A/N As stated in the title, this is not an actual chapter. Rather, it is an addition to the previous one, a scene that should have been included (actually it should have opened the chapter), but I was rushing too much to finish and didn't realize what a bad idea it was to skip over it. Hopefully, it will help fill in at least a couple of the weird emotional holes in the last chapter.

I spent the last two weekends at weddings, the first my cousin's and the second my little brother's (he looked so grownup up there on the altar! *sniff sniff*). It was a lot of traveling, and a lot of visiting, and as much as I promised myself beforehand that I would find time to write, of course I didn't. However, I plan to have the next chapter up by the end of the week, and in the meantime, please enjoy this little snippet!

New Opening Scene for Chapter 19

"Dick?"

Slowly, Richard turned his head. "I couldn't stop him," he said, blank amazement in his voice. "I couldn't."

"Are you hurt?" Bruce asked quietly, stepping forward, putting a hand on his ward's shoulder, seeing with an unexpected surge of panic the blood that spattered his clothes.

Slowly, Richard shook his head. "I'm not hurt. Just Dav—" His voice broke and he took a deep breath and tried again. "David—" The sob escaped this time, a wrenching, violent noise that shook him like a physical blow.

Bruce held him tightly and let him cry, turning him away from the body. "It's ok," he soothed, although it wasn't, and it wouldn't be, and really never had been. "It's ok."

The sobs were too violent to last long, and after a minute, Richard's heaving shoulders stilled. "Can we go home?" he asked, his face muffled against Bruce's shoulder, hiding from what lay on the floor behind him. "I just want to go home."

"Let's go," Bruce agreed, shifting his arm around so that they could walk side by side, Bruce carefully keeping himself between Richard and the body, so that he wouldn't have to look. "Do you know how to get out of here?" he asked as they left the little room behind. "Because I think I'm lost." Alfred had guided him down here and … "Alfred!" he exclaimed out loud, suddenly realizing the butler had no idea whether they were alive or dead. "I dropped my phone …" He found it just around the next corner and saw that it was still connected. "Alfred?"

"Master Wayne! Did you find—"

"We're both fine," Bruce interrupted.

"Thank God," came the whisper on the other end of the line. And then, more briskly, "What's the situation?"

Bruce glanced down at Richard, who was staring blankly down the passageway and said softly, "David Stern shot himself."

"Did Master Richard …"

"He was there."

"Is he hurt?"

"I don't think so. We're coming home."

"What about the police?"

"You know, Alfred, I really don't care right now. We'll see you in a few minutes." Bruce snapped the phone shut and dropped it in his pocket. "Which way?"

Richard looked confused. "What?"

"To the parking lot."

The boy looked around and after a moment of hesitation decided, "This way."

It seemed to take forever to wend their way out of the basement, but it could only have been a couple of minutes. Outside, the winter sunshine seemed unnaturally bright, and as they emerged into the chilly air, a siren screamed around the corner.

Forget the car, thought Bruce and asked, "Where'd you park?"

Richard seemed more alert out here in the sun, and he led the way through the rows of cars until they came to the gleaming bike. "I'm driving," Bruce said flatly, and Richard didn't argue, just handed over the keys and climbed on behind. They drove out the back way as more sirens screamed up in front of the school. A little late, Bruce thought in sudden fury, but aren't they always?

Alfred was waiting for them on the porch, looking worried, a look that only intensified after he got a good look at Richard. "Are you hurt?" he demanded anxiously.

"I'm fine," the boy muttered, clearly anything but.

Alfred scrutinized him carefully, but all he said was, "The police are going to want those clothes. You'd better come upstairs and change. You too, Master Wayne."

Bruce looked down and realized that he too had blood smeared across the front of his coat. Wordlessly, he pulled it off and handed it over, and then Alfred put a careful hand on Richard's shoulder and guided him toward the stairs. Bruce watched them go, and then he walked, then ran, losing his grip on the panic he had so desperately been controlling ever since he'd seen Richard covered in David Stern's blood.

Pushing through a door, he strode around the pool table to the liquor cabinet behind the bar. He flung open the door too hard so that one of the delicate glass panes shattered and grabbed a bottle of vodka.

He never did this, ever, but he twisted the top and flung both cap and seal to the floor, then reached for a glass. In his haste, he overshot the rim, and the clear alcohol splashed across his sleeve and down to the floor. Steadying his hand he tried again and succeeded in filling the shot glass, which he tossed off and immediately refilled.

A man who seeks courage in any place but his own heart …

He paused, the glass halfway to his mouth, remembering a hike up an icy mountainside, the half decayed hut they had passed, and the drunk who sat in front of a dead fire, nursing his skin of wine. He could still hear the contempt in Ducard's voice as he finished,

…is not a man but a sniveling boy, and worse, because a boy may grow into a man, while he will shrink only into the mockery of one.

His life may have been too hard for him to bear, Bruce had argued. Should we have no pity for him?

His life only became too hard when he chose not to find the strength to bear it.

He stared blankly at the glass, as though he could see the icy landscape in its crystal curve. He hadn't remembered his former mentor so clearly in a very long time, and the unexpected memory gave him a flash of disconnection so that he saw himself as Henri Ducard would have seen him in that moment.

What is happening to me?

And in that moment it became easy to push away the horror of David Stern's death and all the accompanying horrors of the past, to slip into old habits of discipline, to look at the situation critically and think about what he had to do next.

Rapidly, he listed the most pressing problems: there was Robin, who had been shot; there was Richard, who had not been shot but still hurt so that he would need a space in which to heal; there was Bruce Wayne, who had displayed uncharacteristically organized action; there were the police who any minute would be knocking on the door, demanding the witnesses of David Stern's death.

He would plan for all of it, but the matter of the police was most urgent, and he worked quickly, manipulating the scene for that slight, invaluable touch of the theatrical so that when Detective Sarah Essen opened the door she could smell the rum from across the room, and draw her own conclusions about the man slumping behind the bar, who invited her to have a drink.