Batman Beyond Drabbles
Recording Session .777899058
"How is she?"
"She'll be fine. Just... banged up."
"Did you call the --"
"--Yeah."
(Wood scraping over ringing metal. Coughing.)
"You didn't tell me."
"What?"
"About her."
"Max..."
"Five years, eighteen hundred and twenty five days, and you couldn't have mentioned her once."
(Long silence.)
"I hadn't seen her in years."
"Bullshit. She's a reformed criminal. You kept your tabs on her - the Old Man kept tabs on her, I know, I've read the reports - how many nights, Terry?"
"Max --"
"How many nights? Five years, how many nights?
"She wasn't sane -"
"...You... you should have told me."
Estrangement (Based on mtgat and dotfic's Robin Red Bird shared-universe series.)
Max stumbles into the Cave with a fractured arm and bruises down her jaw, but she can see, and the sight of the empty case where the costume stood is enough to keep her going.
Terry resets her arm through clenched teeth and they head out together and don't say a word. This is the fifth year.
They find Matt near the docks, unconscious, alive, and they bitch at him but not each other, moving mechanically. That doesn't come until later: she slaps him, he presses her bloody shoulders against the Cave's wall.
She leaves for Bludhaven the next morning.