Thanks to SamIAm4 for all of the help. And thanks to redladyreba, rain1657, and Lucy76 for reviewing.

I STILL don't own the characters.


Alfred moved about the kitchen, doing all the necessary tasks for dinner (or, more precisely, dessert) without any conscious thought. It was not a lack of care which caused his limbs to move with intuitive precision, only the fact that he had been doing the same task for so many years that it didn't require any thought.

When he needed the measuring cups, he knew without thinking to find them in the dishwasher rather than the drawer. Barbara often used them for her experiments and still thought he hadn't noticed. Armed with the necessary tools, he found the flour and sugar in their proper places and went on to the next step.

Alfred enjoyed making dinner. He rather suspected that many people considered it mundane and monotonous, but that was precisely the quality that he enjoyed. One made dinner every night, much like one had for all nights previous, and most likely would the next. The simple tasks in preparing food provided a much needed stability to his routine.

He finished with the measuring cups and placed them in the sink. Then he walked to the refrigerator for the milk, knowing to find the milk next to the peanut butter on the middle shelf (even though the peanut butter belonged in the cupboard and the milk in the refrigerator door), because Helena grabbed them both when she made herself a snack and put them both back in the wrong place.

Again and again the people he cared about went out into the night, risking their very souls in an effort to protect the innocent and helpless. The night had swallowed Bruce whole, and Alfred's greatest fear was that the same fate would claim the three women he cared for.

Finishing with the milk, Alfred put it away in its proper place. He opened the drawer that contained the common cutlery to find the mixing spoons. Dinah often put the dishes away and hadn't quite grasped that the two spoons were of different sizes. And he had been so touched that she tried to help that he had not had the heart to tell her.

He had almost lost her, waiting for Barbara and Helena to realize what was wrong. He'd had his own suspicions on the matter, of course… but, similar to Barbara and Helena, he had assumed Dinah was grieving for her mother. Now that the more important security and abandonment issues were no longer crippling the young woman, she could begin to mourn her mother's passing.

But, it was not his place to voice what were only suspicions on such important feelings. Things such as those were best left to the participants to work out, for they had to understand each other's needs before they could move on. But it had almost been too late.

He had almost lost Dinah. And he could lose any of them at any moment.

'But, by God, they won't go hungry!' he thought to himself, stirring the mix vigorously.

Alfred chided himself for the foolish thinking even as he acknowledged its necessity. After all, one had to focus on the things one could control to avoid dwelling on the things one could not.

Barbara reacted the same way, as had Bruce before her. As Helena was beginning to when she trained Dinah. It was not as if any of them did not trust their protégés, it was merely an act of self-preservation.

Yet it was still foolish.

He stirred faster.

Suddenly his sensitive ears, long attuned to listening for similar domestic sounds, caught the traces of heavy breathing associated with crying. He smiled softly; Barbara was finally making progress with Dinah.

Alfred placed his mix in the appropriate dish and put it in the oven. Then he dialed for pizza to be delivered to the small apartment that lay below the base of operations. After putting the phone down, he straightened his tie and took a moment to compose himself.

It was time for him to get Helena to open up.

He found the brunette sitting in front of the Delphi, several feet away from the nearest keyboard. She had her head placed in her palm, with an elbow resting on her knee. She was staring out the window rather more despondently than he had anticipated.

"Has there been any new information on the case?" he asked.

"Huh?" Helena asked, straightening to look at him. She blinked several times as she remembered Barbara's supposed assignment. "Oh. No, nothing new."

As her attention went back to the open window, Alfred said, "Miss Dinah will be all right, Miss Helena."

When the brunette looked back at him, her eyes startled him in their similarity to her father's. She had always had Bruce's eyes, except that they usually danced with a vivacity all her own. They were wonderfully expressive eyes, shining when she laughed, drooping when she tired, and narrowing when she was angered. Now they flashed with pain, barely disguised by a thin layer of pride which would not let them tear.

That alone gave him hope. There was frustration and self-recrimination in those eyes, but not resignation.

"Yeah," Helena agreed, her jaw tightening. "No thanks to me."

"You did what you thought was best," Alfred insisted gently.

Helena shook her head slowly, smiling sadly. "I knew it was wrong, Alfred. I knew it." She paused and looked away. "Hell! I even told Barbara at the time that it was wrong to make Dinah go with Canary. Why didn't I fu-" She abruptly stopped herself, looking at Alfred a little sheepishly.

The kindly butler smiled inwardly. Why did they all seem to think he had never heard those words before?

Helena's embarrassment was quickly replaced by sadness and anger, and she looked down, shaking her head. "Why didn't I do anything about it?"

"What would you have done?" Alfred asked, raising his eyebrows. "The situation was not as straightforward as it appeared then, or as it appears now."

The brunette looked at him blankly.

"I don't think you would have had the heart to deny a young woman the chance to get to know her mother. Not when you would go to such great pains to learn something new about your own."

For a moment, Helena just stared at him. It was true that she had spent months pouring through every piece of information she could find on Catwoman after her mother had died. She had suddenly felt the desperate need to learn about this other side of her… to be close to her in a way she never had when her mother had been alive. But she'd been careful. She'd covered all of her tracks. How could Alfred know?

She rolled her eyes at herself. Of course, Alfred knew. He was probably the only person who knew more than Barbara. But as she let it go, she suddenly realized that he had just compared her mother to the Black Canary.

"My mom didn't choose to leave me, Alfred," she said icily, stiffening. "She gave up everything to be with me. It's not the same thing."

"No, Miss Helena, it is not," he said placatingly. "But how were you to know that at the time?"

"I knew instinctively," Helena insisted. "That's all I run on most of the time."

Alfred seemed ready to protest so she continued. "Look, I don't have Barbara's memory and I don't have Dinah's powers to get into people's mind. All I have are instincts… and I should have trusted them."

"Helena," came a voice from behind her.

The brunette turned to see Dinah standing on the other side of the computers. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying. For a split second she was filled with concern for her almost-sister, and then she was just pissed at her.

"How long have you been standing there?" she demanded, standing up and crossing her arms in front of her. "Were you going to keep standing there, eavesdropping while I spilled my guts to Alfred?"

Dinah rolled her eyes. "Like I needed to. Ever since I woke up in the hummer, everyone's guilt has been screaming at me. It's almost as annoying as when you guys thought that I was sad about The Canary."

"Well, good to know you're listening in on my thoughts, too," Helena said sarcastically.

"And that they annoy me," the teen reminded her, grinning. "Don't forget that. Geez, for somebody so closed off, there sure is a lot going on in there."

"Yeah, like you're one to talk," Helena said, rolling her eyes. "You've had about as much to say as one of the Darrells."

The teen looked confused.

Helena rolled her eyes again and sighed heavily. "One of Larry's brothers."

"Oh!" Dinah said, her eyes lighting up as she finally got it.

"Took you long enough."

"It was an old reference," Dinah said defensively, frowning.

"Kids these days!" Helena said, throwing up her hands. "Don't you ever watch Nick at Nite?"

Helena could almost see the thought process the teen went through as she started to retort and then realized the comparison was an insult.

"Oh, yuck! You're comparing me to them?" she asked in disbelief. "Wait, which one?"

"Why does it matter which one?" Helena asked, frowning. "Neither of them talked."

"Yeah," Dinah agreed, "but one was way greasier than the other."

"They were all greasy," Helena said, crinkling her nose.

"True," Dinah said nodding.

"She is changing the subject, Miss Helena," Alfred said, stepping out to give them privacy.

'Duh, Helena,' the brunette thought to herself, watching Alfred leave. 'It's the exact same thing you do!'

"Why won't you talk to me?" she asked out loud. "You haven't said anything for weeks."

"I know," Dinah said quietly, fighting the urge to look away. "But not for the reason that you think."

"Why?" Helena asked curiously.

"I thought you'd be mad at me," the blonde admitted.

"Mad at you?" Helena repeated, uncrossing her arms in surprise. "Why would I be mad?"

"Because," Dinah paused as the lump in her throat suddenly grew too large for her to say more. She closed her eyes for a few quick moments and took a deep, steadying breath. "Because I know you try so hard to remember your mom and you go to her grave to tell her things and stuff…" She stopped and looked away in embarrassment as the tears began to flow once again.

"And you didn't want to get to know your mom," the brunette finished.

First Alfred, and then Dinah, had thought that she compared her mother to the Black Canary. Her jaw set angrily as she realized she was going to have to clear that up. She started to retort and then realized that biting the poor kid's head off would probably not be too helpful. She searched for a gentler approach for several seconds before sighing in frustration at herself. She just wasn't used to trying to put things nicely.

She looked up and saw Dinah inching backwards, her arms crossed defensively in front of her. All at once she realized that the teen was taking her silence and frustration as anger towards her.

"It's kind of like you said before," Helena finally said thoughtfully, desperately fighting the urge to spit the words out quickly. That would sound too much like anger and then Dinah would only close up more.

At her voice, the blonde brought her gaze up to make eye contact.

"Before this whole thing started, you asked me if I wanted to get to know my dad." Helena laughed a little at the thought. "Like you guys even have to ask anymore. He abandoned me just like your mom had to leave you. And he's not really my dad just like she wasn't really your mom."

Helena clenched and unclenched her fists, mentally kicking herself. 'Oh, good job! Just tell her that it's not okay to think of Canary as her mom!'

"What I mean is," she said, starting out slowly, "at the time, you didn't think of her as your mom… because she wasn't around while you were growing up. And that's okay. I don't blame you for not wanting to go with her."

Dinah nodded and looked away.

"It's okay, kid," Helena repeated, stepping forward.

The teen was crying heavily now, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs. But she still managed to look up at her to say, "I know."

Just out of sight in the hallway, Alfred quit listening. He had already heard enough to know they were going to be all right. He had known it would end well as soon as Dinah had finally broken her silence.

He took a few steps down the hall toward the med lab to clean up, and nearly ran right into Barbara. She didn't move and raised an eyebrow pointedly as she waited for Alfred to speak.

He straightened his tie and said mildly, "You were eavesdropping on three, while I was eavesdropping on two."

"I'm the Oracle," Barbara said challengingly. "That's how I fight crime."

"And you were fighting crime, Miss Barbara?" Alfred asked disinterestedly, his face carefully neutral.

Barbara cocked her head to the side slightly. "They will be," she said without missing a beat. "I had to be sure."

"It is the job of a good butler to make sure the household runs smoothly," Alfred calmly returned, also not missing a beat.

Barbara smiled broadly. "Touché."

The kindly butler nodded and walked briskly past her to the med lab.

"Alfred?"

He stopped and turned back to her.

"You've always gone above and beyond the call of duty for a good butler," she said, smiling gently. "For as long as I've known you, you've been a father to everyone in your care. I see it, they see it," she paused, gesturing towards the room Alfred had just left.

"And the most amazing part," she said, shaking her head ruefully, "is that you've done it with all of the combined parental issues that seems to be the legacy of the bat."

"The 'most amazing part' is the fact that so many young people have turned tragedy into triumph," he corrected. "That most certainly is not my doing."

Barbara only smiled and shook her head softly at the returned compliment.

He returned her gentle smile and then continued to make his way to the med lab. Dinner would soon be delivered, and he had a half-baked cake in the oven which would be finished just as dinner was consumed.

Pizza and cake. It would be perfect for Dinah's celebration dinner.