A Chance to Say Goodbye

by Marla F. Fair

Chapter One: Haunted

"Dad.

"Dad!

"Daddy! Wake up! Please, wake up! You're scaring me.

"Dad!"

* * * * * * Dick Grayson's ice blue eyes flew open without focus. His heart was beating wildly and he had no conscious notion of where he was or why he was weeping. His arms ached for something they had not held in ages and he was suddenly startled as a warm form, it's heart beating apace with his own fell into them, wrapping him in concern and holding him tight.

"Dad? What is it? X'Hal, you scared me. I've never heard you cry out like that before. Dad...?"

His mind was working slowly as though it hadn't been oiled in months. This was his child. A daughter. He placed his hand on her straight black hair, smooth as silk, and felt a sob rise within him. "Nightstar?" he whispered, swallowing the desire to scream. "Honey, I... I don't..." He blinked and shifted back on the bed away from her, running strong hands across his face and through black hair winged with silver. "What are you doing here?"

Dark brows formed a 'v' like a raven's tail and a heart-shaped face tipped sideways, jade green eyes without pupils pinning him. "I live here," she intoned slowly as though he were a remedial student bereft of sense or the ability to learn, "remember? Me, Nightstar. You, Dad... I thought the doc said you were all right in the head now. Skull too thick to crack, or something like that." She grinned, but it was only to hide her fear. Her slender hand gently brushed his forehead where the scar still showed from the last battle. That horrible battle. Feeling very young and vulnerable she shuddered, resisting the urge to clasp him tight. "You are all right...?"

Finally coming to himself a bit Dick Grayson heard the fear echo in his only child's voice and taking a deep breath, sought to reassure her. "I'm fine, honey. Sorry I scared you. I guess it was a nightmare..."

"Must have been some nightmare." She shifted off the bed and away from his arms, pulling her pale green nightshirt about light golden shoulders. "It sounded like your best friend had died ... " Nightstar winced. It was too late to take it back. She scrunched up her pretty face and ducked her head. "Sorry, Dad, that was thoughtless..."

"It's okay, princess. We've all been hurt. It will mend...with time."

Or so they told him.

His daughter left the room and him, planting a quick kiss on his forehead as she slipped out into the darkened hall. They had just returned to their own home after months of recovery under her 'grandfather's' watchful eye and things were still a little odd. They didn't know each other at all that well anymore and were trying to feel out just what they were to each other. Friends? Nightstar and Daddy? Or more honestly, perhaps, strangers. Since Kory's death they had withdrawn from each other, both enjoying their own private hells. He had been too hard. She had been too wild. He had pushed and when she should have bent, she had broken. They had lost one another.

It had only taken the end of the world to put them back together. And where did they go from there...?

Shaking his head, he walked to the bathroom mirror and tossed cold water in his face. This was the third... no... fourth night in a row that he had had the dream. Each night he awakened breathless, aching, his heart pounding and his breath rapid. Tonight had been different only because he had had an audience. Nightstar had been at her grandfather's - at Bruce's over the weekend. Tonight she had come home. And he was grateful, because tonight - unlike all of the others - he had been unable to wake. He could remember clearly the sensation of suffocation, of slipping further and further away through waves of something thick and viscous, a solid liquid that filled his lungs and throat. He had been trying to yell. Crying out. Reaching for something...or someone....

Sitting on the edge of the bed he sighed, ran his hands over his face again and flopped back, staring at the ceiling. He had every right to have nightmares. Less than four months had passed since the end of everything. Since Donna and Roy, Garth and so many others had died in a battle the likes of which had never been seen. He had almost been killed. His child had been exposed to radiation that would have left her - if not for the ministrations of STAR labs and other alien technologies -scarred for life. He had seen more death and destruction in one day than he had ever dared to believe possible, including the death of many of his ideals. It was not like he had no excuse to fall prey to night terrors, and yet - this was something more. Something all too real.

Suppressing a shudder he sat up again and reached for the robe at the end of his bed, pausing as his hand hit the soft worn fabric. It was at least as old as Nightstar and threadbare in places. Kory had given it to him just before she found out she was ex pect-

"Dick?"

The voice made him start and his lightning fast reflexes propelled him off of the bed and halfway across the room before he turned. There was nothing there. He could feel the robe in his hand and the carpet beneath his feet. He was awake. But he had heard... Feeling like an idiot, he whispered, "Kory?"

Silence greeted him. The silence of the dead.

"You're spooking yourself, Grayson. Get a grip." He pulled on the robe relishing its soft caress and turned to leave the room. There before him, reflected in the mirror a familiar form drifted, the result of his subconscious desire. It had to be the result of his subconscious desire - otherwise he was going mad. He took a step toward the pale vision and as he did, it dissipated, losing form even as its arms reached out towards him, pleading.

"Help me."

Moments later his hand pressed against the now empty glass as tears ran down his pale cheeks. "I tried, Kory. God knows I tried."

The day had been grueling. He had spent it at the side of a man he greatly admired and sought to emulate, seeking to help him reclaim what was left of the state he had once called home. There was great joy to be found in handing out grain with which people could plant new fields and make a new beginning. Superman had done much to erase the signs of the battle of the metahumans, but it was all too clear in Red Robin's mind's eye. He would be forever scarred, unable to forget the flash of light and the images it had burnt into his brain. There was no describing the waste of life. The destruction of innocence. By the time the day ended he was bone-weary and feeling every one of his forty-two years...and maybe a few more. Superman had offered him a 'ride' and he had taken it, remaining silent, caught in memories of those long gone and not so long gone and wondering why of them all he was still here. Maybe for his child. Thank God, she was still here as well.

Clark had dropped him off giving him one of those knowing fatherly looks that said, "We'll talk later', and then was off in a flurry of red and blue, rising boldly into the night sky, winging west to meet with Diana. Dick stood and watched him for a moment and then turned to face his home and his own lonely bed with trepidation. At least Nightstar should be waiting for him.

But when he got inside she was nowhere to be found. There was a brief note. "Out with Ibn." He sighed and crushed the scented paper between shaking fingers. He wasn't really sure what he thought of that relationship. She was over eighteen. It really should be her choice, but ... Visions of Ra's al Ghul and his cool, calculating child filled his mind. Talia had wanted Bruce. Wanted him to be her father's successor. Unable to obtain that, she had done the next best thing. Obtained his seed. Had his child. He swallowed hard. He wasn't even certain what he thought about that yet, let alone Bruce's dark son courting his only child. It was bound to be a match made in heaven ...or hell. Probably the latter. He tossed the note in the trash, sighing. She knew his opinion. For now that would have to do. He didn't want to alienate her again.

"God, Kory, why couldn't you have had a boy? Why have you left me here alone? I feel so..." He paused, realizing he was speaking out loud. Inadequate. That's what he felt. Really inadequate.

Sitting down he picked up the book of Themyscaran sonnets Donna had given him the year before on his birthday- a less than subtle hint- and began to read. But no sooner had his hand touched the ancient leather than he felt his head begin to nod. Damn, he was getting old! Still, it had been a long hard day, hard emotionally and physically. He would just fall asleep for a second and then he would be able to read until his child came home.

The sky was black, even though it was near midday. Rain poured like tears from heaven soaking the small trembling girl who held her father's hand tightly, seeking to comfort him. He hadn't been able to speak for three days. All he could manage was to hold her and caress her shining hair. He couldn't bear to let her out of his sight, as though somehow his watchfulness could keep her safe - even though he had failed her mother. Failed his wife. Failed himself.

Before him the sodden earth yawned, swallowing the silver and lavender coffin that held the mortal remains of his beloved and the dreams he had had of a long life together. He knew he was still in shock. Caught in disbelief. Three days before she had been so alive...so vital... Now.... He hadn't even been able to say goodbye to her. The pathogen that struck her had moved so quickly there had been no time. It had simply sucked the life out of her, tearing her from him and from her child. She had never awakened from the coma. Never responded to his touch. Never known he was there. He had moved heaven and earth to save her, even dealing with Bruce again, but for nothing. She had slipped away without a sound, leaving him alone to care for their small child when he knew he couldn't even take care of himself without her.

A soft touch on his shoulder had drawn him back from his reverie and at that moment he recognized Donna's gentle voice as she attempted to pull Nightstar's small hand from his. He reached for her, suddenly terrified, but Donna gently held him back, kissing his wet cheek as she whispered, "It's freezing, Dick. You're both soaked to the skin. You need to come inside."

He shook his dark head, unable to tear his ice blue eyes away from the brown earth as it rained down on the ornate lid of the metal box that held the earthly remains of his Tamaranean wife..

"Dick, think of your child. She'll get sick. You both will."

"Daddy?" Nightstar's small voice broke through the cloud that engulfed him, threatening to eclipse everything but his pain. He glanced at her and her large green eyes so much like her mother's fastened on him. "Daddy, I'm sorry...."

"Sweetie, Daddy's going to wait here a minute or so. You come with me."

"No, I don't want to." The little girl stamped her feet, splashing mud on Donna's leggings. " I want to stay. Please don't make me...."

Dick looked up at her, his eyes filled with unshed tears. "Go on," he whispered, his voice rough with grief, "I need to be alone."

As Donna moved the small girl away her cries tore into his very soul, but he felt unable to cope with her open expression of grief anymore. His feelings were more complex and he knew, unlike his little girl that once he said goodbye, once he walked away, it was over. He would never see her face again. Never hear her voice. She would be dead. Eternally dead and gone.

He knelt beside the newly filled grave, remaining as the workers moved the crane away, lingering as night descended and the pale bloated moon rose in a sky still peppered with clouds. At last, when everyone had gone he sat in silence, his head bowed, his trembling hands digging into the earth, seeking to find her, to feel her touch one more time. Suddenly, unexpectedly, cold white fingers found his. The dirt beneath him began to heave and shift and the pale sun-deprived corpse of his wife began to rise from its resting place, ratted locks of crimson hair shifting in the breeze about her fallen cheeks. Her eyes, flat and lifeless, fixed him and she pleaded, bone-thin hands caressing his sweat-soaked skin, "Dick, I need you. Where are you? Save me..."

"Dad? Dad, come on. This is getting old. Dad!"

Nightstar glanced over her shoulder at the door where Ibn had just bid her farewell. Could he have made it to his car yet? Was she going to have to call for help?

"Dad..."

They had had a wonderful night. Ibn, as always, had been the soul of graciousness. He had taken her to a private restaurant where, as usual, he had purchased all of the seats to save them from prying eyes. He had remembered to fill the room with roses - red and white - her favorites and had pulled out her chair, seating her, planting a platonic kiss on the top of her hair much like her Dad used to do when she was little. They had talked for hours, laughing and drinking until she had realized that, as usual, he had said very little about himself and learned an awful lot about her. Some time later when he returned her to her home, those keen eyes of his fixed on her as she exited the limo and moved into the house, she felt flustered and uncertain. Had she just spent an enjoyable evening with the most 'drop dead' gorgeous man she had ever met, or had she been part of an experiment? Why did she always come away from their dates feeling like a pet rat?

And yet, a night with Ibn left her always wanting more....

Confused, excited, breathless, she had closed the door with a sigh, remembering the sweetness of his breath and the soft touch of his elegant long fingers only to be startled by the form of her dad asleep in the chair by the fireplace. He looked gray and fatigued and was still in his soiled Red Robin uniform, the hood thrown back to show his handsome time-worn features and his sabled hair. She had crossed to gently kiss him goodnight when she realized he was cold to the touch, his strong lean frame bathed in sweat. Taking him by the shoulders she gently shook him, expecting him to wake, but he hadn't. Terrified, she had taken hold of him and roughly shaking him caused a stray lock of his black hair to fall across eyes clamped shut in pain.

And then she had realized he wasn't breathing.

Though in reality no more than two minutes had passed, Nightstar felt it had been a hundred years.

"Dad! Cut this out! You're scaring the hell out of me!!"

"Dad!!"

* * * * * * Deep within the grip of his nightmare vision, Dick Grayson heard his child calling him but couldn't answer. His lungs seemed to be filled with the same thick viscous liquid that had made it impossible for him to speak before. He drew in a breath and gagged, reeling back in horror as the white phantom that had been his wife shifted, seeming to notice the girl for the first time.

"'Star?" She whispered quietly, her wide soulless eyes blinking within their gaunt frame. "Nightstar, don't wake him.! I need to tell him!" Her beloved face turned toward him, the veil of death obscuring the lips he had kissed, the golden skin he had caressed. White fingers caressed his cheeks. Cold white fingers running through his hair in desperation. "Dick! Hear me. Help me! Please!"

Terrified for his child, for himself...terrified of the sick reality of this vision, he reached up and pried her fingers loose, casting her away. In his dream he fell to his knees, gasping for breath, too weak to move. But then from far away came the voice of his child once again. She was screaming, crying. He could hear his name. He forced his head up and could no longer see the vision of Koriand'r. With a start, he realized she must have fled in search of her daughter! Pressing off of the ground he swam up through a mire of confusion, calling for his child. He had to reach her first. Make her see that this hideous creature wasn't her mother - couldn't be her mother...

"Nightstar...Princess, I'm-"

* * * * * * The raven-haired beauty drew in a deep breath as her father's eyes flashed open and he gasped like a swimmer breaking the surface after too many minutes within the water's cloying embrace. Uncertain, she stopped her strong hands in mid-air, hesitating before bringing them down in another crashing blow on his chest. Beneath the dark somber reds and grays his skin was already beginning to bruise, the result of her frantic attempts to make him breathe.

Raising his sore body on one elbow, Dick Grayson coughed spasmodically and blinked away tears. His daughter threw her arms about him and began to cry. "Dad, I was so scared.... Daddy, I love you. Don't you dare leave me alone..."

The former boy wonder just sat holding her tight, feeling tears run down his own cheeks. She was trembling like a little bird, her heart pounding hard and fast.

Beyond his melancholy. Beyond the fact that after ten years he missed his wife so bad he still felt the ache of her loss everyday in his bones. Beyond this....

Something was definitely wrong.

* * * * * * Some time later Nightstar sat in the bedroom she had occupied as a child, balled up in the corner of the bed shaking. For the last few years she had survived... No, had existed within her anger and now that she had given it up, she had no where to hide. Now that she had admitted not only to the world, but to herself that she loved her Dad, she was suddenly seized with the thought that she might lose him. She had already almost lost him on that horrible day...the day so many of the others had died. If it hadn't been for the speed and strength she had inherited from her alien mother, he would be dead now... vaporized on the field of battle or dead from the blow 666 had given to his all too human skull.

And if he had died, it would have been her fault. Just like her mother's death all those years ago had been her fault. She closed her jade green eyes and rocked back and forth slowly, sick and frightened. She could still see her Mom, see her beautiful form as she awoke her that day. She could remember every item on the breakfast tray she had brought her in bed, the scent of her hair as it brushed her fevered cheek. It was all burnt on her mind's eye with frightening clarity.

Even then Koriand'r had been dying - though no one had known it. If only she had remembered... If only she had been able to warn her in time.

Sniffling, she threw her long black hair over her shoulder and stared out the window at the star- filled sky. That day, at the cemetery, she had tried to tell her Dad she was sorry, but he hadn't been able to hear her. He had never forgiven her, just as she had never forgiven herself.

Aunt Donna had been the only one she had ever told and she had informed her that she was being silly. The beautiful Amazon had always been able to make her feel better, even when they disagreed. She had told her to tell her Dad, to free herself from the past...but she had never been able to do it. When it mattered, she had failed him. And in failing him, she became afraid. Afraid that one day he would die too and she would be at fault.

And then Aunt Donna had died too. And again, in a way, it was her fault.

She stood and walked to the window feeling lost and hopeless. She had checked on her Dad and he was sleeping peacefully in his bed, but rest eluded her. Something was wrong. Something was haunting him and she knew what it was. The same thing that haunted her... her mom.

* * * * * * In the morning Dick Grayson awoke to find his daughter curled up in a ball at the end of his bed, her dark hair draped across his feet.

"Clark, can we talk?"

The older man tipped his head toward his companion and lowered the steel girder he was hoisting into place, finishing the infra-structure of one of the many buildings being reconstructed on the reclaimed plains of Kansas. The sun shone brilliantly off of his whited temples and cast his keen eyes into shadow.

"Talk? About?"

Red Robin glanced about, dropping his voice as he indicated the top of another unoccupied structure nearby. "Can you - ?"

The man known to the world as Superman checked the monstrous beam making certain it was anchored properly and then he clapped dust off of his hands. "Something personal?"

"Very."

There was a moment of silence and then a nod. "Let me give some instructions and then we'll be - up, up and away..."

Red Robin grinned. "Cut that out."

Superman shifted so the light hit his pale blue eyes. "Just wanted to see you smile."

Moments later they were standing on the top of a recently completed three story building, the dawn light about them painting the autumn sky and the brick structure a pale golden-pink. Dick slipped the dark hood off of his face and ran a hand across a slightly grizzled face. His friend studied him a moment and then commented evenly, "You don't look so good."

Dick met his eyes and then looked at the backs of his hands. "I haven't been sleeping. At least- not well." "Yes...?"

The man who was Red Robin sat down crossing his legs beneath him. "It's just that- I've been having these...dreams...."

The other man shifted, his shadow falling across him. "And...?"

Dick's head was in his hands. "Kory's in them. She's not dead but not- alive. She's-" He paused and took a deep breath, raising eyes wet with tears. "God, Clark, how long does it take? Don't you ever...?"

Clark's blue eyes narrowed and his face assumed a faraway cast. "No. Never."

Dick was startled. "Not even now? With Diana? I thought...."

Silence fell again as the giant of a man sat beside him, tossing his red cape sideways so the yellow 'S' flashed in the sun. "How many years has it been...? Ten? Fifteen? " He hesitated and then sighed, "One? It might as well have been. I can still see her... vibrant ...alive. Just as I left her at the Planet before the Joker...."

"You don't have to go through it, Clark. I just thought -"

"That it would get better eventually? It does."

"But you said-"

"I said, you never forget. Never. But you do move on. You have to or you go mad. It's as simple as that."

Dick was silent a long while. Overhead others, metahumans and aliens, flew past carrying on the work of restoration. "I think I may have done that."

Clark's eyebrows soared. "Moved on?"

"No. Gone mad."

"Dad, do you want me to stay in your room tonight? I can sleep on the floor."

"No, honey. I'm okay. It was just a dream."

"But you weren't breathing. I couldn't hear your heart."

Dick pushed his daughter's raven hair away from her forehead and planted a kiss on it, feeling her hands press against his bruised chest. She had really hit him hard. "Princess, I'm really sorry I scared you. I think you just got frightened and panicked a little. I was just -"

Her foot stamped down barely missing his as fire lit her great green eyes reminding him sharply of her deceased mother. "I am not exaggerating! You weren't breathing. You were white as a sheet and clammy like - " She stopped, her heart pounding hard. "Stop treating me like a child."

She pulled free of his grip and went to stare out the window, her back to him. He could feel the walls going up and was sorry for whatever he had done to erect them in the first place. "Nightstar, I don't think of you as a child. I'm sorry if it seems that way. You have to realize its hard for me to think of you as an adult, and yet, you're practically the same age your mother was when we first met.... It's just... A nightmare can't kill you," he laughed, trying to make light of her fear.

She turned sharply and met his eyes, her own steady and shining. "Don't be so sure. Mom thought that too. Look where it got her."

"What?" Her father took a step toward her. "What do you mean by that -"

She brushed past him. "Forget it! I'm going out. You go to sleep and take your own chances. I'm not going to hang around and be the one to find the body." And with that, she was out the door and gone. Several minutes later his ears were still ringing from the force with which she had slammed the front door. He sat on the edge of the bed and buried his face in his hands. God, he was tired. But despite what he had told his child - he was afraid to fall asleep. So much so that he had taken something to keep him awake - and that was something he had never done before.

Several hours later he sat beside the fire in the living room staring at an old family album filled with photos from happier times. Kory was there, so was Nightstar as a carefree little girl, toddling from one parent to the other. There were pictures too of Donna and Roy. Of Garth and the others. His hand caressed one well-worn photo of his wife. She was glowing and radiant.

Five days later she was dead.

His hand on the photo, he stared at the flames in the fireplace, replaying the conversation he had had with Clark that morning on the summit of a man-made mountain of bricks and steel.

"No," he had said in response to Clark's assertion that he had chosen to move on, "Gone mad."

Clark placed a wide hand on his shoulder briefly and asked in a quiet voice, "Can you tell me about it?"

He closed his eyes and began to speak, relating what he remembered of the dreams he had had and of the months and years before that, longing for, unable to forget his beautiful wife, the love of his life, the mother of his child. Clark listened without speaking, nodding his head occasionally, his own eyes growing dreamy, his mouth set in a line.

"At least you had a child..."

Dick looked up at him, suddenly feeling very selfish, and apologized. "I'm sorry. I've made you remember. I didn't mean-"

Clark shook his head. "No. It's good to remember." He took a deep breath and looked at his hands where they were clasped together in his lap. "Sometimes I go days now without thinking of her. I think... I think perhaps that has allowed her to move on as well."

"What do you mean?"

Clark laughed. "It's something Diana believes. That we keep the dead near us by our stubborn refusal to let them move on. And that they in turn suck life from us in order to stay." He grinned and tilted his head. "She has been to Hell you know..."

Dick looked away. "So have I."

Clark's hand returned to his shoulder. "I don't know what to say. I will never forget Lois, I wouldn't want to... but I have begun to remember her without pain. Diana has given me that. Perhaps it is time you - "

Dick smiled sadly. "Now you sound like Donna. She even tried to set me up a few times ... never worked out. I couldn't -"

"Or wouldn't ..."

"Yeah."

They sat in silence a moment, united in a common pain that though long past, knit their hearts together as one.

"Thanks, Clark. I couldn't have talked to Bruce. Not about this... Not even now."

Clark looked away, and then turned to face him, his eyes narrowed. "Bruce is a good man. He feels deeply. Perhaps too deeply."

"I know. But... he's never been married and... he didn't really care for Kory..."

"He loves you. In that, he loved her. And he cares a great deal for your daughter."

"Yeah, but Bruce is...well...closed. I couldn't talk to him like this. He wouldn't... I know him. He'd change the subject. He's - "

"He's never let go. He hasn't moved on. His parents' deaths are as real to him today as they were thirty years ago."

Dick's grin was pale, but it was there. "Are you saying he's mad?"

Superman looked startled and then shaking his head stood, his over six foot frame casting a mighty shadow. "If the cowl fits." He held a hand out to his young friend and smiled. "Come on, Dick, we have work to do."

Red Robin pulled his cowl forward to mask his features and took his friend's hand, holding it a moment before allowing himself to be pulled in so they could begin the descent to the dotted plain. "Thanks Clark, for everything."

Superman met his eyes and said tersely, "Bruce is a good man. You should talk to him. He knows a lot about love and loss."

* * * * * * At four a.m., lost and unable to sleep, Bruce was about the only person he could talk to.

He had left a note for Nightstar, hoping she wouldn't panic at his absence - hoping she would come home to notice he was absent. He had thrown on a soft shirt and pair of jeans along with his bike helmet and ridden over, arriving just as the first rays of the rising sun heralded another day. Now he stood without the entrance to the restored Manor, his foot on the first step, hesitating. What would he say? "Hi, Bruce, I'm falling apart and I came to you to put me back together ... again..." It hadn't been that long since he had left Bruce's care. The older man had watched over him, nursing him back to health along with Nightstar and others after - After the end of everything that had been.

Exhausted, weary beyond words he leaned his forehead against the newly refurbished mahogany beams of the old manor house thinking. What was he really seeking here? Sympathy? Empathy? Or, like his daughter, just the arms of a 'daddy', someone who would hold him and make it all right?

Dick Grayson laughed out loud and ran a hand through his dark hair. Like that would ever happen... Getting back on his bike he turned and rode away into the brightening sky.

* * * * * * In the cave, far below, the sound echoed hollowly from cavern wall to cavern wall. Two straight figures, one held in place by a series of metal tubes that formed an exterior exo-skeleton, the other by strength of purpose, watched him go. A hand ringed with bright blue fabric the color of a summer sky fell on the shoulder of the man cloaked in black and gray, daring to touch, seeking permission.

"Well," he said after a moment.

The other man steepled his long fingers after cueing a camera that tracked the young man's movements, ascertaining the direction he headed was towards his home. Dark blue eyes narrowed beneath salt and pepper brows. After a second he toggled another switch and the screen flickered. Moments later the image of the man he had raised and loved, lost and found, was replaced with that of a small boy caught in the act of purse-snatching.

"Ex-13, Bayside. Be gentle."

"Bruce. What are you going to do?"

His eyes never leaving the screen, the gray haired man replied grimly. "About what?"

Superman sighed, shifting so he leaned against the computer, forcing the other man to look at him. "About Dick...and Koriand'r."

"I see no need to do anything. Everything is as it was. No need to change."

A low rumble escaped the throat of the titanic figure followed by a deep breath and the name, "Bruce..."

The man who was and had been the Batman shifted in his seat and swiveled to face the tall alien as though he were an opponent. "No lectures. Dick is his own man. He's strong. He has survived all these years and he will survive this. Death is permanent. He will have to accept that." He gave another curt instruction to his robotic Batman and watched him gently lift the small boy from his feet and into the sky. "We all have to."

Superman pushed off the board and moved into the center of the cave, glancing about as though he were employing his legendary x-ray vision. A moment later he said quietly, "You and I both know that isn't true. Not now... not then.

"Bruce, you are going to have to tell him. If you don't, I will."

Bruce Wayne spun in his black leather chair, anger kissing his aging patrician features. "Is that a threat?"

Steel blue eyes greeted his. "Take it as you will. It is time for the truth. Something has changed, in him, with her... Have you even checked...?"

"God, yes, every day. Nothing has changed."

"Then he needs to know that. Let them go. Let it end."

And with that he was gone.

Bruce leaned forward placing his elbows on the blinking control board before him, lost in thought. Moments later, a familiar voice spoke from the cloak of inky shadows behind him.

"Bruce, what is it I need to know?"

Chapter Two: Revelations

"Damn Clark! He had to know you were there."

Dick Grayson stood stunned, unable to reply. Before him a vast network of multi-colored wires and tubes fed into a coffin-shaped crystalline box which pulsed with fire and light. Inside it lay what was at once the most beautiful and the most horrifying sight he had ever seen.

His dead wife. Only she wasn't dead.

Beyond anger, beyond grief - beyond belief - he staggered forward, his shaking hands outstretched towards the glistening casket.

"Careful Dick," Bruce spoke quietly, as though afraid to intrude, "don't disturb anything."

He didn't hear a word. Advancing with the grace of an athlete born, he circumvented the multitudinous wires and came, suddenly, face to face with the stuff of his dreams.

She was pale, more pale than he ever recalled seeing her, and surrounded with a thick liquid whose purpose must have been to replace the air in her lungs, protecting her like an unborn babe. She didn't seem to be breathing, but simply floated a few inches above the dais that held the box, as though asleep. Above and beside her digital monitors blinked and beeped, steadily recording the almost null action of her brain and vital functions.

"It's a form of cryogenic preservation, based on Victor Fries's work. I..." Bruce Wayne hesitated, at a loss for words. The rigid form of the young man before him, unseeing , unhearing, its every fiber bent toward the almost lifeless form of his alien wife confirmed his worst fears. Damn Clark. He should never have been forced to bring him here.

Several silent minutes passed as Dick Grayson assimilated all that had transpired in the last hour. Bruce had pivoted in his chair, ghostly pale. With shaking hands and voice he had told him that Koriand'r was alive - in a way. The half-hour flight in the Batwing to the STAR lab subsidiary in Maine had been passed in silence. He had been in shock. Afraid to believe it was true. And yet now... Now that he was here staring at her animated corpse, kept alive artificially long past its time, he began to feel a mounting rage. Finally, unable to contain it any longer, he turned on the man who had raised him and began to scream, all of the pain and horror and grief of the past ten years pouring out of him in an unstoppable tide of venom.

"How dare you! What were you thinking? Who do you think you are? God?" He pivoted and pointed at his wife, at what had been his wife, the vision of her animated corpse as seen in his nightmares still swimming before his eyes. Shaking, he thrust his hand in the direction of the false bed of life. "When did you do this? I saw her buried. You..." His voice broke as he drew in a breath laced with decade old tears. "I kissed her goodbye before they closed the lid. I held her.." Coming closer to the man who had in a very real way created the man he was this day, he threatened him with hands clenched in fists of rage. "Bruce... Oh God, did you dig her up? Bruce?" When he received no reply, his voice broke and he screamed, " What the hell were you thinking?"

The man who had spent decades as the Batman facing some of the worst the world had to offer; Two-Face, the Joker...Bane, felt himself begin to tremble in fear. But he knew the fear was not one of physical harm - though that was a very real possibility - but of loss. He had felt it before, many years ago when he had 'fired' this young man for taking a bullet from the Joker instead of him, and not long ago, when the bomb had gone off on that plain in Kansas and he hadn't known where he was. He had to make him understand. If he could. The trouble was, even he wasn't certain what had motivated him that day.

Who could say? Perhaps he had gone mad. He could remember it still. Nightstar had flown past him, a streak of purple pain scorching the air in the corridors of the private hospital where her mother lay dying, her small child's face scrunched in a way he was all too familiar with... her wide green eyes red-rimmed and raw. He watched as she flew out the window and up into the night sky, her high-pitched voice raised in a cry that should have troubled the heaven's. He had walked slowly down the corridor and entered the sick room to find his former ward, his dark head pressed against his wife's lifeless hand, unconscious. Overcome with fatigue, when it no longer mattered, he had succumbed. Without the boy knowing it he had laid his hand on his hair and kissed it, bidding him farewell once again, and then , without permission, had plunged a needle deep into Koriand'r's ravaged golden skin, committing the deed that would lead them to this day.

At the time it had seemed simple. He couldn't let her die. Not like all the others. Not if he had the tools to save her as he thought he had. But then, it hadn't worked. Her alien physiology had resisted the life-saving drugs which would have restored Nora Fries or any other member of his own race; drugs that should have purged her body of the virus that had laid it waste as well. So instead of saving her, he realized he had set his ward up for a life of never-ending grief, tied to at best, the preservation of a dream. And so he had remained silent. Never speaking. Never breathing a word. Bearing it alone as he had borne so many other griefs. Later, Clark had found out, but that had been a mistake.

Just as this was now.

"Dick, what do I say? How can I -"

"You can't! You bastard, you're sick! What were you thinking? What sort of desperate game are you playing? Being God to Gotham wasn't enough, now you have to play it in my life? She's ...dead... and you have her on display here, kept alive by God knows what means... for what? You can't bring her back, can you? This... All of this was for nothing." The younger man advanced on him, his hands shaking, his voice a mixture of disgust and pain. "Now I'll have to lose her all over again. Did you think of that? Bruce, did you even think of your granddaughter? What this would - " He paused, mortified. "What will this do to her?" he whispered.

"Dick, if you'll listen," the Batman said with more than the usual patience, " I can explain - "

Quicker than thought the younger man knocked him to the floor. As he fell, the steel that held his broken body together protested and on the collar of Bruce Wayne's current 'costume' warning lights began to wink on and off in alarm.

Dick Grayson stood, towering over him, his breath coming in ragged gasps, his skin white as paste. A cold sweat had broken out on his hands and face making him cold. He shook from head to foot. For a moment he stood still, powerful, enraged, and then looking at the man who lay before him, he suddenly shattered like crystal crushed under foot. Falling to his knees he began to cry, great sobs wracked from his well-honed form.

"God... God... Kory. I thought this was all over. I thought..."

Still flat on his back Bruce felt the internal sensors kick in, righting his form. He sat up suddenly and remained quiet, listening to the pain and anguish pour out of his former ward. And then, quite simply, he laid his hand on his shoulder.

"Now you know why I never told you."

* * * * * * Sometime later, as brilliant rays of lavender and scarlet streaked the sky without the compound, the two men sat silently within the room Bruce had chosen to use as his homebase whenever he visited the facility in the woods. The older man sat, his long expressive hands twisting in his lap while beside him Dick hugged a warm cup of decaf coffee, sipping the dark liquid more out of habit than choice.

"I think... I think I didn't think. Afterwards I realized I had... Well, in a way I think I went out of my mind. I just couldn't bear to let it happen again."

"Again," Dick asked quietly. "What again?"

Bruce's deep blue eyes met his and then he looked back at his battered hands. "My parents. Yours. ...Jason. I did everything I could. Used every resource. We had the best doctors... And still death was determined to win." He sighed and stood, walking to the window. "I was determined it would not. Not this time."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

Bruce looked at him sternly. "You don't need me to answer that. Think about it. If it worked... God, if it had worked. You would have had her back and everything would have gone on. A child would have had her mother. You, your wife... If it didn't, well, beyond putting you through her death a second time... Think of Victor Fries. A man who spent his life living for the dead, thinking of nothing else..." He paused and added quietly, "You've seen him, known him. He was ..."

"Obsessed. Unable to live but for the dying."

Silence fell between them. Bruce stood awkwardly nearby, unsure of what more he could say. Dick kept turning the cup over and over in his hands and then finally found the courage to ask, "So where does it stand now? With Kory, I mean I assumed before But I don't know. Is she -"

"Dead? No." The younger man's head came up at that but Bruce put out a hand to caution him, "neither is she alive, not in any real sense. She is in stasis."

"And the disease?"

"It's in stasis too. I thought I knew how to cure it, but I didn't. Because of her alien physiology, I have had little success. That's why she sleeps still."

Dick stood and walked to the doorway, looking back the way they had come to where the silent form of his wife lay. "She isn't sleeping anymore."

"What?"

He turned and met his mentor's puzzled stare. "I've heard her. Seen her. She's been... calling out to me. I can't explain it, Bruce, but something's different. After all these years, we're...connected somehow."

"She has no brain waves. She can't even think."

Dick laughed, abruptly realizing just how near he was to hysteria. "Bruce, dear Bruce..." He drew a deep breath collecting himself and then walked over to face man he thought of as a father squarely, eye to eye. "What makes us alive can't be measured by monitors and brainwaves alone. Regardless of what your data tells you, something in her has awakened. And she needs me." Then, careful to avoid the complicated metal structure that held the man together, Dick put his arms about him and gave him a hug. Bone and metal were rigid beneath his hands, but he had expected that. He let go quickly and walked to the door, pausing with his hand on the wooden jamb.

"Bruce?"

"Yes."

"About before. I'm sorry. I gave up. You never did."

The Batman watched him leave the room and sighed. "No. You grew up. I never did."

* * * * * * How do you follow a trail ten years old, buried by time and the tide of a war that laid a world waste? For twenty-four hours Dick Grayson had occupied an uncomfortable chair behind a small gray desk pouring over seemingly thousands of hand-written medical reports, searching looking for something that had been overlooked. He had already stared countless hours at the computer screen, but somehow, getting his hands on something made him feel a tiny bit better. Like he was doing something real. Pausing, he stretched and rubbed his hands over a face grizzled with the beginnings of a beard. God, it brought it all back so vividly. The horror. The disbelief. He knew no matter how long he lived he would never forget the day Koriand'r had fallen prey to the fast-acting virus that had killed her - that he thought had killed her. Still, in all the months and years that had followed, he had never been able to establish the exact moment or place where she had come into contact with it. She had lived on the earth in relative health for so long they had supposed it to be alien in origin, but now, so many years later with his head clear, he was able to look in other directions, and at this moment he didn't like what he saw. The anti-alien, anti-metahuman movement had been in its infancy then, but his wife - as an alien and the mother of a human-alien hybrid - would have been a prime target for men sick with the disease of fear.

He rubbed his neck and then bent his head once again over the microscope before him that contained several samples of Kory's blood. Concentrating, he failed to hear a light footfall beside him and didn't notice a familiar figure standing next to him for several minutes. When he looked up he found his daughter, her wide eyes filled with tears, her golden skin pale.

"Dad."

Startled he began to chide her for interrupting him but then he saw Bruce standing in the doorway behind her, his own pale face highlighted by the halogen lights in the hall.

Obsessed. Like Victor Fries. Had it begun already? Had Bruce known him so well? Suddenly ashamed, he realized that for a time he had forgotten he even had a daughter.

"Nightstar, I..." His voice broke. He reached for her hand but suddenly shaken, put his head down in his hands instead.

"It's okay, Dad," she said, her voice uncharacteristically calm. "Grandpa explained everything."

That brought his head up. He shot a look at Bruce who simply shook his head and then moved away from the door.

He sighed and then asked quietly, "About?"

"He said you had found some new evidence about the men who killed Mom. He said you got lost in the research." She was pretending she wasn't hurt, but he could tell she had been really scared. He had been away a day and a half without word. Something he would have given her hell about.

Dick drew a deep breath. "How did you get here?"

"Uncle Clark came to check on you on his way to meet with the President. He's here, but he has to leave pretty soon. He's going off-world for awhile." She cocked her head and looked at him, a worried expression on her pretty face. "I had gotten home and found you gone. I wasn't too worried... After all, I was the one who ran out." She smiled sheepishly, her eyes lighting like Kory's used to do just before she would tackle him, pinning him to the floor with her greater strength. "I'm sorry, Dad."

"Sorry, Honey? For what?"

She looked at him and her eyes began to fill with tears. Her beautiful face drew up in pain and she began to cry. "Daddy, I was so scared..."

Dick dropped the papers he held and moved to his child, taking her in his arms. She sobbed for some time, her small frame wracked with anguish. At last, she laid her dark head aside his shoulder and whimpered.

"Can you tell me? I'm fine, Honey, if that's what you're worried about..." Better than I've been for a long time, he thought.

She shook her head and buried it in his shoulder.

"Then what?"

"I'm afraid of what you'll find. Afraid of all of that," she gestured towards the paper trail on the desk.

"Afraid that you'll find out."

"Find out what?"

Her eyes were huge, the picture of her mother's.

"That I killed Mom."

"Man has explored the universe, broken the barriers of space and time, but the mind of a child is a mystery never to be unraveled."

"She was fairly honest with me, Dick. That's why I brought her here."

Dick glanced up at the big man in red and blue and sighed. "God, how could she blame herself for her mother's death?"

"How could you?" It was Bruce this time. Nightstar was asleep in his makeshift bedroom, having cried herself to sleep.

"I..." Dick paused, the Dark Knight's eyes hard on him. "Point taken. The question is, where do we go from here?"

"To bed."

Dick's head came up. He fixed Bruce with incredulous blue eyes and asked, "What? Now? I can't..."

"Son, from what you've said, you've been up two days." Clark folded his arms and cocked his head. "Your daughter said she found pills."

"Dick!" Bruce's voice was harsh.

Sheepishly the youngest man shrugged. "I wasn't sleeping anyway. And for some reason, all Kory has been able to do is ask for help. I have to help her here, in reality, not hang on to her in spirit form." He paused, his aspect puzzled. "Say, can you be haunted by a living ghost?"

"That's a question for the experts. But you need to sleep," Bruce held up his hands, "not dream, really sleep. Koriand'r isn't going anywhere, I can vouch for that. And you need to be awake and alert before we begin to follow these new leads. You really think you know where to begin to look now?"

"From what was in the papers... Yes, I think so. Too many people in our neighborhood reported odd goings on that week. There has to be a connection - something I overlooked in my grief. " He hesitated, suddenly shaken.

Bruce moved toward him, his hand out. "Dick, what is it?"

Dick Grayson looked up, his blue eyes wide as his child's. "I could have lost Nightstar too. God Bruce, do you realize what this means? They could have both been targets! I -" A sudden sharp prick in his left shoulder made him look down and as he did, his mentor released the hypo, sending a strong drug into his system.

"I thought you didn't believe -" But the sentence went unfinished as he lost consciousness, his strong form tumbling towards the ground.

"There are always exceptions."

Clark caught the young man before he hit the floor and effortlessly lifted him in his arms.

"I'll take him."

"No." The Batman held his own arms out and without a word the Kryptonian surrendered his light burden, watching the metal skeleton the other man wore straighten as it measured and took the weight.

"This one is mine."

"Nightstar. Wake up. It's time to go."

"Daddy?"

A cool hand caressed her forehead. "Wake up, Sleepyhead. A new day has arrived."

"Did Uncle Clark leave?"

"Yes."

"And Grandpa?"

"He's still here. I need you to get up, Princess."

The girl yawned and stretched, glancing up at her father where he leaned over her. Sunlight was streaming in the through the open window and the rosy light of dawn played about his handsome features. It was startling, the transformation that had taken place in him overnight. He had obviously slept. The pinched grayness that had marked his face the last few days was gone and his eyes were clear. But beyond that, he seemed to be renewed. He looked as she remembered him from her childhood. Strong. Vibrant. Determined.

"Dad?"

"Are you awake?"

"Yeah..." She looked at him, unable to discern his mood. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing." He kissed her forehead, caressing her dark hair. "I need you to come with me. There's something I have to show you."

Feeling like a little girl, she stood and took his hand, clutching it tightly. "Where are we going?"

He smiled reassuringly, squeezing back. "To Heaven, Sweetie. To Heaven."

* * * * * * "Dad... is she real?"

Nightstar's hand was spread wide across the glass that framed her mother's expressionless face. To Dick the Tamaranean Princess looked like a wax doll, bereft of all the warmth and humor he had known her to possess, but to his child - who had not seen her mother since she was 10 years old - the recumbent Koriand'r must have seemed a goddess. The thick glass and preserving liquid cast a blue pall on her golden flesh. And even so preserved, the years had managed to creep silently into her Tuscan locks, streaking them with pale yellow-white like frost on autumn trees. Still, for all that, she looked no more than thirty or thirty-one - far younger than the years would have made her.

"Does she know we're here? Can she hear us?"

Dick opened his mouth to answer and then paused. "You know, according to those monitors and your grandfather - no. But here, honey, in here," he pointed to his heart, "here, I know she can."

Nightstar's head cocked at an odd angle. She laid her hand on her Dad's chest and watched him try to cover the wince. She wrinkled her nose. "Sorry, Dad. I didn't mean to hit you so hard. I..."

"You have to stop saying that."

She shook her head. "What?"

"That you're sorry. We both do. We have another chance, but it will take courage on both our parts."

She stared at her mother's face, aware she wasn't simply sleeping as it seemed. Suddenly all of the Terran stories her Dad had read to her about sleeping princesses and their awakenings came back to her and she smiled sadly. "Wouldn't it be nice if just a kiss..."

He laid his hand on his daughter's hair. "I've thought of it. There's nothing I'd like more." He hesitated a moment and then asked her quietly, "Would you like to be left alone?"

"No." She looked a little frightened. But mostly puzzled. "I want you to tell me what it is you want me to do that will take courage..."

He squeezed her quickly and said without preamble. "Remember."

Her eyes crested with tears and her nostrils flared, but she nodded. She reached out for his hand and placed her other, trembling, over her mother's heart.

* * * * * * "I was very little. Five or six. Mom came in my room and told me I had to be very quiet because you were sleeping and I didn't dare wake you up. I didn't understand. You had told me you would play with me when you came home that night, and even though it was very late, I thought you would still come. Mom told me - ordered me - to stay in my room and keep out of the way and she'd be back a little later to explain. I could see that she'd been crying.

"You see, even though Mom was different... not human... that never dawned on me. She was just... well... Mom. Anyway, I listened at the door and heard footsteps. Someone mentioned a doctor and there was a presence that walked past the door that I could feel looking at me. Pretty soon Aunt Donna was there and she came in and we played house even though her heart wasn't in it - I know that now - and then I fell asleep. When I woke up hours later she was gone and the house was still...

"I left my room then looking for Mom. She had said she would come and she didn't, so I was worried. Not about her... Just worried. I found her downstairs on the sofa asleep. There were clothes all around her, dark clothes covered in a red substance that looked like that squiggly candy you used to buy me - the strawberry-flavored one - and long white strips of cloth. They were red as well. It smelled funny and I didn't get very close. It scared me even though I didn't know why. Really scared me."

Nightstar let go of her dad's fingers and shifted so both hands lay on the glass. Her voice fell so that it was flat. She spoke without emotion as though she were watching a video of someone else's life.

"I knew something was wrong. Mom never slept on the sofa. She looked really gray and she was still crying, even in her sleep. I could hear someone in the kitchen - probably Aunt Donna - and knew I had to get back to my room before I got in trouble. I ran to the steps and flew up them, heading for my room and then... through a crack in the door... I saw you."

She looked up, focusing her eyes on the wall behind him, the memory bringing fresh pain.

"God, Dad. I thought you were dead. I crept into the room and touched your hand and it was ice cold. You were white as the sheets and your chest... even bandaged was weeping blood. It looked like a bear had ripped you open."

"Close," he whispered, remembering. Donna had almost been too late that day. "It was a beast of a sorts."

"When I called you didn't answer me. When I touched you, you didn't move. I realized at that moment that you could die and realizing that scared me enough that I began to refuse to care."

"What?"

She looked at him, her eyes round and tearless. "All these years, Dad, I've been afraid. I realized Mom and I were different. Not that we couldn't be hurt, but we were stronger, faster... safer. I began to pull away from you and put all of my trust in Mom. Oh, you got better, but it took weeks and I couldn't jump on you or play with you. Mom had to spend all of her time nursing you. I was angry and... jealous... and afraid. Every time you went out it hurt so much wondering if you would come home that I began to tell myself I didn't care..."

"Nightstar, why didn't you say anything? Why?"

"I had Mom," she shrugged. "We were buddies. Invulnerable. Alien. And then I had that awful dream." "What dream?" He moved toward her, reaching out towards her bare shoulder. "What dream, honey?"

She shook her head, black hair flying. "I don't want to talk about it."

Dick Grayson took hold of his child and turned her toward him. "Does it have to do with your mother's death? Nightstar?"

She nodded unwillingly.

"Then you must. You have to. Anything that might help now that there is a chance..."

His daughter shuddered and sank to the floor beside the dais. "I can't..."

"Honey, I wish your mom was here, in this position and I was laying in that crystal coffin. She could always talk to you. I don't - "

"Oh God, Dad, don't say that! Don't ever..." Her dark head shook violently and she hugged her shoulders as though chilled. "One thing I learned through this whole horrible mess is just how much I love you and need you." She drew a breath and leaned against the stand behind her. " And how much I need Mom."

They fell into a silence for a moment both lost in their own thoughts.

"Do I have to tell you about the dream?"

"I think so."

She was quiet a moment and then began to speak, disassociating herself as much as she could from the horror of the memory.

* * * * * * It had been dark, very dark. There was no moon, she remembered that. He had not been home, but was away working with Garth and Donna, saving the world. Or so it seemed to her. Her Mom had been talking on the phone and she had gone to bed early. She remembered her head had hurt and her throat and she had felt ashamed.

"Ashamed?" Dick was puzzled.

"Do you remember when I was very little? About three? I had the ...what was it? Measles?"

"Yes, I remember. You were purple spots from head to toe."

She laughed. " I remember you counting them. I think I had a million."

"A million and one."

Nightstar smiled sadly. "Do you remember what you called me?"

He shook his head. "Not really. What?"

"Your little 'human'."

"I did? I don't remember that."

"Mom was saying something and you said the measles showed I was 'your little human'. I know you didn't mean it, but that made me think there was something 'wrong' with being human. That somehow humans were 'less' than best... Not as good as Mom... or me. I thought about it and I couldn't remember Mom ever being sick or hurt. She had stopped working with you by then so she was never injured... like you. I came to think of her as perfect... invulnerable."

"She was mortal... is mortal." He glanced behind him, still unable to take in her quiet presence.

"I know, but I didn't know that then. It didn't seem real until she died."

Dick hesitated and then prompted her. "You haven't mentioned this dream."

"I know.

"I went to bed that night. Mom rocked me on the bed and gave me some remedy she said you used ...honey and lemon?" He nodded. "It helped and fairly soon I fell asleep..."

"And dreamed..."

"Yes."

* * * * * * She had been in her bed sleeping, just as she was in reality when a dark shadow had eclipsed it and someone had put their hand over her mouth, silencing her. Strong hands held her down as someone poured a stinky liquid over a cloth and pressed it to her nose. But instead of making her sleep, she found it froze her, making it so she couldn't move. She felt herself being lifted from the bed and prodded by many hands. She could feel something press against her skin but didn't feel any pain. Above her in the shadows something moved stealthily, working with a purpose and then she was lowered her to the bed again and left alone. Far away, it seemed, they began to mumble to themselves. In her child's mind she thought of alien abductions and that old show the X-Files that she sometimes watched late at night, and she tried to scream, to call her Mom, her Dad... anyone, but no one heard and no one came.

Soon the room was silent and only two figures remained, cloaked in shadows and secrecy. She felt drowsy and yet curiously awake and some of their words drifted towards her.

"...long will it take?"

"Not long. Two days at most - maybe three - and she'll be dead. No one will know why to begin with, but it should inspire the terror we desire. Later we will lay claim, when the time is ripe. I would rather it had been the man..."

"But we were told. We mustn't touch him. Too hot. Too much potential damage to us. This is safer."

One of the figures drew closer, a phantom hand landing on her forehead for a brief moment as it spoke.

"Still, she is only a child."

Nightstar remembered lifting up her head, seeking to pierce the darkness around her, feeling the fever begin to rise in her veins and it was then she saw him - the demon. A horned figure that lingered near the edge of her bed, a sharp face with red eyes that flashed fire. It lifted a gloved hand and pointed at her, its voice coming in tones at once malevolent and mild.

" No. She is a weapon."

Three days later her mother had been dead.

Chapter Three - The Demon

Dick Grayson stood in the center of the bedroom he had shared with his wife Koriand'r and sighed. It was so empty. Had been so empty for so long. Did he dare hope he would have her back again? Without thinking, he walked to her closet and looked at the colorful clothes still hanging there. Suddenly the dresses and coats seemed only pale musty imitations of the life he remembered, not a link to it as he had felt for so many years. He hadn't removed anything since her death. Donna had chastised him for that, reminding him she had suffered her own losses. With a kiss and a sad smile, she had told him he must let go, not for his own sake only, for Nightstar's and for his wife. Dick laughed grimly. Sounded like what Diana had told Clark. And yet, now that he knew she wasn't dead, that his hope had not been in vain, he told himself perhaps he had known all along. Perhaps this had been his answer to her silent cries, and her cries the answer to the constant question of why he had been unable to move on, to get her out of his mind. Why he couldn't forget her laugh or the feel of her flesh beneath his fingers.

Weary beyond words he sagged to the floor and remained a foot or so away from the open closet. They had returned from Maine late in the day, drawn and exhausted. Nightstar had excused herself and gone to bed. Bruce was asleep in the living room in the large leather chair that fronted the entertainment center. He had come home with him. He had left Gotham and come with him.

Dick rested his head against the wall, feeling the warmth of the early evening sun as it shown through the window, a shaft of red-gold light caressing his exhausted form. Two days ago he had been talking about doing what Donna asked, about moving on and leaving Kory behind. Maybe thinking about dating again, remarrying. Now... He hung his head ashamed. And he had pounded Bruce for it. Been furious that he had kept the dream alive when he himself had been about to give up.

He loved that old man. There was no one else like him. Never would be.

He closed his eyes and thought about his mentor's lonely life. Since Alfred had passed on, Bruce had become almost totally isolated with the exception of his robotic aids and the very few friends he permitted to come anywhere close - people like Ollie Queen and Dinah. People who were gone now, yet another victory for the eternal adversary Bruce had pitted himself against each and every day since it had claimed his parents... And then Jason. And most likely Tim. There had been no one he had not either driven away with his intensity or lost brutally, so that when the mantle of the Bat needed to fall on other shoulders, the rack had been bare. Dick himself had put aside the notion of being the Bat long ago - one trial run had been enough to show him he didn't have that kind of right stuff - but there was someone else he had left behind long ago in pain and disappointment. Someone who deserved better. Now - along with his wife- it was time he was resurrected.

He shifted slightly and slid his hand along the back of the closet until he felt the edge of a thick leather satchel. It rested where Kory had left it all those years ago, a decade and a half before, long before she had died. Since, in fact, that night when his child had come upon him wounded and near death. Then, after many months of healing and introspection and some hard choices - plus several years off to watch his only child grow and blossom into a beauty - it had seemed a new beginning was required, something to separate him from the pain of the past and a new costume to deal with a new era of hostility and violence unlike anything he had ever known. But now... Now it seemed the past was fated to live again.

* * * * * * Nightstar woke up on the sofa next to the man she called Grandpa and murmured. She had been unable to sleep, unnerved by all that had occurred, and had crept downstairs to lay her head on the lap of the older man as he slept. Now his hand was on her head as she stirred and a faint smile crossed battle-scarred lips as they parted to whisper.

"Good morning, Nightstar."

She smiled sweetly, like a little girl. "Grandpa. Thanks."

Sabled brows rose slightly, arching like the wings of a hawk. "For?"

"Mom. Not giving up on her." She hesitated a moment, a curious look crossing her young features, dimming their brilliance. "Like Dad did."

Bruce Wayne shifted so he could face her and gave her a stern look. "And how did you come to that conclusion?"

"She died. He buried her. He could have done what you did."

"She died. He buried her. That is the natural order of things." He paused, drawing a deep breath, feeling every one of his fifty-plus years. "This will be hard for you to understand at your age, but what your father did - in the face of the inevitable - was far braver than what I did. Mine was the coward's way out. Your father has faced and survived a great deal of pain. Me... I simple refuse to face it."

She looked at the old man, seeing the faraway look that flashed in his eyes and thought she had never seen him look so vulnerable. Usually he was hard as steel and stronger than Superman. She said simply, "I don't understand."

He touched her hair and smiled gently. "I hope you never have to, child."

"Bruce."

The silver head pivoted sharply towards the stairs and what he saw there made him rise to his feet, his only grandchild all but forgotten. Before him a vision from the past, a strong lean figure attired in black and deep royal blue hesitated on the bottom landing, a bat-shaped mask tightly covering his attractive features, a brilliant yellow bird symbolically winging its way across his chest.

Nightstar stood beside her Grandfather, her mouth open. He was absolutely more handsome than she had ever seen him. "Dad, I haven't... Isn't that the costume you wore with Mom... and the Titans?"

Nightwing moved down the steps deliberately, his muscular form grace itself. 'Yes. And in their honor I wear it again." He walked up to her and touched her face. "And if - when your Mom wakes up - I want her to recognize me. Red Robin came along later. He served his purpose, but this...

"This is who I am."

"I'm ready to go, Bruce."

Back in the bowels of what was once the Batcave and what had still, since its exposure, served as Bruce Wayne's headquarters and high-tech lab, the two men prepared to begin the search for Kory's killers. Bruce was sitting at the massive computer watching a multitude of small figures scroll past him in a wild dance while Dick Grayson, attired as Nightwing but without the mask, stood staring silently at the small glass case that held the old Robin costume worn by his successor, Jason, the young man who had died at the Joker's hands.

"Bruce? Are you ready to go?"

The older man swiveled around in his chair and folded his hands in his lap. He waited until the his former ward turned to look at him. "Before we get started I have something to tell you... You aren't going to like it."

"What?" Dick walked up to his mentor and stood with his hands on his hips. "If you think you are going to stop me... because of the injuries or anything else, you won't. No matter what..."

"No. No." The older man held up his hands. " I have no intention... and no right to stop you. I just wanted to let you know your focus may be wrong."

"My focus? What do you mean by that.? I'm going to get the men who killed - who tried to kill Kory."

Even now her continued existence at the small lab in Maine seemed unreal, more a dream than the times she had appeared, ghostly pale, seeking his help.

Bruce drew a deep breath. "Sit down, son."

Dick realized this was something very important and without another word pulled up a chair, straddling it, his hands hanging over its leather back. He sat in silence a moment and then prompted, "Well?"

"I think Nightstar was meant to die. Not Koriand'r. Her death was a mistake."

"What! Bruce, I - "

"Hear me out." Bruce stood and began to pace, his mind collecting and categorizing all of the facts he had been fed over the last few eventful days. "Would that your child had spoken 10 years ago. Her 'dream' might have been - well, may still be the key to this whole thing. Think about it. Your wife suddenly develops a deadly virus. We have never known the source. Now your child relates this tale of nightly intruders, men who 'examine' her, seem to inject her with something."

"Bruce, that dream could have come out of a 'B' movie. It's an ancestral archetype. It's why so many people have claimed to have been abducted by 'little green men' over the years. You can't take it seriously." He paused, really angry. "Nightstar was safe in our home."

"Like your wife was safe?" Dick bristled and Bruce held up a hand. "Only making a point, son. Something got to Koriand'r. Some one got to Nightstar."

Dick was silent a moment. He could feel himself trembling. "God, in my home?"

"I think these were very ingenious, very clever men. Now, tell me, you said odd things had been happening in the neighborhood? Things you didn't recall until now?"

"Yeah." Dick ran a hand through his black hair. "Nothing important, really. Break-ins. Petty theft. People were pretty jittery though. Of course, Kory said she could look out for the two of them." At Bruce's look he added, "And she could-"

"Under normal circumstances. What else?"

"There were power-outages. Security systems compromised. Strange lights. That's why I didn't think anything about this dream. Once I thought about it, Nightstar had plenty of fuel to create that scenario."

"But what if it wasn't created? What if it actually happened?"

"Kory would never have let anyone in our house."

"Did you ask Nightstar where and what her mother was doing immediately before or after the dream?"

"No."

"You might want to. I believe someone entered your home and infected your daughter with the virus that killed your wife, never knowing it would threaten Koriand'r. And what is more, I don't believe this was the first time."

"God, Bruce! What!" Dick stood abruptly, kicking the chair away

"Think about it. Nightstar was already sick. Sore throat, fever... In a child who hardly ever was sick."

"She had the measles."

"Yes, she did. And that may have been what saved her life. Her immune system had already battled a human virus and won. Koriand'r had no such protection. Being alien, she had no natural immunity. Like the Native Americans who perished when the white man first came to their shore, she had no way to fight back. Her system was ravaged and shut down."

Dick began to pace, his mind flying furiously. "So what about the words in the dream, "She is a weapon?" That sounds like the attack - if attack it was - was aimed at Kory or me."

"Could be." Bruce sat back down and placed his hands one on either side of the large chairs' arms. "Tell me, what would have happened had Nightstar died?"

The younger man stood still facing the horrible possibility. "I would have... Well... Kory would have really been lost - "

"And what if she had discovered the child had been murdered?"

Dick looked at his mentor knowing where his mind was going. Kory's savagery had always bothered him. He knew there was blood on her hands. "Bruce... Kory wasn't like that anymore. You know she wasn't. She had left all that behind long ago."

"Even if pushed? Even if manipulated? What if both you and Nightstar had died?"

He shook his head remembering the time she thought the Wildebeast had mortally wounded him. "She would have lost herself."

"And been a perfect target for the anti-alien agenda. If she had gone mad with grief, or even been made to appear to have done so, she would have been an effective tool in their campaign to rid the world of everything alien. You both would have been."

Remembering the rage he had felt after Kory died at the hands of an unknown, unseen assailant, he felt once again the anger that had overwhelmed him and remembered at the time that he had been almost thankful there was no living creature to direct it towards. What would Kory have done? Had the person who dreamed up this insane scheme known her better than he? Would she have killed again?

He sat back down, feeling the strain of the last few days. His hands were trembling. Bruce handed him a sandwich from a tray that had mysteriously materialized beside him.

Startled Dick gazed at the white bread and ham like it was a snake. "Where did this come from?"

His mentor smiled and nodded his head in the direction of a small fastidious robot that was wheeling itself away. "Silent butler."

Dick smiled, remembering the old man with fondness. "Definitely not related to Alfred then, eh?"

Bruce nodded. "Subtle but sharp as steel that old man. I miss him."

The two fell into a long silence, comfortable with each other and a little surprised by the feeling. Finally Dick spoke, his voice breaking, "So, who do you think it was?"

Bruce shook his head. "Not enough facts."

Dick stared at him, knowing the man all too well.

"Bruce? What is it? What are you thinking?"

"Well," the older man laced his fingers again and bowed his head. "Nightstar said the man in the dream had a demon's head -"

"Oh God. Ra's al Ghul."

* * * * * * Sometime later Dick Grayson approached his house. He stood outside the door hesitating. The night air was cold. Fall was already on the move and soon the snow would fly burying the land beneath its cold white shroud. They'd buried Kory in the Fall. Running his hand over his face, he sighed. How did he talk to Nightstar about this? How could he try to seek information without confirming her worst fear, that she did kill her mother? He knew her. Knew her well enough to be certain that even though the fault had not been hers, even though she had been used by unconscionably evil men, she would still take it on herself as he had always done. She might have her mother's eyes and powers, her walk and way of smiling, but soul deep she was like him. He had paid for so many years of doubt and insecurity - what could he do as a father to help his child avoid the pain? Taking a breath he opened the door slowly and glanced across towards the fireplace. Two figures sat there silhouetted against the glistening coals. One was his child. The other, the dark figure he had seen frequently in the hospital ward at the Manor, the heir presumptive, the usurper, the son of the Bat: Ibn Al Xu'ffasch. The grandson of the man who had murdered his wife.

Unbidden, a rage rose in him such as he had never known. Not even when Kory died. He had heard before of men seeing red, of them losing control. Had even been privy to jail-house confessions where the prisoner had repeatedly claimed 'temporary insanity', saying he didn't remember doing what he was accused of. But he had never believed it until now. Suddenly his child was screaming and he awoke to find himself near the fire, his strong hands around the young man's throat, his own voice distorted and raised in a howling cry filled with ten years of pain and loss. Nightstar was pleading with him, begging him to back off. Around her slender form lavender light pulsed showing that she was holding her powers in check, not wanting to harm him, but frightened that he would harm the young man he held so tight. Frightened that he might kill. And Ibn was not even the one responsible.

Drawing another breath, Dick Grayson released the tension on the young man's throat, but didn't let go. He couldn't let go. Not yet. Before him the face that was so like Bruce's stared at him seemingly unperturbed. It showed only a shadow of fear, and beyond that a masked curiosity. His pulse was racing. Dick could feel it under his hands where they pressed against his skin, but beyond that there was nothing. He either knew no fear or knew his assailant so well that he knew he wouldn't kill. Dick only wished he knew himself that well anymore.

"Nightstar," he said quietly, his voice rasping, "leave the room."

"Dad! NO!" She shook her long black hair and stamped her foot. "No! You let him go. We'll leave together." Dick didn't look away from the predatory eyes that held his face, seemingly fascinated. Neither of them flinched. The young man was strong. In good shape. With youth was on his side. But he wasn't trained like Dick had been. He knew better than to try to escape. Dick opened his mouth to shout, but the moment he became distracted, the young man's hands came up toward his throat and with one swift impossibly fast movement he was clear. Self-possessed, he stood several feet away making an adjustment to his brocade vest, having earned a new respect from his adversary.

Ibn cleared his throat and tried once or twice to make a sound before saying quite clearly, "Nightstar, please, do as he says. As you can see, I am in no danger. Your father was merely," he held Dick's blue eyes as a strange smile lit his dark face, "startled. Obviously, there is something he feels needs to be said."

"And why can't I stay?" she pouted.

"It would be inappropriate. This is between two men. Your presence is not required."

Dick's eyebrows went up at that one and he shot a chagrined look at his daughter waiting for the explosion.

"What?" was all she said.

Her father waited. She must have been stunned into inaction. By now her mother would have had his head.

Ibn walked toward Nightstar, stopping to seek her father's permission before going to her. Dick merely nodded and backed away, curious about this young man who in many ways would have had every right to take his place at Bruce's side. Had, in fact, in the last conflict on which he and his mentor had chosen to fight on opposing sides. Inclining his head in gratitude, Bruce's natural son moved toward his daughter and reached for her hand.

She didn't withdraw it, but she didn't offer it either.

He kissed the hand and bowed to her, offering his apologies and then quietly whispered something in her ear that made her smile, a silly winsome smile like a little girl who has just been caught with her hand in the chocolate cake. Then she caught her dad watching and in mock indignation shook her head, rolled her round green eyes and exclaimed, "Men!" as she turned and made her exit from the room. "I'm only going to the kitchen," she said as she walked away, feeling Ibn's eyes on her lovely form, "so don't get into any shouting matches." Then she threw over her shoulder as she vanished through the door, "And Dad, behave yourself!"

Silence filled the room with only the sound of the log in the fireplace cracking and popping as it crumbled into burning embers that flamed purple, red and blue. Dick stared at them, remembering the trail of fire his wife left as she sped away from him. If the fates were kind, he would see it again.

"Mr. Grayson - "

"Yes..." He started, unaware of the passage of time. "Forgive me..."

The young man's hand went up. "It is nothing. First of all, sir, let me say I understand your resentment of me..."

Dick's brows went up. "Oh, you do?' He crossed his hands before him on the mantel and looked at the picture of Kory there, young and vital. Beautiful. He drew several deep breaths to slow his wildly beating heart and then laughed ruefully, "Do you? I doubt it."

"I would never seek to take your place."

Dick thought about that one for a moment. What did he mean? With Bruce? Or here? In his home? "Where? With my daughter?" he answered at last, sure that wasn't what he meant. "She's old enough to make her own mistakes."

Ibn paused at that as though reassessing his adversary. He indicated the wingback near the fire. "If I may..."

Dick waved him towards it, but remained standing himself. He waited a moment and when the young man didn't speak but only stared into the glowing coals, he asked. "So how well did you know Ra's al Ghul?"

"Grandfather?" Ibn hesitated, as though truly surprised, "Is that what this is about?"

Finally a question instead of a statement. His calm assurance had been getting on his nerves. Who was the adult here anyway?

"Well?"

The sharp eyes focused slowly, and for once he spoke haltingly, as though at a loss to communicate what he had seen and known. "I knew him. He was an old man. He lay in a large bed surrounded by candles and the ghosts of all he had lost and all he had not accomplished." He paused and then finished, "His dream died with him."

"Did it?" Dick moved away from the fire as it grew too hot, his eyes on this young man. He could see Talia in him, her sharpness, that touch of an oriental cast to the eye, but he was Bruce's son, there was no doubting that. If nothing else, the mind would have given it away. He could almost see the wheels turning. But, what kind of a creature was he? "And what of you? Do you believe in this dream?"

Ibn pursed his lips and then replied, "In principle. Look where all that we have accomplished has brought us. Look at this world about us. I remember the faces in the hospital ward - one of them was yours - battered, burned, without hope. Scarred beyond recognition and care. Is it such a mad dream to want something else?"

"At the expense of human life, yes. Ra's didn't care who he used or who he hurt to get what he wanted." Dick paused unsure of the next thing he was going to say, "You are his grandson."

"Yes, and I am Bruce Wayne's son." The dark eyes sparkled, "And whose blood do you think will out?"

Dick sucked in a breath making his decision, and then casting his eye toward the kitchen where he heard his child humming and moving about as though fixing tea, asked suddenly, "Could we step outside?"

"Is that a challenge, sir?" the young man's eyebrow cocked at a familiar cast.

"No," he shook his head, "an invitation. I don't know how I feel about you and my daughter. I've only just gotten her back. I'm not sure I am ready to share. But you and I are not enemies. You helped me. You have helped Bruce. Walk with me. I need to ask you about something. Maybe you can help me. Help Nightstar and her mother maybe not. Will you come?"

Ibn stood, his eyes keen and alert, and smoothed out the lines of the dark cape he wore. Indicating the door with his hand, he said, "After you, sir."

* * * * * * Nightstar watched the two men walk out of the house, a small war going on in her heart. Ibn had told her that her father would do this. That he intended to talk to him about their relationship and that it was only proper she not be in attendance. She had laughed. Sometimes, he was like something out of some old romance novel. Like she had to have her Dad approve of whoever she wanted to date. Really. But Ibn had said it was important to him. That he needed the approval, even if she didn't understand.

Men were weird. It was a shame so many of them were so darn good looking and so much fun to be with. She smiled at the memory of her Mom talking to her in this very room about them when she was little. Her dad had done something that had really ticked off the red-headed alien and she was fuming. Nightstar had innocently asked her why she had married him and she had stopped, suddenly going all soft and funny. Her mother had then laughed deeply and said the Earth expression of 'Can't live with them. Can't live without them' about said it all.

Suddenly shaken, she sat down the cup of cocoa that was in her hand and plopped into one of the chairs at the kitchen table feeling light-headed. Her Mom was alive! And she hadn't even thought about her the whole night, not once since Ibn had arrived. Frowning, she grabbed a pad of paper and scrawled a few words on it and with a bolt of purple fire, flew off into the night.

* * * * * * "Nightstar?" Fifteen minutes later her dad came back into the house and called her. "Princess, where are you?"

Ibn emerged from the kitchen, the same pad of paper in his hand. "Apparently she grew bored waiting for us. She has 'gone to see a friend'." He handed it to Dick, who frowned. "It says she will be back shortly."

The older man shook his head. "She's always been impulsive." He began to shed his outer clothes, revealing the dark suit beneath, and as Ibn watched, transformed himself into Nightwing once again.

The young man hugged his cape tight about him, and looked off into the distance. "Perhaps there is something she fears if she stands still too long."

Dick put his mask in place and turned to face Bruce's son. "And what would that be?"

"Herself."

* * * * * * "Mom. I miss you so. Please come back to me."

Nightstar stared at the quiescent face beneath the glass. She could remember her mom clearly and yet, for some reason, it seemed she looked at a stranger. She remembered playing with the hair that billowed and waved in the thick liquid beneath the transparent lid, braiding it and placing it high on her head. She remembered the lips kissing her goodnight, the hands holding and rocking her to sleep. But still, this woman, this beauty who slept seemed almost an apparition. A promise.

A dream.

Her Dad hadn't had any nightmares since Grandpa had told him the truth. Was she still there? Still awake? Still calling? Or had she given up? Did she think they had?

"I'm here, Mom. And we won't give up. I swear, no matter what. We won't give up."

Outside the room she heard a stir of motion and turned her head, trying to pierce the darkness. Had her Dad followed her? With Ibn? She stepped off the dais and began to walk toward the door.

"Dad? Grandpa? Is that you?"

"Hardly little one."

She turned to find a dark figure standing behind her, cloaked in shadow. It's voice was unfamiliar and yet cut from the same mold as Ibn's. The accent was soft and warm.

"Who are you? What are you doing here? Do you know my grandfather?"

The words were barely out of her mouth when she heard a whistling and felt something strike her upper arm. She looked down to find a feathered dart piercing her flesh. As a strange weariness began to overcome her she staggered. Reaching for a chair and missing it, she plummeted to the floor.

"We are here to finish what was begun.

"Bring her."

Chapter Four: Reunion For the second time in two days Dick Grayson stood before the glass sarcophagus which had held his wife's body in stasis for ten years, his heart pounding, his mouth opened in disbelief. Only this time, there would be no promise of a happy ending.

Koriand'r was gone. The containment unit had been cracked open like an egg and the various wires and tubes which had fed her sleeping form, rent asunder. Like the life that had been left her, the pale blue liquid which had surrounded her, protecting her like a sleeping babe, was slipping away; each drop silently dissipating as it fell farther and weaker from the source. Above his head, monitors which had recorded signs of life - though weak - were black.

Dead.

Bruce Wayne clung to the shadows but remained close to his former ward, his mind awhirl. Someone had to have known she was here. They had to have breached security - shut it down in fact since no warning had sounded - and then entered and left with the speed of lightning. And they had to have been prepared to transport her, weak as she was. Unless all they were interested in was a corpse. Still, he thought that unlikely.

Why take her at all then?

A frown marred his pale patrician features. Again the same answer presented itself and again - though unwelcome - it seemed the only possible answer. His steel blue eyes sought out the other slender black-haired figure in the room and rested there. But did he have proof? Bruce's frown deepened into a scowl as his eyes moved to where Dick remained frozen.

Did he need it?

A moment later, Nightwing shook himself and moved woodenly to place his hand on the empty pallet which had held his wife. His mentor watched him carefully, weighing his silence. Considering the insane roller- coaster ride Dick had been on these last few days...months. With the deaths of so many of his close friends, the loss of his somewhat innocent ideals and the serious, almost fatal injuries he had sustained - to say nothing of the wounds to his soul - he wasn't sure he wouldn't crack. Within the metal skeleton that held his own weakened frame upright Bruce steeled himself for the worst.

Nearby Ibn watched the scene unfold in silence. No stranger to loss.

Dick stood for several moments motionless, letting the dream go. He had lived without her for ten years. He could - he would - survive. But the sorrow he now felt washed over him in waves of frightening intensity, threatening to undo him. Was it worth it? The fight? Death always won in the end. Always took the prize it wanted. First Bruce's parents, then his. Then Donna, Garth, Roy, and all the others. Now Kory. Only the man who waited in the shadows behind him seemed capable of escaping its fatal embrace. Only Bruce. And Bruce had tried to pass that on to Kory, bless him. But he had failed.

She was gone. And he had to go on. Find who had done this.

Make them pay.

Without a word Dick bent his head and began to examine the wet pallet where her body had lain. He began to look for clues as he had been trained, setting aside his emotions, thinking of nothing but the task at hand. He bent beside the dais and began to look for footprints, running his fingers over the wet sticky tile, searching for a stray hair, a piece of cloth, anything that might lead him to her killers.

Ibn shifted on his feet without saying a word and looked at Bruce. Father and son locked eyes, holding still, uncertain as to what to say or do. An unusual feeling for them both.

Finally Bruce shook his head. It wasn't time for that yet. Ibn looked away and the man who was Batman turned to his elder 'son' and broke the silence.

"Dick."

Nightwing ignored him, but the muscles in his back tensed. "No, Bruce," he thought, "don't. Don't give me hope again. I'm not sure I can bear it. Bruce... Please...."

"She may not necessarily be dead."

* * * * * * A world away a dark-haired girl awoke trembling and frightened. It was dark and she could tell she was not where she had been before, at the STAR facility in Maine. The air was different, harder to breathe and it smelled odd. The sounds outside were foreign to her ears but not to her imagination. She could hear the cry of wild dogs and fantastic birds that winged through the night, and felt the ground shudder with the passing of larger bodies that trumpeted their protests at the square stone buildings that had risen out of the land to blot their ancient hunting places.

Shifting, she drew her legs up under her and reached out to steady herself on the cold stone floor of what she was beginning to understand had to be some sort of cell, but as she moved her hands, she saw they were individually bound in some way. Concentrating, she was able to make out a thin delicate band encircling each wrist. Amazingly, as her mind cleared, the bracelets grew brighter until they pulsed gently, casting a soft pink light about the room. Instinctively she knew they had to be some sort of power- dampeners. That must be why she felt so weak! They were sucking the solar power out of her. It was as though whoever had kidnapped her had known she would be there at her mother's side. For some reason that thought frightened her very much.

Rising to her feet, she glanced to her right and caught sight of a small narrow window ten feet off the ground. She crossed and stood under it, aware that it was too narrow for even her small form to pass through, but nonetheless she rose into the air so she could look beyond her prison. Outside the rough stone wall the night sky was ablaze with a million stars and below on the horizon, she could just make out what seemed to be outlines of tall palm trees ripe with fruit. There was also motion there, but she couldn't see who or what cast the shadows in their passing.

Somehow she didn't think she was in Kansas anymore.

Thinking of that old movie her Dad used to watch with her made her strangely sad and she sank back toward the floor. She had grown really close to him these last few months while she watched over what at first she had feared would be his deathbed, and then over his healing. Closer even, she thought, than she had been to her Mom. That had been the closeness of a child and her Mommy. She had been denied learning to know her as a person. As the wife of Dick Grayson. As Starfire of the New Titans. Perhaps now...

Suddenly fear gripped her heart stopping it cold. Hadn't she been with her Mom when these men had overtaken her? What had they done? She could remember the sound of glass shattering and the feel of a crisp ice-cold liquid on her fingers and feet. Sinking to the cold hard floor she curled into a tight ball, throwing her arms about her knees. They'd killed her... Without the support of the tank she had to be dead, didn't she? Terrified she began to cry uncontrollably, tears running down her smooth cheeks in streams. Soon sobs wracked her youthful frame.

She cried long and hard, not expecting an answer and so was startled when one came. Unexpectedly, a word drew her attention, forcing her to hold in the tears and draw a breath against the surprise. Someone was calling her name.

"Nightstar," an unfamiliar voice whispered in the darkness, weak and without power. The girl wiped her eyes and stood, softly approaching the source which she placed on the opposite side of the room near the window. As she moved past it, a stream of starlight struck a slender form stretched lengthwise across a dirty straw mat. A slender form swathed in lavender and silver cloth. A slender form capped with mounds of auburn hair and two round emerald eyes without pupil or iris that mirrored her own.

Nightstar gasped.

"Mom?"

* * * * * * "She may not necessarily be dead."

Nightwing remained where he was, resting his weight on one knee, feeling his world flip once again.

"Bruce..." he growled warningly, "Bruce, don't. I can't -"

The man who had raised him, who had taught him all he knew about survival in the best and worst of circumstances, left the shadows to come to him and lay his hand on his shoulder. "Yes, you can. Yes, you will. You' re strong - "

"Am I?" Dick looked up, his blue eyes full of unspent tears. "Am I?" He crushed in his fingers the remnants of a part of Kory's gown, caught and rent by the shattered glass. It had blood on it. "I don't think I can take anymore, Bruce. I'm only human. This is too much." The tears began to run down his cheeks as he ran his hands across his neck, his face, touched his forehead. "Bruce, I - I don't. I can't..."

The older man knelt and taking him in his arms, simply held him while he cried.

Several yards away, feeling strangely intrusive, Ibn al Xu'ffasch began to circle the room. Cautiously and with purpose, he skirted the two men who were in fact strangers to him and yet kin, and with eagle eyes began to search, careful lest he find more than he cared to.

"Bruce," Dick said at last, pulling away and pulling himself together, "what do you mean? How can she possibly be alive when she's been ripped from all that sustained her? Don't give me any false hope... "

"Did you notice the white in her hair?" Bruce asked flatly, ignoring the torrent of pain he had just witnessed, fearful lest it unleash a tempest of his own. "Be practical," he thought, "draw him back."

"What?"

"Her hair. Did you notice it had changed?" His ward was looking at him now, his eyes focused.

Dick frowned. "Yes. So?"

"Think. Nora Fries. Did she change? Did she grow older?"

His former ward shook his head. "No. She never changed. That's what the cryogenic bath Freeze kept her in did. It froze time." Dick glanced up to where his wife had lain. "I thought you said this was the same..."

"Similar. Not the same. We were not idle all of these years."

"We?"

"The scientists at STAR who helped me with the computations, the serums, the anti-virus technology." Bruce laid his hand on the edge of the dais and sighed, "Each year we would remove her, treat her and wait. Each year we would put her back. During this time she aged. Unfortunately, nothing we tried worked. There was no cure. The best we could do was leash the monster."

"Meaning?" Dick rose to his feet, straightening his costume.

"As I said, the chamber is designed to hold death at bay, to keep the body out of time and out of danger while a cure is sought. We didn't cure her, but we took her back to the beginning of the disease as we sought its origin. The last time I saw her she was as she had been on that final day."

Frowning, Dick locked eyes with his mentor. "So what does that mean for Kory now? Today? This minute?"

"It means that unless they killed her getting her out of the containment unit, she is alive. I can't say yet how long she has been gone, but from the time she was taken from the liquid, she should have one or maybe two days at least before succumbing again to the disease that killed her - that almost killed her so long ago."

"Make that two," Ibn spoke without warning from the dark shadows beyond the dais, his strong voice shaking with something that sounded like rage. "They have not been gone more than two hours at most."

Bruce whirled to stare at his biological son, his adopted son beside him. Dick advanced down the steps towards the younger man. "Why do you say that?"

Ibn stepped into the light thrown by the twisted and broken spotlights that had lit Koriand'r's resting place and held out his pale hand. In it was a small metallic object shaped roughly like a crown, a single lavender jewel sparkling at its center.

"Nightstar was here. They have them both."

* * * * * * "Mom?"

The woman who lay on the straw mat shifted uncomfortably, as though her body were stiff and sore. She made soft small noises that indicated she was feeling great pain, but refusing to acknowledge it. In spite of this, she sat up straight, making a prop of the wall behind her. Great green eyes fought to focus and a voice, weak but determined addressed her, sorrow shining through the answer. "No. I'm sorry. You're not my child. You're too old."

The girl moved forward, puzzled. Who was this? It couldn't be her Mom... Could it? How had she survived?

"I thought... I thought I heard my little girl crying. I thought you... I was mistaken." The voice was husky, deep and tinged with anger. "Why have you brought me here? Where is my child?"

Nightstar blinked and drew a deep breath, moving forward so the light from her manacled wrists touched the figure before her, illuminating a face at once familiar and strange.

"Please," Kory whispered, tears streaming down her golden cheeks, "tell me where she is."

The dark-haired girl dropped to her knees beside the other woman and held her hands out. "Mom..." She smiled as tears welled in her own eyes, overflowing. "Mom, it's me... I am Nightstar."

Fire blazed briefly in the Tamaranean's eyes, only to be replaced by pain. "My child is ten years old. You must be at least twenty. You can't -"

Nightstar sighed, biting her lip. How could she prove it? What could she say? She rocked back on her heels and took a moment to think as her dad had taught her. Her instinct was to rush forward and enfold this woman in her arms, but she was just beginning to comprehend the daunting task that faced her. They were strangers. Even more than she and her Dad had been.

At last she said, "Can you tell me the last thing you remember?"

Koriand'r's eyes grew cloudy and she looked away, a faint smile on her lips. "I was home. I had just spoken to Dick - my husband - on the phone. He was on his way home. Nightstar," she frowned at the young woman who seemed impossibly familiar before her, "my child was in bed. She was sick. I had just taken her something to eat some soup, I think and..." She hesitated, gingerly shifting her weight as though any continued contact with the ground was too painful. "And then I was here."

"I waited on you..." Nightstar whispered, her eyes growing wide as she was suddenly catapulted back to that awful day. "I waited and waited. You had told me not to get out of bed. I guess I had been out of my head with the fever the day before. I remember Dad even told me I had flown in my delirium. I was really weak. I wanted to get out of bed, to see if you were okay. I was afraid..." She paused, tears spilling anew down her smooth cheeks. "You never came. Ever again."

Kory's frown deepened which made her head hurt. She lifted her hand to her forehead only to find it fitted with a device similar to the ones that encircled this young woman's wrists. The cool pulsing light from the device struck the young woman's raven-colored hair, highlighting her deep lavender costume even as she closed her eyes and lowered her head toward the floor.

"Later than night, after the sun was down," she continued, "Aunt Donna came in and sat with me like she did when Dad was hurt. She had been crying again, like that time. I asked her where you were and she said you were with Daddy. I believed her. I didn't find out until the next morning that he had come home to find you unconscious on the staircase, barely alive and had rushed you to the special unit at STAR where they tried to save you. But you died..." The girl began to weep uncontrollably, raising her dark head to stare at the red-headed woman who sat quite still before her, listening as horror struck her heart.

"Mom, you died!"

The eyes were her own. Great green eyes, only framed instead by ebon hair and the semblance of Dick Grayson's handsome strong-boned face. She gasped, unable to take it in. "Nightstar, is it you? Can it be you?"

Sobbing the child fell into her mother's embrace and Koriand'r's form forgot its pain as she held her, marveling at such a wonder.

"How very touching. Almost as though you had real emotions." A snide and sinister voice echoed through the room, coming from a hidden speaker. Both women involuntarily looked up towards it. Terrified, Nightstar clung to her mother as though she feared she might simply vanish into thin air without warning.

"To bad the reunion is destined to be short-lived." The voice paused, issuing orders and then it finished, "Bring them to me."

* * * * * * At Ibn's words Dick had nearly gone out of his mind. Bruce had finally managed to calm him by assigning him a task which made him feel as though he was accomplishing something. He was busy examining the few clues they had found: An unknown substance left by one of the men's shoes, the cloth from Kory's gown; he blood, as well as a few stray hairs caught on one of the pieces of glass. It wouldn't occupy him long, but it would keep him busy long enough for Bruce to do what he had to do. Speak to his 'son'.

"Ibn."

"Yes." The young man halted where he was and turned. That was it. He used no name. Gave Bruce no title. What were they really to each other.

"Ibn. Where are they?"

The grandson of Ra's al Ghul shifted his feet. In his hands Nightstar's headband twisted between restless fingers. "Why do you ask me?"

"Because you know."

Ibn looked up and met blue eyes hard as flint. He opened his mouth to protest, but then shut it just as quickly. He hung his head. "How long have you known?"

"That you were involved somehow? Personally? Not for long." Bruce circled him, his voice growing harsh, "Just since we arrived here." He stopped moving, settling on the lower step of the dais and crossing his arms. "I guess I was wrong about you."

Dark eyes met his, their feelings veiled. "About me? How?"

"I thought you were different." Bruce sighed. "I thought even with Ra's', even with Talia's blood, that you had to have something of me in you." His voice rose in anger, taking on a frightening edge, "But if you could do this. To him... to her... Then I was wrong about you. Terribly, horribly wrong."

The young man pivoted, his lean face ghostly pale. He held his hands out in protest. "It is not what you think. I would never -"

Furious Bruce backhanded the youth throwing him several feet across the room. Even debilitated as he was from years of bone-crushing crimefighting, aroused he was a still a terrifying sight. Ibn inched away, wiping his mouth where red blood crept from its corner to mar perfect white teeth.

"How dare you? Is there nothing of me in you? Are you all Ra's? Even your mother -his daughter - had some decency in her. She was at leeast loyal to her own! If you have harmed either one of them..."

His voice had risen in volume as he had grown powerful in his anger. Several rooms away Dick Grayson heard his former guardian shout. Puzzled, he dropped the sample in his hand and went to see what was wrong. When he arrived on the scene he was surprised to find Ibn on the ground and Bruce's hands sullied with the blood of his son.

Ibn's hands were before his face and as Bruce approached he continued to protest, not plead. "It is not what you think. Do me the justice to allow me to explain..."

Bruce's hand was raised again to strike, but Dick caught it, holding him back.

"Dick, let me go," his mentor said through lips tight with rage, "he has betrayed us."

"Bruce, this isn't the way. Unthinking violence never is. Whatever you two are arguing about, it can't be worth abandoning your ideals." He held the other man's arm, panting against the exertion of keeping it still. "Bruce, I've never seen you like this. What is it? Tell me!"

Bruce Wayne drew a deep breathe and let it out slowly, releasing the tension in his arm. As he watched, Nightwing leaned down and offered the other man a hand, slowly helping him to his feet..

"I believe..." he started, refusing to let go of the distant possibility that for the first time he might be wrong. "God," he thought. "let me be wrong." He drew a breath and then continued, "...I believe we have the answer to Koriand'r's kidnapping in hand. Ibn, am I wrong?"

Ibn's black eyes didn't flinch. He met his birth father's stare with equal strength and answered.

"No."

* * * * * * "You have to understand," the young man began, his hands clasp together in his lap, his strong frame bent beneath the angry glare of twin pairs of cold blue eyes. "I had no part in this." He glanced up at Bruce, noting the well-known scowl that was directed at him for the first time. "I swear it."

Bruce said nothing. They stood within the confines of the room he used as a study having retreated there after Ibn's confession. Dick had almost taken him apart. The young man's disheveled clothes and mussed hair were out of keeping with his usual image, but they belied the fact that he probably had several cracked ribs and quite a headache. It was odd, Dick's rage had somehow quieted his own. Reason had returned and he had pulled the two of them apart, holding Nightwing back until he found his own sense again. Then the two of them had brought Ibn here to question and to listen to him. As he spoke Bruce studied his face, looking for something of himself; seeing only Talia and the dream of a life together. A life much as the one his ward had had which had been stolen away by a madman's scheme.

Finally, unable to bear it any longer and anxious to begin the search for his wife and child Dick snapped, "Well? Go on. What do you know then?"

"I know there is little time, but the tale must begin at the beginning. I was raised, not by my birth mother," he glanced at Bruce, the look bearing no condemnation or acceptance. " - or father - not even my grandfather whom you both disdain, but by a middle class family who adopted me after I was left on a mission doorstep. They were average people, much like your parents, Richard Grayson, and if not in class, still like yours..." He hesitated, still feeling strange with the word, but wishing to employ it, "...Father."

Dick grabbed a chair and thrusting it against the wall, sat down. What was Bruce thinking? Why was he letting this go on? They needed to move!

"Go on," the older man coached.

"In this way I was raised to believe in God. In the values of society. In love and justice and caring for others. Until I was eight years old."

"That was when Talia came for you?" Bruce scowled, still angry that she had hidden this boy's existence from him. What he could have done with him... What potential wasted... All lost due to a woman's fancy.

"No. That was when my grandfather's men came for me. Mother knew nothing. She thought I was still with my adoptive parents." He drew a deep breath. "Would that I had been..."

"Bruce..." Dick protested, but a hand stayed him.

"There's time, Dick. This is necessary." Bruce pinned him with a familiar look. "What was it I taught you to do before heading out on a search?"

"To gather all information possible." He stared at Ibn, feeling mixed emotions. Rage. Disbelief. Jealousy. That last one startled him. "Is he right? Do we have time? Or will they ...harm them?"

"Not immediately." He raised his hands in protest when Dick started in anger. "I believe they want to study them. But I will be brief. I wish to find Nightstar and her mother as much as you do." The earnest look in the young man's eyes almost convinced Dick. Almost.

"How can we trust you?" Bruce asked.

Ibn sighed. "Ah, that is the question. And for me, the question is instead, 'How can I make you trust me?'" His dark head shook and he went on. "I was thrust, upon entering my grandfather's world, into the most stringent of indoctrinazations. I was taught his principles, his beliefs and for a time... For a time, they became my own. He... they... became my world. Your parents were taken at about the same time, Mr. Grayson, and you were adopted by this man. Did you ever question his principles?"

"No. They were right."

"And how did you know that? By what scale did you measure his beliefs?"

"By my conscience. By right and wrong. I know justice from injustice."

"As do I." Ibn stood and walked a few feet away, careful not to give the illusion that he was running. "That was my salvation. I knew right from wrong and Grandfather - though I loved him for all the good he taught me... literature, art, music - Grandfather was evil. Something in my heart told me this even when I did not understand. Even when I followed and approved his methods. Even when I met this man, " he indicated Bruce, "face to face for the first time." The young man inclined his head. "But that is another story."

Bruce almost smiled. "Yes. It is."

"But what does this have to do with Kory? Bruce..." Dick protested, growing restless again. "We need to move."

"Yes, Ibn, we do. Finish your tale now. Quickly."

"When very young, about twelve or thirteen, I remember meeting a man who rapidly rose in my grandfather's organization. A strong powerful man, easily able to influence others. He shared my grandfather's beliefs with one small difference. He wished, as did Ra's, to cleanse this planet and take it back to what it had once been, primeval, lush, pure, but he blamed its decadence and decay not on man but on the aliens who had come to live among us. He believed that they had brought upon us the wrath of the gods and his sacred duty was to rid the world of their like." He glanced at Dick and swallowed. "He especially hated any who mated with them, sullying the line, producing children that were... sub-human, as he put it. He believed that they should be publicly punished and their offspring eliminated."

Bruce frowned. "This was ten years ago?"

"Yes," Ibn answered glancing at Dick who had suddenly fallen silent.

"What happened to this man and his mad dream?"

"For a time he succeeded," his son answered, "and then he died."

"Died? But then how...? Who is this now then? Who has Kory and Nightstar?" Dick rose to his feet, approaching the young man, his fists balled in fury. "TELL ME WHO!"

Ibn turned, the light from Koriand'r's ravaged support system spilling through the door and highlighting his sharp features as he locked eyes with the father of Nightstar.

"Like Lazarus from the tomb, I am afraid, he is back."

* * * * * * Nightstar awoke again, disoriented. She opened her eyes on the same dark cell, but a quick survey of it told her she was alone. The straw pallet on the far side of the room was empty and her resurrected mother nowhere to be found. Abruptly, she found herself challenging what she knew for reality. Had she only dreamed of being reunited with her Mom? Had she been so devastated by witnessing the destruction of the containment unit that she had created her own fantasy and brought her mother back to life?

It was more probable than that her mother lived.

A trained detective, she began to work her way around the stone cell, searching for clues to either prove or disprove the memory. As she reached out to turn the mat over, a sharp pain darted through her right arm forcing her to cradle it against her chest. She bit her lip and then carefully uncurled the limb, gingerly running her other hand along the smooth lavender cloth until she found a small rent and realized it had been cut. Walking over to the window she lifted into the starlight and pulled the fabric away to reveal several needle punctures covered by a crude bandage.

So, someone had taken her blood. She closed her eyes, listening to the soft sounds of the world outside as she sought to quiet her wildly beating heart. What were they hunting? What could be in her blood?

A sudden noise startled her so she turned just in time to watch two men pitch another figure into the room and then slamming the solid cell door, vanish. A low moan greeted her, followed by a soft sigh. Nightstar descended to the floor and quickly crossed to what she knew had to be her mother. The older woman looked tired and weak. Fatigue pinched the edges of her large eyes and pain etched lines in a forehead meant to be smooth and clear. A small tear escaped her eye as she spotted the girl and her arms reached out.

The young girl fell into her embrace and they sat in silence for some time, the only sound in the cell that of tears of joy.

"Sweetheart," Kory whispered at last, planting a kiss on her grown daughter's black hair, "are you all right?"

"Mmm-hmm," the girl answered, feeling a little child again.

Kory was silent a moment and then she asked, her voice very still and quiet. "Nightstar, is... Is your Dad okay?" Her voice broke as she asked and more tears fell.

Her child drew back, sitting up and looking at her, her jade-green eyes wide. "Dad? What do you mean?"

"Is he - alive?"

Nightstar sucked in a breath. Ten years gone. This woman had no idea what had happened. Thank X'Hal she hadn't asked about the other Titans. Thank God her father had survived.

"Daddy's fine. Though you might not know him." She gestured towards the pale yellow stripes that ran the length of Kory's long red hair. "He's got more of this than you do. Snow on the mountain- top, you know?"

Kory leaned back against the stone wall, obviously exhausted. "He'd be over forty now. So would all the others. Donna, Roy...." She looked away and so missed her daughter's grimace at the name of her beloved Aunt and Uncle. They were all gone now. Someday she would have to know. But not now. Not here.

"Dad was... well... hurt this year."

Koriand'r's head came back to her, terror in her eyes. "Is he all right?"

Nightstar hesitated. "He's almost mended, and he's friends with Grandpa again."

Kory frowned. "Grandpa?"

Her daughter laughed. "Bruce. After you... after we thought you were dead they kind of mended fences. They didn't see a lot of each other but I got to know him... and Alfred." Her face grew long and then she finished, "After Dad was hurt, he and Bruce became friends again."

"Alfred is dead, I take it."

"Yeah. A lot of things have changed Mom. I -"

Koriand'r put her finger to her daughter's full lips and whispered, "Shhh. If you are all right and your Dad is all right, that's all I need to know for now. We have a lifetime ahead of us to make up for the years we have lost."

That made Nightstar ask the question she had been afraid to ask. "Are you... OK now, Mom?"

The Tamaranean princess shook her head. "I don't know. I don't even know where I have been all of these years, or who...? Did you Dad -?"

Nightstar shook her head. "We were told you were dead. It was Gramps..."

Koriand'r's eyebrows arched even more than normal. "Bruce saved me?"

The young girl grew sober. "He really loves Dad, I can see that, even though he tries to hide it. There's more to him than he wants you to know. He's not as careful with me. He lets his real feelings show. Like how much he really loves both of his sons."

"Both. You mean Tim?"

Nightstar wrinkled her nose. There was another one she'd have to find out about. "No, I mean Ibn."

Her mother shifted her weight again, noting the light that filled her daughter's eyes at mention of this person's name. "And just who is Ibn?"

The girl smiled, her white teeth showing. "Got a couple of hours?"

* * * * * * Speeding through the night sky over rural Maine, three men held silent vigil in the belly of the largest of the vast fleet of Batwings owned by Gotham's eccentric millionaire, Bruce Wayne. Once upon a time it would have been necessary to have concealed his secret identity when seeking permission to enter foreign air space, but since the destruction of the Batcave and the revelation of his alter ego, there was no need. Now he was able to accomplish openly many things as Bruce Wayne that the Batman would have had to procure covertly. Having just received permission to leave the vast area patrolled and maintained by the United States government, he steered the plane out over the coastline heading for the ocean that separated them from other continents and the mystical land of the Sudan. The land traditionally associated with Ra's al Ghul, the Demon's Head.

Spinning in his seat after having engaged the auto-pilot Bruce fixed his eyes on the pair who sat quietly conversing over the remnants of two steaming cups of hot liquid. They were very alike. Enough so that they could have been brothers. Blood or not, destiny had made them so.

"Ibn. Dick."

Startled they glanced at him. Ibn picked up his tea and took a sip. Bruce could smell the faint odor of spice in the air. As the young man drank, Dick replied, "Bruce."

"We are heading for the coordinates you have given us, Ibn. What next?"

Steady hands set the cup down and long fingers joined in a steeple before his thin elegant face. "As I was telling ...Dick..."

Dick grinned and shrugged. "Mr. Grayson was making me feel like I was my own grandfather."

Ibn nodded. "Yes. As I was telling him, this man - the one who plotted the demise of his wife and child - worked on the translation of the plague wheel with my grandfather a decade ago."

"The wheel that started the contagion?" Bruce felt anger well in him. Though they had never proven it, they feared that was what had at last claimed Tim. He had gone on a reconnaissance mission with the CIA and never returned. The last his partner had seen of him, he had been ill and exhibiting some of the signs of the fatal disease. "The Clench devastated Gotham, you know."

"I was young at the time, but yes, I was aware of the evil perpetrated by my grandfather using the information stolen from the Order of St. Dumas. This man, Siddig el Ahmuhd, was one of the men responsible for breaking the code. All others Grandfather had executed immediately, but Ahmuhd was spared lest some new difficulty arise. He was very respected and very high up in the organization. My mother detested him." A frown marred his forehead and his voice darkened as he continued, "What Grandfather did not know was that Ahmuhd was a traitor, working for himself. He had stolen knowledge from the wheel and began to experiment on his own with variations of one of the viruses, hoping to develop something that would leave humankind untouched, but instantly destroy anything alien to our DNA."

"And you knew about all of this?" Bruce's tone was stern, though what he could have expected a fifteen year old boy to do about it, he wasn't sure. Still, Tim had only been fifteen when he was Robin and he had done mighty things.

"No. Not then. Not for many years after. My mother was given the task of hunting him down and took pleasure in his execution."

Dick shuddered and then looked up at Ibn with a strange sorrow in his eyes. "But you think he - or his followers - found one of the pits and managed to get him back there."

"There is no other answer. Fourteen months ago rumors began to circulate that Ahmuhd was back, stronger than ever, with a new organization but the old purpose. I am certain he was involved in the escalating xenophobic fear that led to the final conflict in Kansas... though as always, he himself remained hidden behind operatives, in relative safety." Ibn looked at Dick and then at Bruce. "It was for this reason that I first began to shadow your grandchild."

"What?" Dick frowned. "What about Nightstar?"

"From my mother I knew of the attempt on her life from before, of the death of your wife and... of her awaited resurrection." At Bruce's look he added, "Do not think anything in your life escapes my mother's eyes. It was at her prompting that I joined Luthor's group and her hand was in our meeting. She set me to watch over your 'interests'. She did not count on my falling in love with one of them." Before Dick could add anything, Ibn added, "And now, I have failed her."

"Failed?"

"I can think of no other way that Ahmuhd could have discovered the location of Koriand'r's sleeping place or known that Nightstar was there. The watcher has been watched. I have been used."

"...by your mother?" Dick asked, glancing at Bruce, but there was no reaction there.

"I would hope not, but... She is determined that I be the sole heir to her 'beloved'. In that one area, she is blind. And perhaps, a bit mad."

"Mad?" Bruce moved closer, certain of what he would hear, but hoping he was wrong. Had she been so stupid?

"Those who use the pit must pay the price. Perhaps she will find absolution where she is now. I can only hope." Ibn turned to look at Dick, inclining his head so his hawk-like eyes shone black as onyx. "Still, consider yourself warned."

Bruce stared from one dark face to the other and then his deep blue eyes rounded. Shocked he met his ward's determined stare, frightened of its intensity. "Dick, you mustn't consider - Someone has to be there. With her power - "

Dick stood, facing him across the roar of the engines and the gulf of understanding.

"I'll be there."

Continued in Chapter Two