Prologue

Buffy remembered the garden behind the mansion where her old friend Bruce Wayne had lived with his parents up till their deaths. She had been close friends with Bruce and Rachel up till her thirteenth birthday when her parents had moved her and Dawn clear across the country to Los Angeles. Her parents along with Rachel's lived in the servant quarters on the property. Her father, Hank, was an employee of Wayne Enterprises. Her mother was one of only two housekeepers, the other was Rachel's mother.

Sometimes Buffy, Bruce and Rachel would meet at the servant's quarters. Other times they explored every room of the mansion. They had even once asked to play in the guest house by the front gates. But Bruce's mother had thought that was not a good idea. But they could go anywhere else on the grounds they wanted.

The garden was one such place they went and often for they could play games of hide and seek within most of the garden. Except for the greenhouse, most days it was locked.

But one day Alfred, the Wayne's butler, had left it ajar.

Cautiously, hand in hand, Bruce, Buffy and Rachel entered. Bruce stopped just inside the door, released Rachel and Buffy's hands, and looked around at rows of tables covered with potted plants and tools.

Rachel and Buffy went on ahead of him and were crawling under one of the long tables.

"Rachel? Buffy?" Bruce called out.

Buffy and Rachel crawled back out and peered up at Bruce just as he walked up to them. Rachel's small hand was held over her head and closed around something. Bruce knew that they had found something, some kind of treasure, maybe.

"Can I see?" he asked.

"Finders keepers," Rachel said, smiling as Buffy giggled. "I found it."

"In my greenhouse."

Rachel's smile changed to a frown just as Buffy stopped giggling. The two girls looked at each other as they seemed to talk to each other silently. They smiled again as Rachel opened her hand. A stone arrowhead lay on Rachel's palm.

Suddenly Buffy put her hand over Bruce's mouth as they heard someone walking past outside.

"Buffy? Rachel?! Master Bruce?!"

"What're you doing?!" Bruce whispered.

"Kidnapping you," Rachel stated matter-of-factly. "They pay a lot for precious Brucie."

Bruce stared at the girls as they smiled at him. Suddenly he grabbed the arrowhead, stuffed it into a pocket, and ran out the nearest door to hide. "Finders keepers!" he yelled back at them.

Buffy and Rachel gave chase and they watched as Bruce climbed up onto the top of the well. Then they heard a creaking sound and then a loud crash down below. They ran to the well and looked down and could see Bruce below them. He had fallen through.

"BRUCE?!" Buffy and Rachel yelled.

"Stay here I'll go get help," Rachel said as she took off towards the house.

"Hang on Bruce," Buffy yelled as she looked back down the well. She could barely hear him groaning.

"Mom! Mister Alfred!" Rachel yelled.

Suddenly Buffy heard the sound of something screeching as it flew up the well. Whatever it was, was dark and horrible. It was followed by a swarm, hundreds of them, flapping and screeching. They tore at Buffy's clothing and hair as she screamed.

And then the swarm was gone. The shrieking stopped. Buffy lay on the ground, gasping and sobbing. She barely registered the sound of Bruce sobbing below.

Buffy heard someone call her name and when she looked up; she saw Rachel, Alfred and her mother walking towards her with Thomas Wayne, Bruce's father. Joyce Summers wrapped her daughter in a blanket as Thomas climbed down a rope and brought Bruce up.

Thomas Wayne carried Bruce as Alfred gently lifted Buffy and they carried them as Rachel and Joyce walked alongside. "Will you be needing an ambulance, Master Wayne?" Alfred asked

"We have everything we need," Thomas replied. "I'll take X-rays later. For now we will start Buffy and Bruce on a rabies treatment." He looked to Joyce. "With your permission of course."

"What you think is needed Master Wayne," Joyce said.

Smiling, Bruce held his hand out to Rachel. When she moved next to him, he gently placed the arrowhead in her open palm. Looking up at first Bruce and then Buffy, a small smile appeared on Rachel's tearstained face.

The next morning Buffy awoke to see her mother standing over her.

"Bad dream?" Joyce asked.

Buffy nodded.

"The bats?" Joyce sat on the side of the bed.

Buffy nodded again.

Joyce pulled her daughter into an embrace and hugged her tightly.

A month later

"Thank you Master Wayne for allowing Buffy to go with you," Joyce said.

Thomas had stopped by the servant quarters, on his son's request, to invite Buffy and Rachel to the opera with them that night. Rachel's mother had declined stating family obligations. But Joyce and Hank had agreed.

"The thanks should go to Bruce," Thomas said. "He urged me to allow both Buffy and Rachel to go with us to the opera tonight. Rachel couldn't attend due to family obligations. But I told Bruce that Buffy could come and I am a man of my word. Besides both myself and Martha have grown to feel both girls are like our own daughters in a way. In fact we wanted to talk to you and Hank about possibly setting up a college fund for Buffy."

"That's very generous of you," Joyce said with a shake of her head. "But Hank and I really …"

"I won't take no for an answer," Thomas said.

20 minutes later Bruce and Buffy entered a train car and found seats. As the train moved along Bruce and Buffy watched the sights of Gotham speed past the window.

"Did you build this train, Dad?" Bruce asked

"Gotham's been good to our family … but now the city's suffering," Thomas said. "People less fortunate than us are enduring very hard times. In fact it is one of the reasons I offered your mother tonight, Buffy, for us to pay for your college education when your old enough."

Buffy blinked. Being eight years old she had never once thought about life as an adult or what it would mean to grow up. So she was surprised by the offer. "Wow, thank you Master Wayne. And thank you for letting me come with you and Bruce."

Thomas smiled. "Thank Bruce. He talked me and Martha into allowing you to come."

Buffy turned and hugged Bruce, who looked slightly embarrassed at the embrace.

Thomas drew a circle in the condensation on the window. "Anyways we built a new, cheap public transportation system to unite all of Gotham."

"And at the center of it," Martha Wayne added, "is Wayne Tower."

"Is that where you work?" Bruce asked.

"No," Thomas said. "I work at the hospital. I leave the running of our company to better men."

"Better?" Buffy asked.

"Well … more interested men," Thomas said.

The train slowed. Martha pointed out the window to a gigantic building that seemed to stretch to the sky. "Wayne Tower," she said.

The train slid beneath a roof, hissed, stopped. "Her we are," Thomas said.

The Waynes and Buffy left the train and walked among a crowd of commuters, beneath a vaulted ceiling, and went through a wide door to a covered walkway that spanned the area between the station and the tower. Buffy saw a sign in the form of an arrow that read: TO OPERA HOUSE.

They walked toward where the arrow pointed, Bruce's hands folded into his father's just as Buffy'was was folded into Martha's. They went up the escalator, through a hallway with red fabric on the walls and thick red carpet on the floor, and passed through a door. Thomas handed four tickets to a woman you glanced at them, smiled and led them down an aisle to a row of seats. They sat in cushioned chairs.

Thomas leaned over to Martha and whispered, "I forgot to ask. What are we seeing, anyway?"

"Mestistofele," Martha said, "by Boito."

"French?"

Martha nodded.

"Any good?"

"Excellent."

"Okay," Thomas said, and leaned back in his chair.

A minute later the musicians began to play the music, and the red curtain rose. Buffy watched with interest as the actors performed their parts and sung their lines. And then the bats dropped from above, hung from wires, their black wings flapping, and began to circled over the other actor's heads.

Buffy stared at the bats and she began to tremble.

"Buffy," Martha said as she looked at the girl. "What's wrong?" Then she noticed her son. "Sweetheart, is something the matter?"

Bruce and Buffy were gasping, unable to catch their breath, unable to answer Martha.

Finally Bruce managed to grab his father's arm. "Can we go?!" he asked.

Martha looked over Bruce's head at Thomas, giving him a questioning look.

Thomas didn't at first meet Martha's gaze. He eyes were on Bruce and Buffy. He knew instantly what was going on as he glanced at the bats on stage. Joyce had told him that like his son, Buffy was having nightmares about the bats. "I guess we'd better."

Thomas stood and held Bruce's hand and said, "Take it easy." Then the four of them, Martha holding Buffy's hand were moving across the carpet and down the stairs and out onto the street.

"We'll just take a few minutes to get some fresh air," Thomas said. "A bit of opera goes a long way, right, Bruce? Right, Buffy?"

Bruce and Buffy looked up at Thomas and Thomas winked. "What say we take a little walk?"

Bruce and Buffy nodded yes.

"Come on," Thomas said.

Then, in the shadow cast by Wayne Tower, Bruce and Buffy saw something move and a moment later a man stepped from the darkness and approached them. He was pointing something at them that gleamed in the light of a nearby streetlamp.

"Wallet, jewelry—fast!" The man said.

"That's fine, just take it easy," Thomas said, stepping between his family and Buffy and the man. He shrugged out of his overcoat and handed it to Bruce.

"Hurry up," the man said.

Thomas took his wallet from beneath his jacket and extended it. "Here you go," he said.

The man grabbed at the wallet with a shaking hand and missed, and the wallet fell.

"It's fine, it's fine," Thomas said.

The Man knelt on the pavement and groped for the wallet. Bruce and Buffy recognized the object he was pointing at Thomas from pictures they had seen in the newspaper: a gun.

The gun was shaking.

The man retrieved the wall and shoved it into a pocket. "Just take it and go," Thomas said.

The Man stood and shifted his gaze first to Martha and then to Buffy. "I said jewelry, too."

Martha began to pull of her diamond engagement ring. Thomas took a step toward the man. "Hey, just—"

Buffy reached up to take her locket off, the only thing she had to remember Celia with. For inside the locket was a picture of her cousin who had died just two months before. "Please, sir. This has a picture of my cousin in it. It's the only thing I have left of her."

Just then there was a sound like two boards being slapped together. Puzzled, Bruce and Buffy turned to Thomas for an explanation. Thomas was staring down at a red splotching on his white shirt that spread outward from a small, black hole.

Thomas crumpled.

Martha screamed. The Man reaches for the strand of pearls around her neck. Martha pulled back from and the man said, "Gimme the damn—"

The gun twitched and there was the slapping board sound again. The man curcled his fingers around the pearl necklace and yanked and the necklace broke. Pearls spilled past Bruce and Buffy's face and clattered lightly on the pavement.

Bruce and Buffy stared up at the man's eyes. The man jerked, as though he had been stung, and he spun and ran into the shadows forgetting about the locket in Buffy's hands.

For a long time, Bruce and Buffy stared at Thomas face. They heard a groan and bent down to that their faces were close to Thomas.

"Don't be afraid," Thomas whispered. He smiled at them, then closed his eyes.

A while later a policeman came, and then more policemen, and some of them put Martha and Thomas into bags and loaded them into the rear of an ambulance. Someone took Bruce and Buffy in a car to a big building. They were led into the building and to chairs. They sat, and waited. With one hand Bruce clutched his father's coat to his chest. With the other he held Buffy as she cried.

A man walked over to them and knelt down in front of them. "You both okay?" he asked.

They looked at the man, whose hair and mustache were thick and black and whose eyes blue eyes were warm and kind.

"I'm Jim Gordon," the man said. "You two need anything? A sandwich? Soda?" He gestured to the overcoat. "Is that your father's?"

Bruce nodded. Gordon gently took the coat and draped it over Bruce's shoulders.

Another man, wearing an officer's uniform, approached and said loudly. "Gordon! You gotta stick your nose into everything!"

Jim Gordon turned to the man in the uniform and stared, not saying a thing.

"Outta my sight," the uniformed officer commanded. Gordon touched first Bruce and then Buffy's shoulders, then spun on his heels and stalked away.

The man knelt in front of them and said, "My name's Captain Loeb, and I got some good news for the both of you. We got him."

Two days later, at a plot of unused land behind the greenhouse, Buffy watched as coffins containing Martha and Thomas Wayne were lowered into two oblong holes and she cried softly. As Joyce and Buffy left with Mrs. Dawes and Rachel. Buffy and Rachel looked up at the windows and saw Bruce looking back. They waved to Bruce, who hesitated, and then returned the wave.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

Twenty years later Buffy woke with a start as she looked around her room at the International Slayers Council in London. Even now twenty years later, she still had nightmares about Thomas and Martha Wayne's deaths. She slowly got out of bed deciding some fresh air would do her good.

As she walked into the common room she shared with Dawn, she found her sister sitting in a chair looking over a book she had been translating.

"Can't sleep?" Dawn asked as she looked over the top of the book.

"Just a bad dream," Buffy said. "Do you remember when we lived in Gotham before moving to L.A.?"

Dawn nodded. "A little," she said. "I was about seven. I remember hanging around you, Rachel and Bruce."

"It's been so long since we've seen them," Buffy said. "I wonder what their like now. I think I will ask Giles for some time off to go visit them."

Dawn nodded as she put her book aside. "That would be good Buffy," she said. "I could use some time away also."

Buffy smiled. "Good. I think they would want to see you also."

The next morning

Buffy and Dawn entered the office of Rupert Giles and found Giles going over some paperwork. He looked up at them when he heard the door close behind them.

"Morning, Buffy, Dawn," he said.

"Morning," Buffy and Dawn said.

"What can I do for the both of you?" Giles asked.

"Giles, Dawn and I would like to take some time away from the ISC. Visit some old friends we haven't seen in 20 years," Buffy said.

Giles thought about it and then nodded. "I think that would be an excellent idea, Buffy. You deserve some time away."

"Buffy I was just wondering something," Dawn said twenty minutes later when they entered Buffy's office. "Didn't Mr. Wayne set up a college fund for you?"

Buffy sighed. "No. He talked to mom and dad about it," she said. "But he died before he could actually set it up. It's why I went to school on grants and scholarships till mom died."

"You never did talk about it, you know," Dawn said.

Buffy looked at her younger sister and nodded knowing what Dawn was referring to, the night that Thomas and Martha Wayne had been gunned down by Joe Chill. "It was a hard time for me. It's why I hate guns. I was only 8 years old; it's still hard even today to talk about it. They were murdered right there in front of me and Bruce. At that time I had only seen one other death, and you know as well as I the effect Celia's death had one me."

Dawn nodded; she did know the effect their cousin's death had on Buffy. She put her arms around her sister and pulled Buffy into an embrace.