Not for the first time, John Blake was glad that there was nobody waiting up for him to come home.

That was a common problem in being family of a police officer, spouse or parent or friend - there were shifts that stretched on hours past what they'd meant to, unexpected overtime without phone calls, hours that flexed in response to the rest of the city.

But he wasn't a cop anymore, was he? He was - something else, he wasn't sure what yet, the definition had not yet settled but he knew now, suddenly and completely, what the difference was between wanting badly to make a difference, and having the resources to actually do it.

The difference was behind the waterfall, at the coordinates that Bruce Wayne had left him. At first it had been nearly overwhelming, he had no idea what the hell half of this was but he knew that they were the things that you needed to make yourself more than a man, if you knew how to use them. Bruce Wayne had known, and he'd done it with a sort of precision and ferocity that he was still not sure that he could match - but he was not intimidated by the things in the cave, the monitors and weapons, the - it worked for him in some way, lit easily on dry tinder.

Most significant of all was the emptiness of the place - everybody knew that Batman was gone, had seen the news replay it a thousand times, the blinding light and the stillness following it, undisturbed by human life. Batman was dead, but John Blake was one of the only people who knew enough to separate the man from the persona, knew which part might still be out there somewhere - and he was the only person, the only person, who now had the capability to bring him back.

If anyone had been waiting up for him, they would have gotten very worried after the first eight hours. Even with the Bane's hold on Gotham finally broken, the city was still a very dangerous place, had become a place where disappearance was immediately cause for alarm.

But there was no one. He would have gone home to a dark apartment and silence, guns in the bedside table, blank walls without pictures - neat but sterile in a way, almost as if no one lived there at all, his apartment suffered from the long hours and overtime the way his wife might have if he had married. He stayed here instead, and there was a rare uncharacteristic wish for company - not for someone to fill up the seemingly endless space with chatter and warmth, but for someone to explain to him what all of this was, what all of it was for.

He'd been worried about the wall of monitors and safes within the caves, but everything that needed fingerprints opened for him without difficulty, and there was a paper neatly taped on the desktop with a series of passwords in the same boxy blue-inked hand that the cave coordinates had been written in. Everything seemed to be - ready for him, which stirred the same suspicions that had been chasing around his head for the past few days.

It didn't matter if they were true or not. Whether or not he was dead, Bruce Wayne was gone.

Batman, however, was another story.

It was easy to lose track of time in the cave, with no natural light and no reference of sun to tell him when he should be sleeping. He realized how long he had been down here only when his body started to let him know, brain clouding, fingers fumbling on the clasp of a gun case - not the best place to be slipping, it wouldn't do to die in a gun accident before he'd even started.

He found a bed, at the back of the cave, simple and spartan in design but he recognized the dense feel of memory foam when he laid down on it. He supposed that for a man like Bruce Wayne, moments of rest came few and far between, and it was important to make them as effective as possible.

Even if his mind was still moving a thousand miles an hour, his body recognized exhaustion. He was asleep quickly, and he didn't dream.

-

AN: Short intro-y chapter. Will have more very very soon!