Batman
Watchtower

Two more weeks, still no deaths. What is he doing? The killer had either gotten much better at hiding his acts or had moved to a different area. Batman and the family were obsessively scouring the missing person reports every day, but nothing fit his profile...or any profile. On the plus side, they had returned several kidnapped young women and runaways to their homes.

"At least we're getting something accomplished," Tim said as he lifted. Bruce spotted him, glad to have a few minutes of down time.

"I just keep waiting for the other shoe to drop."

"Honestly, me too. We can only control what we can control, though." Straining, he pushed the bar up one more time before securing it and sitting up. "360 for 10 reps. Got that in you still, old man?"

"And then some. Move it, junior." He laid down on the bench and set about lapping Tim's effort three times before returning the bar. When he sat up and grinned, he was awarded with an annoyed look.

"Nice one, Mr. Perfect. You know, you could let me win every now and then."

"What would that teach you?"

"That you're a nice guy who wants to build up my self confidence?"

"Tim, one thing you've never lacked is self confidence," he said, moving to give the bench back to him. "It's your muscle that needs some building."

"Not nice, man. Fair, but not nice." Bruce spotted him again as he struggled through another ten reps.

"You'll get there, Robin. You're lifting more than Dick and Jason were at 19."

"But...grunt...not you?"

"Not even close," he smirked at him and helped him with the last rep. Tim sat up and panted, looking a little like he was going to pass out.

"At least you're humble about it." He crawled onto the floor and started doing sit ups as Bruce did another 30 reps on the bench. When he finished, he walked over to the chin bar and started his pull ups, one arm at a time. "Now you're just showing off."

"Could be worse," he said, switching arms. "I could be Clark, just sitting around and being perfect with no effort."

"Don't even get me started on him. Or Billy. That 12 year old could kick every part of my ass."

When they finished, they sat down on the bench and recovered. Tim was the easiest of the family to be around. Not only was he wonderfully oblivious to personal turmoil, he had the same inborn passion for justice that he had, even hunting him down to take over the role of Robin once Jason was murdered. They had a different kind of bond – more like brothers than father and child.

"I'm just grateful they're the good guys," Bruce said, heading toward the showers. "You on patrol with me tonight?"

"Yep. I'll have noddle arms now, but I can always kick the bad guys into submission," Tim shouted from the shower.

"Take the University and surrounding area. I'll cover the rest."

"Works for me. I won't flirt with the coeds...much."

He sighed and shook his head. "You're supposed to be stealthy."

"Oh, come on. They feel better knowing a big, strong, handsome, capable, masked, vigilante hero is watching them."

"That all the adjectives you could think of?"

"Witty? Brilliant? Suave? Debonair?"

"Obnoxious?"

"Still not nice, Bruce. I'll let you know if anything comes up. Stay out of my territory. The girls get all distracted if you're around, Mr. Perfect."

Once he readied for patrol, he jumped in the Batmobile and started making slow circuits around the outside of town. After an hour of no activity, a call came across the communicator.

"Batman, it's Gordon," the Commissioner said. "We've got another one."

Zatanna
San Francisco

I'm showing.

She stood studying herself in the mirror, the small bump on her abdomen finally revealing itself. The doctor had fussed at her for still being underweight, but it didn't stop the little guy from making his presence known.

"He's healthy. You could be healthier, though," the doctor said in her scolding tone. "Seriously. This time I want ten pounds in the next month."

"I'll do it this time. Got rid of some pretty wicked stressors recently," she said, understating the ordeal a bit.

"Good. If you want that baby to keep being healthy, you'll keep your promise. He can't grow if you don't feed him enough."

That was a week ago and she'd proudly already put on four more pounds. She would be well ahead of the curve if she kept it up. Good doctor report card incoming.

She kept up with her daily walks, wearing looser clothing and still staying as incognito as possible. People would occasionally recognize her and ask for autographs, but the press had been pretty quiet about her presence so far. With her mind clear and hopes for the future with her child running ever higher, she made the rounds in the city. The house was filled with every supply and toy she could ever need or the baby could ever reasonably play with. She knew she would be making some orphanage children very happy in a couple of years, but she couldn't resist giving in to her temptation to buy the little boy everything he could want. He'd be spoiled rotten from day one and she couldn't believe how in love with him she already was.

Throwing a shirt on and grabbing her purse, she headed north to Great Meadow Park, taking in as much fresh air as possible. She ate lunch on a park bench and stopped at the farmer's market before heading home. It was late afternoon and her feet were getting tired, so she rode the trolley halfway. When she arrived at her door, she found two surprise visitors waiting on the porch.

"Hey, Zee," Barb said, walking forward and hugging her. Kate quickly mimicked the movement. Zatanna returned the hugs, but she felt the tension they were emitting and it made her think they weren't there to throw her a baby shower.

"This is a nice surprise. come on in, ladies." She kept her tone light and friendly, hoping that she was wrong and they had come as friends instead of double agents. Opening the door, she dropped the wards and let them follow her inside. "Just give me a second," she said, putting the groceries away before returning to the living room.

"How are you?" Barb asked, sitting next to Kate on the couch.

"Well enough. You guys?"

"We're fine."

"Bruce isn't," Kate said, earning a quick elbow from Barb. "I don't care, we came here to talk about him, so why beat around the damn bush? We have to fly back tonight."

"Because it's rude," Barb said, rolling her eyes. "Sorry, Zee. We didn't come here to..."

She held her hand up to stop her. "If he wants to talk to me, he can call."

"He didn't send us, I swear," Kate said. "We came on his behalf, but he'd kill us if he knew."

Leaning back, she sighed and nodded for them to say their piece.

"He's been working on a case...I'm sure you know. It's a serial killer."

"Yeah, I tried to help him, but couldn't get anything useful. It was all he was working on before I left."

"It's still going on. What do you know about the victims?" Barb asked.

"Not much. College girls, but he didn't tell me much else. He knows I have a bit of a weak stomach about things like that."

"That's not why he was hiding it." Barb reached into her purse as she spoke and pulled out several newspaper clippings. Zatanna took them from her when she held them out and started leafing through the pictures of the victims. Page after page. Face after face. All strikingly similar. Black hair. Blue eyes. They could all be sisters. My sisters. Swallowing hard, she set the papers down on the coffee table and rubbed her forehead.

"This doesn't mean..."

"Zee, he's terrified of losing you," Kate interrupted. "He's working himself into the ground and he can't keep going like he is. No one could."

"He told me how he reacted when you told him you were pregnant," Barb said. "It wasn't right, but I don't think he knew how much it would hurt you. He was scared."

"So was I," she said quietly. "Still am, but I don't get to walk away from it." Closing her eyes, she remembered the look on Bruce's face just before he left her room. She'd read it as anger and didn't blame him; her forgetfulness had put them in the situation. Was it fear? It wasn't an emotion she had ever seen from him, so she didn't know.

"We're not trying to condone the way he acted, but we've seen what it's done to him since then," Barb said. "He's only been this way a few times before and it's always due to fear and guilt. Hell, we're not really asking anything of you, but if you could at least talk to him...let him know you're okay."

"You're asking me to be the one to reach out when he left me and hasn't so much as tried to send me a text message in the last month and a half?"

"Damn that stubborn fool," Barb said, sitting back and sighing. "I told him to call you."

"Yes, that's what we're asking," Kate said. "It's not fair, but we're asking. If he's too stubborn or scared to do it, then it has to start with you."

Taking a deep breath, Zatanna stood and walked to look out of the window. A family was playing in their front yard: mother, father, and child. A normal, perfect life. She knew it wasn't a life she would ever have; normalcy and perfection were foreign concepts to magi. Life was too complicated, too fraught with danger and temptation and the horrors that lie just beyond the carefully-constructed wall between the worlds of realism and magic. But how close to normal would her son's life ever be if he didn't know his father? As afraid as she was that she would just be rejected again, she knew she owed it to her son to try. His welfare would have to come first from now on.

"I'll consider it," she said, unsure of where to even start. She knew she would have to finish getting her own mind right before she reached out to anyone. "I have some things to take care of first."

"Thanks, Zatanna. Really," Barbara said as she and Kate stood.

"Have a good flight back," she said, still facing the window. When she heard the door close, she felt a new wave of loneliness wash over her. Since her father died, she hadn't had anyone care as much about her as Bruce's family cared about him. It was a price she had been willing to pay to keep herself and others safe, but she didn't want her son to pay that same price. He deserved the best of everything she could possibly give him.

The family she had been secretly spying on finally went inside, so she returned to the kitchen to make dinner. She had promises to keep to her doctor, her son...and now the Bat family.

Batman
GCPD

"She fits the physical profile, but not a lot else," Gordon said as they walked to the morgue. "She was married with a small child. Nurse at Gotham General. He took her, killed her, dumped the body all within a few hours. We had only just gotten the missing person report when some joggers found her body."

"Are you sure it's him? That's a lot of deviations."

"The wound patterns are exactly the same. He still raped her. Unless it's an over-anxious copy cat, then yeah...it's him."

Running his scanners over the body, he hoped the faster kill had led to a sloppier method. On the third pass, he found a thread that didn't seem to fit the woman's clothing. "Evidence bag?"

Gordon walked to a drawer and pulled out a small plastic bag and handed it to him. "What is it?"

"Maybe nothing, but it's a foreign fiber. Let me run it through the database and see what I find." He put the bag in his belt and made one more pass before turning his scanners off. "The family?

"On their way to ID her. Why would he change everything now?"

"Could be something psychological. Could be the pressure he's feeling from being hunted. That pressure won't get less now, Jim, I promise. We'll find him," Batman said, covering the body with a sheet.

"We will. Soon, I hope. You know, after so many weeks off, I thought maybe he'd disappeared or been arrested for something else. I was foolish enough to start feeling hopeful, but now..."

"Now we have a child growing up without its mother."

"He's a cute kid, too."

"It's a boy?" His head started to pound again.

"Yeah, looks just like his mom," Gordon said as he led him back out of the morgue. "I hate this, Batman. We've gotta do better."

Nodding, he walked to the exit. He needed air. Not safe. They're not safe.

"Batgirl?"

"Miss Barbara has taken ill, sir. I'm covering her watch for the evening," Alfred responded.

"There's been another murder victim. I'm uploading a small fiber I found on the body. See if you can identify it."

"Of course, sir. And I'm sorry. I had hoped that the nightmare had ended."

"I'm headed to the site where they found her. Let me know if anything comes back on the evidence."

The pounding in his head intensified as he drove, winding through the streets and thinking of his latest failure. The killer was changing. Why now? He'd never taken a married woman or a mother before. Why so long? He'd been operating almost like clockwork before. Why change?

Scouring the site, he found another fiber that didn't match the woman's clothing. Sloppy.

"Sir, the fiber is from a very expensive type of linen. Mainly used in high-end men's apparel," Alfred said over the communicator.

Wealthy.

"Thanks, Alfred. I'm sending another fiber. I'll be back on patrol the rest of the night."

"Yes, sir. Be safe."

The Killer
Gotham City

Some kills just feel better than others. This one had been worth the time and effort. She didn't just fit the profile...she was almost perfect. He only wished he could have taken more time, but women with families tend to raise more alarms than single women. It was thrilling, though – a high that the paler imitations couldn't give him. Locking down the house, he headed out into the night. It was a clear night. It was the kind of night that was ideal for hunting. He smiled as he turned toward the busy streets of downtown Gotham.

Time to find the next.

Zatanna
Shadowcrest

The house lit up like Broadway as she entered. It made her smile, even though she felt a twinge guilt knowing she wasn't going to be staying long.

"Told you I wouldn't leave you alone forever. Didn't bring the cat, though."

There was an eerie vibe to the empty hallways, but she felt at home as soon as she entered the library and sat down. It was late afternoon and she wasn't ready to sleep yet, despite her exhaustion from the cross-country flight. She uncovered her favorite chair and lit the fireplace before calling down a book to curl up with. Her mind didn't focus on the words much as she thought ahead to the next day. Lots of meditation and relaxation had her mind as right as she was ever going to get it. She didn't know what to say or what Bruce might say, but she had to try. Even if all she got was a reluctant agreement to be in her baby's life, it would be better than nothing. His initial reaction was still burned in her memory. She could still feel the pain that ripped through her when he walked away.

House probably remembers it, too.

After several hours of fake reading, she decided her endless worrying wasn't worth the increased anxiety. She would go, they would talk, and she would move forward, no matter what.

Wayne Manor

It had been so long since she drove one of her cars that the trip had been a bit precarious. She'd shouted at least half a dozen apologies at other terrified motorists as she tried to resurrect her muscle memory from driver's ed. Teleporting was easier, but maybe she had used it a bit too much over the years. Finally arriving to the winding road leading to Wayne Manor, she slowly made her way up and carefully parked out front.

Should have called a cab.

The sun was rising over the trees and birds were singing as she walked up the stairs to the front door. Hands shaking, she rang the doorbell and waited. After several minutes, she heard the deadbolts release and Alfred opened the door. His eyes were wide with surprise and it took him a moment to speak.

"Good morning, Miss Zatara. Forgive me, I wasn't expecting you."

"Yeah, sorry to just drop in. If it's not a good time...'

"No, it's fine. I don't believe Master Bruce has returned from patrol yet, but please, come in."

"Thanks, Alfred," she said, stepping inside and following him toward the kitchen.

"Have you eaten?" Same Alfred, always trying to feed me.

"Yes, I had breakfast. Can't go too long without food right now."

He nodded silently and handed her a glass of orange juice. "You're well?"

"Getting there. My doctor scolds me regularly."

"Mine, too," he grinned as he cooked Bruce's breakfast. A little after 8:00, she heard the elevator come to life. Her anxiety went through the roof, but she tried to convey calm. She heard his rumbling voice coming from behind her as she gripped her drinking glass.

"Alfred, whose car is that out..." His words cut off as he entered the room. Taking a deep breath, she turned slightly to face him. "You're here."

"I'm here," she said quietly. Alfred plated the food and made a hasty retreat from the kitchen to leave them alone. The look on Bruce's face was almost more than she could take and she felt the tears start to sting her eyes. She wiped her cheeks and stood to face him. He immediately looked down, seeing her ever-growing belly. His eyes started to fill with tears, too, and he reached a hand out before hesitating. Nervously taking a step back, he dropped his arm back to his side. "It's okay," she said quietly, walking toward him and taking his hand. She placed it on her stomach and watched his face. A tear rolled down his cheek as he ran his hand over the bump.

"Healthy?"

"Yeah, he's good. Growing fast."

"You're healthy?" He finally looked up to meet her eyes. She nodded as his other hand reached around her waist so he could pull her against him. Leaning her head against his chest, she breathed him in. Home. "You drove?"

"Just to the house. I flew in to check on Shadowcrest. Figured I should check in here, too," she lied. She wasn't going to rat out his family. "You should eat your breakfast."

"Not hungry," he mumbled into her hair.

"Eat anyway."

"You sound like Alfred," he sighed, pulling away and walking to the plate of food. He shoved a forkful of eggs into his mouth and took a drink of milk before returning his hand to her belly and hugging her again. "Stay."

"I have a 7:00 flight back tonight," she whispered. His body tensed, but his touch remained soft on her stomach.

"Stay. Please, Zatanna. At least today. I...I don't sleep." His voice was barely audible and she knew she was fighting a losing battle; she had no desire to leave unless he sent her away.

"For a while," she said quietly. Bruce turned and finished off the food in a few bites before taking her hand and leading her upstairs. Once in the room, he stripped his shirt and looked down at it for a second before holding it out to her with a wary look in his eyes.

"Thanks," she said, taking it from him and turning to set her purse down. On the dresser, she saw the small stack of gifts she had returned when she left; he hadn't moved them. He went to the bathroom and she quickly slipped out of her clothes and into his shirt before sitting down on the bed. Memories flooded back to her as she waited. When his warm arms wrapped around her waist, she didn't fight it. He quickly shuffled her body down and pulled her against him. She curled into his chest, as always, and it felt like home, as always.

"Why did you fly?" He asked, lips pressed to her forehead.

"The baby drains my magic, so I'm conserving everything in case I really need it." The smell of his aftershave filled her senses as they held each other.

"Is that normal?" He still asked more questions than the average toddler, but it didn't bother her much anymore. It was just his nature.

"Dunno," she shrugged. "Don't have anyone to ask. I guess I should research it, but I just assumed it was natural. Doesn't really matter."

It was quiet for a long time and she assumed he had fallen asleep until his low voice broke the silence.

"I'm sorry I walked out on you."

"I'm sorry I screwed up," she said.

"What do you mean?"

"It's my fault I got pregnant. I know it's not what you want."

His hand reached under her chin and lifted her face until she was looking in his eyes, once again filled with tears. "Never apologize for that again."

"Try to sleep," she said, lowering her face back down to press against him. This wasn't a conversation she wanted to have while he was exhausted. It wasn't a conversation she wanted to have ever, but they'd have to address how much involvement he wanted to have in her baby's life eventually. For now, though, she just wanted to be held. When his body relaxed against her, she pulled her head back and watched his face. Even sleeping, he looked tired. The girls had said he was running himself into the ground and he'd pleaded with her to stay so he could rest. At the very least, she felt like she made good on her promise to let him know she was okay. Regardless of what the rest of the day brought, she was confident she had made the right decision.

Doing what I can for you, little boy.