Steady On Forward

Chapter 5

He cut off when there was a knock at the door.

"Did you order food?" Stephanie asked.

"No..."

He put his closed laptop on the coffee table and heaved himself up to standing, walking to the door and peering through the peephole. "Huh. It's Damian," he said. He had no idea what the hell he was doing here.

"I know you're in there, Drake," Damian said through the door.

"He's not gonna go away if you ignore him, might as well let him in," Stephanie said.

Tim sighed, but unlocked the door and opened it. "Why are you here?" he asked, as Damian shoved past him into the flat.

"Oh good, Batgirl is already here. I know you two are working on The Case. I want in on whatever you dug up on Tarantula, and I want in with Oracle, Signal, and Black Bat on anything about The Woman. I know you're all in on it," he said assertively.

Tim blinked, and slowly shut the door. "Uhh." He looked over to Stephanie, who just shrugged, as if to say 'why not?'.

Damian crossed his arms.

"Okay, I guess. I was most of the way through, but I guess I'll start over. Sorry Steph."

She shrugged again.

Tim sat back down on the sofa, and started again from the beginning as Damian settled into the armchair.

"So yeah, that's basically where I was at when you barged in. After the recording was destroyed, Nightwing and Tarantula faced off with Blockbuster, and she shot and killed him. Now this is the closest thing I have to evidence (and even this is a stretch because I just don't know enough), but in Dick's case file, he wrote 'my fault' after he said Blockbuster was dead. Obviously that's not an especially distinctive phrase, and Dick has a guilt complex miles wide, but I thought that's what I heard him saying when Jay was trying to get him to wake up. It may be nothing, but it's literally all we have to go on."

"You really weren't kidding when you said everything relevant is complete speculation," Stephanie said, looking deep in thought. "So you think it happened after that? Or maybe right before? And maybe that's why he ended up not stopping her from shooting him?"

"I have no idea. I just think it's certainly a possibility. One of many. Or it could be completely irrelevant and it happened at a whole other time. Actually, we don't know for sure if it was even an isolated incident — he just said 'Tarantula' when Jay asked — that could mean anything." He frowned. "And he did imply Babs broke up with him because of it, so maybe it happened before they broke up. Babs said she didn't know about it if anything like that happened while they were together, and that it definitely wasn't why they broke up. She wouldn't have necessarily known though."

"Hmm," Damian said. "So what happened after Tarantula killed Blockbuster?"

"The next thing I found involving her was her facing off against Copperhead, and Nightwing saving her ass, which makes me think that maybe nothing did happen yet, but then again, it's Dick so he might've gone out of his way to save her anyway. Then a little while after that was when Bruce got involved because Dick was apparently getting ready to sign a marriage license with her, which, as me and the others discussed That Night, also doesn't necessarily mean nothing had happened yet. But again," he said frustratedly, "there's really no way to know and everything is fucking speculation."

Stephanie let her head fall back against the back of the couch and sighed. "So we really have basically nothing."

"Basically," Tim agreed. "The only other thing relating to Nightwing after that was Dick turning them both in for killing Blockbuster, which she got locked up for. And that's it."