Death in the Family

by different author

Disclaimer for entire story: I don't own Batman, I don't own the story, and I don't even own the Internet I'm using to post this.

Do you know how depressing that sentence was?

Nightwing smiled as he flew from rooftop to rooftop. This was one of the times he felt completely free. He kept a watchful eye on the streets below.

Bludhaven was surprisingly quiet tonight. Almost to quiet. That is when he spotted a young woman stolling down the street. He slowed and came to a stop on the building above her. The woman was dressed in formal business attire underneath a long coat. She had pulled the hood up and around her face to shield herself from the snow that was whipping across the streets maliciously. Nightwing knew the briefcase he was holding was an easy target.

Just as expected on the streets of Bludhaven, it wasn't more than a few seconds that Nightwing's sharp eye caught sight of a dark figure lurking in the dark. The dark figure was drawing closer to the woman, and he knew he would have to intervene. He balanced out to stand on a streetlamp in the woman's path.

She passed underneath him and Nightwing saw his chance to jump down and land in a position that would put him between the criminal and the woman. He took the opportunity and jumped.

He had just picked up his foot to get closer to the criminal when a jarring smack to the back of his head sent him reeling to the ground. After a few seconds to recover, the double vision cleared enough that he could make out a figure standing above him.

It was the woman. She had removed the hood and stood over him with a malicious grin. A sickening feeling in Nightwing's gut overcame him as he realised that he had walked into a trap.

He recognized this woman all to well. Her delirious laughter filled his ears and served as his last concious memory before she bludgeoned him once again, and he fell into darkness. His last thought was the woman's name.

Harley Quinn.

()()()

Batman struck the punching bag in front of him once more, and was satisfied when he heard the sound of it threatening to come off of it's hinges. His training was interrupted with the sound of a loud blaring noise coming from the Batcomputer.

He prepared himself to recieve a message of doom, perhaps a World threatening crisis. All of the worst possible scenarios played out in his mind. He shut off the blaring and typed in the passcodes that would allow him access.

What he found horrified him, perhaps more than if he had recieved a message of world ending proportions.

After Jason Todd, the second Robin, had been beaten to death, Batman had made the rest of the Batfamily take extra precautions. They were all equipped with two computer chips. One was lodged in the back of their mouth, disguised as a tooth. It was a simple tracking device. It linked to the Cave computer to allow him to know their positions at all times. The other device was embedded in their wrists.

It also allowed him to track them, and was programmed to send out a signal when the user's pulse was lost. If that would ever occur, the name of the user on the screen of the computer would turn from blue to red.

Bruce's eyes filled with tears and his stomach lined with lead as he stared with disbelief at the screen. There, on the list of his family members, his eldest son's tracking device was disconnected.

But that wasn't what terrified him the most. He put his hand over to the names of the people he considered himself closest to in the world, and traced the names several times. Each time he was horrified to find that his eldest son's name was still flashing red, contrasting with the rest of the blues.