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He saw bats all around him as he knelt in a pool of red, tiny white pearls spilling across the ground as laughter echoed in his ears. He watched as a family flew through the air, shattering on the ground so far below, while another boy watched in horror. A moment later, he saw the boy flying through the air, and the line snapped...
A tight constriction around his chest drew his mind away from the imagined horror of the death of a partner, as he instinctively reached up to grip the binding cable. Dimly, there was a buzz of power through the thinner palm of his protective gloves, and he looked to see it was not the whip of a woman he had thought he loved, but the golden glowing cord of Truth.
The press of fear was still there, but he wrapped his gloved hand around the lifeline, focusing on it until he pulled himself out of the lingering gas of the Scarecrow's trap, toward the holder of the Lasso.
"I was afraid it wouldn't work," she murmured once he was standing at her side, fumbling in a pouch for the antitoxin he had been too paralyzed to take.
"It reminded me enough of an important fact."
Diana cocked her head at the man she had grown to love, curious, but not pressing, knowing the signs of all his ghosts in the lines of his mouth.
"I am not alone," he answered, his mouth easing, before he moved to the Batmobile so they could pursue Scarecrow.
Diana put her Lasso away and thanked the goddesses for Bruce one more time.