Static

[moonshadows]

Virgil Hawkins retrieved his carry-on bag and followed the rest of the passengers through the terminal of the Gotham airport to baggage. While he waited for his suitcase to enter rotation and pass by, he looked around for the old man, but the baggage claim area was free of scowling billionaires. No doubt Bruce would show up suddenly and silently the instant his suitcase – oh, there it was – distracted him. Suitcase handle in one hand, carry-on in the other, Virgil made his way through the crowd and found himself looking at a young woman with creamy mocha skin and a professionally neutral expression. Her uniform was conservative, just shy of severe, with black shoes that had been shined (did anyone do that anymore?) and a matching cap that hid her hair and left only sculpted cheekbones and discreet cosmetics to indicate her gender behind the sign she was holding with his name on it.

“Mr. Hawkins?” she asked as he finished his assessment of her.

“That’s me. And you are…?”

“Maxine Gibson,” she answered crisply. “Mr. Wayne’s assistant. If you’ll just follow me…?”

“Of course, Ms. Gibson.”

Virgil followed the girl outside, where a sleek black car was idling. The trunk opened at her thumbprint, and he relinquished both suitcase and carry-on before sliding into the wide back seat – leather, of course – where the old man grinned at him, hands folded on the head of his cane. A few moments later, the girl settled behind the wheel and the car glided away from the curb.

“How was your flight?” Bruce asked in a tone that actually sounded halfway like he cared about the answer.

“It was alright. I’m just happy to see you again, old man. It’s been way too long.”

The old man grimaced at that. “Thank you for accepting my invitation.”

Whoah, he was getting small talk and a thank-you? After years of surly silence, this was almost as worrying as it was welcome. “Thank you for asking,” he countered warily.

Bruce shot him a wry look. “Yes, I’m feeling alright. I won’t deny I went through dark times, but things are looking better.”

He did almost sound like himself again. Still, Virgil wasn’t completely reassured. The girl’s presence was an oddity; something about her nagged at him. “I guess you must be,” he said absently. “I’m looking forward to catching up with you.”

When they passed the manor gates, Virgil expected that the car would head to the garage. Instead, the girl brought it neatly to the front steps, then slipped out and opened the old man’s door before moving around the back of the car to open his. Uncertainly, he thanked her and followed Bruce up to the door. When he turned around again, the car was vanishing into the garage.

“Maxine will take your bags to the guest room you prefer,” Bruce said as a very large, black dog stood at attention just inside the doorway. “Ace, this is Virgil. He’s okay.”

The dog still looked wary, but no longer potentially hostile, and he allowed Virgil to scratch his ears before following his master deeper into the house.

“I gotta say, Bruce, this is more life than I expected to see inside these walls,” he joked. “And I’m surprised you trust a hired driver in your house.”

Bruce smiled thinly as he stumped to what must be his favorite chair. “Maxine is a live-in home assistant.”

That came as a surprise. “I never expected to hear that from you,” he said as he sat in the other chair.

“She’s been invaluable to me. She cooks, she cleans, she drives, and she gives me someone to argue with.”

“Tell me you’re joking. You hired a housekeeper?”

That quietly sharp smile came back. “Oh, there’s more to her than meets the eye. Tea?”

“Only if it’s iced,” Virgil teased.

“I’ll have no such blasphemy in my house,” the old man growled, but Virgil could hear the note of counter-teasing. “I suppose it’s time to introduce you, then. Maxine!”

She entered the room moments later and came around to a respectful position by her employer. “Yes, Mr. Wayne?”

“Maxine, this is Virgil Hawkins, known in some circles as Static.” The girl’s eyes widened, and a familiar tint of awe crept into her neutral expression. “Since he’ll be staying a week, I expect you won’t be standing on formality with each other for long, but why don’t you tell him a bit about yourself?”

“I had a rough childhood,” she said promptly.

The bald understatement made Virgil wince internally, and he wondered exactly what horrors she wasn’t saying. “Go on,” he urged in a gentle tone.

“My older sister was ten when I was born. Her father left our mom before I turned two.”

That would explain things. He hissed in sympathy. “Never knew your dad, huh?”

“He’s not my dad. That’s why he left. Mom hung herself when I was eight, leaving my sister in charge of me. That’s when it got really bad.”

She was still using that matter-of-fact tone that he knew all too well hid oceans of pain. What’s more, he could feel the old man’s eyes on him, waiting for a reaction, but there were no words.

“I did okay in school.” Her eyes flicked to Bruce, and for the first time that calm façade cracked. What leaked out, however, was pride instead of pain. “Alright, I did better than okay. I could’ve skipped grades if my sister cared. She married a few years back and moved out, sending me barely enough money each month to scrape by. When a kid at school wound up in the hospital for a while, I offered to bring him his assignments. He told me that he was Mr. Wayne’s assistant, that his father’d been murdered, and that the stress of that on top of everything else is what landed him there. I got so angry that I stormed up here to give Mr. Wayne a piece of my mind.” She shrugged. “He liked my attitude and hired me on the spot.”

That made Virgil grin. “Yeah, that sounds like Bruce. He’s got a history of taking in kids with hard-luck cases. You like it here?”

The girl’s face lit up, making him positive he’d seen her before. “It’s way schway; Mr. Wayne teaches me all kinds of things. It’s like going to college after school. I’m finally getting the intellectual challenge and positive reinforcement I’ve been missing my whole life.”

Virgil stared at the old man in disbelief. “Positive reinforcement? You?”

“It’s been known to happen. I seem to recall giving you some of it when you were younger.”

That straight-faced snark; that was the Batman Virgil remembered. “I stand corrected,” he said with a grin for the girl. “And I’m looking forward to talking with you, Maxine.”

“Why don’t you go get changed and put dinner in the oven,” Bruce suggested firmly enough to turn it into a command.

The girl just grinned back. “You got it, Mr. Wayne.”

Virgil watched her leave, twirling that conservative cap on her finger as she went and running the other hand through short hair that was agressively pink, and waited until she was out of the room before turning to the old man. “Alright, so what’s the real story?”

“Max is my daughter.”

He said it so calmly, like it wasn’t some sort of Twilight Zone impossibility. “Your-” Suddenly, the girl’s name and hair color collided in his mind and  knocked loose a memory. No, no, no, that’s where he’d seen her before? This was not  good. Virgil shook his head. “Oh, man. Bruce, uhhh…remember when I was her age?”

His eyes narrowed. “Uh-huh?”

“And I fell into that temporal wormhole?”

“…Uh-huh?”

“When I came back, I, uh, wasn’t completely honest with you.”

Bruce’s eyes widened, then narrowed again. “I think I know where you’re going with this, and I’m not sure I want to hear it.”

“I kinda, uh, kissed your girl.” Virgil rubbed the back of his head in a nervous gesture left over from adolescence.

The older man massaged his temples briefly. “Why am I not surprised.”

“I wasn’t trying to put the moves on your daughter or anything. It was her idea! I mean, she came on to me first.”

“That’s what I’m not surprised about,” he said dryly.

“I didn’t mean any disrespect,” the black man went on. “I was a teenager, she idolized me, she was smok- uhhh. You know what? I’m not sure I’m comfortable thinking about this anymore.”

Bruce laughed.

“I’m serious,” Static protested. “To my past self, she was the attractive daughter of a man I idolized, who also idolized me and thought I was attractive. But now that I’m here in the future, she’s the underage daughter of one of people I trust and respect most.”

“Relax,” Bruce said, still clearly amused. “I’m not going to be mad about something that hasn’t happened yet. Besides, I can’t blame either of you for having a little fun just because I had no fun as a teenager.”

Virgil grinned. “Man, I’m surprised you even know what fun looks like.”

“How would I know what to avoid if I didn’t know what it looked like?” the older man deadpanned.

“True enough. You know, I think the worst part is knowing that I’m going to impress her enough that she’s going to think of me that way.”

“Is that really so bad?”

“I guess not,” he sighed. “It just feels really weird, you know what I’m saying?”

Bruce hmphed. “When you freed your future self, did you say anything to yourself?”

“Just to believe in myself, and that everything would be fine.” He chuckled. “I should’ve said, Hey, don’t worry that you kissed Batman’s daughter, by the time he finds out about it, you’ll be married. On second thought, that would have been a bad idea. I think I’ll stick with Everything’s gonna be fine and Believe in yourself.”

“Good idea,” the old man said mildly, but his expression was a five-page essay on exactly how much he was laughing at Static inside his mind.

 

((timeskip – several months))

 

When Max padded into the kitchen at quarter to seven on a Tuesday morning for some quick breakfast before school, she found Bruce waiting for her. Before she could ask why he wasn’t down in the Batcave, he poured milk onto a bowl of cold cereal and handed it to her.

“You’re home sick with a twenty-four-hour stomach bug. I’ve already notified the school. Come with me.”

Okay, whatever was going on, it was serious. Max grabbed a clean spoon and followed the old man downstairs, trusting that he’d explain soon enough. When he sat down in front of the Batcomputer, she poked her cereal and took a bite.

“Static went missing.”

It took all the control Max had to neither spit the cereal out, nor try to inhale it. She chewed furiously for a few seconds, swallowed, nearly choked, and finally gasped out, “What?”

“Relax. We’ll get him back. Kobra took him to try to force a prisoner exchange: Static for their leader. But we know something they don’t.”

“And that is?” Max eyed her breakfast, wondering if it was safe to take another bite.

“Today is the day his past self arrives. He got sucked into a temporal wormhole some forty years ago and was gone for the better part of the afternoon. When he reappeared, he informed us that he’d been sent into the future and helped Batman rescue his future self from Kobra. He couldn’t give me the exact date, but he was able to confirm it would be a Tuesday, and where some key people would be at the time.” Bruce grinned. “Technically, he hasn’t gone missing yet, but the key people are where he said they’d be.”

Max realized that she’d been holding a dripping spoonful of cereal halfway to her mouth, which had fallen open. After a moment of consideration, she put the spoon back in the bowl and set it on the console; she could eat later. “So Static from the past is going to be here? When?”

The old man gave her a grouchy look. “I don’t know, but I can’t risk him arriving when no one’s here. Eat your breakfast. I’ll need you to monitor some things down here while I sleep. We can’t do anything until Terry gets out of school, but we can be as prepared as possible.”

“Right.” Max pulled her rolling stool out from under the console. “Show me what I need to do.”

 

The sound was unlike anything she’d ever heard. Before she could turn to look, a younger version of Static’s voice said, “Batman? Robin?”

“There hasn’t been a Robin in this cave for a while,” she said, twisting in the console’s chair to kneel on it and peer at him, arms crossed over the back. “Behind you, Virgil.”

The teen turned around and for a long moment, they just stared at each other. Witty, clever, grounded, and he was a hottie? This just wasn’t fair, Max thought. How come he couldn’t have been born a couple of decades later?

Virgil recovered first. “Whoah, when did Batman recruit a smoking sister like you?”

 “I’m Bruce Wayne’s daughter,” she said as she slipped out of the chair to approach him. “Name’s Maxine, but you can call me Max.” Up close, he was still unfairly attractive. “You’re not exactly last place in the Hot Stuff race yourself, you know.”

He seemed a little flustered by that. It just made him cuter. “I, uh…thanks. So…your old man told you about me?”

“Virgil,” she said, both hands on his shoulders as if forcing herself to keep him at arm’s length, “he didn’t have to. You’re about forty years in the future. You’re a hero. And you’re a friend of the old man, so we’ve gotten to hang out a bunch of times.”

The younger Static grinned. “I’m looking forward to it, and I’m sorry I’ll be an old fogey by the time it happens.”

“You make that sound like you got ugly when you hit thirty,” she teased, grinning back. She really, really shouldn’t be flirting with the teenage version of a man four decades her senior and married, but screw that, he wasn’t going to remember this by the time he got here the long way.

“Max, you are gonna give me a swelled head if you keep sweet-talking me like that,” he mock-protested, and oh why did that roguish grin have to look so kissable?

She put a hand to her chest in a display of blatantly fake innocence. “Me? Sweet-talk one of the most respected superheroes of the decade, who I admire both for what he does for the country and as a man who’s got brains, heart, and good looks? Never!”

Static’s grin widened. “For a girl who says ‘never’, it sure sounds a lot like ‘right now’. It also sounds like you were expecting me.”

“Well, Bruce was expecting you. He’s upstairs; I’ll go get him in a little bit, but first…”

“…first?”

“You should know that when you get sucked back to your own time, it will be without warning. There won’t be time to grab any souvenirs or say goodbye.”

His eyes narrowed slightly, as if he knew what she was going to suggest. “So…?”

“So,” she suggested in a low, wicked voice, free hand now on his chest, “how about a kiss goodbye before things start happening? You know, to get it out of the way.”

“I don’t know, Max,” he protested despite his hands on her hips. “Your old man is kinda scary.”

Max leaned in to murmur, “Yeah, but as long as you don’t tell him, he won’t know for forty years.”

“Still doesn’t seem right,” he said, hands sliding around to pull her closer. “Hiding something like that, I mean.”

“Well, I know you didn’t tell him about me, because I was a complete surprise to him.” Her hands, too, started wandering. “So if you’re going to keep a secret like that, what’s a little one like this? No one wants an unstable time loop, after all. Could destroy the timeline.”

“That does sound bad,” he agreed. “I guess it’s preordained, huh?”

“Yep. No two ways about it.”

Virgil’s expression dropped back into something more serious. “You sure you want this, Max?”

“Do I want my first kiss to be with a hot superhero? Hold up, I need to think this over.” She grinned. “Done thinking. The answer’s yes.”

“Hey now, no one said anything about first kisses – what if I ruin it?”

“Then we try again?”

He laughed. “I like your style, girl.”

Several breathless minutes later, they parted.

“Alright, I gotta go tell Bruce you’re here,” Max said, flushed and not quite panting. “And then maybe take a cold shower or something. Just hang tight here, he’ll be down soon.”

“Oh, I’m hanging tight,” he promised.

She grinned. “If I don’t get a chance to see you again before you go back, it was great meeting you and don’t worry – you’ll do fine.”

“Great meeting you too, Max.” He grinned back. “If I don’t see you soon, I’ll see you later. Much later.”

Max dashed up the stairs, then down the hall to the study, but the old man wasn’t there. Great, he was sleeping upstairs. For once. Rolling her eyes and hoping Terry was getting caught in traffic because he would not take kindly to finding a stranger in the Batcave, she ran for the stairs…

 

Static climbed out of the jet after the younger Batman and strode towards the console. Bruce was there, smiling a secret little smile at him in solidarity of the success they both knew was inevitable, but that’s not who he wanted to see right now. “Where’s my homegirl at?” he asked, catching Terry’s startled reaction out of the corner of his eye.

Without batting an eyelid, Bruce pressed the whole-house intercom. “Max! Downstairs. Now.”

It took less than a minute for the black teen to come rattling down the stairs, not quite long enough for her half-brother to ask what he wanted to talk to her for. She hesitated for the barest instant when she looked up and saw him, but any vulnerability was hidden behind her usual brassy demeanor so quickly that almost anyone would have missed it.

Naturally, no one in the cave did.

“Hey, Static,” she said, cool as a cucumber as she walked over to stand at the old man’s arm. “Welcome back, Ter.”

He didn’t miss that she didn’t quite meet his eyes. “Alright, listen up for a sec, ‘cause I got something to say to you, Max.”

Terry was dying of curiosity. The old man may as well have been a statue titled I know something you don’t know, and it’s hilarious. Max looked…guilty. And a little afraid.

“I had a lot of time to think today,” he started. “I knew it was a trap, just like I knew I’d be rescued. And I did a lot of thinking about when I first went through this, back when I was your age. I have to admit, it was real nice knowing that however bad some situation looked for me, there had to be a way out because I already knew I’d live to see a new Batman.” He paused to offer Terry a brofist. “But you know what really stuck with me over the years? It was you, Max. Your memory is what pushed me through dark times for the next decade and a half.”

Max made a tiny, squeaky sound that might have been, “Me?”

Virgil spread his hands. “I was a punk-ass teenager, always getting into trouble for one reason or another. That’s how I wound up a Bang Baby to begin with, and even doing the self-appointed superhero gig, there were plenty of times that I doubted myself. Sometimes, it was fear that I’d go nuts like most of the other Bang Babies. Sometimes it was a sneaking certainty that I wasn’t actually doing any good. I know your old man knows what that’s like.”

Eloquently as ever, Bruce said, “Uh-huh.”

“But you, Max – you knew who I’d turn out to be in a few decades. And apparently, I became someone who could impress Batman’s daughter. Considering how much he impressed me, I knew that couldn’t be easy. So when I started to think that maybe I should hang up the mask, or get down on myself for something, I’d remember that a smoking sister with a terrifying old man thought I was a hero and admired me so much that-” Guiltily, he broke off and glanced at Batman and the Batman of Gotham Past. “-well, you know.”

She didn’t flush as deeply as he thought she might, and he could see that crossing her arms was a deliberate attempt to keep her fingers away from her lips. “Yeah, I do.”

“The point is, Max, you gave me the confidence to become the man I am today. I knew I could do it, the same way I knew I’d find a way to live through anything no matter how bad it looked. And, I won’t lie, that other thing? I treasured the memory of that for a long time. Did make it hard to look your old man in the eyes, sometimes, but it was totally worth it. He knows, by the way.”

That broke her shell of calm. “He does?” she asked in a small voice.

“He does.” Static fought a grin and lost. “I told him about it the day we met, as soon as I realized why you seemed so familiar.”

Bruce studiously avoided his daughter’s eyes. “Just maintaining the stability of the time loop,” he said blandly.

“Uh-huh.” Dang, she was as eloquent with two syllables as he was.

Terry raised one gloved hand. “Uh, do I want to know?”

Max, it seemed, was up to facing that challenge – which was good, because Virgil was pretty sure Bruce wanted to answer the question every bit as much as he did, which was to say not in the slightest. “No, Ter, you really don’t.”

…well, that was one way of dealing with it. Time to change the subject. “Hey, Terry, thanks for putting up with my past self. I know what I was like when I was that age.”

“And now,” Bruce interrupted before his successor had time to do more than open his mouth, “Terry knows what I went through putting up with him in the early days.”

“I wasn’t that bad.” The younger man pulled off his cowl and grinned. “I was worse, and you know it.”

Bruce rubbed his temples. “Don’t remind me.”

Virgil considered the younger Batman for a moment before asking, “Has Big Blue started asking about him yet?”

“We’ve had words,” the old man said ominously.

Well, that was a subject he wouldn’t be touching with a ten-foot electrified cattle prod. He jerked his thumb at Max. “What about her?”

The two teens glanced at each other, exchanging confused looks, but Bruce’s expression turned thoughtful for a moment. Then it hardened back into a glare Static knew all too well: the one that said, you may have a point, but don’t press your luck or you’ll regret it.

“Forget I said anything.” He held both hands up as if to disavow all knowledge, and was rewarded with the tiniest nod of the old man’s head.

Max in the Justice League. Could be interesting, and not just for them. He did have a son, after all.