Coming home after a nice vacation is always a letdown. The memories of sandy beaches, carefree days, and fun-packed nights vanish like a popped bubble in the face of all of the real world's responsibilities and problems. In fact, a few minutes after stepping through the front door, many ex-vacationers feel like they've never left at all.
The intrepid band of travelers that had set out in early January for Myrtle Beach had returned to Gotham on February second, a date that the Riddler had assured them would provide enough of a distraction to the forces of justice that they'd be able to make it to their various homes safely. And, indeed, when they turned on the radio, the breaking news broke in with constant updates on the situation developing with Harvey Dent in – where else – the Second National Bank. What bat-masked vigilante had time to keep an eye on the roads when he had a duality-obsessed and extremely well-armed ex-lawyer to contend with?
The Riddler's car – or at least, the car that had become his after a few hurried minutes with a screwdriver - trundled away down the street. Sorrow and Grief watched its taillights disappear in the flurrying snow, blinking as fat snowflakes tumbled across their vision. When it had gone, Sorrow lifted her small suitcase and stepped inside the vacant storefront that concealed their second home. "You coming?" she called, letting the cracked front door flop closed behind her.
Grief, in better days known as Troy Grey, picked up his own suitcase and obediently trudged after her. He scuffed through the snow, stamping it off of his shoes, concentrating on the fluffy white stuff in a desperate attempt to avoid thinking about where he was, who he was with, why he was there, and what on earth he was going to do about it.
They were back in Gotham. He couldn't believe it. He'd asked, he'd pleaded, he'd begged for them to go somewhere else. Anywhere else. Metropolis. Keystone City. Alaska. Russia. Australia. But no - she'd said they were staying in Gotham, and so there they stayed. He wanted to go - didn't that matter at all to her? He'd given up everything for her - his job, his apartment, his family, everything - and she wouldn't even listen when he told her how much he didn't want to come back here.
He followed her snowy footprints up the stairs, suitcase banging against the backs of his knees, and stopped just behind her as she surveyed their tiny one-room home.
Everything was ruined. The window had been completely smashed, allowing a month's worth of rain, sleet, and snow to blow in and destroy the walls. Shattered glass covered the mold and mildew staining the wood floor. The missing-person fliers that his father had dropped were spread about the room, half-frozen in puddles of filthy ice. The overturned couch had a very large vigilante-shaped dent in the middle of it. And, just to make everything perfectly homelike and cheerful, a trio of bullet holes had sent spiderwebbed cracks through the plaster of the wall nearest the door.
Sorrow picked her bag back up. "Looks like we're not staying here. Let's go back to the warehouse."
"The warehouse?" he repeated, sudden panic burning like a wildfire behind his eyes. "But Batman knows where it is!"
She gestured to the wreckage behind her. "I'm pretty sure he knows where this place is too."
"Can't we find a new place?" he said desperately.
"No," she snapped, shifting the heavy bag to her other hand. "Finding a new place takes time and money and we don't have much of either right now. Besides, we've already got a new place to set up. Remember? The plan?"
Anxiety stretched its venomous tendrils into his abdomen and strangled his stomach. The plan. She'd spent the last half of January doing nothing but planning, in secret, when the Riddler and his girl were nowhere near them. She had meticulously figured out every detail, every weakness, and every potential flaw. It didn't matter. If it failed – which it was bound to – the best he could hope for was a few weeks in Arkham's hospital wing before they were permanently locked away.
"You're sure you want to do this?" he asked, knowing the answer but hoping for a different one.
"Positive."
"But if we get caught – "
"If we get caught, we'll break out again," she shrugged, shouldering past him and trotting down the stairs.
"We won't be able to!" he insisted, running after her. "You don't understand. The basement – " As he skipped off of the last step, Sorrow dropped her bag on his foot. He yelped with pain and yanked himself free. "What was that for?"
She glared at him. "I'm tired of hearing it. I did escape from the basement, you know. Even if they do put us down there, which they won't, I can get us back out. Stop worrying so much."
"Stop worrying?" he squeaked.
"Yes! We'll be fine."
Fine? They'd be fine? He shook his head frantically, trying to find the words to explain how absolutely not fine they would be when Batman caught up with them. Batman was sure to want retribution for their part in letting nearly all of Arkham's captured rogues out on the streets. The staff of Arkham would be happy to stuff Sorrow in the basement and leave her there forever, and he was willing to bet that he would be subject to the same treatment. If they were caught - when they were caught - they'd never see daylight again.
He wasn't an idiot. He knew that the rogues of Gotham had some immense blind spots when it came to seeing the world as it really was. All that anyone had to do was pick up a newspaper on any given day to see a member of the gallery committing some atrocity in the name of their pet cause, whether that meant saving the world from a perceived overinfestation of humans or spreading the word of Lewis Carroll one mind-controlled minion at a time. He was well aware of the rogues' propensity to ignore the bits of the world that didn't match up to their vision. He just hadn't thought that Sorrow would ever fall into that trap too.
"Well?" she asked, breaking his train of thought.
"Can we please go somewhere else?" he asked plaintively.
She sighed with irritation and picked up her suitcase. "I'm tired, and I'm going to the warehouse. You can come if you want to." She shoved past him and stalked out the front door.
His stomach dropped into his shoes. Gotham's underworld was frightening, and Batman was terrifying, but the thought of losing Sorrow scared him right down to his bones. "Wait for me!" he yelped, skittering after her.
Batman did know where the warehouse was. He'd been on the rooftop, in the main space, and he'd probably climbed up the walls a time or two to try and find her. Bat-bootprints and trailing cape marks scuffed the snow that had fallen in through the large hole in the ceiling. The space set aside for henchmen, when she had them, had been thoroughly ransacked for any clue to her present whereabouts. Her private living quarters had never hosted a surprise visit from a pointy-eared vigilante, though, thanks to being carefully hidden behind a door that blended in seamlessly with the wall. When Sorrow let herself and Grief in, she found the place was as she'd left it - mail on the kitchen table, spare coat on the chair in the corner, and dust on everything else.
Sorrow dropped her bag in the bedroom and returned to the kitchen, pulling a well-hidden cell phone out of the back of a drawer. The battery had gone flat after months of disuse. She ferreted out the charger and plugged it in as Grief settled sullenly down on the couch.
What was his problem, anyway? Yes, Gotham was dangerous, but so was everywhere else. The other cities he'd mentioned as possible new homes were just as infested with hero types as Gotham was. At least in Gotham the heroes didn't have powers. The Batman and his brats may have been hyperintelligent and way too skilled at martial arts, but they didn't have bulletproof skin or laser eyes. The Bats may have been armed with an array of pointy, painful gadgets, but none of those gadgets could even come close to the power of, say, a certain green ring that could manifest anything the wearer wanted it to. How on earth did he think they would be able to survive against those kinds of odds?
Who said they could survive in another city regardless of what heroes lived there? It wasn't easy to set up shop in a strange town. Mafiosos and career criminals weren't exactly eager to welcome new neighbors, particularly neighbors that would cut in on their already-claimed turf. Even in Gotham, it had taken Sorrow years to build her reputation up to where it was, and her reputation was hardly something to be proud of. She probably ranked somewhere below the Ventriloquist but above the Penny Plunderer. Well, maybe a little higher nowadays – she had managed to swing an invite to the Penguin's party, after all – but all of that hard-won respect would be completely absent in a new city.
And yes, the threat of Arkham's high-security basement wing was enough to send dread rippling across the back of her mind whenever she thought about it. But if they could stay out of Batman's hands until her plan was operational, they would never have to worry about Arkham again.
The phone had taken enough of a charge to turn on. She powered it up, ignoring Grief's sulk on the couch. If he really didn't want to be here, then he wouldn't have followed her home.
She dialed a number with her thickly gloved pinky. It rang only once before the man on the other end picked up. "Boss? That you?"
"It's me, Sammy," she said cheerfully. "Want some work?"
"You bet!"
"We're at the warehouse. Come on over."
There was a short pause. "We?"
There was no way that she was going to try to explain Grief over the phone, particularly when the subject of the conversation would be in easy eavesdropping distance. "Just come over."
"Sure thing, boss." The phone connection clicked off.
Sorrow left the phone on the kitchen counter and headed for the living room, seating herself in the large comfortable armchair directly across from Grief. "We need to talk."
"About?" he muttered, fiddling with a loose thread on his coat.
"You. You've been moody for weeks." He shrugged uncomfortably, not meeting her eyes. "I have a lot of work to do. I don't have time to baby you through this. You can be either here with me, in Gotham, working on the plan, or you can leave."
He scowled at her. "I'm not leaving you."
"Then cheer up!" she snapped. "You don't have to be Mr. Rogers or anything, but a smile every now and then would be nice."
"I...if you'd just...it's..." he spluttered hopelessly.
"I'll say it one more time. I. Am. Not. Leaving. Gotham," she said, slowly and patiently, the words clicking into place like locks on a door. "Now are you staying or going?"
"Staying," he mumbled.
"Good. Go get the plans out of my suitcase while I clean off the table." He didn't move. "Well?"
Silently, he got to his feet and disappeared into her small bedroom. She sighed and returned to the kitchen, halfheartedly wiping the dust from the table and chairs with a much-abused dishcloth.
Tap-tap-tap-KNOCK-KNOCK-tappa-tappa!
"That's Sammy," Sorrow called. Grief appeared from the bedroom, clutching a loose bundle of papers in his arms. He laid them out on the table as she unlocked the door and cracked it open.
Sammy stood there, grinning at her. Snow had piled up in tiny drifts on the brim of his hat and in the folds of his scarf. "Hey, boss!"
"Hey, Sammy," she smiled back, pulling the door wide. "C'mon in."
He trotted inside, sliding out of his coat and perching it on the coat rack without really looking at what he was doing. "How long you been back in town?"
"Two, three hours?" she estimated, taking a seat at the table.
Sammy slid into his customary spot and paused as he met Grief's curious stare. The two men sized each other up silently.
To hell with explanations. "Sammy, this is Grief," she introduced, flicking through the papers. "Grief, this is Sammy."
She knew that Grief knew who Sammy was - back in the days when he'd been her therapist, Sammy was one of the few topics that she felt comfortable discussing - and as for Sammy, it wouldn't take much of a leap of logic to determine the newcomer's status when he had a name like Grief.
The men considered one another for a moment.
"Nice to meet you," Grief said, sticking out a polite hand.
"Likewise," Sammy said, accepting the proffered handshake with all the caution of a seasoned henchman who wasn't quite sure what was lurking underneath the other man's gloves.
Sorrow snatched up a piece of paper that had been lurking at the bottom of the stack. "Ah! Okay, Sam. Here's the plan." She laid the basics out for him, explaining it with her customary guarded caution with regard to details. "So, can you do it?"
He stared at the various blueprints and hastily scrawled ideas. "Gee, boss, I dunno. Kidnapping and blackmail and...this..." He gestured vaguely to the largest blueprint. "I mean, this isn't like you. I thought you wanted to do another bank job, like old times. This is more like...well, you know..."
"Like something the other rogues might do?" Sorrow inquired, an edge of steel on her carefully casual voice.
"Well, yeah. I mean, Batman's gonna be really mad at you. Really mad," he emphasized.
"He's been really mad at me before. Come to think of it, he's already really mad at me, so what's the difference?" she shrugged.
"A few more weeks in traction?" Sammy suggested darkly. Grief winced.
"Sammy," she glared. "I didn't ask for your opinion. This is the job. Can you do it?"
"Sure thing, boss," he agreed instantly, aware that people who questioned their criminally insane superiors had a remaining lifespan that could be measured in seconds. "I'm gonna need help, though."
"Get an assistant. Someone you can trust," she added. "Someone who's been around a while."
"Sure thing, boss. I know just the guy."
"Good. And when you get a moment, fix up the jewelry store, okay?"
Sammy looked down at the plans that would probably eat up every single second of his waking life for the next few weeks. "Sure. No problem, boss."
(to be continued)