The day had gone about as well as a train wreck with casualties could possibly go. She had spent the majority of the day helping authorities rescue those who could be saved, while still patrolling the ever busy city and helping the authorities in whatever way she could to identify the thirty-one dead on site. By the time they had finished, she had barely had enough time to change out of her bloody suit into a fresh one before making it to the Watchtower fifteen minutes late for her shift. She mumbled a quiet hello to Batman before slumping down in her designated chair and hoping for a disaster to take her mind off everything.

"I saw the news."

"Mm," she felt too drained to give more of an answer.

"Are you okay?" okay? She had just come off a day of pulling dead bodies from a wreck of twisted metal, having someone die in her arms, seeing families devastated by the death of a loved one, and, right now, she was still covered in blood underneath her suit. So, was she okay? No!

"I'm fine," was what she said out loud. If she spoke, it would be real, and if it was real, she wouldn't be able to keep it together. She would break down into tears and cry like a baby for the rest of the time she was supposed to be watching for trouble. Besides, Batman dealt with stuff like this far more often than she did, it would probably just bother him to witness her breakdown when he usually experienced far worse.

She wasn't going to say that the train wreck wasn't a huge tragedy, but stacked against the long list of tragedies Batman had dealt with, she doubted it would measure up as a big deal in his eyes. He would probably just scold her for not focusing enough on what was in front of her right now. Just another three hours, fifty-two minutes and forty-one seconds before she could go home. She could do that. She just needed to stay calm.

"Flash," oh great, what was he going to lecture her on now? "if you-"

"I said, I'm fine!" why couldn't he just leave her alone, like he normally did?

"Flash, there isn't any reason to-"

"We've got an alert!" what a relief! Flash jumped up and was ready to make a break for the Javelin, but Batman somehow managed to grab her arm to prevent that.

"The league members on call can handle it. That's what they are there for," that was reasonable. Too reasonable to argue with. Flash slumped back down in her chair, aching for something to do that wasn't trying to sit still under Batman's scrutiny. Suddenly, three hours, fifty minutes and twenty seconds seemed like an eternity, and the room seemed too small to spend it in.

She tapped her fingers on her knee and twisting her chair this way and that, because she was suddenly full of energy she didn't know what to do with, and because she felt uncomfortable under Batman's intense study of her.

Why was he still here? Wasn't there something he needed to do? There always seemed to be something he was working on. Why couldn't he go do that, instead of being around her when she didn't want anyone around? For once, she agreed on Batman's innate like of being solitary, and he wasn't taking advantage! That just didn't seem right to her! The one time she actually wanted to be alone, freakin' Batman was the one not taking the hint? How was this the world she was living in now?

His hand reaching down and firmly, though still gently, squeezing her shoulder was a surprise, and she wondered at the action until he started speaking again.

"It never gets easier, Flash, people dying for no reason. It feels worse when it wasn't anyone's fault, when there's no one to blame. There should be someone at fault, someone that you can be angry at, but there isn't. There's just the knowledge the innocent people got hurt and died, and there was nothing you could do. And you feel guilty, because if there was no one else at fault, and there was nothing you could do, than it must be your fault."

"Guess I can join your club of perpetual depression now?" her throat felt tight.

"Except it wasn't your fault, and you were there when you were needed."

"I was there 2.2 seconds too late, Bats! I didn't stop the train!" if she'd put on just a little more speed when she found out that there was trouble, she could have done something!

"But you carried over one hundred people to safety and hospitals in 3.2."

"If I had been-"

"If you had been just a little sooner, the train may still have derailed, you may have been injured in the wreck, or it could have gone about its way, only to crash into the station because it was going too fast, maybe more people would have died, or maybe no one at all. Too many scenarios, no power to change any of it. Sometimes, Flash, there really is no one to blame, not even ourselves, and the hard part is accepting that. It's not wrong to feel like hell after something like this, you wouldn't be half the hero you are now if you didn't, but try to understand that it's not your fault."

"Sure, Bats," her eyes were burning and her face was trying to twist in an ugly way that could only be followed by sobs. She wasn't going to start crying in front of Batman! She wasn't going to start crying! She stood up, ready to leave and go off somewhere to hide so she could bawl her eyes out. She wasn't counting on suddenly being pulled against a hard, Kevlar chest and wrapped tightly into strong arms.

Spontaneous combustion, uproarious laughter or a pink Batmobile would have surprised her less than the embrace. She couldn't stop herself from stiffening for a long moment, uncertain as to this kind of territory, then just going with it

She broke down, her own arms curling around Batman until she was clinging to him, and the floodgates opened. She sobbed into his shoulder, not thinking and not caring as she did. She just let it out. The stress, the horror, the sorrow and the guilt came pouring out.

She didn't know how long it lasted, just that she became too exhausted to continue on doing much of anything, even keeping up an intelligent thought process. She vaguely noticed as Batman lead her out of the room and to somewhere with a shower, and directed her to clean up. She may have broken down into tears several times in seeing the blood washed from her skin, she may have almost fallen asleep several times, she may have leaned on Batman way too much, she didn't care.

The feeling of being clean helped her calm down, just a little. There was no more sticky, itchy blood as a constant reminder of the poor people on the train, even if she couldn't really forget them. Wouldn't be able to forget them, ever.

Questioning Batman about the pyjamas in her size that he suddenly provided didn't cross her mind. She was just happy to not be in the suit that had been sticking to her skin since she'd put it on. Now, she just wanted a bed to sleep in until the world was a better place to be in.

"When was the last time you ate something?" Batman questioned, an arm around her shoulders as he lead her down a hallway. When did she last eat? The entire day was a blur, she knew she had eaten something during the day, she just didn't remember when that had been, and it had just been a couple of energy bars. Out of all the things going on, food wasn't that big of a priority, though her stomach was now aching in disagreement with that sentiment.

"Uh…" she tried to come up with a more specific answer, "I don't know."

"Okay," he sat her down on a very, very comfortable couch, and her foggy mind was telling her that there was something distinctly weird going on right now, but her same foggy mind was also telling her not to worry about it right now, "Flash, I want you to sit here until I come back, and I want you to try not to fall asleep. Alright?"

"Sure," trying seemed like an easy thing to promise. She couldn't say she wouldn't fall asleep, she was already halfway there, but she could try, not hard, to stay awake just a little longer.

Sure enough, she was waking to the feel of Batman shaking her awake and the sound of him quietly calling her name. She grumbled in complaint and curled up further into the couch. There wasn't any good reason to be awake

"Flash, you need to eat something," she couldn't recall much about what or how much she ate, just that she liked it and it was very filling. Once she finished, she felt something warm and heavy draped over her, then dropped right back off to sleep.

Batman watched as Flash peacefully slept on, glad to see that she was having no trouble with dreams or nightmares. He hadn't expected her to come in after her day, it would have been easy for him to clear her shift for that day and for the rest of the week, but they were all still getting used to having over two dozen people on call for occasions like this one, and Flash had come, regardless of her emotional state.

When she showed up, shaking and pale, he'd not hesitated in deciding that she needed to go home. Speaking to her, he'd decided that she couldn't go home alone, so had called for two replacements while assigning people to handle the alert. Taking her home, where he didn't know if she'd actually gone grocery shopping this week or if the hot water tank she'd been complaining about had been fixed, was debated a little more. He decided to take her back to the mansion once she had exhausted herself, and she didn't seem to notice a thing when he took her to the teleports and sent them directly down to their destination.

Cleaning her up, getting her dressed, leading her to one of the sitting rooms and making her eat, he was reminding just how much Flash trusted him. She had not questioned one thing he'd done since bringing her down, not even helping her in the shower. She barely ever questioned anyone, come to think of it. Even after her trust was betrayed.

After things had settled, just a little, after the invasion, Flash had only been upset because Hawkgirl was gone. Did she care that Batman just as good as admitted that he had invaded her privacy to learn her identity, when he probably would never have stood for her doing the same? No. She just shrugged it off, saying that Batman was just being Batman, then went back to looking like a kicked puppy over one of her friends being gone. The friend that had betrayed them all in the worst way possible. Yet, right now, Batman or Hawkgirl both could probably tell her to walk off a cliff, and she would do it with a goofy grin and a mock salute, without stopping to question why or look to see what she was getting into. It was a weight on his shoulders, weighing perhaps a little more heavy than it should.

Flash gave a lot, her time, her energy, her trust and happy attitude, and thinking about it, she had certainly gained a lot. She could feel threatened by a mouse in her apartment, and every one of them would probably show up to deal with that threat. Because how could they not? She was their little ray of sunshine, in a world where it was all they could do to beat back the slinking tendrils of darkness constantly trying to overtake everything. Flash wasn't their conscience, as she would often joke, she was that little bit of humanity that they might start to forget, if she was not around to remind them. If something hurt or threatened her, a person could bet that her friends would move both Heaven and Earth to make it all better.

Batman tucked the blanket in around her more tightly, making sure that she wouldn't get chilled, then settled in the other corner of the couch. If she woke up during the night, he didn't want her to be alone, and if she started getting wrestles, he still didn't want her to be alone. He would stay with her, because he wasn't about to call any of the other founders, and he didn't think that she knew any of his family enough to not negatively react if she woke up to them

So, Batman spent his night on a couch, soon falling asleep right alongside her.

If Flash felt better when she left the next morning, after eating a large breakfast, she didn't say it out loud. Her face flamed in embarrassment every time she saw him during the month, until she snapped right back to being the person she was before. Then, when she could finally looked him in the eye, she said thank you.

After that, if it ever truly happened, neither of them spoke of it ever again.

The End.