Chapter 2

It felt like hours before she felt her father chuck her into her room, after spending hours facing every torture that her father could throw at her from being tied up and dipped under water to beatings with a crowbar and being electrocuted. The young girl could barely move towards her bed in front of her not with her every fiber of her being radiating excruciating pain. So she settled on removing her once white blanket that was now dirty and worn over the years that barely covered her blood drenched, cut up body. A normal child would have protested sleeping on the ice cold floor with pain less intense than a broken limb especially without a dinner, but this was a luxury Tarrin didn't have for any complaint, voiced to her parents won't only fall on deaf ears but also invoke more punishment. Plus Tarrin welcomed the coldness of the floor that helped dull the aching pain spreading throughout her body, and for the pain and hunger she couldn't even feel it after sometime as her numb body drifted off into a deep unconsciousness.

"Father what are you doing?" Damien inquired as he watched his father still in his Bat suit hours after they had gotten home, staring into a microscope glass after mixing chemicals together.

"Shouldn't you be in bed?" Bruce replied without taking his eyes off his work. Damien sighed as he rolled his eyes convinced if he had redecorated the bat cave by rearranging all Bruce's souvenirs he would never notice the difference. It shocked Damien sometimes how oblivious his father could be despite him being the world's greatest detective.

"I came down to see if I could help yo-"

"I don't need any, I'm making up a serum to Joker's laughing gas, so go to sleep before Alfred catches you up at two clock despite you having to wake up at six for home schooling," Bruce interrupted in a commanding voice that cut into Damien like a sword, causing anger to flare up in the teenage boy who absolutely hated being treated as a child. It made sense when he was shorter at the age of ten, but now that he was at least as tall as Bruce's shoulders not to mention fifteen he figured his father would at least treat him as his equal like he does to Tim Drake. Damien clenched his teeth to prevent the world wind of protest that would have come out of his mouth; for he had what he really came down to the cave for.

"Fine," was all he could manage as the boy stormed out of the bat cave leaving a stressed out Bruce behind him who knew that if Alfred had witnessed the scene he would have given Bruce a zero in the parental department. Knowing this caused Bruce to sigh knowing that he would have to do something to redeem himself later, he thought as he continued to busily work on a cure for Joker's intoxicating gas.

Once Damien was safely in his room he took off his pajamas and quickly changed into the Robin suit he snuck out the bat cave. Ignore me will you? That was a big mistake. Damien thought to himself with a smirk on his face as he opened his windows to sneak out. Damien froze when he heard his Great Dane bark, which Damien concluded was his dog's attempt of asking where he was going.

"Don't worry boy, I'm just going out to do some detective work as father would call it," Damien spoke as he patted the giant black dog before grinning with satisfaction as he whipped out his Robin communicator to see a map appear on it that would lead him to a red dot indicating to him that the tracking device he planted was still working and attached to its host. With one more glance at his dog that was now stretched across the dummy he had sleeping in his place he smiled with anticipation on how his night of playing detective was going to go down.

The map on his communicator led him across town to an old abandoned amusement park, which didn't surprise him after all where else would a lunatic clown on Gotham's most wanted list try to raise a family? With that notion he climbed over the rusting gates of the amusement park and started to wonder around the amusement park to find his target, while being careful of any booby traps that the Joker may have made to keep certain people like him away from his hideout. Damien was thankful when he came across a small window on a funhouse that was covered by a long patch of untrimmed grass where his communicator was indicating where the person he had place the tracking device on was. He pulled the grass away from the window to see a room that only had a bed in it and a few stuffed animals and clothes scattered across the floor, but most importantly he saw no sign of the Joker, Harley, their pets, or the Joker's goons just their daughter named Bonnie Doll a sleep on the floor.

He snuck in by squeezing himself through the window he knew would've been a piece of cake up until two years ago when he started to hit his growth spurts. At one time he was over joyed with his new height, but at this presence day as he reflected on how much pain it took to get himself through that window he cursing his long legs and his filled out frame. He perched himself comfortably on Bonnie 's empty bed while taking another glance of the room to realize how tiny it was to the point that the room barely fit both teenagers in it. He also noticed how much the room wasn't really fit for anyone to live in let alone a girl near his age, not with the fact that the walls where greening with mold and the damp rotting wood that the Joker's daughter was sleeping on. Why isn't she sleeping on her bed? He wondered as he got of her bed with a back flip over her sleeping body to land silently in front of her sleeping body. The bed was dusty and just as unsanitary as the rest of the room, but to Damien the bed had to be a billion times better than sleeping on the floor, which was going through his head as he bent down to get a better look at the girl. The sight of the dried up bloody girl with blacking bruises broke Damien usual poker face as it sickened him to the extent that the clown go to abusing his daughter, not that it surprised him after all this was the Joker in question. The very sight caused an unexplainable anger and sense of sympathy for the girl, but before he could try to comprehend these strange feelings the girl who he was standing over eyes fluttered open. Damien narrowly dodged a punch from the girl who slowly got to her feet to stare him down with ice cold green eyes that pierced Damien very being although he didn't let it register on his face.

"What in the bloody world are you doing here? Is it to finish me off, I won't show mercy this time," Bonnie whispered with a deadly hiss as she reached for under the bed to reveal her butcher's knives. Damien couldn't help swear under his breath knowing the last thing he needed was to get into a fight with her and get her insane parents involved, but as he stared into her ice cold eyes he knew there was no reasoning with her in this state. Great if I don't die by the hands of the Joker, I am sure as hell going to die by my father's, Damien thought as he grabbed his sword, causing them to pick up their fight from where they left off near Gotham Harbor hours ago.

"You must really have a death wish don't you?" Bonnie more or less stated as she swung her knives at Damien this time to his lucky stars with zero precision and swiftness.

"You're not implying that you could finish me off in your current state are you?" Damien teased as he blocked another one of her attacks causing her face to redden a darker shade of red with every blocked attack. Damien couldn't help but think that her current state of fury was cute, even though she looked ready to maim him the second she got her hands on him.

"What the heck is that supposed to mean?" Bonnie demanded with venom licking at her words as she felt a wave of emotions crashing through her as she tried to comprehend why the sidekick of her father's archenemy had come here to kill her after she showed him mercy and now was toying with her even know she knew he could finish her off in a heartbeat.

"I mean you're not putting up that much of a fight," Robin answered back with a nonchalant tone used to tease her as Damien found himself completely amused with her anger. However, that was Damien's last straw as Bonnie saw his playful teasing no longer as charming as she found it during their fight earlier that night, no now she found it as a means to look down on her.

"Why don't you just die you f-" She was interrupted by a pair of footsteps that froze both teens in mid battle. Both of them shared a meaningful look before Damien threw her on the bed and rolled underneath her bed seconds before the Joker opened the door to her room. The sight that he saw of his daughter sprawled across her bed asleep and her room void of anyone in it he muttered to himself about hearing things again and closed the door shut before heading back to his room that he shared with Harley. The teenagers stayed in their positions for a good thirty minutes to ensure they were really in the clear.

"Again, Boy Wonder why are you here?" Bonnie asked with an amused smirk as Damien flung a dead rat off his shoulder as he dusted himself off after crawling out from underneath her bed. For some reason the combination of him saving her having to deal with her father's disappointment of not being able to get rid of the boy that was now perched comfortably on her bed and her growing suspicion this strange boy she had met for the first time tonight wasn't trying to kill her caused her earlier rage to simmer.

"Obviously because of your sweet personality, Miss. I-love-to-play-with-knives," Damien teased as he flashed a mischievous smile, which caused her to roll her eyes knowing that he was clearly asking for an apology for attacking him before he could explain why he snuck into enemy territory.

"Really are you always this annoying?"

"That depends are you always this annoyed?"

"Fine you win, Mr. I'm-impossible-to-deal-with," Bonnie surrendered causing a smile of triumph to shine shamelessly on his face that caused Bonnie to wonder if it wasn't too late to maim the annoying boy, but she thought better of it knowing that said boy was the only remotely interesting thing in her bleak world.

"So did the Joker do this to you?"

"What makes you think that I'll answer your questions if you won't answer mine?"

"Well first of all I'm your guest second of all you're the one who surrendered to me."

"First point's a lie you're more of an intruder than a guest," the green haired girl replied as she lay down in front of Robin without her eyes ever leaving Robin's. "My father did do this to me for my insolence tonight."

"Does he always do this to you for failure?"

"Why do you ask? Don't all parents?"

It shocked Robin how much she really believed that this was how all children were treated for disobedience. Even his mother never really resorted to such discipline that would leave him out of commission for at least a month. "Do you really feel that all parents beat their children black and blue along with burning them with what looks like electrical shocks just for disobedience?" Damien questioned as he assessed the means of which the Joker used to punish her with through the types of injuries she had littering every part of her body he could see that wasn't covered by her browning night gown that was due to dried up blood.

"I don't know and frankly I don't care, I knew what I was in for when I decided not to kill you."

"And why did you decide that knowing the consequences in advance?"

"Isn't obvious it was because of your stunning good looks and dazzling charm," she cooed sweetly, causing a weird feeling to bubble up in Damien as he masked it with a bat glare that got Bonnie to flash a fringed apologetic look. "I did it because ever since I could remember I have never done anything based on what I think, and when I was up their fighting I knew I couldn't handle killing you or for anyone in that matter. But if this is what happens to me when I fail to be able to kill like my father am afraid I might have to learn to kill without regret like him."

"Or you can continue to disobey your father but not get caught?"

"What do you mean how can you disobey an order and not get caught?"

"It's quiet easy I was ordered to go to bed yet here I am nowhere near my bed without anyone knowing, and all I have to do to ensure I don't get caught is to sneak back into my room before six."

"So let me get this straight you purposely disobey orders and try not to get caught doing it…that sounds like a fun game. Teach me all the rules."

"Why should I?" Damien asked resuming his difficult personality again that caused a pout to appear on the cute banged up face of the girl staring up at him causing the strange feelings to wash through him again with a stronger force every time to the point Damien wondered how long he could keep it from registering on his face.

"Because I want to learn how to make my own decisions without having to be beaten until the Joker kills me, plus won't it be more fun to disobey the rules together?" Bonnie replied with a pleading puppy dog face, Damien knew that in this situation his father would say no in order to insure the secret identity remains uncompromised and that he doesn't get killed. But something that went against everything both his parents ever taught him provoked him to give into her plea for help. Well if I'm agreeing to teach this girl how to break the rules might as well lead by example, Damien thought knowing that when this was all over and his father found out about him fraternizing with the enemy he was going to lose his patrolling privileges to Tim for at very least a month.

"With that done, I should probably get back home, Bonnie Doll," Damien stated as he got up in order to climb out the window he came into.

"When will I see you again? And can you call me Tarry? That's my real name," Bonnie asked after helping the boy through her window. With a hard glance at her cuts and bruises he knew he couldn't take her out to show her what life was really like looking like someone who was a victim of attempt murder.

"Sure Tarry, anyway I know this may sound long but you need to heal and gather your strength back up, so our next meeting will be in a month. Try to stay on the Joker's good side until then Troublemaker," Damien answered with a wicked smile on his face he saw her pout with protests on the tip of her tongue that got tongue-tied when she saw his smile before he vanished into what was left of the darkness of the night.

"Right back at you Boy Wonder," Tarry whispered as she stared out her window with a grin knowing that her bleak dark world for the first time had a light that may pave a way to a new world, one that she could bare.