A/N: Hello m'dears… I hope that the week has been a good one to you.

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Things had gone from terribly bad to seriously worse in the matter of sixty seconds...

Soon as Sterzo the Clown leapt into the air, hoisting that hammer of death, a dozen other painted goons came pouring into the alley. One thug landed a blow to his side that caused him to stumble back. His breath was coming in a wheeze and he'd begun to suspect he had a cracked rib or two at this point. Tim knew even more bruises were creeping over the dozens of other ones already darkening his flesh. His vision fractured and he began seeing spots of red at the edge of his visual field.

He refused to go down like this.

Tim gathered himself and dodged to the side as another thug threw a punch at him, grabbing the arm the guy extended and used his forward momentum to toss him into two other freaks attempting to surround the former Boy Wonder. A lead pipe swept his legs out from beneath him, sent him tumbling down to the ground. Sheer agony radiated up from the back of his calves into his knees, was coupled with a hot pain shooting down his left shoulder. A boot kicked him in the chest, was hoisted back in order to kick him again, but he grabbed the foot and took him to the ground with a leg whip.

Hoping to buy himself some time, Tim plucked a flash bang from his utility belt and tossed it. The bomb went off with a poof, producing a brilliant cloud of white light that completely blinded everybody in its path. Tim used the confusion to attack, needing to eliminate as many of these face-painted freaks as he could before the exhaustion dogging him claimed him in its grasp.

Bodies began to fall to the wayside. It was with an effort that he countered the pipe swung at him with the edge of his bo. His body shrieked as he danced away from a knife being thrust at him. He blocked the next slash by slamming his bo-staff against the man's wrist, heard the knife clatter to the ground, but was already twisting the bo-staff up and clipping the man in his chin. He targeted their weak spots, inflicting the most pain possible so he could quickly finish them off as quickly as he could. All the while he fought the painted horde he remained ever vigilant of the hammer wielding maniac who was lurking on the edge of the battlefield, waiting for his moment to attack.

Tim knew that if he took even just one blow from that sledgehammer that he was done for.

Finally, only he and the one-armed goon remained. Tim turned to study him, his breath coming in short, painful pants. He knew this was not a man to be underestimated. He could tell that this man was not going to be as easily beaten as the other thugs had been. It was going to take everything he had left in his arsenal in order to beat this man-if beating this man was even possible. Determined he would go down swinging, Tim extended his bo-staff and waited for the man to make the first move.

A slow smile curved the man's hideously painted lips before he rumbled in that thickly accented voice, "is it finally time for us to dance, my young friend?"

A smirk twisted one corner of his lips. "I'm ready to dance the kalinka if you are."

The mountain with an arm and legs just laughed a deep barrel laugh that shot chills racing up and down Tim's spine. No, he thought as he gathered himself for what looked like was going to be his final battle. This night was definitely not going to end well for him. His energy was waning, his vision was sliding towards gray, the pain in his head and body was like a piece of music created just for him. Tim watched the one-armed man launch himself into the air with an ear splitting laugh. It took every ounce of strength and energy he had remaining to dive out of the path of that hammer. The mallet struck the concrete, splitting it, the sound of it like thunder shaking the sky.

Now's a really good time for you to suddenly drop out of the sky, Raya, was his final thought as the man hoisted the hammer into the air and slowly began to stalk towards him.

"I'm honestly not sure which one of you that I should hang upside down first."

Raya froze at the sound of Dick's voice. Couldn't be, she thought with a slight shake of her head. He's supposed to be helping my uncle with the toxin bombs...

Yet something told Raya that Dick was, indeed, behind her. A wealth of emotions went screaming through her. There was exhilaration, relief, those first stirrings of assurance. And a great deal of incredulity. She slowly turned around and sure enough there Dick stood, his cape fluttering in the wind, his eyes blazing blue fire. He was clearly not happy to see her. And that, in Raya's opinion, was just tough tootles.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded, fisting her hands upon her hips. "Why aren't..."

"One," Dick cut in as he stalked towards her. "Can your attitude." He heard her indignant squawk, saw the flash of warning that streaked through her eyes and said before she could launch the retort he saw springing to her lips, "And two, don't you even think to lecture me about what I'm doing here when you're being here is way more in the wrong."

"Wrong?" Raya growled. "Look you..."

"No, you look," he shot back. "You promised to stay home, Rae. You promised to leave Crane and any problems that cropped up in Gotham to me and to Tim..."

"And Tim is exactly the reason for why I'm out here, buzzard beak!"

"And that is exactly my point!" He snapped. "Instead of flashing me on my radio and telling me that Tim was in trouble," he glowered at her, "you rushed recklessly into danger! Just like you always do!"

Raya's eyes narrowed into thin slits at his reprimanding tone. "For your information, Grayson, I didn't rush recklessly into danger."

"Oh, no?" He scoffed. "Not what it looks like to me."

"Oh, and you're just seeing everything so clearly right now, right?" She jabbed a finger against his chest plate. "Ya totally didn't hear that I was en route to rescue Tim from the Joker and immediately dash off to put a stop to me now did ya? Oh, no, not Richard Grayson!"

She never saw it coming. One second he was glaring down at her, his face a mask of hard angles and planes-the determined warrior. The next his fingers were tightening on hers and he was yanking her against him, hard enough to knock the wind out of her.

"Unlike you," he growled. "I took the time to put together a tentative plan for how I was going to get both you and Tim out of trouble. Nor did I run out of the house in nothing more than my street clothes."

"And did you stop to think that maybe, just maybe that I had come up some sort of plan myself?" When he didn't reply she slapped her free hand against his chest plate, snarled, "You honestly thought I came after the Joker without some sort of contingency plan in mind?"

"Yes, I do."

Both her eyebrows shot up. "Excuse me?"

"I imagine you raced here without having stopped to form any sort of plan whatsoever." Raya let out a string of vicious curses and went to yank her hand free, but Dick merely tightened his grip on it. Then he said, "When it comes to Tim-to any of us, really, you're blind as a bat. You operate on pure emotion alone. It's your greatest flaw, Raya. "

"No, I don't," she refuted in a low rasp. "And no it isn't."

"Yes, you are and yes it is."

When she went to slap her free hand against his chest again, Dick merely caught it in his and pinned both at her sides.

"Lemme go damn you!" she raged.

"Not until you agree to return to the cave with Damian."

She yanked her arms free and slammed her palms against his chest.

"No!"

Jason saw the fight brewing between them and while it amused the hell out of him to see the lovers at odds with each other, they were really not being of much help to Drake with it. "As amusing as watching this is..." he began but Dick cut him off.

"Shut it, Jason."

Jason smirked. "Hey, if'n ya wanna continue fightin' with Kit, far be it for me ta stop ya." He leaned back against a lamp post, folding his arms across his chest. "However, this ain't helpin' Drake none."

"I cannot allow Raya to confront the Joker, Jason," Dick said. "Not when Tim's life is the one on the line."

"Allow me to confront the Joker." Raya repeated the statement as if he'd said it in a foreign language. "Yea, see, I don't recall having to answer to you, Grayson."

Dick shifted, leaning closer to her, simultaneously protective and threatening.

"You'll damn sure answ..."

"Finish that sentence," she hissed at him. "I dare you too."

Jason knew that Raya had a temper. During the months they had been seeing each other he'd often quarreled with her. So he was quite familiar with that acerbic tongue. But even he had not known, never even suspected that she could turn that temper upon the golden boy. Or that her temper could trigger Dick's own. He was having a great time watching the couple bicker, found it to be the best entertainment he'd had in months. The same he suspected could not be said for the kid. Damian was standing beside the bickering duo, looking back and forth between them, and clearly not used to seeing them at odds with each other. Better get used to it, kiddo, he told the boy silently. This is gonna be part of the pattern now that they're together.

"This is not open to discussion," he heard Dick snarl at her. "You can either wait here, or you can take you and Damian back to the cave and wait there for us to bring Tim home. Either way you are not going to confront the Joker! And that's final!"

She lifted her head and met his scowl without flinching. "Oh, I'm confronting that pasty-faced freak. And nothing you say or do is going to change my mind about it!"

He looked down at her, stepped closer, only a few inches taller than her but still managing to be subtly intimidating. "Well, I'm suggesting that you change your mind. And if I was you," he added before she could issue the blistering rejoinder he saw already forming in her eyes, upon her lips. "I would change my mind really, really quickly."

He took another step; eyes locked on his, Raya raised her hands and shoved against his chest.

"Stop it!" She ordered. "You're trying to intimidate me into doing what it is you want me to do!" She shoved at him again. "And I'm telling you it's not going to work. You are not Bruce. You don't get to intimidate me like he does!"

"And if Bruce was here right now he'd do a helluva lot more than just intimidate you in order to get his way and you damn well know it, Raya."

Raya glowered at him. "And I might be inclined to obey him more than I intend to obey you. He's my parent and still my mentor." Now she glared. "But you are not."

Dick scoffed. "I'm still your partner..."

"And boyfriend," she cut in. "You changed the rules when you asked me to be your girlfriend, Dick."

"The rules are the same no matter that you are my girlfriend."

"Then why are you preventing me from confronting the Joker?" she demanded. "If the rules are still the same, why are you benching me? I'm still the Fenix."

A muscle ticked in Dick's jaw, was her only clue as to how tight a rein he was keeping over himself at that moment. But she'd only begun to blister him for his high-handedness. She slapped a hand on his chest before he could move around her. Dick reached up and grabbed her hand in a bone-crushing grip.

"I really wouldn't push me much farther tonight, Rae."

Part of her was annoyed with him for not seeing, for not realizing why it was so important for her to confront the Joker. Dick was thinking it was all about saving Tim. It wasn't. It was also about her. For the first time in a long time she felt like her old self. She knew what to do when dealing with someone like the Crown Prince of Crime. She was confident and cool, capable of thinking clearly for five goddamn minutes. She hadn't been able of any of that since Crane announced his attentions to her at the Halloween Masque.

"Dick," she said as calmly as she could. "Please, try and understand that this is something that I don't just have to do, but that I need to do as well."

"I know you think I don't get it, Rae. But," he sighed with his dislike of that word. "I do understand."

"Do you, Dick?" she asked him quietly. "Do you have any idea of what I am feeling right now?"

"I know you're feeling helpless right now. I know not being able to figure out Crane has rocked your confidence and made you doubt yourself. And I know you see Joker as a familiar that you know, a criminal you understand and know how to fight." He yanked her to him then, hard enough that their bodies collided. "But I'm not letting you risk your life. Not this time!"

"It's my life to risk, Dick," she gritted. "Not yours."

He gave her one quick, desperate shake. "It's not just your life that you're risking here is the thing!" he snapped. "You're also risking Damian's!"

"I'd die to save Damian and you know it."

That was the problem. He did know that she'd die to save Damian. She'd die to save any of them. Gordon had pegged his niece correctly when he'd told him that if any of them (most specifically Timothy Drake) fell into the hands of Crane that she'd willfully turn herself, as well as her grandfather's formula, over in order to secure their freedom.

"And that's why I'm asking you to stand down, you daft woman," he gritted. "You don't value your life as much as I do."

"What abilities and skills I possess are not any less than yours just because I am a woman." She shoved him with her free hand. "I won't tolerate this, Dick, not from you."

"If you were being rational right now, you'd see that your emotions are still clouded," he replied. "And you'd recall that clouded emotions in our line of work are dangerous."

"You're interfering because it makes you feel like the goddamn hero..."

"That's not why he's doing this and ya know it, Kit."

Even as Jason spoke, the piercing edge of her gaze swung over to him, raked over his face. Recognizing a woman who'd love to cause physical bodily damage to whatever member of the male species was in her way, Jason held up both hands, stepped back. Dickie, he decided, you are on your own.

"Is it that you think I am incapable of facing that freak?" She rounded on Dick again, slapped her freehand against his chest plate, hard. "Is it that you think I'm going to suddenly fall to pieces the second I'm face-to-face with that rotten, no good son of a bitch?"

"It's none of those things and you know it, Rae."

Damian had never seen her like this. He watched, fascinated, as Raya slapped Dick's chest plate again with her free hand.

"Then it must be that you fear that I will make some childish and stupid mistake like offering up myself and Inceptive in return for Tim."

"Stop hitting me." Dick curled his fingers around the hand she was currently slapping against his chest. "And if you're finished with your snit... don't even think about it," he warned when he saw the murderous glint that shimmered in her eyes.

"Snit? You think this is a snit? Well," she uttered the word in a low, emotionally charged tone, "lemme tell ya how unlike a snit this is, you Batass!" She poked him in the chest with the tip of one fingernail. "When that clown called me, told me he brought Tim to the scene of our first dance, and gave me twenty-five minutes to get here to rescue him? The only thing I could think about was that I was in a race against the clock. I knew I was breaking my promise and did not care. My life is not worth more than Tim's. But then the fog cleared and I began to think clearly... the first time I've been able to do that since this whole nightmare began. And do you know just what it was that I realized, Bat Blunder?"

"What?"

"I realized that five minutes after Damian and I left on my bike that the Batplane left the Batcave. Because this?" Her nail hooked the chain which circled her neck, lifted it so that the street lamp could illuminate the five gold pendants which hung from it. "This isn't just a pretty piece of jewelry. It's a..."

"Tracking device," a familiar voice rasped from above.

Eight pairs of eyes stared up at the figure perched upon the lamp post. Only one set widened. Why exactly he was surprised, Dick could not say. He should have known, he should have suspected that Bruce had managed to slip some sort of tracker on her. The common joke among the members of the family (as well as among a number of their friends as well) was that Bruce had inserted small tracking devices on all of them. They'd always laughed about it. Now Dick was wondering if there wasn't more than a little truth to the jest.

"You knew Bruce was going to come after you," he said slowly. "You knew he'd track you through your necklace. So you used the tracker in order to bring him here. You brought him to rescue Tim."

"Yes," she said, nodding.

"Figures," Jason scoffed. "The old man puts a homing device in a piece of jewelry and instead of telling him ta shove his paranoid gesture up his ass, she up and wears the damned thing."

"Because unlike you," Raya retorted without looking at him. "I've always known his paranoia was just his way of showing how much he cares about us."

"Right," Jason scoffed. "Only you would see his paranoia as some type of fatherly affection, Kit."

"Considering that the alternative is a parent who doesn't give a shit, Jas?"

Jason took the hint, but gave her his dead-eyed predator look, the one that didn't impress her one bit. He was about to blister her for her statement when a booming laugh was followed by thunder shaking the ground.

"What the hell was that?" Jason asked, frowning.

Damian made a tt sound. "It was a sledgehammer hitting concrete, Todd."

Raya's face paled. "Tim…" she breathed out on one solitary breath.

"Let's go," Dick gritted.

Bruce was already on the move.