True to her word, Jessie kept in close contact, giving regular updates. Together they had fed Gabriel's picture into facial recognition software. It popped out almost forty possible places at once. It had been four and a half months since and they had checked not quite half of the cities. They had to search each person out and rule them out individually.

"He's covering his tracks." she told him. "That's why I've had so much trouble finding him. He can stay off the grid for the most part thanks to his mechanic skills, but he also wants to send anyone following him on a wild goose chase." As it turned out she was using her books to give her a reason to check different cities. It was in genius but a little flashy. Might as well announce that she was looking for him on the billboards. Jessie argued that Gabriel had in fact shown up to one of her book signings once. She hadn't seen him, but she did feel his presence much like she felt Simons. Nightwing wasn't able to argue after that.

Now he tapped the consul trying to think of some way to narrow the list down. He couldn't focus. Every time he looked at the monitor he saw Jessie's pale face. She looked like she was sick. She had a huge jug of water sitting on the table next to her.

"What about the story that your wrote where one of the characters was based on him." Jessie chewed on the bottom of her lip. Thoughtful. She grabbed her water and sipped it. Finally she shrugged,

"It'll take roughly two and a half months to get that story finished, edited, fact checked, published, and onto the shelves." He whistled.

"That long?" she shrugged.

"Depends on what Amy thinks of the rough draft, could be longer, it could be shorter." Nightwing grunted.

"Check." Jessie nodded then made a face like she was about to be sick.

"Excuse me." She jumped up, knocking her chair over. She reached for the key board hitting a button; he assumed to mute the microphone on her end. But she missed it, then stumbled out of the line of sight of the camera. Nightwing clenched his fist against the table and resisted the urge to scream her name. He heard a door bang open then the unmistakable sound of Jessie retching her guts out. He bit his lip until it bled. What was going on, he wanted to scream. Glancing at his phone he resisted the urge to call Batman. Even if he got into a jet an flew to her, what could he do? Forcing himself to sit and wait almost more than he could take. The sound of her vomiting had stopped. At first there was just silence.

"Jessie! Talk to me. What happened?" He heard the sink from somewhere in the hotel room she was staying in. The soft sound of her footsteps came then she set her chair back up before sitting down in it. There were dark circles under her eyes like she wasn't sleeping well, and she looked even more pale than she had before.

"Sorry about that, I ate something bad." Nightwing held her gaze, searching for a lie. There wasn't one, but he couldn't help but feel that her assessment wasn't quite right either. After a moment he nodded.

"Go rest, Jessie." She opened her mouth to protest. "You can't exactly do recon puking your guts out. Besides, Alex said she wants to check in on you." A smile touched her tired face.

"You know she knows that we've hooked up."

"It took her longer than I thought."

"She's known since that morning at the hotel." Nightwing smiled at that. So many fond memories. "Stop!" He turned back to the screen to see a tired scowl on her face. "You don't get to enjoy memories of sex while I'm losing my dinner. You can wait tell I sign off to think about such things." Nightwing had the decency to blush. He supposed she had a fair point.

"Call Amy, send her the manuscript, and see what she thinks." Jessie grunted. "Go to bed Jessie. Take tomorrow off and rest. You won't be able to catch him if you're sick." She growled at him, but she scrubbed her eyes and sighed in defeat moments later.

"Fine. But don't expect you'll always get your way." He chuckled to himself. Stubborn woman.

I heard that. Looking at the computer he saw her tired smile

Stay out of my head and you wouldn't have to hear such things.

You know as well as I that we are connected.

But you don't have to listen. She shrugged.

You get in trouble when I don't.

"Go to bed." He was done having this argument. She glared at him then flicked off the link. Briefly he wondered if he should go check in on her any way. He discarded that thought almost instantly. Jessie was a big girl, she could take care of herself, even if she still couldn't fully access her powers. That still bothered him. Her mother couldn't explain it any more than she could. He had gone to Jessie's mom and asked, after Jessie had been stubborn and refused to. Jessie and Alex's mother had been very curious about the incident, but she admitted she didn't know why her daughter wouldn't be able to fully take on the body of her characters.

He sighed and glanced at his phone. Maybe he was just being paranoid. Jessie could still use her powers. Actually it was even more efficient. She no longer had problems where she had to become every character or suffer a forced change into every single one, so why did it all make him so uneasy? Tapping the desk he ran his mind in circles trying to figure it out. After a while he was forced to admit defeat, even though worry still gnawed at him. Picking up his phone he punched in Alexandra's number. It rang four times before a yawn answered the phone.

"Sorry to wake you."

"Not as sorry as you're going to be." She groused.

"Can you go check on your sister. She was sick; throwing up, a few minutes ago." He heard the girl shift and he could almost feel her coming more alert. Alexandra had grown more protective over her sister since getting her back. "She's at-"

"No need, I can feel her. I can teleport to her so long as nothing is effecting her mind." He knew that.

"Just send me a message when you check in on her, she might need help for a day or two." Alexandra groaned but he heard what he thought was a zipper being zipped up. Alex like most people in his line of work kept at least one bag packed for emergencies like this.

"No worries." She hung up without another word. A few minutes later his phone buzzed from a text message from Alexandra.

She's sleeping now, I'll stick around a while to watch her.

He sighed in relief, yet couldn't help the feeling that something wasn't the way it was supposed to be.