A/N: Thanks for all your comments! Hope you guys are enjoying it! I don't own the rights to these characters, they belong to DC Nation.


Chapter 42:

Thursday; 15 September 2013

9:10 AM

Dick's POV:

The case had been pretty straight forward. Joker wanted Batman and if he didn't get him then he would poison the city's water. They didn't turn over the Batman of course. Instead, Batman showed up at the distribution plant of his own volition accompanied by Robin and Nightwing where they proceeded to take him and his girlfriend, Harley Quinn, down. Robin was injured, not gravely, but that small slice in Tim's skin allowed Dick to let go of the guilt he felt for the part of him that wished they had just turned over the Batman.

"That sucked." Tim plops down into the second swivel chair at the Bat Cave computer, in the light from the screen and against the contrast of black sweats Tim's bare chest looks pale. His left bicep is wrapped in white compression tape because Harley surprised him from behind while he was disarming the Joker's poison dispenser and he holds an ice pack to the back of his head at the spot where she proceeded to knock him unconscious. Dick glances in his direction, and rolls his eyes.

"For you yeah." Tim tosses the ice pack onto the floor and ruffles his black hair, "How many stitches?" Tim holds up both his index fingers next to each other, "Eleven? That's not bad." Tim shrugs and leans forward angling his chin toward the screen playing through video clips again.

"I figured it would've been done by now."

"It was." Dick minimizes the box with the search running to reveal the one that had already finished. Cassie's face shows up in the very first frame and his chest constricts seeing her focused expression. "The program found her jogging on the way to GA," Dick clicks through the first few videos and they watch her run across the screen until she's out of view of the camera and popping up again in a different feed, her pace quick and steady. "But this is the last we see of her, no cameras by the school saw her." Cassie runs off frame for the last time, her ponytail the last thing he sees. Tim reaches across Dick and starts scrolling through all of the frames with Cassie in them, he stops when he sees her talking on the phone as caught on tape by the front door security camera of a boutique across the street.

"That's me… on the phone with her I mean.." Tim points to the screen, his mouth turned down. "I told her I'd be there in 10 minutes." He leans back in the chair again staring at his hands in his lap. In the unnatural light his eyes are a paler blue glistening with guilt.

"Blaming yourself isn't going to help her." Dick turns away from his brother. He couldn't help imagining that if Tim had been on time that night they wouldn't be sitting at the computer right now grasping at straws. But it's a fool's dream. Slade would have just taken her at some other time. If anyone was to blame it was Bruce. The thought of Slade sitting in a cell somewhere unbeknownst to Dick while Bruce did whatever he could to keep him in the dark puts a sour taste in his mouth. Despite all of that Dick still can't escape the guilt writhing inside himself. Cassie was his daughter and it was his job to protect her. Dick leans back in his own chair pressing the heels on his hands to his eyes trying to recall everything he knows about Gotham Academy because it's still the only piece of confirmed information they have. He remembers going to school there with Barbara. He remembers the way his locker wouldn't close unless you put the combination in a second time. He remembers the time Barbara's friend walked out of that mini market with a pack of gum by accident and was accused of stealing. Dick drops his hands, "Hey is Bobby's Mini Mart still across the street from GA?"

"Yeah, we go in there for lunch all the time." Dick leans forward so fast he almost sends his chair rolling backwards and Tim jumps in his.

"There's a camera on the back wall pointed toward the front door in there." He types furiously entering lines of code faster than he ever thought he could until he has isolated all of the footage from just that store. Then he isolates it further, all of the footage from just that camera. "And the door is a sliding glass door." Through the door is a perfect view of the front of GA, the tops of buildings are cut off by the store ceiling but they can see all the way up to the two double doors of the main office building. Dick fast forwards through the tapes until he gets to the time when Cassie ran out of frame of the last camera. Not three minutes after he clicks play the dark silhouette of a girl in a jacket with hair bouncing in a ponytail jogs to a stop at the edge of the frame.

"That's Cassie." Dick nods zooming in on the video until the mini mart disappears and the glass window is all that takes up the screen, obscured only by the thin metal grate Bobby pulled down at closing. The resolution isn't great so Dick has to play around with the video to restore parts of it and to make it brighter so they can actually see. Several seconds later they have a fairly decent picture of Cassie listening to her I-pod on the side walk. A few minutes later another girl gets out of her car and hugs Cassie, "That's Leslie." Dick nods, he remembered Tim mentioning Leslie saying she saw Cassie at school that night. The two girls talk and then Leslie walks through the double doors leaving Cassie alone again.

Dick can feel his pulse pound, he knows what comes next. Sometime between Leslie leaving her there and coming back Slade showed up. He doesn't know what he hopes to see. Whether she fought him and or went down quietly doesn't matter. He's not ready to watch it happen but he must. Even still hidden in shadow Dick can tell that Cassie is becoming uncomfortable as time goes on. Her head suddenly whips to the side and her posture becomes stiffer. Next she spins to face the gate pulling her headphone from her ear. She knew there was something off. Whatever it is that made her so nervous isn't anywhere on camera. Then she's walking toward the school and turns inside the gate walking out of frame. Dick slams his fist into the console. No! Come back! Movement at the front of the screen catches Dick's eye and he can just make out a person crouched in front of Leslie's car on the street, he grips the arm rest with white knuckles. Cassie comes back into frame at a half run, slowing to a stop a few feet from the car. Dick wants to scream at her, tell her what's waiting to pounce but there's nothing he can do to stop it. He wants to cover his eyes and watch every second at the same time. He has to know what happened but he doesn't think he can stand it. On screen Cassie spins in circles, her head whipping back and forth. She knew. Her back facing the car, she stops. Dick shakes his head, his jaw clenched painfully tight. The movement he saw earlier materializes into a full sized man. He's in a hooded jacket with broad shoulders, there's too much shadow to see anything distinguishing but he knows immediately. Cassie looks to her sides but not directly behind her where Slade has crept up. In his hand he holds something small. Dick's chest heaves, his eyes begging to look away. Cassie moves to step forward but her foot never meets the concrete. Slade's free hand wraps around her face and he leans in close to her ear. Dick expects her to react or throw a punch, that's what she was taught to do. But she just stands there. Slade lifts the small object, a syringe, and finally Dick has to look away.