A/N It's been a rough month, but school is almost over!! If I can just survive my two major papers, I'll be alive and well to start back up with a regular update schedule during the summer. Huzzah! Thank you so much all who reviewed. Your words were a tremendous encouragement to me, as always.

Chapter 10

In Which Dick's Arms Take a Beating

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys.
Don't let 'em pick guitars or drive them old trucks.
Let 'em be doctors and lawyers and such.
Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys.
'Cos they'll never stay home and they're always alone.
Even with someone they love.

- Ed and Patsy Bruce

"And by the beginning of next week I want you to have this novel read."

Dick stared at Alex in horror. "You're kidding, right?"

"It's less than a week away. Believe me, it won't kill you."

Dick reluctantly took the paperback and flipped to the end. "A hundred and eighty pages!" he squawked. "No way I can read all that by Monday."

"You'll be surprised at what you can do, Mr. Grayson. Not only can you read that by Monday, but you can write a one page response paper about your favorite character. Go ahead and read the first chapter while I get a cup of coffee."

"At least it's not poetry," Dick muttered, flipping open to page one. "What kind of a stupid title is The Outsiders, anyway? What is it about, a bunch of people standing around outside?"

"Read!" Alex commanded from the doorway, and the boy reluctantly bent his head over the book. However, as the tutor had hoped would happen, by the time he returned with a steaming cup of java, Dick was intent on the story, not even glancing up as his teacher reentered the room.

Smiling to himself, Alex settled at his desk. Giving one last satisfied look at his student, his smile abruptly faded to a look of concern. Dick had been wearing a sweater appropriate to the chilly fall day, but he had pulled it off, revealing an ugly bruise that discolored his upper arm. "What did you do to yourself?" Alex demanded.

"Huh?" Dick looked up uncomprehendingly.

"Your arm. It looks like somebody took a hammer to it."

"Oh." An odd expression flashed across the boy's face. Alex's gut reaction was to call it guilt, but that didn't make any sense. The look was gone before he could even formulate the thought, and Dick twisted his arm to peer curiously the discolored skin. "Somebody did take a hammer to it. I had a polo lesson yesterday."

Alex frowned. "You play polo?"

"I take lessons. I'm not very good yet."

"Why polo?" Alex demanded.

Dick shrugged. "I dunno."

"Do you like it?"

Another shrug. "It's ok. Bruce plays."

Aha, Alex thought, convinced he had discovered the answer. "You know, you don't have to do everything Bruce does."

Dick looked puzzled. "I don't."

Alex decided not to push his point. "How do you like the book?"

"It's not bad," Dick looked down at the open pages. "This guy really needs to learn how to fight, though, or he's going to get killed."

He settled back down to reading, and Alex tried to focus on his own work, but his eyes kept drifting back to Dick's lurid bruise. He was more disturbed than the situation at face value warranted, but he was convinced that the polo was only a sign of a very real problem that would someday land Dick in serious trouble. If Wayne won't take responsibility for his influence over the boy…

When Dick's lessons were over, Alex dismissed him and gathered up papers and books into his satchel. On his way to the front door, he ran into Bruce Wayne, who was also headed out. Alfred held the door for them both, and Wayne stopped to have a word with the butler. Alex trotted down the steps, then hesitated at the bottom and turned to wait for his employer. "Do you have a minute?" he asked as Wayne ran down the steps and started for his car.

The billionaire turned. "Sure."

"I saw Dick's bruise from his polo lesson. The one on his arm," Alex clarified, even though he didn't know how such an ugly injury could be confused with anything else.

Wayne looked at him with a blank expression and pulled a pair of sunglasses out of his shirt pocket. "And?" he inquired, hiding his eyes behind the dark lenses.

"I didn't know he played polo."

"He picked it up a month or so ago. Not competitively – just lessons once a week at the country club."

"I asked him if he liked it, and his answer was that you played."

Wayne tilted his head. "I'm not following you."

Alex repressed a frustrated sigh. "The point I'm trying to make is that the boy's playing this hazardous sport for no other apparent reason than that you do it. I just wanted you to be aware of that. There are more dangerous things than polo, you know."

"I see." Wayne reached up and slowly drew his sunglasses back off. His bright blue eyes bored into Alex's. "Mr. Peaceable," he said softly, "I realize I am a person of little importance in your eyes, but allow me to suggest that if you enjoy tutoring Richard, you should stick to science." With a nod of farewell, he strode to his car.

Alex watched his employer climb in and pull away from the curb, and suddenly realized that he was tense and sweating, despite the coolness of the day. This is ridiculous, he told himself firmly. I am not afraid of Bruce Wayne. The other man, after all, hadn't so much as raised his voice.

For some reason, Alex couldn't help remembering a long ago visit to the zoo, when he had come face to face with a panther. He had remained eye locked with the beast in an anguished eternity of waiting for it to spring on him, before he finally realized that a Plexiglas wall stood firmly between himself and his killer.

Dick was sprawled on his bed, plugging away at his assigned reading, when Alfred knocked on his door. "Come in," Dick called, not taking his eyes off the page where some rich jerk had just gotten a knife in the ribs.

"Master Dick, Master Wayne would like to see you downstairs."

"All right," Dick said absently, rushing to reach the end of the paragraph. "Where is he?"

"Downstairs," the butler repeated.

Dick's head jerked up and he stared at Alfred, then shot off his bed and down the hall. The butler followed calmly, and halfway down the stairs found a sheepish Dick waiting for him. "I, um, I don't know how…"

"I've been instructed to teach you." Alfred led Dick into the study and demonstrated the way to open the bust of Shakespeare and flip the switch to swing the bookshelves outward. The liquor cabinet was still the double blind behind the shelves, and Alfred also demonstrated the way to open the hidden door to the elevator. "Nevertheless, I wouldn't come down without an invitation," he cautioned as they rode down.

"I'm not stupid," Dick muttered, a little awed by their descent through the dark shaft. The lights were on below, however, and Bruce was waiting for them, suited minus his cowl, as they pulled up the grille and stepped into the caverns.

"Change," he ordered, thrusting a pile of black clothing at Dick. The boy scrambled to obey, while Alfred backed toward the cave wall where he could watch and listen. When Dick was clad in black from ski mask to sneakers, Bruce beckoned him over to a counter and showed him a superfine mini-net of wires, with a tiny knob in the center like a spider on her web. "This is a listening device. The metallic threads on the edge help it cling to any textured surface," Bruce explained, picking it up with a tiny pair of tweezers and laying it on Dick's shoulder as a demonstration.

Dick peered at it curiously. "How do you get it back off?"

"With this." Bruce picked up a slender black bar and held it over the device. The net leaped up off of Dick's sweatshirt and clung to the bar. "It's got a specially calibrated electromagnetic pulse. You switch it on and off on the side." He gently placed the net in a thin plastic case, then handed case, tweezers, and magnet to Dick. "Put these in your pockets." Dick obeyed, sticking the tweezers and magnet on one side and the listening device in the other. "Let's go," Bruce ordered, snatching up his cowl and leading the way to a small car with tinted windows. They drove through the waterfall, leaving Alfred alone in the caverns.

"Where are we going?" Dick asked as they sped through the downtown district of Gotham.

"To plant that thing," Bruce, or rather Batman, responded.

"Yeah, but where?"

"In the apartment of a mistress of a city councilmember. We suspect that he's a silent partner in a number of illegal businesses, but we can't prove anything. We're hoping for some ideas of where to go for evidence."

"Who's we?"

Batman didn't respond.

Dick's private guess was the chief of police, but he figured he'd reached the limit of how many questions he was allowed to ask, at least for the moment.

They parked the car in one of the better sections of Gotham and hiked the rest of the way to the condominium complex.

"This is her bathroom window," Batman growled when they were pressed against the wall of the building.

Dick looked up at the small pane of frosted glass that glimmered three feet above his head. What good is that going to do us?

"The hallway outside the bathroom opens into the living room. There's a coffee table with a table cloth over it. Put the bug on the middle of the table top under the cloth and come straight back out. Understood?"

Dick's mind scrambled to process the fact that he had just been told to break and enter someone's house alone, and then he realized it wasn't all that different from what he'd done the last time with Batman…Bruce. "Ok," he said softly. If Batman ordered him to climb through windows, then he would climb through windows, no questions asked.

"The apartment should be empty. If anything goes wrong, head for the kitchen, which is across from the living room. There's a side door with a glass upper half. Going through that will set off the burglar alarm."

"How do I get through the window?"

"It swivels in the center. You'll sit on my shoulders and cut through the pins. We'll replace them when you come out."

Dick nodded, and took the extremely thin file Batman handed him. The taller man crouched, and Dick climbed up and was raised to the window, which was conveniently open a crack. Either the file was an extremely good one or the condo's building materials were shoddy, because it only took a couple of swipes to cut through the supporting pin on each side. Dick tucked the file into his pocket and carefully handed down the framed glass, then hoisted himself around on the Bat's shoulders so that he could go through the window feet first. He landed lightly on the back of the toilet, straddling a potpourri basket, and jumped soundlessly to the floor. The door to the hall stood open, and there was no light or sound coming from the rest of the apartment.

It was almost ridiculously easy. The coffee table was littered with magazines, some of which he had to shift before he could plant the bug. He took a minute to rearrange everything in its original position, and then silently went back down the hall and out the bathroom window. He again settled onto Batman's shoulders, accepting the window glass and a new set of spring loaded pins. He fit the frame back into place with a feeling of satisfaction: Unless someone else took the window apart, it was impossible to tell that it had been tampered with.

Batman led the way back to their car. "What now?" Dick asked as they buckled their seatbelts.

"Home."

It hadn't been much of an adventure, but Dick didn't mind. The point was that he'd done something to help.

It was nearly midnight, and the highway was almost deserted as they traveled homeward. Suddenly, an SUV shot from behind them, weaving unsteadily between its lane lines. They watched it until it disappeared around a curve, and then Batman said, in a voice that was mostly Bruce but had just enough of the Bat to be scary, "If I ever catch you driving under the influence, I'll break your wrists."

Before Dick could reply, a horrific sound of squealing brakes and crashing metal split the night. Batman hit the gas and they sped around the curve to see the SUV flipped over on its top and a tiny Ford Focus with its nose crumpled against the safety barrier. Batman pulled the car onto the shoulder and hit the brakes, his door flung open almost before the car stopped moving. He ran to the Focus, which was closer.

"Watch the gas tank!" he shouted as Dick ran past him toward the other car.

The SUV reeked of gasoline, and the tank was clearly punctured, judging by the pool of clear liquid that was pooling along one side. Dick didn't know if this was a model with an extra gas tank, but even if not, there was probably gas leaking on the inside as well as the outside, trickling down into the engine and transforming the car into a bomb.

The front passenger's window had shattered and the frame was bent down around it, but there was just enough of a gap to crawl beneath the vehicle. Dick dropped to his stomach and wiggled in. "Hello?" he asked into the darkness. He could make out the figure of a man suspended upside down in the driver's seat by his seatbelt.

"Can you hear me?" Dick asked, wiggling closer and feeling debris shift beneath him. When he got close enough, he put out a hand and felt beneath the man's ear. There was a pulse, fast erratic, fluttering beneath his fingertips. "Ok, let's get out of here," Dick muttered, fumbling for the seatbelt button. It was jammed.

"Shit," Dick muttered, figuring that Alfred would forgive him under the circumstances. He doubted whether a shard of glass would be strong enough to cut through the belt and it might take too long to call Batman for help. Besides, he was probably needed at the other car.

Suddenly Dick remembered the file he had shoved in his pocket after removing the window. He had just maneuvered the tool out of his pocket when a harsh voice outside the car demanded, "Is anyone alive in there?"

"He's alive but his seatbelt's jammed," Dick called. "I'm cutting him loose." He began sawing at the belt. The file didn't cut fabric as well as metal, but he was nearly through when a small explosion shook the SUV's frame.

"The engine's on fire!" Batman shouted. "Get out, now!"

Dick gave a final, frantic tug on the file and the seatbelt snapped, releasing the man's body. "I've got him!" he screamed. "Pull me out!"

Hard hands latched onto his ankles, and he was hauled forcefully out of the vehicle, dragging the driver. But when the man's shoulders hit the opening, he stuck.

"He's too big," Dick gasped, tugging uselessly.

Batman placed his shoulder against the car and grabbed hold of the twisted doorframe. "On three," he gritted. "One, two…" He heaved, and the SUV rose a few precious inches. Dick dug in his heels and jerked. The driver's body slid out from beneath the vehicle and Batman dropped it with a crash. He threw the driver over his shoulder and then they were running, running as a boom shook the air and heat pelted their backs while debris rained down around them.

When they were a safe distance away, Batman dropped the driver unceremoniously to the ground. "You all right?" he demanded.

"Yeah, I'm ok." Dick dropped to his knees and peered at the driver's face. The guy was really young – probably not more than sixteen or seventeen – and the smell of alcohol mixed with the gas fumes drifting up from his body. "What about him?"

"I think he's all right," Batman muttered, crouching and giving the guy a quick once over.

There was the sound of squealing breaks, and then an older woman with styled gray hair and a pink sweater was hurrying over to them. "Oh my goodness, is there anything I can do to help?" she asked, panting. Batman looked up at her, and she let out a surprised squeak.

"Do you have a cell phone?" the crime fighter rasped.

"Yes, yes, I do. Oh my, are you…"

"Call 911." Batman grabbed Dick's arm and they took off toward their car.

"Wait!" the woman called after them. "What do I tell the police?"

Batman ignored her, so Dick did the same. She was still waving frantically as they sped past her. "What about the other car?" Dick asked.

The Bat shook his head. "Dead."

Alfred was waiting for them back at the cave. "Did everything go as planned?" he asked as they climbed out, and then wrinkled his nose. "Smoke?"

"Car accident," Bruce said briefly, pulling off his cowl and unfastening his cape. "You sure you didn't get cut on any of that glass?" he asked Dick, who was pulling off his ski mask.

Dick ran a hand through his sweaty hair and flinched at the dart of pain that ran up his arm. "I guess I did," he answered, looking at the blood visible in a rip in his sweatshirt sleeve.

Alfred sighed. "I see that I'm going to have to lay in more hydrogen peroxide. Come along, young master."

Dick manfully endured Alfred's disinfecting and bandaging while Bruce stood over them, scowling. "You sure that's the only place you got cut?" he demanded.

It was Dick's turn to sigh. "Yes, Master Wayne."

Bruce thumped his ward on the side of the head and began to unstrap his armor.

"Will you not be going out again, Master Wayne?" the butler asked as he trimmed the adhesive tape and gathered up the medical supplies.

"Not tonight. Dick, do me a favor and don't let Peaceable see that arm. He was on me about your polo bruise."

"Polo bruise?" Alfred asked, a touch of worry in his voice.

Dick rolled his eyes. "Yeah, some dumb girl whacked me with her mallet."

"Don't worry, Alfred. I only hit him where it doesn't show," Bruce put in smoothly.

Dick looked at his guardian in surprise, but when he caught the hint of a smile, he burst out laughing. "Heck yes you do!"

"I fail to understand the joke," Alfred said stiffly, walking over to the supply cabinet.

Dick started laughing even harder and leaned against the counter to support himself, forgetting about his arm. "Ouch!"

"Go to bed," Bruce ordered. "You have school in the morning. I didn't intend to keep you out this late."

"All right," Dick agreed, heading for the elevator. He stopped when a hand grasped his shoulder.

"You did a good job tonight," Bruce said, his grip tightening momentarily. Then he dropped his hand and went to put away his armor.

Dick's grin lasted all the way up to the third floor.

The moment his ward was out of sight, Bruce darted to the sink and threw up. "I can't do this Alfred," he gasped, sinking to the ground and resting his head against the side of the counter. "He was almost killed tonight and we weren't even fighting crime."

Alfred handed him a towel and a glass of water. "When Master Dick finds people who need rescuing, he'll help them, no matter what career path he's chosen."

"If he hadn't been out with me…"

"If I may bring up the past for a moment, trips to the dentist have proven quite as hazardous for Master Dick as traveling with you."

Bruce shuddered at the memory. "If it hadn't been for that Somerville woman…"

They were silent for a moment, remembering, and then Bruce gave a deep sigh. "Alfred?"

"Yes, Master Wayne?"

"Do you have any tranquilizers in that cupboard of yours?"

Despite his physical weariness, Dick was much too keyed up to sleep. After pacing around his room for a while, he dropped on to his bed and picked up The Outsiders. At first the words seemed pale in comparison to the experiences he had just lived through, but after a few minutes, the narrative drew him in.

"Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay."

Johnny was staring at me. "Where'd you learn that? That was what I meant."

"Robert Frost wrote it."

Dick sat bolt upright on his bed. "That sneak!" he cried indignantly. "He gave me a story with poetry in it!"

To Be Continued

A/N Good news! I think this story is within five chapters of being done and maybe less! We're two thirds of the way there! Then we can move on to the sequel, which is when things get really good. bounces up and down excitedly

In other news, I've started a fic for The Outsiders. Check it out if you're a Ponyboy fan, and especially if you're a Darry fan ;)