"Bruce!" A pleased smile curved Jessica's lips as she entered her living room to find the billionaire standing by the fireplace and looking at the pictures atop the mantle. "What do I owe this pleasure?"

"I'd be lying if I said it was just to see you." Bruce walked over to place a kiss to her upturned cheek. "Even though, seeing you is reason enough to come."

It fluttered in her blood. The words, the tone, the look in his eyes as he stepped back. Jessica couldn't remember the last time a man flattered her that wasn't after her money. Romantic entanglements were but one of the things lost to her after Martin was revealed as having killed twenty-three people. Many doors once opened to her had been shut, the members of New York's high society not wanting to associate with her for fear that the blood on Martin's hands would coat theirs. As if there were no skeletons in their own walk-in closets.

"Still the charmer, I see."

"I speak nothing but the truth, I assure you."

Jessica waved to one of the chairs before heading to the sideboard. "Can I interest you in a drink?"

"Coffee, please," Bruce said as he took a seat. "I drove myself into the city since I didn't want to leave the kids alone. Not with Malcolm still in danger."

That reminder soured Jessica's mood. As everything associated with Martin did. Even locked away in a psychiatric hospital, the man still managed to disrupt their lives.

"Is Malcolm settling in?" she questioned as she poured coffee into a cup. "He hasn't been a problem, I hope?"

"He's settling in well, actually."

"Really?" Jessica glanced over her shoulder, eyes wide with surprise. "No night terrors?"

"He had one last night." Bruce waved a hand dismissively through the air. "Nothing to worry about."

Jessica didn't agree and chose to say so.

"Malcolm can be quite violent during one of his night terrors." She had received quite a few bruises while trying to help Malcolm through one of his night terrors. Even Gil had gotten scratched and punched during a few of Malcolm's more violent episodes. "I trust he didn't harm anyone?"

"He didn't harm anyone, Jessica," Bruce assured her with a smile. "Raya and Dick were awake at the time it happened and were able to help him through the episode without incident."

"I'm sorry he disrupted your household." She poured a dollop of cream into the coffee, recalling from memory how he preferred it. "Malcolm can sometimes go days without having a night terror. Then..." her voice trailed off.

"Jessica." Bruce's tone was gentle. "Malcolm isn't the only one of my children to have night terrors."

"Theirs are not as severe as Malcolm's are, I imagine."

"Malcolm's are a lot more complex, yes, but nothing we cannot handle."

"I have him in therapy." Jessica poured herself a cup of coffee despite desperately wanting scotch or gin. "You can see how well it's working."

"He'd be doing far worse if he wasn't in therapy."

Jessica silently conceded Bruce had a point as she picked the cups up and crossed the room to where Bruce sat. Malcolm had made huge strides while under the care of his therapist. He was no longer mute, he did well in school, he managed to eat a little bit, and to her profound relief started dating in the last year. His night terrors, tremors, anxiety and paranoia issues, as well as his need to see his father were the only issues Doctor Le Deux couldn't get him to overcome.

"You mentioned you hadn't come to New York just to see me." She handed him one of the cups before taking hers over to the chair opposite his. "Why did you come?"

"Malcolm mentioned at breakfast he has an appointment with his therapist next week."

"Lemme guess," she said, stifling a sigh, "he wants to cancel it?"

"I want to move the appointment to Wayne Manor, actually."

Jessica didn't like it, but she could see the logic in having Doctor La Deux go to Malcolm instead of him traveling into the city to see her.

"I will call her office and arrange it so you can schedule appointments."

"Thank you."

"Was that the only reason you came to see me?"

"Of course not." Bruce smiled at her over the rim of his cup. "I also wanted to invite you and Malcolm to a performance of The Nutcracker."

Pleasure warmed her cheeks. "You have tickets to the ballet?"

"I have a box here, Gotham, and Metropolis."

Jessica's lips curved. "I didn't imagine you as a man who enjoyed the ballet."

"Well." His chuckle sent shivers up and down her spine. Heat pooled in her belly that had nothing to do with the coffee. "I wasn't a man who enjoyed the ballet until I became the co-parent of a ballerina. Attending dance recitals, taking Raya to performances, and becoming active in the dance school she attends changed that."

"Malcolm did ballet." Jessica waved towards a picture on the mantle. "He started when he was five. A prodigy his instructor called him. Until..."

"His father's arrest?"

Jessica nodded. "One of the many things that man stole from him."

"We can help him take some of those things back, Jess."

"How?" Her brow crinkled. "Malcolm has been blackballed from all dance schools here."

"Not in Gotham." Bruce set his cup on his knee. "He could go to school with Dick, attend ballet if he wants with Raya, be a regular sixteen year old."

"Until people learn his father is a serial killer." Her bitterness stung the air. "Then they, too, will turn their backs on him."

"Raya's father murdered his wife and father. He almost killed Commissioner Gordon. He would have killed Raya had Batman not arrived and swept her to safety." Bruce's eyes met hers. "That's not including the people he might have had your ex-husband kill for him."

"Was Raya ostracized because of what her father did?"

"Yes, she was." A muscle ticked in Bruce's jaw. Jessica's only clue as to how tight a control he was exerting over his temper. Not that she blamed him. Her own rage at society's treatment of her son tended to burn as hot as the fire burning in the fireplace. "I taught her to not care what people think of her. The ones who matter are those who see her for who she is and not for what Matthew Berkeley did."

"Malcolm can't escape his father or what he did."

"Yes." Bruce leaned forward in his chair. "He can."

"How?"

"We teach him who Malcolm Whitly is. Give him his own identity. Show him he's not his father."

Jessica's fingers trembled around her cup. "I have watched Malcolm for signs that said he was turning into Martin."

She feared seeing the sweet boy who loved ballet and playing the piano turn into the murderous monster his father was. "I have read books, watched documentaries."

"Jess." Bruce set his cup on the coffee table before walking over to take her hand. "Malcolm is not his father. He's more like you than Martin Whitly."

"Do you think so?" Jessica gave him a watery smile. "Do you really think he's more like me than that despicable wretch?"

"I do." Bruce's fingers squeezed hers. "All I see when I look at Malcolm is you, Jess."

Jessica's heart fluttered with the one thing she had not let herself feel since Martin's arrest: hope.

For the first time in six years Jessica saw the light at the end of the tunnel. A life free of Martin Whitly was suddenly possible. For her, and even more importantly, for Malcolm.

"Why don't we discuss Malcolm attending school in Gotham over dinner?" she suggested. "I already decided not to send Malcolm back to Deerfield Academy after some boys took his things and burned them."

"I'd like that," Bruce said, smiling. "I'd like that very much, in fact."

This time when her heart fluttered, Jessica didn't question it. She simply embraced it.

...

"I'm tellin' ya, Babs, Raya's got a crush on Malcolm." Dick turned the chair in front of his desk and straddled it. "I'm talking a major crush here."

"So?" Barbara Gordon stared at him from the other side of the computer screen. "Malcolm is better than some boys she could have a crush on."

"Like Elijah Thomas, you mean?"

Barbara sniffed as her eyes shifted to the left. Reading a textbook while checking traffic cams and the police bands for anything going on, Dick mused, lips trembling.

"Elijah only pursued her to win a stupid bet."

"A bet?" All serious now, Dick folded his arms across the back of his chair and regarded his girlfriend through narrowed eyes. "What bet?"

"Elijah and his buddies bet on which of them could thaw out the Ice Princess."

Surprise rolled through Dick. He hated that nickname. It quickly turned to fury, a raging flood of anger he'd work off in the gym after he finished talking with Barbara.

"Why didn't she tell me about this bet going on?"

"Because she knew you'd have Conner corner and threaten all three within an inch of their lives if they didn't call off their stupid bet." Barbara's eyes twinkled with a mixture of humor and mischief. "So she called Conner and had him threaten them within an inch of their lives if they didn't call off their stupid bet."

Dick snorted a laugh. "Either way achieved the same result."

Even if it deprived him of the satisfaction of seeing the fear on Elijah's face after Conner finished threatening him.

"That's why I say let Raya have her crush." Barbara reached offscreen, returned less than a second later with a silver travel mug with GSU in big black letters across the front. "It's about time she has a crush on a guy, honestly."

"I know it is." Dick rest his chin on his hands. "I just don't want to see her heart get broken."

Not when she was trusting it to someone for the first time.

"Having our hearts broken is part of growing up," Barbara pointed out before taking a sip of what Dick knew would be coffee. Cream, two sugars. He ducked his head to hide his smile. "She has to learn how to navigate those waters at some point or she will never have a healthy relationship with anyone."

"I know she does. It's just... outside the brief thing she had with Conner, she's never shown an interest in anyone."

"Malcolm's different from the boys at Gotham Academy." Barbara pushed her spectacles higher up on her nose as she typed something on her keyboard. "He's not a spoiled rich boy without a brain in his head."

"You realize not every guy at Gotham Academy is a jerk," Dick said, tone dry. "I'm not."

"Well... you have your jerky moments."

Dick flinched. "I know I do," he admitted with a sigh. "I'm sorry for them."

"Don't be," she said, eyes twinkling. "Nice to know you're human."

"We were discussing Raya having a crush on Malcolm."

"Mhm." Her smile, like her tone, was smug. "Changing the subject."

He was. He admitted it. To himself, anyway. No way was he going to admit it to her.

"Why do you think she likes him?"

Not that Dick couldn't see why she liked Malcolm. The guy was a bit intense, somewhat awkward and shy, but he had a sharp mind and a dry wit.

"He enjoys many of the same books and movies she does, plays chess, guitar and piano, loves ballet." She took another sip of coffee. "Plus, they share having monsters for fathers in common."

"They understand each other."

"There's that, yes," Barbara agreed with a nod. "They don't have to feel weird about their issues around each other."

"For once in their lives they can relax and just be themselves."

"One a little more than the other."

"You realize being alike isn't exactly a recipe for a successful relationship, right?"

"Well," Barbara said over the rim of her cup, "who says they will end up in a relationship?"

"You don't think they will?" One of Dick's brows arched. "Why not?"

"I never said they wouldn't."

"But you just said..."

"I never said I thought they would or wouldn't end up in a relationship." A smile brought out her dimples. "Besides, isn't he seeing someone, anyway?"

"They broke up from what he said."

Which hadn't been much, Dick mused silently as Barbara turned away to grab something from her printer. He used to think only Bruce and Raya kept secrets in vaults more secure than Fort Knox.

Then he met Malcolm Whitly.

A guy who put both to shame.

Not by choice, however.

The majority of secrets Malcolm had were fragments of memories. Things that connected to events he didn't understand and places he couldn't remember being at with people he didn't recognize.

"You don't believe they broke up, do you?"

A grin tugged at Dick's mouth. "What makes you say that?"

"I know you, bird boy."

"You just think you know me."

Out of everyone in his life, Donna and Barbara probably knew him the best. Raya edged them out slightly since she had known him before he was Robin and was there after he donned the mask.

"I know you don't believe Malcolm simply broke up with his girlfriend."

"I don't," he admitted, grinning ruefully. "I have a feeling their breakup wasn't so much a breakup as it was him learning she used him for her own purposes."

"What makes you think that?"

"This morning he talked about people pretending they're his friends but really used him to win a contest or gain admission into some exclusive club."

Anna surprised him by jumping up on his desk. He reached over to scratch the cream colored kitten behind one sable ear as he wondered if Raya was still outside.

"If you can get me her name, I can make some discreet inquiries, and find out what club she belongs too."

"Raya already figured it out." Dick smiled as the purring kitten flopped herself over in front of the keyboard. "Bruce made a few calls before driving into New York to see Malcolm's mom."

Barbara's lips twitched. "What did he threaten them with?"

"He didn't."

One eyebrow arched. "Who did he call then?"

"Detective Arroyo and then Commissioner Brannigan."

Barbara hummed a low, speculative sound deep in her throat. "So, they were that sort of club then."

"Yeah."

Dick, as well as Barbara, was aware that a number of such clandestine clubs existed here in Gotham. Shutting them down wasn't easy. Those who joined those types of clubs were of legal consenting age. Understood what exactly they were signing up for. The club Malcolm's girlfriend used him to gain admission too was comprised of underage adolescents and individuals over the age of twenty-one.

That was a problem.

A big one.

"Doesn't change the fact she used Malcolm to get into this club." Anger hardened Barbara's face. "That's gonna add to the already deep-seeded trust issues he has."

"I think that's what pushed him to suicide."

"I have a feeling Raya was the final push there, Dick."

"Raya?" Dick couldn't mask his surprise. "Why her?"

"Malcolm was in crisis," she said softly. "He needed his masked hero and she didn't come save him."

Dick closed his eyes, more a long blink than anything. "That explains why she's been more agitated than usual."

"Raya?" Barbara's brows arched at his nod. "She's been more agitated?"

"I thought it was cause of what happened at Bellevue." Anna got up to rub against his arm. He obliged her by running a hand over her silky fur. "She was on edge before then, though. Sleeping less than usual, eating only Skittles and spice drops, hyper-fixated on figuring out the connection between Berkeley and Martin Whitly."

"But you think it's guilt over not going to Malcolm."

"Yeah."

Barbara folded her hands atop her travel mug. "Well, I guess you only have one option here, bird boy."

"Oh?" One eyebrow arched. "And what's that?"

"You're gonna have to get her to talk."

Dick blew out a breath. "I had a feeling you'd say that."

"Where is she at the moment? Brooding in the Batcave?"

"No." Dick chuckled softly. "She's walking with Malcolm in the back garden."

"Really?" Barbara made a soft speculative sound deep in her throat. "Well, maybe you won't need to get her to talk, after all."

"Why?"

"Think about it, bird boy."

A frown creased Dick's brow. "What does... oh," he breathed out as realization dawned. He stared at her smugly smiling face. "I thought you said they wouldn't end up in a relationship?"

"Nobody says they will end up in a relationship." Her lips curved, warm with amusement and affection. "But nobody says they can't enjoy dancing on those lines, either."