After a brief trip to the medical bay, Bruce had been declared to be in relatively good health (as good as anyone's health could be after a fistfight with Wonder Woman, anyway) and cleared to return home. Diana had sat in a somewhat guilty silence as the medic applied thick bandages to his chest and set his broken arm. She volunteered to fly him home as J'onn had decided he was most likely not up to the physical stress of teleportation. They boarded her invisible jet in silence, and remained that way for a good duration of the flight.

Diana had hoped that Bruce would say something about everything that had transpired in the past few days, but he simply leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. She could tell from experience that he wasn't sleeping, but simply gathering his thoughts. She waited for him to say something, but he never did. Finally, as they drew closer to Wayne Manor, she spoke first.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be." Bruce said, not opening his eyes. "You don't have anything to be sorry about."

"I was careless. I underestimated the Joker, and I almost..." Her voice broke slightly. "You almost..."

"We all make mistakes." Bruce said thoughtfully, finally opening his eyes, but still not looking at her. "The mistakes that I made with Strange probably would've killed me a few times over if you hadn't been there. You know... The point that he was trying to make was that depending on others is a weakness... But I think that he just might have ended up proving the opposite point."

"Which is?" Diana knew exactly what he was getting at, but she wanted to hear him say it.

"Maybe..." He said slowly, beginning to wonder if would regret opening up. "Maybe I was wrong. About some things."

"Like what?"

Bruce glared at her. "Don't push your luck, Princess."

"Sorry." She said hurriedly. "I just never thought that I'd live to hear you admit a mistake."

"Don't get used to it."

"Of course not." She grinned. "We're almost there. By the way..." She added as an afterthought. "I talked to J'onn while you were getting patched up. He managed to get the location of Strange's Headquarters out of the Mad Hatter. He managed to round up the Tyger guards. He said to say that he thinks that he can fix whatever Strange did to them. Hopefully they'll have forgotten all of this by morning."

She neatly touched the plane down on the front lawn of Wayne Manor, the cloaking field hiding them from prying eyes. She extended a hand to lift him out of his seat, and retrieved the crutch that he was using to walk. She carefully helped him balance himself and escorted himself to the front door of the Manor.

"Well..." She said awkwardly, "I guess that with Strange gone, the threat is over." She'd expected that when she'd finally have the opportunity to say those words that she'd be happy. On the contrary, she was feeling a bit down; she hadn't fully thought out what Strange no longer posing a threat truly implied. "So there's really no reason for me to stay here... Unless, of course... ?" Her voice trailed off somewhat hopefully.

Bruce thought for a moment. "Unless," He agreed. "Of course." He said, wrapping his good arm around her shoulder and leading her into his home.

Author's Note: And there you have it, folks. One finished story. I might be taking a bit of a break... But then again, I could be starting the next story later today. I'm leaning towards the latter right now. I have a good idea of how the first few chapters are going to go. And make no mistake, I'm planning to top this story by a long shot. I've got some ideas that I've been working on since midway through this story that I can't wait to put into play.

But now that this story is finished, I'm going to leave you with one final plea for reviews. If there are any plot holes that I didn't manage to close, or any other flaws that should be addressed, I'm all ears.

And I know that the chapter title contains a Phil Collins reference, and I'm apologetic to anybody who was deeply offended by that, but it also contains a KISS reference, which kind of makes up for that, right? Right? No? Ok...

I suppose that this is a good a time as any... So I have a bit of a confession. Some of you may find this story a bit familiar, depending on how far back you've gone in the archives... So I guess I should come clean. I've written some stories in this category before, but I was kind of feeling like a fresh start. While I wouldn't exactly call this a rewrite, per se, I did recycle some ideas. If anybody's really interested in reading the original, drop me a line and I'll send you a link. I would post it here, but I'd still kind of prefer to keep it on the down low. Call it a quirk.

EDIT: Sorry about the delay... I've had this finished since late early last night, but went on the fritz as soon as I tried to post it... Again. Anyone else have any ideas about other places where I could post? is a great hub, but it seems like they've been having some major server problems of late.