#ccfclosedstarter

Zatanna stood at the doorway with her arms crossed, watching the man attempt to go through his usual workout routine. Stubborn as always. She had come to see how he was doing and judging by each wince and grunt, he was doing as well as she expected. Tsking under her breath, she approached him as he finally took a water break. “Bruce. you need to rest.”

Shutting the door behind him, he flipped on the lights and immediately reached for his weapon when he heard movement from farther inside his apartment - only to lower it when a familiar face greeted him. A welcome surprise. “...what do I owe this visit?”

She had made herself more and more comfortable in the weeks following their emotional reunion and the housewarming at Jason and Rory’s. It was a mix of wanting to make up for lost time as well as secretly wanting to keep an eye on him. Not that he couldn’t handle himself but she wanted to be there if he needed her. None of them liked to ask for help but if she was there when it started, or maybe even head off the trouble before it started...

Glancing up, she caught his gaze curiously when she didn’t get an answer right away. “What? What’s with that look? Not hungry?”

The raven-haired sorceress found herself cursing up a storm as she stood soaking wet outside the coffee shop, doing her best to attempt and pat herself dry but it was wasted effort. Normally a minor mishap, like the waiter that had slipped and dropped a whole pitcher of ice water on her, would not have fazed the woman but this was not the first but the eighth unlucky incident to befall her in not so many days.

The theater losing power right before her performance as well many other things breaking or falling on her were much too targeted to simply be a coincidence or a spell of bad luck. So as she tried to rack her brain in effort to think what spell she had cast that resulted in such miserable consequences, the stop light seemed to glitch just as she was stepping into the crosswalk at a busy intersection. She barely heard the car horn when a pair of strong arms encircled her small frame and lifted her back to the safety of the pavement.

“....!”

Rose took a seat gingerly at the open spot on the bar, looking up to her favorite bartender under a dark baseball hat and tinted sunglasses. While she wasn’t ashamed of her battle scars, she was aware of the concern they raised — especially with friends. “Believe it or not I’ve had worse.”

Zatanna opened the office door just a bit and peered into the dimly lit office in search of the business man. She hadn’t been able to get in touch with him in person since the day everything went to hell and she had, er, excused herself into a mind link with him. That gave her a sense of normalcy in a not-so normal day but it had also given a firsthand look at what Bruce had been through that day and it wasn’t pretty. So she wanted to see if he was okay....

“Bruce, it’s me. I don’t mean to interrupt but you’ve been hard to reach.”

It hadn’t taken Zatanna long to reactivate her tracking spell and follow it to where Dick Grayson was residing and honestly, she was surprised. He didn’t seem to be in hiding or at least not how she expected him to be. But then again, she couldn’t quite count on how that thing within him was going to react. “Is it you or has our dear friend made an appearance. I’ve learned to ask first because as ironic as it sounds, magicians don’t particularly like surprises.”