Disclaimer: I own Psion Force. Ask before you touch. Also Newscaster Ron Llewellyn, but him you can use without asking. DC owns all other characters. I'm using them without permission.

Timeline: Knightfall. For those of you who read my first story, Mayday, this story takes place four years later.

A/N: I always saw Tim as closer to fourteen for this story arc. Unfortunately, since DC recently allowed him to celebrate his sixteenth birthday, and we know that he is thirteen when he first approaches Dick in Lonely Place of Dying, that means that virtually everything including but not limited to: time he spends learning from Bruce but not allowed in costume, Robin miniseries 1 (a number of months in France, etc.), Knightfall (roughly 1 year?), Cataclysm/NML (1 year storyline), the period between Gotham's restoration and BWM/F (one year) and BWM/F (6 months for the "Fugitive" piece) take place in less than three years. The math doesn't really add up...

A/N: Bold italics denote telepathic communication.

Blind Trust

Four nights earlier...

Silver Dragon was flying. She propelled herself telekinetically through the air, over the rooftops but under the radar, eyes on the horizon, hands clamped firmly around the sturdy quarterstaff extended horizontally before her. Her concentration, however, was split between her environment and the voice coming over her comlink.

"Ever worked with a telepath before, Robin?" She asked.

It was a boy's voice in her ear, young, scared, but with an all-too-familiar determination. "Not really."

"Does it make you nervous?"

The voice turned sheepish. "Kinda."

Callie let a smile spill over into her voice. "Completely understandable. If we ever have the time, I'll show you a few defensive techniques. For now, though," she said, her voice turning serious, "it's good that you don't know them. Makes what I need to do a lot easier." She was going to have to teleport, she realized with a sinking feeling. There was no other way that she could get to the ambulance that Alfred was driving in time, and she couldn't ask them to wait. She explained this to the boy on the other end of her link, ending with "I'm going to need you to guide me in."

"How?"

She swallowed. "You're really not going to like my answer."

"How?"

"I'm going to need to link with you telepathically, and lock onto your mind."

There was a long pause. "What do you want me to do?"

"Well," she began, "you can start out knowing that I'm extending doctor-patient confidentiality to anything that I might pick up from your thoughts." She sighed. "If teleporting in blind wasn't so dangerous, I'd try, believe me."

The voice on the other end hardened in resolve. "Tell me."

You made the right choice when you picked him, Mr. Wayne, she thought. "Here's where a low profile becomes an asset," she said. "I'm willing to lay odds that, apart from my team-mates, people don't really think about me that often." (How pathetic are you sounding, right now, Callantha?) What I want you to do is concentrate on my name."

"That's it?" Robin sounded relieved.

She swerved to avoid an aircraft beacon light, which jutted from the top of an office tower. "That's it. Just think the name: Silver Dragon." In a sepulchral tone, she continued, "but, call me 'Silly' and the consequences will be dire."

There was a startled laugh on the other end before the link cut out. She sent out a probing thought. She shouldn't have put that idea into his head, she thought to herself, as she homed in on Silly... no, I mean... Silver Dragon. Silver Dragon. Silly Dragon...

Trix are for kids she projected.

Sorry...

Don't be. My fault for mentioning. First things first. How fast are you going?

About forty miles per hour

Silver Dragon was suddenly grateful for her high school math. If an ambulance is traveling southward at a speed of forty miles per hour, at what point will the costumed vigilante intercept, assuming she levitates at a rate of fifteen miles per hour and teleports up to 60 feet per second but must rest at least 27 seconds after the first jump and 14 seconds longer for each subsequent jump than for the one previous... she worked the calculations quickly in her mind Okay, Tim. I'm going to need your eyes. (And I didn't mean to call you 'Tim' just now. It slipped out.)

My eyes?

A picture drifted from his mind to hers. That's sick. Don't watch so many horror movies, if that's the kind of imagery you come away with. What I meant was, I need to see where I'm teleporting, so I need to look through your eyes

Oh

Sil waited a moment. Tim

Hhhmmm

Where are you?

Ellsworth. Just past Sprang

No, I mean where are you in the ambulance?

Oh! Passenger side of the cab

And you're facing forward?

Uh-huh

Maybe he wasn't such a good choice, Mr. Wayne. And you want me to teleport directly into the path of the vehicle?

I'm looking through your eyes, Tim. I see what you see. What you see right now is what's in front of the windshield. There has to be a better place I can land than right between your headlights

Oh. Maybe I should go behind and let you see the patient area

Silver Dragon caught his embarrassment. Good idea. Go easy on him, she told herself. He's young, he's scared, and he's trying. It wasn't so long ago YOU would have made a similar mistake.

She had been able to reduce her travel time considerably. When Umbra had made the acquaintance of Oracle and the other computer experts, she reflected, her younger sister had gained access to technology that Silver Dragon had not dreamed possible. For one thing, she had presented her older sister with a dozen "teleportation relay discs". She was able to interface telepathically with the discs, which had a range of roughly a half-mile. Spaced at intervals within the downtown core, they enabled her to travel from one point to another in the blink of an eye—and with considerably less nausea. The problem was that she could not use them if she wanted to travel anywhere other than from one disc to the next. Another drawback was that in making sure that there was a disc at or near the most likely trouble spots in the city, she had not been able to place one in the vicinity of home base (also known as 18 Kressy Place, just east of Mooney). It had taken her the better part of ten minutes to fly to the nearest relay point at the Moldoff building, near City Hall. From there, it was easy to use the system to get to the Novick Centre, three minutes from Robinson Square.

Are you at Liss, yet?

We will be in about thirty seconds

Is there a sink in the vehicle?

Yes

Face it and DON'T MOVE

Okayyy. Liss

Wish me success (As I hurl myself off of a townhouse, while teleporting into a small, fast, moving target, fighting every instinct telling me to levitate the instant I don't have something solid under my feet. Tim, don't you dare look away or this is going to get very, very messy...). Closing her eyes, she murmured a fast, fervent prayer, set her mind to the scene before Robin's eyes, and leapt.

Tim Drake had experienced more excitement in the two months since he had returned from Europe, than in his thirteen years up to that point. And those thirteen years included such events as meeting Koriand'r, a jaunt to Haley's circus to find Nightwing, fighting Two-Face and telling off Batman! Becoming Robin had been like a dream come true, one that was fast becoming a nightmare. At first glance, the woman, hunched dry-heaving over the sink, seemed to offer little to alleviate it. But then, she splashed her face with cold water, pulled off her helmet, and smiled. "Would you have a spare white coat?" she asked, standing her staff in a corner with one hand, and jerking off the forest-green mask she wore beneath the helmet with the other. Alfred was already handing one to her. "Thank-you," she said as she accepted it. Quickly, she unfastened her cape, and draped it over the staff. She unbelted her tunic and pulled off her beige tabard, with its stylized silver dragon rampant. She retied the belt around the waist of the loose-fitting knee-length green tunic she wore over matching leggings and low beige boots. This done, she slipped on the coat with the EMT badge pinned above the pocket.

Robin cleared his throat. "Ummm... Silver Dragon?"

"I'm out of costume, Robin. My name is Callie. Thanks for the assist, by the way."

"You're welcome. But why are you bothering with the coat? I mean, you're not going out with the bedboard, are you?"

Callie shook her head. The ambulance stopped. "We're there, I imagine," she said as she heard the driver-side door slam shut. "I've seen Robinson Square before, there's no point in seeing it again. I just work better when I'm dressed for the job in question."

The rear door opened and a blond man about her own age, wearing an EMT uniform and a baseball-type cap with the Gotham Emergency Medical Services logo looked in. "Bedboard?" he mouthed. Tim practically heaved the frame at him.

"Quickly, Jean-Paul," they heard Alfred call from outside. The man, whose name, apparently, was 'Jean-Paul' shifted his grip on the padded board and hurried off, leaving one of the rear double doors open.

"Wouldn't surgical scrubs be better?" Tim whispered.

Callie looked at him quizzically. "Would you be offended if I told you that I'd rather not get fully changed in front of you?"

Robin blushed. How old was this kid? Twelve? And how old and grey were you your first year in costume? She sighed inwardly. When I was twelve, I was older, she thought. She found a surgical cap on one of the counters and set about tucking her waist-length dark hair into it. Next, she tied on a surgical mask. "Help me with the gloves?" she asked as she pulled off her beige gauntlets, and, after a second's deliberation, removed her arm-guards as well.

"Sure," he said sounding relieved. He picked up one of the gloves by the wrist. "Uh... you did call me 'Tim' before, right?"

"Yes. That was unintentional. What I said about doctor-patient privilege still applies."

He smiled faintly. "That's cool."

The boy was glancing nervously at the door. Callie waited until he met her eyes. "I'm scared, too," she admitted. Voices drifted through the open door of the ambulance. The police officer was suggesting an escort to the hospital. Alfred was gently refusing her. "Who's out there?" she asked. "Montoya?"

Tim's eyes widened. "You know her voice? Or were you just, um..."

"In her mind? No. Review a moment. How did I get into your mind? What did you do?"

"I thought your name."

"More important than that. You let me in. If you had fought me, if you had resisted my initial probe in any way, I wouldn't have been able to force my way in. The only way that I can get inside someone's head without physically touching them first, is if the person is willing. By the way," she added, "that showed an unusual amount of courage."

"Thanks."

"There aren't that many women on the force," Callie explained. "She's one of the most competent. Officers, not just women. That crowd out there seems more under control than I would expect, all things considered. Call it an educated guess."

Alfred and Jean-Paul (who was this guy anyway?) returned carrying Batman between them on the bedboard. Callie waited for them to transfer him to the medical bed, for the eerily intense young man to move forward into the drivers seat, and for the back doors to close before moving forward. "Ribono Shel Olam," she gasped as Alfred cut the costume away. "One man did this?"

A low moan from the stretcher cut off any reply that might have been forthcoming.

Alfred prepared an IV drip, and began hooking the prone figure up to various machines. He didn't appear to need her help. He stuck the IV needle into Batman's arm, which caused the big man's hand to clench reflexively.

"Professional distance be hung, drawn and quartered," Callie muttered. The gloves were sterile, she reminded herself, as she envisioned a portion of her telekinetic power taking on the size and shape of her hand. As long as she wore them, her physical hands should not touch anything but the medical instruments. Lightly, she brought the force to rest on Batman's shoulder. "I" she said, then swallowed and began again. "I don't know if you can hear me, or if you know what's going on," she paused for a moment, then continued keeping her voice low and exuding a calm she did not feel, "but just in case you can hear, I want you to know that you're among friends." She looked at Alfred, in case there was something he needed her to do. He beckoned to her to continue. "Alfred and Tim are back here with me, and Jean-Paul is driving the ambulance. And, I don't know if you remember me but I'm Callie. Or Silver Dragon."

His agitation seemed to lessen marginally. Or was that wishful thinking? It wasn't like he had any reason to trust her medical expertise, so far. She drew a deep breath. "I can't pretend to know what you're feeling right now, but if I were in your place, I know I'd be terrified. That doesn't mean you have to be," she added quickly, "but if you are, it's fine. I just want you to know, we're going to do everything we can to pull you through this." Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Alfred measuring the dosage of an anesthetic. "Now, I have to tell you that, no matter how much pain you're in right now, once we start swabbing antiseptic on those open wounds, they're only going to feel worse. It would probably be better if you slept through it. But just in case some part of you is still aware of what's going on, I'm going to talk as we work, and I'll try to keep you up to speed on what we're doing." Not to mention, she reflected, that sometimes saying things out loud, helped to keep her focused. She lifted her telekinetic "hand" from his shoulder, slipped it into his, and gave it a light squeeze. "There is one drawback, of which I should make you aware," she said straight-faced. "Sometimes, when I'm extremely tense, I make some truly... awful... jokes. And since the last thing I want to do right now is add to your pain, if you could let me know when I go too far, I'll try to tone it down. Okay?" she asked, as Alfred placed the breathing mask over his nose and mouth.

It was ludicrous to expect a response. The fact that he was still breathing at all was clear confirmation that miracles still happened. But, impossibly, she saw his hand contract and felt a brief pressure on her telekinetic field as he did. It wasn't wishful thinking. Alfred and Tim had seen it as well. Callie let out a long breath, and smiled for the first time since Alfred and Jean-Paul had brought him inside. "Okayyy."