Gotham has always been a city on the edge.
It is touted as the nation's "greatest city" – but it is known as the nation's most corrupt.
It harbors the greatest wealth in the country – perhaps even the world – with power players such as Bruce Wayne and Oswald Cobblepot, but it also contains poverty and crime nearly unmatched in the rest of the country.
It is known as the land of Arkham insanity, of Zsasz and Riddler and Joker – but it contains the man who some call humanity's greatest hero, the Batman.
Gotham is a city of absolutes and extremes.
There was a time when the just and the unjust moved in closer circles than they did now, in Old Gotham, before the Batman, when the greatest danger of leaving a house was not the Joker but the mob.
The mob was not as bad, all say, as the new lot.
But some say it was worse.
Under the mob, the corruption and the darkness that they brought to the great city, Gotham withered and decayed, a great eagle whose heart was gnawed at daily by tiny worms. Although the people of Gotham were ready, at any moment, to fight against the mob, they lacked the tools they needed. They lacked a leader. They lacked a champion. So they only sat and watched, as their city grew weaker and weaker, as control passed from the workingman to the manager to the mob.
When everything changed, only one man knew it.
When Bruce Wayne was eight years old, his parents were murdered in front of him in Park Row – a street that would later forsake its old name and take on a new one more befitting of its new stature and symbolism. Perhaps it set an example to the young Wayne.
When Wayne returned to Gotham City, eighteen years later, he had the means to destroy the mob in Gotham, the corruption that was eating his city's spirit, but he did not have the method. He was ready to lead the charge into the bowels of Gotham, to eradicate those who would break his city, but he could not do it under this face. He was only human, and the leader of the charge had to be more than a man.
He became the Batman.
At first, he was alone, and he despaired. Alone, he could never excise the darkness that had infected his city. Alone, he could never bring justice back to Gotham and remove the filth. He fought, but he fought with the knowledge that he would lose.
Gotham sent him support.
It hunted, both far and wide and within its own heart. It gave its prodigal son new champions, supports in his unending war. Gotham called upon Harvey Dent and James Gordon, and told them that they were needed.
They were good men. How could they refuse?
Gordon gave the Bat his access to the world of Gotham where people did not fear, where their lives were not ruled by the crusade. Gordon showed Batman Gotham's humanity, and the city exulted.
And Dent… Dent was more than Gordon could ever be for the city. He was the champion that Gotham needed, a man of integrity, a man of justice, a man of hope, a man with a face who could lead Gotham to the future it needed.
Against all odds, in the face of the crime, Gotham was winning.
But the city underestimated its enemy. While the darkness was retreating, losing, its grip on the city's soul being loosened every day, the darkness was learning. In the Bat and Dent and Gordon the darkness finally understood the heart of Gotham, and, finally seeing the path to its victory, it struck.
Gotham's weakness was not in its common men. They were the backbone of the city, the strength that had propelled it to such great heights and would do so again, given the chance.
Gotham's weakness was in its heroes, who were driven by such great determination and vigor that they could stand against the rolling tides of the mob and madmen. They had given their soul to Gotham, and trusted that they would not be there for the paradise they created. The only way to stop them was if they pushed too far.
The darkness made its move.
It gave Jim Gordon a son – the son he always wanted – a son infected by the darkness that was rampant in Gotham. It gave the Bat an enemy, something immune to his methods, something that he could not understand, and something that he could not stop without breaking his soul.
And it gave Harvey Dent a burned face.
The darkness stole from the city its greatest weapon – its greatest hope – and turned him to the darkness's own ends. Harvey Dent forsook his past, his strength in Gotham, and became Two-Face: the enemy of the choice that Gotham had chosen to make.
Robbed of its greatest hope, Gotham was once again in the thrall of the darkness. Gordon and Batman were lost without Dent – without the hope that they so desperately needed to keep them from falling into the same trap he fell to – and the Joker pursued Batman's destruction with a zeal unmatched. His only mission was to break the Bat, and he was nearing victory.
Gotham could not accept defeat.
It gave its all, hunting for its aces in the hole, hunting for any card to play to bring the Batman and Gordon back to their mission without turning to the opposite side.
It gave Gordon a daughter, a lost child of Gotham, who shared Gordon's appetite for justice, for cleansing the great city if its infection. Gotham gave Gordon hope once again.
And to Batman, Gotham gave Dick Grayson. It took his parents from Dick, the brilliant athlete, the artist, the leader, the man who would be Batman, and tied him to the city. It gave him to Bruce Wayne, and Grayson learned justice and Wayne learned hope.
He became Gotham City's Robin. A soldier of the city not dragged down by the darkness, but infused with the light, so that he would never fall, and so that he would bring the people of Gotham up with him, and lead the world behind Gotham's flag.
But Gotham moved too soon, in its desperation to save itself. Although its stopgap measure prevented the Batman from falling, and killing the Joker, and its use of Barbara Gordon was a master stroke, Grayson was not yet ready to work with Wayne, and Wayne was even more unready to work with Grayson. Although he gave the boy the training and the skills he would need in time to protect the city, he was not ready for the age that Grayson would usher in, and he clamped down too tightly.
Gotham relented to young Grayson's plea, and let him go far away, to learn the methods of the outer world, to come back to Gotham stronger and greater and more powerful than he could have ever been.
But while Grayson prepared himself for what he would need to do, the Batman began to flounder again.
It was at this time that the city made its greatest mistake, the one that it would look back upon in years to come and think, "Why?"
The answer was, of course, that the city was desperate. It saw its hero – one of the few remaining – slipping into the darkness, and instead of trusting its greatest son to stand tall against the tide, to fight the darkness wherever he saw it, it panicked and sent him another hope.
This new Robin, though, was not what he needed to be.
Jason Todd was not the same as Bruce Wayne or Dick Grayson had been. He carried not just the iron determination that Gotham would need but the rage that was so easily corrupted. Jason stretched himself, trying to end the scourge of Gotham, and when he stepped too far, it was too late for the city and the Batman both to save him.
The Joker killed Jason Todd, and he brought the Batman closest to breaking than he ever had before.
For all functions and purposes, the city had lost at this point. Its champion was ready to give into the darkness, and Gordon would soon follow. The Joker had won.
The city owes it survival not to its own tools, not even to humanity, but to a being that came from off this planet, off the scope of Gotham, against every Gotham ideal and decision. Kal-El from Krypton came down from cities of light and crystal, where the weak were not afraid to walk the streets, and stopped the Batman's hand when he was ready to give himself up to the darkness.
The city was unable to every forgive Kal-El his transgression, no matter how vital it was for Gotham's survival. It poisoned its champion with suspicion, with darkness, to defend himself from Kal-El, to defend himself from the outside world, because the darkness that was created in Gotham had to be solved in Gotham, or nothing would be solved at all. Let Kal-El keep to Metropolis or Kandor; he could stay there, while Gotham became a city of lead and Kryptonite.
Desperate once again, on its last breaths, Gotham could only watch, moving pawns into motion, poking and prodding at the champions it was looking for, trying to force them to move, now, even if it wasn't the right time, because Gotham had made a mistake and it was faltering and it needed its hero bolstered once again.
I'll probably continue this, but I think it's at a good place now and I want to see what you guys think. So, please, review!