"Look Jen we're not gonna be here forever" smiled John as we dropped our bags into our new dingy apartment. Smoke billowed by the window and the wallpaper crumbled off the wall.

"John look I understand we're not gonna be able to afford a decent place for a while" I said hugging him "you're just a rookie cop in the force and I'm an unpaid intern. Don't worry though…" I smiled as the dripping noise increased in the corner of the room "we'll make it"

Standing in the doorway of our new apartment I realised living away from home would be more difficult than I thought. Don't get me wrong, I was turning 22 this year and leaving home had been on my mind for a while but financially it wasn't an option. I had a law degree under my belt but trying to find work in this economy and with every college churning out more and more law graduates every day was proving very hard. So I took an unpaid internship at Harvey Dents firm to pay my dues before I started actually earning money. While I had wanted to move it, it hadn't been an option that was until John suggested we live together. John Blake was an orphan, his mother died in a car crash and his father shot due to a gambling debt. John wasn't lucky enough to find a stable home where he could thrive in education. He was bounced between foster homes until he was 16 then chucked out on the streets to fend for himself. I met him when he was working as a bartender in the bar beside my college. I went in with my college class after summer exams and he was mixing the cocktails for us all night and I spent most of the night talking to him instead of my class. As you can imagine when I told my mother I was dating a bartender who had never went to college, she was less than thrilled. But she compromised that once I stuck with college and didn't get distracted I was allowed to see him. Once I finished college, I had no idea whether or not to keep the relationship going. After all we were now two totally different people so we took a break to figure out what we wanted from life. I went to Australia for a year and travelled around and when I got back I realised John was all I ever wanted. Lucky for me, he had realised over that year apart that he wanted the same and I hadn't lost him to another girl. He also hit me with another bombshell. He didn't want his whole legacy to be orphan and bartender. He wanted to do something meaningful with his life and after the trail of destruction left by the Joker, the Gotham police were taking on new applicants. I was proud of him but also worried because being a police officer in Gotham is not a job to take lightly but if that's what he wanted to do I wasn't about to stand in his way. The day he got accepted was one of the happiest days of his life, he finally felt like all the pieces of his life were falling into place. After about 6 months in the job John really started to settle in, he was getting well paid at least compared to his bartending job. Once I graduated I realised the law business was slowing down even considering the rampant crime in this city. So I came to the conclusion that an unpaid internship was the best course for me just for the experience really. But I couldn't live on that so I managed to get a part time job 3 days a week as a waitress. The money wasn't great but it meant I could throw some money my mother's way for bills. Once John started to get some money together he started looking at bigger apartments and he decided that if I put the money I was giving my mother towards rent and stuff with him, we could afford a place of our own and I wouldn't be living off my parents anymore. I had never lived with anyone before but as soon as John said I knew it was the right thing to do. So a rookie cop and an unpaid lawyer moved in together. Money was tight but we got by.

I put the sheets on our new bed as John unpacked what little clothes he owned into the dresser.

"You know this place could definitely use a lick of paint or some new wallpaper" I said looking around.

"Yea you're right. Tell you what I don't have to work this weekend so we can go and pick out some paint" he smiled.

I finished fixing the sheets and fluffed the pillows while he placed his uniform in a separate drawer. He walked around and hugged me from behind.

"You know, this place may not be the mansion you deserve to live in but this is the first time in my life I actually feel like I'm home"

"Really?"

"Yea, I mean my life has never really been easy and all I've ever wanted was an easy life with no fighting, arguing just a quiet peaceful life where I go to work during the day and get to come home to someone in the evening who is happy to see me, that's all I really want" he grinned.

"Babe that's so sweet"

"I just think things in my life are finally becoming stable" he said as I finished the bed.

"Hey you wanna get Chinese for dinner?"

"Is there…" I started before he cut me off.

"Yes we have the money for it, besides we're celebrating this is our first night in our new place we might as well splash out a bit"

As we sat on the floor beside the small radiator that the landlord left for us, all our possessions still boxed around us, eating and laughing, we realised our new life was off to a good start.

But as we were going to find out, the only part of our life that was going to be good was the start. From there on it would slowly decline but at that point in time we were happily ignorant eating cheap Chinese food huddling against a small radiator to keep warm before we snuggled down under our duvet for the night while the cold Gotham wind whistled through the cracks in the window frame.