The Last Laugh
Chapter 7: High Profile
By, Frank Hunter

"No!" Tim screamed as the Batmobile exploded below him. "No! No! No!"

He pulled at the seatbelt that held him into the ejection pod, only vaguely aware that if he actually succeeded in tearing himself free, that he would plummet down into the fiery mess himself. He could only look on in horror as the car flipped and barrel rolled down the street, sliding to a stop upside-down in the middle of an intersection. Traffic squealed to a halt around the wreck. In a few seconds there would be people all around it, and there wasn't a damn thing Tim could do about that.

As gravity began to take hold of Tim's seat, a parachute was deployed from behind the headrest, and Robin drifted down onto one of the low rooftops of Old Gotham. When he was resting on solid ground again and the chute drifted out behind him, he finally collected the ware withal he needed to get the belt open and get to his feet. He surveyed the scene below him.

There were people looking in on the car now. One particularly concerned citizen was already batting at the flames with a blanket, a touching display of human compassion. But it wouldn't do a damn thing for Bruce if he was still inside.

Tim traced his eyes back over the stretch of the Batmobile's slide, reconstructing the scene as Bruce had taught him to do over and over when trying to assess a situation or course of action. About fifty yards back he could see the dark stain of the explosion on the blacktop surface. That was where the bomb went off. A little ways before that, his window was lying on the street. That was where Bruce had ejected him. And between those two landmarks there was the smoldering husk of something black and smoking that looked as though it had flown from the car and smashed into a nearby streetlight.

"Oh God," Tim said. With all the attention, for the moment, on the car, he spread his cape and glided from the roof unseen, down to the street. The thing on the curb, with silver scrapes and dings all over it and a ragged, tattered black rag sprawled out behind. That was what was left of the Batman. He must have tried jumping through the passenger window just as the car detonated.

Tim was at his side in an instant. He rolled Bruce over onto his back. His face was showing signs of small second-degree burns. He looked as though he'd twisted and rolled awkwardly when he hit the road, before sliding to a painful stop against the lamppost. He was awake, but not lucid.

The radio on Tim's wrist was activated and at his mouth in another heartbeat, tuned to their standard emergency frequency. "Alfred!?" Tim shouted. "Alfred, help!"

Feedback whooshed back at him for a moment before the familiar, paternal voice picked up at the other end. "Master Tim? What is the matter?"

"Send the Wing, Alfred. We need pick-up here, now," Tim rambled. "Bruce is down."

When he had confirmation that Bruce's jet was on the way, he breathed a little easier. But for safety's sake, he felt a need to get off the street. He grabbed Bruce under the shoulders and dragged him backward, into an alley to wait for their ride. He protested with little more than a dazed grunt, but Tim pressed through it. Bruce would have done the same to him.

While they sat and waited, more than a few people wandered down the street, following the trail of wreckage themselves. Tim pulled the two of them behind a dumpster to get out of sight. When he looked down at Bruce, he noticed that his mentor was absently poking at a panel on his wrist. Tim had a moment of confusion before remembering what that was. Emergency controls for the Batmobile. Bruce's eyes were closed. He was disoriented and in shock, and still his stubborn training and forged instinct had him working to remotely blow out the computers and uplinks in the car, making sure it couldn't be used to trace anything back to the cave when it was impounded.

Tim just shook his head and waited.

It was a matter of minutes before the jet was overhead, and Tim was able to grapple the two of them into its hold. It was not the lowest-profile way to travel, but if Deathstroke had still been tracking them, and now Tim thought there was a strong chance he had been, it also wouldn't be an easy vehicle to follow. Just to play it safe, Tim set the Wing on a couple of decoy approaches, swooping out of the boundaries of Gotham City entirely before coming in for a landing at the cave.

Inside, Alfred was waiting with a stretcher and all sorts of medical implements, his training as a field medic kicking in as it always did in an emergency. Bruce was pulled out from the hangar and into the cave's infirmary, and Alfred was a flurry of activity.

"Two of his ribs are broken," Alfred said as he got to the bruises and injuries around his chest.

"Can I help?" Tim asked. "What can I do?"

"Hand me the suture, on your right there, and then step back please."

Tim did as he was told, watching and waiting until Alfred had finished his work. When he was done, Bruce wound up looking half like a mummy. He had so many ointments and bandages on him, and even more bruises which weren't covered, that he barely resembled a man at all anymore.

Alfred asked what had happened, and Tim filled him in on their encounter with Deathstroke and the destruction of the car. The old butler listened to it all with an ambient level of concern. He cared so much for Bruce, and though he worked hard to conceal his actual feelings on the subject of Batman and vigilantism, when situations like these came up, Tim knew Alfred held himself responsible. Responsible for not setting Bruce on a straighter path. Responsible for not being able to care for him more aptly. But at least the heart monitor that sat beside the cot, beeping its regular beep, told them that although Bruce was unconscious, he was stable.

When the story was done, Alfred didn't have much to say. Wouldn't, Tim guessed, until Bruce was awake again. By then he was sure to have a tirade prepared. But until then, the old man just sat in the infirmary with him, doing his best to will Bruce back to health.

When the action had settled and there was nothing left but the "beep beep beep" of the heart monitor, Tim knew he couldn't stay there any longer. The tension was poised to drive him nuts. He needed fresh air, and to clear his head. The best thing for it would be to go out on patrol. There was nothing else he could do for Bruce tonight, and no good would come from staying here with him.

"If you must," Alfred conceded, when Tim told him. "But do be careful, Master Tim. If the mercenary is still out there, it may not be safe for you."

"I'll keep my head down, Alfred. Thanks," Tim told him. He requisitioned a motorcycle, and was off, back into the city.

/\/\/\

As Robin swung through the night, he tried not to admit to feelings of guilt over the explosion and Bruce's subsequent injury. He was the one who had put pressure on Slade and Bruce. He was the one who'd called the cops. If they hadn't had to flee the scene so quickly, maybe Bruce would have run a more thorough check on the car. Maybe they'd have actually caught Deathstroke and gotten him off the street already. Maybe they'd have gotten the name of whoever it was targeting Bruce's company.

Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. They'd never know. Maybe they'd both be dead. Tim knew that blaming himself for how things went wouldn't make things go any better. But in that moment, there was nothing else for him to do.

The routine of the last few weeks unconsciously brought him to the familiar crappy neighborhood he was getting to know too well. He moved to his perch up on the balcony without thinking much about it, and sat where he had been sitting almost every night in recent memory. Across the way, the window was open out into the cool summer air and Tim could see into the apartment that he knew he was supposed to be monitoring. Compared to mercenaries, corporate spying, and exploding cars, this seemed so much simpler.

But something was wrong.

The lights in the apartment were off, the living room lit only by the shifting glow from an active television, the screen of which Tim couldn't see. But the glow shone over the sofa where Harley Quinn usually sat, and she wasn't sitting there now. Tim lifted his scope to his eyes to get a clearer look at the room, and came away certain now that it was empty.

He swore. Now he'd need to look for her. Now he'd need to figure out where she was going. And with his luck, she'd be down an alley somewhere right now, cutting a deal with Killer Croc to harvest and sell orphans' kidneys on the black market. What joy.

He tucked his scope away and glided down onto the fire escape. If the place was empty, he might be able to tuck inside, find some clue as to where she went. Maybe it was just to the store for groceries. Yeah, the store. At 12:27AM. That was likely.

As he peered into the room from the window, the television became audible and visible and Tim grew distracted by the broadcast. It was tuned to one of the broadcast news shows, and the image on the screen was a familiar one: a flaming car upturned in an intersection.

"…reports coming in that the vehicle actually belonged to the Batman," the reporter dictated, followed by the report of an eyewitness.

"Yeah, I was just drivin' home, and then suddenly like, Wham! The car in front of me crashes and this big like fireball goes zoomin' by."

The reporter went on. "The cause of the explosion is not yet known, nor are the whereabouts of the vehicle's occupants. When police arrived on the scene, the car was vacant."

Tim sighed at the recount of the event, and was just working himself up to climbing into the apartment when another voice rang out from the other side of the room, from the tucked-away kitchen corner.

"They started runnin' this crap about two hours ago," she said, and it made Tim jump. He shot to the other side of the fire escape and reached for his staff, which he had replaced in the cave. There in the kitchen, leaning against the wall and holding an unlit cigarette, was Quinn.

"Wasn't sure you'd show up after all that," she said, lighting the end of the cigarette and taking a drag.

"You've seen me outside?" Tim asked.

"Thought I heard somethin' out there a couple'a times," Quinn answered. "Chalked it up to paranoia mostly. But then you showed up at the store today…" She trailed off.

"Tipped you off," Tim finished. He could barely believe that had been today. So much had happened since then.

"Somethin' like that. Sounds like you're fryin' bigger fish these days, though."

Tim didn't say anything.

"Did they finally nail the Bat?" she asked callously. Tim's heart flipped at the statement. Just the general apathy of it, given his own feelings of guilt about Bruce's condition, twisted in him like a knife.

"Nah, course they didn't," Quinn went on. "When he finally goes out, it ain't gonna be somethin' stupid like a car bomb." She scoffed. "A car bomb for the Bat?"

There was something in her tone that caught Tim's interest. The facetiousness in that last was deeper than it seemed. It was something more positive. Something almost closer to…respect?

"That's not how you would do it?" Tim asked, injecting the question with a bit of sarcasm. He tried to relax himself and let go of the staff. He was still fairly confident that she wouldn't be trying anything here.

"C'mon, Bird Boy. How many times did J come after you? Death traps. Hostages. No-win situations. That's how we did things."

"He never got us either," Tim replied.

"He got one'a ya," Quinn said.

The knife twisted a bit again. Tim had never really known Jason Todd, his predecessor. But he knew that the Joker was the reason that the Robin suit was now Tim's instead of Jason's.

"You're not the Joker, though," Tim offered.

"That's for damn sure," Quinn said, taking another long puff. "Is that why you're nesting on my window these days?" She grinned. "Think I'm gonna come after ya again?"

"Like you said," Tim answered. "It wouldn't be the first time."

"Yeah, well, dream on, Bird Boy. I'm turnin' over a new leaf. You ain't gonna turn my head that easy anymore. I'm rehabilitatin'."

"C'mon, Harley. You want me to just accept that you're satisfied pulling nine-to-five at a supermarket? After everything you've done?"

"Satisfied?" Quinn actually laughed at the word. "Do you even know who I was before I was Harley Quinn? I was a trained psychoanalyst. I've got residencies completed at Blackgate Prison and Arkham Asylum." She pushed off the wall and actually walked over to the window to stand face to face with Tim, who flinched, but did not make for his staff again. Quinn shoved the window open wider so she could look up at him and see him clearly.

"I was a certified mental health professional. A doctor with ten years of a college education. But I don't get to do that no more. Because when you do what I did, they take those certificates away. So now, I'm not certified for jack. Nobody'll hire me for nothin'. They definitely ain't givin' me no job with the word 'psycho' in the title. But I cared enough about helpin' people heal to spend ten years of my life trainin' to do it. That's longer than I spent runnin' around with the clown. So you wanna know if I'm satisfied baggin' groceries?"

"I guess not," Tim confessed, a little meekly.

"No. But I'm done with the runnin' and gunnin'," she finished. "I'll figure out how to get back on the horse when I can. But in the meantime, why don't you come back in half an hour? They run 'Wheel of Fortune' at 1:00 and 1:30. You can watch me watch it. That'll be fun for both of us."

With that, Quinn slammed down the window and stalked over to her sofa, sitting down and pointedly staring ahead at the TV. Tim swallowed and stood there for a minute longer, not sure how to accept what had just happened. His instinct was to apologize for offending her, but he had to remind himself that given their background that was somewhat ridiculous. He settled eventually just to go, leaving her there to watch him leave from the corner of her eye.