5169/Tables, ladders, and chair

Tables, ladders, and chair
Date of Scene:	14 February 2021
Location:	Historic Clocktower - Penthouse
Synopsis:	Babs and Kate return from the Winter Festival and Babs reveals that the experimental device that fixed her spinal injury is failing. Kate is already planning solutions.
Cast of Characters:	Barbara Gordon, Kate Kane

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Barbara Gordon has posed:
Over the course of the evening, Babs held pretty tight to Kate. To the casual observer, probably just her being affectionate, except that Babs isn't nearly that affectionate. Not clingy, anyways, always with her arm around Kate.. always with a little too much weight hanging off the other womans shoulders.

Even when they're leaving and Babs opts to ride with Kate, insists upon it actually, and leaves her car behind. A hand rubbing her left thigh the whole way. Charlie... well she gets home somehow, most likely being annoyingly inattentive in the back seat with Babs and Kate.

The whole ride, Babs is quiet, lips pressed into a thin line, attention turned out the window. "We should go by the Clocktower. I need to run diagnostics on something."

Kate Kane has posed:
    Kate had arrived, of course, in one of her smaller limousines- a statement that looks as terrifying as it sounds. This means that she's in control of who rides with her, and Charlie is subject to... Well, the worst of it. When the youngest of the trio goes to get in, Kate stops her momentarily, and requests that Greg pop the trunk- in jest, of course- before letting her into the seat.

    "Sure, we can stop by the clocktower, that's fine." she notes, offering a friendly shrug as she states this, one arm hooked around Babs' shoulders, bringing her in for the occasional quiet squeeze.

    When they arrive at the clocktower penthouse proper, Kate sheds her thick coat, revealing something a degree less modest even with the boots she's wearing to protect her legs from the cold.

    She's quickly retrieving a soda from Babs' fridge, before joining the redhead wherever she might have stationed herself.

Barbara Gordon has posed:
Most of the time Babs would take the stairs up to the penthouse. She doesn't get out and run the ropes like she use to, jumping around like an idiot on rooftops, but tonight she doesn't look so inclined. Hitting the callbutton for the elevator and lean on the railing with a little smile over at Kate when the coat sheds on the top floor.

The redhead, leans over and kisses her cheek, then heads up to the computer, past it, and to a small work station full of technical gear. She pulls her desk chair with her and sits down with a huff, lifting up her shirt to just beneath her bra with a small handheld device in the other. Moving it up and down her back just below a wicked looking scar directly oposite the gunshot wound in her abdomen.

After the quick scan, she glances at the reading, waiting for it to transfer over to the small screen with her palms spread out on her thighs. Smiling sidelong at Kate coming to join her. "Legs felt a little off tonight..." For a couple nights. Maybe even a few weeks. Numbness that she's mentioned, tingling that she hasn't, and a the one time she actually fell going down the steps when one of her legs gave out on her completely.

Kate Kane has posed:
    Kate isn't the technical type. Most of her gadgets are handled by her father. She's the fists and the intuition- a lot of this is... Not too far above her head, but firmly out of her grasp, we'll say. She could use it- she could even take it apart and learn from it- but she could never put it together. That always gives her a moment of awe when left to her own devices in the clocktower.

    The peck on her cheek earned Babs some swift retribution in the form of a counter peck on her forehead, before Kate went to get a drink. It's not long before she's joined Barbara in diagnosing what Kate feared she was- the implant.

    "How off is 'a little off?' Numbness, pins and needles, worse? I /felt/ you leaning on me, and I /know/ that it didn't have a whole lot to do with Sue Richards showing up."

Barbara Gordon has posed:
Babs isn't the techie that Tim is, though her expertise with computers eclipses just about everyone on Earth. She still understands enough to use the stuff, specifically where it relates to improving gadgets, and even creating new ones. Her phone, for instance, is a mobile hacking device she created herself.

The framework was already there though.

She just made it better.

Leaning on her palms with a furrowed brow directed up at Kate, "A little more than a little." She says with a glance at the screen, "I can't feel my left leg." She explains, "If you hadn't been there I don't think I'd have been able to play it off... and I certainly wouldn't have been able to walk around." Green eyes scan across the information being fed onto the screen.

She ... should probably look more concerned?

Stoic.

Stiff upper lip.

Very Gotham.

"This isn't good."

Kate Kane has posed:
    Whether or not what Babs has done here is as impressive as Kate feels it is or not is perhaps a debate- and definitely, it's for another time. Either way, Kate isn't about to let Barbara refer to it by anything other than what she thinks of it. Extraordinary. It's unlikely anyone else on Earth could be Oracle.

    "Oh, a -little- more than a little. Right." Kate states, somewhat incredulously. "I think this is a /lot/ more than a -lot-." She's frowning- not necessarily at Babs, but at the situation reflected -in- Barbara. "Yeah. That's what I thought." Reaching up, she furrows her brows a bit.

    "Can you recalibrate it? Can it be replaced?" Kate asks, fully aware that Babs isn't a doctor.

Barbara Gordon has posed:
The smile is forced, Barbara trying to stay stoic in the face of what is, by her expression, pretty crappy news read out on that screen beside her. "It was experimental technology." Those words are spoken quietly, spoken with a palm pushing herself up from her chair with a little more effort than she should have to.

It was a long day, but..

This is Batgirl.

"I don't know if it can be recalibrated, but they told me the possibility exist that it might fail. People don't walk again after the kind of spinal injury I suffered.." She sounds calm, she might even look calm to anyone who doesn't know her. Kate knows her. She is not calm. She's frantic... terrified.. and about as close to crying as the redhead has ever been where anyone can see her.

"There were moments early on after the surgery where this happened and it passed. Never this long though, so... I don't know."

Kate Kane has posed:
    Long day or not, Kate isn't panicking. There's a frightening degree of resolve on her part, and she is already searching for answers- solutions to the problem, all while plucking up any portion of Barbara she can hold and squeeze in a comforting fashion.

    "I'm aware that people aren't /supposed/ to walk again after the kind of spinal injury you suffered, but you were there. You were walking. It's been... Long enough that maybe they've advanced the prototype. We'll have to reach out to them."

    Kate isn't being outright comforting, but she's more... Direct. Solutions. Courses of actions. Developing a plan. The pragmatic version of 'we'll figure out something.' "Money's not an object. Someone out there can do /something./ We just have to find out who that is."

Barbara Gordon has posed:
Babs smiles, actually smiles, at Kate's taking charge of finding a solution to a problem that Babs herself worries has no solution to find. Her hand turns over to grip the inside of Kate's arm... Head tilting slightly, green eyes moving over the very serious, direct face with adoration that... well it's not a surprise. "I love you."

Because she does.

She glances over at a closet near Charlie's room, a closet Babs rarely goes to because there's nothing in there she'd ever think she'd need again. "Could you grab me the wheelchair out of there?" Because she's holding herself up and her left foot isn't moving.

"I have an idea where we can start, when we start making calls. Even if they can't fix it, maybe we can find someone who /can/ from whatever we have in my medical records."

Kate Kane has posed:
    "I love you, too." Kate offers, a genuine and soft tone to her voice that simply isn't present at any other time. Call it a moment of weakness, of vulnerability, whatever you might, but the bare nature of it is that above and beyond anything else, it is a moment of /truth./

    Kate doesn't need to be told twice. She's off before Babs finishes the request, and from the closet she pulls, carefully, the wheelchair that Barbara had sent her for. Carrying it over, she pulls it open and then, without much ceremony, flat lifts Babs up off of the bed. It seems almost easy for her, frankly- deceptively strong, thanks to her... Extracurricular activities.

    Setting her in the chair as one would a feather, Kate steps away and offers a couple of nods. "Let's see what strings we can pull, what we can do to find someone outside of the normal circles, if we have to."

Barbara Gordon has posed:
It's like moving back into an old apartment for Babs, being in that wheelchair. She spent years in it, five years to be precise, and it was as much a part of her life as the Clocktower is now. The moment of being wisked up into it was thrilling, if for no other reason than the truth they'd shared was a highlight moment that... maybe could have come at a better time? But certainly came when Babs clearly needed it most.

It's one thing to face this obvious roadblock with friends, but to do so with Kate... that was important. It made it easier. Settling down into the luxury cars of wheelchairs that was covered in stickers and decals. It looks almost like a hotrod and Babs can manuever the damn thing just as well as someone could a Farrari. Rolling towards her computer with easy jerks of her wrist.

"I was thinking Tony Stark." She says up to Kate, settling in infront of her computer desk... which she was going to have to lower again... "But that'll be easier said than done. I can talk to Bruce though, I'm pretty sure he already figured out what was wrong earlier."