AN: My first TDK fic. Barbara didn't seem to fit for a little girl, so I called her BB. Love it or hate it, please leave a review!
There it was again. BB Gordon couldn't even pull the covers over her head, couldn't move at all. The rattling outside her window grew horribly loud, and she clutched her stuffed rabbit close to her heaving chest. One, two, four, eight….she began doubling in her head, a trick her father had taught her when she first learned multiplication. Thirty-two, sixty-four…
Through the gaps around the edges of her blinds strange shadows began to dance and flicker, spinning across her room in an eerie, haunting dance. Two hundred fifty-six, five hundred and twelve, one-thousand twenty-four…
It was feet. People were moving outside her window, running, running down the fire escape. She could hear their voices now, the rattling getter louder and louder like a subway train roaring by. Two thousand forty eight…four thousand ninety-four, or was it six? Or eight? She went back to the beginning. One, two, four-
But the numbers wouldn't help. The numbers made them keep on coming. She had said four thousand and ninety-four, and now that's how many feet would come tramping up and down, down and up the rusty fire escape until it wore down the bolts and screws and fell off the building and the people would be screaming laughing laughing a clown was laughing…
She sat up, covers flung over the side of the bed, quaking in fear, her dark eyes darting all over the room, following the shadows still dancing through the window. Her nightgown stuck to her like flesh, soiled and soaked slimy with her sweat. She had fallen asleep, counting, and had that nightmare. Without hesitation she covered her ears and shut her eyes, running for the bedroom door. Dad would be in the next room. He could make the clown stop laughing. He had made the clown go away. That clown would never laugh again…
She opened her eyes at her parent's bedside-but it was her mother's haggard face she saw, and no one else. Her father was gone, again. "Daddy." She whispered, then she cried for a whole minute, tears streaming silently down her face, letting herself count from one to sixty.
"I'm not always going to be around, honey. This new promotion…it changes a lot of things. Maybe everything. Everything but this." Her father kissed her goodnight. "I love you. I love your mother and your brother and I. Love. You." His mild voice quavered a bit. "When you get scared, you just remember the prayer I taught you, B. And you won't need me here because you'll have angels with you, okay?"
Sixty. Her tears stopped flowing. She wiped her eyes on the back of her small, clammy hand, then left. She forced herself to walk composedly back to her room, counting the slow steps, her chin held high, daring any lurking fear or shadow to attempt to frighten her.
Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the lord my soul to keep, thy angels watch me through the night, and keep me safe till morning's light. She thought, climbing back into bed, laying her head down on the pillow. She repeated the words in her mind, over and over and over again until suddenly angels were all around and she was safe and warm and dreaming. Her Daddy might be gone, but he was working. And she didn't have to be afraid of anything when he was working late at night…because both of Gotham's angels, her Dark Knight and her father, were watching over her.
But there was another version of the prayer, one more fitting for evil times, for despair, for darkness. For Gotham. She would not have dared utter that prayer nor take comfort had she known: And if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.
BB slept peacefully the rest of the night, too young, too naïve to know that in a city ruled by demons, it would take more than just two angels to broker the peace.