"Grayson." The sound of his name stabbed Dick's ears like a knife. He didn't want to open his eyes. Not yet. Not now. Maybe everything from the past year had been one long, insane nightmare and if he just kept his eyes closed, just this once, he'd actually wake up and it would all be over.
"Hey. Grayson. Wake up. If she finds you sleeping when she gets here, she's not going to be happy." Harsh white light pierced his vision as Dick cracked his eyelids open. He found himself looking up at the bottom of a bunk bed, flat steel bars staring back at him like a cell door. Dick could feel those same bars pressing into his back through a too-thin mattress as he pushed himself to sitting. Brushing a calloused hand over his face, Dick felt rough stubble that had sprouted.
He thought about shaving. But what was the point, really?
That same hand moved upward, running through ragged hair now long enough to be pulled back into a ponytail. It had been weeks since he had bothered to look into the small mirror that occupied a fraction of the far wall. He knew what he would find looking back at him: the shell of a man who was once one of the most feared crime fighters in Gotham, and one of the most beloved heroes in the world.
"What's she gonna do, Jack?" Dick finally answered the voice that had forced him to rise. "Kill me?" His hollow chuckle wasn't met in turn. The only other man in the room didn't move from his spot. Wearing a faded orange jumpsuit and sitting on a makeshift stool by the bars that marked the front of their existence, he kept his eyes down the hallway.
"Don't joke, Dick. She probably would. Especially today. She wants you to smile all pretty for the cameras and doesn't want you to ruin her big scoop."
"Born in a circus, die in a circus." The old Dick Grayson would have been shocked by his statement and the coldness with which it was delivered. But not now. Not after the past year. "She's an old friend, Jack. Which is why I'm talking to her, and only her."
Dick had only gotten a few visitors once he'd been incarcerated. Alfred had visited a few times, but then he had Bruce to deal with. Tim couldn't bring himself to come say hello. Jason sent an audio tape of him slow clapping for three minutes. That had been nice to listen to for a few hours, and then Dick had thrown it away.
Bruce hadn't said a word to him since everything happened, but then again, he had his own problems to worry about now. Dick didn't know all the specifics, news was sketchy on this side of bars and concrete and steel, but every new prisoner who came in and recognized him loved to extoll the issues the great Bruce Wayne, the Batman, was now facing at the hands of the law.
Then there were the Gordons. Dick hadn't heard from the Commissioner at all. In fact, the last thing he'd seen from Barbara's father were eyes full of pain, sadness, and anger. As for Barbara… well, Dick had no idea what she thought about what he'd done. But maybe he'd be able to ask her soon. Maybe…
"Can I ask you something?" The question pulled Dick from his thoughts yet again. Worry was creased all over his cellmate's face as he continued looking out over common area. Dick sighed loudly as he sat back on his bunk, fingers rubbing absentmindedly as they always did over his most prized possession, a strip of photo paper.
"You're going to be fine, Jack. You worry too much." His cellmate was Jack Reynald, a former high-rolling investment banker who had Ponzi-schemed his way to hundreds of millions and left a few thousand people very, very angry with him. They were together because Jack was the only inmate who didn't want to kill him. Dick also wondered if the reverse was true.
"No, no, it's not that." The man swallowed hard and looked back over at Dick. "I was never a good guy. Even early on in my career, I found little ways of skimming some off the top here and there. But you… you weren't just good, you were one of the best." Jack sighed as he sat back against the wall, the back of his balding head pressing against the rough concrete block. "If even the great Dick Grayson, the great Nightwing, could fall, what hope is there for the rest of us?"
Hearing his old alias struck Dick like a shock from a guard's stun baton. It had been a while since it had been uttered, at least without an extreme amount of venom behind it. The other inmates had tossed it around a lot when he'd first arrived, mostly to taunt and deride, but even that had died off after a while. Dick felt the edge of the photo paper bury into a familiar crease along his thumb and sighed.
"Did I ever tell you why I did it, Jack?" Dick paused. "Why I killed him?" The Commissioner's eyes flashed through his mind again, but he brushed the feeling away. Jack's eyes were wide, and he shook his head slowly.
Dick smiled slowly and allowed his eyes to become unfocused. The cool grey concrete began to remind him of where it all happened over a year ago. Where this nightmare began. "It was the happiest night of my life..."
XXXXX
"Grayson!" His shouted name danced after him in the mid-winter air, bouncing around the snowflakes and twisting on the breeze. Bright lights swirled all around him, the Gotham night a snow globe of wonder and sparkle. It was, for all its faults and dark underbellies, why Dick Grayson loved this city.
"Grayson, slow down!" But the real reason he loved this city came bounding after him in the sidewalk slush, red hair trailing behind her like a wispy cloud caught in the setting summer sun. Her voice was full of laughter and annoyance, her cheeks nearly as red as her hair with a smile plastered to her face.
"You haven't been able to keep up with me all night, Babs. Why would I slow down now?" A swift punch to the arm was the only reply he got. He rubbed it playfully and half-grimaced. "Ow."
"Oh, that didn't hurt." Laughter filled her voice again as she held an oversized teddy bear in a Superman t-shirt. It was the prize he had won her through his exploits that evening. "You want me to kiss it to make it feel better?"
"Works for me." A mischievous smirk crossed his own face as he wrapped a hand around her waist and pulled her close. Whatever the temperature was outside didn't matter, because when their lips met, there was only fire between them. It was a long few seconds before Dick realized they were squishing the newly won bear between them.
"All better?" There was a teasing glint in Barbara's green eyes, and Dick responded in kind.
"I don't know… it still hurts. I think more kisses are in order to make me really feel better." And so they did again. And again. And again. It was a perfect evening of laughter, innuendo, and physical affection. A tavern with the bear propped up on the bar while they got a drink, a photo booth where more kisses and funny faces were shared, and endless sidewalks where they held each other close.
It was the perfect night, and Dick knew that it was finally time for that little circle of metal, hiding in his pocket for weeks waiting for a moment like this, to appear. They sat on a bench overlooking the park in the middle of Gotham, the city lights twinkling around the light snow that continued to fall.
"I love you, Barbara Gordon." The words came easy to him, uttered countless times before. But there was something different to them this time, a finality that came with them. He knew what he wanted in life, and it was sitting right here on this bench with him. She offered back that easy smile of hers, planting a kiss playfully on his cheek.
"I love you too, Dick Grayson." This was it. This was the moment he had waited for, planned for, hoped for since he had first laid eyes on her in grade school.
Dick began to slide off the bench, one knee dropping toward the slush-caked sidewalk. But as he turned his body to face Barbara, movement in his periphery caught his eye. Mirroring his motion, the figure moved closer, turning to face the two of them.
Time slowed to a grind. It was the years of training and adrenaline that allowed him to see everything clearly, but Dick remained frozen to the ground like the icicles around them. Why now? Why tonight? Why at this moment must the scourge of Gotham once again rear its ugly head?
And then he saw the gun. Highlighted, glimmering in the light from so many concrete and steel towers, the barrel a hole as black as anything he'd ever seen before. This was no robbery, something in his gut told him that. It was death.
A leather-gloved finger tightened on the trigger, and Dick saw the flash of the muzzle. He didn't hear the shot. Everything had gone silent. A force stronger than anything he'd ever felt, and he'd been thrown into a wall by Bane before, slammed him back against the ground, away from the perpetrator.
He looked down to see where he had been shot. There was no blood, no gaping wound. The only red he saw was Barbara's hair in front of him, splayed out on the ground.
If he screamed her name, he didn't hear it. The gunman was already retreating away from them as Dick scrambled to scoop Barbara into his arms, pressing his fingers to her throat, feeling for a pulse. There was one, but it was weak, like a feather bouncing along on a breeze.
And then in an instant, that deafening silence was shattered by the sound of laughter. Low at first, then growing higher and higher to a frenzied shriek. Even if Dick hadn't caught a glimpse of his face from the light of a street lamp, he would have known that laugh anywhere. It had haunted his dreams as a child, and Dick knew it would now haunt him for the rest of his life.
"Dick…" His name, barely heard in a breathy whisper, drew him back to the sidewalk. Barbara's green eyes were staring past him, snowflakes she made no move to brush away gently nestling on her face. Her red hair spilled over his arm, the ends draping onto the sidewalk where it mixed with her blood.
Dick reached down, pulling off one of her mittens to take her hand in his. Even though he hadn't been wearing gloves, her skin was still colder than his. Tears streaking down his cheeks, Dick cradled Barbara in his arms as he leaned down and kissed her face softly. "Everything is going to be alright Babs. I promise. Everything will be alright." But it wasn't going to be alright. He knew that, and so did she.
"It's not your fault, Dick. You didn't know…" she trailed off again, coughing. He kissed her face again, willing his lips to bring warmth back to her body. "Kiss it better, Dick? Please?"
Onlookers were racing around now, some with their cell phones to their ears, other taking video. The bright twinkling of city lights was starting to be replaced with red and blue flashing ones. But even with the cacophony of noise around him, Dick could only hear the whispered words of the bleeding love of his life.
"Stay with me, Dick… stay with me until I fall asleep."
"Barbara, no. Stay awake. Stay here. I'm right here."
"Stay with me until I fall asleep. Stay with me…" The faint steam that had been rising from Barbara's lips froze, and her eyes began to shut. All noise and chaos around Dick seemed to stop. He knew his mouth was open, knew he was screaming something because his throat was burning and raw, but no sound reached his ears. He didn't know how long he sat there screaming, begging for her to come back to him. It wasn't until two police officers began dragging him away that he was lifted off the sidewalk, left only with the image of Barbara Gordon lying dead on the sidewalk, an oversized teddy bear in a Superman t-shirt still sitting on the bench behind her.
XXXXX
"Grayson, you have a visitor." A burly prison guard stood by the cell door, layer upon layer of muscle stretching his uniform. Like most of the other guards here, he treated Dick relatively well because the former vigilante was polite. And because, secretly, they appreciated what he had done on the outside and didn't like how he'd been treated since the murder.
"Thanks Charles. Send her in."
"You've got an hour. The Warden won't tolerate lateness today." Dick offered him a slight nod.
"I'll see you then, Charles." Jack moved from his perch by the door as a slender woman with ebony hair moved into the cell. She wore a crisp pantsuit and held a small notebook between her fingers. When she looked at him, surprise and then a hint of pity fluttered through her purple eyes.
"Grayson," she said, pulling over the extra chair that had been set out for her. "You look terrible."
That got him to laugh. Probably his first real laugh in the past year. She wasn't wrong, of course. She never was.
"Why thank you, Lois. It's good to see you too." Lois Lane, pride of the Daily Planet, multiple Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, and probably one of the smartest women left on the planet smiled up at him as he settled back to his spot on his bunk.
"How are they treating you here?" Dick chuckled to himself. The food was lousy, he got a single hour outside his cell a day, and he lived under constant threat of being shanked. He shrugged.
"The guards are fine. The Warden wants to impress the Commissioner, so he comes down hard on me. But I'm still alive, so that counts for something." Lois offered him a thin smile and reached into the purse she had brought with her. When her hand emerged, it held a small recording device. She looked pointedly at him, raising an eyebrow. Dick nodded in agreement. Though he knew Lois would never misquote him, intentionally or not, he knew the recording wasn't for the story. It was for the people on the outside to hear his voice one last time.
"I was surprised when you agreed to my request for an interview, Dick. You'd shot me down the last ten times I'd asked." Dick could only offer a half-hearted shrug and a sheepish smile that was nowhere in the realm of the one he used to flash all the time. "The Commissioner was kind enough to give me an hour, so I don't want waste any time. I reviewed the case file and your statement from the night of Barbara's murder, so I won't ask you about that. What's less clear to me is what followed. Can you tell me what happened after you arrived at the police headquarters?"
Dick's mind flashed back to that night again. Police headquarters, Commissioner Gordon… the Joker. Yes, it was that night where he had started down this path, towards this inevitable conclusion.
"After the EMTs got there, two officers who recognized me took me back to HQ…"
XXXXX
Dick Grayson had never known before what it was like to be alone in a crowded room. Sure, there had been times when he had just been lost in his thoughts before, but not like this. No spacing off at a Gotham Academy dance or Wayne Foundation gala could compare to how alone he felt right now. The headquarters was in a panic. Commissioner Gordon's daughter had just been gunned down by the Joker. But as officers and detectives raced past him, Dick could do nothing but stare at his hands.
Her blood was dry now. No longer bright crimson, his hands were now caked with a dark burgundy, split by thin white lines where his clenched fists had broken it up. He wasn't sure what felt heavier: his heart, or the engagement ring he'd never get to use that still sat in his pocket.
"Grayson!" Dick jerked his head up, seeing the rotund form of Harvey Bullock standing over him. Even as lost inside his own head as he was, Dick was shocked he hadn't smelled the detective first. The large man still chomped on a toothpick as he thrust his thumb back over his shoulder. "The Commissioner wants to see you."
He forced his legs to work. He had to. Every step he took toward the door with the gold lettering on it, the one he was so familiar at sneaking into through the window, seemed to take an eternity. But with each step rage also bubbled up within him. Rage at himself for not stopping the Joker. Rage at Barbara for pushing him out of the way. Rage at Bruce for allowing the Joker to live as long as he had.
But all that anger melted away as he opened the door and saw Commissioner Jim Gordon sitting behind his desk, a picture frame held in shaking hands. Dick knew which one it was. He had seen it dozens of times before. It showed the Commissioner, then a Captain, and Barbara no more than nine. They were sitting on a park bench, very close to where she had been murdered tonight. It was from their first weekend in Gotham City, when Barbara had wanted more than anything to go back to Chicago. Her father had taken her to get ice cream, to a carnival, and gotten her a balloon. That solitary blue balloon hung in the background behind the two of them, a father and daughter smiling and laughing together in a picture taken by a passing tourist. It was the moment the Commissioner had convinced Barbara to stay. Dick wondered if he hadn't done such a good job, if his daughter would still be alive tonight.
When Jim looked up at him, his eyes were redder than Dick had ever seen them. Redder than when his wife left him. Redder than after any other night of the countless horrors Gotham had to offer. His hair, for years having kept its original auburn color with only a hint of distinguishing gray at the temples, was now almost completely white. In a matter of hours, the Gotham City Police Commissioner had aged decades. Dick felt as if his heart had gone through the same transformation process.
"Jim… Commissioner… I'm so sorry. I didn't see him. I couldn't stop him. And she pushed me out of the way and… I couldn't save her sir. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I tried. I tried to save her but I couldn't. I wanted to, sir. If I could be dead and she could be standing here sir I would do it in a heartbeat." Dick was rambling and the tears started to flow. He couldn't help himself. Words, barely coherent, continued in a steady stream from his lips. He wanted his words to take away the Commissioner's hurt, to bring his daughter back, to make this whole night a very bad nightmare.
And then two arms pulled him into a hug. Dick hadn't even noticed Jim getting up from his desk. The two men embraced, their bodies shaking, sobs wracking them both as they used each other for support. And then the words started to flow again. Dick recounting every single detail of that night. Every place they had been, the times they had been there, what they had done. He told him about the ring. He needed to get everything out before he forgot a single moment. Even, as painful as it was, the Joker killing Barbara.
By the end of it, they were sitting in chairs facing each other. The Commissioner hadn't spoken since he had started, but Dick knew that he had heard and absorbed everything. When the words finally exhausted themselves, they both sat in silence for a few minutes, only the sounds of sirens throughout the city breaking the tranquility.
"How are you doing, son?" The question caught Dick off guard. But in an instant, he knew the answer. The rage was back. The pain and sadness had gotten their turn. Now he was filled again with pure, unadulterated rage.
"I'll be fine." The words were clipped. Dick knew what he wanted to do. No, not just what he wanted to do. What he had to do. "Give me a task force, Commissioner. Give me a squad, anything. The Joker won't see the morning."
The Commissioner physically recoiled in his chair. He studied Dick for a long moment before getting up and walking toward the window. "That's not how we do things, son. And that's not how he raised you to do things."
"The hell with how he does things!" Dick was on his feet now, voice rising to meet his stature. "How he does things got Barbara killed. That monster should have been dead after he killed Jason. Now he's taken your daughter." Dick paused, staring at the Commissioner's stoic back. "I'm not going to let him kill anyone else." Turning on his heel, Dick made for the door.
"Sit. Down." The words stopped him in his tracks. When he turned, Dick saw Batman looming in a dark corner. There was no open window. The Big Black Bat must have been standing in the room the entire time, but Dick had just been too distracted to notice. The Commissioner looked over at Bruce Wayne and nodded solemnly.
"That's not how we do things, son. Not even when it's Barbara he killed. Especially then." Dick opened his mouth to protest when there was a frantic knock on the Commissioner's door and it swung open, an out-of-breath officer bursting through.
"Commissioner, we got him!"
"Who?"
"The Joker. He just walked in the front door and turned himself in." The officer struggled to catch his breath. "He says he wants to confess, sir. He says he wants to confess for the murder of Barbara Gordon."
XXXXX
"I should have known something was up. I should have known the game he was playing. But like Batman standing in the Commissioner's office, I was too blind to see it. I was too distracted to see the big picture. That's what…" He sighed, rubbing his fingers over the strip of paper again. "That's what she was always so good at."
Lois nodded slowly, looking down briefly at her recorder and her watch. She had barely asked him any questions, just let him talk. Dick appreciated that. It was the first time he was able to tell his story, he feelings. Maybe it would help the others still on the outside. Maybe people would see he wasn't the monster the District Attorney and the Commissioner painted him to be.
"What happened after that night? Before his trial a month later."
"The Joker confessed to the murder but plead not guilty in court. Said he wanted his day in court. We should have seen it, all should have seen what was coming. Any trial of his would be a circus, and it was. How many news outlets were there? Fifty? Seventy? All with their cameras and their shouted questions at Bruce. At the Commissioner. At me. People were starting to dig, and that's what he wanted. He wanted the groundwork there so when he took the stand, the pieces would fall into place."
Dick looked down at his hands again, at that strip of paper held so tightly in one of them. "I should have seen it. But I didn't. Nobody did. I don't think anybody could have seen what was coming but Barbara."
XXXXX
"The defense calls John Doe, alias The Joker, to the stand." Dick didn't look up to the court spectacle in front of him. He knew what he would see. It was the same thing he had seen every day at this trial. The Joker, green hair mussed, clad in an orange jumpsuit that was too big for him, arms and legs shackled and a platoon of guards surrounding him.
He also didn't have to turn around to see what was behind him. He could practically feel the eyes of dozens of journalists and the lenses of their cameras pointed squarely at his back. At Bruce's back. At the Commissioner's back. The three of them were sitting directly behind the prosecutor's table. It was as close as they could be to the action without being in the action.
The Joker sat in the witness box with that same sick smile plastered across his face. This was all a joke to him, a theater of the absurd. And now he was center stage.
"Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?" The Joker cocked an eyebrow at the bailiff.
"Not sure what the big guy has to do with this, but for the first time in my life, yes, I do." The Joker sat as his defense council, some young public defender barely out of law school, walked toward him.
"Only one question, your honor. Mr. Doe, are you insane?" The Joker broke out into a low laugh at his attorney's question.
"Some would like to think I'm not because then they wouldn't have to try and rehabilitate me. Others think I am because it makes it easier for them to process my actions. But in my world, I'm the sanest one there is." The leering voice, the upward curve at the corner of his mouth made Dick's stomach turn. He clenched his fists between his knees.
The Joker's attorney sat back down as the D.A. rose to his feet. "Mr. Doe, had you taken leave of your senses the night you shot and killed Barbara Gordon?" Another laugh followed.
"No, Mr. District Attorney. I knew very much what was going on that night. Two lovebirds in the Gotham winter air. It made me sick." The Joker looked over at Dick, locking eyes with him. That old familiar rage came back again, and he struggled to suppress it.
"So you followed Mr. Grayson and Ms. Gordon with the intention of killing her, is that correct?"
A harsher braying laugh followed. "No, Mr. District Attorney, I didn't mean to kill Barbara Gordon. I was aiming for her partner." Dick's back snapped to attention, rage swelling in his chest. He heard the click-click-click of a dozen camera shutters behind him, but he didn't care at the moment. The fog of the past month was lifting, the madman's plan crystalizing in his mind like the memories of that night.
The District Attorney turned and looked at him. "You were in the park that night to kill Mr. Grayson? Why?" The Joker's smile grew, malice filling his eyes and words.
"Because I wanted to hurt someone very close to him. I wanted to hurt someone very close to me." Dick felt Bruce stiffen beside him but did not look over. A glint of light off of metal caught his eye. Ahead of him, just over the bar separating the gallery from the tables and judge's bench, stood a guard. And his holstered gun was calling to Dick.
"You see, the last time I tried to get the attention of Mr. Grayson's friend, I didn't get the reaction I was hoping for. I thought by going for the original, I might finally get the attention I wanted." Something snapped inside of Dick. Whatever had been holding back the rage, the recklessness, was gone.
His hands gripped the bar as he vaulted over it. Fingers brushed the edge of his suit pants. Bruce's. He knew they were Bruce's. He would have been the only one fast enough to even lay a hand on him. But his mentor wasn't fast enough. Neither was the officer, who only managed a shout of surprise as Dick grabbed the pistol and ripped it from its holster.
The commotion in the courtroom was only white noise to him now. The camera shutters, the shouts and screams, all of it was just background noise. There was only one sound he was focused on: the Joker's laughter. It was getting higher and faster again, just like it had that night. His only goal was to make it stop forever.
His hands raised the gun, one palm pressing against the cold metal, the other wrapping around his knuckles. The District Attorney dove out of the way and at the periphery of his vision jurors scrambled for cover. They didn't need to move. He wasn't going to hit them anyway.
Striding toward the jumpsuit-clad monster, Dick's finger tightened on the trigger. He saw the muzzle flash, the barrel jump back towards him, the shell casing fly off to the side. The harsh laughter ringing in his ears hitched, a cough replacing it. A bright red spot began to appear in the middle of that orange jumpsuit. But the laugh returned, wetter and wheezier than before, but still there. Dick's finger tightened again, again, again. His finger continued squeezing until the click-click-click he heard wasn't from the cameras but from the pistol in his hands. The laughter was just a ragged breath now as Joker's eyes rolled back into his head.
Then he was on the floor, four police officers on top of him, wrenching the gun from his hands and yanking his arms behind his back. The cold metal of the gun was replaced with that of handcuffs. As the officers yanked him back to his feet, he caught one last glimpse of the Joker, dead on the witness stand. That sick smile was still plastered across his face.
As he was dragged out of the courtroom, Dick turned one last time to see Bruce and the Commissioner, side by side, still standing behind the railing. The cameras and reporters were already starting to descend upon them. Neither of them seemed to notice though. The last thing Dick saw as he was hauled out the door were the Commissioner's eyes. He hadn't been expecting the emotions he saw in them. Not relief or gratitude. Just anger. Pain. And sadness.
The door slammed shut behind him.
XXXXX
Lois nodded slowly as he finished, writing a quick note down on the pad in front of her. "You didn't know about the tape."
"No." Dick shook his head. None of them had. The tape, which went live an hour after the Joker's death, had been recorded the night he killed Barbara. It laid out, in exacting detail, Batman's identity. Nightwing's identity. And, as the Joker on the tape had realized, who Batgirl was as well.
That had been the end of Jim's career. He had been fired the next morning, his gun and badge stripped, as he was placed under investigation for aiding and abetting vigilantes. The stock of Wayne Enterprises had plummeted as companies declined to do business with Bruce Wayne. No formal charges had been found, they couldn't prove he was Batman. And they hadn't found the Batcave. But the Batman hadn't been seen in the Gotham night sky for over a year.
That tape had been the Joker's final revenge on all of them. He had laid the trap, and they had all been too blinded by grief to realize they were walking straight into it.
"Do you regret doing it?" Dick looked at her for a long moment and smiled.
"No. I wish everything had gone down differently, but no, I don't regret it. I think there's someone in your life who, if he was really honest with himself, would do the same if anything ever happened to you." That elicited a small smile from Lois. She checked her watch again and looked up at him.
"Is there anything else you want to say? Off the record, but on recording for those closest to you?" Dick leaned back against the wall. There had been so many letters that he had started and torn up. He knew that no number of apologies could make up for what he'd done, but he also figured the Joker was going to expose them at the trial anyway. At least he wasn't alive to escape and hurt others.
He shook his head slowly.
Lois' lips pressed together as Charles came back, knocking the cell bars with his nightstick. "Time to go, Grayson." Dick nodded and took a deep breath, standing and facing Lois again.
"One for the road?" There were tears welling in her eyes, but she didn't allow them to fall. When he opened his arms, she threw hers around his neck, planting a quick kiss on his cheek.
"They're going to be there," she whispered in his ear. "Bruce and Jim. Clark too. They promised me they'd be there." Dick broke the embrace and offered her a smile of thanks.
"Take care of yourself, Lois." He felt the much firmer grasp of Charles as he let himself be led out of the cell.
"You too, kid. Good luck." Dick smiled.
"I won't need luck. I've got my girl waiting for me."
As Charles led him down the hallways of the prison, past a sign that said "Execution Chamber", Dick rubbed his fingers over that strip of paper again. The pictures on that strip were worn from age and being held for so long, but the images were still clear enough. And from that strip, as she had every night, Barbara Gordon smiled back at him, laughing as he held her close or kissed her cheek. Soon he wouldn't have to just stare at a picture. He knew that in just a few minutes, he would get to see her again.
The smile on his face grew as he was led through the door and into a blinding white light.