CHAPTER ONE
Tapping her fingers tetchily on the smooth metal of the shotgun she held against her leg, Claudia stared at the silver plaque which read '36' on the dark wood door before her. It hadn't taken her long to get there – the streets further out were dead and the sparse few people who she did encounter did nothing more than stare tensely as she passed. She had felt a tight sickening feeling rising in her stomach as she traveled through the streets, engulfed by the darkness and doom that hung over the city. Not everything had changed. She could walk past buildings one after the other, all untouched and appearing normal as ever. Yet she would then pass an office building which had numerous shattered windows from one which a computer monitor was hanging out of by a wire, with its revolving door frozen eerily and shards of crushed glass carpeting the entrance.
It was a small relief when she reached the apartment building that she found it to be it to be unchanged, if anything a little unkempt. Even though she had headed there instantaneously without even really realising she had made the decision to, she had been stood outside of that particular door for several long silent minutes.
Turning round and leaning her back against the wall next to it, she let her head hang back and she stared at the ceiling. In her 24 years of life, there had been only one other time when she had felt so lost, and so scared, and that was a time she had long buried. This sudden overwhelming feeling of being a vulnerable child tormented her madly as it was a sensation she had worked on blocking out for most of her life. Yet suddenly, through the actions of some sort of terrorist, she had been thrown out of the safety and monotony of prison and into a new corrupt world. She had no life here, here Claudia Shard didn't exist – Prisoner #47823 was all she had needed to be and now the security of that identity had been ripped away. And that's why she came here, the only place she could ever think to go, in hope that not everything had changed.
It was that moment that as Claudia leant off the wall inhaling deeply, the number '36' glinted and disappeared as the door swung open. Someone immediately took a step out into the hallway through the door frame, causing Claudia to flinch backwards in shock and the person to notice her presence. What followed was a long cold silence, in which neither person let out a single breath.
Claudia stared at him, squeezing and releasing the tip of her gun in her fist. Like everything else, he had changed too and she had never expected it. In her memory the image of him she clung onto was planted solidly as a young boy in his adolescence, and he had been that for a very long time in her mind. Yet, standing, his hands balled up into tense fists by his sides, was a man. Gone was his soft round face that she had always found so innocent and instead was a sharp jawline and deep lines framing his mouth. He now stood above her, tall and toned and held a presence that she never knew he could. But the one thing that was so different from her memories of him was the way in which he looked at her, bore into her with intense eyes. Yet it was the one thing she knew would never have been the same.
There was so much to say, so much to ask and so much to explain but at that moment, Claudia could do nothing but stare up at him. She saw his sharp adams apple contract and protrude again as he swallowed, somehow finding the words to speak, slowly and carefully as if he was scared he couldn't control himself.
"I don't think you should be here."
Hearing his voice raised an unrelenting feeling in her, and tears glazed her eyes and a lump sat in her throat. For 6 excruciating long years she had lost the ability to remember his voice in her head and now he was before her and she was speaking before she could realise.
"I should be with my family," was the words she would probably think about a thousand times to come and wish she had replaced them with something better.
The way he answered so quickly without hesitation, proved even now, he was still the hurt young boy he once was. "There is no family." He spat the last word at her.
As much as his words spread like venom in her veins, she welcomed them – she deserved it and would let him say anything if it would ever ease his pain.
"Everything is changing Eden," she said with a trembling voice, as he dropped his stare to the side at hearing his name, "and I don't know what's happening but I need this, I need one more chance with you!" She had started to ramble frantically. "I'm only ever going to have this one opportunity, they're going to lock me up again! I've thought about you every day for six years, I've hated myself-"
Eden grimaced in disgust at her words, staring at her mouth wishing the filth would stop pouring out of it.
"I need to explain, I need you to forgive me!" She was shouting now in a strangled sob. "I can't live with myself, your my brother-"
It was like she lit a match and threw it into a barrel of oil. Something ignited in him, something he had been trying to control for all these years and had recently forgotten what it was like; what it was like to feel blood pulsing through your veins and aching with a scorching anger of the most dangerous kind, fueled by heartache. He caught her lingering words in her mouth as he lunged and thrust her against the wall with one crushing hand enclosing her throat. There was a clattering as her gun fell to the floor and she spluttered under his grip.
"I am not your brother." His voice was shaky and his jaw was tight. "We are not a family, and we never will be. A family needs parents, or have you forgotten that you've been rotting in Blackgate for murdering my fucking father. And as for my mother," he scoffed darkly, "well you may as well of tied that fucking rope around her god damn neck."
He jerked her away from him, and the force pushed her onto the floor, her shoulders shaking violently and tears now streaking her face.
He took one long controlled breath and dragged a hand heavily over his face, trying to regain himself. He kept his hand over his eyes for a moment.
"The city has been taken over by terrorists, people are being murdered every day." He removed his hand and looked at her. "The government is fucked and we're all being ruled by some crazy son-of-a-bitch and his army. People are being dragged from their homes and tossed out into the streets, everything they own no longer theirs to have. And for what? Liberation for scum like you?"
His voice was starting to crack with emotion now, indistinguishable between anger and pain.
"The city is crumbling and you think I give a shit about you and you need for inner peace with yourself? I won't let this happen, and I will do everything to save Gotham so this bullshit will end, and so that people like you are locked up rotting where you belong."
He turned away and glanced over his shoulder. "So do whatever you have to do to get your conscience clear Claudia, just don't ever come near hear, or me, again. There are bigger things in this fucking world, and I forgot about you a long time ago. You should do the same."
With those last, cutting words he walked away. Claudia watched him disappear down the hall and shoulder through the doors and leave her. The doors swung in his wake and there was a short moment in which the rhythmic swooshing was the only thing echoing down the hall.
And then the noise was drowned out, by a raw primal howl, dripping with the darkest of pain. Claudia clutched her knees violently close to her and surrendered to the crippling heartache, sobbing loudly and uncontrollably on the musty carpet floor.
She had found Eden, but was still no closer to heaven.
