Legend

Things got back to normal fairly quickly. J went back to school with no further incidents after a good week at the parents. The incident seemed to have slipped everybody's mind. Tony instituted tighter restrictions on who had access to computer terminals and accounts and had IT personnel put through a supplementary background check, including the interns. Tony is always looking out for me.

And in a surprise turn, Aslyn showed me her brand new engagement ring at lunch. She had a huge, beautiful one and a half carat Asscher-cut diamond solitaire, and I was really pleased for her. Her fiance, Edward, had taken her to dinner the night before and proposed in a carriage ride by Central Park. Very romantic. That was the problem with having a nighttime vigilante as my significant other. The dates were harder to come by, although this was more than balanced out with the lovely little things he did for me all the time. Like dropping everything when my brother was attacked by the Joker. Damian did go with me to their engagement party, which was lovely. I was so glad to see her so happy; she practically glowed. Karen and Rill came back for it and it was wonderful to see them. Karen had achieved the rank of soloist with her company, and it didn't look like she was going to go any higher. That, coupled with early arthritis in her right foot was convincing her to call it a career. She was planning to see this season out, then retire and come home to work in her family's business. Happy day. We emailed and Skyped, but it wasn't the same.

The week after that, I went to the ballet with Natasha, something we'd gotten into the habit of doing around four times a year. It was still as fun as it had been to see the Bolshoi. But the next day, after we'd finished stretching, she told me that she'd been diagnosed with leukemia. Stage three. The doctors had said it was very aggressive and probably linked to the treatments she'd been given in the Red Room. I tried hard to keep it together while she was there, but afterward hustled to the bathroom and cried. It was a hell of a shock. She hadn't said that I could tell anybody, so I kept the knowledge to myself until she told the rest of the Avengers. It was a terrible blow for them too; she'd been a constant since the formation of the team and had provided a lot of stability as well as being well liked. Her decline was rapid, three months. Clint quit the Avengers when she was bedridden, a month before she died. After her funeral, he packed up and left, moving upstate to solitude. Kate took over as Hawkeye, but the loss of her mentor hit her hard too. All in all, I was grateful for the fall. The summer had been hard and terrible.

Damian threw me a lovely party out in the new garden for my birthday, with my parents, Bucky and Emma, Tony, and my friends. He gave me a beautiful diamond and platinum bracelet that looked like a tendril of ivy (love, fidelity).

It started to get colder in early October, so we planted bulbs all throughout the new flower beds. I was looking forward to them filling in next summer. Bruce brought home some different plans for a koi pond, but we changed it to just water lilies (purity of heart) after Alfred pointed out all the predators who would love to eat our fish. I was glad to line up a landscaper who would do the work in the spring.

The S'mores killer struck twice more that fall, but an off-duty police officer caught him setting a third fire and made the arrest. His name was Joe Rigger, and he'd been a demolitions man in the military. He'd been honorably discharged and returned to the city. He wasn't very stable and made himself a suit that threw napalm, and turned to arson for profit. McIver kept me informed on these developments. It was big news when he rolled on the Joker and his minions, claiming that it had all been the Joker's idea. This was greeted with skepticism by the public, who were unaware that the Joker had been pulling the strings from inside Arkham. This was information that the police and DA's office were holding back for a trial, including where the blueprints came from than enabled him to set such devastating fires. The media started calling him Firebug.

Just before Halloween, Damian and I went in to the attic, which ran the length and width of the house aside from the conservatory. Some of the attic was a series of small rooms that the servants had used, back when the house required a large staff to run it. The rest was storage. There was a lot of old furniture up there. We didn't poke around much; there was a fair amount of dust, and we worried that if we started, we'd never stop. We did find a tete-a-tete couch, but it was in distress. Since even Alfred didn't know everything, we took it to be mended and reupholstered, selecting a deep, rich green to complement the rosewood. It was delivered when we were at work, and by the time we got home, Alfred had placed it in the corner of the library, cozy and intimate but not cut off from the rest of the room. Outside of our bedroom, It was my favorite place in the mansion. Winston's too; we often had to boot him off in the evenings.

Damian had a two week trip to London, Prague, and Budapest for business; Tony gave me vacation so I could go with him. I was so excited; I'd never been outside the US and those three cities were among the ones I'd wanted to see for as long as I could remember.

I left work at lunch to get ready for the trip the next day; I'd already bought nice luggage to replace my old roll-on and all I needed to do was pack. Traffic was fairly heavy for noon, and I daydreamed a bit as I crept along the road to the bridge.

WHAM! The vehicle behind me slammed into the my bumper, shaking me back to the present. I swore and reached to turn off the car so I could get out and inspect the damage, when the vehicle (a large, anonymous black SUV) hit me again. This time, there was a struggle for dominance as I kept the brakes on and the SUV shoved me forward. Fortunately there was a gap between my car and the one in front, so I didn't hit them too. Just then the traffic began to flow, and I got on the bridge.I didn't like it, but there was nowhere else to go. The SUV slammed into me again, and I got worried. I pressed the button to release the caltrops; the SUV swerved wildly but the driver managed to get it under control again and charged ahead. In the rear-view mirror, I could see the rims starting to spark on the road.

I saw an opportunity and hit the two remaining countermeasures at once, taking advantage of the lighter traffic. I was over the bridge and more nimble than the pursuer, even though there was a grinding noise from the rear axle. I just had to make it home...

The SUV dropped back and a smile turned up the corners of my mouth. I called Damian. I was updating him on what was going on and I could hear him calling the police on his office phone. I was about to hang up when something streaked into my perepheral vision and hit the front quarterpanel. I lost control immediately as the my sweet little roadster was forced off the road and into a pillar of an underpass. The next thing I knew, I was stunned from hitting the airbags, the door was ripped open and I was dragged out. In the distance, I could hear sirens. Two people dragged me past the large silver sedan that had crashed into me to a third vehicle, a smaller, beige SUV. I was shoved into the back, duct tape slapped over my mouth, wrists and ankles bound. I thought I might have a concussion since I was feeling very nauseated. I didn't want to throw up because of the gag, and I spent however much time the trip took trying to prevent it. The zip ties bit into my skin; they were tightened as much as they could be, no wiggle room, which prevented me from activating my tracker. After some time, the SUV stopped.

The door opened and I was pulled out and slung over some guy's shoulder. I started to struggle violently, and another man ripped off the duct tape. "What is wrong with you?" he asked crossly, and I didn't bother to try saying anything as my stomach rebelled and I threw up all over both of them, the best projectile vomiting performance of my life. And I had a lot to work with--I'd gone to lunch with Aslyn before heading home. The guy carrying me shrieked in disgust and dropped me on the ground and kicked me, cussing me out. The other man told him to stop, and dragged me gingerly to the door of what looked like a warehouse, older and comfortably shabby. It wasn't far, but the coarse asphalt of the parking lot cut through my slacks pretty fast. I was hauled over a threshold and over smooth concrete, before being dumped on the floor.

I looked around, struggling to sit up. I started as the Joker loomed over me, scowling. "I told you to bring her to me, not... What the hell is wrong with you?" he shouted at his minion.

"She threw up all over us," the man protested.

"Shut the fuck up. Bring some damp paper towels."

The man shuffled off, returning shortly with a scowl on his face and a fistful of coarse brown paper towels, slightly moistened. The Joker instructed him to clean my face, which he did ungently. (I'd taken some care to aim for the goons. With my head lower than my body, I escaped pretty much unscathed.) Meanwhile, the Joker brought a folding metal chair and placed it in front of me, then pulled me up and dropped me on it. Then he saw my wrists and ankles and shrieked at his minions. My feet and hands were swollen and dark. Good help is hard to find, apparently even in the criminal underworld. He got a rather unnervingly large knife, which he let me take a good long look at before cutting the zip tie on my wrists, nicking the skin a little. It hurt a whole lot as the blood started moving again. He let me chafe my wrists, enjoying the little whimper I couldn't suppress. I took the opportunity to activate my tracker, but my fingers were clumsy and I also set off the alarm. Tony had been right, it was crazy loud. Everybody flinched away, and I took the opportunity to hop away. I'd gotten about ten feet when I was tackled from behind and went down. The watch was ripped from my wrist and silenced. I guess the goon was yelling at me but I couldn't hear over the ringing in my ears and the excruciating pain radiating from my shoulder. Then the Joker, walking over very quickly, looked at me malevolently and with an enormously vicious backswing, cut the goon's throat with the knife. I locked eyes with the goon just before the blood fountained out of the gash in his neck. I started to scoot away before he hit the ground, but the Joker grabbed my ankle zip tie and dragged me back to the chair. I could see the smeared trail of blood behind me.