Disclaimer: I don't own anything associated with Batman

AN: I've finally updated! I'm sorry for the delay but I haven't had my laptop which had all of my writing stuff on it. Fortunately I'm able to use a different computer while mine is being fixed. To all those that have favorited/alert/reviewed, thank you so much! It means a lot. I should also mention that I've taken liberties with a few of the characters like Zsasz and the Calendar Killer. For those of you that follow the Batman-verse closely you'll realize that. But since this is Nolan-verse I changed a bit and conformed it to this story. I just wanted to throw that out there. Hope you enjoy it!

"Now the dark begins to rise
Save your breath, it's far from over
Leave the lost and dead behind
Now's your chance to run for cover"

I Will Not Bow – Breaking Benjamin

Benito Manicini stood in front of the wooden cutting board, dicing tomatoes, while immersed in his own thoughts. Since opening Sapori D' Italia only a few months ago, Manicini had spent many nights in his fine dining establishment, though many of those nights were spent in a managing capacity. It had always been his dream to own such a place, though he had never really imagined the headache that went along with it. Still, he was fortunate enough to break even in the past few months. The cost of having his business in the heart of Gotham's downtown district was staggering and he found himself looking forward to the chaos that today's holiday, Father's Day, would bring, if only for the extra monetary security.

Manicini wiped the tomato juice that saturated his palms on his white apron and scraped the remnants from the cutting board into the trash. He carefully tied the black trash bag into a knot and carried the awkward item as he made his way to the heavy steel door located on the side of the building. He opened it and stepped out into the early morning air that was already full of heat, and threw the bag haphazardly into the dingy green bin. He would be glad when winter came and these scorching temperatures were abated. He quickly turned to open the door, fully intent on returning to his chores, when he realized there was something amiss.

Looking back at the bin, he saw a shoe sticking out from the other side and sighed heavily. Most likely another homeless man had made his way to the alley, probably looking for scraps, and had passed out. He prayed to God that the man wasn't dead—that kind of publicity was the last thing he needed for his restaurant. Just as he was about to yell at the offender, he realized that it was no man at all, but a woman who seemed to be crumpled over. Suddenly Benito felt on edge. He lifted her head slowly and winced as he saw the dried blood that covered her right eye and the left eye that was swollen shut. Whoever she was, it looked like she'd had a hell of a night. He slowly pulled his cell phone out of the plastic holder clipped to his belt and dialed in 911.

It felt like the Earth was going to open up and swallow her at any moment from the intense shaking. She was pretty sure it already had considering the putrid, rotten stench that seemed to surround her. She was sure that she was on her way to Hell judging from the heat and the stench. Slowly, the first thing that Nicole became truly aware of was the nauseating pounding of her head. The second thing was a voice was urging her to respond.

She forced open her matted right eye, which only led to more pain, and winced at her savior—a burly paramedic that looked as if he should be riding with the Hell's Angels rather than riding in an ambulance. Her lips twitched upward in a half smile as she inwardly laughed at the irony that Hell would have paramedics and those paramedics would be the Hell's Angels of all people.

The paramedic scowled at her as if he could hear her thoughts, and she briefly wondered if he could, before he abruptly turned and began shouting at the other paramedics to get a stretcher and that she was responsive. It was then that she managed to take in her surroundings and was dismayed to realize that she hadn't dreamed the attack. Furthermore, she was disgusted to realize she was sitting in a gooey pile of rubbish and it was that fact that made her stomach lurch. She must have turned green because the beast of a paramedic shoved a pink plastic bed pan in her hands with the instructions to vomit in it and not on him.

She scowled at being manhandled and being placed on the stretcher so violently. She'd tried to protest but the paramedics would have none of it. In fact—they virtually ignored her, only speaking to her to ask what hurt and to tell her that she would have to be checked out at the hospital due to a potential head injury. Several times, she attempted to tell the paramedics about the struggle from the previous night, only to be told someone would be along soon enough to take her statement as she was being shoved into the back of the ambulance. At least the smell was better in there.

Nicole had finally decided to close her eyes, hoping to stop the spinning of the room and the new wave of nausea that threatened to swallow her when the metal doors opened up, sending a blast of heat and stench her way. She had decided to give her dirtiest look at the gruff paramedic but was surprised to see a rather young officer with a mop of coppery blonde hair pulling himself awkwardly inside through the open doors. It amused her as he tried to fit his tall, borderline lanky frame into the cramped space, but she contained her amusement within. She studied his face as he turned from closing the doors and a brief flash of recognition ran through her, though she couldn't remember ever meeting this man.

"I'm Officer Mitchell," he stated giving an agreeable smile that felt oddly soothing to her. "Your ID states that your name is Nicole Miller; is that correct?"

"It is."

"Ms. Miller, can you tell me how you came to be in the…state you're in?"

Ha. The state. She'd overheard the paramedics taking bets on whether she was drunk or not. The officer probably believed she'd simply passed out in the alley after drinking too much, like the paramedics, and it was that fact that irritated her.

"I was attacked after trying to help Cassidy Jenkins escape from her attacker. But I couldn't. He took her anyway after he beat me up and shoved me into the dumpster. That, Officer Mitchell is how I came to be in this state," she spat, full of annoyance and remorse over the situation.

For Officer Stuart Mitchell, those four sentences would irrevocably change his life forever.

Bruce Wayne's eyes burned from staring at his state of the art computer monitor for too long. He had arrived back at the Manor a little after 5am, and had only removed his cowl before plopping down into the leather chair and hacking into Metropolis PD's database.

Katarina's tale had been a chilling one. Bunny hadn't been turning tricks long before she met her murderer. At first, she appeared with little things; mainly bruises around her neck and bruises on her arms. Katarina didn't want to pry and when Bunny caught her staring, she mentioned that her regular was into bondage and dominance. Katarina shrugged it off until the day Bunny had showed up at her apartment bleeding with cuts on her neck. Her trick had pressed a knife to her throat during one of their regular sessions after screaming about how worthless women were. She had no idea what she had done to upset him so she stayed quiet. He had gone on to say that he had "done things" to women in Metropolis for less and had made reference to strangling a stripper and slitting the throat of one woman.

Katarina had begged Bunny to go to the police but Bunny adamantly refused, stating that he would kill her if she did; he had said so himself. Bunny had begged Katarina not to say anything, and until last night, she had upheld her promise. Now it was time for Bruce to uphold his promise to her and to the women who had been murdered.

Most killers get sloppy at some point. Bruce was hoping that this particular killer had left some sort of evidence in the beginning. But hours of fruitless searching had yielded results. Zoey Carpenter was found strangled to death in a hotel room she had rented near the place she stripped at. Trace evidence had found hair at the scene—blonde hair fibers—but there wasn't a DNA match in the database that Metropolis had.

The murder of Sylvia Varese was more brutal. She had been found in a dumpster with her throat slashed. The scene had been far to contaminated to get any sort of trace evidence, except for a drop of blood that wasn't matched to anyone. In fact, they weren't even sure it was the perp's blood. But it was a start.

Bruce set the parameters for the DNA search, thankful that his computer had access to many more databases than Metropolis PD, considering they had never linked the two cases. Hopefully the search would be done by time he woke up.

Nicole was sore and still smelled like garbage as she jiggled the key in the lock, thankful her neighbors weren't outside to see her disheveled appearance or smell her, for that matter. The lock finally clicked, allowing her to open the door and step inside the quickly darkening apartment. A storm was brewing; she could smell the rain in the air and see the darkening on the horizon. She had to admit that she loved summer thunderstorms, and with Gotham being so close to the Atlantic Ocean, there was no shortage of them.

She threw her keys into the catch-all basket near the door as she shut it and headed to the kitchen for a Coke, thankful that her roommate wasn't there. She didn't feel like explaining the black eye and her concussion, much less why she smelled like refuse. She staggered up the stairs, coke in hand, and into her room, grabbing the first pair of clean clothing she came to, and headed directly to the bathroom.

Once inside, she kicked the door closed with her leg while simultaneously pulling her top over her head, all the while briefly wondering if she would ever get the smell and the stains out of her clothes. Once unclothed, she turned the shower on and set the temperature for as hot as she could stand it. Stepping inside, she winced as the strong jets hit her bruised skin, but quickly relaxed as she felt the heat begin to soothe her body. She wasn't sure how long she stood like that, with her eyes closed, breathing in the steam. All she wanted to do was wash away the stench and the guilt; the guilt that she hadn't been able to free Cassidy from her attacker. She knew it was silly, that she had done what she could. Somehow knowing that just seemed to make it worse. Switching off the shower, she quickly dried off and dressed into a tank top and gym shorts before drying her hair.

As she emerged from the bathroom, she noticed the lightning in the distance and the subsequent thunder that followed. She opened the door to her balcony before moving to the window. Once the windows were open, she turned toward her bed. It was an antique full sized bed adorned with a simple black comforter with various pillows and her old teddy bear that sat in the middle of the bed. It was a piece of home, of innocence she had brought to a city that lacked it. In fact, she was quite happy to see it at the moment.

Opening the can of Coke, she guzzled part of its contents, thankful for the refreshment that it brought her parched tongue. She really hadn't had much to drink since the night before. The hospital had said something about beverages interfering with the tests that they had run and had refused to even give her water. By the time the taxi had picked her up, she was ready to leave that wretched place. Thankfully they had let her go without much of a fight considering she only had a few bruises and a mild concussion. But they had given her pain medicine, Norco, which was apparently a mixture of hydrocodone and acetaminophen. She popped one in her mouth and chased it down with her Coke, hoping to alleviate the symptoms of the concussion and every other ache she had, before she fell into the mass of pillows on her bed.

She blew a piece of her hair out of her eyes as she watched the lace curtains gently raise from the breeze outside. Her last thoughts before she fell asleep were of the impending storm.

It was a bright morning in Gotham, the kind of morning that had teenagers calling in sick to work to head to the beach for the day or to some other frivolous activity. But Jim Gordon was not a teenager and took little notice of the happiness of a new day. He sat behind his desk, glasses perched on his nose, and his mouth set in a grim line as he read over the weekend's police reports, specifically those that might help with the case in any way. The mayor was already breathing down his neck this morning about the Calendar Killer, and even without the mayor's influence, Jim's own conscious taxed him. He had seen what that monster had done to those women, to someone's daughters, which made it all the more real to him, especially after spending Father's Day with his own children—though he had given specific orders to be contacted if anything happened with the case.

But Father's Day came and went without any mutilated bodies. While the city might be breathing a sigh of relief, Jim waited with baited breath, wondering if one would turn up today. Running his hand through his mop of hair, Gordon picked up a new report and started to read. His instincts were put on alert after reading that the victim was assaulted, and soon, his instincts were put on red alert as the victim alleged that one Cassidy Jenkins was not only kidnapped, but possibly drugged by a masked man. Even in a city notorious for crime, the event that had taken place stood out. Picking up the phone, he punched in the extension for the secretary and barked at her to find Officer Mitchell.

She sat clicking away at the keyboard, entering appointments into the electronic planner for Bruce, while trying to squash the feeling of anxiety that was rising by the minute. Nicole had been rather late getting to work, over an hour in fact, and had missed seeing her boss, whom she assumed was here, before he went into a board meeting being held in the conference room down the hall. After all, he might've been a spaz but he typically didn't miss the mandatory monthly board meeting. Nicole had actually contemplated taking the day off, but the truth was that she needed the money to help cover school expenses in the fall. Not to mention, after the ordeal Saturday night, she would have just sat around the apartment dwelling on what had happened. At least here, Nicole could keep busy.

She was distracted momentarily by a barely audible gasp, presumably from a passerby, although she refused to look away from the data in front of her. She'd heard gasps like that all morning. Hell, if it hadn't been her own face, she would have been horrified as well. Her left eye was no longer swollen shut—ice had helped that—but the bruising was harsh, even when covered by make-up. Her lip was still split and two butterfly bandages held the wound together on the right side of her forehead where she'd plowed into the corner of the dumpster. In retrospect, she could have covered the wound on her lips with lipstick, but it honestly stung too bad to bother with. Still, she hated being stared at in such a brutal way. She hated that feeling of being on exhibit as if she were some zoo attraction.

Before she could further muse over just how uncomfortable she was, an audible rise in voices approaching from the hallway signaled that the meeting was over. Most members of the precession passed in front of her without looking her way since she was just a secretary, though she was perfectly content with that. However, she could feel his eyes on her before she felt his presence behind her.

"Well, look who decided to show up for work today," Bruce bantered. "I was starting to—hey, are you okay," he asked, dropping the banter, as he glimpsed her face for the first time.

"I'm great. I just overslept."

Bruce wasn't going to let it drop. "What happened? This weekend I mean?"

"Bar fight," she responded simply. There wasn't any point to drag her boss and possible friend into the nastiness of the weekend. After all, there wasn't anything he could do about it. Besides what would she say? Well, Bruce, I attacked a guy who was kidnapping this girl and he might be a little pissed at me and might think I can identify him. So there's a slim chance he's going to come murder me in my sleep. Sure, that would go over spectacularly.

"Are—" he started, only to be cut off by the sudden approach of a familiar face alongside a much taller stranger.

"Mr. Wayne, I'm Jim Gordon and this is Officer Mitchell," he said gesturing to the taller man at his side. "We're with the Gotham City Police. We're sorry to disturb you but we need to talk to Miss Miller. We also think that you need to be informed of the situation. Is there anywhere we could talk privately?"

Bruce could have sworn Nicole looked panicked for a split second, and judging by the air of intensity that surrounded Commissioner Gordon, he knew that whatever it was that the older man had to say wouldn't be in the form of a pleasant conversation. For once it seemed that Bruce was out of a loop he so frequently immersed himself in—and he didn't like it one bit. "Would my office be okay?"

Nicole stood in front of the silver mirror in the lady's room, staring at her own reflection, trying to abate the acid churning in her stomach that threatened to rise through her esophagus. To say that she was scared was an understatement. She was fucking terrified. When she stepped into that dark alley, she did it knowing that Cassidy had no savior on the way. She knew she was putting herself at risk, even in her half inebriated state. In a city where crime was rampant and few stood up to it, she had stood up for Cassidy. She couldn't pinpoint what exactly it was that made her leap off the edge of the proverbial cliff without abandon. But be it her naivety, her small-town southern values, or knowing that someone else would be hurt, she had attacked the attacker. And now she knew why people refused to stand up for others in this town—she was most likely going to be hunted and anyone that got in the way of the hunter could be hurt.

When she'd followed the three larger men to Bruce's office, she knew the reason wasn't a pleasant one. She had sat in one of the plush office chairs, wishing it would swallow her whole the entire time as Gordon spoke. The slim chance scenario she'd thought of was worse than she could have ever imagined. Gordon explained that the timing of the kidnapping, the victim herself, and the use of drugs to sedate the victim pointed to the Calendar killer. Furthermore, the psychological profile that had been cooked up mentioned that the man would likely want to retaliate for her attack, though not in those words of course. All this terrified her, even though she kept her poker face in place, which she'd been told was a decent one. She managed to process exactly how serious the situation was when she was assigned a bodyguard in the form of Officer Stuart Mitchell.

Taking a deep breath, she washed her aching face with the ice cold water now spewing from the copper faucet. As she dried her hands, she willed herself to be calm. It wasn't going to help anyone if she ran around sobbing. This was the hand that she'd been dealt and nothing was going to help that.

Depositing the brown paper towel into the trash bin, she tugged on the cool handle of the heavy wooden door and was met with the harsh fluorescent lights of the reception area she worked in, which only served to strengthen the pulsing ache in her head.

"You okay?"

Nicole jumped, her hand immediately rising to her chest as she closed her eyes and let out a breath before turning to see Stuart Mitchell in the corner behind her. "I'm fine."

"You sure? You look a little pale, if you don't mind me saying so."

She did mind. She felt overwhelmed with having a bodyguard, the fact she might be hunted, of putting her friends at risk, and of failing to liberate Cassidy. She briefly wondered who wouldn't look a bit pale as she walked to her desk with her bodyguard following her. But being bitchy about it to the man only looking out for her wouldn't do anyone any good. "Officer Mitchell, I'm fine—really. Tell me, are you going to be with me all the time?"

"Call me Stuart. And for all intents and purposes, yes."

"Then I suggest we get lunch," she offered, smiling kindly for the first time since meeting him. Yes, it was time to live with the hand she was dealt.

Bruce Wayne's gaze was filled with dark intensity as he watched Stuart Mitchell escort Nicole to the elevator through his office window before flicking the blinds shut, darkening the lavishly decorated space. He sat lightly in the chair for a man filled with anger and burdened with guilt. He was unsure of his feelings for Nicole, though he considered them to at least be on friendly terms. And in his carelessness he had inadvertently grown closer to the woman. She had run blindly into a dark alley and put herself into danger to save someone else, which nagged at him. After all, it was what he did on a nightly basis. Still, he felt protective of her, especially now. Moreover, he was angry at himself. If he had delayed the trip to Metropolis to another night, he might have caught the Calendar Killer himself and the whole thing would be over. But he wasn't even in the city, his city, the place he was supposed to protect. And because of that, a friend had been hurt and an innocent woman had been abducted, and possibly murdered by now.

Bruce wondered how Nicole was dealing with this new knowledge. During the conversation, Bruce's face bore a stoic gaze while Gordon's was intense. Nicole's, however, was varied. Bruce could tell she was fighting with herself on the inside, from guilt he imagined. And he still felt partially responsible for not saving her from that. But Bruce had already decided that she would have another watchful guardian looking after her. Alfred was right, Nicole was not Rachel. Rachel was dead and he had failed to save her from the Joker. Nicole was still alive and he would make sure she remained that way.