Gifts

by Marla Fair

Gifts - Nightwing is dead. Can a grief stricken Batman survive, and what will Starfire risk to bring her love and husband back? A sequel to 'Another Chance...'

3. Chapter 3

PART THREE – ONE

He opened his eyes on a world gone mad. All about him a kaleidoscope of colors whirled and danced filling the small hot space. He couldn't get his bearings. Couldn't even manage to sit up. Closing his eyes, he sought his center and tried to remember the things Bruce had taught him. Even in the worst of circumstances, there was always a way out—a way to survive. He counted slowly to ten and then stretched out his arms and legs and was surprised when he didn't bump into anything. Maybe the room wasn't as tiny as he thought... Still, the lights were disorienting. He tried to stand. Instead he stumbled and fell. Resting on his hands and knees, he drew several ragged breaths and tried to remember how he had gotten where he was. He had left Kory sleeping and returned to the duplex where he had found John to confront Two-face and the Pretender and had—

Dear God, John! He didn't have to check the chronometer built into his suit. The deadline had passed and Bruce was still alive. That meant John... Laying his head on his hands, he began to weep silently. John. By all that was holy, John...

"Wakey-wakey."

He knew the voice. Pulling himself together, he lifted his head slowly and glanced about. Shadows shifted in every corner of the room, but he couldn't tell if it was the crazy lights of if someone stood there watching. "Pretender?"

The lean figure slid out of one of the patches of darkness to come to his side. In its hand was the remote which activated the metal demons in his blood. "Mustn't move."

"Why?"

"Need you here."

He glanced at the creature, frowning at the face, half-white, half tanned skin. "Can I sit up?"

One of the Pretender's brows lifted in amusement and it said quite clearly, "I don't know—can you?"

Dick closed his eyes and sighed. It was playing child's games. He licked his lips. "May I?"

The Pretender laughed and ran a hand through its yellow-green hair so it stood up like soldiers on review. "Yes. You may."

Dick lifted his hands from the floor and tipped back into a seated position. Then he faced his foe. It was the first time he had had a chance to really studythe curious creature. It did look like Harvey, but there was something else there as well. Someone else... "Who are you?" he asked quietly.

The lean figure pointed its nose toward the ceiling and pronounced dramatically, "I am the Pretender..."

"The pretender to what? To some throne?" Dick tried to keep how exasperated he felt from showing in his voice.

It's head tilted and its eyes—one blue and one green—fastened on him. "Smart boy. You get a lollipop." It's long fingers hovered over the control pad and twitched with expectation as he flinched. A moment later, it moved them away.

Encouraged he tried another question. "Why do you call Two-Face, 'Father'?"

It's crooked face split with a grin. "He made me. Like he made you. Now he is your father too." Then it laughed. "Two."

"Made me?"

"So, Grayson, I see you are awake. I've brought you a present."

Dick looked up suddenly. The movement made him gag. Concentrating on the creature before him, he had forgotten the lights. "A better present would be to turn that kaleidoscope off."

"Glad to oblige."

A moment later the whirling lights vanished, their absence leaving him almost as disoriented as their presence. Then they were replaced by a news broadcast which filled the four blank walls of his cell. He frowned as a reporter stepped aside and the cameraman zoomed in on an elegant casket being lowered into the ground. Beside the open grave were two women, one slight and dark, the other broad-boned and madder-haired. In the arms of the red-head there was a small child. He gasped and rose to his feet and fell with his fingers against one of the walls. John was alive. But who was in the grave? He spun about and managed to stay on his feet as he shouted, "What have you done? Is it Bruce? I swear I will kill you where you stand if— " Then he stopped as the sad figure of his mentor and friend moved into the frame. Bruce dropped a handful of earth on the coffin and then walked away as the reporter began to outline the career of the late Dick Grayson, once known as Red Robin and after that, as Nightwing to a grieving world.

"I didn't touch a precious hair on your one time guardian's head, but I have killed him. Look at him," Two-face snarled, almost dancing with triumph, 'old and gray, bent with grief." He turned and looked at Dick and his twisted face seemed to writhe with a sick joy. "Just imagine what it will do to him when I kill you again!"

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Now it all made sense. In the years since he had destroyed Wayne Manor and fled the city and the States, Two-face had been working to perfect a technique of creating clones and transplanting memories into them, hoping to restore himself to what he once had been—to recreate Harvey Dent, whole and undamaged. The grinning gargoyle that watched him must have been one of his experiments he chose to allow to live. While it was obvious Harvey's DNA was involved in the creation of the Pretender, there was something else there. Its body was long and lean—not stocky like Dent. And it had an almost feminine grace. Still, with its disfigured visage—something Harvey had to have subconsciously chosen to recreate—and twisted mind, it was the perfect child for his demented alter-ego.

Dick sighed and shifted so his hands encircled his knees. Apparently in the midst of his quest, it had dawned on Harvey that he would be able to reproduce people other than himself. He couldn't yet transfer memories—that was why he remained in the form God had given him that had been warped and damaged by fate—but he could plant dead bodies at strategic places—like he had his—or send duplicates in as victims of amnesia or mind-wiping. In this way he had planned to take over key positions in the government, to steal vast fortunes and to generally wreck havoc on the world that had betrayed him—until the day he had seen that news broadcast and realized his old enemy had survived both the destruction of the Manor and the holocaust that followed. From that moment on, it seemed, he had begun to plot Bruce's death, and when he had heard the rumors which had flown through the criminal grape-vine of Koriand'r's return and Dick's own death and resurrection, he had begun to plot the ruin of the man who had ruined him. He meant to take from him what mattered most, and do it not once, but twice. Like Bane, he would break the Batman, but he wouldn't bother with his already weak and aging body—

He would break his soul.

Dick glanced at the Pretender. The creature sat across the room playing with the crazy-quilt teddy bear, showing it the keypad that controlled the invisible bugs which infested both him and his son. He frowned. The name still bothered him. The pretender to what? Harvey's empire? He didn't really have one. Closing his eyes, he sighed and ran his fingers through his black hair. At least John was safe and away from here. By now Bruce had probably figured out that he was infected and would have done all he could to remove the nannites from his body. Or to make them inert. The fact that the child was at the funeral...his funeral seemed to support that.

Dear God, he hoped there was a way to make them inert.

He opened his eyes and realized his jailer was watching him. Its eyes shone with a demented light and it smiled while waving the little black box. He waved back. God, he had to get out of here. It wasn't just that he feared for his life—if it would have saved anyone else, he would have given it gladly—but at this point he knew his death would do more harm than good. Bruce had buried him once. That had probably about killed him.

If he had to do it again...

"So what do you get out of this?" he asked suddenly.

The creature cocked its head. "What?"

"You? What do you get out of this?"

Its eyes narrowed and its thin finger's arched. "No tricks."

He held his hands up, palms open. "No tricks. Two-face kills me again. Bruce cracks. Old half-and-half is happy." He paused for effect. "What's in it for you?"

"For me?"

"For you. What do you get?"

The twisted mouth crooked into a smile. "Plenty."

"Plenty?" He shrugged. "What exactly? You get to watch?"

The tall rangy creature rose and crossed to where he sat, towering over him. It fixed him with both eyes, blue and green. It's scarlet lips pulled back to reveal pearl white teeth. "I get to own what cannot die. And what in dying destroys him."

Dick frowned. Those were full sentences, not the sing-song garbage it had spoken before. Was it's simplicity another pretense? "Own what can't die? What is that?"

The creature bent at the middle to whisper in his ear. "You."

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TWO

Koriand'r stood at the foot of the grave, a bunch of wildflowers in her hand. It had been two days. Two days. It might have been two years. Or two thousand. She knelt and lay the blossoms in the dirt. There was no headstone yet. She could not bring herself to write the words in stone. Somehow that would make the loss too final.

Too eternal.

Rocking back on her heels, she closed her eyes and balled her hands into fists. She sat silently a moment and then she lifted them into the air and screamed. This was not right. Someone, somewhere had made a cosmic mistake. Dick was to have grown old at her side. They were to have watched their children mature and blossom and marry and have children of their own. Winter would have come into his hair again and soft lines tempered his beautiful face, adding character to perfection. That had been taken from her once before while she slept in the Batman's hidden lab and he grew old without her.

And so it had been again. And this time, forever.

She stood and dropped her cloak to the ground, revealing her hero's costume. Then, with a burst of crimson energy, she shot into the sky not knowing where she was going, only that she had to fly from the silent earth and the still cold body beneath.

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Diana was worried about Bruce. She had spoken with Clark and insisted he return to the Manor, even though it meant taking time away from his projects in Kansas. He sat now in the study with his old friend, staring at him over the rim of a cup of hot chocolate.

"Bruce. You will survive."

The Batman was silent a moment, then he said, "Maybe I don't want to."

Clark sat back. His fingers traced the rim of the mug. "I never thought I would hear you say that."

'I never thought I would bury Dick."

"You've lost others before. Your parents. Dear friends." As the field in Kansas flashed in his mind with its burnt and broken bones, he rested the cup on his knee and sighed. "Jason..."

"This is different."

"How?" At his friend's angry look, he raised his hand. "Don't get me wrong, Bruce. Dick's...loss is devastating. So was Lois's. Any death diminishes us, but we can't give up."

"I can." Bruce put his cup down. "I have. I've lost and there just isn't any fight left in me anymore." He stood and walked slowly to the French doors, staring at the spot where he had last seen his son alive and vital.

Clark's brows met in a 'v' and he coughed, not quite believing what he was about to say. "But don't you want revenge?"

Bruce was silent a moment and then he laughed. "Trying to rouse me, old friend?" I know what that cost you." As Clark looked away, he continued, "I sought revenge when Jason died. It didn't help. I was just as empty as before. Perhaps even more." He glanced at the other man. "How do you hold a madman accountable? Perhaps the one who should be held accountable, is the one who drove him mad in the first place..."

Clark stood and reached for him. "Bruce, you can't be blaming yourself. You shouldn't— "

"Why shouldn't I?" The gray-haired man lashed out suddenly, "Why not? I created the Joker. I created Two-face. Without me, they would not have existed. Without the Batman there would have been no reason for Jason Todd or...Dick Grayson to die." He stood toe to toe with his old friend and fixed him with his tortured blue eyes. "Either death or god has had the last laugh."

Clark backed away, truly troubled for his friend. "And how is that?"

"I'm still here."

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Koriand'r found herself flying over the area where they had found her husband's ravaged body. She had not been able to get the image out of her mind and she was not content as his mentor seemed to be to brood and wallow in self-pity. Though Dick would not have approved, she intended to hunt Two-face and this Pretender down and to make them pay. She had left Mar'i to watch John, telling the young woman that she needed a day for a Tamaranean mourning ritual. Her vocal daughter had protested loudly. It was all Ibn had been able to do to keep her from burning down half of Gotham looking for her father's killers and, after the funeral, the girl was ready to go back to the chase. Partly because of that—and her own need to know that, at least, Dick's children were safe—she had made her promise she would stay with her brother and guard him close. It had been cruel, but she had counted on Mari's guilt to hold her to that promise. The slender dark-haired woman had not forgiven herself for letting her father escape the first time. Nor had she spoken to him before he had gone to his grave.

Twisting in a spiral as she flew, relishing the last rays of the setting sun, she sighed and thought of how her time upon the Earth had changed her. Not only had she manipulated the girl but she had lied to her as well: there was no such thing as a mourning ritual on her home world. As she spied the duplex she hunted below and pointed her feet towards it in preparation for her descent, a grim smile lit her face. Or perhaps there was. Perhaps a Tamaranean's way of mourning a murdered loved one was to seek revenge.

She alighted just without the house and as the local vagabonds and street thugs scrambled, she placed her fists on her hips and stared at the small window to the back of the second floor. Behind her the sun gave its death-gasp and set in blood. From the beginning there had been something not quite right about all of this. From Dick's shooting to his return and death, it seemed a calculated madness had marked each and every twist and turn: a madness far different from that which had marked the crimes of a certain crazed individual known as Two-face. She had spent the wee hours of the morning pouring over the Batman's files and had come away more confused than enlightened. Yes, he and Dick had a history, and yes, he hated the Batman—but they had been friends once, and when push came to shove, more often than not Harvey Dent had found a way to prevent his alter ego from destroying the other man. And Two-face was a brute, as was evidenced by his beating of the young Robin while he was still a child. A brute and a bully. There was something about this entire affair that was far too clever for it to have been born in his depths of his divided brain.

Far too depraved.

She had told herself on the way to the duplex that if she was very brave and was able to face the image that haunted her—if she could go back into the room where they had found him and began again, the answer just might present itself.

If...

With a sigh she lifted into the air and flew towards the window, banishing the wife and becoming once again, the warrior.

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Across the street in an abandoned warehouse, Dick Grayson lay with his eyes half-closed watching his jailer. There was something about the way the creature moved. Something familiar. He thought too about its words. About the fact that it said he couldn't die. Or maybe it meant, he wouldn't die. He frowned and watched as it tossed its head from one side to the other and then turned his way.

Dick feigned sleep. He could hear Two-face just beyond a wall of boxes, preparing a mini-van to transport him away from here. It seemed they were ready to make their move. He was already bound and gagged. From what he had been able to overhear, they intended to take him to the cemetery and to leave him on his own grave, and then to wait until Bruce or Kory or someone showed. Then they would blow every bug in his system once and for all, leaving him a bloody mass and the Batman— and anyone else who happened to care— hopelessly dispirited and insane.

At least that was the plan.

He had to get away before it happened.

He shifted and watched the tall lean creature as it rocked back and forth talking to itself. It was fiddling with the control device again. Suddenly their eyes locked and it grinned. It had grinned before, but never in this way. Never with the same knowledge or absolute delight. Just as he was about to place whatever it was he found about it that was so frustratingly familiar, its finger came down on one of the keys. He sucked in air and waited, but nothing happened. Not to him. Then he heard a sharp intake of breath behind him and a half-voiced curse. A moment later several cardboard boxes tumbled over him. Something had fallen against them. Something or someone.

The Pretender rose and came to stand over him, cocking its head. It pursed its lips. "Poor Harvey," it muttered, "what a fool." Then it turned into the light. The setting sun struck the creature before him, casting its profile into silhouette.

Dick gasped.

They had all got it wrong.

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"Bruce?"

The older man didn't stir. He was sitting in a chair before the fire with an old-fashioned photo album on his knees. A glass of whiskey sat untouched beside him. Diana knelt before him and laid her hand on one of his.

"Bruce. You must choose to live. You cannot give up."

He refused to look at her. His index finger was between his teeth and he was staring at the fire, a single tear running down his cheek.

"Do you not see? This is a gift. A gift for you."

That made his eyes move. They flicked to her face. The thought behind them was not kind.

Diana tossed her head and laid her other hand on his knee. "Dick was prepared. He had made his peace. So had Donna and the others." She met his cold blue eyes. "You are in turmoil. You are lost. You cannot rest until you do the same."

He laughed. It was a bitter sound. "So God has let me suffer because He loves me?" He shook her off. "Get real, Diana."
"You get real, old man." She stood and placed her hands on her hips. "Is this what Dick would want, you wallowing in self-pity? Condemning yourself to death in life?" Her eyes narrowed to slits. "Allowing your enemy—and his killer—to win?"

He shook his head. "Leave me alone."

She planted her feet firmly in the plush Chinese carpet and refused to move. "No. I will not. You will hear the truth no matter how bitter a pill it is to swallow. You have allowed death to win. It is not his game, it is yours and you have conceded."

"I've what?" He lifted his eyes and stared at her, some of his old fire returning

You're a damned fool, Diana."

"You are the one who is damned. And you are not the man I thought you were."

"Diana..."

"Coward."
He stood then and faced her, much as he had in the skies over the battlefield of

Kansas. "I am not a coward. I am a realist. I should have recognized it from

the very first, from the moment my father's head hit the pavement and my mother's blood sprayed into my face. It is all a lie. It has all been a lie. My life, everything I have fought for. The game is rigged. No one can win."

Her nostrils flared. She licked her lips and then she said, "You are right."

Her quiet words shocked him. "What? I'm right? I thought I was a coward."

Her sky-blue eyes lit with a deep irony. "I do not take it back. But you are right, no one can win. Not alone."

"Eh?"

"You said you didn't know if you believed in God. Have you ever sought divine help? Bruce, have you ever given the divine permission to enter in?"

"What is this..."
"Are you brave enough to do so now?"

He met her eyes at first, his own wearing the look that brought hardened criminals to

their knees and sent them away blubbering like babies. Then a tremor ran the length of his frame and he lowered his head.

"Your childhood gods died in Crime Alley, Bruce. Perhaps it is time you acknowledged that and grew up."

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Sometime later Clark returned and went looking for his wife. He had just walked past the study when something stopped him: a quiet sound, like a whisper on the wind. He knew if it had been voices, he would have heard them from a mile away. He lifted his glasses and rubbed his eyes and then turned back and placed his foot on the threshold. Then he stopped, stunned. Diana knelt before the fire, her hands linked with his old friend's. Her eyes were closed and her lips moving as he had seen many times before in prayer.

Bruce was on his knees as well. Silent. His lips still.

But he was listening.

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THREE

Koriand'r crossed her wrists and raised her eyes to the darkening sky. "X'Hal,' she breathed, "let me find his killer and make them pay." She turned back from the window and stared at the tattered rug on the floor, stained with her husband's blood. Kneeling she ran her hands along its surface, lost in thought. It bothered her still the way they had found him and what they had had to do to identify him. His body had been savaged almost beyond recognition. She remembered, afterwards, looking at the reconstructed corpse in the coffin and thinking it wasn't him. Bruce had assured her that it was. There were tests, he said. Structural DNA couldn't lie. But in that way that a lover knows, she had still doubted. She knew she should have felt him die. And she had not.

The tall Tamaranean stood and placed her hands on her hips, once again surveying the room. Where to begin? Just at that moment a car back-fired and a half-dozen raucous voices cut into the still night air causing her to jump. A radio blared, accosting her ears with some dreadful strain of acid-rock, and a girl screamed in delight as a dilapidated auto rattled off into the night. Koriand'r laughed and placed her hand to her heart, amazed that such a simple thing could frighten her. She walked to the window as another vehicle, a wildly colored mini-van, sped off into the night, careening wildly from one side of the road to the other. She shook her head and muttered something disparaging about teenagers. Then without a backwards glance, she left the death-scene and headed for the spiral stair.

Once on the lower floor she began a thorough investigation of every room. She rummaged through the drawers and emptied all the closets. A half an hour later it was obvious to her that Dick's captors had not been living here, but had only used the room upstairs for their vile purposes. She had been just about to leave when she remembered she hadn't taken a look at the basement. As she drew near the door she noticed it was ajar and that the dust on the threshold had been disturbed as if something of a substantial size had been drug across it recently. Several painful heartbeats later she stood in the center of a small lightless room, staring at the curious remnants of its recent occupation: a projector, a patch-work teddy bear, and a small metal toy much like the ones they had found burned and melted in the warehouse where all of this had begun.

In the warehouse.

Koriand'r sucked in air and spun about. Lifting into the air, she flew up the stairs and out of the door, and landed in the middle of the street. The mini-van was nowhere in sight, but across the street from Two-face's childhood home was the place that had spit it out. The placard above the open garage door read, 'Gemini Enterprises.'

Gemini. The sign of the twin.

Using caution, she entered the silent building, all too aware that someone might be laying in wait for her. She powered up her hands and let the crimson light that fell from them illuminate her way. It first caressed a pile of fallen boxes. And then the body underneath.

She didn't know why the sight of it chilled her. Dick was already dead.

Wasn't he?
Moving with stealth, she crossed the grease-stained floor until she towered over the half-concealed, broken and bleeding form. As she knelt, she placed her hand on its shoulder and rolled it over. A familiar grotesque visage greeted her, the ancient wounds she had seen on the Batman's monitor overrun with new ones, only minutes old.

It was Two-face.

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The Pretender was singing a little ditty and dancing while driving with its hands in the air. Dick winced as they hit another bump in the road and his head came down on the wheel-well. He had no idea where they were going. Now that he knew who he was dealing with—well, in a way—he also knew that anything was possible. What had Harvey been thinking? The two of them had been almost as mortal of enemies as he and the Batman.

Perhaps it had been their hatred that had drawn them together in this bizarre fashion. But then the very fact that the Pretender existed seemed to indicate some prior connection. The other had been dead, what? Fifteen years? Maybe more.

Suddenly the mini-van screeched to halt and he was thrown headlong against the back of the seat. In his weakened state, it knocked the wind out of him and his head was still spinning when the hatch was thrown open and two hands—one gloved, the other naked—gripped his collar and pulled him to the ground.

For some time after that he was dragged by his feet over the rough earth. Branches and dead leaves clung to his costume, filled his mouth and decorated his hair. When at last they stopped and he was released, he opened his eyes and was shocked to find they were on Bruce's land, in the cemetery that lay a mile or so beyond the manor: the cemetery where Bruce's parents and Jason, as well as his own cloned self, were buried. He had thought that with Two-face dead, the Pretender's intention would have been to keep him alive—either to torture or as a sort of 'prize'. Warily lifting his head, he gazed at the lean creature. It had something in its hand that flashed as it lifted it past the lantern it had placed on a nearby stone. It plunged to the earth and then flew into the air over the saffron hair again and again. When his captor noticed he was watching, its gloved hand moved lightning fast and a shining steel blade struck the earth centimeters before his nose. A moment later the tool was raised again and the Pretender drove it into the earth over Jason's grave.

Dick frowned. "What are you doing? You can't— "

Blackness exploded as the flat side of the shovel slammed into his head and he saw no more.

"Sleep-a-bye, little Robin," the Pretender whispered. Then it returned the blade to the earth and jumped on it, while keeping its mismatched eyes focused on the marker bearing Jason's name.

"Forever."

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Bruce had left the Manor and was walking by himself through the still night, his steps, as ever, leading him to his parent's grave. He stopped though before he reached the gate to consider Diana's parting words, remembering the promise he had made her that he would choose life, and that he would try to prove as good a surrogate father to Dick's children as he had been to the man himself.

Still his dark and brooding nature drew him like a magnet to the cold stone and freshly turned earth. A single rose was clenched between his fingers and he pressed it tight so the thorns cut into his flesh and made it bleed. He hesitated, resting his hand on one of the rough iron posts and turned his weary eyes to the sky, as if waiting for a sign—as if to dare the divine, as his friend had put it, to make its presence known.

Without warning a scarlet comet shot across the black void. Bruce started and the rose fell to the ground. He staggered back, disbelieving, and then he began to laugh. It was only another lost soul come to call on the dead. Nightstar had complained to him earlier that her mother had disappeared, leaving her holding the proverbial baby and the bath-water. It seemed, now, that the wandering Tamaranean had returned.

As he watched the trail that marked her descent drop towards the stone-dotted landscape beyond, his keen eyes noticed the park gate was askew. He should have noticed it earlier—would have, had he not been preoccupied. He crossed to it and bent to touch the earth. It was warm, and there were fresh tire tracks laid across those the hearse had left the day before.

Later, he couldn't find words to describe the feelings that crashed over him at that moment in an emotional tidal wave. He had wanted to scream, to laugh and to cry all at once and had had absolutely no idea what it meant. He had stared at the tire tracks and felt almost giddy. Then his mind had turned to logic: a homeless person had wandered in, seeking shelter for the night, or perhaps a thief had thought to find something of value on his son's grave. But neither of those scenarios accounted for the car or the gate being ajar. Clasping the heavy metal with his fingers, he flung it wide and began to run. He was on the far side of a lot of seventeen acres set aside for the Wayne Family Memorial Park and knew it would take him a full ten minutes to reach the other side on foot. He felt his jacket as he picked up his pace. The unit for controlling the Bat-bots was in the house. Mar'i was asleep and Clark and Diana had gone home.

There was no one but him and Dick's wife, out there, somewhere, alone in the dark.

Not knowing how, as he continued to gain momentum, he began to pray.

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Koriand'r landed near the patch of land that held her husband's grave and immediately dropped into a protective position. Someone was in the cemetery and they were singing. She frowned and slipped behind a gravestone capped by a weeping angel to listen. The tune was jaunty. Almost jolly. And terribly off-key. She waited a moment and then crept forward, passing Bruce's parents' tomb, heading for the area she had wept over the day before. Pausing just behind the marker her father-in-law had erected in memory of his butler, she raised her eyes above it, only to have to duck as a load of dirt and stones came flying towards her head. She cursed briefly and bit her lip and then peered around the side instead. A lantern perched precariously on a nearby stone revealed a haphazardly-costumed gravedigger merrily shoving a silver spade into the ground.

Just behind the figure, she could see the withering flowers left from Dick's funeral.

Warily, she moved from behind the marker to the next largest stone, careful not to make a noise or remain in the open for more than a second. Whoever it was singing, they seemed oblivious and the tune continued uninterrupted. She knew it now. It was called 'I'm a Little Teapot.' Mar'i had had to learn it in pre-school. But the words were not the same. Gripping the foot of a stone woman in mourning, she waited as the song ended and then began again. And when it did, it made her blood run cold.

"I am the Pretender, lean and tall. Here lie my victims, here lie they all. When I lock the coffin, here them shout!" The figure merrily tossed another shovel full of dirt over its shoulder and altered its voice so it became a whimpering cry, "I'm still alive! Please let me out!"

Kory squeezed her broad shoulders between two headstones as the strange workman went into a gale of laughter and rose up on her knees, glancing through the center of a stone wreath held by a playful cherub. Then she flung her hands over her mouth. By X'Hal and all that was holy, had they dug him up? Her heart leapt into her throat and she felt sick. A moment later she realized her mistake. Dick was lying on the ground, but his hands and feet were bound and he was in costume. And as she watched, his moved his head and groaned. She glanced at the grave he lay on. It was unmolested.

She had been right. It hadn't been her husband they had buried.

Dick was alive.

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Bruce had lost sight of the red fire that marked the Princess's position. He was certain she had landed in the cemetery, but he had no idea where. If what he suspected had actually happened, then she was in danger. As he paused to catch his breath, he thought of the sacred trust his son had left him. If his last years counted for nothing else, he would use them to see that Dick's family was kept safe, and that included the tall, strong-willed, overly impetuous tempestuous Koriand'r of Tamaran.

Even if she told him where he could put it.

He began to run again, drawing the crisp cold air into his lungs, and as he did, he actually smiled. More than four decades had passed since he had tossed the cards on the table and declared Death the winner.

No more.

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The singer continued to hum its macabre ditty. Sometimes the words varied, but the intent was always the same. She realized now that whoever it was, they were digging into the earth which held Jason Todd's coffin. She shuddered as a chill snaked down her spine. The boy had been in the ground over twenty years. What could they possibly want...?

And then she knew. She gazed at her husband lying bound and bleeding on the cold uncaring ground and she knew.

He had come here to finish the job begun all those years ago.

To kill Robin and lay him in the grave.

"I know you are there, my dear."
Koriand'r's started. She drew a breath and held it and tried to melt into the shadows. She had been hoping to move up behind them, unseen. It was killing her that Dick was there and she couldn't touch him, talk to him or hold him.

"I thought I saw an omen earlier up on high, like a fire in the sky," the lean creature pivoted towards her, leaning its chin on the handle of the shovel which it had thrust into the upturned earth. "By and by, I realized it was a fire-fly. A Star-fire-fly."

She hesitated, wondering if they were sure or only guessing. Then as she watched, the gravedigger shifted the shovel and turned it so the sharp blade rested on Dick's spinal column near the base of his neck. A booted foot settled on the muddy edge.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are." The figure shook its head and its saffron hair waved like neon wheat. "If you don't I may get so angry that I lose my head." It paused and leaned on the shovel, digging the blade into Dick's flesh. "Or your husband may lose his."

The Tamaranean swallowed hard, then she stood and raising her hands before her, stepped into the light. She stared the creature before her. It had to be him. But something was different. Something was not quite right... As the figure shifted so the lantern-light struck its long angular face, she frowned.

"Not who you were expecting, my dear?" Dick's captor leaned down and locked its fingers in his hair, hauling back on the unconscious man's head. The white-gloved hand twisted it at an odd angle and then two disparate eyes locked on her face. "Hello from Hell, Princess."

She shook her head, her eyes on her husband's face. From the way his neck was bent, it could be snapped in a second. "You belong in Hell," she whispered as she fought to keep the fire from her fingers, "but you haven't come from there. I thought you were the Joker. But you're not. You couldn't be."

The demented creature pouted and for a moment, it seemed as if it might cry.

Then it lifted its head and turned so the twisted golden half of its face was toward her. "Then I must be Two-face."

Koriand'r swallowed hard. Her full lips curled with distaste. "X'Hal...you're both."

"And neither."

The tall woman jumped and a small cry escaped her. She reached out as the creature jerked Dick's head back and then let it fall to the ground. Within seconds, it was on its feet. Bruce had appeared, as was his habit, out of the dark night without a sound.

"Who's idea was this," he growled as he stepped on what they had believed to be his son's grave, "this transgression against nature? Was it Harvey's? Or something born and nursed in your original's warped and demented mind?" The thin creature stepped back so the light illumined it fully, revealing the curious pairing of a finely tailored suit with the undisciplined outfit of a circus clown. Bruce refused to show any reaction to what appeared to be the amalgam of two of his most horrific foes. "Well, Pretender?"

"It was ours." Its chalk-white face eclipsed the lantern like a crescent moon. "Ah, dear Batman, heart of our heart, blood of our blood. We always knew one day you would win. Do you think we went to our grave unprepared? The process was in place, all it took was someone willing to be used..."

"Harvey," Bruce's voice was heavy, "in his search of his impossible cure..."

"The deal was made long ago, when we were still strong and whole—just after this one," it kicked Dick in the back, 'appeared again. He knew where and what. And when the time came, in return for our helping him, he was bound to recreate me. Of course, we never told him the secret..."

"The secret?" Koriand'r's eyes were on her husband. If the Pretender had not been so near.

It turned its blazing eyes on her. "Kill us. Kill him."

"Kory."
She glanced at Dick's foster father.

"Power down." Then he turned to the Pretender. "Go on. I'm listening."

The gloved hand went to the cheek that was hidden in shadow, "Harvey did not fail

us, did not try to cheat, but he could not leave well enough alone. The coin was tossed and I was born, as you see me now. Part of him, part of me and deliberately de-formed and de-arranged." One rail-thin leg lifted as it laughed and planted its jester's boot on Dick's chest. "After a certain time I came to understand the artistry. Poor sensitive Harvey. It's part of why we had to kill him."

Bruce's jaw tightened. He glanced at Dick's wife and she nodded. "It's true." Koriand'r watched the older man closely, understanding in part what he was trying to do. He knew this creature—whom he had just met—probably better than anyone in the world. But it was killing her. If this Pretender touched Dick one more time...

"What are you doing with Jason's grave?"

"Jason?" The mouth turned down in a frown. "There is no Jason. There was no Tim. You made them up to confuse me." It grasped Dick's hair again. "There is only this one. There had always only been this one. When I pull the coffin up, it will be empty. But not for long. I am going to put him inside." Its blue eye winked. "Then he will be dead for sure." The Pretender held Bruce's eyes, shaking its head sadly, "I am afraid you will have to hold another funeral."

Bruce drew a breath and held it. He had thought he might be able to talk it into

releasing Dick. After all, he had been the target. But apparently he had only been the target of Harvey's madness. This creature, this pseudo-Joker—the pretender to the Clown Prince of Crime—was fixated on his ward. For a moment, he was at a loss. Then he saw Dick's eyelids flutter. His own ice-blue eyes flicked to Koriand'r and back to her husband. She nodded. She had seen.

The Pretender had produced the small black keypad with which it controlled the micro-creatures in his son's blood. So he meant to kill him after all. He shifted on his feet. "Another?"

It pointed at the earth just turned from Jason's grave, "There is no body here. We would know. We killed him but he wouldn't stay dead. Two-face wanted to kill him—to destroy you." The Pretender rammed his heel into Dick's chest again and again, punctuating its words, "But...I...have...al...ready...done...that!"

"You will stop now!" Koriand'r couldn't stand it. The aura around her was pulsing and her hands had began to seep crimson fire. She took a step forward. "Don't touch him! Leave him alone!"

"Or what?" The Pretender lifted the keypad and held it before its' face. One finger danced on over the small square buttons. "Or what?" it whispered with menace as a morbid smile touched its twisted lips. "One touch...just one, and your son and your precious husband go 'boom'," it tilted its' head and made a gurgling noise, "aaggghhhhh...splat."

She sought Bruce's face and saw him slowly nod his head.

Koriand'r closed her eyes. So, it had come to this. She knew what he had told her, but now she had to trust. She had to trust the old man with her husband and her son, two of the most precious things in her world. When she looked at him again his eyes spoke volumes, seeking to bridge the gulf of guilt and shame and regret created by the last ten days.

Her jaw tightened. She squared off before the Pretender and said softly, "Go ahead."

The creature frowned, one white finger dangling above the keypad. "What?"

She drew a deep breath and raised her hands, pointing them at its head. "Go ahead, you bastard. Push it! Give me a reason."

"Koriand'r. No."

"Kory, no!"

As she watched Dick rose shakily to his knees, reaching out towards her. Damn him! He was more concerned with preventing her roasting the man who had tried to kill him and kidnapped his son than he was with his own safety. She saw him pivot towards the hybrid-clone that was the sum of the two men who had hated Robin more than any other villain he had ever faced and shuddered as his hand just missed gripping the control device. As he fell to the ground, the finger descended and the Pretender howled in triumph.

And the world went into slow motion.

Dick winced and raised his hands to his head. Bruce raised to his side and fell to his knees, catching him and holding him in his arms. The Pretender spun to gaze at them and froze, and then its finger came down on the pad again and again and again.

Nothing happened.

Then it turned and looked her in the eye.

The tall Princess felt the power of a thousand suns running through her, boiling and

churning and seeking to escape. She glanced at Dick and saw him watching her horrified. His mouth was open and her name was on his lips. The black head shook from side to side.

Her gaze returned to the Pretender and she screamed and lifted her hands above her head and all the power and anger and rage that was within her exploded, showering the night sky like a firework display.

A moment later she walked over to the creature and stood looking down at it. It had fallen to the ground and was cowering near the marker which bore Jason's name. It looked up at her, raising its divided face and wide mismatched eyes. She lifted her fist and struck it with all of the strength and might her muscles contained and smiled as it toppled into the shallow depression like a broken rag-doll.

"Go back to Hell."

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EPILOGUE

"So you figured out how to neutralize the nannites after all?"

Clark was watching his son Bruce and little John. They were playing with Dick. The red-head's father had been pretending he was a villain and allowed them to catch him, but the tables had been turned and he had actually yelped outloud when the two tiny powerhouses wrestled him to the ground and pinned him there.

Bruce pursed his lips and shook his head. "Actually, no, I didn't. They are still in their blood."

"What?" The big man came out of his seat. "But Koriand'r said... How could you...?"

"Dare to let the Joker's clone push the button? Actually..." Bruce sipped some hot tea and relished the feel of it on his scratchy throat. He was going to have admit he was getting old and stop running around in the dark without a coat—or at the very least— thermal undergarments. "Actually, your wife had something to do with that."

"Me?" Diana laughed. It did her heart good to see her old friend looking so vital and alive. She glanced at the trio on the lawn and smiled as Dick sat up, holding the two boys, laughing so hard he was crying. "And just what did I do?"

He put the cup down and stood, soaking in the warm sunlight. "I had spoken with Koriand'r the night before, just after Dick disappeared for the second time. I told her I thought I had found a way—not to neutralize the bugs—but to block the signal that gave them their 'marching' orders. I had the transmitter set to cover the entire estate so John would be safe until I could figure out something else." He ran his hand along the back of his neck and pressed the skin to ease the chronic pain his metal braces caused. "Technically speaking, that meant both he and Dick were safe so long as they were on Wayne lands."

"Technically speaking?" Clark accepted a soda from the Alfred-drone and shook his head. "That's a lot to wager on a technicality."

"It wasn't a wager," the man who had been the Batman said as he greeted his daughter-in-law. She smiled and kissed him on the cheek and watched as he went to rescue his son who had was under attack again.

Diana looked at her. "So what was it, if it wasn't a wager?"

Koriand'r laughed. Her bright green eyes lit and she beamed.

"A gift."

"A gift?" Clark asked as he stood and opened his arms to embrace his son.

"Yes. And an answer to prayer."

END