I own nothing DC Comics are the gods of the graphic universe and own all.

ETA 31/08/05
Rose Tattoo has spawned a piece of...fanfiction. The Rose Tatoo (sic)
is a piece of MST. Weird.

The Rose Tattoo
Jay Tryfanstone

"Did it have to be so complicated? You and Bruce...all these issues...couldn't you have just taken him to bed, boy toy?"

"I do."

Babs snorts in amusement

"Well, it made it much more fun." Dick grinned.)

Chapter 1.

The slow, beautiful curve of a trained body in motion, one heart-stopping glimpse, just the barest hint of an elegant, controlled fall that takes him out of sight and camera angle. Images on the screen.

The newsreader, glasses, lacquered hair.

"...and caught yesterday evening on amateur videotape, the first confirmed pictures of Bludhaven's very own vigilante -"

Rewind.

Click.

That singular grace. The camera doesn't see the line and curve of muscle beneath the costume, of the smooth black hair and the callused palms of that body I know as well as my own.

Rewind.

Click.

The camera doesn't, can't, show those blue eyes, laughing, the mischief, the glee as he made one of those terrible puns.

Rewind.

Click.

It's early afternoon, and already darkening. Winter. Across the garden, lengthening shadows start to hide the detail of Alfred's cherished roses. As always, dark calls to the dark in me: in my belly I feel claws flexing against the night to come. But this time is mine. It's only when he has gone that I find this cool centre, this heartbeat of space that is mine alone, not Batman's - although he's here, of course, how can he not be? - or Bruce's. This space is for me, and I've learnt how to give it time. Later, he said that the darkness of the Bat was overwhelming, that he felt isolated, that he needed more - more what? Affection? Praise? - even love? Now he's gone, it's as if the gap he left was the space I, myself, was forced to fill. So here I am, in this time when I allow myself to be, watching a four-month-old five point two second video tape on a repetitive loop, with my hand resting on the cutting book that Alfred politely pretends doesn't exist.

Even if every so often I open it and find scraps that the cutting agency missed.

It's a constant battle not to do more. I could set feeders into Bludhaven's protective closed-circuit television system (and probably be the only one watching.) I could place just a couple of bugs in the police headquarters, maybe one just near enough to his desk: maybe one in the bunkhouse where he sleeps sometimes. Then where do I stop? Cameras on every chimney? Half my life caught up in watching his? And his privacy ripped open as if I owned every moment? I owe him more than that. He knew, too, when he came to Bludhaven, that I wouldn't do it. At least I have honour left for that. As it is, I feel ashamed of the video and the album: the money I spent trying to trace him over the three years he was gone.

Over the trees the translucent curve of a quarter moon has started to show. I can feel the itch that says, soon, night is coming. I hear the faint, cushioned thud of the front door: Alfred, back from Leslie's clinic with the smell of antiseptic still on him. Take the video out, tuck the album at the back of the second drawer of the desk. Pause, one second, to look down into the happy smile of a ten year old Richard John Greyson, seated in a cloud of wrapping paper with a brand new red leather harness for Elinore. When he went, I couldn't bear to see the photographs. Nor could I destroy them, although that first day, with the anger stripping my veins like acid, I had to ask Alfred to take them down. They've gone back up, of course, the graduation photograph in here, the picnic and party ones Alfred keeps on the larder door, the formal portrait in the main sitting room. I keep some here. It was the picture of Dick with a ponytail, added to Alfred's kitchen gallery that let me know he was still alive. Alfred said nothing, of course, but I knew by the curve of his back when I walked in the kitchen that something had changed. He was tense.

"What is it?" I had asked. He hadn't answered, but I followed his gaze to the bank of photographs. I don't know what I felt then. Relief, anger, pain, jealousy: all of these and more. And I know that it showed. Alfred looked shell-shocked. "Master Richard -"he began. I hadn't waited to hear anything else. He never mentioned it again.

Nor he mention the small print of Dick with a group of teenagers, the camera so focused that nothing could be seen except their faces: Dick on a practice mat, the muscles of one arm straining against the weight of a thick-set woman whose face was hidden behind the curve of his jacket. Or the picture of Dick seen from the back, outlined against the white metal curve of a balcony balustrade, in front of him the dark highlights of sea at night. All so carefully anonymous. The photographs were hand delivered: bright-faced youngsters who'd been asked to pass on a small parcel by other wanderers, a loose confederation whom Alfred fed and Bruce bought plane tickets for: none of them knew more than this address. And, always, the packages came to Alfred. That hurt, but what more could I expect? It was, after all, my fault.

I feel the creature inside me tense its wings. Time to go. For once, it's a relief to be patrolling on my own. Tim's away, gone to visit an aunt in Oklahoma. Without Robin, the world seems just a little darker, and tonight that's what I need. Dick would have said, of course, that I made my own darkness, and he'd be right: but I don't think he realised the colour that he brought into that instinctive, protective night. Tim is the partner I want: trustworthy, intelligent, bright. Dick was the partner I needed. And the partner I nearly destroyed.

Tonight, I need to hit something. Hard. I'm in luck: one of the club-land mobs has decided to run a little white powder into the docks, maybe hoping that the cold will deter onlookers. It does, apart from this one. It doesn't take long to knock some heads together, leave them tied in the back of the van, send a message to Gordon. Small fry, opportunistic smuggling. If I thought it was more, I'd have left them and tagged the van and the cargo: no one runs big shipments through my city with impunity. As it is, it's not enough: night slides across my skin, leaving an ache like fever that asks for more. I head downtown, pick up a idiot trying his first dime-store raid, a group of kids hassling one of the old men from the park. Homeless he maybe: that doesn't make him fair game. I wind up on one the warehouses by the canal, just looking across the dark skyline to where, in the distance, the glow from Bludhaven lightens the night sky. Beneath me I hear the slow footsteps of someone cruising along the towpath, a silent transaction in the dark. Once or twice I've wondered what it would be like, that dark anonymous sex, quick and hot and silent. I'll step in sometimes if there's trouble the community can't start sort out themselves. There's a couple of barkeeps I know well, down here in the gay triangle. One more reason I don't come down here as Bruce. Besides, it's not the sex. In a way, I wish it were.

Nothing happening here. I leave, take a run down to the projects, but all's quiet here too. Then back over to the docks: Gordon's men have picked up the van. The sky's just beginning to lighten as I head back to the manor, the horizon a pre-dawn grey seen through the Batmobile screen. In the cave, of course, dark folds protective against the rock, gathered by the big arc lights around the work surfaces, the practice mats and the big bank of monitors. One quick check, and I'll be done, although tonight the tiredness doesn't pull and linger on my skin as it often does. Alfred's been working on the computers: the satellite image screensaver that he uses flickers down as I sit. Logging on, I set the programme to collect and process e-mail from my accounts.

Light at the top of the stairs: I look up. It's Alfred, carrying a tray with a steaming cup of coffee and a newspaper: the early edition. There must be something he wants me to check. He looks worried.

"What is it, Alfred?"

"Have you checked the news media this morning, Sir?"

"No. Is there something I should know?"

"I think you should check the Bludhaven channels." Alfred's gaze is very direct across the tray. He knows perfectly well what happened, of course. But he won't speak of it, and neither will I.

At least he's not dead: Alfred would be halfway to the state line by now.

I turn the big monitor on, tune into Channel 7 news. Restrained excitement in the anchorwoman's face.

"- came as complete surprise to the BHPD. A spokesperson for the force stated that they had no comment to make until all the appropriate procedures have been followed, but it's quite clear that, in the glare of publicity resulting from this effective strike, federal resources will have to brought into play. We'll be asking the mayor about that when he joins us, in approximently twenty minutes time."

The newsreader checked the autocue. automatically smoothing down her hair. "Before then we'll have an analysis of the political fallout of this extraordinary event from out politics and current affairs editor, Mark Chapin. Mark, over to you."

The camera cut to an older man, his hair greying."Good morning." he said. "Well, after last night's amazing events, it's clear that the city hall is going to face a large shake-up after the press and public assess collateral damage from -"

I cut to Channel Three. Here they have sofas, not desks, but the air of excitement and tension is the same.

"- let's see that incredible piece of film one more time, folks. If you've just joined us this morning, the headline of today is the unexpected indictment of ten members of the civic council and numbers of employees on racketeering charges. This astonishing event was stage managed by Bludhaven's own vigilante specialist Nightwing. Now, whatever your views on vigilantes, (and we'll be having a phone-in special later, folks!) take a look at this spectacular piece of film."

In silence, a camera panned across an empty street, in darkness, to the lights and arched doorway of a big hotel. There was a crowd outside the doorway, held back by velvet ropes and uniformed guards: the occasional white light of a premature flashgun. The camera angles in on the door. Then, suddenly, spins around to the closed road: a stretch limousine drives up to the red carpet. A uniformed valet gets out and opens the door, but it's no sequinned star that steps out. One by one, cowed, stumbling, humiliated, handcuffed to each other, ten of Bludhaven's most prominent citizens struggle out of the cab. The crowd is silent, gasping a little in surprise: the press guns are flashing. Each of the men carries a large sign around his neck - "Thief" "Embezzler" - and on each sign is taped a familiar glinting CD. The press are shouting now - "Statement! "Statement!" as the men shuffle and line up on the carpet. Unseen by the limousine, the driver takes his hat off, then slips off his coat. I notice. I would. But it's a clear shock to the press when the masked man steps in front of the cameras.

"Ladies and gentlemen of Bludhaven,he says. His voice has deepened a little. "Each of these men has been carrying out a deliberate and damaging campaign of embezzlement and fraud with the City Council. Details and documentation are contained within the disks each man holds." He looks at the camera. He's got older: it shows in the shadows of his eyes, the broader set of shoulders that carry more muscle than I remember. "Copies of these disks have, of course, been mailed to all the major news agencies. Citizens, these men have been defrauding our children and our hospitals: I urge you to deal with them using the full weight of American justice." He pauses, and I see the corner of his mouth twist upwards. "I would like you to know that such crimes will not be tolerated in my city. Gotham's not the only place to have it's own crusader. "

He turns, dives into the empty door of the limousine, its darkened windows hiding the interior. As the camera zooms in, the car slides away from the carpet, accelerating as the press breaks ranks, racing down the street after the accelerating vehicle. He won't be in it, of course. I wouldn't be. But the camera doesn't pan back, or up, to show him quietly scaling the building opposite.

The newsreader again. But I've seen enough, for now: I set the machines to tape relevant broadcasts, key words - and then I turn and look at Alfred. He offers me the paper in silence: the head a bold statement above a still from the film. "Nightwing Strikes!"

"Alfred..." I know I'm right. "Alfred, who was driving the car?"

He doesn't say anything, but the hand holding the paper shakes a little. Frustration, banked up by shock, suddenly courses through my body. I stand.

"How long has this been going on? Doesn't he know how dangerous those men could be? That's Frank Jordan - he's got the shipping union in the palm of his hand! Didn't he think about the risks?"

Alfred looks at me. "Like you do, Master Bruce?"

"Why didn't he ask for help? And then, to step out in front of the cameras like that -"

"Master Dick seems to have organised things rather well on his own." Alfred's tone was mildly reproving.

"And then to say that -" I can't begin to work out what it means. Does he mean to challenge me? That's not the Dick I know. But what is this, other than a flung gauntlet - look, see what I can do?

"Why did he ask you?"

"Why not?"

We exchange looks over the monitor. "Master Dick has worked remarkably hard on this case," said Alfred. "It's taken him most of the last four months to put together. Everything had to be very carefully tied up, all the documentation accredited. I was very proud to have aided him somewhat along the way, and when we knew that we would be successful, he asked me if I would be there when the case was tied up and er...delivered."

I turn around and walk away. I didn't want to know how long Alfred and Dick had been in contact, how Alfred had helped him, how the two of them had been plotting behind my back in this dangerous enterprise. Part of me was terrified. I knew these men didn't get where they'd got without violence. And Dick, working with no back up - I didn't want to think about it. Behind me I hear Alfred collect the cold cup of coffee and the paper. He clears his throat.

"Master Bruce-"

I don't want to. I turn round.

"Master Dick, I believe, was hoping you would be proud of him."

Oh yes. Proud, horrified, frightened, and gripped in the bowels by a pain of desire so intense that I'm sure it shows all over my face. I can't say anything. But Alfred, giving me one cool stare, seems satisfied. I feel as if I'm thirteen again, caught with the sheets still wet and sticky: exposed, shamed.

He sent me an e-mail. I couldn't trace the sender - how does he do that? It's got Oracle's fingerprints - figuratively speaking - all over it. One word. "See." See what? See that he's as good as me? Dick, I knew that all along. You don't have to prove it to me. But at least, one could say, he's speaking to me.

I will not go to Bludhaven.

Bruce Wayne is invited to the opening of the new Bludhaven City Modern Art Gallery.I don't like modern art - most of it. I never have. I don't go to unnecessary social events.

But Alfred has laid out my tuxedo and polished my dress shoes before I mention the invitation.

So I find myself standing here in this overheated hall, a glass of unwanted and unpleasant wine in my hand, making small talk to a group of the same people I make small talk with at all the same events in Gotham. We could have been anywhere: same people, same conversation. I make my excuses, head out into the main entrance. For a second, I tilt my head up to the clear dark dome that covers this vast and circular area, now busy with Bludhaven's finest trying to look informed and attentive. There's a flicker of movement at the far edge of the dome. There was half an hour ago, too. Either it's not Dick, or he wants to be noticed. I can't decide. But either way, I'm tired of waiting. One of the porters looks as if the judicious application of some green paper might produce a route up onto the roof for a bored and wealthy man.

I'm right. There's a back staircase for maintenance. When I get to the top, I open the door gingerly. I don't know, after all, who's here. But it is Dick. He's not looking at me.

It's cold.

He's bulked out, and I hope he hasn't lost that limber grace that allowed him to fly.

As he turns his head light glimmers on the smooth crown of sleek, long hair.

Even here, in darkness, lit only by the diffuse silver light from the dome, I see the long line of his eyelashes as he lifts his eyes and looks at me. I can't tell in this light, but his eyes are the colour of a Mediterranean summer, where the sea meets the sky.

He looks at me.

There are three years between us. Three years of resentment, pain, of necessarily battened love.

"That was some stunt you pulled," I say. He looks at me.

"Must have meant a lot of work." He says nothing. And I can't hold back the words any more.

"Didn't you consider the risk? How could you involve Alfred in this? What if -"

And he moves, pulling back from the dome for a second's exasperated turn, and then he's moving towards me.

"Hello Dick, how are you? It's been a long time - are you okay? Like the costume - that was good work you did there with those councillors. Oh, thanks Batman, the boy blunder pulled it off this time. And how are you? Still playing nasty little games with those bat-toys, I see. How's the new Robin? Is he as good as me? Do you miss me?"

Oh, he's angry.

So am I.

"What am I supposed to say? You disappear for three years, no messages, no communication at all-"

"I sent photographs."

"And then this crazy, stupid stunt, the cameras, the costume, Dick, what do you think you're doing?"

"What did you train me to do?"

"I didn't train you to risk your life in some misbegotten investigation -"

"An investigation that succeeded. A stupid stunt that means a good fifteen million dollars a year is going to be staying in Bludhaven's coffers, not bleeding out to those vicious thieves. An example public enough to put the fear of God into anyone I've missed. I did just what you trained me to do, Batman, and I did it well, and I did it because the application of justice is the quest that was bred into me with the costume and the neat toys and the fear of failing. But I did it my way, sweetheart."

He's come fully into the light from the dome now. I can see the symbol on the kevlar weave of his costume, a sign that is all his own and yet echoes, so subtlely, my own bat. And I take a long breath.

"Shall we start again?"

"Start where, Batman? Do I go back to the puns and the shorts? Do I go back to the time when you were God and I thought you couldn't fail? Or do we go back to the time when I'm on my knees and you reject everything we ever had?"

Oh dear God.

"I'm not that kid any more."

"I..know that."

"Then, for fuck's sake, why not treat me like an adult? This is my city, Batman. I take the risks, I play my own games, I make my own choices. I'm my own man, here."

"What do you want me to do?"

"How about a moment's respect? Let's start - Dick, that was a good job you did there."

"Dick, that was a good job you did there."

"Nice costume. Good name."

"Nice costume. Like the colours. Good name."

"Why don't you come over for dinner sometime, Alfred would be glad to see you at the manor."

"Sunday would be good." I've already run that one. Tim doesn't come back until Monday week.

"Why don't we talk about what happened when you left?"

"NO!"

"So we're not going to get anywhere, are we?"

Silence. I can hear his breathing, harsher now, and it wouldn't surprise me if he could hear the beating of my own heart. I feel naked, here in the dark without my costume, the padding of cowl and cape and formed protection.

"It's been three years."

"And you hoped it would go away, shoved under the carpet with all the other things that might, just, have been seen beneath that cowl of yours?"

I owe him some honesty. "I hoped you would...grow out of it."

He laughs then, but it's a short, a bitter laugh, and I feel it twist at my heart, the beast within me stir and waken. This I don't need, this urge to protect and hold.

"Did you think you would grow out of it, when you were nineteen? We grow older, Batman, we hope we grow wiser, but some things don't change. I don't think Mr. short-and-blond was exactly your first."

Here I don't want to be, but I am: remembering the absolute despair when I look up from that brief goodbye, late afternoon, at the back of the hotel, and see Dick's back disappearing up the street. It had been obvious, to anyone who cared to notice. My biggest mistake.

"Dick, you know I can't -"

And he looks at me, and he says, "Do you know, I don't think I can, just now, either."

And then he turns, and he's leaving, and I must stand and watch, because if I make one move towards him I will never let him go. And that would be the biggest mistake of all. And the grief of it hits me.

"Why couldn't it be me?" asks Dick, three years ago, nearly four, standing opposite me in the study. "Why not me? Couldn't you love me like that?" He's crying, silently, the tears welling slowly out of his eyes and sliding over the smooth line of cheekbone and the little hollow under it. I had said everything right, of course, because how could I not: my son, my child, with all his life ahead of him: not to be tied to this obsessive, black mission, this cold and empty place that I fill with the necessary curl of raw justice and power. I wanted more for him. His is the future.

His too is the passion that I spend on the occasional, beautiful, stupid girls and the awkward, desperate fucks in hotel rooms with rare, safe men. Airport men. How do I span this mess of love and lust and possession on which he must never tread? Did it start when he was sixteen, seventeen, when his wit grew to challenge mine and his strength became that of a man? Or, sickeningly, did it start earlier - although I remember no trace of desire for that beloved, small boy's body? He is desperate, lit with a young man's passion that I had known and ignored, but I am fighting for everything I hold dear in this world. I thought his love nothing, a lust of the moment, held against the long years of partnership. I had thought he would accept my decision, would recognise the impossibility of what he asked.

"Dick, you know perfectly well that this is impossible."

"What's so impossible about it? Don't you love me?"

"Of course I love you - you're my son!"

"But I'm not your son." And for an instant his eyes catch mine, and I don't know what he sees in them, but I know that instant flare of heat that charges my body. He steps towards me, and now he's sure he's getting somewhere.

"What's the matter - I'm not your type? Not some anonymous fuck? What are you so scared of, Batman? Don't tell me we're risking the love word here?"

And the air between us thickens, and I have nothing to say, and he takes one step towards me, and another, and suddenly he's on his knees and his head is turning into my crotch and I see his mouth open as his hair slides across the fabric. Feel all the blood in my body lifting to my cock: feel for one second the warmth of his breath, as he, knowing, raises one hand, and before he can touch me I hit out at him, one open handed full force backslap that sends him up off his knees and reeling into the opposite wall.

"Never do that again."

There is contempt, now, in the blue eyes that stare across at mine. He's bleeding, just a little, where my hand caught the skin over his jaw.

"You liar."

"Don't do that to us!"

"It's not me that's doing it, Bruce." His eyes are very steady on mine. "I love you. You love me. I want you. And you - as you have just so...interestingly...proved, want me."

And he has given me the weapon I need.

"So I want you. Is that what you want, Dick, twenty minutes of sweaty fumbling, a quick fuck against the wall? Oh, I want you all right, but I sure as hell don't love you."

He is shocked now.

And I feel the rightness of what I am doing, the black power of it take wing, and I walk towards him. "Are you ready, Dick? You want to do it now, get it over with? Twenty minutes, ten, two? And the rest of it in ashes?"

There is pain now, in the blue eyes that rise to mine.

"Don't you love me?" he asks

"Do I want to watch the sun set with you? No. Do I want to wake up next to you in the morning? No. Do I want to spend my life with you? No. Do I want my cock up your arse? Yes. And if you can't take any of that, then get out of this room now."

For the first time, he raises his hand to the thin trickle of blood that outlines his cheek. He's still looking at me, but there is something lost in that gaze now, a hurt I want to hold and turn against my heart, this knife of pain and hate that is all I have left of him. And he stands up and walks, a little unsteadily, out of the room, and I remember to breathe, and feel the first, agonising pain rise, and I am gone and out into the night where I can hold it at bay. I didn't expect him to leave. I didn't expect to come back in the morning and find him gone. I thought he would know that the love I bear Dick, my son, is far more important than the brief lust that was all I offered as a lover. I lied, of course. How could I not?

Three years later, the pain of it still catches my breath in my chest. Did I do the right thing? Yes. Did I do it the right way? No. But what is said is said. I turn, slowly, and make my way down the staircase to the half-empty halls below. I'm too tired to go home. Gotham will have to look after itself tonight. And, slowly, I take this body that is myself and Bruce and Batman, and I find a small hotel where they don't ask questions and a bed and a cover that I can pull over my eyes and a space where, until tomorrow, I am just myself, with a loneliness that centres my heart.

I wake, and I know it's him. This warmth, this weight on my skin, every muscle aligned to my own, the shape of him clear against my skin like a brand, the only man who could do this to me, the little breeze from the window slipping across my fingers where he holds my hands outstretched. I don't want to open my eyes. I want. But what I want cannot, cannot be allowed to happen. And I open my eyes, and for an instant the ceiling is stark across my sight.

"Are you proud of me, Bruce?" he says, his lips inches from mine: I feel the warmth of his breath on my skin. "Did I do what you wanted?" I can't speak. He stretches his body against mine, the warmth of skin under the smooth costume. Here, in the dark, I can smell the faint essence of the night he's brought with him: ozone and starlight.

"Do you want to fuck me yet?" And I am unbearably aroused. He knows it, tilts his pelvis against mine: all the heat in my body rushes to that one, revealing point of contact. This point of stillness: and then he groans, so faintly it's just another whisper of breath, and moves, once, slowly, and through the sheet and the costume I know he wants me as badly as I want him. I want to touch him so badly, I want to hold him and rub my face in his hair and mark his skin, I want to hold him tight and safe and hard against me through the night, I want him wanting and gasping and mine. I want the heat and the passion of him around me, on me, in me.

And I must not.

"Dick-" I managed. I raise one hand to push him away, but what was meant to be a violent move, slows, and I find myself holding his head in my hand and he moves, again, and I feel his mouth on mine, his lips moving, hot, so hot. He's moving against me, and I can't..not..respond...

This must not be.

And deliberately I think of Dick as a boy, think of him at ten, at eleven.

A child.

My child.

And I can do it. I push myself off the bed, and he falls with me, rolling onto the floor, and in seconds I'm safely by the door and he's standing by the bed.

"I'm not eleven any more, Bruce," he says.

"You're still my son."

He laughs. "Oh yes. And your partner. And your friend. And your lover."

"No!"

"No?" He moves to the window. I can see him now, lit by the streetlights outside. "Don't you want me, Bruce?" He moves one hand, slowly down his body. "It's all yours."

"Dick - you know, this can't be."

"Why not? I was too young, too dependent, too inexperienced. I'm not any of those things anymore." And jealousy rushes through me, an electric shock of pain. Who? Who? It must have shown, because he laughed a little.

"Jealous? Well, perhaps you do care a little, after all."

I can't move. I'm terrified that if I move a muscle, I'll go towards him, not away.

"So which is it, Bruce, that's holding you back now? What excuse are you going to use for pushing me away this time? I know you want me. On my skin - " He stops. "I can still feel you on my skin."

"Sex...isn't the issue."

"No? Then come over here." Arousal has deepened his voice, sings through the air between us.

"I ...can't."

"Why not?"

"Dick, you're asking for more than I can give."

"Really."

"I don't love like you like -"

"No? Bruce, I'm not a fool. Lust doesn't care for me the way you do. Lust doesn't take a small boy and care for all the years of his childhood. Lust doesn't count the nights I woke up screaming in your arms. Lust doesn't spend three years trying to find one errant sidekick. Lust doesn't put money in my bank accounts - returned taxes, Bruce? Or send me odd gadgets and military hardware - mailing list mistakes? Love does that. I know, now, what you tried to do to us. And I'm not going to accept it. I don't care how much you pretend to me and to yourself that it's just sex and you can dismiss it. You love me. And I love you. You can take Batman's phobias and stuff them up the hole in his cape." He pauses, and when he speaks again his voice has a thread of fear that, almost, I cannot resist. "You're all I've ever wanted."

"You're too young."

"I'm twenty-two."

"I'm too old for you."

"Is that so."

"I won't do it, Dick."

"Why not?"

"I've been fighting crime for longer than you've been alive. I've never counted the crimes I've solved: I've never counted the people I failed, or the promises I've broken, or the people I've fucked in other people's beds. I'm not doing that to you."

"Don't you think that's my choice, too?"

"I can't offer you what you need."

"No? Isn't that my decision to make?"

"It's nothing to do with you." And he laughs then. "Bruce, Batman, lover: you think about it. I'll see you around."

And then he's gone, so quick and fast that in one breath, the room is empty. And I am terrified that he's right.

It's half past two. George had said there might be trouble. And it's the best view in the city of the Bludhaven lights. I'm here watching the lights of Nightwing's city and keeping half an ear on the men cruising below when I hear someone behind me on the roof. They're making no attempt to disguise their footfall, and I turn slowly. It's Dick, dressed in jeans and a leather jacket. I'm stunned. This is Gotham, not Bludhaven: it's been two weeks since that abortive encounter in the Hilton. What is Dick doing here?

"What?"

"Good evening."

He's self possessed in the moonlight, almost as if this is where he should be. In civilian clothes. Above this anonymous towpath. Watching me. "What are you doing here?"

He's coming closer, walking slowly, deliberately. My eyes skim the curve of his shoulders, the gleam from his hair: my heart beats, once, and again. I can't move, and he's coming closer. And then he's here: one hand cupping my chin below the cowl.

"Too young?" he says, and I see in his eyes a very quiet determination. "Too inexperienced?" He kisses me once, briefly, a quick hard pressure of his lips that sends my breath streaming after his in the night. His eyes are very steady on mine.

"Bruce, I'm going to leave you and walk down that alley and find someone to fuck me. And then I'm going to find someone else, and someone else again. And I'm going to carry on doing that until the great Batman finally decides that I'm good enough to get into his bed."

I can't believe what I'm hearing. Rage, shock: I reach out for him but by now he's gone, twisting away and diving over the edge of the roof: I'm running, frantically looking for somewhere to anchor the rappel: as I look down I see him hit the floor and move away from the building: I'm airborne: the ground takes forever to meet my feet. I can't see him: can't hear him: I know which way he went, but that means nothing: he could well have doubled back. I hear murmurs start again in the silence, the tear of a condom packet and someone's choked cry. I cannot bear this, lust and rage spiralling up my body. I see images of Dick in a stranger's arms, his back arched in ecstasy: Dick on his knees in front of someone else, his long hair sliding over a stranger's cock. No. No and no and no.

And then I take one long breath. Why tell me, if he didn't want to be caught? But it's a full quarter of an hour before I find him, talking low-voiced with a tall man I recognise from one of the bars. As I see him, the man reaches up to touch Dick's hair. It's a casual touch, and it's enough to spur all the rage and pain I feel. He didn't know what hit him. But by then I had Dick in my arms, an instant of startled recognition before I feel his body curve against mine. Oh, he knows. And the blood is racing through my body. His hand comes up to pull the cowl off, but both my hands are on his the muscles of his ass and I pick him up, take two steps to the wall and hold him against it, my mouth on his, hungry, and then as I press close against him the tender skin of his neck and shoulder beneath my teeth. I want to mark him, want to let the world know he's mine. Dick's got one hand free, round my neck, and I feel his teeth on my ear.

"You're mine." I say to him, and raise my head and look at him while my body presses his against the wall, blood beating in my cock, the need for him racing through every vein and capillary in my body. "Mine" And he laughs at that, a little choked laugh that vanishes into a gasp when he feels my hands on his skin, under his jacket, undoing his jeans. Everything in my body is urging me to completion, but I can still, now, spare him a little humour. "I'll do subtle later." I promise him, but then his hand is on my bared cock and I've loosened his jeans: and I fall to my knees in front of him and take his clean cock in my mouth, my hands fumbling with his shoes as his tangle in my hair, and he pushes against me and groans: I smell sex, acrid, sweat, excitement, and suddenly I can't wait, I have to have him, now, and I spit on one hand and reach for his arse, and at that he spreads his legs a little, his breath coming faster, and then I know where I'm going and I know he's coming too and I rise off my knees and take his weight and my cock's pushing into the dark warmth of his arse - try to wait, but he's saying "Yes, yes yes!" and he drags my face round to his and says "I love you" as my cock moves in and out of him, mine, caught here in this tangled web of love and lust, and he's mine, and I tell him so with each thrust and he has breath left to laugh, yet, and I feel the dark unfurl in me and know I'm coming and I reach for his cock and find he's there with me and when I come I'm not alone.

When I open my eyes he's looking at me.

"I love you." he says.

And I can smile.

And then I realise where I am.

And I feel myself loose all balance, my knees going, turning and sliding down the wall, my breath coming harsh as the afterglow of orgasm kicks into a bleak wall of guilt. It's never been this bad. I hear myself gasp, the cold air hitting the back of my throat, and can hear the rustle of Dick's clothing. He must be leaving now: he's got what he wanted. But in seconds his arm comes round my head, and I feel the warmth of his body against mine.

"Shhh." he says, crooning to me. "It's okay, beautiful, it's all right, I'm here."

My fingers are spread against my face, and his join them, open palmed, and the tears, agonising, shaming, seep through our interlocked hands. I can't tell what is mine and what his, and at the moment, I don't care. This should not have happened. This is disastrous. This is yet another moment in time that, an I could, I would erase from all history. But Dick...Dick closes his warmth against me, sits, rocking me, his cheek against my bared hair and his voice soothing in my ear.

"It's okay." he says, quiet, sure. "It's really okay, Bruce. We'll sort it out. It's all right."

Where does he get this strength, this maturity? When did I give up my sovereignty?

I hear someone trip, cursing, and walk forward. "Dick? Richard Grayson?"

It's the tall man, and as I tense so does Dick, his arms holding me still.

"It's okay, man, everything's all right."

He's coming closer, but Dick's grip on my body is tensile steel. I don't think I could have moved him if I'd been able to hurt him.

"Are you sure? That was some - oh, shit!"

He's tripped on something else, and from the plastic snap I think it's one of the bracers from my cape.

"What is that? Jesus, Dick, who's that?"

"Leo, it's okay. Leave it."

"What is he wearing?" I can feel Dick's cheek round against my jaw as he smiles. "Fancy dress party. Leo, go away. There's only one person I want to be with tonight."

"Oh. So that's-"

"Go away."

"I'm gone. But take it easy with this one. You're sure, yeah?"

"Leo, everything's cool. Honest. Go away."

Part of me wants to smash his face into pulp for knowing things about Dick I have missed. Part of me feels utterly grateful that Dick has friends who care about him. Most of me never wants to leave this spot, never wants to face Dick or Alfred or think myself worthy to make any kind of moral decision ever again. But it's Dick who makes the decision, gathering up cowl and cape and wrapping it around me, one arm round my shoulders, tugging me to my feet.

"Come on, I've borrowed a flat a couple of streets away. It's not far. I've got decent coffee."

It's the amusement of that, a thread of normality in this stricken universe that stirs me to my feet. I'm not sure how we made it to Dick's flat, but we did, and by then at least I was walking by myself, although Dick's arm was still round my waist. He took one look at me in the sudden light and pushed me down on the couch. "Stay there. I'm making coffee."

I shut my eyes. Now was a good time to go. But I was tired of running. He won. I lost. We both lost. I hear the whistle of the cafeteria, Dick, oddly clumsy, clinking china. Then the light in front of my eyelids darkens a little, and I feel Dick settle down on the floor by my right thigh, where he used to sit so often to talk over the day's events. When he was small. But it's this older, adult Dick that wraps my fingers around the warmth of a mug of coffee and then rests his arm and chin on my leg. I know he's looking at me.

"Well, hi, Bruce," he says. "Or is it Batman? I find it hard to tell, when you're half and half."

I open my eyes and look at him. How odd. He looks exactly the same, same eyes, same nose, same quirk to his mouth, almost as if I hadn't raped him against a warehouse wall twenty minutes ago. His eyebrows twist.

"Oh no, don't go there. You know as well as I do that I set you up for this. I just hadn't realised it would have such an effect." He held one hand up, and I could see it shaking. "On me too."

I don't know what to say.

"You don't need to say anything." He's more serious now than I've ever seen him. "Bruce, I've had three years to think this through. You're not the only one with issues. I've got a Bruce that I love dearly, a Bruce that took me to the pantomime and gave me my first bike and played Jedi knights in the bat-cave, and I've got a Bruce who can make every part of my body come alive when he walks in a room. But I'm willing to bet that you pushed every part of this as far away from your brain as you possibly could, while I spent three years working out exactly how I felt. There's never going to be anyone else for me." He looks away for an instant. "And believe me, there was a time when I would have given an awful lot to have that possibility. But it's not so." His eyes meet mine. "I love you in every way known to man," he says. And smiles. "And then some."

I feel sick.

Dick has to put one hand over mine on the coffee cup. I'm shaking so much that liquid splashes on the black kevlar.

"What you have to recognise is that this is a choice I made as an adult, away from you, just as I choose to create Nightwing and choose to protect Bludhaven." He smiles, lightly, looking down at the floor. "It's near enough to commute, sometimes, don't you think?

And you..." He looks up. "I know you haven't thought about this. It's very easy to attack a man who's built a wall and forgotten about the foundations. If you'd really decided, I wouldn't have had a hope in hell. But Alfred told me about the album, and the video. And when you came to Bludhaven, I was very nearly certain I could have you. I was right."

He looks down again. "Maybe I should have said it straight out. It's always seemed to me as if, no matter what we say to each other, there's a bond between us nothing could break, a greater truth that isn't Batman or Robin or Dick or Bruce or whoever, but just us. I thought you felt that too. But..."

His hand tightens over mine. "I'm sorry," he says. "I didn't mean to hurt you quite so much." And we sit there in silence, my eyes closed, my hand on his, on mine, on the cup of coffee, the warmth of him soaking into the padded thigh of this Batsuit that he didn't help design.

"I missed you," I say.

"I missed you too."

"I was so proud of you, when you unloaded those councillors in front of the cameras."

"It's okay, Bruce, you don't have to say it."

"I wanted...I wanted you to send those photographs to me." It wasn't quite what I meant to say, but he seemed to understand.

"You could say that I did. There's a whole other set you haven't seen. Alfred has those - all the ones with faces and scenery. I'll show you, sometime."

He lies his face down against my thigh, and I swear I can feel his eyelashes brush down. I lean my head back against the sofa, and feel silent, slow tears start again. His spare hand curls, warm, against my knee, and then he uses it to push away from my body, a long slow stretch that takes him up onto his heels in front of me. "It's been a long night," he said. "I'm going to take you to bed." And as I open my eyes to glare at him, Dick grins, that irrepressible mischievous Dick grin that I haven't seen for far too long. "Don't panic," he says. "I'm saving the anal expanders until tomorrow. I'd just like to feel you against my skin tonight."

And that in itself is enough to send fear dancing over my own skin. But I'm tired, and for once, I allow myself to want him beside me, and he reads it in my face and gives me a hoist up and we stagger into the bedroom, stumbling and cursing the straps of the Batsuit. My fingers are useless, but Dick is quick and deft, and in less time than I think is possible I'm lying on the bed with Dick's warm weight spooned against my back, one arm flung round me, the other lying in that comfortable spot between the pillow edge and my neck that he found instinctively. I have no thoughts. I can't bear to think this through, will wait, safe here, for morning.

It's the word morning that brings misgiving to mind. I tighten my hand on Dick's fingers, lying lax in this pre-sleep warmth.

"What about Alfred?"

"What about Alfred?" asks Dick. His voice is more of a vibration in my ear than a true sound.

"He'll think - I must call." Dick's arm tightens.

"Don't worry. I already did."

"What? When?"

"Before I got up on the roof."

There's a moment's silence, and then I can feel Dick start to shake with laughter and I roll over and catch him on that spot under the ribs where he's always been ticklish. He's laughing out loud and suddenly a chuckle forces its way up from my throat, and another, and Dick wraps his arms around me and lays one leg over mine and curls his cheek into my collarbone.

"That's better," he says. "G`night."

Chapter 2.

When I awake I don't realise, for a moment, where I am. The sun slants at an unfamiliar angle against a ceiling that is lower and smaller than my own, and every part of my body is weighed down with a deep lassitude that spells contentment. Then I remember, and I turn and rise: I'm halfway out of the bed before I realise that he isn't here. I listen, but the flat has that waiting emptiness that tells me he's long gone. I can't say I'm not relieved. I have no idea what, if anything, I could have said to him this morning. And yet, across my skin, I can feel the anticipatory crawl of thwarted desire. It's worse, now. Take one deep breath and another: let the pain out with the cool air. Start to think. There's a duffel bag by the door, and I can see the dark gleam of kevlar. Carefully piled up beside the bag are clothes: the sort of clothes that Bruce would wear on a casual day downtown. Gratitude and shame spike through me: I don't have to leave, in costume, in daylight. I get up. There's a note on top of the bag, and a small case. Dick likes his computers: I can tell from here it's a CD-ROM. I don't read the note until I'm dressed - armoured. Then I sit on the edge on the bed. Dick's handwriting, so familiar.

"Good morning," he writes. Then he leaves a line. I can tell, from the deliberate lettering, that he's taking his time, thinking before he writes. "Whatever you think, I have no regrets. Don't beat yourself up over this, Bruce, I got exactly what I wanted." Then there's one of those sideways smiling faces that I see often on Tim's notes and e-mails. "Thanks. Thanks for staying."

He leaves another line.

"I've left you a present. I thought you might enjoy it. It's a puzzle. Just think about it, hey, big man?" And he signs it, "Yours, Dick."

I take the bag and the note and the disk, and I call a cab and go home. And I manage to meet Alfred's grave, questioning gaze, although I feel that the shame of what I have done must cloak my body in a coruscating red haze.

"Is everything all right, Master Bruce?" he asks, and I can't bring myself to lie to him.

"I don't know, Alfred." We look at each other. Alfred knows everything. I have no secrets from him. What I do have is Alfred's abiding sense of privacy undisturbed, a reticence that will leaven any pain I care to offer but not ask for more. I know, in that second's weighted exchange, that he knows. God knows what Dick said to him.

"I'll be in the cave."

"Yes, Sir. Some coffee?" I ignore him: I'm already on my way. But he brings it anyway, finding me seated, again, in front of the computer bank with a single command on the screen in front of me.

"Master Dick's present?" asks Alfred.

I don't ask how he knows. "Yes"

"I believe you will find that the enter button will start the programme." He states quietly.

I look at the screen. Then I look at Alfred. And I can't bear to be on my own. "Stay with me."

"Of course." He brings over the second chair, and beside the desk. I look at the screen. What has he done?

Then I hit the enter button.

The screen clears. Dick, in his Nightwing costume, is seated, facing the camera over the kind of desk-top he's always had: a stack of floppy disks and wires, a pile of letters, two empty coffee cups. A framed photograph of the three of us. A small black raised disk that I'm sure I recognise. Dick leans back in the chair, his eyes steady on the camera.

"Well, Bruce, or Batman, if you're watching this, I'm pretty sure that I'm feeling rather good about myself this morning and you feel like shit." He gives the camera a half smile. "I'm not going to under-estimate the way you feel about this, Bruce. My guess is that you need space to think this through. And you'd better think it through, big buddy, or - or I'll come after your arse, and you know what that means!" His eyes are laughing at the camera.

How can he take this so calmly? How can he be so sure that this would happen? When did he grow up, become this young man who is so heartbreakingly familiar and so strange?

"I know you aren't going to find this easy," he says. "So I thought I'd give you a puzzle that might help you think about things. There's no hurry, Bruce. You don't have to do it." He smiles again. "I'll know if you've finished. I'll be in touch. But if you're so unhappy with this whole thing that you never want to see me again - chuck the disk." His eyes are serious. "It's not a test, Bruce. I think you might enjoy it." His hand curls around a coffee cup for an instant, the only outward sign of tension he shows, although I know by the set of his shoulders that he doesn't find this as easy as the tone of his voice would suggest.

"I love you, Bruce." His mouth quirks. "Whatever you decide."

And he reaches out a hand to the camera, and the picture darkens. The CD's still running, and I watch a single line of text scroll up from the bottom of the screen.

It reads. "..as the Actress said to the Bishop."

Below it, a line of spaces indicates letter spacing. Six, and then nine.

I don't realise I've said it out loud until Alfred answers me.

"I think, Master Bruce, that Nightwing has set you a challenge."

I turn. He looks at me, eyebrows raised.

"Well, what I am supposed to do?"

Alfred smiles. "I would suggest," he says. "That you start by answering the first clue."

And he gathers up the tray and the discarded civilian clothing and goes upstairs.

I try to play the CD again, but all I get is that single screen. I don't know what he's done to it: the files on the CD seem simple enough, but all I get is that screen, its cursor flashing with an infuriating patience. Evidentially, I'm not going to get any more answers unless I answer the clue. What is this, an Easter egg hunt? I'm not a teenager: I'm a grown man. I'm Batman. I'm also a man who has just committed the worst offence he could conceive of, and the person against whom I committed that offence is laughing at me.

He did say he'd had three years to think to think this over.

Dick's always been well balanced.

More than I, I think.

Three years is a long time.

I gaze at the screen.

Dick knows me very well. There's a misbegotten enjoyment in those games, the Joker's sick jokes and Harvey Dent's tragic fixation, all those doubles: in the Penguin's ornithological nightmares. Although I must admit, I've never been that fond of bird watching and I know more than I would wish to about the habits of the Sphenisciformes family.

As the actress said to the Bishop. It sounds so familiar. I know I've seen that before, heard it, read it, and I cannot remember. I run a search through the computer. It's the end line of a joke. Thanks, Dick. It's the end line of a joke that starts with any number of impossible situations - "Yes, that engine'll be ready tomorrow..as the actress said to the Bishop." "No, there's no fakes in that necklace..as the actress said to the Bishop." It's an old fashioned joke. Oh, thanks.

This gets me nowhere. Night is approaching: the light in the cave doesn't change, but I know dusk has fallen by the rustling of wings in the darkness above me. Soon, they'll start to fly, their sonar telling them that the entrance hologram is as insubstantial as the mist I can smell in this slight, damp tinge to the air. It's time to go. I head out into the night, carrying this riddle with me: a nagging, irritating memory that I tumble through my mind, a small pain that yet distracts from this greater sorrow.

I wonder if Alfred knows.

I wonder if it would be cheating to ask him.

And yet, there's a feeling around these words that means Alfred to me, an inherent sense of stability and reassurance that I feel in his presence. Whatever these words do mean to me - and I know, I know they are familiar - there is no sense of pain or loss. This is not a phrase that carries any feeling of hurt or anger. How odd, that such a small and, frankly, absurd phrase should carry such a charge of emotion. It takes a week before I bring myself to ask him. I don't feel any sense of urgency. Dick's question has settled at the back of my mind, a small trust that I carry with me, a keepsake pebble that I turn at odd moments. When I am tempted to think about what I have done, this is the memory that I reach for, this question, this particular and exact wording that I hold as a small light against the darkness of memories I do not want to face. While I have this, it seems as if all could be right in the world once again. At times, I don't want to know the answer and risk loosing this curious peace. But of course, I have to know.

I ask Alfred in the kitchen. He's baking, and flour lingers in the air over the kitchen table, with the smell of eggs and sugar and the slight whirr of the fan oven.

"Alfred."

"Yes, Master Bruce?" His tone is distracted.

"Dick's question..."

His eyes snap up to mine. "Would it be cheating if I asked you the answer?"

Alfred smiles. "How do you know I know?"

"Don't you know everything?" And indeed, when I was much younger, I thought he did.

Alfred cocks his head on one side. He looks as if he's thinking about it, but I know damn well he's probably been turning this question over in his mind for the past week. He's probably spoken to Dick - No. Don't go there.

"I don't think it would be right for me to answer the question."

"But?" There's always a but.

"But I could suggest that you looked in the old nursery."

What?

Out of the kitchen and through the baize door: up the stairs, and then up again: through the door into the nursery wing. Second door on the left. When was I last here? I don't know: I can't remember. Alfred, I am sure, has tidied a lot of stuff into this room: it's surely smaller than I remember. There are boxes stacked neatly along one wall: a rocking horse whose grey mane I smooth with one hand. There's a stack of games - I must get that scrabble set out for Tim, and then I remember that Tim's scrabble comes on a small black portable PC with an automatic word-check. And, over by the window, there's the bookcase. And a chair. Someone has sat here, fingering these old books: someone has come to relive the memories of too many nights reading to two young boys for whom the darkness of night was filled with memories that they did not want to face. A top row of thin spines: Anderson, Grimm, and that small volume with the clown illustrations that sends an atavistic shiver down my spine. Beneath them, the fun stuff: the Hardy boys - they must have been Dick's, although I remember the stories - the Secret Seven and the Famous Five, older hardbacks - Malcolm Saville, O. Henry - books that date from Alfred's childhood, the books that he saved and sent away for and read to us through the long nights. And beneath them, the vivid paperbacks that were carefully measured against our growing maturity. The Gideon books. Inspector West, of Scotland Yard. Josephine Tey, when Alfred taught us that detective did not necessarily mean bad literature. And then the faded, yellow covers of the Saint novels. Yes. And I run a finger across their covers. How could I forget? The Saint in New York: The Saint on the Spanish Main: The Happy Highwayman, with the Christmas tag still tucked in the front cover. "Bruce - Happy Christmas. With love, Auntie Leslie." The Saint: that blithe and debonair figure whose sense of justice was as odd - and as consuming - as my own. The Saint, with his twisted smile and his family of friends and fellow adventurers, with his dislike of guns and his throwaway catchphrases.

I know the answer, now.

And I gather up that long line of paperbacks and tuck them into an empty box and take them dowstairs to the cave.

Six: nine. Leslie Charteris.

The screen clears. Black and white film, transposed onto digital format but still scratched. The sound doesn't seem to - quite - match the movement. Two men, two chairs, a small table. It's an interview. One of the men is middle aged, dark: the other much older, with a startling shock of hair and long fingers traced with the veins and swelling of age.

"And so you came to settle down in England?"

"Yes."

There's a pause.

"Was there any particular reason for that? After all, you'd seen a lot of the world by then - most of Europe, America -."

"I liked the company." The older man pauses, says quickly, "My wife was English."

"And then there was your writing career."

"That's true. I hadn't realised quite how popular the books would become. And of course, I needed to carry on writing, and that meant finding somewhere to write..."

"You had quite a spectacular career. And, of course, the books were popular on both sides of the Atlantic."

"I was lucky." Then the old man smiles to himself. "At times, they seemed to take on life of their own."

"And now there is the new television series -"

"Oh, but that's not for real."

"You're still writing for it, aren't you?"

"Oh yes," says Leslie Charteris. "But it's not quite the same." He looks at the camera, and for an instant there's a gleam of mischief in his eyes that echoes the one I've seen so many times in the disingenuous blue eyes of another boy. Young man.

"And they've got the wrong car."

And the screen blanks again, and I hit the desk top with one closed fist. Frustration. What is this supposed to tell me? What am I supposed to learn? Dick, tell me, where do I go from here? There's text scrolling up from the bottom of the screen again. It's simple this time.

"Find the car."

And beneath the line, another set of spaces. Three: three.

Nothing else.

And I still can't get the damn CD to replay.

A quick search brings up any number of websites mentioning the Saint's choice of vehicle. I ignore the movie sites - what was the point? By that time, I know, that vivid, guarded old man in the interview would have died. The television series - now that was easy. Roger Moore. Of course. And that supercharged Jaguar that I'd never needed to envy. By then, I'd dragged Alfred into the twentieth century when it came to motor vehicles. A teenager's interest: turbos versus superchargers, the long line of Ferraris and the smell of the Daytona pit lanes: the first sketches for a car that was going to be better, faster, sexier, than anything else on the road. The possessive joy of my first convertible. The look on Dick's face when I gave him the keys - no.

But the Jaguar is the wrong car.

Of course. In the books, it's a Hirondel.

And I check it against the web, and I'm right.

And I check again. There's no record of a company, of a car model, of a real production car called a Hirondel.

Leslie Charteris invented that car. It doesn't exist.

So why has Dick asked me to find it?

I take the puzzle away with me into the night. Another frustration to set against the frustrated desire that, now, knowing, licks the marrow of my bones and yawns alone, against this black and empty sky.

It's a busy night. It's near eight o'clock when I get back to the cave, and I'm tired. I strip off, shower, and go to bed. My body might want to sleep, my mind will not. Images of cars turn, spin, speed in gleaming grace through my head. The sleek curves of my first Porsche: the image of Simon Templar leaping into the backseat of a long convertable faster than anything else on the road. The flash of blond hair at the wheel. What was that woman's name? It didn't seem that important, when I was younger. The first Batmobile: the rush of blueprints for the second. Alfred's face, eyes closed, the first time I drove him up the mountain road. I roll over, open my eyes, stare at the ceiling. Oh, damn, damn, damn. What does he mean?

I hear the sound of an engine, and for a moment think I am truly dreaming. Then I hear Alfred's voice, and the crunch of gravel, and the laughter of another young boy. Unexpected, devastating, shame hits me again, and I curl around myself in bed, imagining what would have happened, if,.. if,...But there is no trace in me of desire for this independent, honest, strong and loved - yes, loved - child. Teenager. Very nearly a young man. I can no more imagine Tim's gaze meeting mine for a second too long, his thigh hard against mine for a snatched moment, the blush that Dick could not, always, hide, colouring his cheek, than I can imagine -

Than I can imagine anyone but Dick beside me in this long, painful trail of desire and rejection.

I don't think Tim's ever thought of me like that in his life.

And, after all, I knew only too well that Dick did.

And my feelings towards Tim have never carried the faintest taste of eroticism.

After all, I know how that feels, too.

That is comfort enough to take into the night. No child: no teenager: no young man wanted, touched, damaged by this desire. Never. No one but him.

And my hands curl, empty, on the pillows.

When I wake the image is sure in my head. One small, black, raised disk on Dick's desk. One small, black, raised disk on Tim's workbench. Tim's voice, explaining impact velocities and electrical charges. Tim's hands, turning and throwing. Tim's invention. Dick's desk.

I can hear Tim laughing behind the kitchen door before I throw it open. In slow motion: Alfred, turning from the cooker with a spatula in his hand, his eyebrows rising. Tim, holding a fork, looking up from the plate of pancakes with the start of a welcoming grin before he sees my face. I am furious.

"You've been talking to him, haven't you?"

Tim's startled incomprehension.

"What? Who -"

"You've been talking to Dick. How long? How long, damn you, how long?"

"Whoa, hold on here, Bruce -"

Tim's defensive smile, Tim's slow retreat from the table I didn't realise I'd hit.

"I saw that disk. I know you've been talking to him. When? How?"

And then I see Tim's retreating gaze meet Alfred's, and the comprehension floods across his face.

"Ohhh, Bruce," he says, and then he giggles.

The shock of it steals the breath from my lungs: I've never heard Tim giggle before. Not only that, it's the shy, knowing giggle of a teenager suddenly faced with the half-understood, inopportune tangle of an adult's affairs.

Tim knows.

What was sure has suddenly become quicksand beneath my feet.

And Tim's surprise has turned to amusement.

"So lover-boy finally got in touch, did he?"

Alfred's "Master Tim!" joins with my "Shut up!" but both are equally ineffective. Tim has grabbed another pancake and is edging towards the garage door.

"Thank goodness one of you showed some sense," he says "I've spent far too long looking at those damn Bludhaven lights."

And with that he's gone. I sit down. I'm not entirely certain that my knees could hold me up. The best I can manage is the face of mute inquiry that I turn to Alfred's calm face.

"First question?" he asks, just as if I was eleven again, with the welter of queries and curiosities that a new day brings. I can't speak.

"Nightwing and Robin have been corresponding for some time. Since, I believe, a couple of weeks after Robin's first appearance in Gotham."

How could I miss it?

"As for the other...Master Bruce, your affection for Dick, and his for you, is painfully obvious to all of us who know you well. I believe we have all been hoping for some kind of rapprochement. Master Tim has been a little - voluble - about the amount of time spent on the west side of Gotham since Nightwing appeared in Bludhaven." Alfred cleans his spatula with a cloth taken from the rack of clean, white towels near the sink. So deliberate.

"This is not the nineteen fifties, Master Bruce. It's no longer shaming to have a relationship with someone else of the same sex."

Alfred lets that statement hang between for a moment of devastating silence.

"Alfred - he was a child. In my house. Under my protection. I loved him."

"And then he grew up," said Alfred calmly.

"He's my son!"

"Yes." Alfred sighs, and lays down the spatula. "Do you honestly think, Master Bruce, that if I had ever thought that there would be any - any - threat to Richard Greyson under this roof I would have allowed him to remain here?

"Furthermore, do you think, that if I had thought you capable of such a deed, if it would even cross your mind, that I myself would remain in this house?"

My mouth drops open. I can't believe what Alfred's just said. I can't believe that the possibility had entered his mind. And the enormity of his trust leaves me speechless.

Then Alfred smiles at me, that little half smile that is all a gentleman's gentleman allows himself. "Shut your mouth, Master Bruce, you're catching flies." He glances at my feet. "And before you enquire after Master Tim's fortnight with his family, I suggest that you put on something more substantial than those socks."

I look down. Not only have I forgotten to put shoes on, I don't even have matching socks.

I bet Superman doesn't have these problems.

Tim isn't in the garage. I find him in the cave, checking out the new surveillance system. His hands move over the keyboard with a facility I can only envy. Children. They grow up with technology. And that reminds me.

"Tim...about that shock star -"

Tim swivels the chair. "Oh Bruce, c'mon on. I spend entire fortnight playing card games and agreeing with how tall I've grown and eating humungous slices of cake and you lay into me the minute I get back? Where's that caring, sharing Batman we all know and love?"

("Hello Dick, how are you? It's been a long time -")

Tim looks at me in bemusement. "Oh, don't both-"

"I'm sorry, Tim. It was a bit of a shock."

"Oh."

"Did you have a good time at your aunt's?"

Tim looks at me with a distinct air of suspicion. "Hey, I was joking about the caring sharing bit."

"Someone else reminded me."

"Oh," said Tim. "Well, it was about time. I've got a bit tired of the brooding stuff. Not that I'm expecting balloons on the Batmobile, you understand."

"Well...no. Not this year. It's past May Day."

And Tim whoops. "You made a joke!" he carols. "Batman made a joke!"

"Tim, I'm sorry about laying into you about the shock star. I hadn't realised that you and...Nightwing..had been in touch."

"He did mention you wouldn't be pleased."

"It's not quite that."

"Look, I do realise that you two have the hots for each other. What with you glowering at the Bludhaven skyline, and him slipping in those awkward little questions, and you monitoring the BHPD broadcasts, and him working on these kevlar plates as if- Ooops!"

His eyes are dancing above the hand that covers his mouth.

"I can't tell you that," he says virtuously.

"What kevlar plates?"

"I promised."

"Tim - !"

"Nightwing-worked-on-the-kevlar-plates-for-the-new-Batsuit."

"What?"

"He said he'd spent a lot of time on the chemical stuff, and you hadn't."

"When did he - Oh, no. Don't tell me." But there is a flicker of surprised, gratified pride, that Dick had cared enough to work on the suit. Do I want to know more? Of course I do. Am I going to ask Tim, who has known for some time far more than I ever expected him to guess? Who has worked with me, my partner, my support, without seeming to care that I want to fuck the first person to wear that Robin suit?

"Doesn't bother you?"

"Oh, don't be silly, Bruce. Nightwing doesn't want to be me - Robin. He's got his own costume now. And his own city."

"I mean -"

"Oh, you mean about you and Nightwing?" Tim pauses. He cocks his head on one side, and his eyes glint across the cave. "Well, so long as you guys don't, like, do it in front of me..."

("Some chance," snorts Nightwing, later, when the conversation is reported to him. "If you knew -"

"Shut it right there, big bro," says Tim. "You know, there are some things I'm not old enough for yet."

Nightwing laughs. "Really?" he says. "What were you saying about that girl Candy over at your aunt's...")

Then he looks across at me. "So does that mean you've got the CD?"

Does everybody in the damn world know that Dick's sending me little graduation presents?

"It's in the drive."

"Cool"

And then I think of the first things that Dick says, and I reach to the main cable. Then I remember those unpassable screens, and I start to walk to the desks.

And then Tim runs the CD. From the beginning.

He's talking over the first bit. "I was there when he shot this, but he wouldn't let me listen. I was in the bathroom."

Dick's voice.

Tim listening.

Myself listening.

Then he hits the stop button, and looks at me. "If someone ever loved me like this, you know, I wouldn't let them go."

Hurt. Anger. Pain. And none of it Tim's fault. I walk away, hit the high bars, limber up. When I return, Tim's watching Leslie Charteris.

"How did you get there?"

"It's easy - don't you remember the Saint books? Alfred lent me them all. Cool dude."

Leslie ends - ' "And they've got the wrong car." '

The dark screen comes up.

"What does he mean, find the car? That author guy made it up, didn't he?"

"It was a Hirondel. I looked it up."

"Did you find it? Where is it?"

"How could I find it? Listen to yourself, Tim - that author guy made it up."

Tim turns round in the chair and looks at me. "Well, someone must have made one then, mustn't they?"

Of course.

Why didn't I think of that? I have to laugh. It's so obvious, and it takes a boy like Tim to point it out to me.

"What's the matter?" he asks.

"It's just that I never thought of that."

"Really?"

"Really. Er..thanks."

"No sweat, man." But Tim's quiet grin spells pride. "I suppose you'll want the big screen now?"

"It's another three hours til patrol - just time to get a good workout and a shower."

"Oh, Bats!"

"Hit the mat, Robin."

Once I'd worked that out - or once, I should say, Robin had worked that out - it didn't take too long to track down the few specialist car manufacturers I could find: the people that made Back to the Future's Delorean steam and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang fly. None of them had ever been asked to make up a fantasy Hirondel, but one of them pointed me in the direction of the man that owned the car from the Saint television programmes. England. Specifically, a small museum in the town of Keswick. Where at this moment - I check the worldwide clocks - it's approximately two o'clock in the morning. It's also time to take a slightly tired Robin out on patrol.

With Tim at my back, I feel the depression of the last few nights slough from my skin: somehow, he can give the most serious events an ironic, humorous slant that is entirely his own. And, mindful of that irony, we spend a lot of time tonight on the east side of the city. Time passes quickly. A couple of hit-and-runs: one inept attempt on the Gotham City Bank, one solitary exploding penguin. I'll have to watch that one. I don't think it's the man himself - there's enough copy-cats out there to give Elvis a run for his money - but I'd like to be sure.

I send Tim yawning to bed, and check my chronometer: It's half four. That's half past nine in England, and I have my fingers crossed when I make the call.

He's there. He's volubly enthusiastic, and he doesn't think at all unusual that the billionaire car-collector Bruce Wayne is calling him from another country to try and trace a mythical machine that a dead author created sixty years ago. In fact, he knows the man I need to speak to. A young guy. An American. Does he still have the number? Paper rustles. Yes he does, and I lay the phone down with a sign and lean back in the chair. Tim's not the only one that's tired, but tonight it's the tiredness that comes with satisfaction, with a job well done, not the tense, unhappy worry that's strung my nerves for the past fortnight. Hell, that echoed through the past three years. I've talked about things today that I though I would never mention, and although I wouldn't say I'm happy, Tim and Alfred's trust has salved a part of my soul I thought I would never bare. I don't know where Dick's journey is going to take me, but he's intrigued me enough to let me think of more than the shame of my desire. His own intelligence. His skill. Even those awful puns: I can see his humour etched into this odd and convoluted puzzle. He's allowed me to think of the possibility that, one day, we might be able to work together without the tension of my betrayal. Although there are things I still don't want to consider.

And when I wake, later, with my body crying out for his, with this dark, blood-red, angry desire that I cannot stem stripping every control and safeguard I have ever set, I know that I am wrong. How can I do this to him? How could I do this to him? I remember the set of my teeth in the skin of his neck, and I am trembling.

Nevertheless, I make that call. It is a young man that answers the phone, and as he speaks I'm setting the tracers that allow me to pinpoint the phone.

"Hi, Simon"

"Hello," I say. "My name's Bruce Wayne -"

"Oh, you're the guy that bought that '64 Porsche from the Dubai auction, aren't you? Didn't someone say you'd got one of the Le Mons Jags, as well?-"

Car talk.

I spent a little time, in my teens, doing car talk. "And what about that Vincent Black Knight?"

It wasn't me that did bike talk, though. That was Dick.

"I...don't own the Black Knight," I say. "That was a gift..for my ward."

"Lucky guy," says Simon, on the other end of the phone. "It's great when your family like engines too. I don't think my mum ever got used to the filters in the sink. What can I do for you?"

So I explain. I don't get very far, but there's no doubt I've got the right man. (And by now I know exactly where I'm speaking to, and who owns this phone and pays the rent on this phone line, and in just a minute - ) "- reset the shocks for American roads, -" (I'll have the address...) "-of course, but the rest of it's nearly all original. Even got the right numberplate!"

What?

"What?"

"She was registered first in England, you know - she's got one of those old-style English numberplates, white on black, six digits-"

Six digits.

"- Of course, I'm sorry, Mr Wayne, but if you're thinking about it, she's just not for sale. I couldn't let her out of the family."

"It's okay," I say. "It's just the numberplate I'm interested in."

"I really couldn't sell you that either. It kind of comes with the car." He laughs. "Although, of course, we couldn't honestly say that she's always had that exact number."

There's something odd about this phone call.

"I thought this was a replica car," I say. "A Hirondel."

"Oh, she's a Hirondel all right," says Simon. "But she's real. The only one left. There were three, you know."

Real? Three? I take a deep breath. "I thought Leslie Charteris invented them. In the books he wrote about Simon Templar. The Saint."

"Oh, everyone thinks that. But he saw her first, this one, before he wrote the books. She's a real beauty."

"Were they all registered in England?"

Simon's tone is puzzled. "Of course," he says.

I wonder how to do this. "I had a..bet, with a friend of mine.. that these cars weren't real. There's a bit of money in it. If you could give me the license number, I could check it out with the people in England and prove it to him."

"Oh, I don't think I could do that." Simon's polite, but definite.

"I don't want more than a note of the figures. But I'd be more than happy to send a small donation...maybe to the car wax fund?"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Wayne. You see, Dick said you'd have to see the car."

Silence.

"Hey, Mr Wayne, I'm sorry. Dick said you'd be ringing: he said I could have a little fun before I told you."

I bet he did.

"Are you there, Mr Wayne? I'd really like to give you the number, but Dick absolutely insisted..."

"Okay, Mr Simon whatever-your-name-is" I growl down the phone. "This is the way we're going to play it. In ten minutes time I'm going to step out of my back door and into my helicopter. And in twenty-four minutes time I'm going to sent foot on my jet. And in approximately six and three quarter hours, I'm going to be landing at Washington airport, and I'm going to have a driver waiting for me, and in another half hour I'm going to be outside your house. And then, Mr Simon, you can show me your numberplate and I am going to get the hell out of there. Is that clear.?"

There is a long, low, appreciative whistle in my ear. "Man, he said you'd be pissed," said Simon. "But I didn't think it'd be as good as that. Mr. Wayne, I think you should meet my Grandpa. You'd have a lot to say to each other."

"Seven hours, one quarter," I say. "Be there."

"Yes, SIR!" said Simon. He might have got the words right, but the amusement was not what I wanted to hear.

I slammed the phone done.

Unfortunately, he got there before I did.

I sent Alfred's carefully organised "to do" pile flying off the desk and towards the practice mats.

A long way towards the practice mats.

Then I called the helicopter pilot.

Some hare-brained chase. Some useless, futile puzzle. I'm not even certain why I'm doing this, why it's so important that I do this right. But if Dick wants me to go to Washington and see this car, I'll do it. He might have a twisted sense of humour, but he's never been frivolous with my time before.

Twenty-four minutes. Out onto the cold airport tarmac, the flimsy metal steps of the plane. " Morning, Mr. Wayne!" shouts the pilot from the cockpit. "Take off in seven minutes, if that's OK with you?" Her bright face peers round the cabin door.

" Great, Karen. I've got work to do." There is a second's bustle at the door, and then the steward, Jonathon, pulls himself in and shuts the door.

" Cut it a bit fine, that time," he says, smiling, and then I see him snap into work. " Coffee?" he asks. " I stopped at Verucelli's on the way. Croissant too?"

"Not just now," I say.

Jonathon looks at my face and seats himself as far to the rear of the plane as he can get.

I watch the airport spin beneath me, and then the long, slow slide over the outskirts of Gotham. My city. They don't allow planes over the city centre any more, but I don't mind: from here, I can see the odd, angular building that is the Manor, the trees my grandfather planted that hide the back road into the cave. I've work to do. In this portioned time that I spend so extravagantly on Batman's affairs, so frugally and resentfully on Bruce's, I have to find space to make sure that my second trust is running smoothly. Sometimes, it's the most difficult job I do, this subtle, careful balance between playboy and magnate, and there are times when I resent Bruce's vacuous hedonism in the same way that I resent Batman's certain ruthlessness. The trick to this edge of careful casualness has been the staff I employ, and without Lucius, I don't think I could manage. He's has forwarded everything he thinks I need to look at onto the on-board workstation: the financial statements, the employment records, the five-year-plan for that innovative mountaineering development set-up in Alaska that I suggested we supply with seed cash. That one should work out - if Terry McNeil can avoid breaking his neck before he makes his fortune. Climbers. I don't understand them at all.

Three and a half hours. It was misty over Gotham when I left, but here above the clouds the sun sends warmth through the window. I turn my head aside, and sleep. In my dreams, the ghost of a young man I once knew rests content, and I wake smiling.

"Twenty minutes, Mr Wayne!" calls Karen over the intercom.

Jonathon raises an eyebrow from the opposite seat. He's obviously decided my mood has improved. I nod, and retire to the bathroom to shave and change my shirt before emerging to coffee and crisp, warm custard-filled Italian croissants. The plane spirals down to the complex arena that is Washington airport: lands, taxis to the waiting car. " I won't be long," I tell Karen. " Two hours at the most."

The car takes me out to the suburbs, through leafy green streets that remind me of Metropolis. Up a slight rise, and then right, into a short, shaded driveway. A rambling house, white-washed: a collection of sheds and tarmaced work space, swept clean. A woman waiting by the door. Whatever I had expected, it wasn't this.

The driver opens the door for me. I stand into the cool, clear light and walk forward.

"Good afternoon," she smiles. " Mr Wayne, I presume?" Her hair is the purest white I think I've ever seen, almost silver in this winter sunlight.

Her skin is clear and soft, the lines around her eyes laughter. She's beautiful. She must be - what, seventy, eighty? It's hard to tell. There are seed pearls in her ears, and a dime-store necklace around her neck that reads "Grandma." I have no idea who she is.

" Ah..good afternoon, ma'am. I don't believe I've had the pleasure -"

"No, that was my grandson, Simon," she smiles. " Welcome to the factory, Mr. Wayne. My name is Patricia. I'll take you out to the boys in a minute or two - some sudden crisis with the transmission, they tell me. I'm sure you've had a long flight - seven and a quarter hours, wasn't it?" There is a gleam of suppressed mischief in her eyes. "Won't you come in and have some tea?"

Batman wants that numberplate now. Bruce, on the other hand, has Alfred's archaic courtesy bred into every bone in his body.

"Thank you," I say.

She leads the way into the house, under the late-blooming roses that arch across the porch. Her back is straight, her hair caught up into an elegant chignon. In the white panelled hall, I look up, and see her picture gazing gravely down. She must have been in her fifties, when that was painted. There are other pictures, photographs, framed on the walls: a group of teenagers on a boat, an aristocratic, elderly man behind a desk, black and white studio portraits of women whose faces look faintly familiar. A short, plump, middle-aged man with an adapted quick-fire Russian Uzi.

"He was so proud of that gun," says Patricia. She taps another picture. "That's him with his family." A tall blond woman: two bright-eyed teenage boys.

"There's one here that might interest you," she says.

Another group of teenagers. Another beach. And then my heart stops for one instant. There, sitting on a beach towel with a redheaded, laughing girl beside him, is Dick. And Barbara. He looks so happy. I reach one hand out, and span the pair of them, before I realise where I am. Patricia looks at me with kindness.

"We always have an open house, over the summer. That was taken a couple of years ago, in Connecticut."

"How long - "

"Come and drink your tea, before it gets cold. I imagine there's quite a lot we need to talk about."

Following her into the long, simple sitting room I scan the other photographs. There are other teenagers, formal portraits, Patricia in a long white gown with a sapphire pendant that could have bought a small European state around her neck. And another one, Dick in overalls, on his back, sliding out from under an e-type Jaguar with a grin on his face.

"Take a seat, Mr Wayne."

It seems too formal. "Call me Bruce, please."

She laughs. "Well, in all honesty, I've heard so much about you from Dick that I almost feel I know you already. How do you take your tea?"

"Lemon..no sugar, please."

"Americans." She's shaking her head a little.

"You're English."

"I was once. Now...I'm not so sure." It's true, I find her accent difficult to place. I take the tea. Cups, porcelain, just like Alfred.

"My butler, Alfred, comes from England," I say. "London."

"It's a big place. And I did a lot of travelling, when I met - my second husband."

"You're married?"

"My husband's abroad at the moment. The boys never seem to mind when I come to stay." She smiles at me. "But I'm sure you didn't come here to waste your time on small talk. Simon and Johnny tell me I've got to keep you out of the garage for the next fifteen minutes or so, and I'm sure there's a lot a questions you want to ask me." She smiles, waits.

Where do I start?

"I...gather you've known Richard - Dick - for some time."

"Oh yes. He came to us, oh, it must be nearly three and half years ago now."

"He came to you?"

"Well, you could say that. He found us, you see."

I don't know how to phrase this. "Why? Do you run some kind of...hostel?"

She laughs out loud at that. "Not quite, although my husband sometimes says we might as well be. No. There always seem to be youngsters around. We're a big...family. And when it became apparent that Dick was on his own -" her eyes meet mine for one quick, neutral instant - "-we offered him a home. He wasn't here all the time, of course. All these young men seem to be so busy. But he stayed with us when he could."

"You're being very polite, Mrs..." She cocks her head on one side, waits. I don't think I can go here.

"Dick and I argued."

"Yes, I gathered something like that had happened."

"It was a...mistake."

"It can be difficult to realise that your children have grown up."

"I lost him..." No, I can't go here. My hands are shaking on the fine china, and I put the cup down and walk to the window. More sheds. More clean tarmac.

She waits. It's almost comfortable. There's no judgement in this pending silence.

"I think Dick was happy with us. But it was apparent from the start that he had a home and a family whom he loved dearly. And who loved him. You came very close to finding us a couple of times, Bruce Wayne, but Dick wasn't quite ready for it and we protected him to the best of our ability. I hope you don't mind. We did it with Dick's full permission, indeed, with his assistance."

What a civilised silence: what a civilised room. What a cool voice. And in it this black weight of anger and resentment and jealousy that I hold, hard. I will not, I will not show her this pain.

I hear the tang of china on china as she replaces the cup of tea.

"You're not quite what I expected, Bruce Wayne."

I am almost myself again. I turn. "But not everything is ..quite..what it seems."

I could swear there is the glint of conspiracy in her eyes as she rises. "Exactly. I'm sure the boys will have finished by now. Can I take you out to the workshop?"

Involuntarily I look at her feet. She's wearing neat half boots, small feet.

And she laughs. "Oh, Bruce, I've spent half my life with people who love cars. If I refused to go near an engine, I wouldn't have had a decent conversation for the last thirty years! Come on, the boys have been wanting to meet you."

I can hear the engine when we walk out of the back door, a low, rumbling grumble that resonates in the diaphragm as much as the ear. Patricia walks quickly towards one of the larger sheds, and I see a curl of smoke appearing from the big double doors.

Oh, but she is beautiful. An extravagant sweep of polished bonnet, a gleaming dark red. The elegant uprising arch of wheel trim and then the curve of walnut trim, the soft, dark of leather seats, the small, downturned boot with the chromed luggage rack. I've never seen anything like her. And that engine! The bonnet's closed, but from the noise in here she must be firing on at least six cylinders. And smoothly. Whatever the problem with the transmission was, the boys have evidently sorted it out. Beside me, Patricia is making violent motions: "Turn it off! Turn it off!" she mouths across the well of seating: I look up, as someone on the left-hand side of the car reaches in to turn the ignition key.

A blond someone, a boy no more than eighteen, with Patricia's high cheekbones and an untidy mop of fine hair. As the engine rumbles into silence, reluctant to stop firing as these vintage engines often are, I see behind him a taller man, dark, broad built, in a set of the shabbiest overalls I've ever seen.

"Ah, Simon," Patricia says. "This is Mr. Wayne. Be nice to him, he's had a bit of a shock. Bruce, this is my grandson Simon and a family friend, John Teal. Simon and Johnny restored the Hirondel a couple of summers ago, and they've kept it running ever since."

"You've done a good job," I say.

"Well," Simon says "Grandpa kept it in pretty good nick, but he hadn't had it out on the road for aeons. It was kind of waiting to go. And then when Dick said he had the whole summer to help us...I always knew those shocks were going to be- "

He exchanges glances with his grandmother, looks down.

"Well, I guess you'll want the number plate, so you can go home." The disappointment on his face is plain, and I can no more resist his youthful pride that I could dismiss Dick's burgeoning excitement as his sixteenth birthday drew near and he began to watch the way I drove the Batmobile.

"I'd like to see that engine, first."

It's half an hour before we make it back to the house, Simon excited, the words tumbling over each other as he explains the antiquated wishbone suspension, the adjusted shocks, the struggle to find the right colour leather. Car talk. John's much quieter, but there's a possessive love in the way he polishes an infinitesimal speck from that long bonnet. There's something else too. It's there in the way his head is cocked towards the younger man, the brief touch of hand on hand, the spark of humour between them. These two are lovers. I realise so gradually that I am accepting them before I even think about it, turning to catch John's amused glance as Simon explains how he found the factory to make the hand-turned Imperial bolts. Surely Patricia must know. But what does she think? What can she think? These two are joined as surely and sweetly as piston fits cylinder sleeve.

She comes to rescue me after that half-hour, stepping neatly across the tarmac and ushering the boys in front. "They met each other so young" she says, watching then laugh and jostle in the doorway. "We can only hope that they are always this happy."

"How long have they been together?"

"Since the summer when Simon was sixteen and John twenty. We could all see it happening, of course, but they took a while to realise. My husband wanted to send them away for a while, said that they were too young, but I argued that they deserved this happiness while they could take it. It seems to have worked out. John's good for Simon."

"You didn't mind?"

She sighs. "It makes an old woman terribly sentimental. I never got over my first love. Did you?"

I laugh. "My first love had four wheels."

"Oh, men!" she says.

(In the Batcave, Robin and Nightwing are arguing over the last chocolate muffin, with the sensors on and one red light centred on Washington DC.

"What do you think he thought of Patricia?" says Tim.

"Don't know. Can only hope they get on. I think so, bit of a mess if they don't."

"She'll have him for toast," says the monitor gloomily. "I hope you know what you're doing, short-arse."

"Just 'cos Alfred made muffins and you're stuck in the Clock Tower," says Nightwing, waving the half of cake he's snatched from Robin at the screen.

"Oh bog off, greedy guts." Then the tone changes. "Before you get crumbs all over that board, can I have another house on Broadway?"

"Aw, Babs" )

Over tea, and slices of cake with walnuts, she shows me more photographs, whilst the boys add comments from the big chair where Simon curls against John's legs.

"This is the Hirondel's first trip after restoration," she says. There's Dick - he was driving the truck, that day, just in case: Simon, at the wheel. Where were you, John?"

"I'd gone to get the map. I could see quicksilver here dashing off into the sunset with no idea of how to get home."

"And this is my husband." So that's the aristocratic man on the hall wall. Picnics, parties, more shots of cars, one very recognisable Vincent Black Knight stripped down and bare in the garage.

"He blew a gasket," said Simon. "Messed up the whole cylinder head."

And then a photograph I recognise. Dick, seen from the back, looking out across a balcony rail with the dark sea in front of him.

"I think you might have seen this," said Patricia. "This is taken at the Connecticut house. It was one of my granddaughters who delivered it."

"I've seen it."

"But I don't think you saw the rest."

There are three other shots, and she lays them down one on top of the other: the camera advances towards Dick as he turns away from the view, the light from inside the house catching his cheekbones and the little muscle at the corner of his mouth. In the last shot, he's face on to the camera, his head lowering, but I still see the shadow in his eyes.

"He missed you, very much."

I've said it before I think. "Then why didn't he come home?"

Patricia gathers up the photographs with an audible snap. "Wouldn't you know that better than I?"

Audience over.

But, how odd: as she shows me out of the door, under the roses, she smiles and says "I'm sure we'll be seeing you again, Bruce. Take care."

I spend a long time, the course of one later-than-planned trip back to a dark and silent Gotham, thinking about what Mrs Patricia Something didn't say.

Oh yes, my first love had four wheels. I remember. And I remember the singer in Paris, and the two smooth-skinned Thai boys with soft fingers and dark, knowing eyes (although they laughed with me when they took me to bed), and I remember the blind arrogance of the first supermodel I ever bedded, and the first time - There are any number of first times. I've never counted. But I don't remember that trust, that acceptance, that joy, the quiet confidence of John's hand gently cuffing stray blond hairs into place.

I wonder if Dick ever had that, if somewhere in his past there is a beautiful girl with a smile that's all his, or a tough boy who would laugh at his jokes. (' "And believe me, there was a time-" ') And I hope that Tim will find the same contentment.

I leave the scrap of paper by my bedside, and sleep.

Alfred brings me coffee in bed. It must be later than I thought: one quick circuit last night, just to check: Tim had already been asleep when I touched down at the airport. Robin had done a good job: the streets were quiet. Someday, he too will want to spread his wings and fly, but for now I am more than content for this third Robin to stay with me. I could trust my city to his capable hands.

And beside my bed, this small scrap of paper on which I've written the next code. Am I entirely sure that I want to carry on with this? I don't know. But I do know that if I don't, if I fail Dick's trust here, I will never forgive myself. So I treat myself to a long workout and a hot shower, and then I sit down at the computer banks with the code in front of me. Tim's head rises from the paper on fractional mathematics that's due in tomorrow morning, and he comes and stands behind me.

"So go on, then."

I look at the piece of paper. It's very simple.

Three: three.

A33: 1ST

The writing dissolves. Slowly, six aligned pictures form on the screen: gallery pictures, auction pictures, each one of an isolated, magnificent piece of jewellery. Six pictures, each one carrying beneath that irritating line of waiting spaces.

"What is this, multi-millionaire snap," mutters Tim behind me.

It seems simple enough. I recognise one of the pieces without having to look it up, a diamond necklace with a single, huge, teardrop emerald. Tiger's Eye, it was called, and Selina had had a very nearly successful attempt at walking away with it when the Five Continents exhibition came to Gotham Central. Snap indeed. I fill in the spaces, and watch the lettering solidify to gold on the screen. This is too easy. I run an analysis on the main stones, and set the jeweller's database that Oracle 'borrowed' from de Boers' to run. Tim snorts in disgust behind me, and returns to his paper. That leaves me free to investigate the curious case of Mrs Patricia someone with a grandson called Simon and a friend called Johnny Teal.

The house, I knew already. It was registered to John Ward Teal, second-generation immigrant; specialist mechanic. No unpaid bills, no troubles with the IRS, not even an outstanding parking ticket. No Simon anything. But of course: he was under age.

Do you have any idea how many women called Patricia have grandsons called Simon in the USA?

You don't want to know.

Or how many women called Patricia have grandsons called Simon, have connections to Washington and Connecticut?

Only a few thousand. Cut that down to, maybe, 738, when one considers her English origins. And then, I've no idea if she registered for citizenship.

So I check the database. Sure enough, it's thrown up another three names: The Pontisbright Crown, Twilight's Dawn: The Hapsburg Necklace. Entered, fixed. I look at the last two. It's unusual for the database not to have a stone, but that information does depend on said stone having been handled and valued by a registered jeweller. For some reason, neither of these pieces had been entered since de Beors' started the register in 1927. That could, of course, mean that they'd stayed in the same hands over that period: or that someone had paid a lot of money not to be entered. It does happen. Smuggled stones: stolen stones.

One of the necklaces is of black pearls, rank upon rank, an almost obscene and, surely, uncomfortable choker. The other is a far more delicate structure of diamonds, with one large sapphire pendent low and centred. I run an image recognition programme through my complete database, and hit paydirt. One pearl necklace. One stolen pearl necklace: vanished since 1938: stolen from a train magnate's grass widow holidaying on the Riviera. That's the initial trace: intrigued, I search for more. And find it. The necklace resurfaced in the fifties: accredited: property of a Canadian jeweller who had sourced it from an obscure museum sale. There was no one to challenge the claim. Recently widowed, and recently wealthy, the magnate's wife had plunged from a cliff with her lover some eighteen months previously. The Fitzherbert Choker. Then nothing: no sale record, no auction house catalogue. Nothing.

I run the same programme for the others. But there doesn't seem to be any correlation: a near perfect documentation for each that stretches back to the original makers. No scam: nothing else registered as stolen. The only thing they have in common is a curious lack of current, registered ownership, but that doesn't surprise me. It's a nasty world out there. Why advertise?

One outstanding and anonymous sapphire necklace.

Tim's back at my shoulder.

"Oh, cool," he says, acknowledging the five named pieces. "But why don't you just run a code-breaker on the other?"

Because that would be an admission of failure.

"Because."

"OK, Batman, sir, godlike powerful being."

"Have you finished that paper yet?"

"Why don't you ask Oracle?"

Why don't I ask Oracle.

I search harder, heading out onto the web. It takes a couple of hours, checking and re-checking parameters, but I get it: Philippa's Promise. A family piece, owned by the Tier family of Sevigny, in France. There's one photograph of an elderly woman with an arrogant lift to her chin, dressed in a smothering Edwardian hat and a sapphire necklace. And a dress. But that definitely came second to the hat.

Quick enough to enter. And the final letters solidify, and then the screen clears again, and I am left with a final line of empty spaces and that one, blinking cursor. No clue. Nine spaces: four spaces.

I stare at the screen. What does this mean, Dick? What have I missed? What do these pieces have common, where did I fail?

I run the search programmes again. Nothing. It's getting late: Tim's suited up. I reset the programmes, go for every parameter I can think of, hit enter. And head out into the night.

For some reason, cold has brought Gotham's rougher element onto the streets tonight. I smell fear, in the hurrying footsteps of a secretary hurrying home late in darkness, in the muffled whispering of two children huddled on a doorstep, in the watchful eyes of the teenager left to run a gas station on his own. And in the watchful, slinking cringe of the two gang-runners lingering outside Ahmed's seven-eleven: the driven face of the solitary stalker outside one particular flat at Fairport Condominiums, and the muffled bravado of one of Two Face's hit squads gone renegade. They're right to fear. There are times when I frighten myself. When we head back, even Robin is quiet, as the Batmobile purrs through Gotham's streets, safe for this night at least, and the computer sorts and filters this night's communications from the Crays in the cave. Including the results of one inclusive search pattern.

Nothing.

"Why don't you ask Oracle?" asks Robin.

"Shut up."

Oracle and I don't have the easiest of relationships. I've always thought that I could, should, have been able to protect her from the Joker's maiming bullet that severed her spine. It only makes it worse that she's Gordon's daughter. I failed her, and that is something I cannot forgive myself. Barbara survived: as Oracle, she's indispensable. I couldn't do what I do without her. But that's business: this is personal.

Robin pushes irritably at the CD rack he insisted I install.

"You don't get it, do you?"

"Just what don't I get?"

I'm a breath away from an explosion of frustrated anger, and he knows it.

He sighs."Well, look, Batman. You asked Alfred about the first question, didn't you? I mean, you got the answer, but you had to ask for a clue, right?"

"And -?"

"And then I kind of helped you with the next one, didn't I?"

"So you think it's Oracle's turn."

"Yeah."

I turn, and give Robin my very best don't-give-me-any-shit Batman to Robin glare. "Did you and Dick set this up?"

Robin spreads his hands in a gesture of denial. " Honest Injun, Batman, I knew he was putting it together but he wouldn't let me know what was on it." Then he adds under his breath "Sneaky bully."

I flick the communication switches.

"Oracle here."

She's turned the visual off.

"Batman." "What's the story, Batman?"

"Are you busy tonight?"

"Is that a date request, Bats? It's a bit late for dinner."

Barbara's tone is teasing.

"How busy are you? Can you run a search for me?"

"I've got Wonder Woman in Argentina on a reconnaissance mission, Batman. That's becoming a little fraught. And BC's having a night off: she's got herself stuck on a ledge in Tomb Raider. Nothing I can't handle. What's the info on?"

"Jewellery."

I download the material I've got onto Oracle's system. After a second or too her voice returns, guarded.

"You want the connection, Batman?"

"Yes."

"I'll see what I can do." She pauses, and then I hear her startled "Jump, BC!"

"Hey, Oracle, is this before or after the sabre-toothed tiger?" asks Robin with interest.

"Shut up, I'm concentrating."

I hear the muffled rattle of machine-gun fire relayed through a mike.

"That's not in the game," mutters Robin. "I bet that's Wonder Woman."

Sure enough, Oracle sounds distracted when she comes back on line. "Batman, it's getting a bit complicated up here. I'll run your search in the background - It'll take a little longer, okay? I'll get back to you at, say, seventeen hundred hours tomorrow?"

"Thanks, Oracle."

Mike off.

"That came out a bit easier, didn't it? You've been practising."

"Shut up, Robin."

( "Yo, Wingster! The big man bit!"

"Cheers, Babs. When did you say?"

"Seventeen hundred hours tomorrow. Bring pizza, short ass, you owe me for this."

"Anything for you, O most beautiful of red-headed founts of wisdom, you know that."

"Flattery gets you exactly nowhere, FBW." But Oracle is chuckling as she turns the mike off.)

This morning, I wake knowing where I've seen that sapphire before. The price of a small European state. One long white gown, one beautiful woman, one photograph. I roll over, stare at the ceiling. Patricia. Where is this taking me, Dick? Who are these people? Is there some major clue that I've been missing?

Just exactly what were you doing, those three years you spent away from me?

It's seven hours before Oracle's due to check in. I run a couple more, abortive, searches. Read the papers. Work out. Check over Tim's completed paper, the copy left for on the desk before he went to college. I'm itching with impatience. If I'm right, if Oracle's involved in Dick's little games (two teenagers, laughing, on a beach I've never seen) I'm just about to get a major clue.

I'd love to know just how close Dick and Babs are.

That's one pain I wouldn't have minded bearing.

"Oracle here."

"Batman."

(and Barbara looks down at Nightwing, sprawled on his back by her desk with his baby blue eyes by her front wheels)

"I ran that search. There's quite a spread of data, Batman. I'm going to download in a minute, but I thought you'd like to hear the results."

"Yes."

"The good news is that there is a connection. The bad news is that there's two."

"Good work, Oracle."

(and Barbara's raised eyebrows echo Nightwing's silent, pursed whistle.)

"The first one was relatively simple. Each of these pieces is due to appear in the Tier Collection Charity Exhibition at the Met, just before Christmas." She pauses. "They're all owned by the same person, Batman. One Sebastian Tier."

It's familiar. A French entrepreneur. An old family. A large Edwardian hat: a white dress: a sapphire. Suddenly, the pieces begin to click into place.

"What about the second connection, Oracle?"

(Barbara looks down. Nightwing nods.)

"The odd thing is that every one of these pieces, apart from Philippa's Promise, has been stolen sometime during the last seventy years. I've got newspaper cuttings for some of them - scans in the download."

"But all the documentation is fine?"

"Absolutely perfect."

"How did Tier acquire them?"

"Oh, completely legitimately, according to the paperwork. He's been collecting them privately over the last fifty years." She pauses. "He must be quite an old man now."

(Nightwing muffles a snort of laughter, and Barbara frowns at him.)

"The proceeds from this exhibition are going to the charity he's been involved with for some years - the Tier Foundation. It provides assistance for street kids, scholarships, apprenticeships, that kind of thing. I've put the proposal in the download. It's not common knowledge yet."

"Where did the information come from?"

"Uh - I don't think you want to know."

Silence.

"Oracle, are you working with Nightwing on this one?"

(And this time Nightwing has to roll away from the wheelchair and the betraying microphone, stifling a wicked giggle.)

"No, Batman, I didn't get this from him. The prospectus is in the download. I pulled it from the CIA internal security commission files."

"The CIA are involved?"

"It's going to be a high profile exhibition. And after September - "

"Of course."

A moment of silence.

"Thanks."

Click.

(Barbara pushes back from her desk, and reaches for the Oracle-patented get-Nightwing -when-he's-out-of reach prodding stick, and hits the lithe vigilante sharply over the knuckles of one outstretched hand.

"You were a lot of help."

Nightwing rolls back to her feet, limpid blue eyes gazing soulfully up at her.

"O beautiful Babs, you did it perfectly. You can have my babies any day."

"Don't mess me around, Wingster. I know who your tail wags for."

She turns, and starts to roll to the door.

"But give me a few years. You owe me big time."

"Icky, turkey, Babsy..."

Barbara turns at the door and taps her stomach.

"There'd better be extra cheese on that pizza."

"I haven't forgotten."

"I know. Love you too, short arse." Then she looks at him. "I do hope you know what you're doing."

Nightwing reaches for the prodding stick, and taps the little grey and blue doll on Oracle's desk sharply.

"All's fair in love and war."

"Quite," Barbara says. "But which one is this?")

Oracle's download is, as usual, beautifully organised. I flick through it, checking the patterns of sale and purchase, registration, and that curious series of thefts. Nothing outstanding: Barbara's right. Checking out the prospectus for Tier's exhibition, I realise what a major event this is going to be. Any one of these jewels would attract a crowd. Tier, however, is planning on displaying his whole collection. Faberge, Tiffany: pieces from Madison Avenue and Bond Street, China and Moghul Afghanistan. Some jewellery box.

Some security. The CIA comments have a definite air of suppressed panic - 'Target'; 'Terrorist'; 'unforeseeable expense'. My guess is that they would rather Tier called the whole thing off - but he's well connected and evidently determined.

I know, now, the next clue. But, just at this moment, I don't want to put find out what comes next. I run another search: this time, I know what I'm looking for. It doesn't take long. Patricia Tier. Wife of Sebastian. Second wife of Sebastian. First marriage, to Peter Burger; two children, Elizabeth and James. Five grandchildren. A string of addresses she shares with her second husband: a beachfront house in Connecticut. An apartment in Paris. A mews cottage in London. A chateau in Sevigny. And a house on New York's Fifth Avenue. Investments - one of them knows what they're doing with money. They own shares in everything from Microsoft to Rive Gauche. Not too much in the papers, though. Clearly, they're a private couple.

Sitting back, I consider what I've learned. What is this, Dick? Where are you trying to take me? What was that visit to Washington all about? Did you just want to tell me where you've been? Point out that you're perfectly capable of taking care of yourself without me? I knew that. Show me a relationship between two men that works? Why? I've had an equal opportunities policy at Wayne Industries since the seventies. And you know it. Point out that I need Alfred and Tim and Barbara? Well, I knew that too. Even if - and maybe you have a point here, Dick - I don't admit it often enough.

Gazing at that blinking cursor, I wonder just where I'm going next.

Right at this moment, onto the practice mats with Tim. I'm distracted: he manages to throw me twice, and rises, grinning and triumphant, to tell a tray-bearing Alfred his victory.

"How did the call to Oracle go, Master Bruce?"

"Fine. She sent quite a lot of information."

Tim's bouncing. "Does that mean you've got the next clue? You didn't put it in without me, did you?"

"No."

"Go on, then!"

Alfred too is waiting, his head tilted expectantly. Oh damn it, why does this have to be so public? Didn't I teach you discretion, Dick?

Nine, four.

Sebastian Tier.

The screen clears. Dick again. Or Nightwing, I should say. Same desk. Same shadowed room. Same man, whose turned frame and steady posture sends a sharp sliver of recognition and desire through my body.

He's leaning back in his chair, and that's a definite grin.

"Hi there, Bruce. Batman. Thanks for making it this far."

He flattens his hands on the desk top, looks down.

"I appreciate it, believe me.

"I guess you're wondering what all this is about. All I can tell you, big guy, is that it isn't over yet." Dick tilts his head to one side, waits. I hear the sound of my own computer through the speakers, the distinctive ping that tells me when I send an e-mail.

"Well, I hope that works," mutters Dick, on the screen.

"You've just sent the message that wins you the contract." He picks up a bound sheaf of papers. "As I speak, this particular document has just been registered for delivery. It's a security contract, Bruce, for the Tier Collection Charity Exhibition. If you've got this far, I'm sure you'll know what that is."

He pauses.

"I'm not going to suggest that you cheated. I don't think you'd do that."

But there is a trace of doubt in his eyes. It's been three years. (' "Liar."')

"I know you wouldn't normally do this, Bruce. But, as I hope you've realised by now, these people are very important to me. It would be good if you could give this your personal attention."

Dick looks away from the screen. A minute.

"I'm not sure how to finish, big guy. Thanks? Apologies for the weird trip?" He pauses. "I found out two minutes ago that you've got this far. Where ever I am, I'm thinking of you."

"I'll be in touch. Just not yet."

And the screen goes blank. The CD stops. That's it.

Chapter 3

I fly to New York in the teeth of a winter storm that closes half the runways at the airport and forces the plane to struggle and flounder into the beating wind. La Guardia's not much better. We're two hours overdue and short on fuel, hopping down the runway as the pilot struggles with the iced steering gear. He has to coast into the loading bay, missing the passenger tunnel, leaving us to stumble down flimsy metal steps in the gathering dark. I shelter the woman who sat next to me on the plane with my body, and catch the bitter teeth of New York's wind-spun hail in my coat. It takes me two hours to clear internal security. Wayne billions or not, with the equipment I've brought with me, you could start a small war, and that's not the easiest thing to explain in New York at the moment. Despite all the documentation. In triplicate. And the CIA clearance.

Nevertheless, when I walk out into the passenger concourse with a fleet of baggage handlers behind me, someone is holding up a card with my name on it. And beside them, in a black cashmere coat and a Hermes scarf, with her hair immaculate under the harsh airport lights, Patricia.

Did she know, in Washington, that I would be coming here?

How much, what, has Dick told her?

She smiles. "Welcome to New York, Bruce. I'm sure you must be tired. We've got a couple of vans waiting for the baggage just outside - will you trust us to sort it out tonight?"

I read the reports. I know how efficient this woman can be.

"Of course. It's good to see you again." I bend, and kiss her proffered cheek: the dry, soft feel of her skin, the faintest scent of lavender.

Cushioned, warm luxury, a silent-engined drive through the street-lit spindrift. Patricia turns to face me.

"I'm going to offer my apologies for not introducing myself properly when we met in Washington." she says. "I'm not quite certain what Dick was doing, but he was most insistent that we shouldn't give you any clues as to who we were before the contract was sent." She smiles. "Your young man's a difficult character to resist, Bruce. I'm sure you must be proud of him."

Oh yes. Dick knows the way to push me into doing things, as well. Obscure clues. A security contract that I'd normally leave to the very efficient team Wayne Industries possesses. The smell of water and brick dust and skin - no.

And I blank that memory from my mind.

"Bruce? Are you all right?"

I've had my eyes closed.

"I'm just tired," I say. "It was a long flight."

"We're nearly home. Sebastian has been looking forward to meeting you."

I smile. "I don't think I'm quite up to a board meeting tonight."

"Oh, don't worry, we're just family tonight. Although, in all honesty, you could say that that's a board quorum in itself."

"You're quite sure" I try one more time. "that you're happy for me stay with you?"

"Bruce, we couldn't have it any other way. Why, to think of you in a hotel room when we've got seven bedrooms going spare? It would be ridiculous."

It's a big house. I knew that already, but it seems even bigger when the car drops us on the sidewalk and Patricia leads me up the steps, floodlight, with whirling gold-tinged snowflakes shielding the looming facade. The big double doors stand ajar, with more light streaming from the arched, art deco hall. A silent butler takes my coat and hat, while Patricia leaves her gloves on a marble hall table.

"Mr Tier is in the Library, my Lady."

"Allen -"

"Mr Tier is in the Library, Mrs Tier."

"Thanks, Allen. Can you bring us some tea? Bruce, did you eat on the plane?"

I wasn't hungry then. I'm not now. I'm...apprehensive.

"Yes," I say.

Then I say "No. But I'm not hungry."

I don't want to start off by lying to these people. Dick's friends. Even over something so small as a bowl of soup.

"Then come and meet Sebastian."

I'm not entirely certain that I want to.

But Batman has, surely, faced down larger dragons.

Patricia walks quickly to one of the doors. Even these ornate, internal frames are twice my height, the ceiling arching over my head above the curve of a staircase broad enough for any number of starlets. Wayne Manor is intimidating. This house practically shouts old money and power. I've been to my share of power soirees, business meetings in boardrooms stiff with dignity and dark leather. I've met more presidents than I care to remember or name in the Oval Office. But this house is formidable.

"Come on in."

I am Bruce Wayne.Isn't that enough?

I walk forward. Books. More books. A great panelled wall of books. A vast open fire, with a pair of armchairs that look as if generations of children curled up here waiting for stories. An old man, with a newspaper caught on his lap and spare flesh of his face fallen into soft slumber.

"Sebastian?"

Patricia's face eases as she leans to wake her sleeping husband.

"Sebastian - Bruce is here."

He wakes with a start, reaches for the glasses that have fallen onto the bridge of his nose, focuses.

"Oh, it's you, sweetheart. Safely home?"

"Dry and warm. I've brought Dick's Bruce with me."

He turns his face to me. Intelligence. A sharp, focused regard that assesses and accounts, a swift measure of my size and presence.

"Good evening," he says, and holds out his hand. "It's good to meet you at last."

I lie in this vast, unfamiliar bed and stare at the ceiling. Unfamiliar shadows haunt the corners of this big room, and my body is tense with barely appeased apprehension. I can't sleep. This is not my city. This is not my house. This is not my family. Hotels are easy, anonymous rooms with the same furniture and the same smell of soap and the same, obliging doormen: this is different. I hope Robin is managing. There's not much I can do if he isn't.

("Whhheeeeee!" shouts Robin, sliding down the rope with two muggers and a stray dog on the score sheet. There's no one around to inhibit his enthusiasm.)

I hope the JLA find nothing-inopportune off-planet.

( And Wonder Woman turns from the view across the silent moonscape and says to Black Canary:

"What's Batman up to these days?"

"Nightwing asks not to contact him unless it's essential."

"Nightwing? But isn't he - aren't they - are they - "

"Shhh. Don't disturb the children." Wonder Woman's eyes follow Dinah's to the corner of the viewing lounge, where Flash and Green Lantern are trying to demonstrate the properties of an irresistible force meeting an immovable object.

"Oh."

"I can only hope he mellows a little."

"Can you imagine?"

"Frankly, that young man's got more guts than I could muster.")

I re-run the evening's easy conversation, turning it in my head. They are both, Patricia and Sebastian, poised and cultured people, her crisp English counterpoint to his faint French accent in informed and fascinating conversation. Clearly, they are people of some influence, but neither of them name-drop nor hint with that infuriating self-aggrandisement that I meet so often in Gotham. No business, tonight. "We'll tackle that tomorrow. You can manage a meeting at ten, Bruce?" Yes.

I try to imagine my urchin, gypsy Dick in these surroundings and fail.

But of course, he'd had eleven years of Alfred's watchful care by the time he came here.

And then I remember what Patricia said to me as we left the library, and the memory of it warms my heart, and my skin, and I turn into sleep.

She looks at the great swoop of the staircase.

"I'll never forget the first time Dick slid down that banister," she says. "All the children were in the hall, ready to go skating. It was absolutely terrifying, we thought he was going to die."

She pauses. "The rotten brat. We had to put foam all across the hall. It was the hit of the summer. Every single child in this house could fly down that rail by Thanksgiving."

I have to laugh. "He did that at home, too. Alfred was horrified."

"I'll bet," says Patricia, and, to my astonishment, kisses me goodnight.

Shaving, I stare at my face in the mirror. It's not something I feel comfortable doing. This clear refection never seems to encompass who I am: these clear, unshadowed blue eyes, the arc of black hair perhaps a little too short for a business man. Nevertheless, there's a wary recognition.

And a promise, today.

Here, Dick, is my gift to you.

Whatever I have to do, to make this work, I will do it.

This is going to be the best, the tightest, the slickest security operation that New York has ever seen.

For you, this exhibition, safe.

For these two charming and intelligent people, your friends, an absolute security.

For the lost children that, I know now, you counselled and trained and took to the circus, the gift of financial security and unexpected love that the Foundation can provide.

I look at myself.

And then what, Bruce?

(And in Bludhaven, in a darkened apartment, Nightwing spreads one shaking hand on the mirror and shuts his eyes, in fear, in love, in a desperate and unassuaged need.

"I miss you, Bruce."

But the night is silent.)

"...And, before we start, I'm sure you'd like to join with me in thanking Mr. Wayne for favouring us with his personal attention. I'm sure you're aware that this isn't Mr. Wayne's usual practice. He leads a very busy life. But we've been very lucky in having had Bruce's ward, Richard Grayson, serving on our charitable Committee board over the last few years and I gather he pulled some strings."

Five pairs of eyes swivel to mine. They've been courteously ignoring my presence until I've been introduced. Sebastian, of course, seated at the head of the long, polished table with his hands steepled in front of him. To his left, a tall, dark, hawk-faced man in a startlingly white kofia. To his right, a small, spare, precise man with gold pince-nez. To my left, Patricia, of course. And to my right, Simon, almost unrecognisably formal in a beautifully cut grey suit.

"Yo, Bruce!" Simon says.

And meets his Grandmother's eyes.Again.

"Mr Wayne, I'd like to introduce you to my accountant, Mr. Wiseman. Jacob. And this is my own security advisor, Feisel Mahmet, with whom you'll be working to fulfil the security contract. And of course, you've met Patricia and my adopted grandson, Simon." He pauses.

"You may think Simon a little young to be on the board, but, I promise you, he can show unexpected flashes of maturity."

"Grandpa."

"Like now, Simon.

"We've all seen your proposal, Mr Wayne, and I'd like to congratulate you on a professional and comprehensive piece of work." Sebastian looks down at his schedule, a half smile lifting one side of his mouth. I'd bet a month of doing the washing up that he knows Dick wrote it.

"I think you need to see what we've got to deal with."

Proposals. Prospectuses. CIA recommendations. Government policing predictions. Metropolitan Museum policy; Metropolitan Museum budgets. Sebastian's budgets. Blueprints. Endless discussion. And this is just the start. We eat on the run, and talk into the afternoon. There's a lot to do, even with the arsenal that I threw together in Gotham. It's not easy to discuss ideas in committee, either.

As the light lessons outside the windows, Sebastian calls a halt. "I think that's enough for today," he says. "I'd like to show Bruce the gallery before we get any further."

It's a short walk to the Metropolitan, through newly fallen snow that's young enough to lie white on the sidewalk. Sebastian leads us down into the workrooms, and through an entrance guarded by plastic sheeting and keep out notices. We emerge into a small antechamber, dominated by a matt grey pillar with an internal display case.

"This is the case for the first piece, Bruce. We're going to put it just inside the Great Hall" He turns to Patricia. "Did you -"

She reaches into the pocket of her coat.

"I was a very efficient secretary, Sebastian."

There's a quick gleam of answering amusement in Sebastian's shrewd eyes before he holds out his hand. And into it Patricia drops the priceless sapphire, Philippa's Promise.

Oh good Lord, is this their idea of security?

Sebastian turns away, and in a moment the perfect sapphire is gleaming under the white light of internal halogen spotlights.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Sebastian says. "It's a family piece, of course. In fact, the only family piece here. Always goes to the oldest girl in the family.."

He shares a glance with Patricia. "Although Beth doesn't seem to be interested in anything other than that Suzuki of hers these days."

"It's a remarkable stone. Is the setting eighteenth century?"

It's Patricia who answers. "Yes. Although the stone itself is far older. In fact, in Sevigny, we have a portrait of the first Tier daughter to wear it. A beautiful girl. Her name was Mary, probably after the Queen. The French found Mary Queen of Scots' story unbearably tragic, you know."

"But they still didn't send her any troops."

This is clearly an old argument. Patricia sighs.

"I'd love to know who she was, you know. The first Philippa."

"Whoever she was," Sebastian says. "She was very much loved."

Sebastian and Patricia want people to be able to walk up to the jewelled necklace, to touch the glass. I want the case surrounded by infrared and ultrasonic beams.

This is going to be difficult.

In fact, this is going to be very difficult.

There are times when I wish I'd never pressed the Enter button for that CD.

There's an unbridgeable dichotomy between public access and security. The best you can do is reach a reasonable compromise. I'm not accustomed to compromising. I find it almost unbearably difficult, trying to work around Sebastian's inclusiveness and Feisal's taste for the personal over the electronic: The Metropolitan's instinctive, bureaucratic caution and the CIA's sheer officiousness. Bruce, of course, might work within certain guidelines, but largely they're guidelines I made myself: that studied casualness. Batman hasn't obeyed a rule in his life.

It's not easy.

This is for Dick.

I manage.

Heat cameras: infra-red cameras: cameras with their own power sources in shielded casing. ("What about the structural alterations?") Night audio alarms. ("You do realise we sometimes have...embarrassed gulp...mice?") Motion sensors. Panic buttons. You name it. And then there's the personal touch. The guards. And each of them individually picked, individually placed. ("Yes, I know he's away from the bench. But from there he can see that fire exit and the Tiger's Eye case.")

There are lighter moments. I catch Feisal and Jacob glaring at each other over a pro-Ben Gurion article in the Zionist Times.

"How do you manage?" I ask, curiosity rising over courtesy.

Feisal turns to look at Jacob.

"My son..."

"My daughter..."

"My son loves Sabbath prayers, the candles, the absolute devotion to Allah..."

"My daughter really enjoys Ramadan. She says it's like a month on retreat..."

"But the children"

"It's up to them."

And then the two men share a lightning quick, a slow, smile of complicity, say together:

"And at least they're not going to be Christian!"

At night, when I can't sleep, I read.

Simon shows me how to explode raw eggs in the microwave. Someone I know taught him that.

One night I come home late from the gallery. It's nearly finished. Four more days. Late enough for Allen to have left his post by the door, thank goodness: I dread that straight-faced courtesy, miss Alfred's irony, can't get used to living in someone else's house.

From the library door, ajar, I hear music. Gershwin.

It's not my house. But I check, just the same.

Candles. Firelight. In full evening dress, Sebastian and Patricia are waltzing, Patricia's head, eyes closed, tucked under Sebastian's chin. Sebastian's eyes rise, slowly, to mine.

I leave them.

This, then, is love.

Oh Dick, beloved, I hope this is what you wanted me to do.

( "He's working terribly hard. Do you think all these precautions are really necessary?"

"If Bruce thinks so, I'd go with the big guy. He knows what he's doing."

"He's a good man, Dick."

"I know.")

Two days to go. I've done all I can. It's time to consult in the experts.

I call Selina.

"Ohhh, Brucie!"

Oh God, the asinine woman.

I don't mean that. I'm tired.

Selina Kyle is a beautiful, intelligent woman with a fetish for kevlar weave and mild bondage.

I won't say that's inexplicable. I just wish she'd keep her hands off what isn't hers.

"Selina - I've got a problem I'd like you to work on. Is there any chance of you flying up to New York?"

On the videophone link, Selina pouts.

"I'm a bit..tied up at the moment, Brucie babes."

I lift one hand. Dangling from my finger, on a slender chain, is a small, silver, emerald-eyed cat. Parisian. Early twentieth century.

Selina, neatly, quickly, licks her lips.

"But I'm sure I can make time for you. When's the flight?"

I go to the airport to pick her up. She's an elegant woman, tall: I see heads turn in appreciation as we head towards the limousine. Cushioned in that warm leather, I hand her the brochure, and wait.

It's doctored, of course. The page showing the Tiger's Eye is missing. Bribery is one thing - stupidity quite another.

"Ohhhh...Spectacular."

She lays the brochure down.

"Going into the business, Bruce?"

"Boot's on the other paw, Selina."

I hand her the security notes, with their emblazoned Wayne Industries Security Division logo. Selina's no fool - she'd have done her homework.

It takes her longer, this time: a professional's interest.

"What's the catch?"

"I need your help."

She taps her finger on the notes, as we draw up outside the steps to the Met.

"You want me to break the system?"

"If you can."

"How long have I got?"

I check my watch.

"Five hours. I'll leave you the notes. No one on the staff knows who you are."

"And do I get to keep a souvenir?"

"Sorry, Selina, all the jewels are fakes. The real ones won't go on display until the Gala Opening. But you do get the silver cat - and a ticket to the show. I've booked you into the Grand."

"Oh what a shame. I didn't pack a dress."

I lay my AMEX card down on the seat.

The things I do for love.

There's a small room in the basement where we've set up all the security feeds. Space enough for a couple of watchful guards, a table for working on. Feisal and I've spent a lot of time here over the last couple of weeks. I sit down, pull up the latest transmission from Lucius, and keep a wary eye on the monitors. It doesn't take long. The barest flicker on the lit masterboard, as Selina tests the connections. And again.

These guys are good. One of them murmurs to the other, pointing out the flickering light: as it steadies, they trace the lead and swop cameras.

There's no one there.

But that doesn't stop Scott sending out a general alert.

Nothing for an hour or so.

Then another flicker. Scott's on it right away. And he sends out the information before turning to me.

"Sir - ?"

"It's probably nothing." I say, engrossed in the Wall Street Journal.

Finally, a flicker on the monitor. She must have chanced that camera.

Red alert.

"Red alert." Scott taps the mike. "Uh - suspected costumed intruder by camera 34A, that's the Roman and Greek Gallery humidity system. Acknowledge, please."

"Can't see anything, Scott."

"Keep looking, Truman, we got a definite sighting here."

Then nothing.

Lights. Scott flips a switch - scratching from the mike.

"We've got a location, guys - noises from the shaft just over the Kouros. That's you, George and Truman. Everyone else stay in position, please - could be a decoy here."

"On my way."

"Can't see anything, Scott: heat sensor's not picking up any presence."

"Suspect decoy, then. You hear that, on the floor?"

"Gotcha, Scott."

"Yep."

Tense silence. Scott looks at me. I think he's guessed now: If this was for real, I'd have said something by now. James is switching the monitors to concentrate on the great hall and the individual, shrouded cases. I could have told them to look up. But I don't.

"Chad in. Heat sensor's picking up motion on the upper gallery, Scott."

"Not a lost tourist? Check it out. Tsieng, can you cover?"

"Hai, man."

Silence.

Silence.

"Chad?"

"Do you copy, Chad, over?"

Silence.

"Anyone see anything?"

"Went into the Gallery, Scott: lost sight of him from here. Tsieng."

"We have a man down, people. Repeat, man down: Helen, can you inform museum staff and get them to start the -"

I hit the over-ride, shake my head.

"Cancel that, Helen. Let's see if we can sort it out first. Great Hall staff, can you assume emergency positions?"

"We're on it, Scott. Martin here."

"Nats?"

"We're OK here."

James is already picking up from the upper gallery cameras. She left Chad right out in the open, wrapped up neat and tight.

"Guys, Chad is AOK but out of it for now. Give me some feedback, people."

"Heat camera's just picking up way too many traces, Scott."

"That's the way it's gone be when this baby opens. Focus on anything unusual, anything fast moving."

Private line.

"Scott, shouldn't I start the external emergency measures? Mr Wayne -"

"Leave it, Helen. I'll explain later."

"I'm picking up something moving fast. Martin."

"Where?"

"Hang on...Shit, it can't do that! Jamie, Angelo, it's over case 7. Look up"

"Jamie. I'm moving in."

"Angelo. I see something moving - costumed intruder overhead. Back up. Back-"

"Mart-"

"I'm on it, Scott. We've got her covered. Shall I stun her?"

Scott looks at me. I take the mike.

"Bruce Wayne. Good work, people, congratulations: this was a drill exercise. Repeat, this was a drill exercise. Please stand down and return to stations. Martin, if you could introduce yourself to the lady...Be nice, she bites. Tsieng, you'll find Chad nicely wrapped in the upper gallery: the lady did no damage."

"Cool, Mr. Wayne. I'm on it, Tsieng."

"You had us worried there for a bit. Helen."

"Like I said, good work guys, you did well. We'll have a de-briefing at oh-seven hundred hours tomorrow morning for the day staff: oh-seven-fifty for you night shift. Everyone ok with that?"

"Sure thing, Mr Wayne."

"Absolutely."

"Uh...Mr Wayne? What should I do with the lady?"

"Can you bring her up to control, Martin?"

"I don't think I can do that."

"Don't tell me - she's got you? Just pass her the mike, Martin."

"I'm a bit tied..."

"Hello, Brucie babes...I gather I failed?"

"You're stunned, Catwoman. But that was good work. You nearly got it."

"Blast. I suppose that means I've got to let the hostage go?"

"Nice kitty. Get someone to bring you up to control and I'll take you to dinner."

"I'll take a rain-check on that, Bruce. This girl's going shopping."

I pick her up a couple of hours later, off Madison. It was a good idea to take the limo: Selina looked like she'd been doing her Christmas shopping.

"You certainly know how to treat a lady."

"Thanks, Selina. I appreciate what you did."

"Well, it was rather nice to know that the big bad bat wasn't going to be coming after me. Although..." She smiles. "We've had our moments, haven't we?"

"We've had our moments, Selina."

"Oh, don't get your ears in a twist. I wouldn't want you full time. You're just not - furry - enough."

I have to smile.

"There's only one problem."

"What?"

"Bruce..this exhibition's quite important to you. We don't usually see the great Wayne Billionaire setting up the security. I mean, don't you prefer coming in at the end to save the day? Isn't all this preparation kind of...missing the point?"

"And?"

"Well...you managed to catch this little kitty-cat. Even if I wasn't really trying that hard. But what about those masked terrorist types you love flinging about the room? Just how many are you expecting, this time?"

I don't know. I wish I did.

"We ran through those drills a couple of days ago. This was back-up."

"Oh."

"You're the best in the business, Selina. Why else would I call you?"

"You do say the sweetest things."

"Always. But, Selina-"

"Mmm?"

"No unauthorised attempts, please."

"But you're all Bruce here, aren't you? It just wouldn't be any fun."

She's right.

I can't remember the last time I've been Bruce for so long.

It feels...odd.

("You packed, Babs?"

"Of course."

"BC sorted?"

"Don't worry about me, Wingster. I just want to be there when Bats finds out you've handed over his patrol to Helena.")

Evening. Light blazing in the Great Hall, glinting from metalwork and diamonds, sleek cars and signet rings. New York's great and good. Handshakes. Canapes. And the nagging radio link in my ear.

Selina sashes towards me in a gown so low-cut it must be cantilevered, her breasts trembling with every breath.

"Brucie..Such a pleasure. Thank you."

She reaches up to kiss my cheek.

"And who are your friends? Do introduce me."

Beside me, Simon chokes on his drink.

"This is Simon Tier.."

Simon's gaze falls to Selena's neckline. He swallows, and drops his radio link.

We both reach to the floor, colliding.

Simon's glass tips over my hand.

Selena laughs. "How lovely. Such beautiful men at my feet."

"And such a lovely guest. Bruce, can you introduce me?"

I dust myself off. Johnny dusts Simon off.

"Selina, this is our host, Sebastian Tier. Sebastian, Selina Kyle."

"Ahhh," Sebastian says, kissing her hand. "Not only beautiful but talented too."

Selina purrs, sweeps her lashes down. "Why, Mr Tier, Bruce didn't mention that I had such a..distinguished...host."

"Nor that he had such...interesting...acquaintances. I must introduce you to my wife."

("Robin?"

"All set, Nightwing")

I check with Scott. For the third time. My thumbs are pricking. And the hairs on the back of my neck are standing up.

("Oracle?"

"Tapped in, Wingster.")

"Mr Wayne?"

"Yes?"

Chain store suit. Anonymous glasses. Packing.

"I wonder if you could spare us a minute?"

Muscles.

"Someone..important ..would like to say hello."

I look up. I knew, of course, when he arrived: a little overdue. We'd wondered if that late debate would hold him up.

But this isn't a President given to missing social functions.

"Al."

"Good to see you, Bruce."

In all honesty, I'm not entirely sure that I approve of democracy.

I check with Scott again.

("Simon?"

"Yeah, done. Where are you, Dick? You're missing all the fun."

"I'm...having a different kind of fun, wheelster. ")

Sebastian, with Patricia by his side, moves to the low column that displays, in breathtaking hued and faceted light, Philippa's Promise.

The lights dim.

"Ladies and Gentlemen.."

I won't be missed.

It feels like stretching into my own skin.

I start a patrol around the outer galleries. It's so big, this place: the guards and cameras can't cover every angle. Blueprints unroll in my mind as I cover the Greek and Roman galleries, the Egyptian rooms. There are unavoidable weaknesses in security, but I know where they are.

The empty space of the quiet museum wraps itself around my cape.

My footfall is silent.

In my ear the radio-link sounds a constant, low ripple of efficient communication. They're good. They should be.

I catch the winking led light of a single camera, slide and duck.

The European art collection.

("He's by the Canneletto. Picking up anything, Oracle?"

"Nothing. We might be lucky."

Oracle looks up from the monitor, stretches.

"Remind me to come back someday. When I'm not waiting for World War Three to break out.")

The Chinese galleries.

("Nightwing! I've got intruders!"

"Where are you, Robin?"

"Above the maintenance door to the South West wing. I've got seven - no, eight men. Blacked up. Carry case. They're wiring the door."

"Can you give us visual?"

"Sure thing."

"Got you on camera, Robin."

"Shall I follow them in?"

"If it's safe. Remember, don't get yourself seen."

"Doing my best, Wing. But I don't -"

"Just don't dive in unless you absolutely have to. This is Bruce's show.")

The Mogul ceramics.

("They're got patches for the cameras."

"Oracle?"

"He's right, Wingster. I've got nothing on the security feeds at all."

"What about the door?"

"It's a scheduled job. That Scott's already acknowledged it."

"Good timing. Well planned.")

The Armenian fabrics. My skin tightens.

("They're heading for the Islamic galleries, Nightwing. Do you want me to follow?"

"Don't get yourself trapped. Is there any way you can circle round?"

"Hang on, I'm just pulling up the plans. Yeah, there's a back way in."

"Make it so, Robin.")

The Islamic collection.

In my ear, Scott's voice.

"We've had a couple of blips on connections in the South West wing. Nats and Chad, can you cover?"

"Sure thing, Boss. We're on our way."

"Give me two minute reports, just in case."

"Acknowledged."

Tension crawls down my spine.

No one is going to harm this exhibition while it's in my care. No thefts. And no disturbances. Even if there are.

Something at the end of the room gleams. I leap for the tops of the long cases bracketing the gallery, crawl forward.

("They're lifting a text, Wing. That's what the carry case was for."

" Odd choice. Oracle picked up Scott with an alert for cable connections. You're going to get official company in five minutes. And, speaking of company-"

"Batman?"

"ETA one minute thirty, Robin. He's come through the main entrance, moving slowly along the south wall. My guess is he's on top of the cases."

"OK, Nightwing. I'm going to keep my head down now. Robin out."

"Youngster did keep the audio feed on, Babs?"

"I've got it on the mike.")

Freezecheck. Eight men, silent, efficient, guarded. And leap, feeling the welcome brace of unfurling cape, one Batarang sent, second spinning into the moving darkness. Boots on the floor, and spin: my foot connects chin exactly where I expected. That's one definite. As I turn, two on my left: startled eyes, one starts to raise his hands. A backhanded slice hits him in the belly and he doubles up: a swift right-handed chop to the second head and he's out for the count. Infrared shows five others: One down, one falling: one already turning to run with a case in his hands: two oddly braced and turning towards me.

The short angles of a machine gun.

I dive, rolling

. .. as the gun lowers..

Rebound from the case

. ..aims..

And flip forward..

( *TAT* *TA-*)

Knocking the muzzle up with one hand as I sweep his legs under-

(*TAT* *TAT TATATA* )

Using the weight of turning to crack his head off the plinth. Roll towards the second -

( *TATATATATA* )

And curve as I rise -

( *TATATA-*)

To smash my fist into his jaw. He starts to sink to the floor, but I'm already gone. Number eight's got a ten yard start. It's not-

( *crack...thud*)

-enough. I dive for his legs, bring him down in a swirl of cape and swinging case, feel something crack off my raised forearm, hit down, feel bone splinter.

(*owwff*)

Find and press that point on the artery. He goes limp. I sit back on my heels, check the carry case. And look at this sprawled group of thieves. Infrared's not good for skin colour. But the eyes have it. I reach for Number eight's wrist, roll back his sleeve. And then check the rest, just to be sure.

The raised tattoo of a Chinese Triad I don't recognise.

I turn and run back towards the Great Hall. Fast.

("Cool!"

"OK, Robin?"

"All eight down, Wing. Talk about faster than a speeding bullet."

Nightwing laughs. "He found something, though. I'm just checking. Oracle, have you got this on visual?"

"Looks like a Triad tattoo, Robin. Recently done, too. I'm just running it through the database."

Oracle's voice comes back through the link, puzzled. "That's no symbol any of my records match. Can you see anything else, Robin? Any thing distinctive?"

"Well..The bad guys are all Chinese. Hang on - that's odd. This clothing label's in Arabic."

"What exactly were they after?"

"The Jadeite Koran. But - "

"That's what he saw. Robin, get back here as quick as you can.")

Radio link.

"-Nats. Islamic Gallery. Scott, we've found eight intruders. Looks like someone got here before us, though. They're trussed tight."

I didn't do that.

"Anything missing, Nats?"

I'm stripping cape and cowl as I run.

"The Jadeite Koran's out of its case, but here. Other pieces disturbed."

Run a quick assessment.

"Helen, can you call-"

I hit the override.

"Wayne here. Don't make that call unless you get my explicit permission, Helen. I want a complete blackout on this one. Scott, people, we have a red alert. Maximum security. This is not a drill. I repeat: this is not a drill. I'm heading to control, ETA four minutes. Feisal, I need you there."

"On my way, Bruce. What's the problem?"

"I'll tell you in control." I flick frequencies. "But get the President out of here."

I reach my stashed Tuxedo.

"Full evacuation?"

"No."

If I'm right, there's a chance that none of us will make it. Running or not.

I need backup.

I call Oracle.

"Oracle, Batman. I need your help."

"She's away, Batman. It's BC here. Can I help?"

No.

"BC, I need her now."

"I'll patch you through."

Two minutes to get to control. I'm running.

(Nightwing slams a fist down on the desk.

"This isn't supposed to happen."

Oracle's making connections with frantic haste.

"What did you expect? Isn't this the story of your lives?")

Finally, I get Barbara's real voice on the link. She sounds strained.

"Oracle here, Batman."

"Oracle, I'm in the Met. Ras al'Ghul is going to launch an attack, probably aerial. We've got five hundred people here, including the President. Can you get onto La Guardia flight control? Do we have incoming?"

"I'm on it. Stay with me a second."

Running.

"Radar shows one large unidentified object just entering the New York no-fly zone. Flight controllers on to it."

I reach the control room, hold a hand up for silence.

"What's happening?"

"Attempting to communicate. No reply."

"Any ID?"

"Shielded. Batman, someone just hit the panic buttons."

Damn.

"How long have we got?"

"They're scrambling the F16's now. I estimate sixteen minutes."

Could be worse.

"Can you patch into the internal communication system here?"

"I've done it."

"I want that radar on our screens."

"Two seconds...you're on."

One of the screens flickers, blacks out. Then the familar radar green appears.

I turn to Feisel. "Ras al'Ghul. Attacking from the air. He's got men disguised as Chinese Tong. USAF scrambled - unless we can get them out of building, fast, there's going to be an international incident that looks like - "

"That looks like a plane hit us." Feisel's steady eyes meet mine.

Scott's on the mike already. Thank goodness I drilled for this. All around the building, men and women are running to their posts, arming, exchanging terse, expectant looks.

Radar gives us two minutes.

"James, I want the roof cameras."

"Done."

Flicking screens. We wait.

Then, movement: the muffled, flickering lights of an airship.

(Puzzled, Siman taps Selina on the shoulder.

"Ms Kyle? My friend Richard Greyson is asking to speak to you."

He holds out a cell phone.

Listening, Selina pales. Then she runs towards the rest room, knocking against a tall, faintly balding man who stares after her in startled recognition.)

Feisel looks at me. " You drilled us unmercifully." He says. " You don't need to be here."

I'm gone.

(Robin and Nightwing are sliding across the leaded roofs.

"I was hoping this would be fun." Robin says gleefully.

" Youngster - "

"I know. Hey, Wingster, are we here yet? I mean, really here?"

"If we have to be.")

I wish telephone boxes worked for me.

Oracle patches visual in. I'm running. The airship slows: I see ropes brushing across the gables. Black figures wait, packed into the giant basket.

"Oracle, there's going to be casualties."

"I've contacted the clean-up teams, Batman. Help's on it's way."

Last staircase.

"I want the frequency that airship transmits on. We need to imitate communication."

Small arms fire.

"I get you. Legitimate, lost their com sys?" She pauses. "You've got thirteen minutes."

It's got to be enough. They're coming down fast. At least a hundred goons, Maybe two: I can't see how many are in the airship.

My security people hold their ground.

One man falls.

Then one hits the ground running.

Two. Three. Ten. I'm there. The white eyes of a frightened man: the rush of my closed fist ramming his throat. The curve of cape as I spin, throw: kick and feel flesh. Martin struggling with two thick-set goons; the swift, efficient karate chops Nats delivers with ruthless speed. Airship lowering, men clustering like bees on the swaying ropes: Chad running and firing, firing again, his face set. An intricate dance of thrust, parry, run, using the roof angles and tricks of light: no time to duck, just turn my head and hope the shielding holds. Spin. Catch the glimmer of someone fighting with savage grace: no time, dive, catching a row of grim-faced men with a cast grapple: swing and let go. Forward, Tsieng on my left now, firing with one hand as he launches himself against a man twice his size-

( Crack - Robin's back-hand slash to the bridge of someone's nose: turn, guard and hit out - )

Take a second, turning, to assess: desperate fighting across the roofs, a ragged circle of twisting combat spreading from an ant heap of tumbling, running -

"Oracle"

"Ten minutes."

Push forward. Tsieng panting, punch and curve, using weighted cape to smash half-seen figures from the roof line as I leap: Batarang spinning into the crowded darkness: watch Jamie fall, limp and Nats rush to take his place. Kick, parry: smash -

(Nightwing fighting on the far side of the airship, upraised hand frozen for a second as he throws and ducks: forward: a cutting shape of dark-edged violence-)

Feel bone splinter under my boot: someone falters, breaks back, but there's five more coming forward- smash, thrust and counter: one second to check:

"Oracle"

"Eight. I've got you a countdown."

Led numbers I don't really want to watch.

Circle closing. Shout, now, a raw scream of desperate encouragement, Chad falling beside me, forward, must drive them -

*Seven*

(Robin flinging insults and stun pellets, one quick check on the dark, caped figure moving with liquid speed.-)

Forward - and someone in front of me breaks and turns back, and another, the circle collapsing inward, Martin shouting as he runs forward-

Radio link.

"Oracle, they broke. Can you-?"

*Six*

"Transmission?"

"Now. And I need radar."

Some still blindly fighting: knock one out with the feet of the man I've just caught by the hair, heft and throw.

This is taking too long.

Snap kick, still forward, and now I can see the shouting, manic figure of Ras al'Ghul himself, beating at his retreating soldiers-

Radiolink, Oracle patching: "-day, Mayday, this is the Airship R102 we have lost all power communication patchy drifting in no-fly zone repeat Mayday Ma-"

"This is USAF Air Command calling Airship R102 Acknowledge"

*Five*

"Thank God - this is Airship R102. Mayday, repeat Mayday -"

"Load the emergency zone identification codes, Airship R102, we have an security situation here."

- race forwards, this chance, forcing my way through -

"Loading. Can you hel-"

- Ras al'Ghul sees me coming, turns, reaches for a rope.

"Still awaiting confirmation, R102, can you repeat download?"

Starts climbing. I push through the black-clad retreating -

He gains the basket. I'm within reach: blocked by a row of organised defenders -

*Four*

I hear the crackling in my ear as Ras al'Ghul realises what Oracle is doing, tries to block her override of his transmission. The airship's drifting, men clambering onto the ropes, stumbling, panicked -

"R102, we have a real problem with those codes - your communication's cracking up. Please repeat download, repeat, R102, repeat download."

I see the airship shiver, power up, start to move. Punch, slash, tumble and flip to-

"We're doing the best we can -"

"Hurry."

Appearing on the edge of the radar visual I see the fatal green stars of six F16s. Time slows.

*Three.*

They're cutting the ropes on the basket, men starting to tumble from the tilting sides, screaming

("What's he do-"

"Come on!")

I leap for a ladder as it rises, glance down. (Red, green, impossibility.) Look up, start climbing. Movement above. If they start shooting-

If the F16's, speeding green dots on the screen -

If I can't reach Ras al'Ghul, at least get a visual they can download from my systems, prove it was him and not the Chinese -

*Two*

(Nightwing tastes blood.)

"R102, you have clearance. "

Thanks.

Whoever.

"Repeat, you have clearance. We're going to send someone to escort you in."

"Thanks, Control, Appre -"

Oracle crackles out of the transmission, keeps a block on Ras al'Ghul.

Whose distorted face appears above the ladder, screaming rage and disappointment.

I can just hear him.

"Take this, Detective!"

His arm goes back: he throws.

A small, black, spherical object.

I have no idea what it is.

But I don't want to find out.

The disc spins past me, turning in the slipstream.

I reach out. But I don't have a hope in hell.

It falls.

I look down.

Beneath me, the roof of the Met gleams: I can see the lights in Central Park, the blaze from the great hall were five hundred guests cluster and chat.

My cape has reinforced, shock-resistant kevlar patterning. My suit's even more protective. It's withstood explosions that have levelled buildings.

But what about implosions?

I let go and dive. Displaced air whistles, accelerating, past my ears. I arrow my body into the darkness, stretching: there, just in front of my fingertips..

Got it.

Air screams past my ears.

I curl round, clasping it to my belly. Back to the ground, my cape sweeps up to enclose us.

Falling.

There's nothing to be done.

I shut my eyes.

Still falling.

It wasn't meant to be like this.

(Nightwing, watching, tastes blood and, for the first time, black fear)

The air is forced out of my body in a rush that tears my lungs.

My back feels like I've skidded down a ladder.

And I'm freezing. I open my eyes. Fairy lights dance crazily in the wind.

I look down.

Damp seeps into my suit as I unclasp my hands. Whatever it was, water seems to have shorted the electronic fuse.

I hear voices in my ear.

"Hey, wasn't that - "

"No, it couldn't have been."

Then Feisel's deep voice. "My people, my children, you awe me. That was magnificent."

"Who was -"

"You saw nothing, people. Repeat, nothing. " Feisel pauses. "Only one of the bravest man I've ever met."

I'm still alive. Lying in the fishpond in the Metropolitan roof garden.

(Catwoman parries and ducks Talia's sweeping backhand.

"You bitch!" Talia screams. "You're cat litter!"

"I might be cat litter, beautiful, but you're dead meat." Catwoman makes a quick snatch for the Jadeite Koran Talia carries in one hand.

"My Father's!" hisses Talia, breaking and running towards the exit.

Sighing, Catwoman reaches for the braided handle of the whip she carried under her evening dress. And stops.)

Walking, slowly, back towards control, I hear the lowering buzz of a helicopter. Look up - news crew? USAF? And then I hear the running, patterned steps of two skirmishers, a member of Ras al'Ghul's troops valuable enough to rescue.

Ah, Talia.

Well, I'm not standing in her way.

Unfortunately she's looking at the tall figure of Catwoman, brandishing that rather effective piece of black leather whipcord.

And she cannons into me backwards.

Turns round, drops the Koran.

And plasters her body against mine. Hope whatever she's wearing (not very much of it) is waterproof.

Catwoman flicks the Koran out of reach, collects it, raises a derisive eyebrow and retreats.

I 've pond weed in my boots. I'm just not up for this.

Talia - I think the usual adjective is 'melts'.

Raises her lips to mine.

And registers my disinterest.

Shock makes her recoil several inches, useful, as it's then she sees the tail end of the rope that's been brushing my shoulder.

Great pleading eyes. "Lover-"

I bend down, and lift her up onto the rope. At least she holds on, her eyes wide on mine. Whatever she sees, she doesn't like it.

"You bastard. You betrayer."

Venom. Perhaps this wasn't -

And, rising, Talia reaches into her jacket. Arches back, throws. Something small, black, round, sailing accurately towards the Great Hall and five hundred unsuspecting guests.

Oh, God, not again.

I hit the ground running.

A slight curl of smoke.

Could be anything.

But I'll bet it's not pleasant.

It arches bounces once.

Stretch.

Bounces again.

Faster.

Rattles.

Faster.

Rolls to a halt against the shoe of a solitary guest.

I dive. Nearly within reach.

He bends down.

My chin cracks off the floor: I'm stretching. Faster.

He picks it up.

I slide into his legs. Keep my head down. Tense my shoulders.

This weighted silence.

Again.

Something rattles by my ear.

"Did you drop something?"

One infinitesimally smaller black object.

I look up. Long line of trousers, broad shoulders.

Mild gaze.

Glasses.

Cowlick.

I hate it when he does that.

("Oracle. Did you see that?"

"No. I've been a bit busy."

"Call him now.")

"Batman?"

"Oracle."

"Lost you for a minute or two there."

"Did you get the visual download?"

"Ras al'Ghul and sky? I've just seen it."

"I need an edited tape. Just in case."

" Done. What happened?"

"--- - - -"

(*Why bother asking.*)

("Wingster?"

"What happened?"

"You ask him."

"So I can ask him, then."

"Don't take it out on me, Nightwing. I just saved your lycra-clad butt.")

Sebastian offers me a glass of brandy, Tokay, gleaming amber in crystal.

"That was good work, tonight," he says.

"Yes."

"I gather we had some unexpected visitors."

"Nothing the team couldn't handle."

Thank goodness.

"And some expert assistance?" Sebastian's eyebrows arch over his brandy glass.

I look at him.

He looks at me.

"It's not what Dick said, Bruce Wayne." Sebastian says. "But rather what he didn't say."

"And, meeting you..." Patricia.

I glance between them, stand up.

Look into the fire.

"What I really want to know." I say. "Is just exactly how you managed a fifty-year trail of authenticated documentation?"

Sebastian shouts with laughter, his bass mixing with Patricia's delighted peel and clap of appreciation.

"Young man," he says. "It takes fifty years."

"I did mention," Patricia adds. "That I was, once, a very efficient secretary."

I smile at them both, raise a glass in silent salute.

"There was a time-" says Sebastian

"I never agreed."

"When we thought you hadn't guessed. It was slightly worrying, as I've a note for you burning a hole in my pocket for the last two weeks. I've had instructions."

Sebastian smiles.

Oh no.

Oh yes. That's Dick's handwriting on the envelope.

I slip it into my pocket unopened.

Why do I feel like I'm carrying an unexploded bomb?

Chapter 4.

(*SKRITCH*

*SKRITCH*

"Stop doing that, you're annoying me."

Silence.

*SKRITCH*

"Oh for goodness sake, Richard Greyson, get your arse out of here and over there."

"But it's not in the plot."

Babs turns her exasperated green eyes onto the supine, restless figure of the vigilante.

"Nightwing, we may have stopped World War Three today. Don't you think that you and Bruce are entitled to a little R & R ?")

I'm tired.

My hand itches.

I pull my sleeve up and check. There's a red, raised rash on my forearm.

It's an odd circumstance, but I've only ever found one thing I'm allergic to. Apart from guns, of course. And white greasepaint. I found out when Tim started experimenting with tracer chemicals: binding mildly radioactive isotopes to sweat molecules, creating a temporary traceable signal. With the trace suspended in liquid, all you need to do is find some means of getting your target wet.

(- Simon's glass tips over my hand. -)

Maybe I had more back up tonight than I thought.

I reach for the taps.

Stop.

(Nightwing drops lightly onto the windowsill, tests the glass.)

He's come.

(Pulls gently at the unalarmed handle.)

I'm asleep.

(Steps lightly into the room. Bruce is breathing lightly and evenly. "Walk like black cat, Dick." Nightwing admonishes himself.)

I roll a little, in my sleep.

(Bruce rolls over in his sleep, allowing the sheet to fall back from his chest. One arm is flung out, moonlight sliding along the defined muscles. Nightwing's throat goes dry.)

He stops. My heart sinks. Then I hear the dry rustle of grey and blue kevlar weave.

("I can't believe I'm doing this.")

I can hardly believe he's here. Or that I'm here. Maybe this isn't really happening.

("Nothing's wrong." Nightwing thinks, fiercely, at Bruce as he lowers himself onto the bed. "It's just a breeze from the window.")

I can feel the warmth of his body.

(Nightwing inches up the bed, tucks himself as close as is possible to Bruce's elegant, muscular body without touching skin to skin.)

I must remember to breath.

(Gently, gently, lowers his head onto Bruce's arm.)

Yes. Oh yes.

(Closes his eyes. Reminds himself to wake early, very early.)

In my sleep, I shift a little, the restless movement of a dreamer.

(Bruce twitches.)

And rolls again, moving one lazy hand from the bed sheet onto the long, rounded line of Dick's thighs, the soft depression of buttock and the curved bone of his hip. Follow the tense, woven muscles braiding his rib cage: the rising curve of his breast, feel smooth skin under the sparse strong hairs. Slide round the indented, firm cushion of muscle over his shoulder blade. Bury my hand in the spreading black silk of his loosened ponytail. Hold.

( ! )

Here. Mine. His. I sleep.

(Bruce.)

Chapter 5.

I open the envelope on the plane. No note. One ticket. I turn it over in my hands. One ticket to the Gotham U Alumni Winter Ball. No writing.

At exorbitant cost, I notice.

I tap the invitation against the table. At the end of the plane, Jonathon stirs and subsides. Is this my prize? Is this another challenge? I've stepped in too far now. Of course I'm going to go.

The girls on the door are dressed as clowns. It's not a good start. Although it's winter, the Ball Committee has chosen to hold this annual event out of doors, in the grounds of the university. Between trees, the white spikes of floodlit marquees reflect, faded, the bright lights of funfair amusements hired for the occasion. Most people seem to have gone for some form of fancy dress, an eclectic mixture of colour, sequins, feathers, lycra. And most of them seem to be young.

I never went to university. I had other things to do. This youthful pleasure seeking feels antithetical to who I am, this sheer tuxedo a silent statement of restraint. And resentment.

Someone whirls around my feet on roller-skates, a tray of dangling candyfloss lurid under the lights. A girl looks at me and laughs to herself, her eyes blind with the indiscriminate pleasure of this year's favourite recreational drug. I move away, forward into the shifting crowd of guests: through the stalls and side-shows, the fortune-teller and the henna tattooist. Faces blur in and out of the crowds: a masked face, an eighteenth century balldress that could have come from Versailles. A wirey, dark skinned man with a snake. A tall man in a tunic emblazoned with an archaic, familiar symbol. A woman in pearls.

(White. Falling.)

The sudden explosion of a Chinese dragon wheeling across the grass. Underfoot, paper, discarded plastic glasses. I'm late, the pace of crowd and music frenetic and driven, a beat that reaches under the skin and sends blood speeding conscious around my body. I see the whirling vivid colours of a carousel, hear the scream of a frightened girl from the darkness and the murmur of lovers in the crowd. Smell fireworks, stale alcohol, fog and dry ice curling up from the ground. I'm no longer certain what I'm doing here.

Then I see the sudden, clear curve of a dark head I recognise., glimpsed through the whirling feathers of a costumed dancer. I move forward, disentangle myself from the clutching hands of a slight boy with long tangled auburn hair. The smell of sex. A group of students in jeans, drifting in the shadows: I push my way forward, into open space. Lost him.

A couple in Elizabethan dress dance slowly past, a stream of dark highlighted hair mingled with white gold, his clear blue gaze bent to her brown eyes. She moves lightly under the shadow of his arm, and around her neck she wears, surely, a replica of Philippa's Promise.

Disorientated, I search the darkness. And in the shadows of the bonfire, see again the limber grace of that athlete's body. Walk forward again into the flickering light, catching the turn of shoulder and hair as he leaves. Follow blindly, back past the carousel and the palmist's caravan, turn to catch the echo of his laughter as he bends to speak to someone in one of the teller's cages.

And find myself standing outside the Hall of Mirrors. Of course.

Darkness. Silence. And then the low flicker of neon lights sparking to life. At the end of the passageway, framed in mirrors that send reflected lights arching across this damp and empty space, Dick leans against the rails. He's waiting for me.

( - "But which one is this?" - )

I walk forward.

Faintly, the smell of lilacs.

Dick turns his head, light curving down the line of his cheek bone.

"Bruce."

I reach out my hand.

And Dick explodes into movement, the sweep of his leg catching me in my stomach and as I start to crumple, his hand smashes up under my chin, my head hitting the mirror, splintering fragments of glass. His body is hard against mine, his cheek pressed to mine against the silver backing: I smell blood. My hands uncurl and fall, empty. We breathe.

"So what did you think, Bruce? Was that...good enough for you?"

The muscles of my jaw are stiff, my eyes closed.

"Tell me, Bruce, what was it like, reliving that strange journey? Child to man, son to lover? Did you understand?"

"Yes." I say. The smell of pages turned in a fear ridden night, the drive to justice. The thrills of adolescence, the drive to be the best. The struggle to adapt and survive in an alien environment, the fear of an unfolding sexuality shrouded in ignorance. The long battle to create and sustain belief and compassion, to believe in love. A man building, separate, on a strange and driven childhood.

"Yes," I say.

Dick draws a deep breath, reaches out and takes my hands, holds them stretched out palm to palm against the mirror.

"When I started," he said. "I thought I knew how this would finish. After New York, I'm not sure if I want to hold you or break you."

"I know."

"Do you?"

Silence. Dick turns his head against mine, dropping his head to my shoulder.

"Some passions never change."

"Some passions are worth holding."

I feel the faint shiver of amusement in his body.

"Isn't that supposed to be my line?"

I open my eyes, see myself reflected, in smoke, opposite.

"Sometimes it takes a moment outside ourselves to be sure of the whole."

"Or to learn fear."

I tighten my fingers on his.

"Do you really believe death is that final? That love doesn't last?"

"I wanted-"

"You showed me that love is a gift freely given. That it's a community which forms the whole. Surely, then, what is done for that community can be a gift of love, even if one life is lost in the giving?"

"I know," Dick says, and his hands tighten. "But I have never before thought that I had lost you."

"I can't change what I am," I say, and lower my head to his. "I love you."

"It's just a game of smoke and mirrors," Dick says.

Sebastian and Patricia, waltzing. A gleam of blue, in the firelight.

I raise his head, smear my blood across his face, bend to kiss him. The taste of blood. "Some things are real," I say. I hold him.

And, eventually, in the curve of my arms, Dick relaxes.

Rain.

"So what do we do now?" I ask.

Dick laughs a little. "You could always ask me out," he says.

"What?"

"If we have something worth talking about."

"Jesus," I say, lean my head back against the wall.

"You can take me...somewhere romantic," Dick says, with just a trace of intent mischief in those shadowed eyes.

I look down at him.

"I'm not taking you anywhere," I say.

I pick him up from his apartment just as darkness falls, whipping the freeway into a blaze of lights and speed. Silence. Take him through the back way and into the empty cave: I set the security lock. Into the transporter.

J'onn sends us through. I don't even have to ask.

A darkening, empty beach, a stretch of rippled sand stretching into the blurring distance. The slow, curving waves of an ocean bigger than any on Earth. On the horizon a vast, sinking, blood red sun gilds the black molasses-waves with glints of crimson and bronze. There's no wind, but the waves pull and retreat from the sand with the rhythm of an absolute heartbeat.

This is a dying world.

We walk in silence, the only creatures alive on this waiting planet.

"Where are we?" Nightwing asks, his voice a whisper in this vast space.

"Elethera. At the end of the solar system."

I find a chunk of rock crystal and pillow my head on it, stetching out and looking at the infinite blaze of stars I may never visit. Nightwing sits at my side, staring out across the ocean.

"It feels..."

"It's the winter equinox."

The tides pull and reach at my blood, slowing that oxygen-laden haste. The rhythm of an immense and alien patience.

"And the atmosphere."

I close my eyes. The sinking sun stains the blackness crimson, a cold and passionless light.

"It's just a little lighter than our own."

By my side, Nightwing stretches on the sand, propped on his elbows. I can feel the faint warmth of his skin, stretch out my arm and cape. After a second he joins me, his shoulder firm against my skin, head pillowed on my arm. Quiet.

"Once," I say. "There were creatures in that ocean. Creatures that took uncounted years to spawn and grow, using the currents to drift across the water. They were huge, eyeless, earless, winged for the sea. Their skin was made of light."

Nightwing's hand stretches across my wrist, lightly. I take his fingers, turn our palms into the coarse sand and hold them pressed together.

"Their bones were of crystal."

I let him go.

"As the sun turned, so they grew. It took thousands of years."

Beside me, Nightwing's breathing stills and deepens, echoing the ocean. The sun spans the horizon, a last gleam of light against the night.

"Once every five thousand years, or once every ten thousand- " I shrug. "They began to reach for the atmosphere, to reach for flight. They fed on pure energy, calling the heart and blood of every other living creature. They had no language, no communication, no concept of time.

"When they reached the shore they struggled against the tides, pulling themselves up onto these empty beaches. Many died. Those that survived waited, sodden and helpless."

"Eventually the turning of the sun dried their wings, hardened their bones, set the diamantine line of their veins. They took flight."

Nightwing stares up at the stars.

"Where did they go?"

"We don't know."

The sun sets.

("Are you ok?"

"I'm not sure."

"Where were you?"

"Batman took me out for a date."

Silence

. "Don't ask," Nightwing says, and replaces the phone.)

It's hard, this curious and tense rapprochement. He'll come to the cave, train with Tim until he's exhausted, stand a few patrols at the computer banks. Occasionally, I've found him in the workroom in the morning. I know he spends time with Barbara: once or twice the voice that is Oracle uses Dick's turn of phrase. But he's far away from us, in his head, struggling with something that I can't help him with. And I know his own responsibilities call heavily on his time and sense of responsibility: the challenge to police and guard that run down and crime ridden city. All I can do is provide this space, both for body and heart, to let him see that the man he has become is welcome here.

He never asks for help.

He never touches me.

But I can feel that wary, trapped gaze on the back of my neck.

I'm not sure, in the morning, if he will arrive. Alfred's been baking for the past three days, the smell of brandy and dried fruit lingering across the halls. The children's party has been and gone: this year, it was Tim who did the work. Outside, the air is crisp and chill, the sky that lowered, yellowing grey that promises snow. It's a long drive to make, in this cold, even if he wanted to come.

I have work to do. Or, in honesty, I make work to do. I don't really have to play to Alfred's Christmas until later. One patrol before Tim arrives, but the city is quiet.

Alfred sets dinner, Tim helping, subdued. But he cheers when Barbara arrives from her father's, laughing and brushing the first flakes of snow from her jacket.

("Dick? Are you going to be there?"

"Where?"

Silence.

"Sorry. I...don't know."

"What happened, for goodness sake?"

Click.)

Alfred leaves the drapes open, light from the windows catching the whirling snow making strange, rounded shapes of his roses. Silver and candlelight, Barbara and Tim exchanging gifts across the table. Alfred brings soup, glances at me, serves.

Barbara and Tim eat. They're on to films, now, Tim arguing for The Grinch, Barbara preferring Fred Astaire.

I pick up my spoon, stare at the soup.

The front door slams. Alfred's eyes meet mine.

"I'll just.." he says, rising.

And Dick walks in the door.

He looks frozen, white and shivering. There's a new bruise on his cheekbone, and a set to his mouth that says, wherever he's been, it was nowhere pleasant. But he smiles, sits down, thanks Alfred for the soup.

"Happy Christmas, Dick," Barbara says.

"Yeah, Happy Christmas, stranger," Tim adds.

"It's good to see you here," I say.

"Thanks, guys."

"Where were you?"

"Police stuff." Short.

Alfred brings turkey and trimmings through. He's not happy. This day of all days, he wants his family together, in spirit as well as flesh. Barbara and Tim, however, are making a gallant attempt at conversation, batting topics across the table. I try.

Eventually Dick looks up. "Sorry, guys, it was a bad case. What say you we stack this stuff in the kitchen and play monopoly? No clearing up, Alfred."

"Ok, Wingster." Tim, already sliding from the table.

Barbara smiles at him. "I was hoping you'd say that. There's a parcel under the tree with your name on it."

They settle in the main living room, where the fire's been lit since nightfall. Alfred's reading, and I pick out a book from the pile of opened presents on the dresser. Dick's surprised delight when he opens the parcel is obvious: it's a Gotham Monopoly set, and it takes them longer than usual to set up the game. Not only have the street names been changed, but so too have the playing pieces, and it's the shared amusement over that which draws Dick back.

"Look, the Clocktower! That's got to be you, Babs."

"What? They've changed the pieces? I'm always the dog!"

"Yeah, look - that's one of the gargoyles from the Cathedral - and City Hall.

" "What's this?" Dick says, scrutinising a small piece.

"Don't know...well, it's got wheels," says Tim doubtfully.

"Show it to me." Barbara. And then she starts laughing. "Don't you know? It's the Batmobile."

Dick and Tim exchange horrified glances.

"Ok...." says Tim. "Well, bags not me."

Dick smiles.

I sit down next to the fire, facing Barbara, with Dick's back bent over the low table in front of me. Open my book, listen to the laughing rhythm of intent conversation.

"Hey, you can't do that!"

"How come I end up in jail again?"

"Babs, you forgot my $200 for passing go..."

"You can't sell him that - he'll have a set!"

"I'm drunk in charge."

"I've always wondered - what does that actually mean? Drunk in charge of what?"

Smile at Alfred over their heads, and start reading. It must be an hour later that I realise the conversation is slowing down, Dick thinking about every move. Finally he gives up and stares at the fire, his face withdrawn. Tim toys with the bank's money, until Barbara's hand closes over his and quietens it. Looking up, her worried eyes meet mine.

"Dick-"

Dick stirs, leans back, his head turning. His back meets my legs: I feel tension run through it like in an electric rush. I don't breath, force my eyes to keep to the page.

And then he relaxes, his weight resting against my skin.

"Sorry, Babs, I'm not with it."

"What's wrong?"

"It was a case this morning." He stops. "I don't know, wrong time, small boy..."

Deliberately, he lays his head back on my knees, shifts into comfort. Looks at the fire.

"I was so lucky."

Silence. He moves his head a little, stares at the fire through narrowed eyes.

I move one hand, cradle the gleaming black hair.

"Stay with me," I say.

Dick freezes.

And sighs, curves his cheek into my hand, closes his eyes.

Across the table, Barbara meets my eyes, smiles approval.

Alfred gets up quietly, pours the Christmas brandy that he keeps for celebrations. Against me, Dick stirs, reaches out a hand to the table.

"I'll take that other house," he says. But his body stays warm against mine.

In bed, I close his tense body in my arms, rest my chin on his hair. "Tell me about it?"

He does. At the end, he cries himself to sleep, and I hold him through this night. In the morning we wake to the cold, clear reflected light of winter sunshine and snow, make love sweetly and simply.

It's not going to be easy. But we'll make it.

(And Bruce says, later, much later: "You're quite sure about this? You know..."

Nightwing turns his chin into the exact curve of Batman's collarbone, where it belongs.

"Mmmphf?"

"...marriage....children?"

"Oh, don't worry about that," Dick says. "Barbara's already bought the turkey baster.")

Fin.