Bubbles floating above his head were the only evidence that he was still living.

The young man felt himself hit the cold water with a massive impact. He began sinking, the clothes ballooning around him. He told himself to stop struggling.

His very bones seemed to ache from the fall. His eyes opened to the clear blue sea surrounding him.

Light cut through the ocean, images dancing in a haze all around. He had to start moving or he'll die. . . . Then something like a tail came to his view.

The white dress danced in the translucent waters with an elegance only matched by its owner. If breathing wasn't such an issue, he would have remained transfixed there, memorized by the floating fabric flowing with the current effortlessly.

He started swimming toward it.

A slender silhouette confirmed his suspension that only a woman could be wearing it.

The floating fabric belonged to an aquatic beauty, a lovely creature moving with a mermaid's grace. She was swimming peaceful away while he fought to get to the surface.

He keep moving faster and faster until he came closer to her face.

She caught sight of him.

For the moment, she allowed herself to be suspended in the medium, her hair moving as a wave around her. He opened his mouth to make noise but nothing came out. Only a host of bubbles followed where words would have followed.

She stopped.

She swam closer to him.

He felt her take his face into her face, she leaned in closer to him. Suddenly, he grabbed her by the waist.

He needed something real, something stable, something tangible to grasp onto in a place that was constantly moving. She allowed him to hold onto her, her legs and dress wrapped around him. His heart was beating out of his chest but no sound could be permitted in the medium. None for heart beats, none for conversation.

She leaned in closer until their noses were touching. . . .


"Terrence!"

The only cold wet thing Terry felt was the sweat covering his face as he fell out of the chair. "Terrence" began pulling himself to his feet.

That was the second time in three days someone called him by his full name.

"You're sleeping on the job." Wayne scolded.

"Sorry." He mumbled, checking for drool.

Sunday was spent listening to the results of Wayne's detective work. Spellbinder managed to get a hold of his magic eye in the asylum. Using it on one of the orderlies, the first orderly knocked out the second orderly and the guard on the floor. Then Spellbinder blasted the former Love Doctor out of her room. Using the magic eye, they managed to simply just walk out of the hospital and get a car stolen for them.

Then the conversation changed, "I was asking you about Maxine-"

"She doesn't want our help." The younger Bat answered with an edge. "Being that Batman won't be around forever."

Bruce Wayne gave his apprentice a curious glance. He noticed that he had entered touchy waters with the younger man when the subject of Maxine came up.

"Is something wrong?"

"She gets all bent out of shape when I told her she should lay low for a week. Says she's tired of everyone seeing her as helpless. Then she swings a baseball bat at me!"

"Touchy." The older Bat simply remarked.

"Don't I know it?" Terry ran a hand through his hair, a nervous sign.

"Maybe she has a point." The older Bat started rubbing in chin, deep in thought.

The younger man suddenly spun around, Ace lifted his head.

"Are you siding with her?" The younger man asked in an absurd tone.

Bruce held up a hand. "Only in the sense, that she shouldn't be treated as helpless."

"Mr. Wayne, she's in danger. Two pyschos that tried to take her out before are on the run. With each other." Terry emphasized his words by pounding his fists. "Do we leave her there like bait?"

"I'll talk to her. I'm sure she won't refuse." Bruce Wayne spoke with confidence,"You just keep trying to help me piece this puzzle together tomorrow."

After Terry left to go home, Bruce Wayne shook his head. What he didn't tell his protege was that he heard the entire conversation through the suit. In his old age, Bruce may have been cripple but not blind.

He saw and noticed lots of things about the boy who had worked with him over a year.

Terry was mad.

And a man only got mad like that when something very personal was at stake.

Wayne guessed it was Terry's feelings. . . .


Therapy was for criminals and crazy people Maxine Gibson insisted when she got a secure call from Bruce Wayne. "I'm not breaking the law and I am NOT crazy."

"I would be more at ease if you were at least seeing someone since you refusedhelp in other ways." Bruce Wayne talked to her as he would a subborn child.

"Is Terry putting you up to this?" She looked at the looming aged face of the former Bat.

"Actually, it was my idea."

"Why do you think I need therapy?"

"Well, you were kidnaped and nearly killed seven months ago, not to mention some of the other things you've been through: Carter Wilson, Xander, the previous Spellbinder addiction. Post traumatic stress disorder isn't a thing of the past."

"So you think I'm crazy for wanting to have a little backbone." She concluded.

"No, I think you're being stubborn and just don't want help." Wayne told her.

Bruce saw her fists clench and unclench several times during the conversation, 'm not going." She answered.

"Maxine, please spare me the tough girl exterior. I've seen it too many times before."

Her arms folded in defiance.

"If you insist on not sleeping at night while attacking random shadows for no reason then, please. Continue."

"How do you know I haven't been sleeping?" She turned away from the screen for a minute, whispering.

"A little birdie told me in my ear."

"Or a guy whose a little batty." She faced the screen again, "How much has Terry told you?"

Bruce Wayne wanted to mention the conversation he had with the night before, but decided against it.

"That you weren't sleeping. Besides, I see the bags under your eyes."

Max immediately looked in a mirror hanging in the living room. He was right. 'Anything with eyes can see you haven't even sleeping, idiot.'

"And you've been very uptight and jumpy. Should I mention the ice cream in the freezer is going too?"

"You've been spying on me?" Maine asked in a shocked tone.

Wayne, not even blinking at the underlying truth of this accusation, spoke matter-of-factly.

"Let's say you've been very apt in providing unspoken details for me."

"Where's the camera, Mr. Wayne?" She shook her fist at the screen.

"Maxine, I have an appointment lined up for you with the company's resident therapist, Dr. Alana Layton. She's very helpful. Tuesday afternoon, after school of course."

"I've had my fill of therapists." She grabbed the remote from the coffee table.

"Before you turn me off, consider it. You can't live in a constant state of fear. Or shutting people out. Just because you're alone there doesn't mean you're truly alone in this matter. Depression-"

The power button found Max's index finger.


"Why did I come?"

Max asked her in the waiting room of Dr. Alana Layton at Wayne-Powers Industries.

A nonthreatening male secretary called Max into a plush decorated office on the fifth floor done trimmed in calming blue tones, they seemed to neutralize the negative emotions in patients.

"Dr. Layton will be with you in a moment." The male secretary told her before leaving the room.

Fifteen minutes later (after playing with the chair in the office and stealing two pieces of candy from a inviting glass dish), a short woman with Asiatic features came into the room smartly dressed.

"Maxine Gibson?" Her tiny voice resonated through room, light reflected off the glass.

"Yeah?"

"I'm Dr. Alana F. Layton, resident therapist here. Normally, I work with the employees here at Wayne-Power Industries. But since you were a special case, I let Bruce Wayne talk me into it." She extended a hand.

Maxine folded her arms in displeasure. Dr. Layton kept talking taking no offense to the clear brush off.

"Mr. Wayne mentioned your reluctance of coming here." The doctor took her seat across from the young black woman.

"I'm not crazy." Max insisted.

The therapist brushed the comment off like she heard a million times before. "Yes, of course." She continued, writing notes to herself, "From what I gather in this file given to me by Mr. Wayne, you may be suffering post trauma disorder."

Max huffed and turned in her chair, gazing out the window. She didn't want to speak still.

The therapist leaned back in her chair, ready to wait it out. "Well, let's start with what's going on now in your life. . ."

"In your dreams if I'm talking . . ." She mumbled.

The therapist asked her, "So tell me about your dream."

"Excuse me?"

"What about your dreams?" Dr. Layton asked again.

"Huh?"

"You said something about dreams." The doctor pressed.

"I'll rather not talk about it." Maxine gave a harsh answer.

After two hours of careful probing, Dr. Layton got Maxine to say something about her dreams. It took all of her psychological training and copious amounts of patience to pull an answer from the younger woman. "So is there a particular dream you want to explore? Or even just mull over?"

Losing some of her hostility, Maxine began to open up. "Well if I had to. . . . there is this one dream. . . I'm in some weird sculptured garden like out of Queen Elizabeth's time wearing a white dress. I don't even know why I keep having the same dream."


Before hitting his first class of the day at Gotham U., Terry had been out prowling New Arkham Asylum for information about "Bonnie and Cylde" as Wayne labeled them (whatever that meant).

What he learned was a retelling of how they escaped along with the arrest of a female nurse that Ira Billings sweet talked into helping him escape. (The nurse smuggled the magical eye in and gave Billings her car.)

'Harley Quinn and Joker all over for Wayne again.' The Bat remarked mentally.

Billings also had something of Angel Proctor's with him: Her Love Potion No. 9 pink pills.

Whether Billings was on Proctor's pills or even Proctor's pills were being used on her was unclear. What was clear was finding the criminal couple and their toys.

The Bat made his way to Business Management. Bruce Wayne told him if he even considered running the company, Terry better know the business world's ins and out. The true business skills came from the man himself.

'Now I got to learn to be Terry McGinnis businessman and Terry McGinnis Batman.'

Terry would often joke with his mentor: "Why don't you teach me how to be Terry McGinnis, ladies man."

This often earned him a laugh followed by the "women are humans, not lands to be conquer" speech.

'Why not teach me your suave skills?' Terry would often counter with.

'Terry, look at where my suave skills have gotten me.'

'But women still throw themselves at you, even at the verge of 80.'

'Keep asking that question and you'll learn the hard way.'

"The hard way, what does that mean?" He asked himself, finding a desk in the 500-plus seat lecture hall. Did it mean the lessons he got from Dana? Melanie?

The only thing he needed to be schooled on was time management–and even that began to feel like a cake walk. He listened to his professor begin class while pondering the latest caper.