Legend

Safe travels

Things got back to normal fairly quickly. J went back to school with no further incidents  after a good week at the parents. The incident seemed to have slipped everybody's mind. Tony instituted tighter restrictions on who had access to computer terminals and accounts and had IT personnel put through a supplementary background check, including the interns. Tony is always looking out for me.

And in a surprise turn, Aslyn showed me her brand new engagement ring at lunch. She had a huge, beautiful one and a half carat Asscher-cut diamond solitaire, and I was really pleased for her. Her fiance, Edward, had taken her to dinner the night before and proposed in a carriage ride by Central Park. Very romantic. That was the problem with having a nighttime vigilante as my significant other.  The dates were harder to come by, although this was more than balanced out with the lovely little things he did for me all the time. Like dropping everything when my brother was attacked by the Joker. Damian did go with me to their engagement party, which was lovely. I was so glad to see her so happy; she practically glowed. Karen and Rill came back for it and it was wonderful to see them. Karen had achieved the rank of soloist with her company, and it didn't look like she was going to go any higher. That, coupled with early arthritis in her right foot was convincing her to call it a career. She was planning to see this season out, then retire and come home to work in her family's business. Happy day. We emailed and Skyped, but it wasn't the same.

The week after that, I went to the ballet with Natasha, something we'd gotten  into the habit of doing around four times a year. It was still as fun as it had been to see the Bolshoi. But the next day, after we'd finished stretching, she told me that she'd been diagnosed with leukemia. Stage three. The doctors had said it was very aggressive and probably linked to the treatments she'd been given in the Red Room. I tried hard to keep it together while she was there, but afterward hustled to the bathroom and cried. It was a hell of a shock. She hadn't said that I could tell anybody, so I kept the knowledge to myself until she told the rest of the Avengers. It was a terrible blow for them too; she'd been a constant since the formation of the team and had provided a lot of stability as well as being well liked. Her decline was rapid, three months. Clint quit the Avengers when she was bedridden, a month before she died.  After her funeral, he packed up and left, moving upstate to solitude. Kate took over as Hawkeye, but the loss of her mentor hit her hard too. All in all, I was grateful for the fall. The summer had been hard and terrible.

Damian threw me a lovely party out in the new garden for my birthday, with my parents, Bucky and Emma, Tony, and my friends. He gave me a beautiful diamond and platinum bracelet that looked like a tendril of ivy (love, fidelity). 

It started to get colder in early October, so we planted bulbs all throughout the new flower beds. I was looking forward to them filling in next summer.  Bruce brought home some different plans for a koi pond, but we changed it to just water lilies (purity of heart) after Alfred pointed out all the predators who would love to eat our fish. I was glad to line up a landscaper who would do the work in the spring.

The S'mores killer struck twice more that fall, but an off-duty police officer caught him setting a third and made the arrest. His name was Joe Rigger, and he'd been a demolitions man in the military. He'd been honorably discharged and returned to the city. He wasn't very stable and made himself a suit that threw napalm, and turned to arson for profit. McIver kept me informed on these developments. It was big news when he rolled on the Joker and his minions, claiming that it had all been the Joker's idea. This was greeted with skepticism by the public, who were unaware that the Joker had been pulling the strings from inside Arkham. This was information that the police and DA's office were holding back for a trial, including where the blueprints came from than enabled him to set such devastating fires. The media started calling him Firebug.