Chapter Text
The wind was shivering and cold, but it felt like a caress every time it brushed his cheeks.
The night was dark and gloomy, but still, it was illuminated by the dim lights of the city.
He felt the wind and watched the lights, blinked a couple of times, rubbed his eyes, not caring that the makeup ran. He looked down from the top of a building, and finally, nothing mattered to him, not even dying. He had a purpose, after all this time, he had one: to protect Gotham.
𓆩𓆪
Tuesday, December 13,
Gotham rises from the darkness, the city prospers, but crime also rises. Fear, shadows, darkness; they are my tools to fight my targets. I am vengeance, but not only that, I have become something more. A symbol of justice. The criminals run every time they see a dark alley, they think I am there, watching them from the shadows. The others, the civilians, feel safe when they walk through those places. They know I will be there to watch out for them.
But I can't be everywhere at once. I push myself every day to be better than the last, to catch more criminals. Still, my attempts to help are less and less helpful.
Riddler has left a big mark; he has inspired people to torment the surviving part of the city.
Arthur Brown, AKA Clue Master was the last one I faced. I managed to catch him. There was a little girl with him, quite small, about five or six years old. I could see the confusion on her face, so small and scared, so fragile.
I think too much lately, I try not to, but I can't help it. I used to say I was the shadows, but lately, it feels like I'm becoming part of them, as if being consumed by them, and I don't know how to stop it.
𓆩𓆪
Bruce looked at the computer in front of him, rereading the report he had made about the last case over and over again. His eyes glided over every word he typed, intently analyzing every sentence, phrase, word, letter, semicolon, and comma he came across.
He was looking for something, but he didn't know what it was.
“Go to bed, Master Bruce,” he heard Alfred say walking toward him.
Burce looked at him, and noticed how he leaned more weight than he should on his cane. But he didn't say anything about it, he went back to fixing his eyes on the computer. Ever since Riddler's attack, when he almost died because of his inefficiency, Alfred had begun to walk with a little more difficulty.
“I could tell you the same thing.”
“I already slept. It's morning, you were up all night long here, Bruce.” Alfred walked over and looked at the report on the screen, but then looked back at the man. “You should have some kind of clock or something here so you know what time it is, since you apparently can't read it from the computer.”
“I wasn't here all night, I slept for a couple of hours. I couldn't keep sleeping.”
“Do you have a problem with that?”
“No.” Bruce turned to Alfred and looked at his face. “The donation I made to help rebuild the city attracted attention. Now I have to go to the gala the mayor has arranged.”
“Bruce Wayne will make a public appearance for the second time in the same year? Wonderful, sir.”
“I haven't decided if I'm going yet.”
“But you're thinking of doing it, are you?”
“I think it's the right thing to do, I need to create a public image that I can use to my advantage,” he explained, and fixed his eyes back on the computer.
“It could work. It's... necessary to keep up appearances, from time to time.”
“Hm.”
“Some new case is what's keeping you here, in the cave?” he asked as he looked at the computer once more along with all the items Bruce kept on the desk; mugs with leftover coffee, cans of energy drinks, new prototype weapons.
“There's a woman.”
“A woman?” he asked interested, “the same one who helped you a while back? What was her name, Céline?”
“What? No.” Bruce looked back at Alfred with a frown. “Her name is Selina, and no. She left Gotham.”
“And that's why you bought so much cat food?” he said with a small smile. “You take care of her pets?”
“That's not important.” Bruce evaded the question.
“Yes, of course. What about the woman?”
“Elizabeth Contreras, she was a medical student, she was doing her fellowship in psychiatry at Arkham Asylum. She was found dead. Previous months, more health care staff and patients at the asylum have died, all due to cardiac arrest... There's a pattern, this has been going on for over five months, every two weeks, one or two people have died under these circumstances. The woman was the last to die, her autopsy revealed some kind of unknown toxin, the others also presented something similar.”
“What kind of toxin?”
“I'm trying to find out. It's confusing. None of the toxins found were the same, it's like someone was using people as guinea pigs.” he said to himself. “I need to go to Arkham to investigate.” He reached over to pick up his suit that he kept to the side. “I'll go with Gordon.”
“Eat something before you go, Bruce.”
Bruce looked at Alfred, noticed the wrinkles on the older man's face, they were deeper and more noticeable. His hair was getting whiter and whiter. Every day he aged a little older, and yet, he had never stopped taking care of him.
He looked at the suit in his hands for several seconds, and put it back in place.
“I will. Don't worry.”
“I do, it's my job, sir. Besides I'll remind you that Dory retired a couple of weeks ago.” There was a caring tone in his voice, one which Bruce has never quite managed to understand.
“I'll finish what I was doing and head upstairs.”
Alfred nodded and headed for the elevator.
Alfred had done so much for him over the years, and he had never really thanked him. All he had done was put his life in danger.
He always stood by him, even when he was suspended and expelled from different schools one after another after getting into fights with his classmates.
Even when he thought Bruce would become a troubled teenager, and not the depressed kid he ended up being. A shadow of who he used to be: always angry and boisterous, now immersed in silence and loneliness. He spent most of his time lying down, feeling not enough and self-harming.
He remembers not being able to leave the house; the mere thought of setting foot outside Wayne Tower caused his anxiety to shoot up and caused him to end up having panic attacks. It was so bad that he had to repeat a school year and finish his education from home.
He avoided everyone, and to a large extent, still does. He doesn't know how many years it's been since he last saw his cousin, Kate.
He wished he could die every second of his adolescence.
Bruce grew up surrounded by sadness, feeding off the hatred he felt for himself. Yet, despite the hurtful comments and self-harm, Alfred never left his side.
Now, the mission to protect Gotham gave him a purpose. A reason to get better. To keep moving forward.
He wished to die for most of his life, but that was now a secondary thought, the mission was everything; but if he had to die in order to fulfill it, he was more than happy to do so.
But even as an adult, sometimes bad days were inevitable.
𓆩𓆪
Batman knows he will never be welcomed in a friendly way in Arkham. After all, it is because of him that the place is so crowded.
The atmosphere is frigid and sober, almost gloomy. The place was permeated with an unpleasant stench, the lights flickered erratically, to the point that it made his head ache.
He walked through the corridors, avoiding being in the sights of other people. He felt the guards stares on the back of his neck.
He knew what they were thinking, “Dressed as a bat, you're just another crazy guy.” What they didn't know was that, when he put on his uniform, everything stopped mattering. He became a figure who, from the shadows, guarded Gotham from all evil.
He walked with his eyes straight ahead, avoiding stepping on the garbage strewn on the ground. If it weren't for the noise emitting from the inmates and guards, he would think the place was abandoned.
“Everything okay?” Gordon got his attention by giving him a little punch on the arm once the bat approached him.
“I think I saw a rat run into that room,” he indicated with a glance.
“Nothing new. Come on, the morgue is on the subway.”
They headed for the elevator, and began to descend. The lights were flickering, the place was so old that the elevator mechanism made strange mechanical sounds every time it descended a floor, accompanied by the hum that echoed through the four walls.
The elevator stopped with a deafening screech as they reached their destination. They walked through the dark, silent corridors, the only sound present was the echo of their footsteps.
At the morgue, the attending physician was waiting for them.
Gordon entered first, followed by him. He was wearing his contact lenses, so he made sure to watch every corner of the room to record the scene so he could review it later, when he got to the cave.
“I'm Dr. Cooper,” the man said as he introduced himself. He was short, brown, and wearing a white lab coat. He looked and sounded anxious. Still, he extended his hand to Gordon, who reciprocated the greeting. He then stretched out his hand to Batman to greet him as well, but Batman only looked at his hand, then his face for a few seconds, before returning to inspect the place without saying a word.
The doctor noticed the intense eye contact, but decided to remain silent.
“It's nothing personal,” Gordon said as he looked at the doctor somewhat uncomfortable. “He doesn't like people..., for the most part,” he half joked.
“S-Sure...”
The doctor was visibly nervous, and it wasn't just because of Batman's presence. Something was wrong with him.
“So, what can you tell us about Miss Contreras?” asked Gordon, approaching the table where the woman's corpse lay.
“Well, in the t-toxicology report... traces of neurotoxins were found,” the coroner explained, fiddling nervously with his hands. “These, in excess, can alter the cardiovascular s-system...” He looked at the body and then at the bags containing other corpses.
Batman followed the direction of his gaze and asked, “What's wrong with the other corpses?” He looked at the bags and then at the doctor once more.
“Oh, it's nothing.” He smiled nervously, slipping both of his hands into his pockets. “Just..., there was a fight. Things got a little out of hand.”
“Are you sure about that?” asked Batman seriously. “There's nothing else we need to know, doctor?”
“Nothing more. It's just been a rough morning. It's not every day you start off with a fight that leaves three people dead.” He tried to smile to lighten the mood, to no avail.
“So...,” Gordon said, “if I go through those bags, I'll find ordinary dead bodies?”
The man nodded, but that didn't convince the bat. He went over to check. He opened one of the bags and found nothing unusual; the doctor wasn't lying, it was a simple corpse of a man in the asylum uniform. He looked at the doctor and saw that he was moving his hands in his pockets and biting his lower lip hard. There was nothing out of the ordinary, so why was he so nervous?
He walked to the next gurney where the second bag was, approached it. With steady, determined hands, he slowly pulled down the zipper that kept it sealed. To his surprise, there was no corpse, but a fully alive person wearing a gas mask that resembled a scarecrow.
Before Batman could even think of making a move, the masked figure stood up quickly and abruptly, and activated a strange device he held in his hands. It released a dense cloud of gas that completely enveloped the bat.
The gas blurred his vision almost completely, to the point that all he could see were mere figures. His throat began to itch and breathing became choppy; with each inhalation he took, he breathed in even more gas, causing his vision to distort faster and faster, intensifying his disorientation.
“Shit!” Gordon exclaimed in panic as he saw what happened, raising his gun to point it at the man in the mask.
“S-sorry...” whispered the doctor in a shaky voice, something that caught Gordon's attention. When he turned to look at him, he noticed that he was holding a device identical to the one used on Batman. “He made me do it. You don't know how horrible it was...” The man began to cry, “I-I don't want to see that again. You have to understand, officer. Please...!”
The man's nervousness was to the detective's advantage. Before the device was triggered against him, Gordon shot with precision into the hand holding the object and into his left shoulder. The man let out a high-pitched scream from the pain and fell shuddering to the floor, hitting his head on the table where the woman's corpse rested. The brutal impact caused him to lose consciousness instantly.
Gordon looked for the man in the mask with his eyes, but he had slipped away without his noticing.
“Shit!” he exclaimed, frustrated.
He turned his attention to the bat, who, affected by the gas, had sat down on the floor. He was breathing hard and his eyes were unfocused, but when his eyes met the detective's, they were filled with fear.
“Hey, are you okay?, what's going on, what the fuck was that gas?” he tried to touch his shoulder, but Bruce quickly moved away and hid under one of the tables. “It's... me, Jim Gordon,” He tried to approach once more, slowly. “What's the matter, Batman...?”
“No. Get away...” His voice sounded painfully soft and fragile.
Gordon cursed silently, watching. Of course Batman was just a person underneath that suit.
Shit.
“Look, I need you to tell me how you feel.” Gordon sat down on the floor, not under the table, but facing him. “I want to be wrong, but I'm pretty sure they sprayed you with the same toxin as the others...” He looked at his cell phone to call someone, but he had no signal. “You could die,” he said seriously. He looked outside and shouted, “Guards! Help!” but nothing happened. Most likely the man in the scarecrow mask had sprayed them with the gas, he thought. “Shit.”
He looked back at the bat. He had removed the cape from his back and draped it over his legs as if it were a blanket. He was still breathing heavily, but you could tell he was trying to control himself as he clutched his cape with both hands. He was whispering inconsistent things, which made no sense to anyone but him: “...my fault...”, “Sorry...”, “Mom...”.
“Listen, I have to go get help, okay?” said Gordon as he got up from the floor.
“Don't leave me alone... Please.” It was the first coherent thing he said after a while.
Gordon looked at him and watched as as soon as the words were spoken, Bruce turned his back to him and removed his cowl, exposing the back of his head. He leaned his forehead against the wall and brought his hands to his hair, tossing it and hitting his head from time to time. The detective watched him repeat these actions several times, until he thought it was enough. He grabbed both of his hands tightly and stopped him. At that moment, he noticed that the man had also removed his gloves.
His hands and part of his wrists were exposed. His hands were thin and his skin was too white, as if he had not sunbathed in the last five years. They did not look like the hands of someone who fights crime on a daily basis, although they had wounds on their knuckles due to recent fights, his hands looked like the ones of an ordinary man.
“You're hurting yourself. Don't.” The detective released his hands, but didn't take his eyes off the back of his neck. His hair was long and brown, that was another interesting detail.
“It's... a fear gas, a fear-infusing toxin,” Bruce suddenly said, his voice brittle and tired.
He picked up his cape, which he had draped over his legs, and pulled it tightly against his chest. At that moment, he didn't care what Gordon thought; he knew that in a couple of hours he was going to regret this, but he needed it. He held the thick cloth as if his life depended on it. He stayed in that position for several minutes without saying a word.
“I guess you like that cape more than you want to admit, huh?” tried to joke a little Gordon.
Bruce pulled the cape off his back, and put his cowl back on. He turned to Gordon, avoiding looking him in the eye. Putting his gloves back on.
He stood up and walked over to the doctor who lay on the ground, a pool of blood had formed around his head; causing Batman to frown. The expression of displeasure disappeared almost immediately as he approached and noticed that the man was holding something. He carefully lifted the object and discovered that a device similar to the one the man in the mask had used. Upon closer inspection, he could see that it looked like some sort of spray bottle, although the part to operate it had broken off after impact with the ground.
“Is he alive?” Batman looked at the coroner once more and nodded. “Great. By the way, no offense, but why the hell are you alive? That gas must have killed you.” His voice had a strained tone to it. Struggling to understand the situation.
Bruce gave him a sidelong glance, ignoring him completely as he took the object in his hands to inspect it. It was dark gray and small, it looked like a small tear gas bomb, the only difference being that this one used some sort of mechanism to trigger it, similar to that of a gun.
“He triggered it?” Batman's voice sounded harsher than he intended, almost as if he was forcing himself to maintain his composure.
“No. I shot him in the hand before he did, it has its contents intact,” Gordon explained. “Are you okay...?” he asked with concern. “Maybe you didn't die because it was a different version of the toxin?”
“Maybe, but it doesn't matter,” he said firmly, still looking at the device. The way his gaze was focused on the object was almost obsessive. “Take this,” he said, and handed him the device. “Have someone you trust to analyze it. When they're done, it would be helpful if you could give me the contents; I could try to create an antidote.”
“Sure...” Gordon replied, taking the object gingerly, still a little concerned about the recent situation.
Batman moved toward the exit, opening the doors with a bang that echoed down the hallway. He paused for a moment and turned to Gordon with pursed lips.
“One guard is dead. The other was sprayed. We need to find out what's going on.”