Edited 7/6/2013: Made a few changes. Re-reading will be helpful. Set during Justice League Season 2, after Maid of Honor but before Starcrossed.

Chapter Roll Call: Dick/Nightwing, Diana/Wonder Woman, some Batman.

Tim looks uncharacteristically small under Bane's bulging muscles as he slowly loses consciousness. The choice Batman has been given is simple: return the data chip, and Robin will be released from the choke hold he is in. An even trade, for things of equal value to each respective party. Bane reiterates: "An acceptable compromise, I think."

But instead, Batman shoots a weighted, electrified wire cable from his wrist, and when it wraps around the tubes behind Bane's neck, he pulls hard enough to rip them out. Bane's head whips back at a sharp angle, before he falls forwards, crushing Robin beneath him.

Batman pulls the boy out from under the convulsing giant and assesses his condition. Left arm broken. Damaged windpipe, severity unknown. Breath is shallow. But it's there.

Bane speaks in gasps at his feet. "I didn't think…you would put his life…in jeopardy. I underestimated you."

Batman lifts Robin and stands, but says nothing. The weight of the data chip suddenly heavier in his hand.

Chapter 2

Slinking through shadows was not the Amazon way, but Diana decided it would be best if she did so while still in Gotham. Batman had subtly demanded she leave his city, and would no doubt be furious if he knew she'd disobeyed, regardless of her good intentions.

She spotted the young man she had been looking for perched on the edge of a rooftop, scouting the streets below through a pair of binoculars. Pulling herself out of the darkness, she landed behind him as soundlessly as possible.

"You shouldn't be here, Princess."

Well, so much for stealth. "I thought I was being quiet. And please, call me Diana."

He didn't respond, continuing to observe the street below him.

She walked closer to him until she was flanking his left shoulder. She wondered if he'd bothered to tend to his injury before jumping around the city. "You know, Batman's worried about you."

Before she could blink, he threw himself off the roof.

She instinctively bolted to the roof's edge, preparing to swoop down and catch the foolish boy for trying to do more harm to himself. What did he think he was doing? As she peered down, she realized he knew exactly what he was doing. His arms were extended, and two flaps that she could only describe as wings were flying him through the air. He gracefully landed on a gargoyle ten stories lower. Being careful to stay close to the building, she floated herself down and hovered next to him. "That was impressive."

"Thanks," he said uninterestedly.

"As I was saying before, Batman's worried about you."

"I heard you the first time," he told her flatly.

She tried again. "Bruce is worried about you."

He raised the binoculars to his eyes. "I don't know what you're talking about."

She smiled. Apparently the apple didn't fall far from the tree. "There's no need to dissemble with me."

He put down the binoculars, giving her his attention for the first time that evening. "So you know? He doesn't usually reveal his identity to anyone."

"He didn't reveal it to me, but it's not hard to figure things out when you're close to someone."

The frown on his face deepened, and he looked away from her. "You'd be surprised." He returned his attention to his patrol.

"You should talk to him."

"I don't mean to be rude, Diana, but I'm a little busy right now. So you can just tell Batman that if he wants to talk to me, he should come do it himself."

"He didn't ask me to come to you. I wanted to make sure you were—"

He raised his hand to silence her. He leaned forward on the gargoyle, something on the street having caught his attention. She looked down and saw a man in a brown suit pull up a metal loading door and enter the building opposite them. The door rolled closed behind him.

"Hate to cut this short, Princess, but there's something I have to take care of." Nightwing stood and extended his arms. She caught his slight wince as he dove off the gargoyle.

Making a quick decision, she dove after him.

Aided once again by his wings, he slowed his descent just enough to make an easy landing on the shadowed ground. She landed next to him just a few seconds later, earning herself a raised eyebrow. "When I said I had things to take care of, I meant by myself," he told her.

"Just consider me your backup. I'm not letting you go in there by yourself."

"Batman wouldn't want you to get involved."

"I know, he'd disapprove."

Nightwing's lips quirked into the slightest smirk. "Alright, let's go."

"Thirty meters," Nightwing whispered back to her, his voice echoing slightly in the dark ventilation shaft.

Diana acknowledged and continued crawling behind him. After quickly scouting the building, he'd deemed this the best way to infiltrate. This was his city, his operation, so she'd followed his lead.

He stopped once they'd reached the metal grate at the end of the shaft, and extracted a small device from his suit. Soundlessly, he pulled the iron slats away from shaft edge and pushed himself through the new opening. She pushed her head out after him, grateful for the slight illumination she found as she exited the tubing. They were now standing on piping that ran parallel to the shaft. Feeling unsteady with her boots on the rounded surface, she hovered slightly above it. Nightwing, however, seemed rather comfortable on the odd-shaped platform.

He pointed below, indicating to her that they needed to remain silent. She looked down, and saw the same man who'd entered earlier pacing back and forth at the bottom of the warehouse. Sweating profusely, he'd begun mumbling to himself—no, she corrected herself, praying. "God, I swear, if you get me out of this, I'll quit. Turn over a new leaf—anything—just please—"

He stopped speaking as footsteps approached from behind him. Though he spun quickly at the noise, he didn't seem surprised to see the two men walking toward him. "It wasn't my fault," he said without preamble, closing the distance between them.

"Sure it wasn't, Joe" said the shorter of the newcomers. "Why'd you have to blow up the whole goddamn dock?"

"What should I have done? Let the Bat get it all? I don't think he would have liked that much either."

"What's done is done," interrupted the third man authoritatively. "We need to start thinking damage control."

"What do you mean?"

"Show him we're still competent. Take responsibility for what happened and forfeit our cut for the next few runs."

"Are you nuts? We should split! Disappear until all this goes away!"

"There is no disappearing from this, Idiot. No matter where we go, he'll hunt us down."

"Yes. We run, we're dead. We go to the drop point as scheduled today and explain."

The man in brown seemed to deflate in the wake of his comrades' arguments. "When's the drop?"

"In 2 hours. And Joe," said the third man, forcing the man in brown to look up at him. "Don't be late. Won't end well for your kid if you are." Then he clocked 'Joe' squarely in the jaw, causing him to crash to the floor.

Diana moved to help—there was no sense in this violence—but Nightwing raised his arm, motioning her to stop. She stayed where she was, reminding herself that he was calling the shots. Satisfied that she'd stood down, Nightwing went back to his careful observation.

The two other men exited, as did Joe after taking a minute to spit the blood out of his mouth and pick himself up off the floor.

With the coast clear, Nightwing launched himself off of the pipe. Instead of using his wings, he used the various other pipes and beams to swing himself down. Diana was stunned at his acrobatic grace, a direct contrast to his mentor's forceful power. As much as Nightwing was like Batman, he was that much more different.

He landed in a crouch by the spot where Joe had fallen and swabbed up some blood with a q-tip he'd procured from Hera knew where.

"Should we follow them?"

"I've got a tracker on 'Joe.' I'm more interested in finding out who he is and who he's working for."

"And how do we do that."

He held the swab up to her and smirked. "DNA testing. Fancy going back to my place?"

He was a minimalist, Diana noted, studying Dick Grayson's apartment. He had a few decorations of Asian origin, and just enough furniture for a bachelor to live comfortably. There was nothing flashy, no blatant displays of wealth, despite the large fortune he had access to.

"Make yourself at home," he told her, turning a saber on the far wall ninety degrees clockwise. The wall turned, revealing a small yet sophisticated computer console. "This system should be able to sequence and process the sample fairly quickly." He placed the bloodied q-tip in a slot on the console and began working.

Having nothing else to do, she continued her appraisal of his home. She noticed a few pictures near one of his living room side tables. A wooden framed one, faded with age, was of three costumed performers—trapeze artists. Leaning down to scrutinize it further, she was stunned to see that she recognized the young boy in the picture. So that's where Nightwing got his graceful acrobatic style.

The next picture appeared to be more recent of Dick, Alfred, Bruce, and a young boy who looked vaguely familiar. He couldn't have been older than thirteen or fourteen, and his black hair stood at least four inches off the top of his head. They were at some sort of restaurant, and Bruce was sporting a rather festive hat which read 'Happy Birthday.'" She couldn't decide from his expression whether he was amused or irritated.

The final picture was of just Dick and Bruce, the former dressed in a blue robe and hat with various cords hanging from his neck.

"That's from graduation," he told her. He'd turned his chair so that it faced into the apartment and away from the computer monitor. The screen was rapidly scrolling through faces as it searched for a DNA match.

"College?" She asked, but he shook his head.

"High School. He never made it to my college commencement ceremony."

"He didn't?" she said genuinely surprised.

He shrugged, "He had to work. I understood."

"I'm guessing that happened often?"

"Gotham comes first. And that's probably the only thing we still agree about these days." He walked around the couch to where she was standing and picked up the graduation picture. "I'm sorry about earlier tonight."

She raised her eyebrow. "Earlier tonight?"

"I was acting like a kid throwing a tantrum. I'm not usually like that. It's just been a rough day."

"You don't have to apologize to me."

"I want to. I was upset, but I shouldn't have taken it out on you."

She tilted her head at him, watching as he studied the old photo. "It's alright. I wasn't offended. I've dealt with far worse."

"I'm guessing Batman falls somewhere on that list."

"I suppose he can be rather abrasive at times."

"Understatement."

"True," she said, amused. "He is one of the most infuriating men I've met since leaving Themyscira. But at the same time, he's managed to become one of the men I most respect in Man's World."

"Wow." She seemed to have stunned him. "Well, it's obvious he respects you as well. That makes you one of an elite few. The rest of us, he tolerates." He placed the picture back on the table, but his eyes remained fixed on it.

"That I have trouble believing." She doubted that he was correct about Batman's regard for him.

There was a beeping from the computer, interrupting their conversation. They both turned to the monitor, which was blinking Matches Found. "Looks like we've got something," Nightwing told her as he made his way back to the console.

She came up behind him, reading over his shoulder. On the large monitor was a picture of the man they had seen at the warehouse, a series of statistics next to his face. "Joseph Alexander Hart," she read the name from the screen.

"He's got a bit of a rap sheet for various misdemeanors, but nothing that would suggest a career in explosives trafficking."

"He has a family," Diana noted, reading the lines Dick had skipped over.

"Yeah. Ex-wife, and a ten-year-old kid. Classic case of deadbeat dad. It's Gotham's vicious cycle."

"How so?"

"Joe Hart—also the victim of an absentee father," Nightwing pointed to the section of the screen that detailed the man's lineage. "Dad was incarcerated when he was young for running an automible chop shop. Died in prison. Joe entered the foster care system, which in Gotham is basically a straight shot to juvie. We see it all the time—kids get caught in this system, and when they grow up, the same happens to their kids. Only a lucky few are ever able to escape."

There was something strange in his voice when he spoke, which compelled her to move next to him from behind the chair and place her palm on his shoulder. The lasso at her waist came to rest against his upper arm in the process. "I'm sorry," she said sincerely. "It must be hard to watch that happen and have so little power to stop it."

"It makes me wonder what would have happened to me, if Bruce hadn't pulled me out. My parents were killed when I was younger," he explained further, "I had no other family, and became a ward of the state. But before I ever set foot in a home, he petitioned the courts to become my guardian. And over the years I've come to realize how lucky I was that he did—that he turned the anger that I felt inside into something that wouldn't destroy me. But the truth is he just keeps all of us around because he needs people to fight in his war. That's all we'll ever be to him." He stopped talking abruptly, causing her to pull her hand away from his shoulder. "I don't know why I just told you all that," he said, rubbing the back of his neck, embarrassed. The strands of the lasso his arm had been resting against swung slightly before stilling.

She was also surprised by his candor, but allowed him to change the subject quickly by once again reading from the screen.

"According to this, Hart has received large payments every month for the last three months from a company called Janus Limited." Recognizing the name, Nightwing pulled up more information. "It's a new food distributor that came to Gotham about four months ago. And apparently, one of the products they're selling off the books is explosives—their branding was all over the cans we found at the dock."

"Janus is the Roman god of gateways," she informed him, pointing to the company logo displayed on the computer. "He's depicted with two heads, one looking back at the old, the other looking forward to the new."

"Two heads?" The slits on his mask narrowed. "He's not being very subtle." He killed the computer's power and turned to Diana. "I know who we're dealing with."

"Are we in the right place?" Diana whispered as they stood inside the very empty building Joe Hart's tracker had lead them to.

"Positive." He tapped the top of his glove lightly, and a translucent display projection hovered above his hand. Checking the locator again, he confirmed Joe's position. "He's here, but he's-"

"Underground."

They both turned around, equally startled by the familiar voice. Nightwing regained his composure immediately, and straightened his back. "Batman."

He looked at Nightwing briefly, but then turned his attention to Diana. "I had a feeling you wouldn't let this go," he told her.

She folded her arms. "And I had a feeling you would," she said, glancing fleetingly at Nightwing before returning Batman's stare. "I'm glad you decided to pursue the matter, though." The lines around his mouth hardened further when he understood her meaning.

"Look, we've got another problem on our hands," Nightwing interrupted. "So why don't we figure out what's under this warehouse first, and deal with," he looked at Batman, calling a silent truce, "everything else later."

Batman looked back at Nightwing, expression unreadable. "Agreed."

To Be Continued…

Chapter Notes:

[1] Diana's Lasso inspiring Nightwing's Monologue: In Justice League, Diana seems wholly unaware of the power to instill honesty that her lasso has until much later in the series (I believe there was an episode in which this ability was activated, but I can't recall). Given that she never used it for this purpose in seasons 1 or 2, I took some artistic license here and assumed that the power lay dormant within it, but could still compel the people it touched to speak truthfully. Hence Nightwing's sudden candor.