Cooking is a mystical art that properly requires years of intensive study and practice before one should even think of picking up a whisk. It must be. After all, if even Bruce Wayne, the Batman himself, can't cook, it surely must require the kind of skill that only a true devotee could summon.

It also might explain the little puffs of smoke rising from the stovetop. "How's it going over there?" Jackie asked tentatively.

"Fine!" Sorrow and Grief declared simultaneously. They scuffled briefly, snatching things out of one another's hands in an attempt to stop their breakfast from carbonizing.

Rather than distract them and lose yet another residence to rogue-induced ravening flames, Jackie settled back in the battered wooden chair and rested her hands on the table, toying with a napkin. She darted a sidelong glance at Eddie.

The Riddler had not taken last night's interruption well. He scowled at the table, drumming his fingers heavily on his placemat. Grand Strand Man needed a serious dose of revenge, and the Riddler was just the person to wield the syringe of retribution.

The thumping of his fingers slowed as a look of dawning evil broke across Eddie's face. "Did you think of something?" Jackie asked, jumping upright in her seat.

"Oh yes," he grinned, staring into the distance.

"What is it?"

"It's perfect."

"But what is it?"

"Ooooh, he's going to hate it."

Jackie bounced impatiently. "Tell me already!"

He turned a wide, beaming grin in her direction. "We do...nothing."

"Nothing? Nothing is your plan?" Jackie asked, disappointed.

"Exactly." He chuckled to himself. "Think about it," he continued, settling comfortably back into his chair. "What does he want us to do? Break a bench, steal some money," he mocked, trying to mimic Grand Strand Man's petulant expression. "He wants us to do something illegal so that he can get us arrested. He'd probably turn us in for jaywalking at this point."

"I thought the cops were paid off," Sorrow commented, dubiously poking an egg with the tip of her spatula.

"They are," Eddie assured her. "I can't imagine that he knows that, though." He took a sip of his coffee, reveling in the jolt of caffeine with a look on his face like a cat's in the sun. "If we do nothing, he does nothing. Stalemate."

"Works for me," Sorrow said, carefully transferring a plate of eggs to the table. Miraculously, they only appeared to be slightly scorched. "Breakfast," she announced, taking a seat.

Grief carried a frying pan over to the trash can and scraped out half a pig's worth of blackened bacon. "At least there's toast."

"The toast!" Sorrow scrambled over to the toaster oven. The door slid open to reveal four black hockey pucks that might have been bread in a previous life. "Great."

"Thank goodness for Cheerios," Grief said, retrieving the box.

The vacation drifted onward, as vacations do. They wandered through the endless parade of cookie-cutter beachwear shops, which were glowing with neon and stocked with enough cheap gimcrackery to fill a thousand trailer parks. They wound through the endless exhibits in the virtually abandoned tourist museums, examining everything from a matchstick roller coaster to a wax figure display of the Justice League. Aquariums, zoos, swamps and casinos blurred together into one long wave of time-filling, mildly entertaining activity. (One might think it ridiculous that a foursome of fearsome criminals would bother wasting their time in tourist traps. Then again, at least one of the four was known to wear full-body spandex in public and expect to be respected, proving that good taste did not necessarily go hand-in-hand with infamy.)

Naturally, wherever they went, they remained on their best behavior. True, Grand Stand Man was a teenager, and thus they were safe during school hours. But in the afternoon, as soon as the buses began trundling down the streets, he'd be on his way to track them down and stare at them from behind the nearest handy barrier. They took extra care to be polite and helpful whenever they noticed that angry, pimply glare burning at them from a hiding spot.

It had become a fantastic game. One day, Eddie had gone for the gold, scooping up a woman's fallen purse and handing it back to her with a friendly smile. When she'd thanked him and hurried on, he'd turned that friendly smile to a nearby bush and winked devilishly. The bush shook as its inhabitant had growled with fury.

But today they'd managed to give him the slip (which wasn't hard, given that Myrtle Beach had a population of twenty-two thousand people to blend in with) and they'd headed straight for the beach.

Sea oats and seagrass clustered atop tiny dunes at the borders of civilization. The beach was empty, silent except for the rhythmic crashing of the waves. No people frisked along the shoreline. No toddlers patted castles into shape with fat little hands. On the other hand, there were no handy bushes for Grand Strand Man to lurk behind, something that made everyone a little more relaxed.

They hadn't bothered with swimming gear. Even though Myrtle Beach felt like warm, toasty heaven after the bitter cold of a Gotham winter, it was still January and it was still too cool to swim. Instead, Eddie and Jackie wandered to the shoreline, pants rolled to their knees, and indulged in some playful splash-fighting.

Sorrow, wrapped in her windbreaker, scowled uneasily up and down the sand. Grief, sprawled lazily on an oversized blanket, snuggled up next to his boss, resting his head on her thigh. "I love the beach," he said dreamily. "It's so peaceful. Couldn't you live here forever?"

Sorrow shook her head. "I don't like it."

"What?" He squinted up at her, puzzled. In the water, Jackie shrieked as Eddie scored a direct hit on her bright blue T-shirt. "What's not to like?"

Sorrow shrank a little deeper into her jacket. "I don't like it!" She darted a glance behind her. She wasn't used to all of this...this space. She'd been born and raised in Gotham, where every building was a bolthole and every alley was an escape route. The thought of an empty plain - an empty plain that you couldn't even run quickly on! - was unsettling at best. "I can't wait to get back to Gotham," she muttered, poking a hole in the sand with one gloved finger.

"Back?" He sat up slightly, bracing himself on an elbow as he turned to face her. "Why do we have to go back?"

She smiled halfheartedly at him. "We can't stay on vacation forever, doofus."

"No. I'm being serious," he insisted, pulling himself up into a crosslegged position. "Why do we need to go back to Gotham?"

"Because!" she said, taken aback. "Because...we do." Since she was technically his boss, she could probably try to play the time worn "Because I say so" card. On the other hand, she didn't think that was going to knock that determined look he always got when he didn't want to let a topic go off of his face.

Eddie and Jackie, soaking wet and grinning, bounded back up the sand and flopped down onto their own blanket. Jackie snatched up her jacket and bundled herself into it, sticking out her tongue at Eddie when he chuckled at her. "Just because you don't get cold," she said haughtily.

"Eddie," Sorrow interrupted, raking her red-blonde hair back from her face. "Tell him why we have to go back to Gotham."

He shrugged, stretching out on the blanket to catch a few meager rays of sun. "It's where we live," he suggested lazily.

"But why do we have to live there?" Grief pressed. "Couldn't we just...go somewhere else? Or stay here? Here's nice."

Eddie snorted disdainfully. "You can if you want to. I like Gotham."

Jackie snuggled up beside him, draping a jacket-clad arm over his chest. "I'm with him," she said loyally. "Gotham may be filthy and freezing, but it's home."

"It's where the henchmen are," Sorrow added thoughtfully.

"It's where the money is," Eddie agreed.

"It's where the Batman is!" Grief exploded, waving his hands frantically in the air. "You can't all sit there and tell me you're willing to just...walk right back to him! We got away from him once! If we go back, he's going to kill us!"

"Nah. He doesn't kill anybody," Eddie said, mostly ignoring him. "At least, not on purpose," he added as an afterthought.

"But-"

Sorrow silenced him by grabbing his chin. He stared at her, desperate-eyed and open-mouthed. "Listen," she said. "I'm going back to Gotham. You can do whatever you want." She dropped his chin and looked away, fiddling with the fingertip on one glove.

"I want to stay with you," he said desperately, "but-"

She shoved him back down onto the blanket. He lay there, stunned. "Then lay back, relax, and enjoy the last two weeks of your vacation," she instructed. "Eat. Drink. Be merry."

"Speaking of which," Eddie said, "Le Crabe Énorme has a guest chef in this week."

"Crab?" Sorrow wrinkled her nose. "You go. Seafood and I don't get along."

"Your loss," Eddie said, tilting his face toward the sun.

"...and the dessert! Oh my god, what was in that?" Jackie asked rapturously as she clicked into the apartment on sharp black heels.

Eddie chuckled and closed the door behind them. "Chocolate," he answered.

She rolled her eyes at him. "Yeah. Chocolate. I might have missed that, otherwise. It was only a chocolate cake with chocolate ice cream and chocolate syrup and shaved chocolate and heaven in it!" She flounced on the couch with a sigh of satisfaction.

"Sorrow? Grief?" Eddie called toward the back hallway. No one answered. "They must still be out," he shrugged, settling down next to Jackie. She shook her uncomfortable shoes off, sighing with relief as she wriggled her pantyhose-covered toes into the soft pile of the carpet.

"Why do you wear those if they're so uncomfortable?" he asked lightly.

"I dunno. You tell me...Echo," she teased.

He scowled briefly at her, then held his nose aloft in an exaggerated display of haughty scorn. "I don't know what you're talking about," he sniffed. "Besides, no one was trying to kill us tonight."

"Yeah. It was nice," she smiled. "No ex-girls, no cops..."

"No Nightwing," he added, thinking back to their first disastrous dinner outing.

"Yeah," she repeated. "It was nice to be alone...just the two of us."

"Yeah," he agreed softly. He toyed with a curly lock of Jackie's hair, letting it wind silkily around and around his fingers. A tingly thrill raced down the back of Jackie's neck. "Just the two of us."

Jackie's heart hammered in her chest. Softly, gently, she slid up next to him, resting her head on his shoulder. He wrapped his arm around her, cuddling her closer.

Jackie had never been in love before - at least, not with anyone who may have loved her back - and her inner thoughts were being short-circuited with panic. What was she doing? the rational bit of her brain screamed. Here she was, five hundred miles away from home, sitting on a couch with a supervillain and cuddling him! Had she lost her mind?

Hopefully! answered the rest of her. She was being held by the man she loved. Nothing else beyond that mattered.

She raised her head and softly kissed the edge of his jaw. He smiled, tracing his fingertips lightly over her cheek, and pressed his lips to hers, one hand nestled in her hair. She let her hand roam to his chest, where she toyed gently with his shirt buttons beneath his tie.

The delicious silence in the room was broken by a soft rustling noise. Immediately, they broke apart, scrambling off of the couch. "What was that?" Jackie hissed.

"It was outside," Eddie whispered back, trick cane already in hand. Slowly, he padded to the window, placing himself just in reach of the miniblind strings.

Jackie hoisted a metal statuette and wrapped one hand around it as if it were a club. If it was Batman out there, they were in deep trouble. If it was Grand Strand Man, he was in deep trouble. And if it was -

Eddie yanked the blinds up. Outside, resting against the window, was nothing more heroic than a pair of vines swaying in the breeze. They brushed against the window, leaves scraping against the screen. Eddie sighed a short sharp sigh of irritation and dropped the string, letting the blinds crash back down into place.

Jackie put the statuette back, adjusting it until it sat squarely on the little table. When she looked back to Eddie, she saw that Eddie was already looking at her.

"I, uh...guess I'll go get out of this dress," she said, uncomfortably tugging on the skirt. He nodded, beginning to turn back to the couch.

She stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. "Unless..." she paused.

"Unless?"

"Unless you'd...like to help?" she suggested, blushing furiously.

He caught her in a hug and kissed her firmly. Then, with the same anticipatory smile on both their faces, they disappeared into the bedroom.

(to be continued)