Thomas stopped and took a deep breath to calm his nerves. He was out of the wheelchair and on crutches now but there was still a way to recovery, and he was making sure to keep active how he could to make the recovery to street-able status faster.

 

But this was a long time coming, and he'd been stewing ever since the Joker encounter. He hadn't been enough. The Joker got him and used him, to demand a Batman and hurt Maria, and now he was free in the city. While it bothered him that they'd gotten the jump on him, angered him really, it bothered him more that the whole encounter had made something painfully obvious. Robin wasn't enough. The Joker had demanded a Batman, and now he knew what all the other criminals in this city had known. There was no Batman, and without that presence, that striking figure of fear, Gotham was worse off. The Joker could run free, the criminals had no real fear of the rest of them, and despite his work in the last few years, most of them still thought of Robin as the youthful bright partner of Batman. Not a figure to fear at all.

 

The entire Batman mythos his father had created was near useless if there was no Batman to use it. And now Gotham was on the decline.

 

While he steeled himself and plucked up the courage to make the last few metres to Bruce's study door, Mr. Paws who'd been walking along the bannister leading to the stairs had stopped to watch him. After a moment the cat hopped up onto Thomas's shoulders and walked along to rest on one and give his owner a look. "I know, I know," Thomas muttered. "Just get it over with, I'm not asking for me, I'm asking for Gotham."

 

Here he was about to ask for something he felt he had no right to, but he had to do it. He just needed it long enough to get rid of the Joker, that was all. He could return it after, he wasn't asking for it permanently just long enough to stop this chaos. But it was still a conversation he dreaded.

 

The cat seemed to think the muttering wasn't enough and hopped off Thomas's shoulder to lead the way to the study door, stopping and looking back expectantly when he got there. Thomas sighed once more and followed. When he got to the door he paused before knocking on the door briefly.