"And they don't carry rabies hardly at all," Maria said dryly. She was aware that there were fewer bats with the disease than popular opinion would have it, but there was still a rather large colony down here.
He bounced, and a part of her heart that had been tied into a knot eased a little. There was something that was profoundly wrong about Dick Grayson still; seeing him bloody and broken had been wrenching, and had made scrubbing away his life an easy call. He'd been vulnerable enough; having someone pry through his past and peel apart his life, find the exact angle to attack him from, would have crippled him, and if they moved from him to the rest of Bruce's family, it would have destroyed that bright light inside him.
And that would have been the worst.
But it left him trapped down here in the darkness, where no camera could find him and start rebuilding that online presence. Except for an alternative. "Circuses are a dying breed these days," she said, but a little gently. "You could come work for SHIELD," she said, and in other times, it had been half a quip, something she'd tossed at him as a lure knowing he'd never so much as nibble. But now that he couldn't be a cop, couldn't even be Bruce's son in public? "We do really nice work with identity creation, have a working environment that involves a Helicarrier, and you get to help save the world on a regular basis. Again," she added as something of an after thought, because it wasn't exactly a new experience for him.