system. But it wasn’t enough, those guys hadn’t been anything close to what she usually went up against. No challenge.
Eleanor needed more.
Instead of heading to another bar that night she walks into a costume shop. There’s a variety of choices, everything from the Justice League to slutty Halloween outfits. She’s being stupid, she knows. Eleanor should just contact Alfred or Lucius and have something dropped off, but it’s not just the need for vengeance and justice she’d gotten from her dad. Eleanor was just too damn stubborn to ask for help. Over the course of a couple of weeks Eleanor manages to buy enough material to have a working suit, and some gadgets, it’s not nearly anything like the quality she’s used to. But it’ll do its job.
It’s a full body black suit and tight against her skin, tighter than the Nightingale suit had been, and the Rogue suit as well. A red sash low on her hips, with a couple of pockets spread out over her thighs, wrists and calf. Eleanor had debated for a long time if she should add the bat symbol to it, but ultimately had decided not to. She hadn’t spoken to B in a long time, and she didn’t want to bring attention to herself in that way.
On the first night out, she stops four robberies and two assaults while mentally mapping the city from the rooftops. Berlin is beautiful, and not without crime, but it’s no Gotham. Every punch she throws, every person saved fuels the fire, the need of more.
Eleanor gets reckless, arrogant. Taking punches she could have avoided or allowing slashes with a knife to graze her because like sharks they fight harder when they smell blood. But at the end of the day – or the night as it were, it’s still just too damned easy.
She breaks into a police station and steals some case file data off a computer ridiculously easily. In the morning when Eleanor gets back to her hotel room, she sorts through them and finds two that catch her interest. (She also finds a cold case that she solves while fixing her grappling hook and sends an anonymous mail to the detective in charge with a file attached to it.)
One’s a missing kids case, pointing towards a human trafficking ring connected to Blüdhaven and Roland Desmond. The second one is an firearms trafficking case that’s been worked by the German police for months now with no new intel, but she recognises the work of the Russian Bratva. It links to other major cities in Europe too, and Eleanor would bet her right arm on Interpol being involved.
The firearms and Russians can wait.
The kids can’t.
It’s easy to forget, Eleanor thinks as she’s sat on a rooftop for the umptieth time this week, that most organized crimefighting takes place as stakeouts and stakeouts by their very nature are incredibly boring. Another week goes by with Eleanor growing more and more impatient – excess energy being spent on seeing how long she can do a handstand on the edge of the rooftop. Then she gets her lead, a slip up in security and she follows a vehicle through the city – glad that she’d taken the time to map it, to a warehouse. It’s always a warehouse. Eleanor busts the security, frees the kids and calls the police. The next day she’s in the news as a security camera catches her leaving the warehouse – really it’s just a black blur when she’s grappling away but it’s enough that she gains the name ‘Black Blur’ (Eleanor isn’t a fan). The case explodes and exposes several other branches of the trafficking ring. A shipment is taken down in the middle of the Atlantic with the help of Aquaman, freeing another ten dozen kids, and sending a couple hundred of Desmond’s acquaintances and henchmen (and acquaintances henchmen!) to prison.
Eleanor goes to bed without alcohol in her system the first time in months and doesn’t get nightmares. It works! She’s found something that actually works other than wallowing in self-pity and getting drunk. She feels good, better than good! Eleanor is reaching for her phone to call home, to call Alfred, it’s a good middle ground to start with. He wouldn’t judge her too much, maybe he’d even be proud of her.
Then an explosion goes off on the TV and she’s back in the mountains and all she can see is smoke and all she can smell is burning flesh. She passes out trying to find Jason’s shuriken, coming back to a couple of hours later with the worst headache she’s ever had.
Eleanor doesn’t go out that night, instead she orders champagne from the hotel and gets so drunk she throws up before passing out again on the bathroom floor. Another week passes before she manages to drag herself out of her room, telling herself that maybe it was an off fluke, if she solved the firearms trafficking case it would get better.
So she does. More long stakeouts, going over old case notes and eating street food. It’s tempting to bring a bottle of something stronger with her, just in case something triggers her panic attack again, instead she keeps the shuriken close to hand and tries to reign in her more terrible impulses. Eleanor is distracted this time, thinking too much about how she’ll feel better afterwards, and it costs her. She slips up and they spot her, taking a bullet to the front of her thigh. She has to leave before she can find anything else out, or risk bleeding out on some rooftop before she can make it back to the hotel. When she goes back after her leg is somewhat healed there are no traces that they were even there to begin with.
Then it gets worse because of course it does.
The alcohol stops working. She wakes up in cold sweat, gagging and trying to breathe with images of Jason’s brutalized body behind her eyelids.
Eleanor is so tired, nothing she tries works. Tired of being afraid, of feeling like a disappointment. She wants to go home, but even that is an alarming thought that she shuts down before it can take any root. Then the terrifying thought of the shuriken’s calming effect also not working is what finally gets her to decide.
Ra’s al Ghul might be a supervillain. But right now, Eleanor had nowhere else to go.
So with her tail between her legs she slinks back to London, to the penthouse that Slade had taken her to four months ago. She’s not surprised when the guard opens the door for her without question, nor the other darkly clad people that flank her into the lift.
Ra’s stands on the same elevated spot in front of the windows, facing her this time though. He smiles, looking very pleased with himself.
“Excellent, Eleanor.” He says, arms crossed behind his back. “Let us begin, shall we?”