(A/N): Ha, remember when I said I'd try to update more frequently? Apparently I lied, but I'm not lying when I said I really missed typing drabbles for this story. And with that, I've returned! To all those who reviewed in the time I was away, I appreciate your suggestions and I will address them in future prompts! But for now, I hope you all enjoy these four new stories, and please, go ahead and read on!


Twenty-Five: Demon

"Tell me now, my Good Lady and Dark Knight," Etrigan began as he paced closer to them from the shadows they had summoned him from; scarlet red eyes were poignantly bright in the dimness of the room, "Why you desire my hellish presence. 'Tis not often I've solved a human's plight."

A singular, thick brow arched upon demonic features as he vociferated his unspoken question.

"But, what say you? Time is of the essence."

Zatanna was the first to speak, stepping forward and departing from the comfort of Bruce's imperious company. The demon, acquainted with her previously through supernatural occasion, leered and bowed in a manner almost genial for the likes of hellspawn.

She spoke, but devoted her attention to retrieving a small, black amulet from her pocket, and held it out to awaiting clawed fingers. "We're looking for the owner of this talisman; Bruce can't trace it and I can't get a hold on it with my magic."

Etrigan allowed the moment's pause as it passed to his hand, dwarfed in his palm. Zatanna beat a hasty retreat back to the solidarity of her friend.

"Will he know who it belongs to?" Bruce murmured quietly; a comforting hand rested on her shoulder and she rose her own to clasp it to her.

"Well, if he doesn't, I'm not the one about to ask Circe." She responded dryly. "Maybe you can sing at her again and she'll spill her guts. It saved Diana last time, didn't it?"

Bruce took the moment to response to her implication with a chilling glare as she suppressed the fond memory, coupled with a snort; however, Etrigan interrupted them with the completion of his inspection. Pale-white fangs glinted with the unsubtle trace of ferality suffused by a thin veneer of civility.

"Ye of little faith, I've found you your boy; this trinket stinks of his sin and his vice." He tossed the amulet up in his palm and it ascended for an instant before returning back to his hand. "But 'fore you continue your madcap ploy; know Etrigan answers your whims…for a price."

Zatanna and Bruce shared a slow, meaningful glance and gravitated closer to each other.

"What kind of price do you mean?" Bruce demanded, voice turning rough and defensive as he beat her to the inquiry.

"How precious. Nothing as stark as a life; and not the one of your magical wife!" Etrigan chuckled lowly, one arm folding over the other. Zatanna held up a hand to signal a request for a personal conference before turning on her heel to summon Bruce to discuss with her in quiet.

"See why I don't like dealing with him?" she accused through gritted teeth, eyes narrowing at him in a manner that said 'this-is-what-you-get-for-asking-demons-for-help.'

"Because of the rhyming, or the fact that he thinks we're married?" Bruce asked stoically; now it was his turn to suppress a smirk.

"Aaannd these are the moments that make me wish I took Dick over you." Zatanna glowered at him, though her scowl was rounded out by a blush.

"What? So you could hand Etrigan him instead?" was the whispered reply; a jab in the arm was what he received for his troubles as they turned back to the current situation at hand.

Twenty-Six: A Moment in Time

Dick meandered the estate with the casual proclivity of a wanderer looking for idle entertainment. Dark columns imposed in his periphery as concealing shadows loomed past the sunshine of the open hallway windows. From the outside that beckoned a cool breeze, the lack of natural sound would have been eerie if he hadn't become acclimated to Wayne Manor's unnatural atmosphere by now.

It was peaceful, but solitary; and if anything, a ten-year-old boy desired company above all other things. A quick dash through an open door revealed a lack of companionship, an inverted wrist turning open another doorknob instigated similar results. This wouldn't do.

Hands instinctively cupped around his mouth; the echo as he called for humanity reverberated once, twice, thrice, but went unanswered.

"Bruce? Alfred?"

As he ambled down the hallway, he continue to test doors for a sign of familiarity but continually found vacant rooms, abandoned tables, and discarded relics of the past. Dick began to wonder if he was truly the only one in Wayne Manor at the moment, when the faint murmur of conversation distracted his mental ramblings.

He drew to the noise like moth to a flame, nearing the living room soon to be revealed around the short staircase. A clever quip as to the state of his abandonment was prepared on his lips as he rounded the corner, but stopped short.

Bruce and Zatanna (vaguely, he wondered when she had arrived, but did little more to question it) sat together on the couch, quietly asleep.

His mentor's head lolled in slumber, resting on the magician's shoulder, a protective arm draped around her waist, defensive to the last even in the refuge of sleep. Zatanna muttered, a half-spoken, half-mumble of conversation in rest, and instinctively Bruce moved further into their embrace. Dick noted that one of her legs reclined in Bruce's lap as her arm wrapped around Bruce's shoulder, as protectively as he held her. Her head had rolled back at a gentle angle to repose on a mauve couch cushion, and her shoulders bobbed and sank with each slumbering breath she took.

The television was on; casting a soft, comforting glow on the two of them as a newscaster cheerily reported the next week's forecast. That was where Dick had heard the conversation from; certainly not the two resting on the couch.

Silently, quickly, he turned away from the couple illuminated by the soft morning glow emerging through the living room windows, and returned back down the hallway he had descended from.

He'd find something else to do in the meantime.

Twenty-Seven: Never Again

The opaque morass of the excess sewer water issued out and downwards in a thick, imperceptible and obscure waterfall underneath the starry twilight. Nearby, the noise of the ocean could be heard as the surplus glut pooled in a miniature slough directly underneath the rotund maw of a pipe that interrupted the uniformity of the land it stuck out from.

The torrent continued, undisturbed by the current or the overbearing presence of nearby humanity, save to pour out the necessary byproduct of detritus; the routine of everyday pollution continued to pour out into the ocean. But, unexpectedly, this was interrupted by an implosion of grime and dirt-caked fluid that emerged from the mouth of the pipe. It was an amoebic object that as the grit tumbled away from it in rapidly solidifying chunks, revealed itself to be a hand, gloved in black and grasping for purchase.

It found it after a moment, and underneath the thin layer of the cloth, knuckles turned pale with exertion as a forearm clad in gray pulled over the top of the conduit. Another moment and there was a gasp of breath, yearning for air and two hands clad in what was previously immaculate-white clutched the pipe's roofing.

"Careful," came the warning intonation that guided the hands, and then there was a grunt of exertion. The first was followed by a quieter, more exhausted one as first came an arm, angled at the elbow to guide themselves up until it revealed a face, covered in mud and other definitively disgusting slick. A pink tongue, thankfully untouched by the mire, stuck out in a bright contrast to the rest of the dirty yet otherwise lovely face in an unashamed noise of disgust.

"Bruce, there is dirt in my dirt." Zatanna Zatara wheezed as she hauled herself over the channel's roof. In a clumsy fumble-crawl to the nearby solid ground, she spared a second to glance behind her to make sure that her companion, as disheveled and as consumed by muck as she was, was following. "I think we're past the point of caution."

She held out a hand to him as he made a few careful, weary steps to the firm ground that was not tested by gravity in a competition of slipperiness and grime; he accepted it and she grunted as she guided him to the safety of the unmoving earth.

Once that task was completed successfully, she acquiesced to reclining on her back in an unruly fashion. Stiff hair clung to her face, already solidifying with exposure to the open air that was a welcome relief to the stagnant atmosphere they had recently surrounded themselves with. Her chest rose, heaving and falling as she reintroduced herself to the sweet, sweet air she had previously taken for granted. Besides her, her companion plummeted to the ground in a fatigued heap of limbs and sewer-contaminated uniform.

"Let's go in a sewer to escape, Zee," Zatanna gasped as she tilted her head to look at Bruce, who was concentrating on regaining the lungs he had lost to the physical exertion expended upon guiding them through the passage, "It will be fun, Zee."

She turned her head back to stare up at the stars that dazzled and twinkled above them. "Oh, sure, Bruce. Sounds like a great idea. Can't be anything wrong with that, can there?"

Bruce grunted in exasperation but said nothing, rolling over on his back to admire the stars in the same fashion that she did. Zatanna opened her mouth to say something else, but conceded with a sigh, deeply so, and resigned herself to something a little more civilized.

"Next time, I choose where we go for the date."

Twenty-Eight: Renaissance

"Look, just think about it like this," Zatanna explained as she tried her best not to crack a grin, sidling around him as they paced down the dirt road while she maintained a weather eye on Tim (he weaved through the ebbing, chattering throng), "Tim gets his chance to go to a Renaissance Fair, and you actually get a chance to see sunlight for the first time in years."

Bruce walked, stiffly and irritable, through the teeming crowds with his company, pausing only to aim a well-placed frown down at her. She diverted her gaze to rather thoroughly admire a prancing jester, red and green checkered hat bobbing with his sprightly display of acrobatics.

"And besides," Dick joked on his left-hand side, "For once you could dress up in the day and no one would even look at you sideways."

The Ex-Boy Wonder pretended to grimace as he received a scowl for his remark. "Sorry, too close to home?"

"You think?" Bruce replied humorlessly; for anyone who knew him, it was the closest he would assume to sarcasm at times like that.

"Well, at least Tim is putting that advice to good use," Zatanna commented sardonically and pointed to Bruce's newest ward, who was currently volunteering himself for a "squire-in-training" crash course. The gleam in his eye as he appraised the blade the swordsman palmed was rather unsubtle; Zatanna and Dick shared a glance.

"Yup," Dick excused himself. "Better go make sure this time doesn't end up like the 'con."

He disappeared into the press and shove of people to follow after Tim, leaving Zatanna and Bruce beside each other as they ventured to other destinations the Ren Fair offered. They took a moment to admire with horrified amusement a fire-juggling sword-swallower and then continued to walk; Zatanna spoke first.

"C'mon, Bruce. If you're a Dark Knight when the sun goes down, at least learn to appreciate the one that fought during the day." She teased; his hand reached for hers as they rounded a corner, and he gave her a doubtful expression in reply.

"You really think they did that in Medieval Times?" Bruce asked, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb to the skinny man that sang whilst juggling tomatoes as he maintained his balance on a unicycle (while not even mentioning the garishly bright polka-dotted cloth he had donned).

"Well, maybe when they really put themselves into the drink," she retorted with a grin. "Now come on, Mr. Grumpy Knight. Enjoy a cup of mead with me as we count off the historical inaccuracies."

"There's not enough alcohol in the world for that, Zee." Bruce deadpanned, but allowed himself to be dragged along to a tackily-painted tent; in the distance, the faint whimsical music of minstrels played into the cloudless afternoon sky.


(A/N): What did you think? Please, review, comment or critique them in any way you see fit! Have any suggestions for prompts and drabbles, and I will gladly take them; I apologize to those who have made suggestions but I have not addressed them yet. I promise I will include them in the future!

Additionally, on another important note, I would like to announce that I am in the process of making a new story featuring Zatanna and Bruce in what I feel is a story that will make amends for what I attempted to make with my previous, old project If You Can't Catch Up, Don't Wait Up.

While it takes place in a different universe, I feel that the story is of a higher quality and has a more organized plot than that of what I envisioned with said previous story, and that it will finally put to rest the unnecessary luggage I felt with never finishing that certain fanfic. I hope that you will all read it when it comes out, and I wish you all a good day! Keep reading!