AN:
This is one of the first Batman fanfictions that I am posting to this website. It takes place over the span of all three movies, years and years; therefore, do expect it to end up being fairly long. This is chapter one. Just a few notes:
1. Monica is not Asian; I' expect that to be obvious, seeing that both of her parents nationalities are explained, but I want to make sure that is known, just in case.
2. Bruce in Monica will have no romance; seeing that this takes place in the movies, everything will go as they did then.
Thank you for reading and please leave reviews.
(This is a rough draft, also.)
crusades.
I first saw him being beaten, or rather beating, criminals that attacked him in an Asian prison.
My father was imprisoned there and I was to make my monthly visit. But, after visiting my father and heading back to the town, I saw him.
He was white, and American maybe, or European. A beard growing, scraggly, with dirt brown hair. I couldn't tell whether that was actually his hair color, or if the eternal mud that they lived in had stained him for life.
I stood in the background, separated from the prisoners, right in the threshold between what life can be and what life is. What my father's life was and my own.
There were so many of them, though. Too many, I knew he would be killed. They were all so much bigger than him and stronger looking, compared to the relatively lean man they were fighting against. He didn't stand a chance.
But held them off, he really did, and one by one they went down. I stood flabbergasted at what I had seen. Had he really destroyed all of these seasoned criminals, one man against six? Maybe my eyes were deceiving me, I thought. Suddenly I realized how far away I was actually standing, but I saw them so clear. A chill ran down my spine as I felt a push on the back of my shoulder.
"Move along," a guard with a gun told me in the native tongue and I nodded, moving up the road and farther and farther away from the prison. The man gripped my mind, even from far away. What a strange thing, I thought. What a very strange thing.
Before the accident, my mother was an acclaimed archaeologist. She travelled everywhere, knew everything; therefore, in her small town of Como, Italy everyone knew her name.
Her favorite place to travel was the Middle East and Asia, and that, of course, is where she met my father.
The disowned Arabian Prince was doing some travelling of his own when he met my mother in the summer heat in a dig in Israel. It was only by chance that they met, really, seeing that she was suppose to be gone the day before, but had convinced her men to stay another day. Another day turned into two days then three and finally she convinced my father to come back to Italy with her. They had to smuggle him in, but once he was there there was no turning back.
Fast-forward a year and they were pregnant. Father had convinced her to move into the mountains of Bhutan, where my sister Lalun was born.
Ten months later they were pregnant again, but this time with was me.
But as I said before, that was all before the accident.
We'd been in Europe most of the summer of my fourteenth birthday. It was in Paris where it happened.
Father had stayed back in Bhutan, he said he couldn't risk losing his job for a vacation, so mother, Lalun and I, on our own. Mother was happy, so very happy. She could tell us about every building and every crack in the sidewalk. I could see the stars shining in her eyes. She never told us that she missed her work, but we knew.
Mother was so excited about what she was teaching us that she did not pay attention to the fact that she was walking right into the street. By the time we noticed, it was too late, the bus had already come and she was lying on the ground, unable to move. It all happened so fast.
I was only fourteen years old and it looked as if my mother's life was about to end.
She would be paralyzed for the rest of her life, the French doctors told us. She was never walk again, never run, never dance. When mother slept Lalun took me to the side and whispered into my ear.
"How is she going to climb up a mountain? How is she going to get home?"
We had no way of contacting father, so we had to figure out everything on our own. Our flight was set to go out in three weeks, and the doctors said that that should be enough time. They gave us a wheelchair.
Finally we were able to contact father, and we thought we were saved. But he never looked at us the same again. He considered it another burden, as if it was another mouth to feed. The stars in mothers eyes went out and never came back again. Though she was still the fun person I knew before the accident, there was that element of her that had died.
"This is getting ridiculous," I said as I entered our home. It's a series squares running up the mountain side.
My sister stood over the fire in the middle of the "kitchen", which really was no kitchen at all, but a fire pit and salted meats hanging from the ceiling and fruits and vegetables we were trying to keep cold, on ice away from the fire.
"What?" she asked, cutting an apple in half and handing it to me.
I shrugged and bit into the fruit. "All of this," I said. "Running out to father every month to visit him in that shithole. Seeing him like that. And then," I glanced over to make sure mother wasn't in the other room, "having to take care of her in this place." I motioned to all around us. "She needs better living conditions, Lun. All she does is sit in the house all day."
"Speaking of that," my sister said, "did you bring what she asked for?"
I nodded and pulled she small book from the pocket of my massive jacket. "I hope she enjoys it."
"I'm sure she will."
We sat down against the wall in silence for a moment, before I spoke again. "I saw someone today. American, I think. He was in the prison. He was... I don't know. They attacked him, six of them, and he fought them all off."
Lalun said, surprised. "All of them? By timeself?"
I chuckled. "All by himself. He was practically super-human."
"Ah, our very own Superman." We laughed and I rested my head on my sister's shoulder.
"We have to get out of here," I decided.
"And leave father?" she asked.
"He put himself there. He's never getting out. You know that."
Lalun licked her lips. "Maybe mother would be happy again. To... get away. From this place. From the cold. We can go back to Italy, find her family. Maybe she could work again."
"No," I shook my head. "Not Italy."
"Where then?" she asked.
I grinned and threw the rest of my apple into the fire. "America."
GOTHAM
The buildings seemed to keep growing and growing until there was nothing left but metal and glass. They got taller and taller until the gods could reach down and put their hands upon them. Everything was different. But this was now home.
"Welcome to Gotham," my sister mumbled, looking for her keys in her jacket.
"Left pocket," I said, looking around in awe at everything in front of me.
Our apartment was near the bridge; I could see it from where I stood outside. It had taken a while, but Lalun and I were able to get student visas to get us into the country.
Mother was too sick to make the trip. I looked down at my hands as my sister opened the door.
She had gotten a fever some time before we were supposed to leave. We were sure everything would be fine, but one morning she just didn't open her eyes.
My visit to father was two days later when I brought him the news both of mothers death and out departure.
"I don't understand," he said, confused. "Why are you leaving?"
"We want a better life than this," I told him. "We'll go to America and go to school... get goods job and have a life. We were never meant for his." I added: "Mother wasn't meant for this."
His anger finally boiled over. "Don't you dare speak of what your mother was made for, Monica! You have no idea what we went through those first few years, raising you and your sister in the mountains of a country we didn't know." He spit. "You have no idea."
Father may have been right, I may have no idea. But what I did have an idea about was the fact that he was now a criminal and would die a criminal. What little money we had we got came from his crimes.
"Ah, right." Lalun pulled out her keys and opened the door to our flat apartment. It had a kitchen, a real kitchen, a bathroom and one bedroom we would share, plus a small living room which looked out to the city. Everything was brick. There was a small blow up mattress that the landlord said he was leave for us and a coach. Besides that we had nothing at all but the clothes we carried with us and all of mothers books.
"How the hell are we going to pay for school?" Lalun had asked before, when I told her of my plan.
"We won't have to," I said. "All we have to do is get into America, that's it. After that, the wind will take care of us.
I dropped my things in the middle of the bedroom and turned to find my sister with her hands on her hips.
"We have six hundred American dollars to our name. What do you think that can get us?"
"A shitty investment," I said, moving past her into the kitchen to wash off my hands.
She followed me. "We're going to have to work to pay for this place, you know? Both of us. This isn't some fun adventure."
Ah, but it is, I thought. "Alright, but first, we have to check the place, out right?" I said.
My sister thought for a moment and nodded. "Yes, you're right."
"So," I said, heading for the door. "Let's go."
There is something dark in Gotham, something bloody and something quick. I shoved my hands into the pockets of my jeans as my sister and I walked down the street. People surrounded us, but no one paid much attention to us. But all the same, I felt a darkness come over the city the way a mother looks over her newborn child.
We passed two police officers walking down the street a little while later. One of them turned back as they passed us. Lalun grabbed my arm and pulled me hard to keep on walking.
"Creeps," she groaned.
"I'm sure they think the same thing about you," I told her, as we kept on walking and the sun decided it was time to set.
