The sound of honking horns and blaring sirens in the distance were the only sounds to be heard clearly. A low thrum of a moving engine filled the background. Barbara sat in the passenger's seat of her father's car, leaning to her right and letting her face press up against the window. The cold glass was a welcomed sensation; anything to keep her mind of the heat of the flames. The fire…

She couldn't bear to look at her father. James Gordon was driving her home as swiftly as he could, and she could almost feel all the things he wanted to say to her. The encouragements, the consoling. But it would have rang hollow this soon, he knew that. So he sat in agonized silence, hoping his little angel would be all right. His daughter was in a daze, not thinking about much of anything. Her eyes listlessly followed whatever objects passed by. Gotham was tired, and turning in for the night. There was almost no light left on the streets now; they'd been at the restaurant for an hour after her father came to her rescue. She'd been stopped by a Lieutenant asking for her to fill a police report. It had taken Jim half an hour and a very angry tirade to remind his subordinate just what a sixteen year old girl had been through.

"You think you'd go through hell like that, and the first thing you'd want to do is RELIVE IT?" he'd bellowed at the man.

She would be filling it out tomorrow, Jim had told her in the car. He wished to heaven there were some way to avoid it, but they needed her to. She hadn't minded so much at the moment he'd told her, and indeed had given him a full recounting of the incident—she needed someone to share it with, the confusing horror of it all. At that time she was focused on Arnold's disappearance, begging her dad to tell her if he knew what had happened to her friend. He was only able to shake his head "no", disappointed. His officers had searched the entire building, but nothing had come up.

She was still dazed and exhausted when her thigh began to vibrate.

The odd sensation roused her quite quickly from her stupor, and she fished a hand into her pocket to feel a vibrating cell phone. She fished it out and glanced at the number displayed on the screen: Bruce Wayne's. She moved to answer it; but before she pressed the answer button, she stopped herself. She set the cell phone in one of the cup holders, and not a moment after her eyes shut.

As Jim pulled up to a red light, a rare source of illumination in the streets of Gotham, he glanced over at his daughter, fast asleep with her face still pressed up against the window. His crinkled lips stretched into a worn smile.

"Come on kid," he whispered. "let's get you home."


Barbara's eyes fluttered open. It was dark, but she was certain she recognized this place. She tried to move her arm, to find it stuck underneath a sheet. As her eyes began to adjust to the darkness, and her cognitive faculties returned, she finally remembered the feeling of her own bed. She sat up, and discovered she'd been changed into her pajamas and tucked in. Her eyes shot to the clock, which displayed the time of 12:48. She felt very flustered, confused as vague shards of memory began to piece themselves back together. She remembered what had happened that night, immediately pressed a hand to her throat to feel it; all her hands touched was a carefully-applied bandage. In fact…

She looked at her hands in the darkness, barely able to make out several wads of gauze and bandages applied to her palms. It was if she'd slept through a trip to the hospital. She swung her legs out from under the covers, sitting on the side of her bed and looking over to the end table to her left. Small and humble, it had barely enough room for a lamp and perhaps a book. The Old Man and the Sea occupied that spot tonight, but her eyes warily took in the sight of something on top of it.

Barbara flicked on the lamp, letting dim yellow light wash over a small cup of medicine and a note. She picked up the slip of paper, fumbling a bit with the bulky dressing restricting her.

Your father thought you'd be out until morning, but just in case, this'll help with the stinging. And didn't you already finish your Hemingway shelf? I swapped your book with that Chalker book you bought last week, just in case you needed some reading material tonight. Sleep tight, little angel.

Alone or not, Barbara couldn't help but blush when she read the last words. She smiled, though. She sipped down the medicine, which tasted something like chalk-coated cherries, and picked up the book. She stared at the cover, at the hordes of strange, pea pod-like people chasing after the man in front. This would be an odd one, to be sure.

But try as she might, she couldn't force herself to start reading. Odd, considering she normally had to force herself to stop reading a book. Her mind was on other things, particularly the boy that had tried to call her earlier.

"Oh wow," she muttered out loud. "He's probably having a heart attack by now."

She stood up from her bed, almost immediately toppling over from the daze she still seemed to be fighting off. She caught herself on the wall, to see her phone resting on the other side of the bed. Still propping herself up, she scooped down with her arm to grab it before pushing off and flopping back to her bed. The impact immediately sent unpleasant shock through her tired body, bringing up an intense desire to scream.

She stared up at the ceiling for a moment, unsure of what to do with herself, even as the phone rested in her hand. All in all, she didn't want to talk to anyone. But she knew Bruce deserved to at least know she was all right. Sighing, she brought the phone into her vertically-faced view, and dialed his number.

The phone rang exactly once as she brought the gadget up to her ear, before a click came from the other end.

"Barbara?" asked the familiar voice of the Wayne boy, just a subtle dash of panic layered in his voice.

"Yeah, who else would it be?" she asked teasingly.

"J?"

"Thanks for the flattering comparison, Bruce." Barbara said, deadpan. Wayne was uninterested in continuing their back-and-forth for long, though, and dove straight into the actual matter at hand.

"Are… are you all right?" he asked. "Alfred told me about what happened today, we called your dad and…"

"I'm fine." Barbara said, cutting him off. He couldn't see the growing grin on her face. "But thanks for checking on me; I just got a few nicks, I'll be okay."

"Well, all right. If you're sure." Bruce said, sounding fairly unsure himself. "How's Arnold holding up?"

Barbara was actually a little surprised that Bruce had remembered the skinny boy at all, let alone care enough to ask after him. "He's, um." she stopped, contemplating his strange disappearance. "I don't know, actually." she admitted.

"You… don't know?" Bruce asked, not buying it from his tone.

"Yeah, it was the weirdest thing." Barbara told him. "In fact… he was acting really off the whole time we were in the restaurant, like he knew what was going to happen next."

"What?"

"Well, when we sat down," Barbara began. "our waiter was that big mob boss, Sionis' nephew. Arnold pretty much flipped off the handle and begged for us to leave, and a few seconds later the front of the building blew up."

The other end of the line was silent for a few moments. Barbara began to fear that Bruce had hung up, but at last he said "Anything more?"

Uh oh. She remembered that tone. It was one she hadn't heard since the first week she'd met the boy; he'd used it while they were tracking down the camera thief. He was serious, now.

"Uh… yeah." the Gordon girl replied, thinking back to the day. She tried not to let it show in her voice just how horrifying the experience was; the slightest tremble was wont to set off an alarm in Bruce's head. "He flipped out just a few seconds before some guy snuck up and nabbed me; he made me switch phones with him, and then he ran off and hid. A minute or two later, the phone rang, and get this, 'cause it's weird—the guy calling was this gangster's boss, and ordered him to surrender!"

The line was silent for even longer this time. Bruce's voice seemed harsher when he spoke again. "You don't find that suspicious?"

A prick in Barbara's mind set her adrenaline rushing, like she'd been caught in a lie. "What are you talking about?" she asked, with a bit more bite than she'd intended.

"I convinced Cobblepot to give me a peek at the entries to tomorrow's talent show."

"Oh god, that's tomorrow?" Barbara asked, cutting him off. She'd completely lost track of the week.

"Yeah, it is." Bruce confirmed. "And in the entries—look, okay, did Arnold tell you what his act was for tomorrow's show?"

"No, now that you mention it, he didn't."

"He's a ventriloquist, Barbara. A good ventriloquist can make himself sound like a completely different person. And do you know his puppet's name?"

Barbara shook her head, her mind reeling from these ideas Bruce was planting, and unable to even realize he couldn't see these motions.

"His name is Scarface."

At once, Barbara's mind rushed back to that name, and the events surrounding it. The man in the mask, waving his gun; and Arnold, so vehemently denying anything to do with the name.

"Oh god. It makes sense." The words slipped out of her mouth, beyond her control. She tried to form words, but none came to her. She sat in silence, desperately trying to think of something to say; something to defend her new friend. He couldn't have been responsible for that, right? If he was, then why—

That was the answer she was looking for. "But, Bruce, he defended me. He saved my life! If he was responsible for that, w-wouldn't he have just let me die?"

"Even crooks have friends, Barbara," her friend chided. "but whatever's happening, I plan on getting to the bottom of it. Whatever you do, stay away from Arnold."

"Wait, you can't order me what to do!" she yelled into the phone. Her protests came too late, and she heard a click as Bruce hung up on her. She buried her head into the pillow to muffle a scream as she tossed the glossy phone into the wall, and let it recoil to the floor.

Her scream stopped, and something dawned on her. Looking up warily from her pillow, she saw the phone on her floor, screen face-down. Not her phone. Arnold's. She stood up, stumbling over to the little device and picked it up, examining it and feeling dull shock hit her drowsy mind.

How the hell did Bruce know to call her on Arnold's phone?


In the slums of Gotham City, a steady rain was pouring. Rains were common, even this late into the year, and they added an extra layer of grime to an already disgusting part of the city. Trash littered the streets, and a few lit oil barrels glazed the alleyways in orange light. Shadows flitted back and forth as those stuck on the streets jockeyed for places to stay out of the rain. High above them, though, one creature took the water in without complaint.

The Bat was on patrol, kneeling on the edge of a roof and looking out over the streets. No crime to be seen for miles, just miserable men and beasts trying to stay warm and dry. He paid them no mind, his eyes focused through binocular lenses on a different target: a rust-brown apartment building on the other side of the street, with darkened windows—a few of them shattered—and no signs of movement within.

"Alfred," the Bat asked in his baritone voice. "Are you sure this is the right building? It looks... terrible. Like it was deserted, and not recently."

"I assure you Master Bruce," the voice on the other end of the line replied. "my sources are as reliable as your penchant for stalking. This is Arnold's home, all right."

"I'm going in." Bruce declared, removing the visual aid from his eyes, and clipping it back to his belt. He stood, pulling out one of his newest toys. He referred to it as the Batline.

He took aim with the Batline, suppressing infuriating memories of Alfred sniggering at the name. The hell's wrong with Batline?

The device was set against his knuckles, and held with said knuckles facing straight up to connect it to the opposing building's wall. He clicked a button with his thumb, jettisoning a cable from each end of a little spool and two-ended barrel on top. One side clinched the brick outcropping that housed the stairway down, just behind him. The other spiraled across the street and connected with Arnold's home, right above a window.

I made it, and it's a damned zipline. Simple.

Batman tugged the line once with his gadget, now doubling as a handle, to make sure it was strong enough to support his weight. He was satisfied with the resistance, and with a slight run to start himself off, leaped off the side of the building and dropped only a foot or so before the Batline began sliding him through the air, zipping down towards the window he'd targeted.

He braced himself for impact, smashing into the glass window with his full weight. The structure couldn't dare to resist that kind of momentum, and shattered into a hundred pieces as he clicked another button on the side of the Batline; it released its cables, allowing him to drag the gadget with him as he blasted through and into the darkness of Arnold's apartment.

He landed on his feet, after several roles, and quickly rose. Tapping a small switch hidden behind the armor on his chin, the Batsuit's night vision activated. Bruce rolled his neck, letting it pop as he cracked his knuckles.

"I always wanted to be an archaeologist, Alfred. Why don't we dig up some dirt?"

"That was dreadful, Bruce."