Clark Kent stood opposite the Batman, perpetually frozen in an absolute shock. His mind raced in every direction. Thousands of thoughts flew through his dismayed head, ninety-nine point nine percent of which involved running. Unfortunately, the stunning presence of the Batman kept him in his place just as any other man who'd faced down the drak knight.
"Planning a vacation?" The Batman nodded his head to the bag Clark carried over his shoulder. Clark couldn't answer, enthralled with the mass of shadow that stood in front of his screen door. "Escaping the rigors of a stressful city?" The Batman moved away from the porch, cape following behind him, heavy rain and thunder booming along with his voice. "Trying to get away from it all?"
Clark's lower lip trembled, and without realizing it, he dropped his bag.
"Oh, good." The Batman noted as it fell to the floor, then looked back up at Clark. "So you'll stay. That's great, because I've been meaning to have a talk with you."
Clark made a run for the porch but the Batman was already two steps ahead of him, his arm whipped out from under his cape to the side and grapple in his hand. The Batman fired towards the porch before Clark made his first step, but Clark's subsequent steps moved at a pace that an eye wouldn't stand a chance at following. Clark was at the screen door before the Batman had even known he'd moved, but then again, so was the grapple.
Just as Clark took off the night porch and into the dark, raging sky, the cord of the grapple wrapped around his ankle. The Batman, for whom a millisecond had yet to pass, was pulled harshly by his grapple out of the room, following at a wire's length an airborne Clark Kent.
The Batman had been well aware of Clark Kent's inhuman speed, and there was a brief gratification in knowing he had anticipated correctly in firing his grapple towards the porch: where Clark was going to be instead of where he was. Now, wind whipping at him and rain spraying his face, The Batman pushed down on a second button, and Clark hollered out as an electrical current ran through the grapple, up the cord and into him. He fell like a bird shot out of the sky, falling slowly before smashing onto the gravelly roof of a building. The Batman dropped far more gently a moment later, landing in a crouch and his cape melting into the shadowy ground in every direction around him, staring thoughtfully at the fallen Clark as the rain rolled right off him.
"Come on Clark, you're stronger than that." The Batman whispered and somehow managed to make it perfectly clear despite the heavy rainfall, standing to his full height as Clark used the nearest wall to help himself climb to his feet, gasping deep, painful breaths. The Batman only watched him indifferently, the wind atop the building whipping his cape only slightly, his entire body completely invisible beneath it. "You really don't look that well," The Batman commented as Clark made his way to his feet, still supporting himself against the slippery wall. "You should probably be getting a little more sun."
Clark looked up almost childishly at the dark figure, like a boy staring up at the monster in the closet, shoulders sagging with every breath.
"I know who you are, Kent." The Batman said simply, utterly terrifying as he got to his point. "I know where you're from, I know what you've done, and most importantly, I know what you can do..."
"Why are you doing this?!" Clark pleaded with the Batman, but it may has well have been with the world. "I'm innocent! I don't deserve any of this!"
The Batman said nothing for a long moment, an empty shadow. "June 19th, two years ago, Smallville Kansas." He said plainly, and Clark almost lost his balance as his heart completely sunk. "Hottest day the state of Kansas had ever had." The Batman continued, keeping a safe distance between himself and the boy. The first move could not be his own. "There was a fire at a local diner. The entire staff, two seniors, and three local high school students died. Probably the most notable thing the town had ever seen, aside from maybe an unexpected meteor shower eighteen years before it. There were no fingerprints, no evidence of arson. Witnesses claimed to have seen a bright red light shoot out into the sky beforehand. Police called it an electrical fire and closed the case. Bad wiring, they said. Autopsies said something different."
Clark slid down the wall and onto the floor, eyes wet and startled.
"The burn marks on eight of the thirteen people who died in that fire couldn't be measured by any know degree." The Batman explained, taking calm calculated steps towards the boy. He cut through the rain and into Clark like a knife. "Specific regions of the bodies had been completely melted out. Fire couldn't have done it. The wounds were too precise and thin, almost like the people had been cut through by a branding knife. Similar to the effect experimental high energy lasers have down in the military, but far too advanced for anyone to suspect fowl play. Just another Smallville unsolved mystery."
"No..." Clark shook his head desperately.
"There was one survivor of the 'Smallville Hell' as it came to be called." The Batman continued the story, piercing right into Clark's head. "He was found in front of the building, covered in soot, in a state of shock, but without any wounds. Town knew him. Good grades, good looks, good kid. No possible M.O. Worked for the school paper. He was pretty shaken up when they found him. Naturally, since he wasn't hurt at all, people started to get suspicious, but the police had already shut the case. Town started making noise, though. They demanded a more elaborate investigation, and they almost got one. Suspect, however, could not be reached for questioning. No one knew where he'd gone, not even his folks. Or at least that's what they said..."
"Please..." Clark begged meekly, actually tearful. "Please...it was an accident..."
"Now this kid..." The Batman carried forward mercilessly. "Most people don't know that he found his way to Gotham. Lives in a small apartment by himself and majors in Journalism at the University of Gotham City. Pays for tuition by working for a small diner near the tracks called Sam's. Owner died recently."
"You don't understand..." Clark turned away and shook his head defiantly.
"You killed them." The Batman finally hit the nail on the head. "All of them. I know you did. You're a menace. You're not going to get away with it, and it is never going to happen again."
"I didn't mean too!!!" Clark screamed back furiously, and the world seemingly quaked along with him.
The Batman only stood there, unshaken, a head atop a mass of shadow that rain dared not touch.
"Do you really think it makes a difference?" He whispered, and he almost sounded sympathetic. "They're still dead, aren't they? You killed them Clark, and whether or not the will to do it was there is irrelevant. Tell me, does it make you any less dangerous either way?"
"I wouldn't..." Clark beseeched.
"And what happens when you have another 'accident'?" The Batman tilted his head, every word masterfully manipulative, toying with the boy's emotions. "What happens when there's more? How many others have to die before you surrender yourself, how long until someone like me or worse has had enough of it and makes you? You think you can find happiness with something like me in the way? You can run as much as you want, but I can promise you I'll be two steps ahead of you, waiting for you at your every stop. Or you can confront it now, meet the judge and jury right here on this rooftop. Either way, I'm here to pass sentence on you, Clark."
Clark looked around himself, closed in on every side by skyscrapers. Except of course for the patch of sky behind the Batman. Clark couldn't help but wonder if he'd planned it that way.
"So what's it going to be, Clark?" The Batman cut into his mind once more. "You going to run from me for the rest of your life, however long that may be, or are you going to get me out of your way right here and now? Nobody knows but me, I can promise you that. I'm your only loose end. With me out of the way, you can hide and no one would ever be able to find you. But can you do it again? Can you force me out of your way?"
Clark took deep breaths, steadying himself and standing to his full height.
"That's what I thought." The Batman sneered contemptuously, the touch of a button invisible beneath the second shadow that was his cape. He invited him forward with a simple nod of his head. "Well let's get it over with, then. Come on. I'll make it quick."
With a visceral roar, Clark rocketed forward faster than the naked eye could follow, fist pulled back as the Batman whipped his cape out behind him, looking like a black star atop the building. One good punch would be enough to put him away.
Before Clark could throw it, the Batman was already upon him, fist buried in his abdomen. Clark felt something then he'd never expected to: agony. He felt cold and feverish all at once, just about paralyzed in a cold sweat. He nearly collapsed, falling against the Batman to support himself. The Batman only looked down at him, mist floating up and illuminating his grim face to a glowing green.
"You thought I wouldn't figure it out, Clark?" The Batman whispered almost sadistically, leaning into the boy's ear. Clark barely managed to gurgle, clutching the Batman's cape and feeling like he'd been shot, unable to bolster his own weight.
The Batman backhanded the boy, and Clark shot off his feet, hitting the gravel hard like a bag of bricks. He looked up shakily with a busted lip, his vision a blur as The Batman marched slowly, purposefully towards him, green mist spilling from his violently blazing emerald fists.
"Bet you weren't expecting that." The Batman shrugged, every step a tolling of the bell. "It's not like it was hard. After that night in the alley, I'd have been blind not to see it. Unfortunately for you, and despite my namesake, I am anything but."
Clark managed to get to his feet, and he took off skywards, but the Batman had anticipated it. He kicked himself off the wall and lifted himself into the air, wrapping his arms around the boy's waist and tackling him back down to the ground.
"It hurts, doesn't it?" The Batman hissed, grabbing Clark's head by the hair in both hands and lifting him off his back. Clark screamed as the jagged green slivers on The Batman's hands seared against his face. "It's like fire, I can tell. Burning, blistering, scorching. You're like a piece of meat."
The Batman drove his knee up into Clark's face. He groaned loudly, his neck whipping back as he fell forward onto his chest.
"What's it like," The Batman thought aloud, pacing around a Clark who struggled to get to his knees, his right eye swollen shut from a new laceration. "Being like you your whole life and then finding yourself here like this?"
The Batman kneeled and drove an expert fist into the small of Clark's back. He hollered loudly in pain.
"It must be terrible." The Batman continued, standing back up to his feet. "Feeling all that strength and vigor fading away. I should feel bad, but I doubt you would have had things gone the way you'd wanted them to. Must be humbling."
He soccer kicked the boy in the gut. Clark crumpled, moaning.
Clark roared and tossed a desperate punch, but the Batman sidestepped it and caught him by the wrist. He twisted the boy's arm harshly and drove his foot down into his shoulder. Something snapped as Clark fell back into gravel, and he screamed again.
"Pace yourself, Kent." The Batman warned as Clark struggled vainly. "At this rate you're not going to have any bones left."
Clark still writhed, trying futilely to force the Batman to release his arm.
"You don't get it, do you Clark?" The Batman asked, raising his voice and jerking the boy's arm for another scream. "This isn't a fight. It's not a battlefield you're on, it's an operating table." He kicked the boy across the face. "I'm dissecting you, Clark. You're just another carcass under the knife."
Another kick.
"You're one hell of a specimen, though." The Batman shook his head. "Unlike anything I've ever seen. I'll probably look back at this little experiment fondly. At first, I figured you and that Diana were the next rung on the evolutionary ladder, but no, you're something completely new. There's nothing human about you."
The Batman paused and contemplated, watching the boy bleed and convulse under the gentle green glow.
"Maybe that's not true." He muttered. "Maybe I'm missing the point. It's just science, Clark, I hope you know. Nothing personal. Honestly, you seem like a nice enough kid, but the hazard you present can't and won't be ignored."
"Why are you doing this..." He murmured weakly.
"Don't make this any harder." The Batman sighed. "You've got guts, and I respect that. I'd say this is hurting me more than it's hurting you, but I don't think you'd really appreciate being condescended like that. I'm still here to teach, though."
He grabbed the boy by the collar in one hand, dragging him along behind him as he made his way to the edge of the rooftop. He lay Clark there, hanging his upper body over the side of the building. Clark was too out of it to register any consciousness of his surroundings.
"I hope you're paying attention." Said the Batman, kneeling down close to Clark as to make sure he heard. "Because there's a lesson buried in all this. Oh yes, I'm not just here to pound you into atoms, I'm here to brief you on some simple rules I live my life by." He grabbed the boy by the chin and jerked him slightly, forcing him to watch. "Rule number one: there is no madness for the sake of madness. Even now, this has purpose. You're learning that no one, not even gods like you, can get away with everything. Are you listening, Kent?!" The Batman shook him again and Clark managed to kick back into consciousness, achieving panic. "Rule number two: no one is more important than those people down there." The Batman grabbed him by the hair and made him look down at the streets. "No matter how derelict, no matter how ravaged, each and every one of them has the potential to be great. Every death is the death of someone who could have changed the world, and that's why it's my life, my very mission preserving that capacity for good. Excuse me while I break you."
The Batman lifted him off the edge of the roof and slammed him cruelly into the wall. He grabbed him by the throat, and drove his head repeatedly into the brick, Clark choking and gagging all the while.
Clark smacked uselessly at the wraith's arm as he jerked him by the neck and slammed him down into the gravel, strangling the life from him callously. Clark hit the man's limb as strong as he could, but the Batman's arm remained as straight and as stone-cold as his face. Blackness took Clark shortly.
For awhile, there was only darkness. Then, with a sore, tired cough, Clark blinked back into existence. The Batman stood back turned to him, removing the violent green gloves from his hands and hiding them somewhere within his belt or cape. Clark was so beaten up he couldn't even begin to understand.
"And here we find ourselves at rule number three." The Batman explained, turning his head only slightly to look over his shoulder at the boy. "I hope you were paying attention during rule number two, because it has a lot to do with this one. As every being has the facility to do good, consequently, every death is a tragedy, and one that none should suffer. You're being punished because you broke that rule. Lucky for you though, I'm not about to break it just for the sake of trying to balance it all out. You owe more eyes than you can pay, anyway.
"Now you're probably going to pass out soon, so I'll try to make rule number four a quick one." The Batman said simply, at least part of the menace withheld. "Since every being has the potential to do good, it's only fair that they also have unlimited potential to do any number of awful, terrible things. Being what you are, this potential is greater in you than in anyone else. Maybe I'm just being naive, but I believe that it basically comes down to choice. We choose who we're going to be. Destiny, fate and all those other fabrications are just the excuses we make. At the core of it all, we are responsible for who we are, for which side of the coin we're going to live our lives on. Clearly, you haven't made any conscious decision to lean either way. So, I want you to remember tonight, Clark... in all the years to come... in your most private moments... I want you to remember my hand at your throat... I want you to remember the one man who beat you..." The Batman paused, and turned around to face the boy, who's eyes were beginning to roll backwards. He kneeled down in front of him and grabbed his chin, forcing him to see eye to eye. His daunting, terrifying demeanor was back in spades. "If you EVER even set another foot on the wrong side of the line, tonight will be nothing in comparison to what I'll do to you. I'm not exaggerating in saying that you'll beg me to bend rule number three just once for you."
The Batman tossed the boy's head backwards and onto the gravel, utterly comatose. He stood to his full height, reaffirming his general-purpose gloves. A job well done, all things considered. Plan worked and flowed flawlessly, and he was now aware that if it were necessary, he'd be perfectly capable of taking out Kent. Not that the boy would try anything after tonight. A successful experiment, he thought, clenching and unclenching his fists. For the first few hits, it had been like punching rock. Thankfully, Clark had softened soon enough.
He heard something like thunder but different in the black clouds then. He turned his head in every direction, looking past the rain and lightening. Nothing there.
He heard something cut the air in the distance, behind a sky scraper, and he whipped himself around to face it. In the corner of his eye, he could have sworn he'd seen a red streak. He heard that thunder again and he pivoted around in time to catch something of a rocket that grabbed him by the throat and lifted him forwards off the rooftop and high above the busy streets.
The Batman clutched the single arm that strangled him, grinding his teeth and his face cringed as he looked down at his attacker, who held him at arm's length overhead, floating above the street and between buildings. She pulled her fist back, and struck him harder than anything he'd ever expected to live through.
He shot backwards like a bullet through a gun, shattering a window and crashing through a floor of an abandoned office building before finally skidding to a stop on a massive, empty dilapidated floor. He stared up from his bed of slivers at the hole he'd left in what now had become the ceiling, before rolling away as the section of floor he had found himself upon gave way beneath him. His heart pounded uncontrollably in his ear. Diana. She'd escaped. That was impossible, this wasn't right. He wasn't ready for this.
She came down after him, and he managed to stumble to his feet in time to cross-block a straight punch. It did him no good, though. He rocketed back off his feet and through a wooden support-pillar in the distance, hitting the floor sliding and barely rolling off any of the impact.
Sloppy. You should have seen it coming.
"How dare you..." She hissed maliciously, walking a straight line towards him as he forced himself to his hands and knees. She looked different, he noticed in his haze. Change of clothes. The gown had been replaced by some sort of red, blue and gold uniform. Were those stars he was seeing? He couldn't tell well enough to know the details.
Focus!
He shot up to his feet and threw out a desperate spinning hook-kick, but she ducked and caught him by the leg and abdomen, easily lifting and slamming him hard down through a second wooden pillar. He made no sound, rolling out of the way and onto his feet when she went to stomp him into the ground, but she was still quicker, straight punching him hard in the solar-plexus and again sending him hurtling backwards through the air and onto his back.
"I will not tolerate such disrespect!" She shouted furiously at him, but he couldn't hear her, rolling onto his stomach, his one arm trembling with strain as he pushed himself off the floor.
Get up. Pain is irrelevant, pain isn't real, pain doesn't matter...
"No mere man has right to make a prisoner of me!" She continued, hateful. "I will not allow you to do it again to my kind. No mere man will ever humiliate an Amazon, or talk down at me as you did! None shall ever put me and mine into bondage!"
She swung her leg back and kicked him in the ribs. He flew off the floor and smashed into an edge between the ceiling and a support pillar. He fell to the floor, pillar bending and dropping small chunks of plaster and dust from the ceiling on top of him. He felt blood shoot up from his lungs and into his mouth.
Don't you dare give up any ground. Don't you dare let her see you bleed...
He swallowed as much of it as he could, hoping she mistake it for a busted lip instead of an injured organ. It was bitter.
"What makes you think you have any place in all this?" She hissed. "What sign was given to you? Why don't you scream when I wound you? What is it that makes you keep going, pretending like it doesn't affect you? You think I can't hear your pounding, dying pulse, or the snapping of your bones? You think I can't see the blood spilling freely from you?!"
He looked at his side. She'd opened an old knife wound, and it was seeping out of his suit. He swore, and she kicked him across the room again before he could get to a knee.
He landed better this time, bouncing off a pillar and landing on a hand and a knee. He took deep breaths, his mouth open and his teeth locked shut, a single line of blood and saliva dripping from the corner of his red mouth.
"Is that really all it takes?" She nodded knowingly when the first drop of red hit the floor. "I think I understand it now. The cape, the heroics, the mask. You need it. You can't stand the thought that you don't matter. You despise how fragile and insignificant your humanity makes you. You can't accept the thought that it's all you are. That's why you hide behind all this shadow and monster's clothing, isn't it? The boundaries of mortality suffocate you. You need to feel like you can make a difference." She reached down and grabbed the edge of his mask "It's just delusions of grandeur. Beneath it all, you're still only..."
He swatted her hand away from his mask, shooting to his feet and backhanding her across the face harder than he'd ever let himself hit anyone. Her head barely whipped and she didn't make a sound as he followed with a roundhouse that struck her in the side of the head. He went to give her a right hook but she stopped him in mid-step, catching him by the arm. She gave him a backhand of her own, holding tightly to him. He shot sideways none the less, the arm of his suit torn off and left in her hands. He took this hit better than any before it, rolling off the impact and into a crouch, reaching under his cape for a Baterang, but she was already flying forward, and she had his weapon wielding arm in her grasp before he could make use of it, crushing his wrist in her hand.
He made no sound, only shaking slightly and scowling that bloody scowl while his bones cracked loudly between her fingers. She swung her leg around and kicked him down across the face, smashing his head into and at least partly through the fragile wooden floor and tearing away his remaining sleeve.
"Your toys can't help you now..." She hissed, pulling his cape over him and stealing away his belt. He began to struggle, but she drove her knee up into him, launching him upwards and tearing away his cape. She followed him into the air, tossing the cape and belt aside and striking him hard with an uppercut that sent him flying backwards, hitting the floor and sliding right into a wall. A concussion had been gnawing away at his cognizance for what felt like hours now. Things were getting far harder to see.
He refused the darkness. He'd been its master for years, and he wasn't about to submit to it now. Death... rest was not an option.
The pain was getting harder to ignore. He tried to concentrate, tried to make use of all the tricks and skills he'd learned to neutralize it, but he found himself forgetting them as blood trickled down over his eye. The right half of his mask had been cracked and a chunk had fallen off. His face had been badly splintered from the wood of the floor, small slivers buried in his skin. None of the cuts were longer or deeper than a couple of centimeters, but they were numerous. He took deep, laboring breaths. His ribs were crushed.
Get up.
He couldn't acknowledge it. He couldn't even let himself think of the injuries, or he'd start remembering stats, and hypothesizing how many minutes or seconds he could press on without medical attention. To think that what he didn't know wouldn't hurt him was he knew an ignorant philosophy, but for now it was a necessary one. Knowing for a fact he couldn't survive wasn't going to help him get through this.
He shook his head, and rolled onto his stomach, blood dripping to the floor from at least four individual places on his exposed chin, but he didn't bother to count and make sure. He pressed one arm against the wall and pulled himself to his feet. She was not amused.
"What's the point?!" She demanded, frustrated with him. "Why keep fighting me when its only going to bring you another wound, another broken bone?! What is it you expect to do?! Do you really think you can beat me?! Will the world be any better if you strike me down?! Are you so vain, so proud as to not accept defeat from a better?!"
Get up. She is not a better...
She threw a punch, but she missed when he rolled under it, instead smashing her fist elbow deep into the wall. Moving faster than his body should have permitted in his state, he kicked her in the ribs, again and again. Finally, she broke free and grabbed his leg in both hands, swinging him one-hundred-eighty degrees and back into the wall. He crumpled against the impact and fell to the floor, dust and plaster falling down on top of him, but she did not let go.
She took two steps, lifting him off the ground, swinging him around her before releasing . He hurtled, spinning uncontrollably through the air. His skull smashed bluntly with a sickening crack into a concrete support beam, his body wrapping around it before he dropped to the floor. He was unmoving for a moment, and Diana smiled, a sigh of relief escaping her. Until of course he started to shake again, lurching as he tried to push himself off the floor and blood spilling heedlessly down his partially exposed face.
To be great is to go on, to go on is to go forward, to go forward is to return...
His mask was fractured, a hard edge digging into his face. It had to be removed, he could feel the wound. He grabbed the cowl from a bottom flap, and tore it from his head. At least she wouldn't get to do it.
She scowled furiously, and then noticed his belt and cape laying at the center of the room. A vague idea formed in her head, and her smile returned as she picked off a pair of his sleek, meticulously crafted handcuffs. She walked slowly, purposefully towards him. He was turned away, on both hands and a knee when she drove her foot down into the small of his back. He crashed back down into the floor, and his head whipped back in obvious anguish. She imagined he must have swallowed his tongue as not have let a sound escape him.
"See how you like it..." She leant over and hushed, grinding her heel in his spine, clicking the handcuffs around his wrists. "Scream for me..."
He only trembled and grit his teeth, stubborn to his last gasp, which may have been approaching. Defiant until the bitter end.
Get up...
With her own annoyed scream, she kicked him again in the side. He soared again, and crashing out a window once more came into open air, falling a couple stories into an alley. He rolled with it, scrapping his bare arms against the pavement before smacking the back of his head against a dumpster. It hadn't been as bad as he'd expected on the way down. Perhaps he was getting numb.
The rain fell on his face, washing away the blood. He rolled onto his stomach and pushed himself up to see a single watery red stream falling to the ground.
This is no way to die...
She floated down to the ground, landing on the pavement lighter than a feather. "I don't understand." She barely hushed over the rain, but somehow he heard her. "I just don't get it. There are millions in this city alone that are exactly the same as you, billions around the world, but none of them would do what you're doing. No one would even think of it. So why do you do it? What separates you, what makes you keep getting up?" She gestured vaguely at him. "What's the point? What are you trying to accomplish?"
He was almost to his feet, but before he could move, before he could think, her hand was at his throat, shoving him into the dumpster. She punched him across the face over and over, and with each strike he staggered to the side and nearly to the ground, but she kept pulling him back up.
"Don't you get it?!" She screamed furiously, the rain falling over her and a blank expression on his red, reeling face. "Don't you realize you're dying?! Can't you see that I'm killing you?! Why get up?! Why make it worse?! Do you think you're fighting for something more, that you have a place in the grand scheme of things?! Can you even tell me what it is?! Is it because you think you can make a difference, that you can make this filth that is you and your race any better?! Do you think you can offer them any protection from this harsh reality, do you think they'll even remember you for it?! Can you honestly say that at the end of the day, the world will be a better place for you having endured?!"
"No..." He muttered weakly, eyes to the floor as he took deep exhausted breaths.
"Then why?!" She demanded, squeezing his throat and whipping his head backwards. "Why fight when it's never going to matter?! Why fight only to die?! Why be a hero when there's no glory or satisfaction, when your own people will despise you?! Why not spend your time trying to make yourself happy, instead of tormenting yourself to make it better for people who's lives remain in shambles no matter what you do?! What's the point of trying?! Why why why why why why?!?!"
She drove him again into the dumpster, her grip tightening, and he writhed, gritting his teeth. Trembling, he looked at her, stubborn, spiteful. "Because I need to try..." He answered simply, beaten far beyond an inch of his life. "Because it's right..."
Furious, she turned and threw him into the wall behind her. The brick cracked and he crumbled to the floor, but he was already pushing himself back up as soon as he hit it. He lifted his heavy, weary head, and noticed a thin golden rope, tied into a lasso in her hands. It nearly glowed in the rain and dark night. Where she'd gotten it, he hadn't the foggiest.
"Do you know what this is?" She asked quietly.
He didn't answer, forcing his screaming muscles to work. There was no point, but that didn't really matter.
"It's old." She explained. "Ancient. Forged by the greatest of Themsyscira craftswoman from my mother's girdle."
What is it with her and that girdle?
"It's very well made." She noted, resting it in her hands. "Unbreakable, and infinitely long. Can your mind look far enough past your sciences to grasp that?"
He was beginning to dislike this Diana, princess of Amazons.
"Now here's what makes it such a powerful, unique weapon." She continued. "It is purity. It will permit no darkness, no dishonesty, no injustice. It is the divine, perfect right. No will can deny it or break it, for it is beyond the grasp of the conscious. To be enthralled in its glow is to be under my command."
The Batman barely heard a word, fighting against constant blackouts, but he was fairly certain he'd caught the gist of it. His brain was working far slower than he'd have liked it to. Then there was something binding around his throat, and all at once everything stopped. The will, the calculation, the rationality, the choice: it was gone. All of it. All at once, there was nothing he could do. That familiar terror he hadn't felt since he was a child was all that remained.
He could feel himself kicking and fighting as she dragged him out of the alley, the golden cord burning the flesh of his neck and choking the life from him. The rain stung against his wounds, but he couldn't think. His brain would not function. He could only feel. To react was beyond his grasp. The helplessness was horrifying.
There was a sudden stop, and he found himself beneath the fluorescent glow of an overhanging street lamp, which felt strangely familiar. He made his way to his knees, looking down at the blood on the ground, spilling into the sewers, and the crack upon which his left foot rest. Same sewer. Same crack. Same foot. Very familiar. It was happening again...
No. His own blood. Not their's. Not their's.
There was blackness and rain all around him, as if the small circle of white light falling down on him from the lamp were all that shine in the world. At the end of the street, through the blackness were the decayed ruins of the Monarch Theater. He was sure of it.
Very familiar indeed...
"You will be a symbol." Something red blue and golden said from the darkness. He was suddenly very aware of the lasso...no, noose around his throat, and how it climbed up into the bright light of the lamp before coming back down on the other side.
"The dawn of a new era, where fear and shadow won't be necessary."
The rope pulled hard once at his throat and lifted him to the tips of his toes, choking him mercilessly.
"But for one era to begin, another must die."
Another tug, and he was off his feet and hanging from his neck under the lamp. He pressed his feet against the post to relieve some of the pressure, but it was wet and hard to hold on to. His one foot kept slipping.
"Now," said Diana stepping into the light beneath him and into his sight. She looked poised, unmoved by his writhing, bloody and bound body. "Is no longer your time." She said, looking up at him. He stared back at her trembling, furious, spiteful, and any number of other emotions she couldn't count.
"Die." She ordered simply.
For a brief moment he just looked at her, tips of his toes clutching desperately to the lamppost. They fell away, and he just hung there unmoving.
She stood in the rain watching him for what was probably a minute, just to make sure. He didn't budge. Just gently swayed back and forth, turning slightly whenever the rope twisted, head hanging heavily forwards. The rope did not glow golden. It looked more plain than she'd ever seen it.
Eventually, she left. Someone would find him sooner or later, she figured. There would be a news story, an initial, though minor shock. Nothing important. He didn't matter enough.
She didn't understand the significance of that alley, that lamp, that theater across the street. There was something about it all that made her shiver. She'd felt it when she grabbed the rope. She dismissed it as the rain and turned the corner.
For the second time in his life, Bruce Wayne found himself completely and deeply helpless under that same lamp, in front of that same alley, bathed in that same hollow light, blackness all around him and utterly, hopelessly alone.
-----------------
Lex Luthor sat patiently in his plush leather chair deep inside his war room, content smile on his face and a bounce in his foot. Bane leant against a command post, and Shiva sat perched on top of one across, each equally impatient, starring down their employer, who only kept on smiling, obviously aware of something they weren't.
There was a soft drop behind the leather chair, and Luthor swivelled to see Diana, princess of the Amazons in his door frame, a bloody, beaten Clark dragging behind her. She lifted him by the scruff of his shirt and tossed him at Luthor's feet.
Luthor beamed an ugly smile. There was nothing fake about it.
/
Alfred Pennyworth looked up through a dizzy concussion at the main monitor of the Batcave, a single straight red line loudly sustaining a single beep: The Batman's pulse.
Alfred Pennyworth nearly collapsed.
/Well, that'll be all for awhile. After two shorter chapters, I hit you upside the head with a huge one. Sorry to leave you on such a cliff-hanger, but this is pretty much the big turning point of the story. I'm glad I made it this far before going on hiatus. Hopefully, you're hooked by now. Spread and share the word if you'd like.-Roll/