A/N: The last chapter. God, this is it. This is the end, isn't it? Well, thank you to everyone who read, followed, favorited, and reviewed, you're all awesome and I'm lucky to have such great readers. I considered doing a sequel to this but I have so many other things that I want to do right now, I think this character's story is probably done... that and if I gave her a sequel, I'd probably end up killing her or something. I seem to do that to my characters a lot. Plus, Professor Hugo Strange was a major part of Mary's story and he's dead so... I mean, you can't exactly get much more dead than getting stabbed through the chest and then getting caught in an explosion. But anyway, thank you all and I hope you liked this!

The Boy of her Dreams

"Yet another hell of a night, huh?" Jim Gordon asked the Batman, staring up at the gates of Arkham City.

"You're telling me," the Batman replied. Hours of fighting the Joker, the Penguin, Ra's al Ghul, Mr. Freeze, the Mad Hatter, Clayface, the Identity Thief, Zsasz, Deadshot, and the Riddler had taken their toll on his energy and with the sun beginning to rise.

"We at least some good came out of it," Gordon commented, motioning over to the group of people being checked over by ambulances. The undercover cops, the medical team, and the political prisoners were all covered in blankets and holding hot beverages… except for one blonde doctor who was too busy hugging a little blonde girl to accept anything. The Batman nodded.

"I suppose. You'll take care of her?" he inquired. Gordon nodded back.

"I'm looking up her brother's address now. She'll be home in no time." The Batman nodded and handed Gordon a small communicator.

"Keep me posted." Gordon nodded back and the Batman took off into the night, the young but heavy blue eyes of the girl watching him as he left.

An hour later, Gordon knocked on the door of a town house apartment not five miles from Arkham City. A young blonde man opened the door, bleary eyed, and asked, "Can I help you officer?" Gordon looked him over.

"Are you by any chance Justin Noble?" The young man nodded.

"Yes."

"Brother of Mary Iris Noble?" At that his eyes widened and he suddenly looked awake.

"Yeah," he breathed, the pain and sorrow evident in his voice. Gordon nodded.

"You need to come with me son." Justin Noble looked confused but nodded and soon joined the Commissioner. Gordon unlocked the door of his car to reveal skinny, pale girl with limp blonde hair about twelve years old. The young blonde man's jaw dropped.

"Mary?" he gasped and the little girl looked at him, questioningly.

"Justin?" she murmured. He nodded. "Justin!" she cried and leaped out of the car and into her brother's arms. They were crying and holding onto each other with their lives but neither cared for neither one of them had been so relieved or happy in years. As Justin Noble spun his little sister around, Mary Noble laughed with glee and smiled.

She'd done it. She'd escaped. She was free. She was home.

Gordon was sitting in a chair in Justin Noble's living room, while Mary and her brother sat on the couch, the little girl's head in her brother's lap. "Mary was always different," Justin explained, stroking her hair. "She only lasted in school a week before Mom and Dad pulled her out. Notes from teachers and other parents said Mary was 'Unnerving, violent, moody, and should be separated form the other children.' They home schooled her from then on. Not that she really needed it. She was smart, she couldn't express it very well but I knew she was. And for a while she seemed stable, but when she was seven there was an incident." He faltered. "See, I… I wasn't there. I was in college. If I'd been there I could've helped her, kept her out of trouble. Mom and Dad had company over for a business dinner and she snuck down, declared that Mr. Smith was having an affair, as was Mrs. Smith, and Mr. Jones was secretly gay, and Mrs. Jones was a drug addict. One of them called her a liar and she attacked them. That was sort of the last straw for my parents and they apparently sent her to Arkham, thinking they'd never have to deal with her again. When I found out what happened, I tried to get them to release her, but they said she'd died in a prison riot. Being the idiot I was, I believed them." He took a deep breath. "But after that… I didn't want anything to do with them. I cut off all ties with them, started paying for law school myself, and tried to live with the guilt of leaving her with them… and letting her die." Gordon nodded.

"You'll take care of her?" he inquired.

"Of course. I promise you, I will never leave her again," he swore and Gordon nodded again, before standing.

"I'd better be going. Press is going to have a field day and I've got a lot of work ahead of me," he said and got up to leave. Justin got up, leaving an apparently asleep Mary on the couch, walked him to the door, thanked him, and watched him walk out.

"NO!" a young voice shouted. Gordon turned and looked to find Mary in the doorway, but she wasn't looking at him. Instead she was looking up at gargoyle high up on the building next door. "Please do not go. Please? I do not want you to go," she said to it and the Batman emerged.

"I'm not going forever. I'll come back soon. I promise." Mary looked like she wanted to protest but looked into the Batman's eyes and stopped. She lowered her head and focused her eyes on her black boots.

"Ok. Goodbye Mister Batman," she muttered and the Batman swooped off into the night sky, Justin Noble and Commissioner Gordon looking on as he left.

The next day, late in the afternoon, Justin Noble answered the ringing phone (after assuring Mary that it wasn't Zsasz) and almost dropped it in surprise when he realized who was on the other end of the line.

"Mr. Justin Noble? This is Bruce Wayne, and I have proposal for you concerning your sister."