AN: I've elected to end Running Gag in favor of this story. Now I've time to write properly, but I couldn't find a way to salvage it in any satisfying way for myself or you all. I hope you enjoy this story just as much, and if you want to know how Running Gag ended, I'll happily tell you over PM. Enjoy!
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Chapter 1: Azrael
"... nearly eight years after the disappearance of Bruce Wayne, whose massive estate and fortune were divided between his children. The monument at Park Row, funded by charitable donation from the Wayne children, will serve as a shining reminder of Bruce's constant contributions both nationwide and to his hometown. May he be remembered as one of Gotham's greatest sons. Vicki Vale, signing off." Click.
Michael Lane shut off his television, looking out his apartment window to the glittering lights of Gotham below. No matter how old he got, this city never really seemed to change. It was the light, the constant nauseating mix of neon and fluorescence that poured out from every shop window and street corner. Every other big city, Central, Coast, Metropolis, they grew and changed with the times, but Gotham seemed trapped in its Sixties Art Deco phase forever.
He stood up, groaning with the effort. Age hadn't been kind to him. He was pushing sixty but his joints were convinced he was in his eighties, judging by the way they creaked and ached him every time it got cold.
Not that he'd been especially kind to them over the years. He'd spent his twenties and thirties brainwashed by a doctor named Simon Hurt, dressing in a third-rate Batsuit and terrorizing the people of Gotham under the pretense of becoming the Batman's successor. In his early forties, he became Azrael, and could have redeemed himself if not for the machinations of Ra's Al Ghul, once again manipulated into hurting the Bat and his family. Nightwing had saved his mind, but couldn't save his soul; Lane was certain of that much.
So, here he was. An old man who got his family killed, himself manipulated by not one but two supervillains, and for what? All he had to show for it was the Suit Of Sorrows, and he couldn't bear to put it on again after what he'd done the last time he became Azrael.
He strode across his apartment to his bedroom. He reached out and touched a framed picture on the wall. His wife and child, playing in a park. He'd taken the photo himself, saved years for the camera. He grimaced as he remembered that he'd had to burn that same camera, along with half his other possessions that had been covered in goat's blood by so-called "Satanists" that had invaded his home. He tilted the picture to the side and machines in the wall began to whir, as the wall opposite him slid out of place. It revealed a display case, six feet of glass behind which sat a white suit of armor and two swords.
The Suit Of Sorrows. Once like a second skin to him, it had become a symbol of his ultimate failure, but he couldn't find a reason to get rid of it. It seemed wrong to him to simply dispose of the suit. To Lane, it was akin to burying a dog you hit with your car to hide it. One can't simply tuck away their sin and think that it counts as penance.
No, he figured, that wouldn't do at all. But he reasoned that it may be time that he atoned for his sins after all these years of hiding. The Batman had been gone for nearly eight years, and though Robin and his new sidekick had done an admirable job keeping the city safe, Gotham was fraying at the edges. No one could do what Batman had done.
No one, he thought, But Azrael.
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AN: Just a taste. Update tomorrow.
