This is mostly just a drabble, no real plot. For the livejournal community Weekly Watchmen and the prompt "Waiting For..."
He sat back on the cell, all toned lethality, waiting to strike. He wasn't afraid. Not since he was younger and he had found his mother in the sexual embrace of a man not his father had he been afraid. Not really, anyway. Even in the days before the Keane Act, when he and his fellow masked vigilantes had gone into the night, he wasn't afraid.
Even when they had all retired, all gone soft, he hadn't been afraid. He had seen somewhere fear is the mindkiller, and he knew that to be true. Fear was what made them go soft, had made them cower into the basement "lairs" and whimper. Fear was what made them refuse to confront the sin and degradation that made these cities filthy. No, he wasn't afraid. He wasn't weak.
He was coiled like a spring, his feet under him on the hard thin mattress, balancing on his toes, crouched and ready to attack. He wasn't afraid of this place, in many ways it was like the streets he had patrolled at night, the streets he knew like a lover, trying to rid her of disease.
He was waiting because he knew that he would be visited soon, though not in the kindly way. There were many people in this hell hole that wanted to see him die, and he wasn't willing to give them the satisfaction of catching him unawares. He had become a forced insomniac, only sleeping when his body crashed in on itself and he had no other choice. Even then he slept with one eye open, careful not to be caught unawares.
They hadn't given him a cell mate for the obvious reasons, though he thought they were maybe more afraid of what his cell mate could do to him, instead of fearing what he could do to them. Stupid. The prison officials were soft too if they thought that caging an animal made him cower. A caged animal was a cornered one.
He wondered who it would be first? He'd been told when they'd put him in here that there were a couple dozen big name criminals he'd put away that were in here, back when he let them live. Many years to think of what to do to him when he got caught. Years to harbor a grudge. They would be a little bit formidable, but not really. They weren't his only threat. There were the small time crooks that wanted to make a name for themselves. But he wasn't afraid of them. All of those years searching for the criminal underbelly and he had found it. And all the criminals were coming to him. Now he just had to wait.
There was Shortround, an arms dealer from Ireland that he'd busted for selling semi-automatics to kids, but he would be shocked if he had survived in prison. The same with Max Twelve-Fingers, the serial rapist. Both probably dead.
Through the dimmed lights of the tier, just outside of his end cell, he caught sight of three figures. Two tall and foreboding, hulking men meant to intimidate. The other one was small, about the size of a child. Ah, Big Figure.
At least this would be interesting.