"Be careful, that's probably acid!" Babs listened to the chatter between Batgirl and Robin in frustration. The funhouse was old enough that there weren't any security cameras for her to tap into, so she had to rely on their reports, which were becoming fewer and farther between. When she got her hands on those two…

"I'm not stupid!" Babs winced. She knew she had probably been the one to create such a low sense of self-esteem in Batgirl when it came to intelligence…always pushing her to learn to read, not to mention outright calling her stupid…and if her tone was any indicator, Cass was developing a major tendency towards overreaction any time the subject came up.

"I didn't say you…wait!" There were some loud crashes over the comm and Babs had to grip the arms of her char tightly to keep from demanding to know what was going on. She couldn't afford to distract them right now. She didn't know what sort of surprise Joker had left for them, but they were obviously running on some kind of time limit.

"Stop it!"

"I can't stop it, you're going to have to catch…"

"OKAY! Shut up!" Whoa. If those two made it out alive she was going to have to find out what had gotten Cass so riled up. She turned down the volume slightly, turning to open another channel.

"Nightwing, I think they really need backup down there, what's your ETA?"

"Give me a minute, willya? I'm at the carnival main entrance, but, hold on…" Babs ground her teeth together. "Had to avoid the police. I'm in the funhouse, just give me a…"

"Batgirl! NOW!" Babs jumped, startled. She hadn't turned the volume on Robin or Batgirl's comms all the way down, but he had to have been bellowing pretty well for it to have been that loud on her end. There was a scream of stressed metal and a crash.

"What was…?" Nightwing's question broke off as he rounded a corner and saw the chaos beyond. "Never mind."

"Don't 'never mind!' What's going on?!"

"I thought you already 'knew all'."

"This is no time for jokes!"

"Sorry." But he didn't sound too repentant and she hoped that meant he could see the situation and everyone was ok.

"So…?" She waited, but when he spoke again it wasn't to her.

"Man! You two sure know how to make a mess. Better not let Alfred see." Babs shook her head. Well, it sounded like everything had turned out ok, though the Joker had gotten away again. At least everyone was accounted for…well, except for…

"Hey, I seem to recall a few occasions where your room was none too clean… at least we have a legitimate excuse!"

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Stop." Though Babs couldn't see, Batgirl had been half-buried under a collapsed heap of rotten wood and building materials. Robin had been trying to help her dig out when Nightwing had come upon the scene. The older man's good-natured teasing had sparked a brotherly spat, and Batgirl was having to make her way out of the rubble herself. She shook her head at them in disgust. "Boys are so dumb."

"You tell 'em, girl!" Babs knew she shouldn'tencourageher, but it was too good an opportunity to pass up.

"Hey! That's not what you said the other night!" Babs felt a blush staining her cheeks. Trust Dick to make it sound worse than it was.

"Oh really?" Great. Now Tim was curious.

"Hey! Hello? Help." What was that about? Babs hadn't thought there was any more immediate danger…and though Cass' tone was urgent, it wasn't desperate.

"Oh! Duh!" There was a rustle and Babs groaned. She hated being blind. Down in the funhouse Robin and Batgirl struggled to get the fallen object out from under the same mound Batgirl had been trapped under.

"Is that…?" It was a roughly human-sized sack, tied at the top. Nightwing took out a modified batarang, shaped a little thinner, more like his mask, and slit through the cloth with ease. The bag parted cleanly, revealing an unconscious Batman inside, his mask still on, though part of it was missing, still attached to the cape they had found at the warehouse.

"Damn." Nightwing felt for a pulse, relived to feel it beating under his hand.

"What!? What is it?"

"Call Alfred, have him get the cave prepped for…" he hesitated. "um… well, for medical purposes, though I'm not sure exactly what we're dealing with. It's Batman, but he's unconscious. Could be he's gotten dosed with Joker's new formula, or he could be suffering a concussion or something" Babs felt a wave of relief, followed swiftly with a new worry. Batman was alive but down for the count. And who knew how long he'd stay that way?


The silence was deafening. A phrase she'd heard once, but never understood until this moment. Normally in the Batcave there would have been some sounds, Batman or Robin working out, the click of the computer keyboard, Alfred's distinct footsteps, even just the rustle and occasional squeaks made by the bats in the deeper recesses. But tonight there were none of those sounds. The bats had gone out on their nightly hunt and everyone else…well, everyone was crowding around the hospital-style bed in which Batman lay unconscious. The room was an artificial one, created specifically for medical purposes when the cave was first "built" by Batman. With the door closed it was virtually soundproof, and as far away from that room as Cassandra sat, any sounds that might have penetrated were unable to reach her ears.

She sat alone, silently running through the events of the night in her head. Batman gone AWOL, her trip to the police station as Batgirl, Joker's tape, Robin, the factory, the funhouse, the… she heaved a sigh, the sound seeming to echo throughout the cavern. Though they had quickly chased the idea that Batman had perished in the factory explosion out of their minds, Cass couldn't quite shake the feelings that had pierced her innermost being when they had first found the cape. There had been a sense of loss, of course, and pain. But what had surprised her was the total lack of thought that had accompanied these feelings.

Even when she had had no language, when she was pure movement, Cass had been aware in some way…some kind of mental process had been going on in her brain. But she had never before felt…empty. Not having lost someone really important to her before, and not being raised among "normal" people, it was impossible for her to know that this reaction was actually a quite common way of coping. True, Stephanie's death had hurt, as they had been friends of a sort…playing rooftop tag and helping her with her fighting had been fun. But Stephanie had never really seen past Batgirl. She had tried to out do her, had talked to her sometimes, but as soon as someone else was willing to train her she had left her all alone again. And, since Cass knew that Stephanie hadn't considered her a close friend, she had never really let her feelings get too deep either.

But the thought of Batman dying…it had locked up all reactions inside. He was just as distant with her as Stephanie had been, more so, in fact, but he was a father figure…a better father than Cain had ever been, certainly. She had felt as if his death would be the end of her world. She couldn't move, she couldn't fight…to her it felt like failure, and all the training she had endured, both with Cain and Batman, told her she must find this weakness and eliminate it.

She had tried working out, starting with a simple kick/punching bag to work out her frustrations, but after only a few minutes she had found the bag torn to shreds. She hadn't realized how hard she had been attacking it, and this frightened her, perhaps more than the strange empty feeling. She knew too many ways to hurt of kill someone to lose control like that. Her talents had always been a fine balance between power and technique, and her ability to hold back was what separated her from Cain and other killers.

So she had sequestered herself away from the others, hoping to push the numbness out of herself and, hopefully in doing so, regain control of her abilities. She tried meditation, but found that her mind wouldn't cooperate and instead focused on her failures.

"Hey Cass." She looked up at Robin's…no, Tim's; he had removed the mask…approach. She looked back along his path and realized he must have seen the demolished bag. She felt heat burn her face and looked away.

"Hi." The answer was short and cold, hoping to discourage him from talking to her. Tim sighed and sat down next to her.

"I, uh, saw your handiwork in the other room…" here it comes, she thought, the fear, anger…disgust. "…not sure what the bag said to you, but I'm sure it deserved it." She looked over at him questioningly. A joke? He had a half-smile on his face, like he was trying to be cheerful for her sake. She looked back down at the ground.

"No." He sighed again and become more serious.

"Cass… you want to talk about it?" She shook her head. "Ok…well would you be willing to listen while I talk about it?"

"Why?"

"Why? Because talking about an experience, especially a bad one, can really help. It makes you feel better…ok it makes me feel better, and most people too. It lets us see that we aren't as alone in our feelings as we think we are. And possibly that what we're afraid of is really casting a bigger shadow than it deserves." She thought about this for a moment.

"You mean you have bad feelings about tonight? But you didn't…didn't…"

"I didn't what?" She scrunched up her face in concentration.

"You didn't fail." It came out as a whisper, so soft he nearly didn't catch it.

"Fail? You…you think you failed in some way?!" She refused to look at him…refused to see if his incredulity was real or only a vocal performance out of some sense of … of something. "Cass, I don't know how you could think that. You managed to figure out what Joker was up to, even though you didn't have the clues or the training. You looked at Harley and just…figured it out. I didn't even know what you were doing until I tried to disarm the timer. You saved Batman. Don't you get it?" This time she did look up, a question furrowing her brow.

"But I didn't. I was wrong. I said we should follow them, that there was no trap. Yet there was."

"Not really. Harley is probably a little flaky like the Joker, hard to read, right? And there wasn't a trap…not one that could stop us if we had chosen to run after them instead of stopping the clock. So she was right to be afraid, and you knew that. When Joker activated the countdown, you figured out that it wasn't a bomb. I didn't. I still tried to disarm it, thinking if I didn't we were all going to blow up." She shrugged with indifference and he eyed her thoughtfully. "But what did or didn't happen at the funhouse isn't what's bothering you, is it?" She shook her head miserably. "What is, then?"

"I…" how could she put it into words? "At the factory, I… I couldn't do anything." She could tell he didn't understand. "When we found the bomb…and then there was Batman's cape…and…" she gestured helplessly, "I couldn't do anything." Comprehension lit his face.

"Because you thought Batman was dead?" he asked gently. She nodded, kicking a piece of broken stone down into a bottomless crevice. "And you think this means you failed?" She nodded again, feeling like a bobblehead toy she had seen at a souvenir stand in downtown Gotham. Tim looked away, lost in thought. She dared to peek at him and could tell that her dilemma had started him thinking about something very serious. But she wasn't sure it had to do with her…it seemed more like he was lost in the past, a memory.

"I…" he turned suddenly, an intense look in his eyes.

"Cass, do you ever think about Stephanie?" Ummm, ok. This was a strange question. She knew that Tim and Stephanie had dated, but he hadn't ever brought the subject up before. Then again, she had been thinking about Stephanie just minutes ago…comparing her reactions.

"Sometimes, why?" He shrugged.

"Well, I guess I hadn't thought about how you may view death before. I know I was, um…pretty upset. And I hadn't thought how her death might affect others. I mean, sure, Bruce took it really hard, and he's still pushing people away, but no one ever just talked about it." There was something, some deep pain in his voice, and Cass couldn't help wondering…

"Did you…were you…"

"Was I in love with her?" She blinked, surprised at his wry tone. "I don't know. I guess at one time I was. I had pretty much realized it was time to break it off before the gang war ever got started, but I never got around to it. Then, afterwards…" his shoulders drooped. "I felt guilty. Really really guilty."

"Why?"

"I don't know. Probably because I thought if I had loved her, or loved her better, or maybe if I had been honest and broken up with her when I should have then she would still be alive."

"That's silly. It wasn't your fault. Stephanie still thought of everything as a game. She didn't understand life…and death."

"I know that. And deep down I think even Bruce knows the same thing about his involvement, though he will never quit blaming himself either. But that's what I mean. You understand what death means." She winced, but he didn't notice and continued. "But I think even with knowing what's at stake, you haven't really experienced death before, have you?"

"I…"

"Wait. That came out wrong. You haven't, like, had someone you really cared about die. Unless you were closer to Steph than I knew. I was kinda out of it at the time and didn't see your reaction." She frowned, pondering his words.

"I…I was sad. But, more from a distance. Like a movie. We weren't…close." He nodded, encouraging. "I felt some guilt too…I knew she was in trouble, I had a feeling the whole war was somehow connected to her, but Batman said he knew and we didn't have time to go find her. I should have made sure she couldn't go out in it." She gave a little smile at the memory of knocking Spoiler out when Bruce had been accused of murder. She had done it twice to examine something without the other girl's interference. At the time she had thought it was funny. Now she wished she had thought to do something similar during the gang war.

"I think we all felt a little guilt. Even Alfred." She nodded. Poor Alfred…though he understood the drive in his "charges" to fight the evil in the world, he also disapproved and he was caught in the middle of wanting to protect them and letting them proceed in their quest.

"Ok, but what does Stephanie have to do with…"

"With tonight? I guess it was a roundabout way of pointing out that your reaction is perfectly normal. Everyone deals with loss in his or her own way. Some rage, some cry, some go numb inside. While it never gets easier…each time you lose someone you care about is going to hurt…it does become a bit… well, subdued, I guess. I lost my mom shortly after becoming Robin. But I was young enough and there were people around me who cared about me that I was able to heal.

So with Stephanie I was able to grieve, but also get on with life. You haven't ever had to come to that point before. You think you failed because you were grieving. But that just shows you that you're human, that you have let yourself care about someone that much. And I think that caring is the most important part of our job. The hardest, yes, because there is the potential to lose friends and loved ones, but still the most important. If we don't care about the people we work with and protect, what is the point of doing so? Glory? I know Bruce tries to pretend he doesn't care, that he's emotionless, but I know he really cares possibly more than anyone. So feeling numb or unable to react when you thought Batman had died is really a success."

He finally stopped talking and Cassandra stared at him. Where did he get all those words? But while part of her mind was mulling over that question, the majority was chewing on what the words had meant. A sound from the other part of the cave made both of them look towards it. Tim stood and turned to her.

"Come on, let's go. You don't really want to stay here all alone, do you?" She shook her head and he reached down to help her up.

"Wait." She paused and he looked at her enquiringly. "I…thanks." She seemed uncomfortable, and he wondered if she had ever really had a true heart to heart chat with anyone before.

"No problem." She fidgeted a moment, then suddenly reached out and hugged him. She was gone, hurrying back to the main area, before he could react. He blinked after her, not entirely sure what had just happened, then shrugged to himself. He was just glad he'd been able to help. But, though he refused to think about the implications, he couldn't help whistling a little as he followed in her tracks.


To be continued…