Disclaimer: I do not own Batman.
A/N: Hello!
In this story, there will be no Robin romance (sorry, Robin/OC shippers), and this story will be more of a mix of the comics and the animated series. This will also be the only chapter in first person perspective.
Thank you!
"You have nothing to live for, kid."
She said that to me, after the fire started. I didn't know how to react to that, so I panicked. And...
I k-killed her.
I swear; I panicked. I was ten when that happened, so I wasn't able to keep my emotions in check as well. It just hit me that I had to kill her out of some form of self-defense, so I acted on my instinct. I felt like that this was all going to happen at some point, based on the way she acted before.
I think that all really started three years before. Her name was Beatrice Hatch, and she adopted me when I was seven. I don't remember the day that I was adopted in detail, but I did remember seeing her face very well. Her eyes kept narrowing at me, and there was this twinge of something in them that just felt wrong for her, even though I only knew her for a few hours back then.
When I thought about it at that time, it almost looked like she regretted bringing me home with her, and I eventually realized that this was the case. After I was adopted, I quickly went into the background of her life, and there were times that she would look at me with a mixture of shame, annoyance, and emotionless contempt. Other times, she forgot that I existed.
When I did exist to her, I only existed to make her look good, usually to strangers or her friends. I guess I was supposed to set a good example for her, since she wasn't really good at setting one for herself in front of her colleagues. Whenever they were over, they always gossiped how she would spend her big paycheck "like water", and I think they even said it to my face, at one point. According to them, Beatrice was a highly paid doctor at Gotham General, and we could have lived in a mansion with her money, if she didn't spend all of it on crazy parties on the other side of the city. This always came up in a conversation between Beatrice and her "friends" when I eavesdropped, but Beatrice would always make them stop talking about it by giving them more champagne. She would either do that, or she would have her colleagues meet me at my best. In other words, I had to be her trophy daughter whenever she made herself look particularly bad, so I was there to make up for it.
Personally, even now, I don't really mind that I was there to be her well-behaved, polite daughter. After all, that was the only thing about me that made her happy; I made her look better than she was behind closed doors. I was her mask, and she was my mask. We needed to keep our facades on, except Beatrice and I both had our own reasons for them.
This didn't last forever, though.
One day, the apartment that we lived in caught on fire. I don't remember how it happened, but I just remember being in my room when the sounds of the alarm and the flames came in. Beatrice came in with it, but there was something about her that was different. She stood like she was just barely holding onto that mask she was wearing, but it fell off, regardless. Once her mask was gone, she ran up to me and pinned me down on my bed. I tried to get up, but there was a small knife in her other hand that told me to stay down.
She was saying things that I had no idea would come out of her, and she sorely blamed everything about her on me. When I did turn around to see her, I could only catch sight of her burned legs and her dull, apathetic eyes.
At that point, I had no idea what to do. There was one part of me that told me that the heroes would come to help, like the police or the Batman. Then, there was another part of me that told me that they weren't going to come. It wasn't just like they couldn't, but Beatrice made it seem like they shouldn't have. And then...
"You have nothing to live for, kid."
That made me realize that no one would come, and that was around the same time that I needed to fight back. I kicked her in her burned knee, and she dropped her knife by surprise. I tried to get the knife, but she tumbled downward when I reached it. I remember freezing up when she started yelling at me in the fire, and I barely heard the blaring noise in the background from the television. Even though the flames were engulfing it, it still managed to stay on the news with the reporter talking.
"On a darker note, five people were found dead in Gotham National Bank from exposure from the Joker's deadly venom–"
I looked at the TV, and I remember wincing at what I saw. On the television, there were five pale...bodies, smiling abnormally at the camera. It was clearly the work of the Joker, but it felt strange how all of this chaos was happening at the same time.
Huh, I thought, trying not be be aware of the situation I was in. The Joker always has the right timing. Scary, but right timing. And he's always happy about that. How can it be possible that a man can be happy like that?
I only got one explanation at that time, and that was when Beatrice told me a few years ago that Gotham was simply a wretched rat-hole. Even then, I still didn't know why the Joker was so content.
I really wanted to know why.
I glanced at Beatrice. I thought of the grins on the corpses' faces.
So, I put the knife on Beatrice's lips. I had no idea what I was doing.
Police sirens closed in about twenty minutes later.
The police found me weeping on the other side of the house. Minutes later, they found Beatrice. I don't want to think about how she looked...
After...that time, I found myself sitting in my old room at the orphanage again. I couldn't stop thinking about those things, about the way people were. I practically locked myself away from the world.
While I was in my room, I tried to make more sense of what happened. I realized that the police came over to pick me up eventually, but why didn't anybody try to help sooner?
I mean, the fire in my mom's apartment was huge. I knew that Gotham was a crowded city, so somebody must have seen it.
So, why didn't anybody report it? Did people not care about the welfare of their city? Even though terrible things happened in every corner of it, it was like nobody batted an eye.
I don't want to admit it now, but I would have reacted in the same way, too. I would have acted as a bystander, and I would have tried to forget that anything ever happened. I admit it.
People only really care when something bad happens to them. Then, they think about their trauma until the end of their days. Even then, not many people care to think about those who've gone through worse.
I'm going to mope about the Beatrice problem for a long time, but I know that it could have been worse. Yet with everybody else, it's all about them.
Kind of like my mom...
I began to believe that Good Samaritans didn't exist, especially in a city like this. Those that were "Good Samaritans" were just trying to make themselves feel good.
The Batman, for example, seems like a hero, but he still couldn't get rid of the corrupted apathy of this city. Sooner than later, it became a part of him, too. After all, he regularly beats up criminals without a second thought!
It took a while to think about that. The more I did, the more I felt like a stupid piece of nothing. I know that it wouldn't make sense to anybody else, but it did to me.
Nobody cares about anything, whether we know it or not. We really mean little to everyone else. People don't matter.
When I realized all of this, I became really unhappy. For weeks, I only watched the news and read lengthy novels in the orphanage, with nothing else better to do. I just stared at the television as the city slowly fell to ashes because of the satisfied criminals and the careless public. Sometimes, I even felt the need to join the public in their attitude.
Then, one day, there was a note from someone anonymous sent to a news channel. Something lost jumped within me, and I was desperate to know why.
The note said, "Our lives are circus acts. It's a gag to burn the circus down!"
I realized that the message was right: both figuratively and literally.