"This is taking too long." He muttered.

"Dick," Zatanna said in a feigned bright and chipper voice, "If you complain one more time, I will actually read across this table and rip out your larynx."

Dick looked at her evenly and she cocked a shapely dark brow in his direction before picking up her bagel and biting into it.

"Try me." she warned.

Dick brought his coffee to his lips in response and let his eyes slip over to the blonde bombshell that sat five table across from them in the relatively packed café. She was in no way older than they were, she sat with a gaggle of other young women and in spite of all the qualities that made her wrong for the person they were looking for Zatanna insisted she be followed.

That was last night when they'd arrived in Nebraska at around 3 a.m. and it was now going on 11 in the morning. He'd called out of work and Zatanna was due to be back in Gotham before her show.

They followed the P.O. breach from the box location to the home where the last person who'd touched it allegedly resided. It was an apartment complex that made the four seasons look just a bit tacky and that was the first red flag.

"This can't be right." He said.

"Well this is where the person lives, 17b to be exact." Zatanna replied.

"This person has been pretty much living incognito for the last half decade and we locate them at what, no doubt, has to be the flashiest place in Nebraska to live? It doesn't make sense. We must've gotten it wrong." He insisted.

"Or maybe we didn't." Zatanna said simply.

"It doesn't make sense Zee."

"But it makes sense that Gotham's wealthiest family is actually a team of superheros." She snapped.

He pressed his lips together in defeat.

"Now park the car around back and be quick. I have a feeling this isn't the last surprise we're going to come across." She said getting out of the car and walking into the building, without any further explanation.

When he walked into the building she was leaning against the receptionist desk, laughing and playing with her hair insipidly. The male receptionist; a responsible looking brunette man with glasses, with a bad tapered haircut and medial build, flushed and smiled awkwardly. He couldn't be more than 30, he was obviously unmarried if he was working the dungeon shift, and by the way he looked at Zatanna (or tried to look at her) it was clear he'd never been paid attention to by women just like her. Not that anyone was anything like Zatanna Zatara but to a man like the receptionist behind the desk, any pretty face went a long way. A weakness Zatanna was definitely exploiting. Dick frowned, she wreaking havoc on the poor guy's emotions.

He watched as she gently brought her hand to his arm and he nodded in submission. He turned to type something into the computer and Zatanna's eyes flashed towards the door, catching Dick's poorly concealed grimace. Her eyes narrowed in speculation before the receptionist called her attention to him again. Handing her a plastic key.

She squealed in response and bounced on her toes.

"Alex, you're the sweetest. Don't ever change." She gushed. She looked over at Dick now and motioned him over with her hands. "Oh, here he comes now. Don't mind his face, he's scarier than he looks."

Dick walked over and cleared his throat. "Alex." He said, taking his hand in a firm handshake. "I can't thank you enough for being a help. It means a lot man."

Alex smiled, "It's not a problem. I hope she says yes. You two would make a beautiful couple."

Dick's brows raised slightly. "Well you and me both." He continued.

"Well," Alex said, "I'll see you two in the morning then."

"Yep." Zatanna replied, hooking her arm under Dick's excitedly. "Later!" she said as she began dragging him out of the building.

Alex tipped an imaginary hat to Dick and Dick nodded. When they were behind the building she brought her hand to his eyes and uncovered them in the next second, she had changed into her usual 'work' outfit, only a slight variation from her magician's outfit. Instead of the fishnets, her stockings were a sheer black and she wore black low-heeled boots.

"You could've just asked me to turn around." He told her humorously.

She shrugged, "It would've been unnecessary effort on your part. Plus I don't know that I trust you that much." She told him. "You're kind of a womanizer."

He laughed, and she placed her hands on her hips and looked him over.

"What?" he asked.

"Well, you're gonna change right?" she asked.

"Well how about you let me in on what's going on first?" Dick asked.

"Well for starters, you're proposing to Marge tomorrow a little before noon so when she leaves at 7, we have to go in there and 'decorate' the place. Alex gave me a temporary key, so no need to sneak in." she said.

"Then why get dressed?" he asked.

"Because why put off what you can do today, for tomorrow?" she replied.

"So, we are sneaking in." he said flatly.

"Right after you get dressed." She confirmed.

He looked back at the car where his gear was and back at the magician in front of him.

"Speaking of unnecessary effort." He hinted.

She winked at him and smiled. "Dick Grayson asking a woman to undress him, I'll savor the moment another time." She purred.

"You're insufferable." He told her.

"And yet here we are." She smiled before bringing her small hands to his eyes again and taking them off in the following second. He looked down and he was dressed.

"So, are you levitating us up to the 17th floor or should we ask Alex for scaling equipment?" he jibed.

Zatanna closed the space between them, standing right beneath his chin, he looked down at her and froze as he felt her hands snake around his hip slowly.

"If it's all the same to you." She said in a low even tone. "I think we should scale it."

She brought her hand between them and he noticed his grappling hook and rope in her hand. She turned sharply on her heel and went to face the building. She secured the rope to the hook and launched it up to the third ledge of the building effortlessly. They'd be positioned right where they needed to be. She checked the sturdiness of the rope and started walking up. He followed behind her silently.

When they both made it onto the ledge, she peered into the window.

"I can't see anything." She said.

"Move over." Dick whispered as he bent down to look into the window. It was pitch black, but there was a shiny sort of look to the darkness. One that made him uneasy.

"Here, I'll just pry it open a little." She said. She went to open the window and Dick caught her hand before she could.

"That's bullet proof, dark aluminum." He said. "This window and probably all the other ones, are alarmed. If you so much as put a pound of weight on the glass, everyone in this building is waking up."

"What?" she hissed.

"You wouldn't be able to see through that window with X-ray vision."

"That seems a bit extensive." She said straightening out of her crouch.

"Marge isn't taking any chances." He replied. "Our best bet is waiting until she leaves tomorrow."

Zatanna smirked. "I guess Alex was quite the help after all."

They waited until the small blonde Zatanna had seen on Alex's computer left the building early morning before walking into the complex building and heading straight for the elevators. Fortunately, the reception staffing had made their change over.

The apartment yielded little information, there were no personal effects of the sort. Just a well kept and modernly furnished apartment with an extensive security system that required magic for them to come and go undetected.

"The woman we saw leaving is a little young to be Dex's mom's sister or acquaintance. She looks our age." Dick said.

Zatanna shrugged, "Looks can be deceiving."

Dick scoffed. "Modifying her looks to get by, possible, modifying them enough to look twenty years her junior?" He said skeptically.

"You'd be surprised at the lengths women go to in order to keep up appearances. Though I'm not sure that's exactly what's happening here, it's not like it would be unheard of." She replied.

"Well I guess a pretty face goes a long way." Dick muttered.

Zatanna's eyes narrowed infinitesimally. "It certainly doesn't hurt." She said dryly.

"I can tell." He lipped.

"Last I checked pretty faces were your type. Don't tell me solitude and bitterness has humbled you." She quipped.

"I'm just saying that women, in general, shouldn't rely so heavily on their looks and charms to get them everywhere in life." He said ignoring her jibe.

"Women, in general, don't." she told him. "And whenever you want to start speaking in the specific, I'll be in the car, helping you do your job."

In the blink of an eye she was gone and Dick was in the hallway of the 17th floor. He felt like kicking himself, but walked sorely to the car where she sat in the passenger seat and followed the GPS (which Zatanna had already set up) to the café.

"You're not in a good mood this morning." He noted as he brought his cup down.

She turned to look at him evenly. "What were you insinuating back there?" She asked.

"I wasn't insinuating anything. I was just making a point." he said tersely.

"Last night the point was that I should ask Alex for scaling equipment and this morning its that women should do more than coast on their looks." She said incredulously. "I don't know what your problem is and right now I don't care, but let me make myself clear, pull your shit together and fast."

"It was a joke."

"It wasn't funny." She told him. "If you don't like the way I do my work-"

"Your work is fine." He said. "You're fine. I was just, I don't know, I-"

"You what?" she snapped.

He looked at her flushed an angry face and could see the hurt in her eyes. It wasn't fair to her, she was right. This wasn't her case, it wasn't even his, but here she was in the middle of nowhere, running on zero sleep and having to put on a show in a few hours, helping him in spite of his less than decent behavior.

"I'm a crap friend." He said. "And I guess I am looking for any excuse to validate my own really shitty logic as to why I should keep being a crap friend to you and everyone else. And I'm sorry. It's my problem not yours."

She hated when he did that, when he could see past his own bullshit and call himself on it.

In the past few days she'd seen it all, the way he was fighting who he was and who he was becoming. His own inner darkness had laid a claim to him and it was his own battle to fight. She knew that struggle all too well, it was why he made every effort to not be close to her despite her own advances and although she had thought she was making even the slightest difference, she should see it wasn't enough. They had days left together and he'd be gone again. A whisper in the wind, living in his own personal hell and not even realizing it. But if he could see through his own bullshit, then maybe just maybe he was getting better, maybe it meant he could still see the light at the end of his own tunnel.

She had to hope. She had to. Because he had hoped for her and she'd be damned if she forgot it.

She turned to face the blonde again.

"I already knew you were a crap friend." She told him.

Dick nodded and knew that was her own way of saying, she'd already forgiven him.