In the few moments that he has now for reflection he wonders "Why did I go back?" There was, after all, nothing there that he could have wanted.

Only his revenge and perhaps, after that, justice, although the justice, as with the revenge would have been his own sweet kind.

But it was late and he was tired and more than tired even, more in the way of exhausted, both in body and in mind. The train which had become the coffin of Ra's Al Ghul was still burning, a fiery funeral pyre amongst the wreckage, rapidly consuming the broken body of his one time friend and mentor. A very little further away, the last place that had held the living memories of his parents was also burning.

The night sky dropped a gentle rain of grey ash and soot down softly on the city. Some of the blood on his face was his own. He could have called it a day.

Instead he had turned and walked away from the ruins of the overhead rails, the twisted metal of the fallen pylons, and set his face grimly back towards the Narrows.

He had accepted that the Narrows was now in all likelihood irretrievably lost, that order, such as it had been, would now be impossible to impose on the winding streets and the collapsing piles of old tenement buildings. He liked to think of himself as a pragmatist. But there was one thing that he could not believe was irretrievably lost quite yet. One last loose end to tie up.

A dark oily rain began to fall as he approached the gateway tower of the bridge. He took satisfaction in the weather, it matched his mood. Gave him an excuse to pull the black cloak tighter around him, to cover his face from the world.

On the other side of the slick current, out on the island, there was now a near total silence, broken by outbreaks of shouting, and, worse than the shouting, the occasional terrified scream.

He could not imagine what it was like out there in the blackness for those whose mental worlds had been altered by the drug. Or rather, he could imagine, he could remember, but he chose not to. He had felt the vicious grip of the terror on even his stern mind as he had made his way through those twisted streets the last time, and he had been free from hallucination and nightmare. Apart of course from those he had brought there with him.

In the cover of the mist it was easy enough to make his way across the river without attracting undue attention. He already knew where he would need to look. The rooftops made his roundabout path across the crowded streets less complicated, most people too absorbed in their own private terrors to look up.

Moving from ledge to ledge the physical demands of the work on his battered body took him out of the chaos that he knew his mind was all too rapidly becoming. He kept moving to maintain momentum as much as anything, not to have to stop and analyse his actions.

The flickering light of the Narrow's failing power supply reminded him of old movies he had watched as a child, the hero going behind enemy lines to rescue a fallen comrade. Was that really what he thought he was doing? Mercifully the concentration required in reaching his goal, the unpredictable slip and slide of the smooth wet tiles, spared him the need to decide exactly what he would do when he arrived there.

Sooner than he had thought, and far sooner than he really wanted it to in truth, the gothic framework and spires of Arkham appeared out of the fog. He studied the outside of the building from his perch on the roof.

The doors were mostly thrown open, not the least of the reasons for the loss of the Narrows was the impact of a couple of hundred high security criminal mad men slipping quietly out of the asylum. The argument that he would be doing a lot more good for the city by rounding up all of them and ensuring that they were safely guarded could be put aside for a time. He was just about done with working for the public good today. Now he had something else to do.

On the street outside there was no sign of life. The grim reputation of Arkham seemed to keep even the terror-crazed population of the Narrows at bay. It had never been a building that people went into willingly. The open doorway looked more like that of a tomb than of a respected medical institution.

Inside, the once immaculate reception area was filled with the signs of panic and of the hasty escape of staff from behind their desks. White pages of pamphlets and countless pages of closely typed records now freed forever from their files were spread over the floor.

He stopped briefly, struck by the smell, the disinfectant, the slight hint of damp, the ammonia, like any hospital anywhere. But here there was something else as well, something that stuck in the throat, even in this once bright and welcoming reception. It was the heavy doors, the security alarms, the restraints visible at the rear of the glass panelled box from which the receptionists had greeted visitors.

Until that afternoon. When all that had stopped, the bright candy coating of Gotham finally peeling back to reveal the open and infected wound concealed beneath.

It had been a long time since he had been able to see anything but the wound. And he thought that part of the reason that he was there, seemingly alone in that vast building, was because of a suspicion that he might not be the only one who saw the truth. Ra's Al Ghul had seen the wound, but he had not thought the body worth saving. But then Ra's Al Ghul was never a medical man.

Behind the reception desk a notice board bearing the names and the photographs of the institution's staff watched over the devastation. At the top on a row of its own, the picture of Jonathan Crane regarded him with a steady amused stare. In grainy black and white it looked like a police mugshot. All Crane needed was to be holding up the card displaying his reference number under his chin. There was no hint of madness visible in the grey eyes and after a few moments he turned away from it and walked into the hospital itself.

He made his way cautiously through the ultraviolet half light of the corridors, checking at each intersection, ensuring that there was no-one following him, no eyes peering through the observation windows in the doors, no camera moving in the high corners of the ceilings. His steps echoed on the bare floors.

He began to feel all the sick fantasies of the paranoid crowding in on him, the building was too hot, too noiseless, there were far too many opportunities in these walls for secret surveillance. It was very dark in those rooms without emergency lighting, easy to believe that some of the recent inhabitants were still there, sat motionless in the dark, waiting.

When he reached the turn into the administrative part of the building he was, although he would not have admitted it, relieved. He'd seen enough tonight.

This corridor was more homely, there were carpets at least, and a little colour on the walls. And looking at the carpet more closely there were traces, smears of some sort of moisture, be it the dirty rain from the streets outside or something more unpleasant. He stooped forward, peeled off a glove and touched the back of his hand to the mark. It was still damp.

And now he began for the first time to wonder what the hell he was doing here. There were easier things he could be doing right now. Things that weren't so likely to end in injury, or madness, or something worse.

He wasn't afraid. Yet there was something, a tightening of the throat, the sound of his heart loud in his chest, throbbing in his ears. He hadn't felt like this for a long time and it was better not to remember when.

A few metres further along the corridor he could see the door he was looking for. The trail of scuffmarks turned sharply into it, and although the door was partly shut no light came from the opening. He hadn't ever thought this far ahead. So he stepped swiftly up to the heavy door and flung it back wide open. He'd taken his antidote. He was as ready as he was ever going to be.

- - - - - - - - -

So, what do you think?

More coming shortly, but please do review if you have read this far and enjoyed the experience. Or hated it. Whichever.