EDITED 7/8: Made a few changes, but the chapter ending was changed quite a bit. Re-reading will be helpful. Set during Justice League Season 2, after Maid of Honor but before Starcrossed.
Barbara begins to watch his back. At first he thinks she does it out of guilt over Dick, but still, she becomes an invaluable asset. It's not until much later that he realizes for her it's become something else entirely.
She gets buried in the rubble of a collapsing building and wants to keep fighting on a broken ankle. She takes a near lethal dose of Scarescrow's toxin and her greatest fear is causing his destruction. She stays up all night to decrypt the data stream Jervis Tetch is transmitting to various relay stations in Gotham, and his simple 'well done' makes her face light up so brightly.
He sees it all, but he never makes her stop.
Chapter 3
Batman crawled through the ventilation shaft behind Diana, with Nightwing in front of her. He'd identified this as the best way to get underground undetected. Diana, put off by the thought, had offered to just barrel through the ground and knock everyone unconscious. He'd clenched his jaw while Nightwing more politely declined her offer, explaining that they would need evidence for the police.
The crawl had been short, however, and the shaft large enough to fit them all comfortably. Nightwing signaled for them to stop when they reached the right location, and pulled open a loose grate from under his body; it allowed enough room for all three of them to look out the aperture. Large dome lights hung underneath them, suspended by metal cables from the ceiling above. Wires and mesh connected the lights together creating a protective blanket between the ventilation shaft and the floor. Nightwing turned to him and he nodded back, silently communicating their plan. Dick carefully squeezed through the opening, and jumped down to one of the large lights. Somehow, he managed not to jostle it when he landed.
Assuming that she would be next, Diana moved to glide out of the shaft. Batman stopped her with a hard fist around her upper arm. "No. Stay behind me."
She smirked. "Trying to protect me?"
He kept his expression stony. "Trying to camouflage you. You don't blend in well."
Diana looked at her uniform, and obliged, shadowing close behind him as they landed on a light adjacent to Nightwing, who was already listening to the conversation taking place below the mesh covering. Batman activated his own audio aid. Surveying the scene below them through the holes in the netting, he noticed immediately that the man from the docks—whom he had identified as Joseph Hart—was there. He was with two other men, and the trio stood rigid as if facing an execution squad. In front of them were more than a dozen armed men, flanking their leader who wore a black and white split suit that matched his split face.
"Two-Face?" Diana's breath whispered in his year, and Batman nodded to confirm.
Below them, Two-Face tossed his coin into the air repetitively. Flip. Catch. Flip. Catch. "Explain it again." He said rather calmly to the men before him.
One of Joe's comrades spoke first. "The Batman's interference tonight caused some unavoidable problems with the delivery this week. We're prepared to-"
"No," Two-Face interrupted, catching the coin. "Not from you. From him." He looked at Hart. "You tell it."
Joseph, who was sweating profusely, began to stutter. "I-I-I'm sorry, Sir, but he showed up with one of his sidekicks. I didn't say a word to him about you, I swear, Sir. I'd never say a wor-" His head snapped backwards as the bullet pierced his skull. His two companions looked shell shocked as his body hit the floor.
Two-Face held the gun he'd just fired in one hand, and his coin with Bad Heads facing upwards in the other. "There's no way this idiot outsmarted the Bat. He was allowed to escape." Surveying the room, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. "Spread out!" He ordered the men flanking him, and they scattered to various parts of the warehouse. "They're here somewhere."
Batman and Nightwing nodded to each other, the former using the remote transmitter in his glove to create a surge in the building's electrical system. They would only have one minute of darkness before the backup generator kicked in, but with Diana it would be more than enough to even the odds.
The room blackened as the power whined off, and Batman activated his infrared eyelets. A quick sweep of the room revealed ten men on the right side, and ten more on the left, closer to where Two Face was.
"Dibs on the left," Nightwing said launching himself off the light he was perched on, his own eyelets also active. He somersaulted and extended the wings of his suit to glide downwards, slashing through the net and wires as he did so.
"Follow my lead," Batman instructed Diana, whose superhuman abilities did not include night vision. He sent a batarang to slit through the netting below him, then jumped after it. She grabbed him by the arms as he dropped, controlling his descent. "Swing me toward 2 o'clock," he whispered low so only she could hear, "then there are three men at your six."
She complied, releasing him into the chest of one of their would-be assailants. The force of the impact sent the man flying backward and he pulled the trigger of his gun in shock. Batman dodged the stray bullets, disarmed the man of his automatic, and then threw it hard into another man who'd used the brief flashes of light from the gunfire to try and ambush him from the side. It caught the man in the temple and he went down hard. A fist to the face knocked the man below him out as well. The chronometer on his glove slowly ticked down their time—15 seconds to go.
He spun quickly to assist Diana, who was fairing rather well with bullet deflections though essentially blind. She smashed her fist into the nose of the man in front of her, and then without missing a beat smashed her elbow into the face of the man who approached from behind. She'd tracked him by the noise he made, Batman realized, impressed. He leapt forward and clobbered a third gunman who'd appeared at her flank just as the lights came up.
She blinked, then smirked, "I heard him coming."
He fired a batarang into each of the muzzles pointed at them as two of the remaining bodyguards took aim and fired. The resulting explosive failures in the receivers provided him with enough distraction to knock the men out. "I'm sure you did," he told her, eyeing the three men still standing. He ducked to the side as one of them tried to belt him with a crow bar. "Is Nightwing down?"
She glanced quickly to the other side the warehouse. "Not even remotely. But he's still out numbered."
"Go," Batman barked as he grabbed the crow bar when it rushed him again, using its momentum to propel his attacker over his head. The man hit a stack of wooden crates, toppling them. He attempted to push himself up once he'd landed on the floor, but slumped back unsuccessfully. "I have this under control.
She propelled herself across the warehouse without asking twice.
Normally, Nightwing liked 10-to-1 odds, but he had to admit that he wasn't faring as well has he usually did. He'd taken down four of the men before the backup generator kicked in, but now had six guns trained on him. They were blocking his path to Two Face, who had high-tailed it through a back stairwell as soon as the fighting began; he needed to get to him before he managed to disappear again.
He disarmed two of the guns with birdarangs, then jumping up he kicked the shaft of the third down with his left leg, and slammed his other foot into its owner's face.
He heard the clicks of triggers and prepared to roll; it would be impossible to avoid being hit entirely but he could try to minimize the damage. Instead of feeling the impact of bullets, however, there was a flash of red, white, and blue in front of him, followed by rapid clinking. Walking forward against the fire, Diana grabbed and twisted the muzzles of two of the guns once within reach of them. She pulled the now useless weapons out of their owners' grips, letting them clatter to the floor. Disarmed and stunned, the men could do little as she grabbed fistfuls of their shirts and sent their bodies flying.
"Thanks," he told her picking himself up off the ground. "Any chance you could give me some cover?"
"Of course, but where are you—" he was already through the doors of the back stairwell before she could finish her question, "going?"
Two Face was fast, but Nightwing was faster. He easily used the trail of footsteps Harvey had left in his wake to catch up to him. He tripped him with his bolas, and was on him an instant later, spinning him so his back was on the ground.
"I heard a rumor that you were still alive," Two Face hissed as Nightwing brought down his elbow to pin his neck. "Joker must be losing his touch."
"Shut up." Nightwing brought his fist down fast, aiming for the nose, but Two Face blocked with his open palm.
"Did you come here to take another bullet for your Daddy?" He wheezed, bringing his other hand up to reveal a small device clutched in his palm. "I'm all out of bullets, but this should be a lot more effective." His thumb clicked down on the red button at the device's side once. "Consider this a warning shot."
"I like these odds much better," Wonder Woman told Batman as she landed at his side. They were surrounded by the unconscious bodies of Two Face's men.
"I've sent an anonymous tip to the authorities. They'll be here soon. We should assist Nightwing."
But Diana didn't seem to be listening. "What's that noise?" she asked
He stopped to listen as well but heard nothing.
"You don't hear it?"
He shook his head but activated the scanner on his glove. Leading with her ear, she moved slowly, also trying to identify the source of the sound. She stopped in front of one of the wooden crates that had toppled over during their skirmish. "It's here," she said, prying the lid off just as his scanner beeped with results.
His eyes widened. "Diana!" He barreled into her, trying to knock her out of harm's away, but the explosion that followed turned everything black.
To Be Continued…