CHAPTER 4

Dick stood up in front of me, holding onto my hand tightly as Bruce came storming down the rest of that long corridor, my eyes looked up at him, begging him to protect me from the wrath of an angry

"You're alright Hel, don't worry about it, I've got ya." He assured me with a wink and squeezed my hand tightly as Bruce closed in, that look of anger on his face mixed in with relief and annoyance at the worry I had possibly just caused him to feel in the last two days. "You wanted to see me?"

"Yes, yes, I did, I need you to take Helena, for the day, I have things I need to discuss with her mother." He glared down on his unruly child before kneeling in front of me with a sigh, looking at the floor to compose himself before looking back up at me with that set jaw and blue eyes. "Listen to me, anything that happens between your mother and I today, you must promise never to run away again, it's not safe…"

"I'm in a hospital, I can't be harmed here, people are looking." I was a stubborn little know it all, even at that age who would think nothing of sassing either one of her parents or how much it vexed them.

"It doesn't matter, its happened before, people get hurt in hospital. You know my secret, that makes it easy for you to be taken here. You don't want that, do you?"

"No Daddy." I looked at my shoes and pouted with every bit of that mouth before he pulled me into his chest, his chin on my head, engulfing me for a split second before pulling away.

"Be good for Richard, and I'll be home tonight to read a story." he was a little softer now as he stood up and patted the younger man on his shoulder, that small smile of mutual respect on his face for his younger counter part. "Make sure she's safe Dick."

"I will." He nodded and took me out of the warzone of the hospital, leading me by the hand to his car in the parking lot. Dick, even when I was that age, treat me like a mini adult. As if I he knew I could cope with a lot more than your average eight year old. "Helena, you're going to be okay."

"So, everyone keeps telling me." I glared at him as her opened the car door for and I jumped in, letting him belt me up before he got in the other side. "Where are we going?"

"I'm going to take you to see your Aunt Kate, she has a little girl your age, Jackie. You can hang out with her for the day if you want to?" He was hoping against all hope that the stubborn child of the batcat was going to comply to him without a fight that day, and he was sorely mistaken in every way.

"I don't want to, but you're going to take me anyway."

"You're not stupid, are you?" he chuckled lightly as he moved across Gotham in the car with me, slowly and steadily "So I hear, you're going to live with Bruce full time."

"I heard it too, but I don't know if I want too. "

"Why not kid?" he genuinely looked puzzled at my disdain at the idea of being locked up in Wayne Manor for the rest of my life.

"Because, he's always away. Just like mom. Then they always argue with one another, all of the time." The scowl I gave him was enough to make any man shiver, let alone one that I had under the thumb from the age of five.

"You know that's not your fault. Bruce and Selina, they always fight, but it's because they love you and each other. They're just too stubborn to admit it."

"They're stubbornness will get them killed one day, then I'll be an orphan, just like Dad."

"Helena, you're never going to an orphan, you have us all. You have a big family kid, and don't think for one second your old man is likely to be killed by anyone." He shook his head at my adult like behaviour before parking the car on the side of the building. This place wasn't too far from my mothers, a couple of blocks over in the same part of Downtown, although, it looked a little bigger than my mother's Brownstone building. He looked up at it and then back at me "You have to be nice."

"I don't have to be nice to anyone, polite, yes, nice, that's different." I smirked at him and he chuckled a little.

"Well, polite then." He shook his head and moved out of the car, moving around to let me out and take me up the stairs to knock on the door. "Do you want anything from your mothers?"

"Whatever you can get, just, leave her some things of mine. I don't know if she wants them…."

"Helena..." he looked down at me with a slight sad look on his face before the door opened. "Zantanna."

"Dick, why are you…." She looked at him as if she had just woken up from a long nap, and she probably had, most of the people that Bruce knew, slept most of the day and did their work at night. Her eyes followed his nod as he indicated toward me. "Helena? When did you get so big?"

"I need you to look after her for a while, Bruce wanted me too, but I have to swing by Selina's and grab things, sort some odds out."

"I understand." She let out a small smile and opened the door wider, letting me inside with Dick close by me, his hands on my shoulder as I wondered inside, looking around the building at the collection of things she had collected in her time in Gotham City, not unlike the way my father did the same thing, collecting things that she had memories too. "Helena, try not to touch things., I know you're a curious kitten, but somethings in here are dangerous honey."

I nodded and I looked up at her. Kate was my father's oldest friend, I knew he had known her long before he became the Bat, when he was just Bruce. I inherently trusted her, with every fibre of my being, although, it took me longer than that to actually like her the way I did my mother.

"Come on, there is someone I would like you to meet." Her face smiled as she took my hand and led me into the kitchen of her home, A girl, the same age as I was, sat there, pens strew all over the table as she drew, too engrossed to look up at me. Her raven hair, tanned skin almost a match for my own, but she was smaller than me, her brown eyes a contrast to my blue ones. "Jackie, say hello to Helena."

"Hello." She smiled as she looked up at me. At that age, we hadn't seen enough or done enough to be the women we turned into. We were both still young and innocent, happy and almost contented to live with our mothers, until either father had too much of an influence on either of us. "Have you been to a funeral?"

"Jackie, be nice. Helena's been to see her mother in hospital." Kate glared and she went to the fridge, grabbing milk and pouring it out for me into a glass as I instinctively sat at the table to join her. "There you go, now, can you girls play nicely?" she rose and eyebrow and smiled a little at me and her own child. I nodded again, silence was my go to when I didn't want to be rude enough to warrant an adults disapproval. Jackie moved a piece of paper over to me then the pens with a small smile, and I couldn't help but smile back. I picked up the pen and began to draw with her, keeping my ears open for signs of talk.

"Dick, she's a lot quieter than I expected her to be…."

"She's not been around kids much, she's only ever had adults around her. Silence, is her way of coping."

"Not unlike her father then. She looks like him, a little, a lot more like Selina though."

"Oh, you have no idea how much she is like her mother." He let out a chuckle and came over to stand over my shoulder "Draw me something nice, and I'll be back soon." His hand messed up my hair and I growled at him as he left, pausing for a moment at the door "There you are kid, I was worried for a second."

"Did you just growl?" Jackie asked me with a small laugh and I nodded in response with a scowl. "Would you like to be friends?"

"I don't have friends. I have my brothers." I shrugged as the pen moved over the paper, not drawing anything in particular that day.

"That's sad, I do, at the school I go to." She shrugged at me with a small smile on her face.

"Do you not have siblings?" I rose an eyebrow as I looked at her. I didn't have friends, because at the Academy, I wasn't exactly the popular kid, not account of my mother being who she was and my pride in the fact that she was my mother and no one could say any different. I had been caught up in more than a couple of fights defending her, and on more than a couple of occasions, was almost excluded for those fights.

"No, I always wanted a sister though." She smiled at me and I smiled back at her with that rare Wayne smile.

I played like a child for the first time in a while that day, all day, and when there was no sign of Dick, Kate treated me like one of her own, feeding me, letting me take a bath with my new best friend and settling me down for the night in her room with her. And I fell sound asleep. It never mattered to me what traumas I had been through or what I had seen, sleep, was always a constant thing. Something I could depend on to get me through the nights. Although, for the most part, it would always be broken by some form of nightmare. That night, it was the laugh, the cackle, the white paint and tattoos that made me jump awake with a start. Breathing out in panic before a figure appeared at the door in my sleep ridden state. First in shadow as he blocked out what little light there was in the doorway before moving into the room.

"Daddy, why are you wearing the scary suit again?" I looked up as I rubbed my eyes, Jackie still dormant at the other side of me, her brown hair spread over the pillow and her face completely relaxed and trauma free.

"You can leave her here, I don't mind." Kate looked over at me with her beautiful face and raven hair spread around her shoulders like her own cloak. "She needs to sleep."

I shook my head fiercely in objection at the thought of being left here without either one of my parents at the time.

"No, she needs to be home." He moved over the room, picking me up as if I weighed no more than a ragdoll, my eyes now attempting to close again on his shoulder, ignoring the fact that the cape was in the way. That's always the thing that people seem to forget about the Batman, he's the protector of the innocent. So as much as those hands could be used to pummel a criminal to near death, they could also be used to comfort a child in the wake of losing her whole existence in the space of a few days. "She needs stability, something Selina can't provide right now."

"She's signed…" Zantanna stopped, knowing my brain worked at a higher rate than most kids my age and that having grown up with those adults, I understood a lot more than they wished or needed me too.

"Thank you, Kate." He nodded to her as he left the brownstone, placing me in the passenger side of the car, climbing in and speeding toward the manor through the darkness of countryside and the crash of the sea. I wasn't the first child to be driven back to his home for safety, nor was I to be the last to be added to the odd collection of people in the Bat Collection.