"I'm having trouble trying to sleep

I'm counting sheep but running out

As time ticks by

And still I try

No rest for crosstops in my mind"

Green Day, "Brain Stew"

ONE WEEK LATER

It was a Sunday when Lex Luthor finally entered Gotham City, and it was almost the reverse of Fear Halloween. Instead of mass evacuation swelling the streets, it was protestors and that meant Dick had to assist the GCPD with crowd control.

I watched him get ready, leaning against the doorframe as he fastened his bulletproof vest. He knew I was there, but focused on the task at hand, and for once, he wasn't smiling. Many cops didn't like this part of the job, if they didn't outright hate it. Dick was no different. I knew it was the looting that really bothered him; the people that took advantage of the chaos to break into stores, vandalize buildings and cars, and sometimes, lives were stolen along with the peace of mind.

I watched him button his uniform and arm his duty belt. Watched him holster a gun, two sets of cuffs and a handful of my strongest zipties, mace spray, taser, a flashlight, and a pouch strapped to his hip with first aid equipment. In Gotham, there's a fine line between protest and riots, and when enough people crossed that line, it was impossible to tell there'd been one in the first place. I offered to go with him, to park my car near the protests in case things got hairy, but Dick reminded me that half the police force had seen my face. If someone recognized me, it wouldn't be the protestors in handcuffs.

It was always in the back of my mind when I thought about Dick as a cop. My big brother, who knew eleven different ways to break someone's arm, could be picked off on his day job by some no-name thug with a gun, or stabbed with a knife and die bleeding out. Everytime he shined his badge and went out the door, he took the same chance he did when he dove off rooftops as Nightwing.

Sure, I disrespected the law on a daily basis by being a murdering vigilante, but I got that. I understood that risk, and I hated it all the same. It's easy to threaten a cop if you haven't got family on the force. Supercriminals were easy. Having to sit at home out of uniform when your brother's in harm's way downtown, in the heart of a potential riot, that's hard.

So when he left with a smile after I told him to be careful, I got to work cleaning my guns downstairs. I knew the cleaner fumes wouldn't be kosher for Lian to inhale, and she had a mid-morning nap that went smoothly. Roy came down to the engine bay with me while she slept, sharpening arrows and shooting the shit with me in hushed tones. He still wouldn't tell me what his beef with Dick was, but there was plenty of time to find out.

Lunch came, and when Lian woke up, she was adamant to have her lunch protocols observed. Spongebob played on the small twenty-two inch TV monitor I installed on top of the microwave, Lian in her high chair with her father's black bean hummus in a bowl with carrot sticks, celery and pita chips, and no bib. Because bibs were the devil, apparently. Roy joked that the defiance over bibs and anything that resembled one came right from her mother.

About halfway through Spongebob, which I dutifully ignored in favor of inhaling a bowl of leftover pasta, I noticed Lian's big eyes watching me over her pita chips. I smirked, and asked her, "Something wrong, little lady?"

She loved when I called her that, and her cheeks got even chubbier when she smiled. "Nooo…"

I exchanged a glance with Roy, who snorted into his cup of noodles. He slurped down the rest of the broth and then got up to throw the cup away. "I'm gonna go use the john, keep an eye on her for me, will you?"

This was the first time I'd be left alone with his daughter, and a moment's hesitation hit me in the face about how much he trusted me. He trusted me with his daughter. Me. Mass-murdering psychopath. With his daughter, a breakable smoosh-ball. He trusted me with her. Okay, Todd. Chill. Be cool. Don't fuck it up. It's just for a few minutes. "Yeah, man. I got her."

Roy waved a hand as he left the room, and as soon as he was gone, Spongebob was entirely ignored for favor of a staring contest. Lian dipped her carrot sticks in hummus, and sometimes missed her mouth because all of her attention was on me. I picked my fork through the reheated rigatoni, and winked at her as I chewed. Every rewarded cherub-cheeked grin was worth it.

"Want one?" She asked after a minute, and held out a pita chip slathered with hummus.

I lifted an eyebrow, and when I realized she was gonna cry if I didn't, I leaned in and opened my mouth. She stretched her little arm out and pushed it inside. She giggled when I closed, kissing her fingertips. The hummus was good, and so was this.

"Can I ask some-fin'?" Her voice was soft, and she talked behind her hands, so careful. I could see the captivity on Lian, the times she's had to ask the people keeping her from her daddy for things she should never have to ask for at three years old. But now, she asked for something I never thought possible. "...Can I call you my uncle Jay?"

"Your what?" Blood rushed to my cheek, and I recovered. "I mean, are you sure? I'm just...a friend of your dad's."

"Dad says that you're a good guy," Lian said, reciting Roy's words with confidence. "And you're really nice to me. I asked Dad what that means, what you call people like that, and he said that the best word is 'uncle'."

She didn't struggle with the last syllable, but she did have an odd lilt that could only have been inherited from learning to speak from her mother. Roy told me that Cheshire was teaching Lian her native Vietnamese before she died, little words and phrases. I had no idea if Roy kept up with it.

"Sure…" I said at last. "Sure, little lady. I'm your uncle Jay."

Lian reached out to me again, and patted her hand on the high chair after a few seconds. She held it out, and looked at me, all eyes and chubby cheeks. I watched a scarred hand stretch out to her, and she smacked her hand onto my palm, before she held my thumb. And then she didn't let go, shoving more carrot sticks into the hummus to eat.

I continued eating as my eyes stung, and forced myself to stare at my pasta. Her grip on my thumb was insistent. Like a don't you dare let go kind of insistence I only learned from the women in my life.

I heard the toilet flush and when Roy walked back in, saw her holding my hand, and caught my eye, I tried not to look at him.

"You and Jason holding hands, baby?" Roy was grinning, and leaned down to kiss her forehead. The girl yawned, her eyes getting the specific brand of sleepy that came after a meal.

"Uncle Jay, Daddy...Uncle Jay." She corrected him, and I tried to pull my hand back but she only gripped tighter. She leaned over, and put her head on my rough knuckles, her soft eyelids closing. My scars looked so wrong against skin that young, and a weird flash of deja vu shivered down my spine.

"Looks like she doesn't wanna let you go," Roy said, and put his hands on the back of her chair. "You can put her to bed if you want."

I swallowed hard when he said that and boy, did my heart pound. She's a baby, so tiny and fragile and breakable and precious. Nevermind Roy, I liked this kid too much to risk anything. But when I looked up at Roy through my lashes with a pale face, his smile fell and he sighed.

"It's easy, man." Roy had me stand up, and hold my fingers like knife-hands. "Now poke out your thumbs." I did. "Now slide your hands a few inches from under her armpits, and lift her gently until her head is on your shoulder, chest-to-chest."

I have held live bombs set to explode seconds after I touched them. I have held bombs that did not detonate, expectant that they might explode anyways and take me with them. I have held wounds closed knowing that if I let up pressure for one second, my brothers would die with the blood. I have held Barbara to keep her together. I have held a woman that made me want nothing between us but music and air, made me think bombs would have been too subtle a way to die.

But dear God, I have never held anything so small. I bent, and thought about my form rather than the girl I was lifting. I thought about keeping my back straight, as if I was lifting something heavy and delicate. Lifting with my thighs. But when she opened her eyes and looked at me, I couldn't try to cast my gaze over her head. She held me there, insistent upon being carried. Her thumb in her mouth, and her other, reaching to my face. I brought her in, cradled her to my chest, holding her back with one hand and supporting her with my other arm.

She touched my cheek, the branded one, and I watched as she traced the outline of the 'J' with her finger. She didn't know what happened, she didn't care. She cared about sleep, food, and her father. But she hung her head forward when the cheek didn't keep her attention and I was thankful to let her rest on my shoulder, her face against my neck.

Roy led me to the dormitories, opening doors for me. After I laid her in the bed, cuddled up in a nest of blankets and pillows to ensure she didn't fall off either side, I found my hands tucking her in before I knew what I was doing. I tucked the blankets around her, and my pinky finger brushed her hair.

Roy moved to the other side to kiss her nose, and bid her sweet dreams. I wanted to do the same, but my throat was dry. Roy said he was going to do calisthenics a couple of rooms over and asked if I wanted to join him.

I didn't want to go. There was something in me that didn't want to let her out of my sight, and I understood Roy completely in that moment.

I shook my head, and under my breath, admitted I wanted to stay with her. Roy repressed a laugh, managing to whisper over, "She's got you wrapped around her finger." He snorted. "Whipped."

"Says the guy who asked me if I could fit a heater by her because she shivered in her sleep," I whispered back, rolling my eyes as I fixed a chair at the end of her bed. "Yeah, I'm the whipped one here."

And there I was, spread out and slouched in the chair with my head in my hand, watching her sleep. The light from the window, which peeked out as the cloudy day finally cleared up, crept across her and even that I stood to stop, closing the curtains so she could sleep in peace.

There was a daydream I had when someone else slept in that bed. The daydream was rare and brief, but I remembered it because when the image flashed across my mind, it was like her sun. The sun she burned images and words and her voice into my mind, bleached the thing white so that nothing else remained but her. The daydream was her, laying across that bed completely asleep as she had been so many times when she lived with me. Just sleeping, and then after a while, she woke up and looked at me. But instead of an idle smile, she kissed me. I would disappear, and we would become one thing.

And I knew it was an impossible dream, but here, looking at Lian, I couldn't think of anything else. A dream my life was so, so far removed from coming true, with the nature of my work, and my need to finish the mission that Bruce gave up his life for. I was destined to follow that line. The way I was going, there were only two ways my life could end: at the end of a barrel in enemy hands, or when my body had given up on me altogether.

It was against the fuckwit's interests, the fuckwit that threw a rope down the vent in the roof of my engine bay, whose feet I heard smack the concrete, that I was thinking about death to begin with. And that I was committed to keeping Lian asleep.

I reached under my chair for my gun, screwed on a silencer. Roy glided down the hall on the balls of his feet, bow in hand before he flattened against the wall to avoid thrown knives. They stuck to the door at the far end, Roy notching an arrow as I prepared to fire. I peeked out to the hall as Roy fired, and saw the shadow shrink to the corner to dodge the arrow. A League ninja, their new sort with the knives and armored gauntlets, and trained to move without sound.

Roy covered me with more arrows as I charged the ninja and dug my shoulder into his chest, my hand clamped over his mouth over the headwrap. I pinned him to the wall with that hand, hammered the other into his gut. He thrashed, grunted under my fingers, but I muffled every noise he made. A flash of ginger hair came to my peripheral vision, and he replaced my hand, but the switch-off gave the ninja the opportunity. He nailed the crooked bridge of my nose hard with his forehead. I recoiled, stuck on the first syllable of a four-letter word as blood spurted onto my upper lip. Roy jammed his elbow into the guy's mouth, blood soaking the headwrap and dripping onto the floor.

I pushed my nose back into place just in time to turn and see the ninja's shins off the ground, his arms around Roy's head. His legs wrapped around my neck, and I toppled backwards with the downforce. My shoulders hit the floor with a dull thud, and my head lashed back outside the dorms. His calf muscles cranked down on my neck, and I attempted to turn my head, but what I saw harrowed me with dread. Another ninja, with Lian in their arms.

"Roy, Lian!" I shouted, and almost immediately, Lian shot awake in the ninja's grasp. A high wail pierced the room.

I never imagined Roy could scream like that, but he did and it gave me the extra bit of grit that I needed. I put the muzzle of my gun against the point where the ninja's ankles lined up, and pulled the trigger. The bullet shattered the bones, and he released us. The ninja hastily moved to lift the window as Roy staggered to his feet with his bow, his eyes feral and his skin red. He struggled with the second ninja who had his daughter as I threw my gun aside, punched the newly paraplegic ninja again.

I scrambled back to the dorms, nailed the fucker in the jaw over Roy's shoulder. Lian cried and squirmed in the ninja's other arm, his hand on Roy's armor to hold him back. I tried to stand on a bed, my hands reaching for her. The League ninja bent his arm to elbow my face and exploited the broken nose. I bowed back, just in time to see the ninja in the hall had my gun and pointed it at Roy. I rammed my shoulder into his, a white-hot pain ripped through my arm and I felt the bullet ricochet against bone. I hadn't realized it hit the ninja in front of me until he slumped to the floor, and I hadn't realized that Lian had slipped from his hands until Roy's feet were disappearing through the window after her.

Through the pain, instinct pushed me out of the driver's seat. Through the fog, I caught sight of Roy's ginger hair just below the fire escape across the alley, and Lian's pink shirt to his chest. He had her, but he couldn't hold on forever and he certainly couldn't fire a grappler line with one arm.

High on adrenaline, I searched just outside my window for the sturdy metal pipes that crawled up the side of my firehouse and caught a firm hold. I stretched my leg to barely get a foothold on the top of the fire escape, and I dug my nails into the pipe as I reached down for him. Another bullet went into me, this time through my thigh. Blood was running down my chin from my rebroken nose. Roy stared up at me with wide eyes, his face white as to what he was seeing.

"Give me Lian!" I ordered, my teeth stained. I put my other foot on a fire escape rail just by where his hand was gripping for dear life.

He hesitated, like anyone would. Then, the hand he had on Lian slid to the knife he kept in the upper limb on his bow. He hoisted her higher to stick it between his teeth. I reached for his face, and knicked myself on the razor sharp edge as a third bullet lodged itself through my hand between the bones. I groaned, my eyes watering and my body singing. I switched my grip, fingers slick with the fresh cut as I lifted myself up and threw the knife at the ninja with my gun. The blade buried into his eye, far enough to take the light from the other.

Only then did he heave Lian into my arms, and her shirt tinged red as her crying slowed down. Roy kipped himself onto the fire escape. Dazed, I was about ready to give when he pulled me against the railing, and helped me to safety. I couldn't let Lian go, even as she smacked her hands at my face.

"Uncle Jay!" She coughed, mouth drooling as she sobbed. The alley began to spin, warmth on my cheeks and neck. Her face lifted to Roy, and she begged him, panicked. "Daddy, help!"

"Hold onto him, Lian." Those were the last words I heard before I slipped away, but I never let go of the three-year-old in my arms. His voice, and Harper hands on my face.

I came to in the dorms, inhaling the smell of blood and antiseptic. Air chilled my skin, and I was cold, despite a blanket thrown over me. Roy sat where I was in the chair, Lian fast asleep on his lap. I blinked away the blurry lights and focused on them. He was unscathed, save for a few bruises on his chest and jaw. She was spotless. The only indication her life had ever been in danger was dark spots on her fresh shirt where she must have been crying.

My lips, chapped and cracked, pulled a frown. I hated the idea of that little girl worrying herself sick over me, but the way Roy's eyes shined under his lower lashes, she wasn't the only one. Those lower lashes fluttered, and Roy's body came alert. He did his best not to jostle Lian as our eyes met, and I tried to sit up, but my upper body, and my thigh - old and new wounds protesting - weren't having it.

"Don't move…" Roy whispered, "I could only get two of the bullets out. The one in your thigh I couldn't get…"

I tried not to think of the last time my thigh had been injured like that and I'd woken up in bloodstained sheets. "Don't worry about it. Add it to the four other bullets I'm stuck with."

Roy's teeth gritted. "...Only one of them's dead. The one that took my daughter is downstairs, tied to a chair with salt in the chest wound."

"The bullet didn't kill him?"

"I was disappointed too," He mused, his arm tightened around Lian. "His partner I took care of."

I raised an eyebrow, smirking. "Yeah? Pieces or wholesale?"

His teeth were pink when he smiled, and I noticed his lower lip was split. "Pieces." He nodded down to his daughter. "She insisted on guarding you while I did it, said you might get nightmares."

"Aww," I cooed, my eyes on the little nugget in his arms. I sighed after a moment, and then shifted my gaze to his. "...The minute I can walk, we're interrogating that rotten piece of-" He shot me a stern look, his eyes darting to Lian, and I amended, grumbling. "...you know."

"Yeah, I do." Roy's mouth curled into a sinister grin. "But I'm going first."