A/N: Thank you for the reviews! And thank you to Angel Queen for the beta :) Here's the next chappie - both father and daughter are in for a shock...

Chapter Six - Answers And Questions

"Urgh..."

Diana cracked open her eyes, waking with a headache the size of the Metrotower. An familiar voice spoke up from nearby, relief evident. "Welcome back, Princess."

She looked blearily at Bruce's masked face, hovering above her. "...What'd I drink?" she murmured.

He smirked. "Nothing. Someone threw a tank at you when you weren't looking."

"Oh." Diana blinked, then asked, "Did they get away with it?"

"No," he assured. "No, they're all in one of Audrey's colder jail cells." The smirk on his face spoke of his satisfaction. "Also, her Majesty asked me to remind you that she has not seen her goddaughter in some time and would like that situation to be remedied in a timely fashion."

Diana grinned a little – laughing didn't seem like the best idea given the state of her head at the moment – and then pushed herself up into a sitting position. "Good. Thank you."

Predictably, Bruce pushed her back down again. When he spoke, his voice was gentle. "No, Diana. You could be concussed, you need to lie down until I get you to the med-bay."

She smiled, gave into the impulse to squeeze his hand. "I'll be fine, Bruce."

"Humour me."

She rolled her eyes. "Just because it's you."

"And the fact you know I could make you if I had to," he supplied with a flash of a grin.

"In your dreams," she retorted, inwardly grinning. They were flirting again, they were back to their natural banter. Thank the gods – she might be able to make things better. Make them right.

They were alone in the bottom part of the Javelin; it looked as though she'd been the only one injured. That was a little embarrassing... but what she had to do now might be more so. "Bruce..." she began, "I'm sorry I –"

Captain Atom's voice interrupted. "We're about to dock now, Batman. Is Wonder Woman still stable for transport to the Infirmary?"

Diana spoke up, not looking away from Bruce. "I'm fine, Captain, thank you."

"Glad to hear that, ma'am."

They docked soon after, and once he'd seen her to the med-bay, Bruce left for Gotham. Diana sighed. She'd missed her chance for today.


"I'm not not talking to you, Nicky!" Sarah sighed.

"You are so not talking to me!" he protested. "You haven't said more than two words to me all day, Sarah – you were talking more to Emma Reilly than me, and she's in first grade!"

She shrugged. She'd been talking to Emma Reilly because she'd accidentally stumbled upon the little girl crying over something. Sarah wasn't good with tears, but tentatively asked if there was anything she could do.

"I-I'm trying to make a picture for my granddad but I can't d-do it and it looks nothing like what I w-w-wanted it to and he's gonna hate it and I really want him t-to like it and he's gonna h-hate it!"

Sarah had looked critically at the finger painting she'd been working on. It looked like a... "Is that a fish?" she asked.

Emma had wiped her nose on the back of her hand. Sarah – naturally, since Alfred had had a hand in her upbringing – wrinkled her nose and waited for the reply. "Uh-huh. He likes fishing." She sniffed. "So... So you can tell that's what it is?"

"You bet!" Sarah had grinned, nodding enthusiastically.

"Mommy says that he'd love anything I made him. Do you think she's right?"

Sarah honestly had no idea. That sounded nice, and like something a granddad would do, but then... how would she know? She was never going to have one after all.

She nodded anyway.

Still, the thought of her grandparents had stayed with her all day. Grandma Hippolyta didn't really count as a normal grandparent – she'd be around a long time after Sarah was an old, old lady after all. In fact, thinking about Daddy's parents had driven even the thought of the clock from her mind. Nicky, however, couldn't know that.

And he was right. She had been giving him the cold shoulder, intentionally or not. "You know Mommy calls us the exact same thing?" she said, making a stab at conversation.

Her brother frowned at her. "Huh?"

"Yeah," she continued. "Think about it. Little sun and little star. The sun is a star."

"Oh."

He apparently didn't have a reply to that, so the car journey passed in silence until they got to the manor. Figuring she'd given it her best shot, Sarah went back to thinking.

She knew – in theory – what had happened to her grandparents. She knew that Daddy had seen it. She'd never seen anything about it though; no newspaper articles, no news clips. Nothing except what she'd learned from Alfred, and while Alfred had assured her that her grandparents had been the most wonderful people in the world – naturally, since they'd had Daddy – he hadn't exactly been free with details. She didn't know what perfume Grandma Martha used, or what kind of doctor Granddad Thomas had been. She wanted to ask Daddy those kinds of things, but knew she couldn't. He'd answer, but then he'd get sad, and she didn't want that.

After talking to Emma, though, she really wanted to know things like that. What had happened exactly? Who had done it? How could anyone do something so cruel? For some reason she couldn't really name, she didn't want Nicky to see what she was looking at, so she left him in the games room saying she was going to study, then opened her laptop and began surfing the net. It didn't take long looking in the on-line archive of the Gotham Gazette to find what she was looking for.

She mouthed the headline. "Gotham philanthropists gunned down in vicious armed robbery..." She clicked on it, read through the article. "Eight-year-old heir sole survivor..." The further she read, the worse she felt. She was six, and eight wasn't that much older… Poor Daddy! She was sure she couldn't survive if it was her mommy and daddy, how on earth had he? To suddenly find himself completely alone, with no one to kiss him goodnight or read him a bedtime story –

She pressed a hand over her mouth to stifle the sob that erupted, but hot tears sneaked their way down her cheeks. The urge to demand Alfred take her to Wayne Enterprises just so she could hug Daddy was almost overwhelming. She wanted to shut her laptop and not look anymore, but her eyes kept scanning the lines of print.

The attack occurred at approximately ten-forty-seven, with police arriving on the scene six minutes later.

It was unbelievable. In the space of a minute, Daddy's entire world had changed. "Ten-forty-seven..." she whispered. "Oh Daddy..."

Then something clicked in her head. Ten-forty-seven. "Ten-forty-seven!" Her mouth fell open, her tears instantly forgotten. That was it, she knew it was. That was the time she needed to turn the clock hands to.

"Great Hera, that's it!"

The wait until bedtime was torture. When she was lying in bed, wriggling her toes in excitement, it felt like Christmas Eve. Unlike Christmas Eve, though, she refused to fall asleep. Every year she and Nicky tried to catch Santa in the act, and every time they failed. Then again, a man who could travel the world in one night with flying reindeer was a worth adversary. Daddy, she was going to catch red-handed, doing...whatever it was he did behind that clock.

She was sure he would be in there – Alfred had read them the second chapter of Moby Dick tonight, because Daddy was in a 'conference call with colleagues in Tokyo' in his study and couldn't be disturbed. Sarah knew that wasn't true – when she'd passed the closed doors earlier, there wasn't even a peep of sound coming from inside, not even in Japanese, which she knew Daddy spoke.

Despite her best efforts, though, the long day and the warmth of her bed worked their magic – by nine p.m. she was fast asleep.

At eleven, however, she was woken by a light. She groaned, and opened her eyes, realising what it was. She'd opened the curtains again once Nicky was out, hoping that staring out at the city's lights would help keep her awake. The Bat-Signal had just gone up, casting a shaft of light to fall into the nursery.

Sarah grinned. Thank you, Batman. Assuming he was actually real, of course.

Pushing thoughts of the Dark Knight aside, Sarah quietly pulled her dressing gown on and tiptoed out of the room. Time to find out what Daddy was up to. As she passed the top of the stairs, there was light spilling from under the kitchen doors, so Alfred was still up. She'd have to extra quiet then. She couldn't risk getting caught, not now.

Getting to the study doors, she pushed them open with a wince as the hinges creaked. She had her excuse ready if Daddy really was in here – she was after another book, because she couldn't sleep and she didn't want to spoil Moby Dick for Nicky.

However, her suspicions were right – the room was dark, and there was no one inside. She moved over to the desk and grabbed the chair, dragging it over to the clock. Then she opened the glass door and stood up on the seat. She took a deep breath and bit her lip, then moved the hands to ten-forty-seven.

For a second, nothing happened. Sarah's heart sank. She'd been wrong, there was something else she was missing –

Then the clock started moving toward her. Moving faster than she thought possible, she scrambled to get off the chair and pull it back. By the time she'd put it behind the desk again, there was a large, black hole where the clock had been.

And steps.

Going down.

She stared, bug-eyed, at it for more than a minute. Then a fox barked outside, and she jumped, realising how risky this was. Taking yet another deep breath and holding it, she walked forward, and down the steps. They didn't go on for too long before there was another archway, and white, electric light at the end of it.

Once there, Sarah's feet froze in place.

Her jaw dropped.

It was several seconds before she remembered to breathe again.

"Whoa."


Batman pulled into the Cave feeling a rare sense of satisfaction – he'd finally caught up to the recently escaped Poison Ivy before she unleashed a mutating virus that would turn every rose in the state into a finger-eating monster. The former Dr. Isley was now in Arkham once more, and expected to be unconscious for the next seventy-six hours.

Judging by the white-green light in the Cave, the computer was in use. Bruce frowned; it was unlike Alfred to use the computer while he was on patrol unless he'd requested some information about a specific person or company on file.

When he left the car, though, it turned out it was extremely unlike Alfred. Considerably younger, for a start; blonde for another, and not to mention female.

Sarah turned with a wave, still sitting in hischair. "Hey, Daddy." The grin on her face was bright even in the dim lighting of the Cave.

Bruce could only stand and stare. Sarah had apparently expected that. "How was patrol?" she asked. "I've been following it – sort of – on the radio, but all I heard was what the police knew. How did you get Poison Ivy?"

He blinked. Blinking was good. It was a step on the road to speech.

For a moment, father and daughter just stared at each other before Sarah giggled. "You're not talking, Daddy."

He swallowed. "Sarah?"

She turned back to her game of Solitaire. "Yes?"

He moved forward, switched the monitor off and spun the chair around. "Why – How – When –"

She smiled smugly and put her fingers up one at a time as she answered. "I couldn't sleep; I stood on the chair to open the clock in the study; and about half an hour after you went out."

He'd gone speechless again. Sarah put her hands up and pulled his cowl back, then leaned forward and kissed his cheek. "You have to ask the question to get an answer, Daddy."

He took her hands. "Sarah...how long have you known?"

"That you're Batman?" she shrugged. "Not long. About three days or so."

"That long?"

She nodded. "Yeah. Nicky doesn't know, so you don't have to worry about that."

"Who told you?" he asked urgently. A thought occurred to him. Surely she wouldn't have… "Your mother?"

Sarah shot him a truly disgusted look and got off the chair. "I'm six, Daddy, not stupid. It's the only thing that makes sense."

He raised an eyebrow. "It is?"

"Yeah. I mean, I read the papers, Daddy. They always say what a horrible person you are, and I know you're not like that, so logically you have to be hiding something. It didn't take a genius to figure it out. Though," she added as an afterthought, "technically, since my IQ is one-fifty-six, I am a genius."

He chuckled slightly. Technically you're a princess too. "No arguments here." Then he sobered. "Sarah, I'm impressed you figured it out, but you can't come down here anymore."

She frowned. "Why not?"

"Because... it's the Batcave. Do you have any idea how dangerous it is –"

"Why is it dangerous?" she asked. "You don't bring criminals back to the Cave, and I don't want to come on patrol with you. Yet."

What exactly he was choking on, Bruce had no idea. He was definitely no longer breathing, that was for damn sure.

Sarah laughed again. He glared. She carried on laughing, then took his hand. "C'mon, let's go get some of Alfred's hot chocolate and you can tell me about patrol –"

"Does Alfred know you know?"

She shrugged. "Probably. I haven't told him, but he's Alfred, so..."

Bruce pulled his daughter to a stop. "Sarah, listen to me."

She looked up with wide eyes. "What is it, Daddy?"

"Promise me you won't..." He watched her eyes get defiant, prepare to argue, and gave a mental sigh. There was no way he'd get to her agree to anything she didn't want to. This was the start of that slippery slope he'd knew would come one day, even if he'd desperately hoped that it wouldn't. "Promise me you won't go anywhere near the platform for the Batmobile, or anywhere near the weaponry. The computer only, young lady, understood?"

She nodded with a blinding grin. "Okay, Daddy! I promise! Now come on – hot chocolate!"

Watching his daughter run up the stairs, Bruce let a groan escape him. Now what do I do?

Diana was going to kill him. If Sarah knew about him, then she probably knew about her mother as well. Even if she said that Nick didn't know yet, at least about him, Bruce would wager that it was only a matter of time before he did. Sarah did not keep secrets from her twin for long.

Bruce gave her a week before she spilled the beans. Then both of them would know.

Hence why Diana was going to kill him. They had worked so hard to keep the twins from the life of superheroes, and now that hard work was crumbling before his very eyes. Bruce just knew she'd find a way to blame him for it, even if it was just to blame him for Sarah's keen insights.

Damn it.


A/N: Review please!