Jack Napier was a kid who never fit in, and his mother, Marie Napier, was fed up with his antics.

"Why do you come home so dirty, Jack? Where have you been?" As much as she would've liked tot think it, Jack wouldn't have been with friends. Jack didn't have any friends, except, perhaps, for his sister, Carol.

Carol was an angel, in Jack's mind – someone he wanted to be like. But it seemed to Jack that that sort of perfection was out of his reach. Nonetheless, Carol was always there for Jack – encouraging him whenever he managed to pick up a hobby and stick with it for a while, always amazed at his grades in school, even if they were all C's. Carol, Jack decided, treated Jack with respect.

She even thought he was handsome.

"Just smile, Jack. You have the most beautiful smile. All you've got to do is let those shiners loose and you'll have all the ladies falling at your feet." Jack would smile tentatively in her presence, then broadly, a grin that went widely from ear to ear, showing off all of his post-braces, perfectly realigned teeth.

Carol was really much older than Jack – by fifteen years – but unlike a usual sibling who blamed their parents for hanging the weight of a much younger brother around their necks, Carol was delighted with her little brother.

It was hard to tell, however, with Marie, which child she disliked the most. Jack could understand why Marie was never very friendly with him – after all, he wasn't very good at anything, always preferring to be on his own, always spending time in his room. What Jack couldn't understand was why Marie was so… angry… all the time at the angelic Carol, who never did anything wrong except, perhaps, choosing all the wrong boyfriends.

There was one boyfriend that seemed to matter to Carol the most – he even gave a gift to Jack, through Carol. It was a small Swiss-Army knife, and Jack would unlatch it with amazement each time, wondering how so many things could be in something so tiny.

It was the first of Jack's knife collection.

As Jack entered surly teenagerdom, Carol was in her twenties, but still lived at home. She went through relationships like fish went through water – each one ending in a rush of emotion and sending Carol back home, usually into the comforting arms of her little brother.

At one point, though, she met this boy who seemed too good to be true. He had money of his own, a place of his own, and he seemed to genuinely like Carol. To her, this was her knight in shining armor, completely ready to take Carol away on his silver Harley.

Jack never thought it would happen. After all, it had never petered out before. But this time...

Carol packed her things quickly and moved out of the little house that her brother and mother occupied, swung on to the back of the Harley, and wrapped her arms tight around her newest love. Soon she was nothing but a cloud of dust – leaving no note of where she was going behind. No name of the new boyfriend. Nothing that could ever connect her back to this place where she had grown up.

Jack tried to understand. After all, people did have a tendency to grow up, and a tendency to move away from the home nest.

But the day after Carol's departure, Marie was serving breakfast at the round kitchen table, and she sat across from her son.

"Jack, I've got something to tell you."

"Yea, Ma?" Jack said around a mouthful of scrambled eggs.

"Jack, look at me." Setting down his fork and swallowing the last of his bite, Jack stared into his mother's face. She had an old face, lined before her time.

"Jack," Marie began, before pausing and taking a deep breath in. "I'm not really your mother. I'm your grandmother."

Jack sat perfectly still, looking down at his plate. He suddenly wasn't hungry anymore. When he looked back up at his moth – at his grandmother, he suddenly knew what she was going to say.

"Carol… she got into trouble."

Yes, Jack knew what that particular euphemism meant. "Let me guess," he said in an iron-clad voice. "She was fourteen."

"Yes…" Marie reached her hand out across the table, and Jack had the sudden urge to stab it with his butter knife. "Jack, Carol was… is… your..."

"I don't want to hear it!" Jack shoved back his chair as he stood up. "It's not true! My mother wouldn't abandon me! My mother wouldn't… wouldn't…" He grew quiet again, his face suddenly a mask of blandness.

"Honey…" Jack didn't respond. "I thought you should know. I still want you to live here, I still love you."

Jack quietly left the table, dropping by his room to pick up his pocket knife. Who did this really belong to? He asked himself. My father? Or the one after him? Or maybe even the one before him? With this thoughts raging in his mind, Jack stalked out of the house, leaving a trail of almighty anger behind him.

The week after, the neighbors started to notice that their pets were going missing.

oooooo

Rosa woke up suddenly, feeling oddly… comfortable. As in, extremely comfortable. Sleeping on a cloud, floating on water, feather-bed goose-down pillows. She was pressed up against a gigantic body pillow.

Which was… breathing.

Rosa's eyes flew open, only to have their gaze meet the flat plain of a navy blue jersey t-shirt. She glanced down – blue and green plaid pajama bottoms. Up – a flesh colored landscape. She pressed tentatively down on the tips of her fingers, and the not-body-pillow slightly indented at the pressure, as a sound came out above her head.

"Oof."

It clicked. Rosa rolled back and sat up in less than a second, then executed a jump from her cross legged position to the first pose of some martial arts attack. However, the surface wasn't firm, and the speed of the movement caused Rosa to wobble for a couple of moments before she fell forward.

Right onto Bruce Wayne. Who, it seemed, had designated himself to be Rosa's personal snuggle buddy.

There were two louder "oof"s – one high-pitched and one low. Now Rosa was looked at the floor, her legs were flailing in the air as her weight shifted forward. Her torso was pressed against her bedmate's stomach, and she stayed there precariously. She knew she would fall. It was much like the feeling she got when she spilled a glass of something – she realized it was happening, but there wasn't enough time for her to react.

Putting her arms out in front of her, hoping to catch herself in a handstand, Rosa felt one strong arm land on the back of her thighs, grounding her feet back on the bed. The other arm went under Rosa, settled on her stomach, and flipped her backwards.

"That was fun," Bruce Wayne said, smirking, his hand still laying on Rosa's stomach.

"That," Rosa said, "is not the question at hand."

"I didn't know there was a question at…"

"What are you doing in my friggin' bed, Bruce?!"

"It's my birthday today," he said, still smiling.

"Answer the question!"

"You were the one who asked me to move closer!!"

"And you really think I meant this close?!"

"Excuse me, Sleeping Beauty, but I was not the one who decided to close the gap."

Rosa went bright red. "Yes, well. Um. I tend to move around in my sleep," she said in a tone that suggested this was Bruce's fault.

Bruce just raised his eyebrows.

"I… you…" Rosa was fumbling for words. "… not fair." She finished off. Seeming to change tactics, she brought up a hand to her hair, and then buried her face in her below. "Mmph."

"Sorry, didn't catch that?"

Rosa briefly raised her head. "It's seven a.m. I know what I look like at seven in the morning. Now, I know what you look like at seven in the morning. It's easy when you've got short hair and absolutely no grooming responsibilities whatsoever. Would you mind exiting the room so I can trek to the bathroom and try to repair this damage?" Sitting back up, she tugged at one of Bruce's arms, trying to get him to do the same. Damn, she thought. Guess the whole "lifting" thing isn't going to work.

"So what about this?"

"This? Are you talking about the fact that you slept in my bed last night?"

"That's one way to put it, yeah…"

"Than 'this' was extremely weird and hopefully will not happen again, unless both parties are wide awake and agreeable."

"Right," Bruce paused. "Well, that counts me out." He swung his legs over the bed, giving a parting smirk and wave to the open-mouthed Rosa on the bed.

As soon as her door was shut, Rosa "flumped" back down on the pillows, thinking mutinously of… of… yeah, who knew what? Just something that would make Bruce Wayne feel as embarrassed and out of place as she did right now.

She grumbled a couple of times, then turned over to face the windows, and fell back asleep.

Back in his room, Bruce did the same.

oooooo

"Master Bruce, it's three o'clock."

"Thank you, Alfred, I'm well aware of the time." After a few more hours of sleep, Bruce had woken up, only to realize that it was still his birthday, and he had less time than he rather wanted to prepare.

Now, Bruce sat up, tying his bathrobe around his waist and pulling on some slippers.

"Your party…"

"… starts in a few hours. This, I also know. I'm inviting Miss Ducard, Alfred, can you see that she gets something appropriate to wear? Something that she'll actually… you know… put on?"

"I thought this might be the case."

Bruce turned on his stool after brushing his wet hair back with a comb.

"So I have a dress made. I dropped off orders for it when I took the suit to be cleaned." Standing up and crossing over to Bruce's wardrobe, Alfred pulled out a long dress bag.

"Am I allowed to see it?"

Eyes still dancing, Alfred unzipped the bag. "I hope you approve?"

"Alfred, I knew you're still here for a reason. That's perfect."

"Then I'll deliver it to Rosa's room, shall I?"

"Marvelous."

It was only a few minutes later that Bruce heard the screeching denials that "… I'm ever going to fit in a dress like that." And "… Alfred, what were you thinking? This is almost worse than those wide pants!" Finally, "… well, I don't want it to go to waste."

Haha… Bruce thought. Point to Alfred.

There were footsteps stomping down the hall, and suddenly Bruce's door slammed open. "You really think I'm going to wear this, then?"

"Rosa, I could've been naked."

Turning an interesting shade of green, Rosa exited, closing the door behind her. There came a knocking noise. "Bruce Wayne, please tell me if you're naked because if you're not I'm coming in there to yell at you and don't try to trick me because I know you're not."

She re-opened the door, holding up a floor-length black dress in her arms. There was a sweetheart neck, a back made of wide straps of black material, and sleeves that would cover her shoulders and the tops of her arms.

Bruce looked at the dress, then at Rosa. "Yes, I really think you're going to wear that."

There was a silence.

"… but what will I do with my hair?!"

"Whatever the hell you want, I don't really think people will be looking at your hair, Rosa," Bruce smirked.

"Well that's just… not appealing." An idea formed in her head of Ashley's hair, on a night she was going to the Gotham Opera. It had been swept across her forehead and brought bag in an elegant chignon. Rosa had repeated the hairstyle on Abby, so she had some sort of idea of how it was made… she sighed heavily. "Fine. You win. The dress, the hair… only one thing."

"Anything, if we're already past those two obstacles…"

"I'm wearing my holster."

"That would make an interesting scene as you would have to hike your skirt up to your hips to retrieve a gun…. Wait. I've probably got an ankle one around here somewhere. I'll let you borrow it."

"Why, Bruce, my very own ankle holster? I feel so loved!"

Bruce felt like he was giving candy and flowers to Rosa instead of a chunky holster as he handed it over. Perhaps he was, he thought. Perhaps he was.

Rosa swept back out of the room, and Bruce retrieved a tux from his wardrobe.

That was when the doorbell rang.