August 19, 1132

	"Bruce?  Bruce, wake up."
	Bruce lifted his head groggily from the mattress and stopped abruptly, 
pain racing through muscles stiffened by hours of sleeping bent nearly double.
	Dinah's hands pressed into pressure points at this neck and the small of
his back.  Searing pain rushed his back, but he was able to straighten.
	"Babs is getting ready to take a nap," she explained, pulling another 
chair in close to his, "and I've put on a pot of coffee.  Why don't you go get
some?  I'll wait here."
	Bruce nodded and stood, feeling his cramped muscles stretch over 
vertebrae. He'd been unfair to her-selfish-the last few days but that could be 
discussed later."Must have dozed off.  Spud?" he asked instead, wondering where 
Dick'spermanent accessory had wandered off to.
	"At church with Alfred and Leslie," Dinah replied.
	Bruce quirked an eyebrow.  "Church?"
	"He asked to go," Dinah told him as if this was normal.  "Said he was
afraid his cross might not be working anymore since he hasn't been to
church since his mother was alive."
	Bruce nodded, having no answer.  If Spud could find some comfort in a 
being Bruce had long since felt abandoned by, who was Bruce to tell anyone
otherwise?  He watched his wife turn her attention back to Dick, fussing
with the covers, and turned go look for the promised coffee.
	The tension in his neck and shoulders was finally starting to ease when he
entered the kitchen and saw Barbara staring at the first page of the
morning's newspaper for the first time.
	She lifted her head, her eyes blazing fire at Bruce.
	"What the HELL is this?" she cried, throwing the newspaper at him.  "How
DARE you!  What were you thinking?"  Her voice was hoarse from exhaustion
and coffee, biting into his already frayed nerves.
	"What?  I-"
	"Don't even TALK to me!" Barbara yelled at him, tears welling in her eyes.
	"You think I wouldn't KNOW?  Goddammit Bruce, he spent eight years, eight
YEARS trying to bring down Blockbuster and you just waltz in here and do it
in a weekend!  How do you think that's going to make him feel?  How could
you DO this to him?"
	Woodenly, Bruce lowered his head to see the headlines splashed across the
paper that had bounced off his chest and hit the floor.  BLOCK-BUSTED!
	"Dick did bring him down," he tried to answer.  "He did all the work-"
"And you got all the glory," Barbara snarled.  "You just decided it was up
and time to dump everything on the BPD.  Yeah, Bruce, you've got everything
under control."
	"No," Bruce fumbled.  "I-"  Suddenly he wasn't sure why he was even
arguing.  After all, Blockbuster was in jail and that was what mattered,
didn't it?  The ends justified the means and Barbara would just have to
accept that sooner or later.
	"What's going on here?"
	Dinah had arrived in full outraged comportment.
	She looked from Barbara to Bruce and back, then stalked to the middle of
the room and crouched to pick up the newspaper from the floor.  She scanned
the stories quickly and threw the paper on the kitchen table.
	"Tell her," she ordered Bruce, staring at him hard with icy blue eyes.
Bruce looked resistant, but he did as he was told.
        "Dick did all the work," he said quietly.  "There was one thing
that tied his information together and that was the money laundering
through the Freesoap Corporation."
	"Dick wanted you to look into their holdings," Barbara agreed, her voice
brittle.  Dinah shot her a warning glance.
	"He looked into it himself.  They were using stock transactions to hide 
it.  The money went in on the fifteenth of the month-if I'd checked on Monday, I
wouldn't have found anything-and would leave tomorrow morning if the police
didn't get the records before the stock market opened.  I waited as long as
I could.  He couldn't do it so I did."
	It lay unspoken in the heavy kitchen atmosphere that Dick might not wake 
up and that Blockbuster might have gone unchecked.
	A small sob turned Dinah's attention back to her friend.  Babs hunched
over, her shoulders shaking in silent sobs.
	"Come on," she suggested, laying a hand on Barbara's shoulder.  "You need
some rest.  You'll feel better after a nap."  She glanced over her shoulder
at her husband as she helped Barbara leave the kitchen and he felt shamed.
He didn't deserve her love.  He didn't deserve any of their love.  But it
was there and it was inescapable.  And he had to make amends.