Officer John Blake walked to the roof of the Major Crimes Unit, seeing the man that he knew would be there. He, like many others, didn't like to come up here when Gordon went, as it was now more of a somber location. Blake saw Gordon, sitting against the air duct reading a stack of files, with the now rusty, broken searchlight next to him, and couldn't help but wonder what it had looked like here, eight years ago. But those days were long gone.

"Sir?" He asked.

Gordon looked up from the files, and in doing so looked right into the broken light. He paused for a moment before turning to Blake.

"I didn't want to bother you up here, but they're looking for you." Blake added.

"What's the problem, son?" Gordon asked, setting down the file he was reading from on top of the pile.

"Congressman Gilly's wife's been calling." Blake answered. "He hasn't made it home from the Wayne Foundation event."

"That's a job for the police." Gordon joked.

"Sir, I've been a cop for a year and I've only logged half a dozen arrests. When you and Dent cleaned the streets you cleaned them good." Blake replied. "Pretty soon we'll be chasing overdue library books."

Gordon smiled, picking up the files.

"But here you are." Blake went on, gesturing at the files. "Like we're still at war..."

"Old habits." Gordon shrugged.

"Or instinct." Blake suggested.

Gordon looked surprised. "What's your name, son?" He asked, now curious.

"Blake, sir."

"Do you have something you want to ask me, Officer Blake?"

"It's that night." Blake answered. "This night, eight years ago. The night Dent died."

"What about it?" Gordon asked.

"The last confirmed sighting of the Batman." Blake continued. "I mean, he murders those people, takes out two SWAT teams, breaks Dent's neck...then just vanishes? We spend a few years chasing him down, following leads, reports, but eventually those just faded away, and there was...nothing."

"I'm not hearing a question, son." Gordon said.

Blake shifted uneasily. "Don't you want to know who he was?" He finally asked.

Gordon chuckled, turning to look at the broken searchlight. He slowly ran his hand down the exterior, remembering the days when it had lit up the sky every night.

"I know exactly who he was." Gordon said, turning back to Blake. "He was the Batman."

Gordon walked past Blake, heading towards the roof's exit. "Let's go see about the congressman's wife." Gordon called back.

Blake stayed on the roof for a few moments, looking back at the broken signal, before following the Commissioner away.

Morning had come, and as he did every other morning, Alfred carried Bruce's breakfast to his room. However, when he entered to the room, he found the bed empty. Alfred left the room, looking through all sections of the house that he could think of, calling for Bruce, but receiving no answer other than an echo.

Eventually, Alfred realized where he had gone.

Alfred walked back around to the east wing of the manor, setting the tray down on a piano and pressing three keys that he hadn't played in quite a long time. Ahead of him, a bookcase swung open, revealing a secret passageway.

Alfred spent the elevator ride down below the mansion silently, as he had hoped never to have to ride it again. He walked out of the small elevator into the caves, hearing the chittering of bats, and seeing Bruce sitting at the large computer setup he had used back when he had been Batman. Alfred had never liked venturing down into the caves, but he hoped that it was only a temporary problem that Bruce needed to solve. Alfred clicked a switch near one of the large platforms, raising a walkway to connect to the large slate cube where Bruce sat, and the butler approached him.

"You haven't been down here in a long time." Alfred noted.

"Just trying to find out more about our jewel thief." Bruce replied. "I ran her prints from the photos she handled, and unless she's lost a lot of weight..."

Wayne clicked a few keys, and the mug shot of a fat, male armed-robbery suspect named Nikolai Ondrejko appeared, along with his police file and information.

"...she was wearing someone else's prints." Bruce finished. "She's good."

"She may be, but we have the tracer on the necklace." Alfred pointed out.

"We do." Bruce nodded. "So, I cross-referenced the address she went back to with police data on high-end B-and-E's, and..."

Bruce hit a key, and a photo of the maid appeared on the screen.

"...Selina Kyle." Bruce explained. "The databases are full of close calls, tips from fences..."

Newspaper headlines started to appear on the various screens, "THE CAT STRIKES AGAIN", "POLICE SUSPECT 'CAT' BURGLAR IN JEWEL HEIST".

"She's good, but the ground is shrinking beneath her feet." Bruce added.

"We should send the police before she fences the pearls." Alfred suggested.

"She might not." Bruce replied. "She seems to likes them. Although, she usually doesn't infiltrate places in disguise."

"Maybe you should exchange notes over coffee." Alfred joked.

"You're trying to set me up with a jewel thief?" Bruce asked in disbelief.

"At this point, sir, I would set you up with a chimpanzee if I thought it would bring you back into the world." Alfred replied.

"There's nothing out there for me." Bruce said.

"And that's the problem." Alfred said. "You hung up the cape and cowl, but never moved on. You won't get out there and find a life. Find someone-"

"I did find someone, Alfred." Bruce replied bitterly.

"I know. And then you lost them." Alfred said. "That's part of living, sir. But you're not living, you're waiting. Hoping for things to go bad again."

Bruce didn't say anything, and just looked at the ground.

"Remember when you left Gotham? Before all this? Before Batman?" Alfred asked. "Seven years you were gone. Seven years I waited, hoping that you wouldn't come back."

Bruce looked up at Alfred in surprise, not understanding what he meant.

"Every year I took my holiday, and I'd go to Florence." Alfred continued. "There's a café by the Arno, and any fine evening, I would sit there and order a Fernet Branca." Alfred now had a wistful look on his face. "I had a fantasy. I liked to imagine that one day I'd look across the tables, and see you. Sitting there with your wife, perhaps some kids. You wouldn't say anything to me, or me to you, but we'd both know...that you'd made it. That you were happy."

The wistful look turned to one of regret as Alfred looked back down at Bruce. "I never wanted you to come back to Gotham." The old man said. "I always knew that there was nothing there for you but pain and tragedy, and I wanted more for you than that. I still do."

Alfred turned and walked away from Bruce, his footsteps echoing through the cave. Bruce watched hi leave, and eventually turned back to the screens, alone with his bats once again.

Blake and his partner, Ross, exited their patrol car, and were greeted by the DWP man who had called them there. They had received the call after a body had been found outside one of the catchment basins.

"They wash up a couple times a month. More when it gets colder, from homeless sheltering in the tunnels." The DWP man explained. "We had to pull him to clear the basin, but other than that we didn't touch him."

The three came to basin, where two other DWP men were waiting, along with the body. The body was a teenage boy, young and wearing a few layers of worn-out clothing. Blake looked down at him as they waded through the water, and froze.

"What is it?' Ross asked.

"His name's Jimmy." Blake answered. "He's from St. Swithin's, the boys home where I...I coach some ball."

Blake exited the car once again, looking up and the run-down, ramshackle building that had once been his home. He walked through the front door, dodging a few young boys who were chasing each other down the stairs, before climbing them towards the main office.

"Jimmy hadn't been here for months." Father Reilly was telling him, sitting in his chair and looking up at his former ward.

"Why?" Blake asked.

"You know why Blake, he aged out." Reilly answered. "We don't have the resources to keep boys on after sixteen."

Blake furrowed his brow. "The Wayne Foundation gives money for that." He said.

"Not for two years now." Reilly corrected.

Blake was surprised. As far as he had known, the Wayne Foundation had been devoted to this place. "He has a brother here, doesn't he?" He asked.

"Mark." Reilly nodded. "I'll tell him."

"I'd like to, if that's okay." Blake replied.

Blake and Reilly went to the playground outdoors, which was a fenced-in section of a spacious balcony. Blake had found Mark sitting on a bench. When Blake explained what had happened, Mark seemed sad, but was still willing to talk.

"I'm sorry." Blake repeated.

Mark nodded sullenly, etching a symbol into the top of the table with a piece of chalk.

"What was he doing in the tunnels?" Blake asked, trying to get to his original point.

"A lot of guys have been going down the tunnels when they age out." Mark mumbled. "They say you can live down there, that there's work down there."

"What kind of work are you going to find in the sewers?" Blake asked.

"More than you can find up here, I guess." Mark shrugged.

Blake looked over at the symbols Mark was drawing, and recognized them as Batman graffiti art. That symbol had once been prevalent throughout Gotham, but it had been mostly cleaned up over the past eight years. "You know about him." Blake asked.

"Of course." Mark answered looking up from the table and at Blake. "Do you think he's coming back?"

Blake looked at Mark, and saw a lot of himself. He saw hope, and also how his position in the world was keeping it limited. So he answered with what he wished that he'd been told at Mark's age, instead of lies.

"I don't know."

Selina, now wearing a small black dress, as well as the string of pearls she had stolen, walked through yet another dark alley, towards a nameless dive bar in yet another dank corner of Gotham she hated visiting. She was with a haggard-looking drunk in a Hawaiian shirt, who she pushed through the door ahead of her, before he stumbled towards the stools at the bar. Selina helped him down onto one of the stools, patting his back lightly before walking over to the tables. Waiting for her was Stryver, the man who'd organized the meeting, along with several of his henchmen littered around the room.

"You brought a date?" Stryver asked as she sat down across from him.

"I like having someone around to open doors for me." Selina replied. She looked around, taking in all of the details of the room before continuing. She reached around and unclasped the pearls on her neck, holding them in her hand. Stryver reached out for them, but she held them back. "You didn't tell me there was a tracker on it." She said angrily. "This could bring even more trouble down on me."

Stryver gestured with one hand, and one of his men locked the bar's door. Another one walked over and stood next to Selina. She smiled nervously, looking at the thug out of the corner of her eye, tightening her grip on the blue pearls.

"Tracker or not, we made a deal." Stryver said, as the thug placed a briefcase next to Selina. "So keep your end of it."

"Wayne's probably already found my apartment, so I'll need to get moving, and soon." Selina said. "So, I hope you counted the money you brought very carefully, or I'll be paying your boss a visit."

"I count fine." Stryver replied coolly.

Next to Selina, the thug cocked his gun and pressed it against her head.

"In fact, I'm counting to ten, right now." Stryver finished, smirking. "By the way, I've never seen the Wayne pearls, but I know that they're white, not blue."

"Okay, okay." Selina said nervously. "These aren't the real pearls, my friend has them outside." She reached into her purse, but the thug stopped her, and he reached in instead, pulling out a cell phone.

"Just press send." Selina said, looking down as the thug removed his gun and tucked it away.

Stryver took the phone and clicked the send button, staring at Selina, who wouldn't meet his eyes. There was a knock on the bar's door, and the thug waiting there unlocked and opened it, revealing a short blonde woman. The woman walked cheerfully through the door, not understanding the situation, and over to Selina, handing her the string of white pearls.

"This place is a little dead." The woman commented.

"It'll liven up in a minute, trust me." Selina said tensely, handing Stryver the real pearls.

"Is everything okay?" Jen asked, noticing Selina's nervousness.

"Great. Catch you later." Selina said blankly, not looking at Jen.

Jen got the message, turning away from the table and leaving the bar. Selina handed the real pearls to Stryver, who pulled out a small black device at clicked it onto the string. A small red light appeared on the device, and Stryver smiled.

"That'll take care of the tracker." He said.

"Well, now that we all have what we want-" Selina started.

"Not quite." Stryver interrupted, pulling out a gun and resting it on the table at her. "We can't have loose ends. And, even in that dress, no-one's going to miss you."

"No, but my friend over there." Selina replied, gesturing at the drunk. "Every cop in the city's missing him."

Stryver looked over at the drunk, who was currently drooling into a bowl of nuts, and then up at the muted television above the bar, where the news was showing a picture of the same man, but in a cleaner state, with the Gotham City News banner declaring "MANHUNT FOR MISSING CONGRESSMAN".

"That's cute." Stryver smirked. "But they're not going to be looking for him in a place like this."

"I don't know..." Selina said. "...you did just use his phone."

Stryver smirk disappeared as he glanced down at the phone, and, as if on cue, the sound of tires screeching could be heard from outside. Selina smirked, and as the thug pulled out his gun, she grabbed his arm, twisting it until she heard a snap. Stryver stood up to shoot her, but she whirled back around, grabbing his hand and twisting it upwards, causing the gun to fly up into the air. She caught it, and hit Stryver across the face with its handle, before slamming his head down onto the table.

Outside the bar, Gotham SWAT officers exited their trucks, lining up next to the door with their weapons ready, preparing to enter.

Selina saw that Stryver's men were starting to pull out their weapons and race for the exit, but a couple of them were still focused on her. As one of them aimed his gun at her, she flipped Stryver onto his back and rolled over him, pulling him along with her to squat behind the table, using it and his body as cover while she readied her plan.

The rest of Stryver's men were running into the alley and away into the darkness, just trying to avoid capture.

Selina heard the sound of the police's battering ram hitting the door, and she shot the man trying to escape over the bar, causing him to fly backwards into the bottles. She then leaned over the table, shooting the thug who had been aiming at her, and hit Stryver in the face with the gun once again to keep him down. She ducked back down behind the table as another man ran out, pointing his gun at the door.

The door broke open with a loud crunch, and the police, seeing the man pointing the gun at them, opened fire, killing him. Selina had already pulled Stryver off of her, and thrown the gun away, o there was only one step left in her charade: to scream hysterically. Once she started doing this, the police ignored her as a threat, even as she screamed and grabbed at them for "help", as she knew they would.

"It's okay, miss. Just stay down." One of the officers reassured her, before following the other arnoured men.

Selina kept up the screams and pleads until all of the team had moved through the bar and continued into the back alley after the rest of the thugs, where a firefight started to break out. She stopped her screaming after the last SWAT officer was out of sight, watching for a few seconds before she knew she was clear, and stood up. She walked over to Gilly, who was on the ground, clutching at a bullet wound in his leg. "Keep some pressure on that, sweetheart." She advised, adjusting her dress on the broken mirror behind the bar and walking towards the exit.

"Call me?" Gilly said weakly after her.

After Selina walked outside, she looked around, and resumed her weak act as an officer approached her. "There's a man in there, he's bleeding, he needs help-" She started rambling.

"It's okay, miss. It's okay." The officer said reassuringly as he led her away.

Blake ran into the bar, checking the room with his weapon raised before lowering it, seeing Gilly lying on the floor. He clicked his shoulder radio. "I've got the congressman." He reported.

Selina got away from the officer, assuring him that she had calmed down, and ran off into the night past the line of police cars.

Blake heard gunfire and followed it, leading him out into the alley. He ducked behind a van with one of the SWAT officers, as the two remaining thugs kept firing at them. The SWAT officer left the cover to take a shot at the thugs, but he was cut down by a single shot that burst through his body armour, and the sound of a sniper echoed through the alley. The sniper, firing from a balcony above, fired again, and another SWAT officer fell dead to the ground. During this distraction, the two thugs chose to run away. As more and more officers started rushing towards the alley, and more cars started to pull up, the sniper weighed the odds and started to put away his rifle.

Gordon jumped out of the car, his gun raised, and watched as a team of SWAT officers covered a fire escape. Gordon swept the area with his eyes, seeing no threat or way of escape, until he saw-

"Manhole!" Gordon called. "Get it open!"

A few officers wrenched the cover off of the manhole, dragging it away, while Gordon shined his flashlight down the tunnel.

"You three, down with me." Gordon said, pointing out directions. "You two, head down to cover the next exit. And get the DWP down here, now!"

Gordon and the officer climbed down the tunnel's ladder lowly. Gordon let the SWAT officers take the lead once they reached the ground, and he held his flashlight and gun up, looking for any sign that the men had escaped down here.

Blake approached Foley, who was leaning over the manhole, shining his flashlight down into it. Blake was about to ask the other officer standing there where Gordon was, but the man knew what he was going to ask, and just gestured at the manhole.

"What, they went down there?" Blake asked in disbelief.

Gordon and the men moved slowly and quietly through the sewer, the only sound from around them the occasional click of their footsteps. They didn't realize that one of the pairs of feet didn't belong to them until a man, still in the shadows, leaned around a corner and fired two bullets into one of the SWAT officers, causing him to fall to the ground. Gordon and the other two officers whirled around and started to return fire, and Gordon ducked behind a pillar. Before the police could react, a huge explosion erupted in the sewer, sending the SWAT officers flying.

Outside, just as the police were starting to move away from the manhole, a huge burst of fire erupted from it, before disappearing back down into the sewer.

Gordon was still reeling and breathing heavily from the explosion, but he recovered as quickly as he could, leaning around the corner and moving his flashlight. He could see nothing, apart from the SWAT officers' bodies littered around the ground. He started to walk down another path in the tunnel, but a man leapt out from behind him, slamming his gun down on Gordon's head and knocking the Commissioner to the ground.

Smoke was still steadily coming out of the manhole, and now every officer around it was holding their flashlights down, looking for the source.

"We're going down there, right?" Blake asked.

"It was a gas explosion, kid." One of the officers replied.

"Gas? This is a sewer." Blake said.

"No-one goes down there until we know what's down there!" Foley called out.

"We know what's down there, sir." Blake said. "The police commissioner."

"Can someone get this guy out of here?" Foley asked, walking past Blake and holstering his gun. "And where's that DWP guy?"

Blake shook his head, walking away from the manhole, before a memory from earlier in the day hit him.

"What kind of work are you going to find in the sewers?"

"More than you can find up here, I guess."

Blake realized that there was something that he could do, and started running away from the scene, down past the long line of police cars. Towards the outflow where they had found Jimmy.

Gordon was dragged by his shoulders down the twisted labyrinth of the tunnels by two men, trying to make out his surroundings through his fuzzy vision. He managed to make out what looked like a group of teenage boys staring after him, as well as some more armed soldiers, and several men working on some kind of construction, with the sound of drills and hammers filling the air.

Eventually, the two men dropped Gordon on the ground in an opening that had been turned into a makeshift room, bathed in blue LED lights. They both stood silently as soldiers watched them, and a man walked behind them, dropping a sniper rifle next to a large grey container. An enormous, muscular man was kneeling near the bed, his scarred back facing them with the low, shallow sound of metallic breathing.

"Why are you here?" Bane asked.

One of the men kicked the weak Commissioner. "Answer him." He yelled. The only response Gordon gave was a weak groan.

"I was asking you." The robotic voice went on.

"It's the police commissioner." The man explained, while his partner stood frozen in fear.

Bane slowly stood and walked towards them. "And you brought him down here?" He asked.

"We didn't know what to do." The man started. "We just thought-"

"You panicked." Bane cut him off, staring at the silent man, who refused to meet his gaze. "And your weakness cost the lives of others."

"No, he didn't -" The other man started, but was interrupted by Bane grabbing his throat. With a slight movement, Bane crushed his throat, letting his body drop to the ground, the man still choking.

"Search him." Bane ordered the silent man. "Then I will kill you."

The other man knelt down, looking through Gordon's pockets, finding nothing until he pulled out a few papers, which Gordon had forgotten to remove from the night before. The man handed Bane the papers and Gordon's gun, and Bane slowly walked away from him, suddenly very interested in what the commissioner had written.

"Take him away." Bane ordered, and two soldiers pulled Gordon to his knees, dragging him away from the room.

The silent man had started to get up, but Bane held out a hand, stopping him. The sniper handed Bane a small electronic tracker, which Bane tucked into the man's jacket. Before the man could say anything, Bane fired a bullet into the man's chest. The man fell back, rolling over the edge of the platform and into the running water, which carried him away, out of Bane's sight.

"Track him, and make sure he isn't found." Bane ordered the sniper. "Then brick up the south tunnel."

The sniper nodded, looking at the outflow with a scared expression.

"This is wonderfully written." Bane went on. "The people of Gotham should know this as well."

"What do you need?" The sniper asked.

"For now, a camera." Bane answered. A new opportunity had just sprung up, and he would be foolish not to take advantage of it.

Blake ran up into the same catchment grille as before, seeing that a body was stuck in the metal fencing. He pulled the corpse out, not recognizing the man, but saw the device stuck in his jacket. Blake took it out and threw it away, radioing the paramedics to come pick up the body. Hopefully two bodies in the same location, on the same day, was enough evidence for him to convince Foley to investigate this further.

The only thing Blake was worried about was where Gordon had ended up.