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We didn't sleep long. In just a couple short hours, the sun was up, the light streamed in through the windows, the sounds of angry traffic could be heard below, and Dick's alarm clock screamed us to life. It was the weekend, but that didn't mean we had no obligations.

I rolled off Dick's chest enough that he could roll over and smack the daylight out of his alarm clock, but I crashed back down on the soft pillows as I yawned. He turned back and smiled at me as I cleared my throat. "Morning," I smiled pleasantly. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me back onto his chest.

"Not yet," I groaned as he tightly hugged me to him.

"You're crushing me," I giggled as I poked him between his ribs. He jostled a little with the prodding and released me enough that I could prop myself up on my elbows.

"No take-backs, right?" he asked. I furrowed my brow as I pushed myself further off him.

"You think I'm gonna change my mind that fast?" I asked.

"Hoping you won't," Dick raised his eyebrows and smiled at me. I smiled back, still suspicious of his low expectations, but leaned forward and kissed him.

"No take-backs," I confirmed. "But we do need to get moving." I rolled away from him and sat up on the edge of the bed, arching my back in a stretch.

"Why?" Dick asked. "Bruce will be sleeping in a little, Jason's gonna sleep till noon… why can't we take the morning slow?"

"Too much to do," I said, turning only my chin to protect my naked torso from being ogled too much first thing in the morning. His eyes were already scanning over my back; I rolled my eyes and picked up the pillow beside me, tossing it towards his head as I stood and picked up my white tee shirt from where he'd thrown it on the ground the night before.

"What's so urgent that we can't relax just a little longer?" he whined, and I smiled back at him as I bent over to pick up my leggings and bra from the ground as well.

"Batman's on the hunt for Red Hood- we've got to distract him. Plus, Joker and Quinn are on a rampage, Penguin's going to lose his shit after last night went so poorly, and after Catwoman robbed him, the Black Mask case file is still open, and Scarecrow's peddling drugs that are, at best, designed to kill their users or, at worst, designed to do far worse," I explained as I stepped into my leggings and pulled them on. Dick watched me as I spoke, sitting up in bed with the white sheets only covering his bottom half. I buckled my bra into place as he stared at me, then smiled softly as I pulled the white shirt over my head. I came forward and crawled over his body, covered in white sheets. His hands reached out and softly touched my arms, and his lips tightened as he inhaled, breathing me in. "And we can't play in bed all day," I smiled at him.

"Not all day… five more minutes?" he asked playfully, putting one hand on the back of my head and pulling me in for a kiss. I indulged him for a moment, but pushed back, bounced the tip of my nose across his, and got out of bed. "You're a killer, you know that?" he groaned as he threw his legs out from under the sheets and began getting up.

"No take-backs," I reminded him with a smile as I got myself ready to go.

I left Dick's apartment by Uber and got myself home to shower and change. Luckily for me, dad still hadn't come home; but that meant, poor thing, he'd probably been at the station all night processing paperwork. I got myself ready for the new day and started by making a run to the station to check on dad and, while I was at it, Two-Face. I made a stop for coffee and walked into the precinct with a full cup carrier. The first coffee was for the sarge at the public desk; it wasn't anything special, but a slow roast from a decent diner was far better than the burnt sludge they had here at the station. He recognized me on sight, of course, and quietly celebrated that he'd be on the receiving end of a non-precinct coffee. He waved me back; they didn't bother following protocol to admit me to the bullpen anymore. On my way to Dad's office, I caught the sight of Aaron Cash leaning sleepily over a stack of forms. I discreetly put his mocha Frappuccino down on his desk, and his eyes tripled in size when they saw the cup.

"If it isn't my guardian angel," he said, leaning back in his chair, his hands grabbing the arm rests. I leaned over his desk.

"You look tired, Aaron," I said, and he did. His skin had a white pallor to it. In all the years I'd known him, my favorite thing about him was his vitality and ability to find spots of humor on dark days; but he seemed weary today, too weary for jokes. "Long night?"

"This Cobblepot bullshit has got me sick and tired," he said, gratefully grabbing the sugary coffee and taking a sip out of the straw. "Dumbass wants to throw another party tonight… as if anyone's gonna want to come anyway."

"He wants to throw another party? One of his staff was killed last night, right?" I asked. Cash nodded with wide, annoyed eyes.

"I'm too young to be too old for this shit," Cash laughed, and I smiled at having his humor back. "Your dad's in his office, chewin' out the DA. I'm sure he'll appreciate the excuse to take a break." I looked across the bullpen to Dad's office, indeed seeing him in the middle of a shouting match with a weak-spined man in a suit.

"Thanks, Cash," I smiled, and he gave another grateful wave as I walked past. Dad's office had walls of windows; when Gotham moved headquarters to Bleake Island, the city hired interior design 'experts' to try to solve some of GCPD's most notorious problems- one of which was transparency. They figured that if the walls were all see-through, you couldn't hide anything.

Too bad the suspect interview rooms still had thick, dark walls.

But there was no corruption to hide in Dad's office- a lot of hard-assery, sure, and pent-up aggression, but nothing he was trying to hide. The DA, mayor, or Vicki Vale could walk into his office and he'd treat them all the same way- with his characteristic grit, candor, and general 'screw you' attitude. There were few exceptions to that rule; I was one of them.

As soon as I opened the door to his office, his raised voice blasted into the bullpen, bulldozing all other noises of ringing phones and clacking keyboards. "I don't give a damn who incapacitated him! We've got warrants for his arrest, he's staying put!" Dad shouted at the District Attorney, a fist slamming down on his desk.

"His lawyers will have a field day…"

"His lawyers can kiss my ass. There's no way Dent's getting off on a technicality," Dad's voice lowered as I closed the door softly, staying at the back of the room as their interaction closed up.

"I'm not disagreeing with you, Gordon. But it'll be hard to pin these charges on him indefinitely with the citizen's arrest; they'll appeal any sentence we stick on him. And they're going for the insanity plea," the DA responded meekly.

"Let them," my dad waved the lawyer away, sitting in his rickety wooden swivel chair. "The appellate process will take months, if not years. Gives your office more time to collect evidence on him and tuck him away for good. And I don't care who has to deal with him: Blackgate or the Asylum, it's all the same to me. He'll be behind bars." The DA was silent as he nodded, clearly afraid of arguing more but hating that his office was stuck with the legwork of keeping Dent off the streets. His eyes met mine as he turned to leave, and I gave a tight-lipped, understanding nod as his eyes went to the ground and he quietly left the room.

"Rough morning?" I asked as I stepped forward to dad, delivering his black coffee with just a dash of vanilla simple syrup. He shook his head and rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses.

"The one DA Gotham ever had that could get shit done without shying away from the fight," he grumbled in a low voice, "and I'm finding a way to keep his ass in prison for life so he can never hurt this city again. Doesn't make sense, the world we live in." I tightened my lips at him as I pulled my own coffee out of the carrier and raised it in a toast.

"To a safer Gotham?" I offered. He let out a laugh under his breath, but raised his paper cup and tapped it lightly against mine before taking a sip. "You never came home last night."

"Cobblepot's nightmare at the Iceburg Lounge wasn't the only mess I had to mop up last night," he said. "Two-Face was taken down by Batgirl and Nightwing last night. And after Joker killed that waitress at the Iceburg Lounge, he went on a joyride with Harley Quinn that ended in a messy car crash in Park Row. A lot of paperwork to fill out." He shook his head as he leaned over a form on his desk. I nodded understandingly.

"Batgirl and Nightwing, huh?" I asked, pretending to flip absentmindedly through things on the corner of dad's desk.

"Yeah. Batman was trying to catch Joker- good thing he's got friends waiting in the wings, or the shop owner on Bleake that Two-Face was robbing probably wouldn't have survived," he said as he filled in some paperwork. I tried to suppress my smile, and had to keep myself from asking after the shopkeeper I had helped save the night before.

"Well, you can't work all day, Dad," I said, dismissing the conversation as I stood and got ready to leave. "You need to sleep sometime."

"I'll sleep when Two-Face gets his transfer and gets the hell out of my basement," he said, gesturing towards the elevator wells that led down to the county holding cells in the depths of the parking garage. I walked around dad's desk and gave him a kiss on his forehead, then turned to leave. "Oh, hey," dad slowed me, and I turned back to face him. "Your friend, Colleen, didn't give us a whole lot on that hooded guy that saved her; just said he was a hero, like Batman. Kind of got the impression she may have been withholding information… trying to protect him, you know?"

"If she knew something else, she didn't tell me," I shrugged. "Just that he saved her. I think her head was pretty fuzzy… that bump was no joke." He nodded.

"Shame," he grumbled. "Doesn't make any sense… there was a 'Red Hood' back in the day, the year Joker attacked Gotham on Christmas Eve. The get-up matches, but that Red Hood was helping the mob; this one, saving hostages from Penguin? It doesn't add up."

"Maybe it's just a coincidence?" I asked, but he shook his head at me.

"There are no coincidences," he reminded me, and I nodded. He picked up his pen again and got back to work. "You'll let me know if she remembers anything?"

"Of course," I answered in a lie, turning back to the door. "Love you, dad."

"Love you too, Barb," he called after me as I closed the door behind me, casting a wave at Cash on my way out.

I drove myself to Elliot Memorial Hospital to check on Colleen, and just in time. The doctors were preparing to release her, so I brought in some clean exercise clothes that I kept in my car so that Colleen wouldn't have to pull her slinky black dress on again. I helped her get dressed and insisted on driving her home and making sure she got upstairs to her place okay.

"I'm alright, really," she insisted as I helped her out of my car in front of her place.

"I know you are," I said, ensuring she moved slowly and watching her eyes for any sign of dizziness or unease. "Let's just get upstairs and you can take it easy the rest of the day."

As I helped her up the staircase, her arm draped over my shoulders and my other arm wrapped around her waist, she quietly said, "I didn't say anything. About that guy from last night."

"Do you feel okay about that?" I asked, making sure she'd stay quiet.

"Yeah… I think you're right. I don't want him to get in any trouble- he might have saved my life," she said. I took her keys and unlocked her apartment door, letting her inside. She flopped down onto her bed, a bit more tired than she'd expected from the journey up the stairs. "I've been trying to figure out who he is," she said as I stepped into her tiny kitchen, which made me freeze in front of the stove. "Like, how could he have known we were hiding in the bathroom? Do you think he was at the Iceburg Lounge when things went wrong? As a party guest? Then maybe he changed so no one would recognize him?" I reached into her cabinet and pulled out a box of crackers, the only thing that seemed like a comfort-food snack.

"Why are you trying to figure out who he is?" I asked, bringing her the crackers.

"I don't know," she shrugged coyly as she opened the web browser on her phone, "maybe I can help him… like, if he's hiding from the cops…" She trailed off as I scanned her face suspiciously, then I turned aside with a laugh. "What?" she asked.

"You have a crush on him, don't you?" I stated more than asked. She opened her mouth to protest but had no argument to give.

"Listen," she said with a guilty smile, "this guy carries me out of there like freaking Lancelot and takes me to the hospital… he gave that cute little salute… he legitimately saved my life, who knows what those fucking goons were gonna do if they managed to get into the bathroom? So, you know, forgive me if I'm a little hung up on who this guy is." I grabbed her phone out of her hands and tossed it onto the blankets, offering her a sleeve of crackers instead.

"Worry about it later," I insisted as I put the phone down on the end of the bed. "You should be resting." I stood and grabbed a throw blanket, tossing it over her, and she grabbed her phone off the bedspread.

"I can rest and do stuff on my phone at the same time," she grumbled under her breath, and I shook my head with a laugh. Research on google wouldn't turn much up on Red Hood or Jason, so I wasn't worried. I helped her snuggle into bed with some snacks, books, and television, and I left her to rest- though she was too busy staring into her phone to notice what I left on TV.

As the days passed on, I found myself with a surprising amount of secrets to keep. We had to persuade Jason to continue laying low while Batman desperately searched for the true identity of The Red Hood. Jason was only a month away from his birthday, which I knew was when Batman intended to give Jason a shot at the real job. I didn't want Jason to blow anything, and he needed to focus on school anyway. Besides, the thugs that Batman was catching and pummeling in interrogation attempts didn't exactly not deserve a beatdown; they just unfortunately would not have the knowledge that he was attempting to procure.

Besides keeping Jason's identity a secret from Batman, Colleen proved more persistent than I'd expected as well. I got calls regularly from her, asking about what information she could weasel out of resources at the library or, "maybe could you ask your dad to run a report of likely suspects based on" some characteristic or other. She was definitely more eager to learn Jason's identity than the GCPD was, who stayed tied up in paperwork for at least a week after Dent's capture and the debacle at the Iceberg Lounge. I wondered if she would be so interested in Jason if she knew he wasn't quite 18 yet…

But without a doubt, the hardest secret to keep was Dick. He came by the Batcave slightly less than he used to, but when he came around he maintained his typical sarcastic, jocular, slightly flirty behavior. I kept up the ruse that I was holding him at arm's distance, and it seemed to convince both Bruce and Alfred. Jason was convinced too, and he did a pretty good job of pretending to not care around me, but I would occasionally glance him lecturing Dick as they walked around the mansion together, or see a text come in on Dick's phone from Jason reading something like, Hurry up or someone else is gonna come along. We don't want another DANIEL situation, do we?

It was hard not to smile at Jason advocating for us being together. He was such a good friend to us both, who was somehow able to see before either Dick or I could that we were good for each other. It sucked lying to him; I wondered when it might be time to tell the truth.

But it hadn't even been two weeks; that time was not yet.

It was a Thursday night, or rather Friday morning, and my feet were tucked up under me as I sat in Dick's computer chair, scanning the reports produced out of the GCPD criminal database. The blue light that filled the room filtered through my black rimmed glasses, and my hair was kept out of my face in a messy bun at the base of my skull.

"You've only got a few hours until work, beautiful," Dick said as he stepped up quietly behind me, the more ambient light of his apartment spilling in from the open doorway. His Batcave (or what would he call it- Nightwing-cave?) was far smaller than Bruce's: a small, discreet room hidden by a bookcase that housed his equipment and gear as well as a great computer set up and some training gear. It wasn't much, but it had everything I needed to continue my search for Scarecrow- which, yet again, was proving fruitless.

"Five more minutes," I mindlessly said, though I saw a glass of a greenish juice appear out of the corner of my eye. I accepted it with a small smile up at him, and tried not to be distracted by his shirtless form as he stood over me in only pajama pants.

"You know, Bruce can see my search history over here," Dick noted. "He's going to see I'm running all these reports on Blackmask's drug runners and get pissed I'm moving in on your case."

"No, he won't," I said as I clicked through one more filter on the list, seeing if there were any recent releases of Black Mask's Men that raised a red flag. "I'm running on a private server; he won't see this unless he scrubs his system top to bottom."

"Clever," Dick said, leaning forward over my shoulder, "wanna show me how to do that?" I smiled mischievously up at him.

"Why? Afraid Bruce is gonna find your red folder?" I joked as I took a sip of the juice, which turned out to be kale, cucumber, and celery. He smiled cutely down at me, taking the glass out of my hand and placing it down as his other hand fingered the cotton collar of his shirt that I was wearing.

"I'm not really thinking I'm gonna need a red folder anymore," he said, grabbing my hands and pulling me up out of the chair. I looked down at the keyboard and opened my mouth to argue, but he pulled me close and wrapped his arms around me, bunching the shirt up around me as he did so that my bare legs and underwear were exposed. "No more tonight," he said before I could argue. "Come to bed."

"There's no way you're ready to go again," I smiled, mostly because there was no way I was ready to go again.

"No, but we both have work tomorrow. Real work," he said, his hands on my lower back as he held me close.

"This is real work…"

"And it can wait."

"Not long," I argued, pulling my face away from his to show how invested in the work I was. "Scarecrow is going to have a new formula on the streets soon, and who knows if this is the one he'll try to attack with."

"Are you onto him here?" he gestured towards the computer. I looked up at the reports that continued to generate; none of them generated patterns or produced likely suspects. I let out a heavy breath, not wanting to concede that I kept coming up short.

"I'm missing something," I said with a shake of my head. "There's a link to the dealers, I'm just not finding it."

"You're not going to find it by depriving yourself of sleep and running list after list," Dick said. "Come on. Bed. You'll think clearer for it." He took a step away and pulled me after him by my hands. I reluctantly relented, following him out of the dark room and into the living room, where he flicked off the lights and led me back to his bedroom. We slipped between the sheets and he molded his body around mine as we slipped into sleep.

A few hours later, he'd dropped me off at an Urbarail station near Colleen's place on his way to work- this had been our plan, so that if anyone was watching the office, like Lucius, they would see me arriving alone. We didn't want anyone knowing I had spent the night anywhere other than Colleen's (which, of course, was the same story I told my dad). I spent much of the day reading through the reports I had generated the night before, trying to discern who the supplier was that linked Scarecrow's drugs to Black Mask's men- but the lists revealed nothing. I collapsed back into my chair, feeling like I'd hit a wall.

That's when it dawned on me; I'd been searching for a needle in a haystack, but I already had a direct line into the operation. We'd already gotten information out of Simpson about the money laundering; if he didn't know anything about the drugs, I was sure he could point me in the direction of someone who did.

That night, Batman was insistent that he wanted to do some interrogating of known Joker thugs to see if he could find a trail to either Red Hood, Harley Quinn, or Joker, but he didn't mind if I did some solo work to track down Scarecrow. So I went back to our source.

Andre Simpson was cradling his daughter in the crook of his arm as an old Kim Possible movie ended. She was 80% asleep as the movie wound to a close, but he was a good dad; he didn't try to change the channel, and he didn't try to rush her off to bedtime. He let the movie finish, then discreetly turned off the TV, and without a word he scooped her up in his arms and carried her off to bed. He was a good man at heart, I could tell, but perhaps a bit careless; he left the front door unlocked. While he was pulling the blankets up around her chin and tucking the blankets under her sides, placing her stuffed giraffe beside her on the pillow, I quietly opened the door to the apartment and stood in the shadows beside the TV. Andre closed the door to her bedroom and came out into the main room, seeing immediately that his front door was ajar. He almost knocked the small kitchen table over as he scurried backwards into the room searching for something, presumably a gun.

"Don't panic, Andre," I advised him in a calm voice. He froze and his eyes darted around the living room until he found me. "I'm not going to hurt you."

"Get the fuck out," he said, but he whispered it. He didn't want to wake his daughter; clearly, he didn't fear me enough to want to alarm her.

"Neither of us want to wake your daughter," I said, stepping out of the shadows, "and neither of us wants to take you from her."

"What do you want? I already told you everything I know," he snapped at me, his hands staying low but his eyes darting up occasionally at a high cabinet just out of arms reach.

"I need to know who's supplying Black Mask with the drugs," I answered.

"I told you, I don't know shit about the drugs…"

"Then who does?" He hesitated to answer me. In that instance, I was pretty sure of the answer. "Where is he tonight?"

"Like I said, he always stays close to the Mask," he said about Neill, his edginess abating though he stayed plenty nervous.

"Where are they tonight?"

"Olympus," he said. "They were all excited for some show down there tonight. Some…" he looked me over once, "dancer."

"Thank you for your cooperation," I said and turned to leave the apartment.

"I don't know anything else," he said a little louder as I stood in the doorway. "You keep comin' back, they're gonna find out. They'll kill me."

"Sounds like you should find a new job," I said over my shoulder, then grappled to the adjacent rooftop. I clicked on my communicator and connected with Batman. "I'm heading to Olympus," I said. "Alexander Neill is our connection to the dealers, he's got the information that will lead us to Scarecrow."

"Don't take him down unless he's alone," Batman advised me. "Black Mask's men have a lot of fire power. If he's impossible to get alone, call. We'll take him down together."

"Got it," I acknowledged, then clicked off that line. I landed on a rooftop across the highway from the Olympus casino and nightclub. It didn't take me long to see into the nightclub on the upper floors, where a heavy-breasted dancer in a black, leather biker-girl themed outfit was giving personalized attention to a table of men, including Alexander Neill. Alexander liked to play it cool and seem like nothing fazed him- including the swaying hips and mystique of the woman he dangled hundreds in front of- but I could see beneath his tough exterior that he was just a weak, insecure man clawing for power anywhere he could find it.

And the cigarette pack in his breast pocket was all I needed to see. It wouldn't be long before he came out onto the balcony beneath me for a smoke break, and when he did, he'd be getting some one-on-one time with a mysterious woman in black.