People think Gotham hates Batman.

That couldn't be further from the truth.

Gotham loves Batman.

She made Batman. He is her son, her wayward son. He always returns to her.

Even when she is sick and broken, he returns to her, sets her bones and forces bitter medicine down her throat.

Gotham loves Batman. She watched a little child's parents gunned down and thought nothing of it, the disease crawling around her dark places, festering, pools of crimson spreading. And a little boy over the bodies, face stricken. Her Crown Prince. Bruce Wayne.

The Waynes were hers, her people, her Royal Family. It was a shame there was only one left now.

And then he left, how dare he. How dare he think he can leave her. He is hers.

Metropolis and Star City laugh at her as she rages.

"Here is your little Prince! Oh, here he is! He has left you for better places, for nicer places! Look at how he has abandoned you!"

And she can see him there, looking around those other cities as if he could ever belong anywhere else.

Then he is gone from those places too and they are bitter. They thought they could hold her Prince, the last of her Crown Family.

The thought is laughable and laugh she does, a sick broken sound that reminds the other cities of blood-filled lungs, gasping for air. They suddenly remember why taunting Gotham is never a good idea.

But Gotham has bigger things to worry about than petty revenge.

Her Prince has not come back to her. Instead London calls her up and tells her that her little Prince is there, a little Lost Boy.

Then Paris says she has seen him as well.

Then Berlin tells here he was there too.

Jerusalem is the next to call, what is the Prince doing so far from home?

Then Hong Kong, who tells her that, though it seems like no time at all for her, her Prince is no boy anymore. He is a young man now.

And young man and she had missed it.

Finally, Tokyo calls and tells her that her Prince has been hopping all over the islands, a gaijin among her natives, but she had come to love him just as fiercely.

"He is a man of Honor, Cousin. He has lived with my children and has been loved."

The other cities can't help themselves after that; it took Tokyo admitting love for her Prince, for Tokyo could rarely keep her ideas to herself, to open the floodgates.

"Yes, yes, us as well!"

Each trying so desperately to claim the not-so-little Prince that had wandered away from her a Lost Boy and had somehow turned into a man.

She had not seen him for years and years.

"Cousin, he is boarding a plane for America. It seems like it lands in Dakota City."

And so he did. Why Dakota, when there were flights from Tokyo coming back to her every couple of hours?

From Dakota, he travelled even more, visiting most of her sisters across America.

"No, no, no, no!" Gotham couldn't stand it. He was hers. He needed to come home.

Gotham was sicker than ever, entire pieces of her dark and festering, broken and ragged and torn. She would be dying if she wasn't so alive. If the disease hadn't consumed her, taken her body. It was just using her now, a vessel for the filth. She was a bloodied and broken as they come, but her sickness was what was keeping her alive.

They had taken everything except this. Her Crown Prince, so far from home, where she couldn't touch him. It wasn't fair.

Then again, she would only hurt him more. It didn't matter. She was greedy. She wanted him back. He was hers. Her last nice thing in the world. The last of her Royal Family, whose names still were painted across the best of her bones, gleaming silver against the grime. Wayne.

She wanted him.

America had nearly cast her aside, but a mother doesn't abandon her children so easily.

"Gotham, please!" America begged.

Gotham had no patience for America. America was no better than her, she just hide her filth underneath. Gotham had no patience for ideals and platitudes. For Truth, justice, and the American Way.

Lost Boy, come home now. Come home and I will give you teeth and claws of guns and knives. Come home and, from my darkness, I will pull the man who took away your parents. For you, Lost Boy. Crown Prince. Come home and I will show you Justice, Gotham's Justice. Come home, Lost Boy, and I will forgive you for leaving.

And he did.

But he put on a cape and believed in Justice. America's Justice. The kind she'd never thought could work here, in these dark places. Her Lost Boy was a Man now, but he was still a Lost Man.

But Gotham never really forgave him for leaving and he knew it.

That's why, when her dark places clawed at the spot of light a Circus brought, she made sure he was there to watch.

"You left and now you will watch another little boy become just as Lost as you, my Prince." She whispered from behind tent flaps and couldn't be heard over the sickening crack and the dreadful screams.

But Bruce took in the Circus Orphan, took him in and kept him there. Bruce, Gotham, and Dick. Batman, Gotham, and Robin. A happy little family.

The Orphan thought he could leave too, once. Bludhaven laughed at her from down the river, flashing her knife and humming a jaunty tune.

"I will kill you little bird, Sister!" Bludhaven laughed. "No more returning Princes for you. I will kill him and he will never be yours again!"

Of course, my Orphan was too smart for that bitch to kill.

The next Lost Boy came from her dark places. He was a Tribute of the disease. His parents gone and him next. It would take a few winters, a gunshot, or even just hunger, but soon he would join the rest of them under her skin. They would never leave her.

But the Prince found him, already halfway dead as he was. She let him have this one, but no one escapes forever. His life was already forfeit, long before they swathed him in red and green and yellow.

But she would let them have him for a time. She promised her Crown Prince many things when he came home. She would let him have this Almost-Tribute for a time, if that truly what he wanted. She loved him so.

But then, she could wait no longer.

Her other Prince, the one who was not born into his place at her left and instead clawed his way there, wanted the boy as well. And, truth be told, she couldn't love one son more than the other. Even if Bludhaven with her silly knife had the Orphan right now, he could come back any time. If the Clown Prince wanted this Tribute, who was she to refuse him?

And didn't she say no one escapes forever?

Even when he returns, he does it with grave soil under his fingernails and blood in his smile. He wears the forgotten colors of the Clown Prince and she deems it good enough, for the Orphan had abandoned the Prince too and she still counted him. Her Princes were tied. She would never tell which she loved more, even though it was obvious to all. The favored son sat on the right. And, on the left sat the one with a dagger and a bloody smile.

The next was a Young Lord. He was no Wayne, not by a long shot, but she knew his face. Watched him, hungry, for signs of weakness, of darkness.

Every child born here has a little. Even the most frail of her children could rip flesh from bone. Metropolis's children could only scream and cry and fail. Gotham's children knew better. Gotham's children knew that, if your back is to a wall, you rip and tear and break and rend until it is gone, until you are safe. Because no one will come for you, if you scream.

Hush little children, don't waste your breath, screaming always ends in death. And if the Bat saves you this eve, don't forget there's always me.

This Young Lord was one of her favorites, clever and quick and a fan of her Prince. He watched the Prince's anger.

Her Crown Prince was angry she had given the Tribute to the Clown. He didn't understand fairness the way Gotham did.

And, when she thought about it, the Clown had the little female Jester he had broken. So perhaps the Prince had a right to be angry. She didn't care. He fought crime in her dark places and stained them red, but she couldn't care less. They were alive, weren't they? And who cares if they were. Some more for the ground and the flowers would grow over them.

But the Young Lord couldn't stand it. He tried to bring the Orphan back, but Bludhaven sunk in her claws and would not let go.

So the Young Lord was clothed in red and yellow and black.

But you couldn't join the club without loss. Not in this city. When the darkness called for blood, she gave them his parents and laughed in his face.

"Little Prince, Lost Man against the darkness, you should know better. You let him join the Lost Boy club without being lost. And I haven't forgiven you yet, my Prince."

(A secret. She barely remembers the girl and she doesn't care. The club was the Lost Boys club, dear. She has another one for the girls, where they dress up in black and pretend they are not scared little girls wearing borrowed designs. The red and yellow and green is for the boys. She strikes this girl in the wrong colors down and refuses to talk about her and, soon, it's as if she never existed at all.)

And then. And then.

Her little Prince had become a man while he was away, in more ways than one.

She could lie and say this one is not her favorite, but she has no time for nice lies now.

Her Royal Family is a Family again, albeit a small one. But this new prince, this little foreigner Amir, is everything she wants and nothing she wants all at the same time.

Prideful and arrogant, brash and harsh and bloodthirsty. He would fight like a Gotham child without prompting. He makes the city his own and is sorry for nothing and no one.

But, as much as it pains her, he is no Lost Boy.

Not yet.

"I'm so sorry, my Prince. My Crown Prince. My Lost Man. I never forgave you. You left me, but still, I love you." And the Crown Prince falls

The Orphan shakes off Bludhaven's grip and returns to play pretend in the Prince's clothes, the Amir at his side.

And Gotham lies still and waits again for her Prince's second return.

Just going to put this out there, I have no idea what the hell I just wrote. Still, hope you enjoyed! Please review!