Prompted by anonymous: "unexpected leader" with dana tan, Melanie Walker, and Max Gibson

A/N: I didn't have a big plan for where to take this one but I ended up liking it a lot so thank you so much for the challenge, Anon!

Batman Beyond and associated characters © DC Comics

Who We Leave Behind

"I won't believe it."

It took Max's steady hand to keep Dana in place, but she was kept all the same. Her fists were tight and her eyeliner a mess. It was already taking everything in her to have feigned some sense of civility before the blonde ever opened her mouth. Once she had, Dana could feel her very composure slipping through her fingers.

At least it had all waited until after his funeral. Max or no Max, she would not have been held back if it were there.

"It's a good think it doesn't depend on you believing it or not," Dana answered once she could, lightly pulling herself free from Max's grip. "I'm doing the right thing and I'm honoring what he left me."

Melanie Walker is a difficult person for Dana to stand across from. She represents many things, but in the wake of Dana's most present tragedy she represented the parts of Terry she did not know, could not have known. And it wasn't in the ways that Max or even the enigmatic Bruce Wayne once had.

The indomitable Ten formerly of the Royal Flush Gang represented a love that Dana was not aware had been in Terry's life.

Not Batman's. In Terry's.

And that was the deepest cut of all.

"You might feel like you owe something to a dead man, Miss Tan," Melanie countered sharply, hiding behind a very false sense of cordiality. "But I have finished living my life with that sense of debt toward anyone."

This was never going to work, and Dana was ready to leave, feeling as though her part had been adequately fulfilled.

But Max surprised them both by stepping up to Melanie herself, arms crossed over her chest and eyes belying a heaviness that could only be expressed in the sincerest of grief. Her black suit and understated makeup clashed with the bright pink of her hair in a way that only Max could have properly pulled off.

"Not to anyone?" Max asked almost tiredly. "No one at all?"

"I pulled myself out of the gutter," Melanie said starkly. A curl came to her lips as she looked off toward the edge of the parking compound. "That wasn't thanks to Batman."

"It was thanks to Terry, though, wasn't it?" Max pressed.

Dana felt removed from the conversation, by Max's body blocking her and by the context. There was history and knowledge that she hadn't been aware of and as much as she was sad, she was even more struggling, her guts twisting in almost agony.

When she was told Terry was Batman, she thought that it was the beginning of learning everything. She could have never imagined that they would not be granted that much time.

For her part, Melanie Walker looked just as shook by Max's words as Dana. Maybe more. When her chin dropped, her hair fell messily over her face and, for the first time since listening to Terry recorded will in the Batcave she had never been allowed in before, Dana felt legitimately sorry for the other woman Terry once loved.

"Why don't you believe what we're saying then?" Max asked Melanie point blank.

"Because," Melanie began, voice watery and weak, "Terry McGinnis was good. And he was kind. And he helped me when no one else in the world looked my way. He gave me chances, he helped me out. And when he met me just before the sun would rise, he made me feel for the first time like the world wasn't spinning with new places to be shipped to and new law enforcement to hide from. He made the world feel… still. Stable. He made me feel like a person who could live in a world that was still…" When she looked up, her piercing blue eyes nearly knocked the air from Dana's lungs. They were harsh and hateful, but most unsettling was how they were filled to the brim with tears. "He would never be so cruel as to ask me to… form some kind of bodyguard unit—"

"Bodyguard unit?" Dana repeated, aghast. "This isn't — Max, tell her what it is—"

"I might be a waitress right now, but I'm not an idiot. I took Metahuman History like anybody else," Melanie snapped. "I know what the Birds of Prey are. And I know what I could bring to the table, and I know what she can bring to the table," she jerked her head toward Max, but her eyes angrily returned to Dana. "But you? You, princess? What else would your involvement be about if it wasn't Terry trying to hide the fact that he's building some squad to protect his real girl now that every hood in Gotham knows where to go for their revenge."

"I'm not a princess," Dana snapped. "And what I am is the person who Terry trusted with this idea."

"But why you?" Melanie demanded.

Voice caught in her chest, Dana stood back, a little more timid than she wished she was in the face of Melanie's scathing rebuke. But she didn't have an answer on hand. She hadn't even been bothering to as the question in the wake of the tragedy that had been left in her lap.

"Yeah," Melanie finally sneered once she saw that there was no response coming. She reached into the pocket of her overcoat and produced a disk which expanded with a flick of the former crook's wrist into a card shaped hover board. Melanie then jumped onto it with a finesse and balance which only could have come with familiarity and practice. "When you've got an answer for me, girlfriend, think about getting a hold of me again. Unless that happens, though? You better lose my number."

Melanie bent her knees and took off swiftly over the side of the roof, leaving Max and Dana standing quietly on their own.

And once a few moments had passed, Dana's tightened fists curled up close to the temples of her head as she let out a growl of frustration. "What did Terry see in her?" she asked more rhetorically than anything else.

"Well, Dana," Max said calmly, looking back to her new partner with the most brittle of smiles. "I remember back in the day… when everyone was asking the same about you with Terry."

"It's different," Dana replied stubbornly.

Max didn't press her, and it was a good thing since Dana wouldn't have been able to explain why.

It was a long night, made longer by the knowledge that she would be walking up the stairs to a large mansion that didn't make her any less alone. Even if Max were going to stay in the cave a few hours more, just in case there were emergency calls from Gordon or Batgirl decided to go against advisement and finish off another patrol, Dana would be in Wayne Manor — a building that no longer had Waynes and was a far cry from a Manor.

Dana, at least, had gotten somewhat used to the routine, exiting the clock silently and correcting the minute and hour hand just before listening to it click closed just right.

Her night was going like many of the others before, almost all of the ones before.

Until she turned and found a silhouette sitting in wait on the oak desk that sat in the office. A black-and-white costume greeted Dana as her eyes adjusted, as well as a ruby red smile.

"I was wondering how you got in and out of whatever bunker they got your little birdies set up in," the illustrious Ten said, fingers rapping against a glass box Dana instantly recognized from the grand safe she kept in her bedroom behind the portrait of herself and Terry.

"What are you doing in here?" Dana asked angrily, not bothering with the how of it.

After a few months working on her Project, she could imagine it pretty well.

"Do you know how much Wayne Techa is worth now? I mean since you inherited it from your late finance," Ten asked, tilting her head curiously. "I'm sure you do. You're an accounting major, weren't you? Wonder how many of your stockholders or the Board know how much money the company sends to your charitable projects. Like all that fancy equipment I see the Batgirls and the Oracles and the Robins and the so ons working with these days. Can't run cheap."

Dana squinted at her and waited for things to make more sense. When that didn't seem to be panning out, she decided instead on appealing to her own curiosity. "I hear that Ten Formerly of the Royal Flush Gang has been fairly handy for the Gotham Police Department on her own already. Couldn't imagine she would be interested in a loan."

"Good, because I'm really not," Ten replied before reaching up and pulling off her mask. Her blonde hair flourished beneath it, but even in the dark office, Dana could see how it stuck out at strange ends and stuck up due to the disruption. It humanized Melanie Walker in ways that Dana had never thought she wanted her to be humanized.

It had hurt less the way it was before.

"I asked you a question when you got your little Power Puff Gang together, and you never gave me a real answer," Melanie said coolly. "Was wondering if that had changed. If you could tell me why you, finally, at last." Her eyes then dropped meaningfully to Dana's growing waist. "But I think I have my answer."

Dana put a hand on her stomach almost protectively, but she didn't drop her gaze. "Terry didn't know. Hell, I didn't know at the time. This is… This has nothing to do with what I asked you. And it's not why me." Dana took a breath and then shook her head. "I've been asking that question of myself a lot, though. Even before you asked it."

"So no answers?" Melanie sighed, almost disappointed.

"Well, I didn't say that," Dana breathed.

Tilting her head once again, Melanie asked without words for Dana to go on.

"Terry asked me to take care of Gotham, and who knows what it was in his mind that he was thinking of when he asked me to do it," Dana explained slowly. "But I do know that I never imagined doing so alone, and I knew if I was going to be even close to what he dreamed I could be in that way, it would require me going forward and asking every person he touched, every person he inspired, to give back in the same way he did. I knew it deep in my soul, because his connections were everything he left behind. And, for some reason, I was at the heart of them. And so far, every person I have asked has given above and beyond what I could ask."

"All but one," Melanie corrected.

"All but one," Dana agreed.

With a huff, Melanie slid off the desk and closed the distance between them. "Seems like a blemish on your record. If I were you, I'd want to get that fixed."

"I'm not good at begging," Dana answered. "Too strong willed, my father always said."

With that, Melanie let out a small laugh, looking down with her hands on her hips. Her laughter grew a bit stronger, like there was some huge joke that Dana wasn't welcomed to. "Well, there you have it. That's why. You're at the center of all his connections because you've got his same heart. I can see it now."

Dana felt winded more by her words than any of Melanie's surprises that night. "I… Thank you, Miss Walker, that means a lot."

"Please," Melanie said, putting on her mask again in one smooth motion. "It's Ten when I'm in costume, Boss."