A/N: I'm sorry for the delay, but I haven't had a lot of time to write lately because of the play I'm in and the homework I have to do in between rehearsals. I'll try and keep it up.

Chapter X

"I understand that Joey, but…you're not listening to me…look, do you want the money or not?...Yes, Joey…yes, Joey…drop dead, Joey…yes, Joey." I hung up the phone, disgusted. It had taken me hours of finagling to finally track Joey down and then he started giving me a hard time because I "sounded too young". The guy acted like he was the don of the Soprano family. Well, I didn't care if he was Prime Minister to the Grand Pooh-Bah of the Great Cathayian Empire! I was paying him enough; I wanted him to do as I said! And what I said was that he was to have his monkeys track down Jonathan and hold him for me. I was still furious with Jonathan for what he had done, but I was going to give him another chance. I wouldn't have bothered if Mrs. Dunberry hadn't talked to me about him. Besides, I wanted to test my inoculant to see if it would work. And I needed a test subject.

It was two days after the "Panic Attack" as the presses were calling it. Batman had stopped the train from reaching the tower, and Lieutenant Gordon was having the antidote mass-produced. It would take a while, but it was happening at least. I, meanwhile, had been running tests on the blood sample I managed to procure, and had managed to isolate the protein-based receptor compounds and create an antidote of my own. I had no idea of knowing for sure if it would work. That would require a test. And I was unaffected by the gas, not being human. For the first time, I was glad that I wasn't. Still, it's a lonely world when you're the only one living in it.

I dressed all in black – black pants, heavy black boots with steel toe caps, black sweater, black leather jacket with zippers and chains on the front – and I had tied my hair back in a tight braid and outlined my eyes with black eyeliner and mascara. I did not look like someone to be taken lightly, young or not. I also had a gun in my pocket. Now all I needed was a location. The goons who had been sent to find Jonathan were supposed to hold him somewhere discreet and call me with their location so I could pick him up. I didn't have a legal driver's license, but I knew how to drive a car. I'd take Jonathan's and pick him up. That is, when I received the call.

The call finally came late in the evening. I had been hovering around the phone waiting for it, but I still jumped in surprise when it rang. Immediately I seized the phone and brought it to my ear so quickly I smacked myself in the head by accident. But that didn't matter. "Talk to me."

"We have your 'package', Miss," said a voice.

"Good. I trust it's still completely undamaged?" I asked in a warning tone.

"Nothing that we did."

"Fine. Where?"

"At the docks, in the crate storage."

"Stay there. I'll meet you in ten minutes. And if my 'package' isn't in prime condition when I get there, there will be Hell to pay. Am I clear?"

"Crystal, Miss."

"Good."

I hung up the phone, grabbed a pair of wraparound shades and black leather gloves and hurried to the garage. Jonathan's innocuous little Volvo was waiting for me. I had fond the keys in a kitchen drawer and was set. Two minutes later I was rolling down the highway with 101.5 The Hawk blasting in my face. I hated the music, but it made me seem more like a normal kid going for a joyride late at night rather than an I-don't-know-what hooking up with mobsters. I checked my hair in the mirror to make sure I had covered all the whiteness – I had gotten a can of cheap black hairspray, feeling that my lunar locks would make me a little too recognizable if things went sour. I came up on the docks pretty quickly and hurried into the storage area to finish the transaction. The muscle I had hired were standing on either side of a much-shaken Jonathan, still wearing his untied straightjacket. He had lost his mask somewhere, though, and I could see that the skin around his eyes was an angry red, burned and twisted from the taser gun. Well, that should be fixable. He was muttering incoherently to himself, apparently not aware of anything around him. I sighed, but didn't remark on it.

"Help me get him to the car," I said, deepening my voice, making it sound husky and low. One of the men picked up Jonathan, who gave a cry of fright, and followed me with him. At my curt gesture, he laid Jonathan in the backseat of the little Volvo and back away. When he was done, I handed both men their money, which they accepted greedily. "I was never here," I warned them.

"Neither were we," one man replied. I nodded silently, got into the car, and drove off. By the time those goons found out that their cash was counterfeit it would probably be too late. Even so, they'd never be able to tie it to me; I had neither fingerprints nor birth records, so I didn't legally exist. They'd never be able to find me, and with no evidence there was no way to prove that I had counterfeited the money.

I drove in silence, switching off the radio. Jonathan moaned in the back, but I didn't say anything to him. I didn't know whether to be angry with him still or feel sorry for him. He had certainly put his foot in it this time, there was no question of that, but what I didn't know was why. But I intended to find out as soon as possible.

I parked the car in the garage and had to half-drag Jonathan inside the house. I managed to get him up to his room, and he went quietly enough, but I was worried that he was going to have some kind of homicidal outburst at any given moment. So I was exceedingly careful. I laid him down on his bed and got my antidote from the nightstand where I had left it.

"Can you hear me, Jonathan?" I asked him. He just looked at me. "You're sick, Jonathan. Very sick. But I have the medicine you need right here. Do you understand?" Jonathan mumbled something that sounded like "frazelspitz". I looked him right in the eyes and asked softly, "Do you know me?"

Jonathan looked back at me silently for a moment. "Sirena," he finally said.

I smiled. "Yes, I'm Sirena. I'm here, Jonathan."

"Fear gas," he said.

"I know," I said. "I'm still angry with you for that."

"I'm sorry," he said, sounding very like a little boy who had taken a cooky before dinner when his mother said he couldn't.

"I know you are," I sighed. I reached over and pulled off his straightjacket. He just lay there like a doll, watching me but offering no resistance. I swabbed his arm with an alcohol pad and readied my syringe. "I have to give you your medicine, Jonathan. You can't get better without it. Don't be afraid. I'm not going to leave you." I reached for his arm and he tensed, clearly nervous. I kept making soothing little sounds while I took his arm and held it firmly.

"Sirena," he whispered. "Sirena, wait, what is it? Ow, ow, Sirena, hurt."

"I know, I know," I said softly. I had just inserted the needle and he was trying to twist away from me. I pulled it out slowly and taped a piece of gauze over the tiny pinprick. "There, it's over now. You'll feel better soon. Just go to sleep. Sleep will help you get better." I gently laid a cool damp cloth over his eyes. I didn't like the look of those taser burns, but there was nothing I could do about it at the time except keep putting cool cloths on. I stayed by his side all night, singing softly to make him sleep. There was nothing more that I could do but…hope.

I woke with a very stiff neck the next morning in an armchair in Jonathan's room. He was still sleeping peacefully. The swelling and redness around his eyes seemed to have gone down a little, but not much. I'd have to look up how to treat the burns soon. I had an aloe vera plant in my room on my windowsill that I could use the gel from, as well as several other plants and herbs with curative properties. Some 'a'ali'i, a Hawaiian plant, could help soothe the angry flesh, and maybe some juice from the shoot of a ko plant (which was actually normal sugarcane) would help too. Ko, I knew, was used to treat lacerations, so it might have a curative effect on the burns. Noni leaves were made into a poultice for boils, wounds, and fractures, but my noni plant wasn't blooming yet. The 'a'ali'i and ko juice should be enough. But I wanted to wait for Jonathan to wake first and see how he was reacting to the medicine I had made.

Jonathan woke soon enough and seemed confused. I was worried. Had the serum been useless after all? Had I made his condition worse? Slowly Jonathan sat up, taking the cloth off his eyes, and looked around. His gaze fell on me shortly.

"Sirena?" he asked. "What…what have I been doing?"

"You've been making a real mess of things," I replied, but there was no chastisement in my voice. The antidote had worked. Jonathan was back. "You created a gas that infected anyone who inhaled it, besides myself, with a panic strong enough to drive them to insanity. You fell victim to your own drug, though, before a man named Ra's al Ghul released it on the city. That was three days ago. I just managed to find you last night, with the help of some hired muscle. I managed to counteract the toxin with a serum of my own. And I certainly hope you're proud of yourself."

"Ghul released the toxin?" repeated Jonathan incredulously. "He said he wouldn't! He – oh god, my eyes," he moaned.

"Don't rub," I instructed him, moving to sit on the edge of the bed. I had kept the lights dim and shut the curtains just in case this happened. "I have some herbs that should help. Stay in bed, and I'll get them." I squeezed his hand and went to my room. I cut off some of the ko shoots and pressed their juice out into a cup, plucked some of the 'a'ali'i leaves and ground them into a powder, and mixed them with the juice to make a paste. That done, I broke off an aloe vera leaf and took everything back to Jonathan, who, by some miracle, had heeded me and stayed in bed. I set the cup down on the nightstand and sat on the bed. "Close your eyes," I said gently. I took his chin in my hand and carefully applied the paste I had made to the burned skin, including his eyelids. That done, I took the aloe vera leaf and spread its soothing gel over the skin. "There. That ought to feel better."

"It does." Jonathan sighed, not looking at me. "I suppose you want an explanation."

"How could you tell?" I replied, a little scathingly. Jonathan just nodded resignedly.

"I'm not a bad person, Sirena," he said. "I never would have agreed to Ghul's plan if I knew he was actually going to release the toxin on the populace. He told me the plan was just to hold the city to ransom."

"Yes, because that's so much better," I said coldly.

"Please, just listen," said Jonathan. "I agreed because I felt it was time that the city paid for its crimes. Crimes like allowing thugs like Falcone and his muscle men to run free on the streets and flood them with crime, drugs, and dead bodies. That's why I used the gas on the inmates of my asylum: because they deserved it for what they had done. They had all tried to get out of jail with an insanity plea, thinking that the asylum was better than prison. I wanted them to pay still. In addition, I was conducting an experiment of my own. I always wondered why crime held such a high interest in those who committed it. I wanted to try it for myself and see if I could come to anything conclusive. I never expected things to go the way that they did. I didn't want you to know because I didn't know what you would think."

I was silent. Was I supposed to tell him "Oh that's all right Johnny, I forgive you" now? It wasn't that simple. His explanation made sense, but he should have told me anyway. And it was a pretty stupid thing to do in any case. Still, he did seem honestly remorseful and he had told me the truth in the end – I could always tell when someone was lying to me. He had never lied to me before, when I thought about it, he just hadn't told the whole truth. What was I supposed to do?

I sighed. "You should have just told me."

"I know. And I'm truly sorry. I never counted on finding you that night. I never counted on caring for you. You changed everything when I brought you into my life. Until then, I had never had to answer to anyone, never had to explain myself to anyone. But suddenly I have a daughter and she wants to know what I do late at night that's so important I can't have dinner with her. And stranger still, it mattered to me."

I was touched by Jonathan's words. I hadn't realized that he cared so much about me. In the end, was it I who had hurt him? "I wish this could have been different. This could have been so much easier for both of us." I sighed. "Well, we can't change the past and we can't dwell on it either. But this is still going to take a while to clear up. The police are still looking for you."

"I know, but I doubt they'd look for me in my own home. They probably think this is the last place I'd run to."

"Still, we should go away for a while I think. I feel like I've stayed in this city for too long, and They might be on my trail." Actually, I hadn't thought about Them in a long while. A foolish thing to do, since They had almost caught me once because of that. "Maybe we could go out to the countryside for a few weeks until all this clears up. In that time, I'll try to figure out an alibi for you. There are diseases that can cause temporary insanity. We can just tell the police that's what happened."

"I despise the idea of anyone believing me insane," replied Jonathan darkly.

"Oh don't be such a maniaphobe. You know it's not true and I know it's not true, so what do you care what they think? Would you rather tell them the truth?"

"No, of course not." Jonathan sighed. "All right. You're right. We should leave the city for a while."

"Good, but I want you to stay in bed for a few days first. We'll be all right here, I think." I smiled at him. "Now, how about breakfast?"

Jonathan smiled. "Breakfast sounds wonderful." I rose off the bed and left to get some breakfast for the both of us. If only we had left that day, things might have been different…