I don't own Batman.

They said the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. She didn't think anyone who hadn't grown up reading the news about the endless rounds of Arkham breakouts could appreciate that quite like she did.

Villain does something bad. Batclan throws them in Arkham. Villain breaks out. Villain does something bad. Batclan throws them in Arkham. Ad nauseam.

That was insanity on both sides of the line, the Bats for throwing them back in there anyway and the villains for trying the same old tricks in the same old places and expecting not to get thrown back in.

Maybe the familiarity was comforting for the older generation, but she intended to be the first of the new, and she didn't intend to spend her life dancing in and out of that pit of an asylum. She wanted to make her mark on the world, and she wanted to be around to enjoy it.

Right now, she was still an unknown, and that was fine for now. Unknown meant no one was watching her. Expecting her. Stopping her.

Unknown meant she had plenty of time to plan.

And time . . . time was the crux of it, really. Fortunately, time was something she had plenty of, and to spare.

And if that ever changed, well, she could always rewind it to make a little more of it.

The downside to personal assistants - and yes, she was calling Mort a personal assistant. Despite what he kept lobbying for, "henchman" was just too tacky.

So the downside to personal assistants, aside from a tendency for melodramatics, was the questions. Or, rather, the complete failure to ask intelligent ones.

"Wouldn't it be easier to just take out Batman?" he asked hesitantly.

"Mort," she said flatly, "I'm honored that you have such faith in my abilities. I am. But if the entire murderous population of Gotham's criminal element hasn't managed that by now, I think it's time to try something a little more original. Besides which, Batman isn't the actual problem."

"He isn't?"

She pinched the bridge of her nose. "Mort, who got Batman out of that exploding warehouse last week?"

"Robin," he said promptly. It had been on the front page of the paper.

"And when they were both caught two months ago, who got them out?"

"Nightwing." Mort might lack creative thinking, but he did at least have a good memory.

"And when Nightwing nearly got taken out by Ivy, who got him out?"

". . . Red Robin and Batgirl."

"Who were in turn later saved by Black Bat. And a month before that, when someone managed to round up all the Bats that were currently in Gotham, Red Hood claimed they were trespassing on his territory - " despite his territory ending some three blocks away - "and showed up and obliterated them. And if someone somehow managed to take out all of those people without stepping on the toes of half the rogues in Arkham, how long do you think it would take the Justice League to interfere? Or some of the younger heroes? If it was just Batman, he'd be long dead by now. The problem isn't Batman. The problem is that he has a small army."

Mort's mouth had slowly drifted open in realization.

"But if we go back to before he had the small army . . . " she said leadingly.

"Then you can kill him before he becomes so powerful," Mort concluded. He frowned. "Except no one knows who Batman is. How will you find him?"

Sometimes she despaired of that boy. She rubbed at her rapidly growing headache. "Mort. How did the papers speculate Batman was injured in the last fight?"

"Broken ribs."

"What did Bruce Wayne break horseback riding this week?"

"Broken ribs."

"Where did Batman briefly show up last month?"

"France."

"And where did Bruce Wayne go on a vacation last month?"

"France."

He was still just looking at her guilelessly. She pinched the bridge of her nose.

"When did the new Robin show up?"

"Three years ago."

"And when did Bruce Wayne get a new child?"

"Three years ago."

"Are you getting my point yet?"

". . . No."

She sighed. "Okay, Mort. Okay."

" . . . You're going to try and kill a baby Bruce Wayne?"

She stared at him. "Mort, what did we just discuss about the problems of a small army of people trying to stop you?"

"It's bad."

"Right. And if I try to kill a baby, do you know who's going to try and stop me? His parents. His parents are going to try and stop me. The police, no matter how corrupt they are, will try and stop me. Random people on the street will try and stop me. If any heroes in this time get wind of it, they'll go back in time to try and stop me. For that matter, when faced with a baby, I might try to stop me. I am not killing a baby, Mort."

"Oh. Then what are you going to do?"

"I've got no quarrel with Bruce Wayne, Mort. It's Batman I want to stop. So it's the idea of Batman that I'm going to kill."

See, the way she figured it was this:

Everyone knew that Bruce Wayne had lost his parents in a rather traumatizing way at a young age. She figured that if any one event spurred him into a life of vigilantism, it was that.

So theoretically speaking, if someone went back in time and saved his parents . . .

The beauty of it was that she'd only have to fight one person, and then only if she was careless and couldn't interfere until right as the crime took place. The police wouldn't try to stop her. The Waynes wouldn't. And while any heroes who caught wind of it might have reservations, "Mission: Make Sure Batman's Parents Stay Dead" wasn't something she saw a lot of heroes volunteering for.

She wasn't sure what a non-traumatized Bruce Wayne would look like. Surgeon? Genuine playboy? Dedicated businessman? As long as he wasn't Batman, it wouldn't matter.

And without Batman, the rest of the Batclan disappeared as well. She wasn't sure if he would still adopt the kids; maybe, maybe not. It didn't bother her either way.

The League would still exist, sure, but they'd have no reason to pay particular attention to Gotham. As long as she kept her activities less glaringly obvious than world domination, she doubted they'd even know she was there.

So she closed her eyes and wound back the clock, just like her mother had taught her.

There were limitations to the gift. She couldn't go into the future. She could only visit each time once.

But that was okay. She didn't need anything more than that.

Operation: Keep Wayne Family Out of Crime Alley was a bust. The crowd at the theater had worked against her despite all her careful planning.

She was prepared though. She was wearing body armor under her black theater clothes, and she was well armed. She managed to push her way through the crowd and out the door to the alley.

An alley where a man was just raising a gun.

"Stop!" she screamed. She raised her own gun.

The gunman twitched towards her. Her bullet slammed into him. His gun went off. The bullet ricocheted off the wall.

The would-be mugger collapsed to the ground. She ran forward. Dead.

Little Bruce had a little smear of blood across his cheek. Both of his parents were staring at her in shock.

Alive. They were both alive.

She grinned, stepped back into the shadows, and wound the clock forward.

"No," she said blankly. "No. You have got to be kidding me."

The Wikipedia page waited mockingly.

Under "Bruce Wayne: Early Life" the article stated, "Only a day after an attempted mugging, Bruce Wayne's parents were tragically killed at a charity gala when a bomb exploded and took the lives of nearly twenty guests."

The newspaper Mort was reading had a grainy picture of Batman on the front cover. She snatched it out of his hands.

"Is that a gun?"

Mort blinked up at her. "Yes?"

"Batman has a gun," she repeated. She looked at the picture again. "He was patrolling with the Red Hood?" She knew they had been under a ceasefire, but . . .

Mort frowned. "Is there some reason he shouldn't have been?"

"But the no kill rule," she said weakly.

" . . . Are you okay, boss?"

The memories of an alternate life were slowly trickling in and she needed to sit down, because no, this was not okay.

Batman didn't have a no kill rule. Batman used guns. Batman had killed the Joker years ago when the second Robin had disappeared. Batman frequently worked with the Red Hood; after all, Jason Todd still lived at the manor.

On the plus side, his ties to the police and the Justice League were much weaker here.

On the downside, everything else.

Okay, so, in hindsight, she could see how little Bruce might have gotten the wrong lesson from those two days of terror. On the first night, there had been a bad guy who a lady had killed with a gun, and his parents had been fine. On the second night, there had been no guns, no killing of bad guys, and his parents were dead.

It was too late not to shoot the guy.

. . . But it wasn't too late to interfere with that gala.

The party was black tie, so she showed up in a simple black dress that hopefully should be in fashion in any time period and a black wrap in deference to the cold night air.

Her little black purse was filled with the tools she would need.

She'd researched everything she could about the bomb. She knew where it should be, and she knew how to disarm it. She could do this. She could totally do this.

With no Batman, it wouldn't matter what Bruce Wayne's views on guns and necessary force were. Those opinions would remain strictly theoretical.

She slipped through the edges of the party and broke off to a little hallway. There was a supply closet here. In the closet, she would find the bomb.

She crouched beside the door and got to work on the lock.

"You're the lady who saved my parents."

She jumped. Behind her, a solemn Bruce Wayne stood in a tiny suit.

That's right. Bruce had been there that night. He'd just been far enough away from the blast to survive.

She smiled and hoped it didn't look as nervous as she felt. "That's right. And I'm here to do it again. Would you like to help?"

Interest lit up the future hero's face. "Yes!"

This was a terrible idea, but she was enjoying the irony too much to stop. "Alright. Hold my tools while I pick the lock."

He did so dutifully. "What's in there?"

"A bomb."

"Are you going to shoot the bad guys that made it?"

She seized the opportunity to impart a valuable life lesson. Well. A valuable lesson to help her stay alive at least. "No. We should never shoot bad guys unless we absolutely have to. I wouldn't have shot that man last night if I'd had any other choice, and even though I didn't, I still feel absolutely awful about it."

. . . True. Just not, you know, for the reasons he'd be assuming.

"You don't look like you feel absolutely awful about it," the kid pointed out.

"I'm on the job," she said swiftly. "Emotions can't get in the way on the job."

He nodded slowly like he was taking mental notes.

. . . He was taking mental notes. He was totally taking mental notes. She resisted the urge to bang her head against the door.

It popped open. The bomb set their waiting.

With a lot less time left on it than she'd thought.

"Wire cutters," she said tensely. They hit her palm a second later. Red wire, red wire - there. She cut it.

The timer stopped. She breathed out. "Thanks, kid. Don't know what I'd have done without you."

He perked up. "I helped?"

"Yep." She ruffled his hair. "It's always good to work with a partner. Now, I've gotta go, so go run tell your parents about this, okay? They'll call the police." Her hand was kind of tingling. She'd ruffled his hair. She'd ruffled Batman's hair.

She stepped back into the shadows of the closet and wound time forward.

She wasn't sure which was more depressing: the article discussing the twenty year anniversary of Martha and Thomas Wayne being shot by a disgruntled employee two weeks after the nearly disastrous gala, or the newspaper article with a photo of some massive fight that had occurred the night before that included not only the Batclan as she knew it, but also like five allies she'd never heard of before.

Apparently, Bruce had taken her partnership advice seriously. Fantastic.

On the bright side, none of them were carrying guns.

She scrolled despondently through her search results. The third one down was, "The Killing Month: The Top Twenty Conspiracy Theories for the Twenty Year Old Tragedy."

She stared at it for a long moment. The mouse inched closer to the link.

The last line of the article really stuck with her:

"'I know it sounds crazy to some,' says one expert, 'but you have to look at the facts. Someone or something was after the Wayne's, and I'll believe that to my dying day.'"

She sighed. "Me too, buddy. Me, too."

Mort looked up from his paper. "What was that?"

"Nothing, Mort."

She thought about warning Bruce off quite so many partners on her next attempt, but her original theory still held. Get rid of the Bat, and the rest would follow.

She stopped the gunman. Non-fatally, this time.

Little Bruce caught up to her before she could slip away. "I want to be a hero just like you when I grow up," he announced.

Her mind went blank. "What."

"I'll go around saving people, and I'll do that cool thing you do where you hide in the shadows, and I'll wear all black - "

She looked down. She was wearing all black again, wasn't she.

" - and I don't want to kill people since you said that was bad, so I thought maybe that would be easier if I scared them really bad. So I'll dress up as something really scary like a, like a, like a bat!"

She stared at him for a long moment before sinking to her knees and putting her head in her hands. "I hate everything."

She didn't think Bruce could hear her over his excited babble.