I was always fascinated by how thin is the line between Batman and his villains. So I wanted to try to describe what alternative future may wait for Batman. Sad revelations, different perspective, sorrow for what was lost… I honestly tried to find anyone who used a similar concept, but I didn't succeed. If anyone can help me, please, send it over. I would love to read it!
Slightly limping with her left leg, she puts a chair in front of me and blows a puff of smoke into my face.
Her cheekbones are dreadful, so sharp that they seem to tear her skin.
Her left hand is hanging next to her torso in some unusual manner as if disfigured by unknown forces.
"Hugo," she comments, catching my stare, "It was supposed to be cat's claw", she puts out her cigarette into a sleeve of the robe, "Not all experiments end well, you know."
Her breath smells like cheap cigarettes and freshly boiled mint. I grimace eagerly catching every part of it.
I stare at her.
There is a lot of moonlight today. Moonlight on walls, on door, in her black hair, slightly grayish black hair.
"I know I look sick," she continues. I don't say anything, but she does look sick. Her porcelain skin is tired and stretches as an old bed sheet when she smiles .
"You are as talkative as ever, Bat," she lights another cigarette. "Want some? I don't think you ever smoked. I didn't think that I would as well. But there is not much to do in this shithole."
Smoke covers her image. It becomes so blurry that my memory shows me red goggles and red lipstick. I gasp. I feel that my mask is on as well, I feel it wrapped around my head, I feel elastic leather on my neck, I feel it covering my forehead and nose. I straighten. Batman doesn't slouch, he never hunches. I feel as if the power comes back to my hands, I feel it overwhelms me, getting me drunk and short breath.
My eyes are wet from cold Gotham air and sticky fog. The fog with a shape of a woman in a black leather costume who says "meow" and teases me into darkness.
Her warm lips on my chin, her soft breast next to my chest, her "bat" in my ears.
Smoke disappears… This middle aged woman looks at me astonished, excited. The chair under her is leaned to me and she is pressing her hand to my chest to keep a balance. Her good leg is stretched with almost forgotten cat instincts trying to steady her fall. Her lips are parted, wet, welcoming… and her eyes … I remember those eyes. The most beautiful, the most poisonous color of green.
"Cat…," I whisper, feeling how power is leaving me, how my shoulders are falling, how cold sweat appears on my forehead with medication kicking in.
She leans back, touches her leg. I bet it didn't have any physical exercises for some time.
She takes a cigarette out and then puts it back in. Her hand touches her hair messing it. I hear a quiet laugh before she looks back at me.
"It was good, Bat. Let's repeat it some time," she licks her lips and put the chair back to its place.
When she leaves, I feel as broken as ever. I barely have any energy to drag my old body to the bed.
My thoughts get cloudy, slow. I don't sleep, I am in a comatose of all the pills that they squeezed into me, but through it, somehow, I see one image over and over. A woman with a heavy walk leaving my room. The door is closing and I see her looking at me. Her eyes are as alive as ever.