It had been a long time since Bruce had seen his parents in his dreams. The last time had been right after Rachel died. It had been a horrible time for him-both he and Alfred had wandered about the penthouse, lost, grieving. Nights were exceptionally hard, then, for he was having a hard time falling asleep and an even harder time staying asleep. When he awoke in the night, he would be gasping, sweating, paralyzed with a fear he never allowed to reign when he was awake. He knew his subconscious conjured horrible nightmares during that time, but thankfully, he never remembered when he awoke. The only dream he did recall was the one with his parents, the one in which he was reunited with Thomas and Martha Wayne once more. It had been that dream which had finally coaxed him out of his grief-stricken depression and back into the land of the living.

And now he was in their presence once more.

Strangely, he was a child again, eight years old and yet painfully aware of all that would unfold in the years ahead. He stood at the crest of the hill, just outside the house, gazing down the green slopes of the estate, watching the children of the Gotham City PD playing in the background. But it was his parents that he saw. They were walking up the hill, heading toward him, laughing and holding hands. In that moment, he was struck by how happy they seemed, how in love. He watched them hungrily, feasting his eyes upon them, starving for any vision of him he could get. Martha saw him and waved, and Thomas knelt down and opened his arms to Bruce. But something held Bruce back—some force held him in place.

That's when Bruce saw him: Joe Chill, looking the same as he had on that god-awful night: disheveled, dirty, up to no good. He was stalking up the hill, coming behind Thomas and Martha, looking ludicrously out of place in the well-manicured beauty of the Palisades, and Bruce's eyes were glued to the gun, but he couldn't move-and then Joe Chill turned into a leering, laughing Joker-

The shots blasted out, louder than they had sounded in actuality, and Bruce watched as his parents crumpled to the ground, their lives—and his—shattered like porcelain dolls. His role in Bruce's dream completed, the Joker disappeared, and it was only then that Bruce was able to move again, and he rushed to his parents, watching in fascinated horror as their blood spilled onto the lush grass.

"Bruce."

It was his mother speaking; miraculously, she was still alive, but only barely. Bruce knelt before her and saw that his parents were still holding hands.

"Bruce." Martha spoke again, her voice barely more than a dying gasp. "It's not too late."

He shook his head, wild with grief and anger at the deaths that, once more, he had been unable to prevent. "It is."

"No." She coughed, and a trickle of blood passed her lips and stained her peaches-and-cream skin. "It's not too late for you. You don't have to die with us."

"You don't have to die with us."

The gentle voice of Martha Wayne was still echoing in Bruce's head as he erupted out of the dream, disoriented and shaking and tangled up in the goosedown comforter that Alfred had wisely spread out the night before, in anticipation of the bitter cold.

"Master Wayne?"

Alfred was standing in the doorway, peering into the bedchamber. "Are you awake, sir? It's only eight-thirty."

Bruce shook his head, trying to hang on to the vision of his parents, the sound of his mother's voice. "I...I'm awake." Almost to himself, he muttered, "You don't have to die with us."

"I beg your pardon, sir?"

"Nothing. Never mind." Bruce shivered. Why the hell was he so cold? Belatedly, he remembered taking off his t-shirt before crawling under the covers; in the biting cold air of the morning, he was paying for it. "How cold is it outside, Alfred?"

"It has warmed up to almost thirty degrees." Alfred came into the room and headed to the fireplace, where he began poking at the dying embers. "I heard on the news three homeless citizens died from exposure last night. Nothing criminal in that...but somehow, it feels like there is." He glanced back at Bruce. "Did you sleep well, sir?"

"Not really."

"Splendid." Alfred wasn't paying much attention to his employer. "I will return with your breakfast. I have decided you drink far too much coffee, sir. All of that caffeine simply isn't good for your system. You should drink more tea."

"You're just trying to assert imperial dominance." Bruce was rapidly awakening now. "I want my coffee. Black."

"Darjeeling or Earl Grey?" Alfred asked brightly.

"You're a nag," Bruce grumbled as he slowly emerged from his bed. He ambled over to the bay window which looked out onto the sweeping grounds. From where he stood, he could see the rolling, green slope of the hill, the same one from the dream which lurked so fresh in his mind. "Were my parents happy, Alfred?"

Turning back to face the older man, Bruce could tell that the question had rattled him. "Where on the good green earth did this codswallop come from?" His carefully-modulated voice threatened to lapse into the Cockney accent he had tried for years to suppress. "What an extraordinary question." When he saw that Bruce was still expecting an answer, he sighed. "As far as I know, Master Bruce, your parents were happy. With themselves, with their lives, with you, with each other. It was one of the most refreshing things about them—they were wealthy, and yet they were happy. So few wealthy are, really."

"What was their marriage like?" Bruce demanded. "I only saw them as a child sees his parents, not as a husband and wife."

Alfred began to meander aimlessly about the room, fiddling with various objects as he went-running his hand along the dresser to check for dust, straightening a pillow, picking up some withered petals that had fallen from the bouquet of freshly-cut flowers that he brought in daily. Only when he found nothing else with which to fidget did he answer the question. "Your parents married each other because they wanted to, because they wanted to share their life together...not because they had to, not because it was expected of them, not because they had their families pressuring them to find someone 'suitable'. In my opinion, sir, those make the best marriages—the kind of marriage that becomes a partnership. Not everyone can forge that kind of marriage." He trailed off for a moment, remembering his brilliant, glittering friends Thomas and Martha, their work, their generosity, their love. "It was a privilege to see their partnership and how it worked, and it was a joy to see how they loved their life."

"It's not too late."

It was too late, had been too late, too many years ago, for Bruce's parents.

"You don't have to die, too."

But he had died, hadn't he? At least metaphorically, on that night that he watched Chill murder his parents. Either that, or he had been dying a little every day since then. But is that what Thomas and Martha would have wanted for him? Apparently not, if he were to believe what his mother had told him in his dream.

Alfred was still talking. "They were each their own person, certainly, but they worked in unison. They had the same goals, and they worked for them together." He fixed Bruce with an intense gaze. "They loved you, Master Wayne, but sometimes I think they were happy to die together as they lived together. And I think if they could see you now, they would only be grieved to see how unhappy and alone you are."

"It's not too late."

Not surprisingly, Bruce did not directly respond to this gentle rebuke. But with an air of energetic decisiveness, he crossed the room and disappeared into his closet. From the bedchamber, he heard Alfred's patiently amused voice. "What are you doing now, sir?"

"Getting dressed." He grabbed the first pair of pants and shirt that came into his hands, and only prayed it wasn't the flashy designer labels Annabeth loved to mock. "I'm heading into the city. It's not too late."

"Of course not, sir. It should only be ten in the morning by the time you make it to downtown."

"Yeah, that too."

Bruce had spent enough time at Safe Haven to understand the insanity that seemed to descend upon the place on Monday mornings. Annabeth had explained it to him, a long time ago: mothers and children tended to show up on that day, slipping away as husbands and boyfriends and fathers returned to work after inflicting upon their families another weekend of cruelty and fear. Add to that all the little business that accumulates over the course of two days off, and it was usually a scene of controlled chaos.

This Monday was no different. As soon as he stepped into the second floor, intent on seeking out Annabeth, he was greeted by noise and people. One of the mothers was chasing after her toddler, who had inexplicably made its way down from the third floor, and he passed two rather worn-out looking women, likely new clients driven in from the streets by the cold. Maya was at her desk outside Donna's office, but she didn't greet him right away; she was talking on the phone as she simultaneously typed out an email. Even as she multi-tasked in this fashion, a second line rang. She threw Bruce one look of harassed desperation before answering. "Safe Haven Consulting, please hold—" she was cut off, and frowned. After a moment, she said crisply, "Just a moment, I'll transfer you through."

Finally, she was off the phone. "I think Mondays should be mandatory days off."

"Busy morning?" Bruce smiled sympathetically.

"You have no idea." Maya didn't mind, not really. She enjoyed the frenetic pace. "If you're looking for Annabeth, you'll have to wait. She's on a conference call. Watch out—she's sick as a dog, and twice as snappy. Damned fool must have caught a cold, traipsing around your manor on Saturday."

Just then, Donna burst out of her office. Without even seeming to see Bruce, she hurried down the hall to Annabeth's office and closed the door behind her.

"What was that all about?" Bruce was alert to trouble.

Maya shrugged. "No idea. It was Marjane's foster mother on the phone. I know that Donna and Annabeth haven't been able to reach her lately..." Any further speculation was cut off by a strangled exclamation, almost a cry in protest, emanating from Annabeth's office. "Excuse me," Maya said, and hurried after Donna. He was tempted to follow after, but something held him back. He watched as Maya disappeared into Annabeth's office, and as the door opened and closed, he heard the sound of crying, and then, the softer sound of Donna's dispassionate, reasoning voice.

Five minutes later, he was still hovering by Maya's desk when the door opened once more, and Annabeth, Maya, and Donna all emerged. Annabeth was still crying, silently; he caught a glimpse of her pale, tear-stained face before Maya led her past him and to the elevator. Donna remained behind, standing next to Bruce.

He turned to her. "What's going on? What happened?"

Donna had never appeared so grim, so fierce. "It's Marjane. She's disappeared." She glanced over at Bruce, and he saw that even she was deeply agitated. "We think that man, her husband, went to Metropolis and brought her back here."

"How? Why?"

"I talked with her foster mother-Marjane's been homesick, and she placed a call to her parents in Iran last week. She must have told them where she was, and they probably told her husband." Donna's cool exterior began to crack. "Dammit! We lost her. She's been missing since Friday; she never came home from school. Dammit, dammit, dammit!"

Bruce's mind was already dancing about between different plans of action, but he needed more information. "Can't we get her back?"

"How?" Donna demanded. "We can't just show up at his apartment and demand her back. We simply cannot, will not put ourselves into that sort of physical danger. We can't go to the police, because then they'll just end up deporting Marjane. Unless Marjane can come back here, or make it back to her foster family in Metropolis, our hands are tied."

"Annabeth seemed upset." That, Bruce thought wryly, was like saying theTitanic had a minor leak.

"She is upset. And she's sick, too, so this was just one blow too many. She's no damned good when she gets like this."

"What do you mean? When she gets like what, exactly?"

Donna shrugged, exasperated. "Come on Bruce, you've been around Annabeth long enough. You're not stupid. The woman's obsessed, and not in a way that's at all cute to watch. She goes through these phases when she works longer hours, drains herself of all energy, completely exhausts herself, and then she practically collapses. She's sick, she's exhausted, and it's just a matter of time. She doesn't know when to stop." Worry was clouding her eyes. "It sucks for us to watch, because she doesn't listen to any of us."

"Is she manic?"

"No." Donna rejected that right away. "Just haunted. I think work's her way of coping. And I would say she'd have to plead temporary stupidity."

As he listened to Donna detail Annabeth's obsessive, self-destructive streak, Bruce suddenly began to appreciate exactly how Alfred felt. "So, what? She just does a crash-and-burn every now and then?"

"Essentially. I sent her home until she recuperates." Donna shook her head. "She always takes it so hard when we lose one of our clients...these people are the only family she has. And that's why I treat this like a business. I don't know if she'll ever learn to do the same...but if she doesn't, it's going to tear her apart."

The Batman came to her that night.

After Donna sent her home earlier that day, Annabeth had collapsed on the sofa, too sick, too exhausted, too depressed to do anything else. Her last coherent thought was that she should call Bruce, cancel, explain, anything, but as a cough racked her body, she realized that she simply did not have the energy. With a tiny mental shrug, she pulled her throw over her and curled up on the sturdy end of the couch and fell asleep.

When at last she awoke, it was dusk. The golden glow of a setting autumn sun had illuminated the living room, but nothing could keep out the chill—she had forgotten to turn on the heat when she returned earlier, and the unseasonable cold snap was nowhere near over with.

Even after the hours-long nap, she still felt awful. Her head was completely congested, her body ached, and it wouldn't have surprised her at all if she had a fever. As much as it pained Annabeth to admit it, she needed to stay right here, recuperating; she was a mess in every possible way, and she wasn't of much use to anyone in this condition. So there she sat, wrapped in a blanket, just as Janey had found her the night before. But even then, she wasn't completely idle; she was thinking, thinking, thinking of some way she could help Marjane.

This wasn't the first time she had lost a client; she had seen it happen so many times before when they went into hiding and couldn't stick it out-their old lives, their old friends, and their old jobs were too difficult to abandon. Or else they simply went back to the men—and, on occasion, the women—who mistreated them. Poor Marjane. She had simply been homesick. Annabeth didn't blame her in the slightest. But where ever the girl was now, she was probably terrified, possibly hurt. How could Annabeth help? The cops were out of the question. She thought briefly of Gordon, but rejected that idea almost immediately. As good and as honest as Gordon was, he was limited to and by the system, and she didn't want to get him involved. Marjane was, after all, an illegal immigrant. And Annabeth couldn't just go in herself and get Marjane; this wasn't like her extracurricular meanderings through the Narrows, this already involved Safe Haven. She couldn't go maverick on her employer. So what options were left?

Long after night had plunged the living room into darkness, Annabeth remained on the couch, thinking. And that was how the Batman found her.

"Sitting in the dark. Not exactly healthy behavior."

Annabeth didn't start at the sound of his voice, rasping out in the darkness. And as he crossed the room to stand in front of her, she didn't even seem surprised to see him. "I thought I told you to knock."

He took in her disheveled, sickly, cocooned state. "Would you have answered?"

"Not if I thought it was you." The glare she gave him lacked her usual ire, and just then, a cough seized her. "What do you want? I'm assuming you're not here for the stimulating company."

"I'm not." He began to pace about her living room. "Does the name Nathan Parris sound familiar to you?"

Annabeth dug deep into her sickness-addled memory. After a moment, she nodded hesitantly. "I think so..." Recognition dawned then. "Yes. Nathan Parris. He owns a brothel, filled to the gills with women he's acquired through illegal means—"

"Immoral, too." The Batman was clearly in an unforgiving mood. "Parris is dead."

"Dead?" Annabeth was surprised. "There was nothing in the paper..."

"There won't be. The FBI's involved now."

He watched with pride as Annabeth began thinking through this information. She was exhausted and sick, yet her mind never ceased. Perhaps if she had taken care of herself, her body would not have quit on her, either. Not for the first time, he was poignantly aware of the similarities of their goals and missions.

"Parris is dead. Presumably by the hand of the Arrows?" Annabeth waited for his curt nod in the affirmative. "I think I know what they're trying to do."

"I think so, too."

Becoming agitated, Annabeth began to untangle herself from the blanket she had wrapped around herself. "The Arrows are trying to monopolize Gotham's sex trade-"

"-take out the pimps and intimidate the prostitutes-"

"-eliminate any competitition-"

"-and now they've killed Gotham's main player in the human trafficking trade," the Batman finished.

"They want to get control of that market, too." Annabeth stopped pacing and stared at him from across the room. "Global sex trafficking is extremely lucrative, and incredibly unregulated. You realize, with the resources the Arrows has, they'll be able to expand that market in a way Nathan Parris never could?"

"Would they be able to? Wouldn't people object?"

"Jesus, are you always this naive?" Annabeth resumed her pacing. "You really think that the men who are paying for time with these women pause to ask their life stories? They're not going to stop and say, 'Hey, Natasha, thanks for the blow job, and by the way, is this something you willingly do or are you forced?'"

"Are there really that many?" Even discussing this made him feel filthy. Who would do this to a woman, a child?

"At least ten thousand women are trafficked into America each year. They were kidnapped or sold into this, or lured to America with the promise of clean, easy jobs. And once they get here, they're locked up, beaten, drugged, raped, starved into submission. Nathan Parris was the only man in Gotham that ran a brothel with unwilling Natashas and other prostitutes...I never really thought that it would take off here like in other cities." She stared at the Batman with eyes that seemed to penetrate his armor. "But god, I've been stupid. It'll take off, alright, with the Arrows backing it. Don't forget, sex sells because people are buying."

He didn't disagree.

"You think this is what that woman was talking about?" she asked. "The woman who contacted me, said that she had information. You think this is the 'big thing' she said was going down?"

"I do."

"You said the FBI is involved now?" Annabeth's eyes temporarily brightened. "Then we don't need her information anymore. The Feds have it covered." Even as she said this, however, she watched the Batman's mouth tighten into an unhappy grimace. She didn't like what he was about to say.

"I told Gordon about her. He's not happy about it, but we need more information from her." Inwardly, he braced for her reaction, which was not long in coming.

"No!" Even that exclamation taxed Annabeth, and she fell into another fit of coughing. After she caught her breath, she tried to dissuade her unlikely ally. "So long as she does this, she's in danger. We need to get her out of that situation. How do we know that they're not going to try to force all the sex workers into a situation like the Natashas? She could be at risk, along with the rest of them." But it was almost impossible, she knew—trying to imprison and beat into submission thousands of women was a little bit beyond the capabilities of even the Arrows. It was one thing to intimidate, another thing entirely to compel through outright force. Better to let the women be free agents and bring in Natashas for more lucrative—and ultimately disposable—workers.

"The Arrows are trying to get the financial backing of some of the power players in Gotham," The Batman snapped, his voice harsh with impatience. "If we continue getting information, we can find out who they are."

Annabeth's shoulders slumped in defeat, and she shuffled back over to the couch. He watched, and then said in a slightly less forceful voice, "We need to incapacitate the Arrows. The only way to do that is to take away their financial and political power, too."

Damn the man, she hated that he was right. "This needs to end. Soon."

"I agree. You have to give me any information that woman gives to you."

"It's not exactly like I can shoot you an email," Annabeth snapped. "Apparently you like to play hard-to-get."

"I'll be by more often." He began to move towards her bedroom, no doubt headed towards the fire escape. But then he heard her speak again.

"Wait."

He turned around and watched as Annabeth came to the end of a struggle within herself. She lifted her chin a tiny fraction, an unconscious gesture of defiant pride. "I need your help." Her eyes challenged him to mock her or deny her plea.

The Batman cocked his head. "I'm listening."

If Annabeth were to be honest with herself, she would have to admit this was a plan she had not thought through at all. But she did know that there was no other obvious solution. "I have a friend in trouble. She's sixteen years old, and she's in a bad situation. She's with a man who has already hurt here once. I need for you to get to her and bring her to a safe place, and I need for you to make sure that man never goes near her again."

"I don't kill." He said this flatly, in a tone that made it very clear this was not open to discussion.

If Annabeth thought it odd that he was refusing to kill a man when he was already wanted by the cops for the death of several others, she did not question it. "I don't want you to kill him. Anything else goes." There was a nasty little gleam in her eyes that bespoke of her hope that not only was this "anything else goes" caveat acceptable, it was downright desirable. "Look, this is a young girl that needs help—and I can't help her." This cost her a great deal of pride to admit this to him, that he could see. "This is no big rescue mission, it's not the First Lady or the Virgin Mary, no one famous. There's no glory in this. Just the honor of helping one good woman."

"Sounds like I'd be helping two."

She inclined her head in acknowledgment of the compliment, and then fixed him with her piercing stare. "Well? Will you help?"

He had already been planning a mission to retrieve Marjane, but Annabeth would never know it. "I will. Where is she?"

"Last we knew, her husband lives in an apartment near here, at the edge of Bordertown. If he's still there, that's probably where he has her." Annabeth proceeded to give him the address, and to instruct him to where Marjane needed to be delivered once she was in Metropolis. As she spoke, she found herself getting more and more drowsy; the intensity of this meeting had drained her, and her throat was getting sore all over again. She wanted nothing more to slip back into sleep.

The Batman saw this. "I will extract her." He began to move for her bedroom once more, but she said something that stopped him.

"She's not a flavoring—don't extract her," she told him tartly, her voice sharpening with anxiety as she delivered the next piece of information. "She's pregnant, and she wants to keep the baby. For the love of god, be careful. Make sure she's okay. And don't terrify her, either."

"That's a pretty tall order." There was nothing, no quirk of the mouth, no change in his look, to indicate this was a joke. "But I'll get her out."

Enough. Annabeth's body gave way, and she settled back onto the sofa, no longer able to care about the Batman or anything else other than her own sickness and the need to recover. Even before the Batman had climbed out onto the fire escape, she was dead to the world, and unable to see him return to the living room once more. Stealthily, and with great care, he placed her blanket over her and made sure that it was tucked around her shivering body. Only when he was satisfied that Annabeth would remain warm did the Batman slip back into the night.