Dedicated to my best friend, known here as Jesse A. Harper. She always had the best stories.


"Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it." ―Terry Pratchett

Prologue:

200 miles out of Baghdad, Iraq
March 23, 2003
Operation Iraqi Freedom

The sky glowed like a hot coal dusted with ash. Behind lay nothing but darkness. The Humvee rattled around them, growling over the rough desert road.

"I give them two weeks before they roll over!" insisted Lieutenant Toombs.

"Fuck that shit!" argued Lieutenant Boswell. "It'll be at least a month!"

"Shut the fuck up, Boswell!"

"I'll shut your fucking momma up, motherfucker!"

"The next person who opens his mouth gets latrine duty until Baghdad!" barked Sergeant Vallant before turning to stare back out the window.

Lance Corporal Bryson began to say something when the Humvee suddenly ground to a stop so quickly that it gave every passenger whiplash.

"Easy on the pedal, Grimes!"

"Watch it, leadfoot!"

"Sergeant!" Grimes called back. "You might want to see this."

Sergeant Vallant growled in displeasure, but she hooked her fingers around the handle of her door, cracking it open. "Toombs, you're with me. The rest of you, stay in the vehicle!"

Holding her M16 close to her body, ready to fire, she jumped from the Humvee and glared around in the darkness. She flipped the light of her rifle on. Paired with the glow from the Humvee's headlights, it illuminated what seemed to be nothing more than a pile of debris lying in the middle of the road.

She approached cautiously, beckoning for Toombs to follow. As she neared, she realized that it wasn't debris at all, but some sort of clothing. A burkha perhaps? It moved a little bit, and she saw that it was a woman. She was sobbing quietly.

"Ma'am? Ma'am, are you all right? Do you speak English?" Sergeant Vallant neared. "Ma'am, are you—"

She stopped, not sure what it was that held her in place. Maybe it was the odd bulky shape beneath the woman's clothes as she rolled over, tears in her eyes.

Sergeant Vallant whirled around and ran for Toombs.

"BOMB!"

A bright flash suddenly lit up the night. Sergeant Vallant didn't even hear the explosion—she simply felt the hot blast of wind and debris on her face, the ground as she connected with it, choking on gravel. There was an incessant ringing in her ears. Something was burning, so close that she could feel the flames lashing out at her, singeing her cammies. As she blinked the dust and disorientation from her eyes, she realized that it was the Humvee, suddenly on its back, wheels still spinning.

Somebody was shouting at her, picking her up by her tactical vest and dragging her to her feet. Toombs. Her fingers were still clenched tightly around the barrel of her M16, as if they'd been cemented into place. She stumbled and glanced down. Blood soaked through the left leg of her cammies, and the soles of her boots had melted. She could smell the acrid stench of burnt rubber. Toombs grabbed her arm and wrapped it around his shoulders, helping her limp away from the Humvee.

Just in time. Another charge, this one buried in the ground and triggered by some debris, exploded, sending both Marines tumbling down the side of the road into a shallow ditch.

Toombs shouted at Sergeant Vallant, but she couldn't hear a thing.

Soldiers were suddenly everywhere, pouring out of their Humvees like black ants in the darkness, fire reflecting in their eyes. One of them grabbed Toombs, another snatched up Sergeant Vallant, dragging the two of them towards the nearest Humvee.

"You look like shit!" the man shouted into Sergeant Vallant's ringing ear.

She mumbled something about feeling like it too, but she couldn't tell how much she actually managed to speak, groaning as she was lifted into the Humvee.

"You're all right! We're gonna get you help!" another Marine reassured her.

She was barely aware of anything but the shaking of her limbs, the ringing in her ears that was starting to sound more and more like screeching, like a wail, that God-awful wailing of the crying woman just before she'd vanished in a blinding light.

"Toombs—" she gasped, trying to sit up when she realized that he wasn't in the Humvee with her.

"Hold still!" warned the Marine beside her.

"Grimes! Bryson! Boswell!"

"You can't help them! There are others with them! You've got to calm down, Sergeant!"

Sergeant Vallant went quiet, but she couldn't calm herself. She didn't know how long it was before they stopped, but she was still shaking, her ears still ringing, pain shooting up her leg with every bump of the Humvee.

There was a helicopter outside, gusting up wind and debris. That black bird was for her. They carried her to it, placed her inside, next to another Marine. His face was black with ash, his front soaked with blood.

"Boswell!" she shouted.

"Hey, Sergeant," the man greeted her wanly. "Glad to see a familiar face." He tried to lift his head, but fell back down with a weak groan. "You all right?"

"Yeah," breathed Sergeant Vallant. "Yeah, I'm OK," she reassured the man. "You?"

"Fan-fucking-tastic," he replied with a laugh that was interrupted with a cough. Blood dripped from the corner of his mouth. "What do you think? Are we going home?"

"I don't know!" replied Sergeant Vallant, having to shout to be heard over the helicopter as it started to lift off the ground. "Where's home for you, Boswell?"

"Los Angeles, Ma'am! And you?"

Sergeant Vallant closed her eyes, saw the sweeping skyline of the city reflected in the river, the sun rising behind the polluted clouds, casting its soft light over the landscape that right now was probably still caught in that muddy season between winter and spring, when the snow hadn't melted all the way, and the flowers hadn't yet bloomed. The city's lights. The city's shadows.

Thousands of miles away, it hadn't felt more like home than it did then in her imagination.

"Gotham."


A/N: Thanks for sticking through the intro. I'm a little rusty at writing fanfiction (haven't done it in ages, and I'm doing this at the request of a friend), so I hope you'll bear with me and my OC as we try to navigate this new place and story together.