Harley sat next to Killer Moth's broken form, watching his chest rise and fall with every weak breath. Drury Walker had always been considered by most as just a second-string villian, but he'd realised that the city would be destroyed completely if he didn't join Nightwing and the others.
Harley knew that, even if it was only for one fleeting moment, Drury had enjoyed being the good guy for once.
She liked it too, sometimes. Only after the attack had she realised how truly she had loved a despicable man like Joker. He and his flunkies had run for their pathetic lives as soon as they could. The bastards hadn't counted on Rās knowing exactly where they went to hide and decapitating them all on TV as well.
She had realsied how stupid she'd been, killing for his attention, his approval.
Harley had nothing left except a chance at redeeming herself.
She felt good doing the heroic thing, but it was still hard.
They were on the edge of their very existence. Gotham was little more than an crumbling ruin invaded by servants of a demon. Killer Moth was a hero that could easily die soon. Bane was already gone. So was everyone else they'd fought with in the last five months.
The Atom, Blue Devil, Huntress, even Two-Face and Poison Ivy.
Harley shuddered remembering Ivy, feeling like crying.
She and everyone else had died for this miserable, brutal city.
They could all end up dead for Gotham.
Harley buried her face in her hands and sighed as Killer Moth kept struggling to breathe easily.
And she realised that sooner or later, they would end up dead for Gotham.
Anarky and Static sat on the floor in the guard storeroom. They were both barely older than kids.
Virgil preferred to only be called Static when he had his mask on. He didn't want to lose everything from his old life, least of all his name.
All they had left of childhood were memories, his name, and a necklace Virgil's mother had given him when he was thirteen.
He had only been in Gotham visiting Tim about some new equipment to be shipped to the recently christened Titans headquarters.
And sitting on the top of Wayne Tower with Tim and some hotdogs he'd picked up at a stall in the street below, Virgil had felt like he was part of something real, something that was worth fighting for.
But then the bombs had gone off. Hundreds had died in the streets below them and Wayne Tower nearly collapsed beneath them. He would have died without his powers propelling him off the roof and roughly but safely down onto a neighboring roof.
But he wasn't fast enough to catch Tim.
Wayne Tower now lay on one side with the corpses of it's former employess still rotting inside. There were almost no skyscrapers left in Gotham. The bombs had taken care of that.
And no matter how much Virgil tried, he couldn't get the image of Tim falling to the burning ground below, his body buried amongst the rubble and never found.
Anarky had only joined this team in order to survive a little longer. These consumerism-fueled criminals were horrid creatures, especially Nightwing. He and Batman and all the rest had fooled themselves in believing he was the hero, and millions had paid for his folly with their lives.
Only by ridding ourselves of the dirt of corruption can we achieve true power, he thought to himself.
Riddler and Deadshot sat quietly in the asylum's computer system center. Edward typed furiously at the keyboard trying to unlock the data on the chip they'd gone to steal, the one Bane had died getting, while Floyd calmly disassembled his prized rifle and reassembled it several times over.
"Damn it," muttered Edward, banging the table.
"Hey, hey, easy, Nygma. You can't just go up to a computer system and expect it to work for ya. Ya gotta treat it like a sexy chick. You buy her a drink, tell her she's hot a million times, put up the "sensitive guy" act, then before you know it, she's waking up next to you and you're promising her you'll call back."
"Mister Lawton, if you really insist on talking while I'm working, please talk about soemthing other than your helplessly pathetic dating tips."
"Hey! That is a proven technique, Eddie. You do what I tell you and you'll be swimming in sex in a matter of days."
"This may come as a surprise to you, Floyd," said Edward, turning slightly to look at the assassin, "but getting the girl isn't my priority right now."
"Oh, yeah, you've got all your attention on the violent army of ninjas occupying Gotham. How could I have overlooked that?"
"Just let me work in some peace and quiet, Deadshot," said edward, going back to his still-failing attempt at breaking into the system.
Dick lay back and slept a restless sleep. It was his first in a long, long time, but that didn't help at all.
Neither did the nightmares.
All he ever saw when he closed his eyes was Barbara glancing at him with a look of nothing but sadness in her eyes, and then the flames enveloping her as the Batcave collapsed and fell around them. Jason had had to pull him away so that they could escape the emergency exit before the bombing stopped and the footsoldiers ame for them. Alfred had told them simply to go, and not look back. He'd collected a shotgun from his room, then marched up the stairs.
As Jason and Dick had been rushing through the escape tunnel, all they had heard were gunshots and then a yell, then nothing.
It's your fault, Dick...you could have held them off and told Alfred to go with Jason...you could've found some way of tracking Bruce and Damien before Rās murdered them...You could've pulled Barbara out of the way...it's all your fault and you know it, Dick...you murdered the woman you loved...
Dick woke with a violent and panicked cry, sweating bullets.
All he saw now was Barbara, and the look in her eyes, just before the flames...
And all he could do was suffer, becuase he felt beyond anything else that one fact above all others consumed him.
He felt he was right in feeling guilty for Barbara's death.
He felt almost as if he deserved it.