AN: This little story takes place after Kingdom Come, disregarding the sequel entirely, but you do not have to have read the series to understand it. As long as you like Batman, and maybe enjoy Superman and Wonder Woman some too, you'll be just fine. Let me know what you think, please and thank you.
Lorenzo Maclione was a nasty old piece of work. A lot of that Italian mafia class had vanished with his youth; now he spit chewing tobacco at the nurses instead of lighting up expensive cigars and gnawed on rubbery cafeteria meat instead of dining on juicy, sliced salami. He had traded in Italian silk and gold watches for shapeless cotton and an identification band with his name and prescription numbers on it. Nursing home life never seemed to get more riled up than the occasional minor wheelchair crash or Crazy Sally's dementia leading her to flush people's warmest socks down the toilets. He no longer got to pack heat or run rackets, but no matter how low that old mobster sunk, he would always class up for a visit from The Bat.
It had happened a few times now; the masked crusader had shown up, sweeping in the room in a flurry of black cape and weird gadgets that seem to hold his body up. Maclione figured for a guy like that, things can't get much worse than not being able to move without help from machinery. Next thing anybody knew, the guy was going to need a breathing apparatus too. Getting old was not so bad for an old gangster who had served his time and was content to just sit on a couch and watch the soaps, but for The Bat… that had to be a fate just about as bad as death, and it would not be too long, Maclione would have bet, before death, too, swept in on Gotham's once-hero.
Maclione had no idea why The Bat came to see him, but it didn't bother him none. He just cut the volume down on the television, and they would talk. It was pretty interesting to hear shop talk from the other side of justice, after all. Today, he was sitting on the lumpy couch with its gaudy flower print and watching the news. Watching the news wasn't so bad these days, not since the Armageddon coverage ended; when the reporters had just been talking about the end of the world at the hands of some bozo named Magog or whatever, Maclione had just switched over to watching Days of Our Lives instead. Who were these kid reporters who didn't understand that no second-rate, two-bit, wannabe-super was going to take out this scrappy old planet while the Golden Age heroes were still alive?
"Thinkin' Superman was gone just 'cause they ain't heard from him in a while… humph…" He muttered, remembering it with a snort as he watched some interest piece on community service rottweilers or some shit. His accent was the harsh clip of Americanized mafia attempts of sounding Italian, but he had worked so hard on crafting it back in the day that there was no giving it up now.
Off the top of his head, Maclione might not have thought that today would be a day that The Bat would visit. It was nice outside, not too cool and not too hot, the kind of day where old bones didn't ache quite as much as they would otherwise. So he was surprised when he heard the odd thump of The Bat's heavy shoes approaching from behind. He didn't turn around though; years of watching his back and fearing this old foe had drawn to an end. Age could be a great equalizer sometimes.
"Hello Mr. Maclione," he said as he rounded the back of the couch and took a slow seat into the armchair across from it. The metal exoskeleton supporting his body creaked just a little as he settled into the uncomfortable piece of furniture.
"Hey to you too, Bat," Maclione replied, cutting down the volume on the television. "What brings you down to Gotham Senior Center this fine morning?" The sarcastic note was as dry and good-natured as an ex-mobster's humor can be.
The Bat leaned forward, metal-supported elbows resting on his metal-supported knees, and frowned. Maclione figured he didn't like coming down here, talking to a known criminal, rubbing elbows with the aged underbelly of society instead of its golden heroes, but he also figured that The Bat didn't like spending all his time with them either or he wouldn't be here. Or maybe he was just grappling with something big. Maclione had no way of knowing because they did not talk about Bat Boy or his feelings or anything like that. They talked about news and about the old days, pre-metahumans and wild technologies, back when mobsters and the Gotham DA duked it out and that was all any of them had to worry about.
The Bat ignored the question. "Anything good on the news?"
"Nah, they don't talk about the good shit anymore," Maclione waggled two grey eyebrows. "Back in the day, I'da been on there at least once, even if I wasn't exactly called out by name. I ran a good racket right under your nose back then."
"What year?"
"How the hell would I remember that?"
"I got distracted some years. More rackets got 'run under my nose' then."
"What distracted you those years?" He was interested now. The Bat didn't talk about himself usually, but what criminal wasn't interested in hearing about the other extreme of the law, the anti-criminal who turned to illegal measures in an attempt to stop crime? It was a pretty fascinating flip side of it all. So talk up, Bat, talk up, the rheumy old gangster thought, I ain't got nothing left to life but a little time and a little talk. "You don't want to answer, huh?"
The Bat looked offended now, sitting up a little straighter, that frown furrowing a little deeper into his craggy face. "Nah, I'll talk about it." His eyes were cold. "The Justice League was a big commitment from the beginning, took me away from Gotham more than I liked. Sometimes I worried Gotham would even think I had forgotten them."
Maclione remembered the easy times, the times when everything seemed to go easy, the times when the city was sliding back under their thumb. He supposed those were the forgotten times the other man was talking about.
"Why'd you let 'em take you away from here if here's what mattered to you?" He scoffed.
The Bat surprised him, though, with a laugh, a big, cold, almost sad laugh. "A woman, much of the time," he replied when he stopped laughing, though a bittersweet smile still played on his thin mouth. Now it was Maclione's turn to laugh, and he did so heartily, so heartily that he laughed tears into his eyes. He wiped them away carefully with a shaky finger before he spoke.
"Damn, Bat, you ain't so different from the rest of us. Broads are the downfall of us all."
"She wasn't my downfall. Just an admirable woman."
"In the Justice League, you said? That crew of supers taking care of the galaxy or something?"
"Or something," The Batman agreed, looking almost amused. Maclione thought hard for a second about this, tried to imagine some babe locking lips with Gotham's personal brand of superhero. A few images tried to form in his head, but they swirled away before they could get concrete.
"Wonder Woman," Maclione breathed out the two words in awe the moment they crossed his mind. There was no doubt he had hit the nail on the head; The Bat's eyes clouded for just a moment with a look every man can recognize: the look of a man who has had his heart left lying in the gutter in the pouring rain. Then his eyes flickered straight back to normal, but Maclione hadn't missed that look, no sir. "You're chasing Wonder Woman."
"Was chasing Wonder Woman," he corrected quietly, the words forced out between gritted teeth. "At my age, it would hardly be appropriate to still be chasing her."
Maclione cocked his head to the side in spite of the crick in his neck. "Don't it have more to do with her being Superman's main squeeze than age?"
"They were not together back in the Justice League days."
"Oh. So, they just now figured out they loved each other. What a kick in the tight, black pants," he supposed it wasn't right to lay sarcasm on the hurting old hero, but it probably wasn't any better to lay off it and pretend that things weren't the way they were. They were old, and if they were going to Hell, it was coming sooner, rather than later, so there wasn't enough time left to bother with pretending.
"It's because they still are the same," His teeth were still gritted, his voice dropping to a growl. "It's because I've aged to the point that I'm just a healer and a washed-up hero moving in a fake body." He looked down loathingly at his support exoskeleton. "That's what pushed them together. The fact that she will never age, and he can still fly off into the sunset with her."
"Hell, boys, she's still perfect!" The old gangster raised his gnarled, arthritic hands into the air in mock triumph, his tone caustic in its bitter, sarcastic tone. He dropped his hands just as abruptly. "You think that the woman you thought so highly of would abandon you for All-American Boy just because you got a couple wrinkles?"
The Bat frowned and looked down, changing the subject abruptly. "I'm their daughter's godfather."
"Pretty big of you."
"I know."
"I'd have told Superman to suck my dick, that I wasn't babysitting the spawn of his loins."
"He and I may not be the same, but he's a man worth more respect than that." Batman might have disagreed with the former statement, but there was amusement etched on his face again, and Maclione chuckled. The Bat wouldn't have been such an outsider in the old gang, if he had chosen that path. He might as well have, it seemed. He was still sitting here on tacky furniture in Gotham City, right next to a mafiaman himself. Their different paths in life had only taken them a few feet from each other now, and it wasn't like one of them really had some huge upper hand.
"I don't know how it all ended up like this," The Bat said, seemingly reading his companion's mind. He was sitting up straighter now, and Maclione knew that was the sign that the little tea party was almost over. Visits between two opposing sides of the world can't last but so long, no matter how similar the players are. The way he saw it, the two of them were both the underbelly of their respective worlds. In normal human society, a mobster might be a criminal, a villain, but in superhero fantasy land, Maclione suspected that The Bat was not exactly top among his peers, always an outside, always opposing the others just a bit more than he might admit.
"Two old villains washed up in Gotham, you mean?"
To his surprise, Batman nodded wearily. "Watching the world and its heroes march on."
Maclione was an old man, long out of the mob world, so he could toss a bone to this aged dark knight. "You were a hero to the people that needed your kind of savin'." He cracked an almost toothless grin. "Not my kind of hero, but then again, you ain't got Wonder Dame's tits."
Another surprise, Batman chuckled, almost involuntarily, even though he probably should have been offended for Wonder Dame. He stood up slowly, creaking and clanging a little but making it to his feet just fine, which was more than Maclione himself could do without his walker.
"Don't know why I came down here. Don't know if I'll come back," The Bat had closed every visit that way, even though they both knew he would come back until the old mobster was dead and knew that he did it because he wasn't feeling like much more than a washed-up old villain himself these days. After all, if you saw the stories, you knew that the good guy always gets the girl in the end, and here was The Bat, girl-less.
"You're welcome unless I'm dead. Then I guess you'd better go to my family cemetery."
The Bat did not acknowledge that statement as he began walking towards the door, taking his steady, strong, albeit a bit slow steps. He looked unspeakably tired, and Maclione was pretty damn grateful he had taken the path more traveled. Being a criminal was looking a whole lot better than trying so hard to be a hero.
"Oh, and Maclione," he turned suddenly to add, his craggy face like stone, "Talk about her tits again, and I'll kill you."
The old gangster chuckled and cut the volume on the television back up.