Bruce realized he could not walk into Gotham General dressed in his body armor as soon as he found himself standing on the roof of the hospital. However, stripping everything off and going into the hospital dressed as Bruce Wayne wasn't going to work either. There was simply no logical explanation that he could come up with that would suffice for why either of his personas had come to see Captain Gordon. He didn't deliberate over what options he had for long.
The way he saw it, there was only one viable option open to him: rappel down to Gordon's floor. As contingency plans went, it was risky. There was every possibility that hospital staff or security could see him. It was the best plan he had.
He glanced down at the empty street, calculated how many floors he needed to descend before throwing himself off the roof, keeping his cape tucked firmly against his body as he plunged headfirst through the night. Gravity seized him as he hurdled to the alley below, a line of unbreakable monofilament wire unspooling behind him. The predawn wind shrieked past his face.
Gordon had been moved to a private room in the ICU. He counted off the floors as he plummeted past them. One, two... He waited until just the right moment before triggering the braking mechanism attached to his belt. Three! He came to a halt right outside a room on the tenth floor. Dim lights penetrated the blinds as he stealthily slid the window open and slipped inside. He made not a sound as he crossed to prostrate figure in the bed. His heart sank at the sight that greeted him.
Bruce had met James Gordon on what was still the absolute worst night of his life. A young detective, freshly promoted, Gordon had attempted to comfort a nine-year-old child who watched his parents murdered right before his eyes mere hours before. He'd never forgotten Gordon's kindness.
In a city that was full of dirty cops, Gordon had stood out as one of the few who possessed any integrity and class whatsoever. He'd become an unlikely, but invaluable ally in Batman's war upon crime.
He couldn't have accomplished a lot of what he had if it had not been for Gordon's help.
Now, the courageous detective lay in a hospital bed, hooked to a bunch of machines, close to death. Bruce stared at the blinking and whirring medical equipment monitoring his vital signs. His stats were all alarmingly low. An oxygen mask was pushing much-needed air into his starved lungs. IVs pumped fluids as well as desperately needed medication into his bruised and battered body. Gordon's face was almost as white as the sheets upon which he lay.
Needle-thin scratches crisscrossed his face, arms and the back of his hands. A livid bruise that was nearly as black as his armor was just visible above the collar of his hospital gown. Bruce felt the rage always simmering beneath the surface leap to life.
Berkeley.
Berkeley was who hurt Raya. He was who put that mountain of fear in her eyes. He suspected there were many things Berkeley had done to his daughter. Things intended to break her will and make her completely compliant.
He also suspected Berkeley was who hired the one responsible for putting Gordon in this hospital bed.
He slammed a clenched fist upon the metal railing, rattling the clipboard that hung off the front of the bed. The sound roused Gordon, whose eyes fluttered open. For a moment, Bruce feared that the sight of a man in a fearsome mask and thick body armor standing at the foot of his bed would cause the Captain to go into a panic.
However, he seemed to recognize that it was him who was there. He attempted to speak, but the oxygen mask stifled his words. Wincing in pain, he tugged the mask away from his mouth.
"You came," he said in a hoarse whisper. "I wasn't sure that you..."
"You shouldn't be trying to talk at the moment," Bruce said in Batman's throaty rasp. "You need to conserve your energy so that you..."
"No," Gordon croaked. "I need to ask..."
He broke off to wheeze and gasp. Bruce went to place his oxygen mask back on, but Gordon pushed his hand away.
"You need to..."
"No," Gordon interjected in a voice that had a hint of the steel it normally did. "I need you to protect my niece, Raya." Anxious eyes pleaded with him. "She's in danger."
"From her father."
He didn't phrase it as a question because he already knew the answer. Yet, nothing prepared him for what Gordon was going to tell him next.
"He killed his wife."
Shock crashed over him in waves. "What?"
"Raya was there, she saw it," Gordon said throatily. "That's why you have to take her. You have to take her and hide her. You have to take her and hide her and protect her."
Does he even know what he's asking of me here? Bruce wondered. Aloud though he told the injured man, "I can't take your niece."
"Yes, yo-"
"No," he said firmly. "I can't. My life isn't one designed for a child. It's far too dangerous."
Gordon clutched at his gloved hand with fingers born of desperation.
"You have to take her," he murmured, gasping for breath. "You have to take her and hide her and protect her."
"Jim..."
"He'll kill her if you don't."
...
Trust the night.
The phrase flickered into his mind as he plunged into the shadows of the labyrinthine tunnels that led into the subterranean cavern beneath Wayne Manor. The words were a reminder telling him that no matter how dire a situation might seem or how hopeless things might appear, so long as he trusted in the night to guide him, everything would turn out all right.
The night was the one constant in his life that never failed him.
Yet, even he found himself wondering if the night had not lost its mind. Exactly what the night was about in giving him a child to guard, he couldn't say. What the lesson here was, he didn't know. All he knew as he expertly traversed the narrow passageways was that the night had decided he needed to protect a small girl from a man who meant her great, physical harm.
And protect her he would.
From this night forward, he and Raya were irrevocably bound by a thread as unbreakable as the wire he used to gain entrance to her uncle's hospital room. Night had decreed it, fate had aided in it happening, and violence had sealed the pact in blood. The tunnel began to widen and grow lighter a few seconds later.
He flew out the chute into the Batcave and allowed the Batwing to hover while a pair of slate cubes rose to form a landing pad. He touched down on the cubes.
The canopy opened and Batman emerged into the subdued interior lighting he installed just over a year ago, into the interior of the underground fortress he started building after he returned from his journey to become Gotham's nocturnal protector.
He activated the cowl's hands-free as he began walking across the platform towards the stairs that led up to the main platform and the huge computer workstation he painstakingly put together to aide him in monitoring the city and its criminals.
"Alfred, I'm home."
The butler's voice, carried directly to his ear, was coated in relief, or perhaps exasperation. He never could tell which. "I am pleased to hear your voice, sir. Did all go well? Were you able to locate Captain Gordon?"
"I found him," he replied. "He's currently in the ICU at Gotham General."
"Oh, my." There was a note of dismay and concern now in Alfred's voice. "His condition is serious I am taking it?"
"Very serious," Bruce rasped. "I overheard a nurse telling some of Gordon's men that the next twenty-four hours are critical."
"This will not please the young miss to hear." Bruce heard Alfred sigh. "She is going to want to see him."
"Gordon has instructed me to not bring her to the hospital."
"May I ask why, sir?"
With a sigh, Bruce walked up the ramp into the main grotto of the cave. He passed the area that served as his crime lab before ascending another set of short steps to the main computer station. A large, high-definition flat screen monitor dominated the wall while seven linked Cray supercomputers hummed quietly, providing enough data storage and computing power to run the entire city.
He shed his cape and the cowl, simultaneously balancing between the vigilante and the billionaire. He pressed a few keys on the keyboard to route the call from the speaker in his cowl to the computer.
"Gordon told me that Berkeley may have killed Raya's mother." He paused to run a hand over his face. "He says that she may have witnessed what happened."
"And?"
Bruce's lips twitched. Leave it to Alfred to just get to the heart of the matter.
"And he says that Berkeley will kill Raya if he can get his hands on her."
"Good heavens..." There was genuine anger and disgust in the older gentleman's voice that echoed that burning in Bruce's heart. "And what is it that Captain Gordon wants you to do, exactly?"
"He wants me to keep her safe."
"Surely he realizes that the girl's father has a legal and unassailable right to her."
"Ellen Kean-Berkeley signed custody of Raya over to Gordon a few days before Christmas. He's her legal guardian. Something," Bruce said with a sigh. "That I think Berkeley found out about."
Alfred made a soft speculative sound. "That sounds like a potential motive for murder to me."
"Yes," he growled. "And it's very likely the reason for why Gordon was shot tonight. Berkeley is eliminating everybody who can finger him in his wife's murder. The last one he needs to get rid of is Raya. And Gordon stands in his way."
"I'm afraid that Miss Raya already confirmed as much to me in our conversation earlier."
Both of his eyebrows shot up at that startling revelation. "Raya told you about what happened the night her mother was murdered?"
"Not in any specific details, sir," was the butler's gentle reply. "She only said enough that I was able to infer the events for myself."
Bruce knew that Alfred's inferences were almost always spot-on.
"Did she see what happened?"
"I can confirm that she did, indeed, see what happened to her mother. And," he added on a heavy sigh. "She blames herself for it."
Bruce's felt his heart constrict at hearing how Raya blamed herself for what happened. Just like I blame myself for what happened to Mother and Father. Aloud though, he asked, "Did she say why she blames herself for what happened to her mother?"
"You should ask her that, Master Bruce."
He already figured that that would be Alfred's answer. The man was predictable in a way. His lips curved at the corners.
"Where is our guest at the moment?"
"She is asleep in the library. Something that you," the butler advised pointedly. "Really should try to do yourself, sir. She will anticipate Master Wayne looking like a pampered and well-rested playboy when she greets him for the first time this morning."
When she greets me this morning and not her family, Bruce realized with a slight pang. Again he was reminded about how much he shared in common with the girl asleep upstairs. Just like me, senseless violence has taken her world and turned it completely upside down.
Raya was essentially spending this Christmas as an orphan. Her mother was dead, her uncle was near death in the hospital, and the rest of her family was only God knew where. She had nobody to share the magic of the season with. Well, he amended silently. She has us. Even as he thought it, he knew it wouldn't be the same. As much as they tried, they just were not her family.
He ignored the voice that was whispering to him about how "they could be."
"It's Christmas, Alfred," he said quietly.
"Indeed it is, Master Bruce," was the butler's drawled response. "I am glad to know that you have finally remembered today is a holiday."
"She doesn't even have presents beneath the Christmas tree to wake up to this morning." His shoulders slumped as the familiar weight of responsibility settled heavily upon his shoulders. "All she has is waking up in a house that is not her own, with a bunch of strangers who are not her family, and an endless amount of uncertainty and pain to deal with."
"If I may say so, but you've already given Miss Raya exactly what it was that she wanted this Christmas."
"And what was that, Alfred?"
"You gave her a Knight for Christmas."
A/N: Hello, all, and goodbye! I've decided to end this story here because it seems like the right place for it to end.
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