Chapter Text
Bat-Girl is a performance, and the stage of Gotham's skyline is where she comes alive.
It doesn't start with the silhouette of a bat against the moon, not really. Bat-Girl has much more humble beginnings (and it's important to note -- this will be true for all girls under the Bat). Betty, not yet Bette, Kane is twelve years old and simply bored out of her mind under the California sun.
Tennis is slowly taking over her life, school is boring her, her parents are ignoring her, and the world seems so frightfully small. Her world, at least; the one she sees on the news, spirals further and further into the weird and the wonderful.
Her parents suggest a summer spent in Gotham. Betty, to her own surprise, leaps at the chance.
It helps that she's decided she'll be staying with her Aunt Kathy and not any of her other, antisocial family members. Kathy's kind, funny, and strange, and Nathan, who Betty remembers through extravagant birthday presents and her grandmother's smouldering glare, had adored her. She doesn't act distant like Bruce, cold like Kate, or confused like Jacob. Her favorite aunt always manages to strike the perfect middle ground.
Besides, Betty's growing sick of California, and the performance she has to give there. No matter how much effort she puts in, it never seems like it's enough for her peers, and she's finding the outside to be a terribly lonely place.
Nobody is aware, upon her arrival in Gotham, that Bette's going to be staying with Kathy. Her parents had arranged for her to stay with her grandmother, Betsy, which might be akin to torture, so Betty had taken matters into her own hands and spun a few innocent white lies. Kathy's not going to mind -- she said Betty could come visit her whenever she'd like, and, well, she'd like to do it now, instead of spending a summer with her overly strict grandmother. She'd take Bruce over Betsy any day of the week.
"Hi, Aunt Kathy", she chirps. "You once said I could visit you -- so here I am!"
Kathy, coolest family member by far, blinks at her slowly, then nods her head and opens the door a little more so Betty and her suitcase can squeeze inside.
"I did say that", she says, closing the door after them. "I'm almost certain, at some point, that is a thing that I said to you."
"Uh-huh", Betty agrees, looking around Kathy's house in wonder. Where her life is LA is all soft colors and minimalism, Kathy is gothic maximalism. It looks pretty lived in, considering its sole inhabitant is a retired widow.
But that's just how Kathy is. She's got a habit of breathing life into places.
And she breathes life into Betty, too. Gotham's such a cold and dreary city, but with her aunt, it seems lit up by a billion stars, a supernova in its own right.
You'll have to forgive her for her optimism. At age twelve, Betty has yet to realize that Gotham likes to burn away everything she loves. For now, it's a marvel. For now, it's entrenched in a childlike wonder.
Living with Kathy is different from what Betty imagined. There's plenty that she had expected, but her aunt's penchant to vanish into the night certainly isn't on that list.
Her first assumption is that Kathy has met someone and wants to keep it a secret. Betty doesn't see the point in keeping it a secret from her, but she can see the logic in wanting to hide it from the rest of Gotham. The Gazette would probably run wild with something like that, and the Kane family would have a meltdown if Kathy were to move on from Nathan.
She wants her aunt to be happy. She knows that Kathy was happy with Nathan, and if somebody else can bring her that spark of joy, then Betty's all for it.
The problem is that, despite Kathy vanishing every night for the first two weeks that Betty's staying with her, she never gets even a hint of the mystery man. If he's worth Kathy sneaking out, then surely he can make the time to swing by instead of expecting her aunt to rush to him.
Why doesn't he ever call for her here? The question sticks in Betty's head like gum, no matter how hard she tries to distract herself from it.
The only thing that ever really pulls her away from ruminating on wherever Kathy's running off to is news reports of Batwoman. She'd always known about Batman, but his female counterpart isn't ever mentioned over in LA, and Betty can't understand why.
Batwoman bewitches her. More than Wonder Woman and Superman ever had, Batwoman gets under her skin. There's a fascination that she's never felt before, a borderline obsession that she indulges in every night when she watches the news.
It's a typical night in Gotham, then, when everything changes. Kathy's gone, Betty's watching a recap of Batwoman's escapades from the previous night, and she's absent-mindedly brushing through her hair.
The report isn't as exciting as it usually is, just a story about Batwoman stopping some robbers from getting to a safe of a school supplies company. It's the exact type of ridiculous that Betty's begun to understand is inherent to Gotham. When it's Batman involved in it, she doesn't care all that much -- when it's Batwoman, it's all she cares about.
She watches the grainy CCTV of Batwoman tossing a box of gold stars at the criminals and thinks, "How I wish I could be like her!"
She watches those stars fall from the box, and fall from the hairbrush in her hands, and she tries to think of a single reason that she can't be like her.
She's so young when she comes jumping through that window, saving Kathy and the Dynamic Duo and forever altering the trajectory of her existence, the kind of young that will make Hank Hall's eyes bug out a little. Well, a lot. He'll know her, and he'll love her, and he'll never understand who she is, how Gotham shapes her.
Twelve is young. Twelve is a child. That doesn't matter all that much in this city.
Betty's one for the dramatics, so a part of her wishes that the window she sails through had been closed. The smashing of glass would've added a good effect to her arrival, but she'll settle for the shocked looks on everyone's faces as she announces, "Don't worry, everybody -- Bat-Girl will take care of him!"
Robin's shock is clear under his domino mask as he gets out an incredulous, "Bat-Girl?!" and she pays him no mind.
People will gleefully distort this in the future, but Betty's not really that interested in the Boy Wonder when she first debuts. She's here for the excitement, she's here for her aunt, she's here for golden stars in a hairbrush, and she's here to slam her heels into Cobra's chest and hear a satisfying crack. Some boy is barely on her radar.
Her grip on the purple curtains she used to glide down tightens as she kicks over whatever weird freak-o device the Cobra Gang used to immobilize the three vigilantes. There's no stopping the way her gaze drifts over to them, drinking in their reactions.
Batman's been thought of as an unstoppable, unbeatable demon, and here he is, looking at her in genuine shock, like he can't wrap his mind around the idea of somebody taking on a mask without his permission. It's a look that becomes a trend when it comes to girls with a bat symbol.
Kathy's her aunt, and Kathy's her home. It makes her easy to read. There's that spark of interest, and a vague amount of pride, even though Betty's sure that she hasn't figured out who Bat-Girl is quite yet. It would be inevitable that she would, but for now, Betty has the element of surprise.
Robin looks torn between further indignation and begrudging curiosity. He sits in the middle of the other two, and something about that settles into Bat-Girl's chest.
With a patience that she'll inevitably lose, Bat-Girl waits for Batwoman's return to her secret cave. She'd found it on her third week staying there, about two days after golden stars fell to the ground, and it's become something of a habit to sneak into it every time Kathy goes out. It's a side of her aunt that she'd never seen before, one that she loves to indulge in.
Her aunt, her hero. This little room is the place where they collide into the same person.
She watches Batwoman return, and, always with a flair for the dramatics, steps out of the shadows with a flourish.
"Well -- did I do all right, Aunt Kathy?" She asks, not even bothering to disguise her glee.
"Betty!" Kathy gasps. "So it's you! And you've learned my secret disguise!"
She looks genuinely surprised, and it's an expression that Betty will never question, nor will she ever have a reason to question. Any information pertaining to her closest family member will be deemed too classified to ever be shared with her, and so she'll never get the chance to ask why a super-spy capable of tricking Batman would make a mistake as basic as leaving evidence in front of a child.
There are a million pieces at play that she'll never be aware of. Did she ever need to be? Isn't it enough for her to just have this moment?
Bat-Girl is her first love. Other people might dispute that, but it's true. Tennis will grow on her, building its way into her bones, but it won't be the rush of adrenaline that Bat-Girl sends through her bloodstream. It'll never match that instant spark of electricity.
It's a performance, sure, but it's her best to date and by far the easiest. The world expands outwards, the universe slitting into place, and she lights up the Gotham skyline like a star in her own right.
It's why her grin drops into a glare as she finishes explaining how she came to be Bat-Girl and responds with, "You were very clever, Betty -- but you must never be Bat-Girl again!"
"If you can be Batwoman, I can certainly be Bat-Girl!" She shoots back with a huff.
She can see it in Kathy's face that she doesn't agree with that logic, and it doesn't make any sense to her. She saved her life, and Batman's, and Robin's tonight, all by herself. That was her, just Betty, just Bat-Girl. It doesn't matter -- it shouldn't matter -- that she's young if she's clearly capable.
But that's not what Kathy's thinking. She knows her aunt better than she knows anyone in the world (sad, in retrospect, and sadder still that this will be true until she's in her twenties and living with a green monkey), and she knows that her aunt is only looking at her like a child playing dress-up.
Robin was there. Boy Wonder. Beloved sidekick of Batman. Same age as her, if not younger. Somebody who fits. Gotham, Batman, and Kathy have all accepted him with open arms, without even the slightest bit of hesitation. He's their little prince, the light of their eyes, and Betty feels something curdling in her stomach, heavy enough to keep her weighed down.
Want appears in many forms. Want is so easy to confuse.
"Maybe we can be a team", Bat-Girl says, "like Batman and Robin!"
Betty Kane will never be privy to the failures of Robin. Any of them, but the first one is the most important, the pedestal she's held against. She won't hear about the ways he screws up. She'll never learn that Two-Face shot him and Batman benched him. She'll always be poised on the outside, her look inside always blurred for security.
Bat-Girl's mistake, in light of Robin's almost golden standing, seems bigger than it actually is. The fact that she was able to get out of it herself is irrelevant. The fact that she debuted saving Batman, Robin, and Batwoman is a footnote. What matters is that she messed up, and that puts everything else in danger.
None of them are thinking about how she committed to their fake training and excelled at it. None of them are thinking about how she tracked down the Cobra Gang on her own. None of them are thinking about how she took down the gang leader.
All they're seeing now is a little girl, wildly out of her depth and floundering in the face of Gotham's cruelty.
"I learned my lesson!" Betty promises, hoping to keep the desperation out of her voice. "I'll never be so foolish again!"
Kathy's face, what little of it she can see, softens. "I'm glad of that. But you've proved you can be a good crime-fighter. Maybe we will go out as a team some day!"
It sounds so much like the false promises and platitudes that Kathy gave her before. She casts a small gaze to Batman, who's watching her carefully, and Robin, whom they've never bothered to doubt before. He can't be much older than her, he might even be younger, but she can't see Batman benching him before he ever got a chance. She can't see Kathy doubting Robin at every turn.
She breathes out and plasters her face with a grin. She wants this, the same way she wants tennis trophies and gold medals, and to feel like she can exist without performance. For better or for worse, no matter what it takes, Betty Kane wants in.
"Oh, I can hardly wait! And perhaps Robin and I can work on a case together", she says, forcing that perky smile to never waver, and tilting her head slightly towards the Boy Wonder. "Well, Robin -- is that a date?"