Chapter 17: Tracking

"You do realize that that was the worst stunt you could have pulled?" Bruce asked for what felt like the hundredth time. Andi huffed.

"What else was I supposed to do? There was no other way to track him and he was about to kill me, so even if I had any information it would have vanished with my death."

"And if I hadn't been watching that van, I would have followed him instead of you, and you'd be dead!"

Andi sank back in her seat in Wayne's Tumbler and put a hand to her forehead. She did not want to be having this conversation right now. She was nauseous, cold, and breathing took effort. Everything ached, and she knew it would soon get worse as the numbing chill of the river wore off. "I know that Bruce," she said wearily, "But once I realized he knew what our plan was, I figured I was dead however you spun it. I just wanted to… to make it matter. Now are we actually going to go anywhere in this thing or not?"

He growled something unintelligible and the car roared to life beneath them. Andi perked up to look for the heater, but noticed something else on a computer map—

"Look, there's where the Joker's heading!"

"Towards the harbor." Bruce muttered. "I wonder whether it's a ploy or his actual hiding spot?"

Andi didn't hesitate. "His lair."

"You sound pretty certain."

"He smelled like rotten fish. None of his kills have been in the area, and it was strong enough that I'd guess he's been there pretty often. I grew up in the Narrows, and trust me the stench from the dock area doesn't come off for days once you've been living there for awhile, no matter what sort of soaps you use."

Bruce nodded slowly, then pressed a button.

"Master Wayne!" Alfred's voice was very nearly panicked under the stiff British accent. "Sir, what happened?"

"Nothing too exciting," Bruce shot Andi a warning look when she opened her mouth. "We have a tail on the Joker and Andi's safe with me. She looks miserable though. Can you get some antiseptics out and something hot to eat? We'll be home in a few minutes."

"Very good sir. Anything for yourself?"

"Food's always welcome but, no, I'm not injured if that's what you're asking. A few towels would be nice for both of us though."

"They'll be waiting in the cave when you come in."

"See you then." Bruce pressed the button, then settled back in his seat.

"Why aren't we going after the Joker?" Andi demanded as Bruce began to maneuver his monster of a car from the river bank onto a deserted stretch of road. He gave her an incredulous look.

"What do you mean 'why aren't we going after the Joker?' You couldn't even walk to the Tumbler on your own!"

"I could just sit in the car while you did your thing."

"No." Bruce's voice was iron. "You almost died once tonight. I'm not putting you in the line of fire again."

"You would do it to yourself no matter what you'd been through!"

"That's different."

"How?"

Bruce gave her a hard look. "Because I've already made my peace with dying. You think you have, but it's not the same for you, with your friends and co-workers. There's no one who would lose too much if I was gone."

"Alfred would."

"Alfred has agreed to the risks, and he's already dealt with losing me once. He's tough, he'd make it."

"I would then."

Bruce looked as startled at the words as Andi felt. She scowled at him and folded her arms defensively as if admitting it had somehow been his fault. "Well I would! You're a friend. You've saved my life twice and you're… well with Pam and Leena gone, you're the only person I can really depend on right now. I wouldn't want to lose you too!"

He kept quiet, looking straight forward, until Andi began to shift awkwardly in her chair. "Thank you."

Andi would have snorted if she could have trusted her thawing nose not to run. "Don't thank me. The fact that I need you alive to find Leena is a big part of it too."

Bruce just shook his head and tossed a phone at her. "I transferred Bailey's number to this cell. Gordon will probably call soon and I doubt he'll just take my word for it that you're still alive."

"May as well get it over with then." Andi punched in the Commissioner's number. He picked up immediately.

"You give her back now you son of a bitch or I will carve that smiling face of yours into—"

"Commissioner? Commissioner it's me."

"Taylor?" Andi heard him take a deep breath, and his next words were much more controlled. "Are you alright?"

"Yes. Batman rescued me."

His snort carried over the phone. "Nice of him," he said acidly, "To save you after he left you to die."

"It wasn't quite like that sir. I asked him to put me in your custody."

There was dead silence on the other line. "Did you just—" Gordon's voice was more menacing than Andi had ever heard it, "Taylor, please don't tell me this was all just a set up for the Joker."

Andi swallowed. "Um, could we talk about this later sir? The fact of the matter is that I'm fine now. Wasn't in any danger at all." She said the last line glibly and ignored the incredulous look Bruce gave her. If he got to lie to Alfred on this, Andi could do the same for Gordon.

"And the Joker?"

"Escaped, but we're closing in on a location right now. See? It was all fine."

"I suppose." Gordon's voice was much calmer now. Andi drew a ragged breath of relief. "Can you put me on with the Batman?"

"Sure thing." Andi passed the phone. Bruce cleared his throat and spoke in his rough 'Batman voice.'

"Hello?"

"WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING, USING ONE OF MY PEOPLE LIKE THAT!" Even in the other seat, Gordon was still shouting loudly enough for Andi to hear clearly. "IF YOU EVER EVEN THINK OF PUTTING TAYLOR IN THAT SORT OF DANGER AGAIN I WILL TAKE THAT CAPE OF YOURS AND—"

Bruce gingerly lifted the phone from his ear and set it in the backseat. Andi could hear the faint sounds of Gordon raging, but otherwise the car was quiet, its rumbling soothing beneath her. Andi leaned her head back and let her eyes drift shut.

"Hey." Bruce tapped her hard on the arm "Stay awake until Alfred can look after you."

Andi straightened and realized that Gordon was still shouting at nothing on the other line. She reached back and hung up on him, pocketing the cell.

"He's right you know. That was a mistake."

She gave Bruce an annoyed look. Back to this? "Look," she said flatly as they pulled through the waterfall and Bruce stopped the car. "It worked. Let's stop looking back and concentrate on the future alright?" Bruce pressed a button and Andi climbed out carefully on her own, just to prove that she still could. She had to grab onto the side of the Tumbler for support though, and Wayne's sharp look said that he wasn't fooled. Andi deliberately looked away from him to Alfred who stood several feet away and was holding a stack of fluffy white towels.

"Judging by the way you two smell, I would guess that you decided to travel via sewer Master Wayne."

"Close enough." Bruce grabbed a towel and started to pull off his waterlogged mask and body armor. Andi waited until his eyes were diverted before she staggered over to take her own towel from Alfred; she didn't want Bruce to see her struggle just to stay upright. Bless Alfred, they were warm, almost as comfortable as a hot bath would be. He pulled a chair over from her work station and Andi sank into it with a relieved groan.

"If that's the case I'm going to have to see to your stitches, Miss Andi, before you can go to bed. We don't want any infections."

Bruce's face emerged from toweling his hair dry. "Stitches? What stitches?"

"Nothing serious," Andi said hastily, "They're almost healed. In fact, Alfred can probably pull them out once I've cleaned up a bit."

"That didn't answer my question."

"Thanks a lot Alfred." Andi muttered. Now Bruce would never let her alone.

"Hmm." The butler paid no attention and gently began to wind his finger's through her hair, separating the strands so that he would have a clear view of her scalp wound. "Master Wayne, could you hand me the antiseptic? It's on the table next to the French onion soup. You'll need to look down for this, Miss."

Andi obeyed and a minute later Bruce had returned. She couldn't look, but from the smell, she suspected that he had also grabbed himself a bowl of that soup. Normally she hated soup, and loathed onions that weren't in Mexican food, but at the moment the stuff smelled heavenly.

Something stinging splashed onto her cut and Andi hissed. The stitches were still in, she thought, but some of the skin between them had pulled open. As Alfred finished daubing it clean with cotton swabs she heard Bruce demand again "How did that happen?"

"It was nothing! Just the Joker last time." Alfred deftly rolled up the sleeve of her damp nightshirt and began treating the slash there. It still hurt, but at least with that wound Andi could look Bruce full in the face. He didn't seem to be particularly appeased.

"I'm afraid you've gotten more of those stitches torn open." Alfred clucked his tongue and Andi sighed. No use trying to pretend that everything was still fine if Alfred was going to check anyways.

"At least one in my back's broken open too."

Alfred moved to check it.

"Would you mind explaining exactly what happened here?"

"What?"

"It seems as if the Joker has run over your back with a semi-truck."

"Oh. I slammed into a doorframe struggling with him." Andi ignored her protesting body and twisted to look at the damage herself. A long, livid bruise was forming across her lower back, pinkish with smeared blood and water where it intersected with her knife wounds, a few red squiggles where the blood had overflowed working their down. It looked more painful than it was, but that didn't say much.

She glanced up from her back to see that Bruce had circled around too and was staring at the damage with a combination of horror and pity.

"Would you mind keeping your eyes somewhere else?" Andi snapped the words to cover her blush. Friend or not, she still hated for him to see her like this. And besides, it wasn't as if he didn't have much worse—she'd seen how badly he was scarred and it made her cuts look like a five year old's scraped knees. "Go analyze something. See if you can follow the Joker or whatever."

Bruce rolled his eyes and began to pull his armor back on. Andi straightened, ignoring the difficulty she knew shifting would cause Alfred. You couldn't keep dignity hunched over like a turtle and leaking blood everywhere.

"Where are you going?"

"Back out. I need to follow the Joker now that you're safe and I've had time to recover."

Andi's yelp had nothing to do with the disinfectant Alfred was spreading across her back. Well, almost nothing at least. "You almost died tonight too! You're in no condition to be going anywhere."

"Andi," Bruce's voice held a bit of warning to it, "We've already discussed the differences between how far each of us can go. You know that—"

"I'm inclined to agree with Miss Andi on this one." Alfred said as he carefully threaded a needle. "What could you accomplish anyways? If you follow the Joker now and he realizes that you're coming, he may get spooked or pull one of his tricks. And you can't afford to capture him until he leads you back to his home. Leave him be for a little while."

Bruce hesitated. Andi folded her arms and glared at him. "If you're going I'm going too."

"And how would you do that?"

"I'd drive her sir." Alfred stood straight and mimicked Andi's stubborn posture. "Or we could all squash together into that contraption of yours. I've always wanted to take it for a spin."

It worked. A reluctant smile pulled at Bruce's lips and finally he removed his helmet.

"I should just set the two of you on the Joker. He'd volunteer to go to Arkham to escape the trouble you can cause."

Neither she nor Alfred said a word, but Andi sensed that the butler shared her smug sense of victory when Bruce turned to a huge set of computer monitors and began following the GPS. She was feeling more comfortable now, completely exhausted and achy, but at least warm again. More than anything she just wanted to fall asleep, especially when Alfred finished dressing her wounds, but the butler insisted that she eat and Bruce dislodged himself from the screens long enough to bring her a bowl.

Andi had just eaten enough that she had begun to taste the food again—and was therefore slowing down very quickly—when Bruce began to curse.

"No! NO! He found it that stinking son of a—"

"The signal's gone?" Alfred was nowhere in sight. Great.

"YES!" Bruce roared, "He tossed it in the harbor! Now we've got nothing. Nothing." He looked like he wanted nothing more than to throw several large rocks at the computers, but controlled himself with quick, sharp paces. Even Pam in a temper wasn't this bad. She took it out on things, where Andi could already see Bruce straining to bottle it back in. She'd have to defuse him before he exploded from the strain.

"We have plenty of things!" she said quickly. Bruce stopped his pacing and seemed to direct all his anger into a glower at her. Andi was getting better at ignoring those looks. Practice she supposed. "Think, Bruce. First of all, there's the plates from the van. I doubt they'll give us anything useful, but it's worth a shot. Then there's the radio waves. I wasn't wearing the clothes treated with them when he attacked, but some of the residue's rubbed off on me over the past few days and he tackled me pretty good. It's possible you'll be able to pick him up with that. And, most importantly, I think that he honestly didn't know the ring was there until he tossed it into the ocean. Given how much time he had, he was probably pretty close to his home base."

"Andi, do you have any idea how large Gotham's waterfront is? He could be anywhere around the harbor!"

Good. He was starting to think rationally. Andi pinched the bridge of her nose. All she wanted was some sleep, but someone had to be the adult in this situation. Think logically. "He has to have a pretty large place to stay though," she said slowly, "Somewhere he can keep hostages and explosives. Why not involve the police? Start from where he last was before he found the GPS and have the police slowly—and subtly!—spread in a circle from there. Check out any large or abandoned buildings, get his scent from my apartment to the K-9 units and have them sniff around, that sort of thing. And then go find a punching bag and let loose because, believe me, this stress isn't helping you any and you'll need your A-game when you find him."

Bruce growled under his breath but finally nodded. "Gordon's not going to like doing anything I suggest right now."

"I trust—" Andi stifled a yawn "I trust you're both mature enough to handle that." She really should go upstairs to sleep. Alfred had probably already fixed up that grandiose suite she'd stayed in before. But this chair was comfortable too, and she was warm and sleepy and safe. Her body could relax here as it never had at the safehouse.

Bruce was talking on the phone already, his voice scratchy and guttural again. Hard to believe she'd found him so frightening only a few days before. Strange. Now… now she trusted him as much as—as Pam… or Leena… Leena… only a few more hours and it would be over… only a little longer and she'd be safe. Things would go back to normal… Andi would like that… she would… really…

Andi blearily opened her eyes in the overlarge, overstuffed bed Alfred had given her on her first day at the Manor. Bruce. He must have taken her upstairs. But the light was already dying—probably late afternoon—and by the way she'd burrowed into the mattress, she guessed he had moved her hours ago. What had woken her up then? It had been a noise, some sort of beeping... the cell phone?

It was still ringing insistently and Andi extricated her legs from the tangled covers so she could pull it from her still-damp pajama pocket. Lucky the water hadn't ruined it. Pam's cell number blinked up on the caller ID. Oh gosh. She must have heard about the Joker. Heaven help her, if Pam had found out that Andi had tried to get herself kidnapped… Andi braced herself and flipped it open.

"Pam! Pam, it's alright, I'm perfectly fine—"

"What do you mean you're perfectly fine?" Pam's voice was strained, but not panicked or angry as Andi had expected. "What happened?"

"Didn't you call because—" Andi paused, cursed her groggy thoughts. If Pam didn't know, she certainly wasn't going to tell her. "Why did you call?"

"You told me if there was an emergency to call this number. That's still alright, right?" Pam sounded on the point of crying. Pam. Crying. Andi sat up straight.

"Of course. What happened?"

"How soon can you meet?"

Author's Note: Yay! Pam's back! I have to admit, even though she's the one in the trio with the least screentime, she's kinda my favorite of the group so I'm looking forward to seeing her again.

For the record, I think Andi's the only person in the world who could say something like 'It was just the Joker, that's all,' with a straight face. Anyways, this chapter was mostly filler, I know, but even Andi and Bruce need a break after what happened, and we're almost to the climax of the story; think of it as a last gasp of air/sanity before things go completely crazy. Besides, it was a chance for Alfred to get some more scenes.

Oh, and I passed 100 reviews last chapter! Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU to everyone who's let me know what they think, especially to those like Limplict, ChristianBale Girl 2010, Serendipity AEY, NeverTooLate03, wtchcool, Dontgotaclue88, and Monday the 14th who have all been willing to stick with me through multiple chapters of delays, these rambling author's notes, and other shenanigans. It means the world to me, guys.